Monday 8 February 2016

lexus-nexus

The other day I was reading over one those build-your-vocabulary lists of words that merit immediate inclusion into common-parlance, and while I did sort of like the idea behind the nomonym (for something which tastes like something else—chicken’s the standard impression, I suppose) I was not so pleased with the rest of the nominees. While they all might be perfectly cromulent terms, they were kind of dark (reflections of anti-social behaviour or hyper-social conditioning) and not surpassingly clever or up-building, I certainly appreciated how the entry directed me to an analysis of the mechanisms behind neologism—that human need to expand our sanctioned lexicon with an annual supplement reaching to a thousand more words to augment the dated and unfashionable. Though whom among English-speakers holds the top-spot as greatest word-smith is subject to much debate, the devices that each of us employ when it comes to invention is rather better known. The most inspired—but probably also the least likely for adoption, are fashioned like nomonym and its class as portmanteaux, overlapping and fusing two separate meanings, from a French type of luggage that opens into equally-sized, separate compartments.

weary giants of flesh and steel

Writing for Quartz magazine Gideon Lichfield presents an interesting long look back at the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s charter statement—the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace—which was proclaimed two decades ago this week.

Fresh from the World Economic Forum in Davos (amid the conflicts in Chechnya, the implication of First Lady Hillary Clinton in the Whitewater real estate scandal, and various other –gates enough to sour the most hopeful souls) and responding to a palpable, puritanical tension over the efforts of the US government to censor objectionable language with the same prudish quiver that applies to inter-state trafficking and cinema-goers, John Perry Barlow drafted his vision for a free and unfettered world-wide web. Analysing each article, one finds through the lens of 1996 both the naรฏve and the far-sighted expressed in rather poetic conceits and rousing construction that evokes other lofty mission-statements. I especially find the arguments for self-regulation and emergent governance forming organically, as mediated through quid pro quo and the prisoner’s dilemma, and manifest in the economics of gigs and journeymen. What do you think? Has the perceived draining of internet liberties come from outside menaces and frightened tyrants of industry or is its architecture a victim of its own success?

Sunday 7 February 2016

zut alors ou le oignon

Many francophiles and language purists are very upset with the universal arbiter, Academie Francaise, and the plan to enforce some institutional changes in spelling first proposed back in 1990.
More than two thousand minor changes to the orthography of French (including dropping the i from onion, reducing the ranks of hyphenated- words and vowels that take the little chapeau, the circumflex) have incite vocal dissatisfaction and downright militant opposition. The Academie (the national body which also assigns gender to newly discovered exoplanets and quantum particles) assures the public that both old and new spellings will be considered correct but I wonder what sort of diglossia will result. In Britain in the seventeen hundreds the circumflex-o was shorthand for -ough for economy’s sake and thus had thรด for though and (confusingly) brรดt for brought. Is getting rid of the รช possibly some concession to lazy typists and web-navigators?

seven points of articulation

Via the superb Dangerous Minds comes a look at the creations of one Etsy artisan, Glinda the Geek, and her adorable and necessary contribution to the universe of LEGO minfigs with the addition of characters from the British comedies The Young Ones and Absolutely Fabulous (plus many more at the artist’s stand).
I think that branching out is always laudable as sometimes I find the whole mainstream franchise a little grating as it seems to be only capitalising on some other popular movement and the tie-ins usually mean that one can only every play-out one very specific adventure (although the standard-issue repertoire of building-blocks can create pretty inspired tableaux as well)—as opposed to Sigmund Freud’s consulting-couch, also on offer from Glinda the Geek.

Saturday 6 February 2016

dander and demonisation

If it’s to be believed, the Norwegian Council of Heart and Lung Health is encouraging, as reported by the Norwegian edition of the Local, to get parents steaming mad at dirt and the threat of dust-bunnies by portraying Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-il and Muammar Qaddafi as plush toys and uncuddly repositories of respiratory-ills. Not withstanding that over-sanitary conditions lead to over-sensitivity, lumping these characters together threatens to make a caricature of out of each of these tyrants and place them on the same level. While the government is not necessarily advocating the destruction of childhood familiars, but rather only regular and thorough washing of them, the retreat to allergic reactions and bespoke dietary sensitivities (whether real or imagined) has been fraught with vulnerabilities and fretful mothering. What would you think if your teddy suddenly was turned to a symbol of hate and evil? Does that make you a better house-keeper and less likely to sweep things under the rug?

hi-def or the force awakens

Fellow true-believer Bob Canada, whilst watching some of the classic episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, in anticipation I’m sure of the relaunch of the series, in thrilling high-definition re-mastered quality, noticed that the panelling of the interior of the Satellite of Love is composed of Star Wars spacecraft (at least two Millennium Falcons) and a Darth Vader helmet action figure carrying-case. I wonder what other easter-eggs are out there to be discovered. The process of adding superfluous (but we’re now accustomed to and wouldn’t buy a sleek and featureless design) textures to surfaces to make them more visually interesting is called greebling, whether executed with set decoration or computer-generated graphics.