I wonder whether they've censored "Nineteen Eighty-Four" yet?

From Part One, Chapter 7, as printed in 1976:

Of the three, it was Rutherford whose appearance had most impressed Winston... He was a monstrous man, with a mane of greasy hair, his face pouched and seamed with thick negroid lips.

If anybody has a more recent print, I'd love to know what happened to that sentence.

UPDATE: Lucy (in the comments) confirms that the sentence in book she bought in Canada in 2012 is as follows: "Of the three, it was Rutherford whose appearance had most impressed Winston... He was a monstrous man, with a mane of greasy gray hair, his face pouched and seamed, with protuberant lips."
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A couple of other things struck me on re-reading it recently:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

There are endless articles like this trying to explain or justify why Orwell didn't make the second slogan "SLAVERY IS FREEDOM", which would fit in with the logic of the other two. I'm not convinced. I don't think it was a 'mistake' as it was clearly deliberate, but I still think it was a misjudgement on his part. Unless he wanted to troll his own readers.
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Part One, Chapter 1, on a visit to the cinema:

A woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didn't oughter of showed it not in from of kids...

I'm in two minds about this. Was Winston highlighting the proles' incapacity to distinguish between 'have' and 'of', or was Orwell highlighting that under IngSoc, not even Party workers like Winston have a basic grasp of grammar any more?

Either way, he called that one right. I have colleagues - whom you'd expect to be reasonably intelligent or well-educated - who think that 'of' is an acceptable alternative spelling of 'have'. I usually send the terse one-word reply "Have" (making sure to hit 'reply' and not 'reply all').

Minuscule's last stand

The Daily Mash still spells it the traditional way:


I spotted the alternative spelling "miniscule" in a BBC article today, but I can't track it down again.

While trying to find it, I realised to my horror that the BBC have been spelling it "miniscule" since 2003.

I personally am not bothered whether we spell it the traditional way, based on its word stem "minu..." ('minute' as in 'very small', not 'minute' as in 'sixty seconds') or phonetically as "miniscule" but can we please make up our minds?

Daily Mash out-pedants itself

From The Daily Mash:

3am in the morning

‘AM’ means ‘in the morning’, cockwad. Saying them both is like asking ‘would you like some gravy meat sauce on that chop’ or ‘are you seriously smoking a cannabis drugs spliff before work?’ For f**k’s sake just choose one.

Agreed. But they overlook the next iteration:

Could you pop in your pin number for me?

Who else would I be doing it for? I’m the only person in the shop, my card is in the machine, I’m talking to you and only you. Save your breath.

It's not "PIN number". It's "PIN". The "N" in "PIN" stands for "number". That's the crime here, the rest of the sentence, while largely superfluous, is just general politeness and friendliness. In some places, they just point vaguely in the direction of the card reader.

Ah well, it is what it is, just saying etc.

Fun with numbers

I've just stumbled across this month old article on the BBC:

Where does rent hit young people the hardest in Britain?

People in their 20s who want to rent a place for themselves face having to pay out an "unaffordable" amount in two-thirds of Britain, BBC research shows.

They face financial strain as average rents for a one-bedroom home eat up more than 30% of their typical salary in 65% of British postcode areas...

Least affordable areas outside London

Epping Forest - postcode areas IG9 (rent £1,230; 71% of income), RM4 (rent £1,126; 65% of income), and IG7 (rent £1,087; 62% of income)

I live in one of those postcodes, they're in south west Essex inside the M25 and while the rent estimates look about right to me (good enough for a low level Land Value Tax assessment, for example), the percentage figures look way too high.

If you look at outer London postcodes just across the Essex/Greater London boundary, the % spent on rent drops significantly, even though the rents are just as high.

As you might have guessed by now, this is because they used average rents down to postcode district levels, but assumed that wages are the same across whole regions. Essex is part of the East Anglia region, which has an average wage of £1,755 per month, as against an average wage of £2,275 for people living in Greater London.

1. It would be much more meaningful if they used average wages at postcode district level.

2. The percentage is actually meaningless in itself, it is a derived figure. The relevant figure is wages net of housing costs. If they bothered to do that, they'd find that this is fairly constant everywhere in Great Britain (Ricardo's Law of Rent).

Fun with numbers

From The Guardian:

There are three options in tackling climate change. Only one will work

We’re now at a fork in the road: either we cut out fossil fuels completely, or we pass on a dying planet to our children

A "fork in the road" usually refers to a binary choice, i.e. go left or go right. To my mind, this jars uncomfortably with the notion of "three options".

And no amount of CO2 will ever lead to a "dying planet". It'd take something like a global nuclear war to get anywhere near that.

Meaningless tautology/platitude of the week

From The Metro:

‘Anyone can succeed, given the opportunity,’ says May

Well duh, doesn't answer the question whether everybody is given the same opportunity (they aren't), and even if they were, not 'everybody' can succeed, most of us just bumble along*.

She then gives examples of a few Cabinet Ministers with 'humble' backgrounds and misses the point that by definition, only a few people will ever become Cabinet Ministers. It's a bit like the Lottery presenters on telly saying "Good luck, everybody!".

Also, the article uses two different spellings: "Barnado's" and "Barnardo's", only one of which is correct.

* For clarity, I have somehow hit the sweet spot by simply always taking the line of least resistance/doing the most obvious thing and have bumbled gently into a well above average job/lifestyle/home with mortgage long paid off etc. Some might actually consider me to be a 'success story'. If only Her Indoors hadn't decided to piss away half of it on private school fees...

Economic Myths: "Government loses £2.1bn on RBS stake sale"

From the BBC:

The government has incurred a loss of £2.1bn after selling another tranche of shares in Royal Bank of Scotland. The shares were sold at 271p each, almost half* the 502p a share paid in the government's bailout of RBS a decade ago when it rescued the bank at the height of the financial crisis.

Clearly, the government did lose money, but that money was lost/wasted ten years ago when the government bailed out RBS. The government did not lose a penny on the sale itself, it merely converted shares worth £2.71 into cash of £2.71.

* The phrase "almost half" is totally misleading as the government sold the shares for more than half of what it paid for them. It would, however, be correct to say "The shares fell in value by almost half".

This leads me on to something else which annoys me. Let's say Object A weighs/has mass 1 kg and Object B weighs/has mass 2 kg. It is fine to say that B is twice as heavy as A, or that A is half as heavy as B. It is also OK to say that A is lighter than B. But for some reason, a lot of people say that A is "twice as light as B", which is nonsense. You can't use a comparative with an adjective meaning light, small, short, near etc, only with adjectives meaning heavy, large, long, far away etc.

“Sandwiched”???

I'd ask the sign writer to try again

Two spelling mistakes, one punctuation mistake, and three style inconsistencies. Either capitalise the second word or don't; either write "and" or "&" and either use plural or singular (they sell "soft drink"?) - don't mix and match:

Strange words to use in the context

Via @MisanthropeGirl, from North West Georgia News:

A Floyd County farmer was killed Wednesday morning when a cow he was trying to move knocked him up against a fence, resulting in massive chest trauma. Floyd County Coroner Gene Proctor said Nathan William Parris, 72, of 2056 Cunningham Road was pronounced dead at 11:04 a.m. after reaching the Redmond Regional Medical Center emergency room.

Doesn't "knocked him up" suggest "got him "pregnant"?

Hurricanes used to arrive in alphabetical order...

Pessimistic warning on the back of a learner driver's car

Stupid Criminal Of The Week

Headline from The Daily Mail:

Nanny caught stealing 68 PUNNETS of 'expensive' cherry tomatoes from Coles after her doctor told her to eat more vegetables for health reasons

Tomatoes are of course fruit, not vegetables. Duh.

Sadly, the article does not say how much the house where she works as a nanny is worth, which would have helped to put it all in perspective.

Fun Online Polls: Rhymes; Bank Holidays

The results to last week-and-a-half's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

The word "seam" rhymes with... (choose all that apply)
"Beam" - 43 votes
"Seem" - 29 votes
"Seam" (the word itself) - 27 votes

Total - 46 voters

I am deeply, deeply troubled by that. Clearly "seam" rhymes with "beam" and also "seem". For example:

"Things aren't always what they seem,
It's not a joist; it is a beam"

Is surely a perfectly acceptable rhyme? Three out of 46 think it isn't.

Similarly:

"Things aren't always what they seem,
It's not a zip; it is a seam"

Is also a perfectly acceptable rhyme. Why do over a third disagree?

As to words rhyming with themselves, that is an abhorrence. I challenge the 27 out of 46 who think that "seam" rhymes with "seam" to knock up a half way decent stanza.
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Here's someone who agrees with The Stigler on the topic of bank holidays:

I’m not a Gradgrind. I don’t want to stop workers seeing daylight. I just think they should choose their own holidays, instead of politicians choosing for them. Today, all UK workers have a right to 28 days’ paid annual holiday. Nobody has an automatic right to paid leave on public holidays, but in many sectors, it is the norm...

Why can’t we choose our own holidays? Why can’t Jews or Muslims take their own holidays instead of Christian ones they don’t recognise? Why should we be funnelled into traffic jams and overcrowded airports? Why can’t we take holidays when the weather’s likely to be better, rather than when politicians dictate?

Workers of the world dis-unite! Denationalise our holidays!

I can't remember exactly what The Stigler's Killer Argument was, but I have to agree. I know what we like clinging to tradition, even if that tradition is everybody is stuck in the same traffic jam on a rainy Money, but surely common sense/liberty should prevail?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Economic Myths: "Pumpkin artwork valued up to £600,000 smashed by selfie-taker"

From the BBC:

A visitor to the Infinity Mirrors art exhibition in Washington DC has lost his footing, reportedly whilst* taking a selfie, and fallen into one of Yayoi Kusama's signature polka-dot pumpkins...

A similar sculpture sold for almost $784,485 (£635,000) in 2015 according to Artnet.

Seeing as the sculptor is still alive (although getting on a bit), the "value" of the pumpkin depends entirely on the lower of a) how much the owner is prepared to pay for a replacement and b) what she will charge to sprinkle some holy water over a new one and certify it as an original.

What an earlier pumpkin sold for is neither here nor there.

If the owner of the collection of dozens of similar pumpkins decides that it makes no odds whether one is missing, then it's not worth that much; if the set has to consist of some magic number of pumpkins to be considered complete, the price she can charge for a new one is considerably higher etc.

If the artist is dead and there is no possibility of obtaining a new replacement, then the equation is different of course, that's just down to supply and demand between owners and would-be owners.

* "Whilst" can also mean "although", so the better word to use is "while".

It's "low-HANGING fruit", you bozo!

From the BBC:

"The National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) defended the practice of paying informants - or covert human intelligence sources as they are officially known.

Deputy Chief Constable Roger Bannister, the council's lead on the issue, said: "The intelligence provided helps to prevent and solve the most serious of crimes and is vital in bringing offenders to justice through the courts."

But Neil Wood, who worked as an undercover police officer and ran many informants, told Radio 5 live the tactic has its limitations when it comes to drugs.

"Nobody wants to inform on the drug lords because of fears of violent reprisals, so it's only the low-lying fruit that gets caught out - and the trade continues regardless. Nobody can call that effective. Overall it does little to bring down the level of overall crime."

Fun Online Polls: Picking winners & "You guys"

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Picking winners: which of the following should taxpayers subsidise?

Robotics and AI - 0%
Industrial biotechnology - 0%
Medical technology - 3%
Satellites - 0%
Advanced materials manufacturing - 2%
Other areas where the UK has a proven scientific strength - 4%
None of the above. If there's money to spare, just cut taxes on all businesses - 91%

Good, I was with the (overwhelmingly large) majority on that one. And thank you to everybody who took part, a good turnout of 103.
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This week's Fun Online Poll should be fairly self-explanatory.

"When somebody addresses you/your group as "You guys", he/she is…"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

That's either a crap translation or a tautology.

Question 6 in the BBC's Quiz: How well would you have done at GCSE? is as follows:

FRENCH: Read this extract from a letter to a local newspaper. What point is the writer making? Choose the correct phrase to complete the sentence.
"Pour réduire le nombre d’accidents dans le centre-ville, le conseil municipal propose d’agrandir la zone piétonne."
The writer tells us that the council wants to ...

A - Reduce pedestrian-only areas in the town centre.
B - Make the town centre safer for pedestrians.
C - Increase fines for motorists who cause accidents in the town centre.

You don't need to be a genius to guess that the council proposes to enlarge the pedestrianized area. But that option is not on there, so what do you do? We can rule out A and C (clearly incorrect), so that leaves you with B (which happens to be the correct answer) but that is not a literal translation and is stating the blindingly obvious anyway: "They are going to reduce the number of accidents by making it safer, duh". You could argue that increasing motoring fines or reducing the pedestrian-only areas also reduce the number of accidents (maybe it's cyclist vs pedestrian accidents).

The answer is as follows:

Literally, the sentence means: "To reduce the number of accidents in the town centre, the local council is proposing to expand the pedestrian area."

Well why didn't you fucking offer that as choice B?
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Question 4 is a load of shit as well:

State the denary representation of the binary number 10111010

A - 157
B - 143
C - 186

It takes you a split second to realise that a binary number ending in -0 must be an even number and there's only one even number on the list. FFS.
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The history question blows as well - Dido was a pop singer in the 1990s, not a queen in some ancient fable.

A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.

A classic from yesterday's Evening Standard:

As historian David Kynaston put it, “social mobility has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie causes to which it is almost rude not to sign up”.

Let's gloss over the ghastly Americanism-and-apple-pie and rejoice in the fact that he was trying to be clever and remembered to put the "to" before the "which" but then messed it up right royally at the end. Having dodged the first trap, why not go with "pay lip service" or "pledge support"?

If pedantry were an Olympic event...

It riles me that they all abbreviate "Rio de Janeiro" to "Rio". That's like abbreviating "New York" to "New" or "Sao Paolo" to "Sao". "Rio" is the least important part of the name!

As we all well know, "Rio" is the Portuguese/Spanish word for "River" (see also Rio Grande, Rio Tinto etc). Behindthename further informs us:

Its full name is Rio de Janeiro, which means "river of January", so named because the first explorers came to the harbour in January and mistakenly thought it was a river mouth.

Look on a map - Rio de Janeiro does not have a prominent river running through it (like London or Rome), so that makes abbreviating the name to Rio even more annoying.
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I couldn't avoid catching a few seconds of live coverage of something or other recently, the commentator solemnly announced that the competitor's time was "... seconds faster than the world record"

Bollocks. His or her time was precisely 0.0 seconds faster than the world record because be definition it is the world record.