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Divided Loyalties
Jan. 4th, 2009 08:26 amGeoff was probably knee-deep in accounts yesterday (hands up the person who gets his numbers to Geoff by August and has the whole thing settled by October? Oh, just me?) so I am not sure whether he made it to the Manchester City v Nottm Forest game (the club he supports vs the club of his current home town), where the expensive glory, once of That's 'Im With The Mantra, managed to sink to a Three To O defeat at the hands of the faded glory that is Nottm Forest. Sometimes I wish I were a sports writer, simply because the opportunity for fun headlines is that much the greater than it is in the insurance industry (a long time since I could use the Katrina And The Waves headline, sigh). This morning I would definitely have got in a reference to "Not A Good Feeling At The Hughes Corporation".
There's a good technical reason for Nottingham Forest being Nottm Forest, while it's Notts County. Something to do with one being the city and the other being the county, I guess. One of those fun peculiarities of the English language, me duck.
Jan's granddaughter Gracie, now 18 months, has a few words in her spoken vocabulary. One of those is fascinating for those of us interested in the concept of language in a Chomskyish kind of way. There is a dog next door to her parents' house called (I think) RoRo. Gracie has now taken to calling ALL dogs "RoRo". Nothing surprising about that, you might think. She hears the animal next door described as RoRo, not as "dog". Indeed, I didn't think about it myself until sometime later.
Then it struck me as a very surprising thing indeed, because Gracie is automatically categorizing in a Platoist kind of way. Why is she calling all dogs RoRo, but not cats, or other four-legged beasts? Dogs, you must admit, are a variable bunch, and yet here you have an 18-month-old putting the concept of 'dog' into one pigeon-hole in her brain (not the one set aside for pigeons, but the one for dogs) and, somehow, putting one set of animals into that box and yet not another set of, superficially not that different, animals. I think that's quite interesting, supporting the Chomskyish line of a kind of "hard-wiring" in the human brain. No-one has pointed at other dogs and said "RoRo" to Gracie; this is an induction she has taken off her own bat. Fascinating.
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I've managed a walk into Blackheath every evening this year. It's about a 2.5 mile circular walk and its good for clearing my head and making me less introspective (always a dangerous path for Birks). Walking is not just good exercise; it's good mind food that is a bit spoilt if you stuff earphones in and listen to music while doing it.
That said, it's been bloody cold the last couple of nights, particularly on Jan 2 when an easterly whipped across the heath. Tomorrow morning it's back to the office and there's a vague warning of snow. Luckily I'm now prepared for the feeling of cold, but I don't think I will enjoy the snow, if it comes.
While I used to enjoy the walk from Charing Cross to the office, the walk from Cannon Street is boring and the walk across London Bridge is Boring times 2. It's unfair to blame Essex for everything that we don't blame on the Americans, but why is it that the City seems to have more workers from Essex and is a much more depressing place to walk through? Curiously, I wouldn't apply this to walks through Docklands, so it's not just a matter of the lack of "West-Endness". No, the City of London is just bad Feng Shui, bad karma, bad soul, man. I felt this 25 years ago whenever I had to work in betting shops there, and I feel it now. I think we should pull it all down and start from scratch, leaving just Tower of London, Tower Bridge, St Katherine's Dock, St Paul's and the St Paul's footbridge. The Bank of England, Royal Exchange, Lloyd's Building, Tower 42, all around Fenchurch Street (has anyone everwalked up The Minories? Jeez, what a shithole) should go.
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There's a good technical reason for Nottingham Forest being Nottm Forest, while it's Notts County. Something to do with one being the city and the other being the county, I guess. One of those fun peculiarities of the English language, me duck.
Jan's granddaughter Gracie, now 18 months, has a few words in her spoken vocabulary. One of those is fascinating for those of us interested in the concept of language in a Chomskyish kind of way. There is a dog next door to her parents' house called (I think) RoRo. Gracie has now taken to calling ALL dogs "RoRo". Nothing surprising about that, you might think. She hears the animal next door described as RoRo, not as "dog". Indeed, I didn't think about it myself until sometime later.
Then it struck me as a very surprising thing indeed, because Gracie is automatically categorizing in a Platoist kind of way. Why is she calling all dogs RoRo, but not cats, or other four-legged beasts? Dogs, you must admit, are a variable bunch, and yet here you have an 18-month-old putting the concept of 'dog' into one pigeon-hole in her brain (not the one set aside for pigeons, but the one for dogs) and, somehow, putting one set of animals into that box and yet not another set of, superficially not that different, animals. I think that's quite interesting, supporting the Chomskyish line of a kind of "hard-wiring" in the human brain. No-one has pointed at other dogs and said "RoRo" to Gracie; this is an induction she has taken off her own bat. Fascinating.
+++++++++++
I've managed a walk into Blackheath every evening this year. It's about a 2.5 mile circular walk and its good for clearing my head and making me less introspective (always a dangerous path for Birks). Walking is not just good exercise; it's good mind food that is a bit spoilt if you stuff earphones in and listen to music while doing it.
That said, it's been bloody cold the last couple of nights, particularly on Jan 2 when an easterly whipped across the heath. Tomorrow morning it's back to the office and there's a vague warning of snow. Luckily I'm now prepared for the feeling of cold, but I don't think I will enjoy the snow, if it comes.
While I used to enjoy the walk from Charing Cross to the office, the walk from Cannon Street is boring and the walk across London Bridge is Boring times 2. It's unfair to blame Essex for everything that we don't blame on the Americans, but why is it that the City seems to have more workers from Essex and is a much more depressing place to walk through? Curiously, I wouldn't apply this to walks through Docklands, so it's not just a matter of the lack of "West-Endness". No, the City of London is just bad Feng Shui, bad karma, bad soul, man. I felt this 25 years ago whenever I had to work in betting shops there, and I feel it now. I think we should pull it all down and start from scratch, leaving just Tower of London, Tower Bridge, St Katherine's Dock, St Paul's and the St Paul's footbridge. The Bank of England, Royal Exchange, Lloyd's Building, Tower 42, all around Fenchurch Street (has anyone everwalked up The Minories? Jeez, what a shithole) should go.
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