TERF Accountancy

 

The Guardian's was among the many media reports of the kerfuffle caused by...

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(or rather shortly before  according to the analysis in the latest episode of More or Less; the blurb says: 

The Cass Review is an independent report on the state of gender identity services for under-18s in England’s NHS. It found children had been let down by a lack of research and "remarkably weak" evidence on medical interventions in gender care. But before it was even released, claims were circulating online that it ignored 98% of the evidence in reaching its conclusion. Is that claim true?~   

) 

</tangent> 

... a paroXysm (formerly known as "a tweet"... 

<tangent>
(It's a great shame, I feel, that "Twitter" became [Mus]"X" [Folly]. The image of the little blue bird reminded me of the etymology of the word "gazette":

 I like that 'false chatter' {and give yourself a Brownie point if you noticed the link between this bird and Rossini's opera}.
</tangent>

... the Report that led to Dr Cass receiving "vile abuse" and being advised not to use public transport.

The doctor behind a landmark review of the NHS’s gender identity services for children and young people has said fears had been raised about her personal safety amid online abuse after the report’s release.

Dr Hilary Cass told the Times she wished to address the “disinformation” circulating about the findings and recommendations handed down by the Cass review when it was published on 10 April.... 

She said she had received online abuse in the wake of the report and had been advised to stop using public transport.

That More or Less report held that the first exhortation to ignore the Cass report on the grounds that it 'discounted 98% of the research' was a ridiculous assertion somewhere between a gross over-simplification and a lie; at any rate [to quote Doctor Cass in various press reports, and – of course – More or Less] it was disinformation [presumably aimed at smearing her as a 'Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist').                                                    

Os retornados

I've been listening to Jon Snow's fascinating Portugal's Carnation Revolution, in which he looks back at the events of 1975 – which he reported on as a young reporter working at the time for LBC. The programme ended with a report of the feelings of the people who had left former Portuguese colonies rather than live with the revolutionary governments.

<autobiographical-note relevancy="0">
Less than two years before, I had spent the summer enrolled in a summer course at the Universidade de Coimbra. In those largely pre-wheeled-luggage days ...

<tangent>

Bernard D. Sadow developed the first commercial rolling suitcase by applying for the rolling luggage patent, which was officially known as; United States patent 3,653,474 for “Rolling Luggage”, in 1970. Two years later in 1972 Bernard D. Sadow was given the wheeled suitcases patent, which became successful. A number of people (not men, for some reason – it's almost as if women made up for relative physical weakness [on average] by using their brains. It took a man to cash in on the idea though.)
</tangent>

 ...I was struck, on a day-trip to Lisbon, by the sight of a native of one such colony ...

<tangent>
It's just struck me that it's normal  for commentators to refer to 'First Nation peoples' in America and Australasia, but I haven't met the usage in Africa – ironic in view of the fact that Africa's where humanity got started. (Maybe it's just that I don't move in the right circles though...).
</tangent>

... hurrying through the main station at Lisbon with a suitcase skilfully balanced on her head.
</autobiographical-note>

(Predominantly) white colonials who had returned (os Retornados...

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[known unfortunately but inevitably, as 'the Returnees'...

<meta-tangent>
I feel a certain antipathy to neologisms ending -ee that don't derive from pseudo-reflexives such as s'échapper (escapee) or se refugier (refugee). "Retiree" and "Attendee" make my stomach churn. I know this is silly; it's just me. In defence ...

<meta-meta-tangent>
Yes dammit: Add to dictionary.
<meta-meta-tangent>

...of "returnee", return is, as my French master M. Baring-Gould used to say un verbe de déplacement, and would therefore (if it were French) take être in the Passé  Composé. But I digress.
<meta-tangent>

]
</tangent> 

...) found it hard to fit into the homeland's cultural background. In the colonies,   there was a more relaxed dress-code, it was not unusual for women to smoke, and there were other restrictions not yet relaxed after nearly 50 years' dictatorship that Portugal was recovering from (some petty, some less so): at first., even Coca Cola was banned).  I experienced the old regime (under what was ironically called o Estado Novo) in 1973.

<autobiographical-note>
I was briefly in thrall to a fellow guest at the Pensão Alentejana. One evening we were walking la main dans la main (as tous les garçons et les filles de [notre] âge used to do – after all, she was French (though not Sylvie Vartan) – and were stopped by a policeman who wanted to know if we were married. It took a few years for such a culture to relax.
</autobiographical-note>

At first, it was feared that the influx of hundreds of thousands of returnees would be crippling for Portugal. A confidential CIA memo dated September 1974 (approved for release in 2005) warned:

But according to one person interviewed in Jon Snow's report many historians now hold that the successful integration of os retornados and the new economic and cultural innovations they brought with them account for the ultimate success of this almost bloodless coup.

Portugal's Carnation Revolution is well worth a listen.

But that's all for now. I must go and wrestle with my conscience about using the pressure washer – which the people at Greenredeem take a dim view of.

b

CRM and Punishment

 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy that companies use to manage interactions with customers and potential customers. CRM helps organisations streamline processes, build customer relationships, increase sales, improve customer service, and increase profitability. 

Source

There are of course many software packages, and (in this smartphone-centric ...

<tangent>
I heard on the radio this morning of a restaurant in Verona that is offering a free bottle of wine to diners who agree to relinquish their mobile phones for the duration.   The man on Radio 3 didn't – as is his wont – attribute this  snippet of news, but I found it in this piece in Monday's Guardian:

An Italian restaurant is offering a free bottle of wine to customers who relinquish their mobile phones during meals.

Angelo Lella, the owner of Al Condominio, a restaurant that opened in the northern city of Verona in March, said the aim was to encourage diners chat to each other instead of constantly glancing at their phones.

“We wanted to open a restaurant that was different from the others,” he said. “So we picked this format – customers can choose to renounce technology while enjoying a convivial moment together. Technology is becoming a problem – there is no need to look at your phone every five seconds, but for many people it is like a drug … This way they have an opportunity to put it aside and drink some good wine.”

Her words 'like a drug' have a basis in fact. I believe the same dopamine receptors are involved in drug dependency and mobile dependency, and I suspect similar physical withdrawal symptoms affect both – FFS as they used to say in the standards world: 'for further study'.
</tangent>

 
...brave new world) apps that provide support for CRM,

<autobiographical-note>
The NHS must be using one such package, as this experience attests: last week I was at the Royal Marsden for a check-up involving a short consultation preceded by a blood test. The phlebotomist was chatty and friendly, and after giving her my name I added 'People usually call me "Bob".'

After she'd done her stuff I went back to the waiting area to settle in for my usual hour or two's wait. But before I had even sat down a nurse called for "Bob Knowles" (not the usual "Robert" of that ilk). The phlebotomist must have had a CRM app open at the entry for "Robert Knowles" and filled in the (previously blank) "Preferred common name" field. And later the same day I received a letter addressed to "Bob". From now on I fear I'll always be "Bob" in all contexts, formal or informal. I question whether this 'improve[s] customer service'.
</autobiographical-note>

All Trussed Up

Earlier this week I listened to the Liz Truss interview on Newscast. This was met in the Newscast section of Discord with the foreseeable anti-Truss reception (much of which I agree with). One among many was this:

 

At the time I agreed. I felt that her veiled accusations against other actors in the incredible financial shambles  that accompanied her 7 weeks' Reign of Error were simply indicative of her child-like inability to admit that she had screwed up flamboyantly.

But later in the week I came across Robert Peston and Steph McGovern's 3-part piece in The Rest Is Money blog, entitled...

<rant>
(and spare me from the 'titled' nonsense – I've explained elsewhere [that's the first of many whinges] why that suits the social background of American English; old fuddy-duddy that I am I'm sticking to my British English guns [flintlocks though they may be]).

</rant>

...'Who Killed Liz Truss?' Unarguably she made several gross missteps (I initially wrote 'miscalculations', but decided that that was giving her too much credit for strategic thinking), but it turns out that her finger-pointing at other culpable participants in the tragi-comedy/farce was to some extent justified.

So. unlike that contributor on Discord (who couldn't bear a second listen) I did go back and listen to the Truss interview again, giving her credit for not taking all the blame.

 But this has gone on long enough, and the lawn is crying out for attention.

 

b

Qualis artifex

Meet the Roman Emperor with Mary Beard. broadcast earlier this week referred to the words attributed to the Emperor Nero just before his suicide:

Qualis  artifex pereo

'What an artist dies [in me]'

 – or, as it is more often quoted (rather fancifully. I think, here, for example) 'What an artist the world is losing'. 

<autobiographical-note>
I may have some across this at school, but in 1978 (as I was working at the time on the 3rd edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations) it was at the forefront of my mind as I checked all the Latin entries.
<autobiographical-note>

And Mary Beard's reference reminded me of a bon mot of mine, one of which I am inordinately (unreasonably? at any rate, typically) proud; arguably it was my meilleur mot. I've cast a fair few pearls before a fair few swine in my time, but in this case I could be sure of my audience, Richard Brain (RIP), an erudite classicist and friend; also,  at the time, my boss.

<autobiographical-note>
After my time in London, working as an assistant on ODQ, I moved to Oxford in 1979 to work as Editorial Assistant to Richard. I was writing a report on an unsolicited proposal (not yet a full manuscript) dealing with the Emperor Nero, written by a man named Perowne.

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I imagine the risk of a libel action is minute, but as his name is crucial I think it's worth taking anyway.
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Some of the ideas in it were interesting, but I had my doubts about his prose style. In the last line of my report I said we must ask ourselves the question  Qualis artifex Perowne?  (LITTLE THINGS...)

<tangent type="more OUP larks">
one of my better efforts, I think, rivalling the rhyme '...eponymous hero/...anonymous Pierrot' (especially apt as it was sung by Peter Pan, and Pierrot is a diminutive of Pierre).
</tangent>

</autobiographical-note>

The first programme in the Mary Beard series started with a description of  a dinner laid on by   Domitian in a room whose walls were painted black. This was presented as part of a ghoulish joke. I'm sure the Professor was right, although it's an interesting coincidence that the new find unearthed (unashed?) at Pompeii features a banqueting hall with black walls.

The black room is the latest treasure to emerge from the excavation, which started 12 months ago - an investigation that will feature in a documentary series from the BBC and Lion TV to be broadcast later in April.

Source

(And on the subject of Pompeii, anyone who's so inclined is welcome to do some background reading in this old post of mine.)

Gotta go, Grass needs cutting before a jaunt to North Yorkshire.

b

<rantette type="ps">
I wonder what genius at Wokingham Borough Council, or  the recycling contractor, or  maybe a committee involving both, came up with the scheme that requires  a wheelie bin not to be emptied  unless it is displaying an easily-removable sticker (costing £86.00). They might as well insist on  an unsealed envelope sellotaped to the bin containing the money, marked

PLEASE TAKE ONE
WDC welcomes careful sneak thieves

To give them their due, they were quick to replace the missing sticker, but what's to stop the same thing happening again? (And I'm sure I can whistle for a rebate to cover the collection not made.)
</rantette>

 

Shameless plug no. 2

I wrote No. 1 more than eight years ago, when the Wokingham Choral Society was giving a concert that included three pieces that I'd sung before. This time there's only one piece I know I've sung before, though as the programme involves madrigals and I have sung several before...

<autobiographical-note>
In 1979 I was working with the rump of the OUP General Division (don't ask) who had not yet migrated from London to Oxford – mostly a small team working on the 3rd edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and the Early Music department. Both these teams were focused on books to be published to coincide with the quincentenary celebrations.

<parenthesis>
'500 years of publishing at Oxford' [not all OUP, but still...]
</parenthesis>

The music book was the Oxford Book of English Madrigals, and at the launch party there was a performance of some of the songs in it, given by a group of singers from that London outpost. Many years later I was in the Reading u3a Madrigals group.
</autobiographical-note>

...I expect a lot of the music in this concert to be familiar.

 

When I was looking out the music for the main piece, John Rutter's The Sprig of Thyme I found between its pages the programme from  the last time I sang it, in 1999.

<autobiographical-note type="prescript">

In an earlier blog I wrote of the main piece in that 1999 concert:

A good few years ago, I sang (not with my present choir) Howard Blake's Song of St Francis. The setting was mid-late 20th century, but the text was by St Francis of Assisi, written in whatever Italic dialect he spoke – Umbrian of the 13th century, probably.  But saying it was written in that dialect is an oversimplification. Vulgar Latin had various different substrates – whatever medium of spoken communication underlay it – throughout Romania (in the historical sense of 'that part of the world that was directly influenced by the Romans'). St Francis may have thought (if he thought about it at all) he was writing Latin. Strongly influenced as his life was by Latin texts, it is probably a rather Latinate form of his dialect.

Anyway, speculation like that is something I left behind 40-odd years ago...

(The rest of that post is quite fun though I says it as shouldn't including a speculation about Respighi and the Doppler Effect, but I'll leave it to interested parties, if there are any, to do the necessary clicking.)

Anyway, the point is that the programme includes a translation of that 13th century text, signed "RJK". I don't remember doing it, but it must have been me.
</autobiographical-note>

 

Enough, or as they say in Portugal Chega!

<note-to-self>
Must tell Alastair Campbell, whose The Rest is Politics podcast is great fun, how to pronounce the Portuguese party  of that name.
</note-to-self>

It promises to be a charming concert. Don't miss it.

 b 

The forensic arena

In Tuesday's The Life Scientific Dr Sheila Willis, a forensic scientist...

<oops>
Jim Al Khalili used the term "forensics" before Dr Willis said she disapproved of it as 'meaningless' She had the good grace not to correct him, and he (as far as I noticed – though it's not a nit I'm particularly keen to pick)...

<american-trait status="query">
These two dictionary excerpts suggest that 'forensics' as shorthand for 'forensic science' is more common in American English,

Anerican Heritage Dictionary

Collins Engllish Dictionary

And the Google Ngram Viewer confirms this:

American English

In American English, 'forensics' is nearly always the commoner form, while in British English the form 'forensic science' was preferred until the early years of the twenty-first cemtury.

British English

Then it is quickly overtaken by 'forensics', which has a sudden steep rise in fortune. (Incidentally, the TV series CSI – Crime Scene Investigators first appeared in the early years of the millennium. Just saying.)

</american-trait>

...  didn't repeat the error (?slip?bone of contention'/???).

</oops>

...was reflecting on the derivation of the word 'forensic' – from the Latin forensis (='pertaining to the market place or forum, public, out of doors'). The  point of forensic experts is that they have to present  their analysis for all to see.

<tangent>
Link with 'autopsy' (= 'see for yourself').
</tangent>

Jim Al-Khalili ...

<parenthesis fivolity-quotient="5">

(who I can never listen to without imagining his evil twin, Midge Acidid {'Midge' doesn't look like the polar opposite of 'Jim', but looked at in terms of phonemes {natch} it's a palindrome: /mɪʤ/ versus /ʤɪm/ . See? Stark raving sane.

</parenthesis>

...asked her to contrast this sort of presentation with the sort of acacdemic situations that experts are usually called on to speak in. And she said 

The court is certainly a very different arena from the scientific conference mainly because the adversarial system is designed in such a way as to... undermine your opponent; that's the nature of the game....

<etymological aside>
I doubt if she knew how appropriate the word 'arena' was in the context of an adversarial system. You can't get much more adversarial than gladiators  (not the Spandex and greasepaint sort with a capital G, but the Roman sort who actually spilled blood). And so that the blood of the previous fight wouldn't interfere with the spectacle of the next, the fighting area was covered with sand (Latin arena).

<tangent>
In the same way that a covering (in this case, sand) became – by the magic of metonymy –  a word refering to the whole fighting area, a fallen boxer 'hits the canvas'. Maybe not, though. The arena is the ring, not the canvas. Still, there's a link there somewhere...
</tangent>

<//etymological aside> 

Westminster Diary 

We understand that there's no truth in the rumour that Rishi Sunak plans to replace the KCMG with the KChNG (pronounced Ker-ching)..

That's all. There's a break in the clouds, and it's time I got out.

b