Money down the drain - DRAIN?

My attention was grabbed today [to be honest, it didn't take that much grabbing] by this tweet:

She starts with an interesting piece of typical choplogic:

As a neuroscientist I am interested in how we can use insights from our basic research and apply those insights to understand contemporary life. The brain adapts exquisitely to the environment... 

By definition, if you use computers heavily, guess what? You are going to turn yourself effectively into a computer, because that is the environment you have adapted to. You will have certain skills, but not others.

More here 

Wow! 'By definition'; this is obviously clever stuff, only to be grasped by trained neuroscientists like Herself. I'm not sure I've got this, but it seems to me that 'if you use handtools heavily, guess what? [nice bit of vox poppery there; 'Don't be frightened by all this clever stuff, I'm talking your language'] you are going to turn yourself effectively into a handtool,  because that is the environment you have adapted to. You will have certain skills, but not others.' Scary. I obviously had a lucky escape when I spent only three weeks in a holiday job as a carpenter's mate's mate's mate. Much longer and I'd've been saying things like 'Sorry, I can't have a conversation right now; would a dovetail joint do instead?'

<rantette>
And I do wish people wouldn't brandish the phrase 'By definition' like some kind of omnipotent weapon at the beginning of sentences, with the general meaning 'It's obvious that...' but with no definition anywhere in the argument.
</rantette>

The insidious thing about her piece is that there are occasional shafts of sense:

... A while ago Michael Gove, when he was the education secretary, said that every child should learn a poem. My own view is that a parrot can learn a poem

The whole point is that the child should understand the poem. Facts on their own are pretty boring, whereas true knowledge is how you use those facts, relate them to each other and put them together in a framework.

Shame about that 'My own view' bit. Another bit of vox poppery. But there's no need for the assumed diffidence. A parrot can learn a poem (well.. a short one). And the word 'knowledge' is an odd choice. But her heart's in the right place (in this instance). It's when she embarks on simple-minded extrapolations from neuroscience to the-trouble-with-education-today that she comes unstuck:

If serious money is being spent on high-tech devices, we need to think whether that will really achieve the best ends. In a report commissioned by Nesta in 2012, Decoding Learning, it was concluded that, "in the last five years, UK schools have spent more than £1 billion on digital technology. From interactive whiteboards to tablets, there is more digital technology in schools than ever before. But so far there has been little evidence of substantial success in improving educational outcomes".

There is no issue here. An inspirational teacher is an inspirational teacher, using whatever media are appropriate, from traditional pen and paper at one end of the spectrum to the latest high-spec iPad at the other. 

<autobiographical_note theme="educational spending">
I must say, it seems to me that the high-spec end of the spectrum will quickly move downwards. When my daughter was studying 'Don Juan' a few years ago, I recognized the text she was using. When in 1969 I had studied 'Don Juan', the text we used had been quite recently published (June 1967, says Amazon). So in September 1969, when we first opened those olive covers, it was only two years old. Nearly 40 years later, my daughter was using the same text in the same binding.</autobiographical_note>

In the context of education spending this penny-pinching, I'm amazed that any teacher manages to get any hi-tech equipment. But if they can, good luck to them! And anyone who whinges about the cost of education – as Baroness Greenstuff does – should weigh it against the cost of the alternative.

And anyone who decries the pouring of money down the drain, in the case of education, should perhaps reconsider their use of the term DRAIN.

b
Update 2015.07.17.13:50 – Added PS

PS With no  great relevance to the theme, I'm adding a diagram that I produced a few years ago as a prompt for further research in (that is, outside) the ESOL classroom, on the subject of drains.

---

 Mammon When Vowels Get Together V5.2: Collection of Kindle word-lists grouping different pronunciations of vowel-pairs. Now  complete (that is, it covers all vowel pairs –  but there's still stuff to be done with it; an index, perhaps...?) 

And here it is: Digraphs and Diphthongs . The (partial) index has an entry for each vowel pair that can represent each monophthong phoneme. For example AE, EA and EE are by far the most common pairs of vowels used to represent the /i:/ phoneme, but there are eight other possibilities. The index uses colour to give an idea of how common a spelling is, ranging from bright red to represent the most common to pale olive green to represent the least common.

Also available at Amazon: When Vowels Get Together: The paperback.

And if you have no objection to such promiscuity, Like this. 

Freebies (Teaching resources:  over 45,100 views  and well over 6,000 downloads to date**. They're very eclectic - mostly EFL and MFL, but one of the most popular is from KS4 History, dating from my PGCE, with 2,300 views and nearly 1,000 downloads to date. So it's worth having a browse.)

** This figure includes the count of views for a single resource held in an account that I accidentally created many years ago.

Nowheresville

Hmm. This, new-to-me, wonderful word looks to me as though it should mean 'being in no place', not existing ANYWHERE rather than just 'non-existence'. But far be it from me to question the OED's authority. I should  at least look it up.

It seems to belong to a 'family' of words that refer to places in Latin:

• ibi = there/in that place
• ubi = where/in what place?
• alibi = somewhere else/in some other place (or, pleasingly if archaically, otherwhere)

I was tempted to suggest an Early Latin particle meaning 'place' that could be tacked on to a word. But I was misled by English's readiness to do this; if you want a new word, take one and tack another one on: egs. 'placeholder', 'weekend', 'good-for-nothing', 'sick-making', 'live-in lover'..... Latin, per contra, had case endings, and if you wanted a special ...errm, case of a word you changed the ending. Good old etymonline makes it clear in the reference to 'the alibi defence' (the accused was somewhere else) that alibi is the locative of alius [=(an)other]. Just for the heck of it I'll quote this piece of gentle understatement:

The weakened sense of "excuse" is attested since 1912, but technically any proof of innocence that doesn't involve being "elsewhere" is an excuse, not an alibi.

<digression theme="This is the way the world ends, not with a banger but with a wimpy"^‡> 
A similar weakening of a clear sense is happening to amnesty – the temporary suspension [or forgetting – think of 'mnemonic'] of a prohibition. This precise meaning works for 'gun amnesty', 'knife amnesty'... and so on - when people can hand in a weapon without admitting to illegal possession. But once a year, with a grating regularity that always seems to me to be quickening ('Time's wingéd chariot', I guess), Radio 5 Live participates in a Football Shirt Amnesty which when I first met it conjured up an image of shame-faced middle-aged men queuing up outside a Police Station to hand in a shirt: 'A friend wore it once, it wasn't me, honest... oh all right, it was me, but I was a lot younger then....'
</digression>

My Latin Dictionary doesn't have a separate headword nullibi (well, it wouldn't have), but I assume it's the locative of nullus. So here's a fourth for my list of place-words:

• nullibi = in no place

Returning to the marvellous (if rather arch^†) 'nullibiety', of which Onelook finds only nine dictionary listings, one of which is called Worthless Word For The Day, I have to admit that 'not existing' and 'not existing in a place' are often synonymous; it's useful though, on occasion, to be able to refer to 'the nullibiety of  comodo dragons in the wild in the UK' – not terribly useful, I grant.

But the hardcopy #WVGTbook calls. I should be getting proofs next week (or at least seeing them – I'm not sure of the actual nuts and bolts of the CreateSpace process).

b

^†It reminds me of flocci-nauci-nihili-pilification, a nonce word with legs, coined from a schoolboy mnemonic about a common clutch of Latin prepositions.
^‡With thanks to Frank Muir on My Word.

Update 2013.12.12.12:12 – Added this PS (actually at about a quarter past, but the timestamp  was just too tempting)

PS Native speakers  will know this already, because of anxiety, piety, satiety, sobriety, society, variety... and so on, but language students may not have this lexical background: it's /nʌlɪ'baɪǝti:/.

Update 2013.12.14.12:50 – Added purple passage.

Update 2013.12.15.16:00 –  updated footer

---

 Mammon When Vowels Get Together V5.2: Collection of Kindle word-lists grouping different pronunciations of vowel-pairs. Now complete (that is, it covers all vowel pairs –  but there's still stuff to be done with it; an index, perhaps...?)

And if you have no objection to such promiscuity, Like this.

Freebies (Teaching resources:  nearly 35,0300 views**  and  5,000 downloads to date. They're very eclectic - mostly EFL and MFL, but one of the most popular is from KS4 History, dating from my PGCE, with 1796 views/838 downloads to date. So it's worth having a browse.)

** This figure includes the count of views for a single resource held in an account that I accidentally created many years ago.





 

Unos 20 personas simpáticas, así como Usted

'Probably the finest Gothic building in Spain', the cathedral in León  – 'the House of Light' – passed me by.  I didn't rejoice in the 125 medieval stained glass windows, 1,800 square metres of glass – catching and mediating the sunlight in different ways as the Sun moves (or as the Earth moves, if you must); it was the last church that I went into as a (vestigial) believer,  in March 1971, and my mind was on other things. The Guardia Civil were not among the '20 personas simpáticas' who, according to my sales spiel, I was to talk to each day ('diáriamente y en cada lugar donde vamos visitando...').

I had just been arrested at gunpoint, and my one colleague (I had previously been in a group of about a dozen 'students' – well, young people, mostly students – but we two were to be the nucleus of a new group) was still being held. I had no return ticket, precious little money, and I was working  with a man whom I didn't know from Adam – or rather Adán, he being Spanish – who, the police had tried to convince me, was probably a spiv. So I turned to religion; or just  wanted to sit down somewhere cool (a need which I think may explain the popularity of Catholicism in the Mediterranean).

I was reminded of that magnificent Gothic pile yesterday, at Truro Cathedral (and cognoscenti of the money-changers story may be interested to note that, by the magic of predictive text, 'Truro' is only a finger-slip away from 'usury'). As the cathedral's website says:

Since at least 1259, and probably before, there has been a Parish Church of St Mary located on this site. When Truro was chosen it was assumed that the Parish Church would be completely demolished to make way for the Cathedral. However, the architect John Loughborough Pearson, argued and eventually gained permission to keep at least part of the old Parish Church. He cleverly incorporated the South Aisle of the church into his design for the new Cathedral, so that symbolically and physically the Mother Church of the Diocese has a protective arm around one of her daughter churches.

 There had been a bishopric of León since the ninth century AD, their website says:

A Christian community is first recorded in León in 254, but no bishop is recorded in Visigothic times. The bishopric of León was established in 860, after King Ordono conquered the city from the Moors. It was subordinate to the diocese of Toledo until 1105.

But it was not until the middle of the thirteenth century AD – about the same time as the building of Truro's Parish Church of St Mary – that work on  the cathedral at León was started with money from Alfonso the Wise. [Cardinal Wiseman school? No, that would be a digression too far, even for me.] Both cathedrals, also, were built mainly over two periods: León's in the thirteenth and then in the nineteenth; Truro's in the nineteenth century (the foundation stone was laid in 1880) and not completed until the twentieth (with refurbishment extending into the twentyfirst).

They are both Gothic – although Truro's is an example of the Victorian Gothic Revival. And although Truro's stained glass bears no comparison with León's, it is still spectacular (a word with a pleasingly optical double-entendre). And, presumably for lack of funds, much of its glass above ground-floor level is clear. The rose window at the front of the building, though, is magnificent; and there is much other notable stained glass (just not 1,800 square metres!)

I was in Truro at the end of my choir's short tour of the West Country, of which more anon. But before I go I can't resist an etymological reflection induced by my visit to the Mayflower Exhibition. Plymouth was noted for being a Roundhead stronghold during the English Civil War – and that name for the Puritans' soldiers, was coined with reference to their headgear (I prefer the soldiers' helmet theory to the pudding-basin haircut theory expounded – very briefly – here).

The Roundhead soldiers were by no means the first fighting force to be given a nickname based on what their heads looked like. When Roman soldiers occupied Gaul the locals thought that their helmets looked like cooking pots (Vulgar Latin TESTA(M)). Among all the Romance-language names for head (capo, cabo, cabeza, cabeça ...) where does the French tête come from? Well, here's a hint; the circumflex in French is often a vestige of an s.

I'll leave that with you. After 5 days away I have mail to delete; and then I must get on with V3.1 of #WVGTbook.^PPS

b
PS Another headgear-based term of abuse and/or contempt was one that I was exposed to in common with other wearers of the uniform of St Gregory's RC Primary School – which included a cap that sported the papal arms (a mitre, that looked a bit like a bee-hive). Hence the unbelievers' cry of  'Look out, here come the bee-hives', a term of derision that I classed with the "dungeon, fire and sword" that, according to the hymn, the Faith of our Fathers [was] living still in spite of.  With any luck it'd be worth a good few Hail Marys in the Hereafter Stakes.

Update 2017.06.02.13:50  – Deleted old footer and added PPS.

PPS –This link no longer works, as at the time I wrote this post the book was half finished. The finished book is here.

Teeth ...wait for it...

GNASH.

I had a difference of opinion with MrsK the other day. We were in the seventh circle of la cittá dolente, or PC World as it is more commonly known, looking for a new laptop. In defence of one I pointed out that it did not have Windows 8 (which to me made it preferable). She wanted to know why this was an advantage, and I said that with any new operating system there's more to go wrong; tried and trusted software is no longer supported.

This was further evidence of my defeatism, she said. Why expect things to go wrong? She asked a passing school-leaver if there were any known support issues with application software (I'm paraphrasing here, you understand) and the answer was, surprisingly enough, that everything was hotsy-totsy with Windows 8.

Well, twenty years of working with software engineers (actually, 19¾ - HP took the penny-pinching precaution of shafting me 3 months before they would have had to fork out for a 20-year award) has taught me that if anything can go wrong with new software it will. This was true of Windows 95, and with everything since. Working in 'Support', which I did for many years, involved me almost daily in fixes and workarounds and you-just-can't-do-that-any-more when people tried to get existing application software to play nice with a new operating system.

So everything, I feared, was not hotsy-totsy. To quote Ogden  Nash it was coldsy-toldsy (and Google, incidentally, has just asked me whether I mean 'cold toddy'). New operating systems are great when all the dependencies work, but with each new operating system there are more dependencies; there's more to go wrong. I hold no candle for Windows 7; give me Windows NT 4.1 any day. But for me it's preferable to Windows 8 (just as Windows 8 will be preferable to - saints preserve us - Windows 9).

This is not just a rant about shopping for laptops. I've just had an inexplicable failure with  my old trusted HotMeTaL Pro. Earlier today, at a whim, it changed all my IPA symbols to meaningless glyphs. I repaired the damage - assuming that it affected only the IPA characters - and carried on. Suddenly, it did it again.

What is there to do? HotMeTaL Pro has long been unsupported. It worked marvellously on Windows NT* V4.1 but the company that made it either off-loaded it or went out of business years ago. It has limped along from upgraded platform to upgraded platform, with bits falling off. It's now at the 'One wheel on my wagon' stage. I can't use the help library any more - that stopped at Windows 2000, as I recall.

If the symbols go on the blink again I shall just have to bite the bullet and learn to use some other tool. I should have done that ages ago - that's the way the world of software works. You have to keep buying and learning to use new stuff. Otherwise, entropy takes over: what started as hotsy-totsy declines to coldsy toldsy, and thence to frigidy-wigidy.

* Later the same day: My fabled typing speeds of up to five words per minute conjured up an American sounding operating system called 'Windows NY', which I suppose someone might ♥.

PS Yippee - I've diagnosed the problem and have a workaround. The trouble is with the Project> External Links command, which is what weds me so strongly to this tool; it - ahem - 'does what it says on the tin' (an anagram, FWIW, of WET AND TIT IN HOSE SAY TOSH), checking links to external web-sites. This command, for some unknown reason, plays around with the symbols. The workaround is to take a copy of the working file before doing the check - just a slight inconvenience, as long as I remember to do it. I also need to note and repeat any fixes arising from the check - a minor annoyance. But at least I now know what's going wrong.


Update 2013.01.15 - a few tweaks
Update 2013.01.17 - added PS
Update 2019.12.31 - deleted old footer