"not the least resemblance to a Woman."
Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), English poet, classicist, writer and translator, was described by Lord Napier as "a fine old Slut, though bearing not the least resemblance to a Woman. She had more the appearance of a fat Priest of the Church of Rome than an English Gentlewoman." I mention this to demonstrate that the likes of A.A. Gill who evaluate scholarly women solely by disparaging their physical appearance are nothing new.
God in check
I was asked for a poem for the newsletter the churches here send out to all the houses in the town. This is what I gave them and they printed. I think it's reasonably good, though it could probably still be improved here and there.In a supermarket
In the supermarket, I passed an old lady in discussion with a young security guard.
Old lady: And they rearrange the shelves all the time.
Guard: They do it on purpose. To see if you're awake.
Old lady: Well, I can never find anything.
Me: You know, it's to the supermarket's advantage to have you wandering around looking at the shelves.
Old lady: Well, it doesn't work with me. I just say (lowers voice) sod it, I'm leaving, I'll do without.
Me: And the world needs more people like you.
Guard: Yeah, everyone buys too much stuff, more than they need. And then they throw it away instead of giving it to the homeless.
I left them discussing practical socialism.
Shipping expertise needed
A friend in Maryland is sending me a parcel whose contents are valuable enough to attract duty. HMRC put a sticker on the parcel saying the duty needed to be paid, and then (as far as we can tell) sent it back "return to sender" without actually asking me to pay the duty. What now, wise people?
End7.org
End7.org wants to get rid of seven tropical diseases (roundworm, hookworm, elephantiasis, river blindness, schistosomiasis, trachoma, and trichuriasis) by 2020.Pies
Wondering why I had an earworm of "Two Lovely Black Eyes" in the supermarket, I looked around and saw I'd just passed a sign saying, "12 Mini Mince Pies". This happens to me all the time.
Auto-pun
I read today that in both Nazi Germany and East Germany the government would give you a loan when you got married, so you could buy furniture and so on, and for every child you subsequently produced, they would cancel a quarter of the remaining debt. My brain said to me, "So I suppose that was payment in Kind."
Justin Cantuar
My (long) answer to someone who asked me what I thought of Justin Welby as the new Canterbury:
Pluses and minuses, I think. Minuses: he's only been a bishop for a couple of years, and he's much-loved in Durham and my friends there report they're sorry to lose him (though that's a plus for the rest of us). And it is certainly not the best thing that he went to Eton, especially in the current political climate. But on the other hand he's a smart guy, he has experience running large organisations, he went into the priesthood for very good reasons, he's heavily critical of capitalism despite his background, and I think it speaks volumes that he sent his own kids to state schools. I could wish he was more pro-LGBT rights than he is (though despite what some have said I see no reason to call him actively homophobic; at worst he colludes with a homophobic status quo). But one of the important things with an archbishop is not so much what he himself believes, but what he's prepared to allow others to believe. I certainly doubt he'll drag the church to the right, as some have been saying, especially given his critiques of capitalism. Out of all the candidates, he was probably the best choice overall (Cocksworth would have been good, but I think on balance not quite as good). So I'm pretty hopeful about the next few years.
Millipedes update
Ucalegon, the female giant millipede, has been nesting deep in the tank of earth (and presumably laying eggs) for the last week or so, so I haven't seen her. Melchizedek, the male, has been appearing and disappearing. I don't know whether he's been actually bringing her food or what. Anyway, today I saw the middle portion of Melchizedek curled around (he often sleeps with his head and tail buried) and then I realised that the curl in the middle was a different colour. So Ucalegon is back and sleeping cuddled up to Melchizedek.
Biblical double entendre
I wish Bible translators would avoid double entendre. Two cases in point:
Psalm 16:11. The Episcopal psalter renders this as: "in your right hand are pleasures for evermore."
Luke 18:5. The NIV renders it as: "because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming."
I suppose I have a dirty mind, but it's really, really distracting, at least to me. I stop thinking about the text and start thinking about the double entendre instead.
Edit: After I posted this, I thought of a case where I've seen translators deliberately duck such a misreading: Luke 11:7. The Greek has the man saying his children are *with him* in bed. This is open to misinterpretation in our cultural context, so different from the original context where a household might only own one bed. As you can see in http://bible.cc/luke/11-7.htm there are translations which work around this by saying "My children and I are in bed"; I'd be surprised if this wasn't a conscious choice to depart slightly from the Greek.
Syndicated 2012-10-25 20:45:13 (Updated 2012-10-25 20:58:32) from Monument
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.
If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!
