And Slaters Go Plop

A conversation I’ve felt needs to become commonplace…

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Keeping with the theme of quirks of the English language, here’s one courtesy of Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct:

This one requires a lot of scene-setting, let’s start with,

Cats whom dogs chase like to eat mice.

which can be shortened to,

Cats dogs chase eat mice.

We can place the cats, dogs and mice in locations:

Christchurch cats Dunedin dogs chase eat Masterton mice.

What if there is no chasing or eating, just bullying?

Christchurch cats Dunedin dogs bully bully Masterton mice.

Why not make them all live in the same town?

Christchurch cats Christchurch dogs bully bully Christchurch mice.

Let’s only talk about cats who are bullied and who themselves also bully:

Christchurch cats Christchurch cats bully bully Christchurch cats.

Let’s move them to the town of Buffalo in the US:

Buffalo cats Buffalo cats bully bully Buffalo cats.

Swap the cats for buffalo instead:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo bully bully Buffalo buffalo.

And did you know that another word for ‘bully’ is ‘buffalo‘? Let’s do it:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

There, perfect sense.

This is likely to be familiar to many people. It’s about how the addition of punctuation can turn a seemingly nonsensical set of words into a technically correct sentence, usually with a story to go with it.

So,

There is not enough room between fish and and and and and chips

makes sense when I tell you that a shop owner is telling the signwriter that the words for his fish and chip shop are too close together:

There is not enough room between “fish” and “and” and “and” and “chips”.

Ok then, try to add punctuation to the following to make it make sense:

Jack while Joe had had had had had had had had had had had the teachers approval

Answer below the fold.

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I’ve been incredibly slack over the last nine months or so. One reason is that I’ve been fairly flat-out on a contract to a company in town during that period and so my available ruminating time has been quite limited. But perhaps the real reason is that I feel like I get more from life when I spend more time listening than opining and being busy is a convenient excuse to say less.

So anyway, here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been up to lately:

In June last year I took up a position as a contractor for a fairly well-known New Zealand ISP and web-hosting company tasked with the job of implementing a content management system for six websites running in a LAMP environment but with occasional SOAP web service integration into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We ended up going with Drupal which we wrote a couple of our own modules for and re-themed for each site. It’s a pretty nice system once you get to know it but I’m not sure I’d choose it over my own mini-framework when it comes to day-to-day rapid application development, especially given that my other clients rarely need multi-site, multi-user content management systems.

I’m finishing up there at the end of this week but will probably occasionally be called in from time to time over the next few months. From here I’m back to looking after my other, neglected clients who I’m in danger of losing if I neglect them any longer. Looking forward to the variety once again but will miss the security and profitability of this latest job.

Back in September of last year I became afflicted with a terrible addiction. It is commonly called ‘home brewing’. I started with a couple of batches of kitset beer straight from a can with a bit of water and yeast and quickly moved to boiling plain extract with additions of hops, proper yeasts and resulting in much cleaner, more flavoursome beers. I’ve even done partial mashes of grain to augment the flavour and complexity of my brews but I’ve yet to slide completely into the abyss by going all-grain mash and leaving the happiness and safety of malt extract behind. Be warned of lots of upcoming posts that will be of absolutely no interest whatsoever to many of the past visitors here.

I’ve been reading some pretty good books too. One that is of particular interest to me is Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter which was recommended to me by a commenter called Simon last year. He’s quite right, it really is ‘insanely mindblowing’.

Meals on Wheels continues in a fairly non-eventful way and my weekly catch up with my Big Buddy little buddy is going really well. He’s 9 now and really coming out of his shell which is infinitely rewarding. If you are an average bloke in Auckland and have the time to spend three hours a week with a boy kicking a ball around or doing other things that you are supposed to have officially grown out of, then get into contact with them. There are a lot of boys who are growing up out there without really getting to see how ordinary adult males deal with life.

My wife continues to be lovely and we manage to get out of town frequently which keeps us both pretty happy. We’re lucky to be living in this time and in this country.

That’s really about it. Non-controversial. Not particularly interesting. But that’s life eh?

Last year I entered and completed the Auckland Half Marathon. When I started training I could barely run non-stop for 10 minutes but by the time the day of the event rolled around I was able to run the entire 21km without stopping or being hospitalised.

This year I’m doing it again and trying for a better time but thought I’d publish the training regime that I found so useful on the off chance that someone else reading this might benefit.

The essence of the regime is to build up the strength of your muscles in small increments with plenty of rest in between challenging runs to give your body time to heal properly. Most of the runs are only minimally more challenging than the previous ones but the general idea is that you should be able to comfortably chat throughout most of them. It’s a good idea to have an event to work towards and to start the regime 14 weeks out from that event.

All figures are in minutes. Run as slowly as you like but try not to stop. Days marked with (*) indicate hilly runs for building up extra strength (optional). Don’t run if you are sore and think you might do yourself damage. Get some good running shoes and perhaps lightweight shorts and a shirt. Don’t worry about missing some runs but try to keep up with the Sunday ones.

Good luck! It’s totally do-able and you’ll feel pretty amazing after having completed it.

In the last week I’ve encountered my first real taste of the recession. One of my clients went into receivership and liquidation last Friday owing me $18,000 and it’s unlikely that I’ll be getting anything once they’ve liquidated their assets and paid off their secured creditors, etc. And to make matters worse I’ve had to pay around $5000 tax on it because a large portion of it was declared as earnings in the last financial year. I can’t claim that tax back until I can prove beyond doubt that I’ll not receive the money owed to me which will take at least a year.

Still, I have my health, my family, my friends and my home. And it’s only money at the end of the day.

This video gives a reasonably good summary of the content of Peter Singer’s new book, The life you can save – Acting now to end world poverty.

See the book review below.

Patricia Peterson, the woman who accounts for a quarter of my genes, died peacefully on Friday night at the age of 91. She was a wonderfully strong spark of a woman who, whilst let down by her body, was in full command of her faculties right up to the end. I’m privelliged to have known her and proud to be her grandson.

I’ve been making bread for a few years now and recently I was in the local supermarket when they announced over the audio system that we ought to try their inhouse ciabatta because “unlike our standard bread that we rise for 15 minutes, our ciabatta take two hours!”.

The rising process (called “proving”) is where the yeast eats some of the sugars in the flour and, in so doing, produces the gas that puffs the bread up. This fermentation process also adds flavour and the longer you leave it fermenting the richer the flavour.

I don’t want to sound like a bread snob here but I’ve tried supermarket ciabatta before and it’s really not ciabatta at all. Which is a crying shame really because ciabatta is one of my favourites and it’s remarkably simple to make. It is very time consuming though (the first of three provings takes 12-15 hours) which is why supermarkets can’t afford to make a proper loaf.

Ciabatta gets its name from the Italian word for ’slipper’. Not as romantic-sounding eh? Still, it’s a wonderful bread.

If you’ve never made it before, please, give it a go; you’ll never be able to eat supermarket ciabatta again. Here’s how you make it:

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If you are a Christian and have watched the above video, I would ask that you imagine a similar video released by an Islamic group. Imagine that they stated that the best way to spread their beliefs would be to target children because “if a human does not hear about Mohammed as a child, they will most likely never follow him”.

And they’d be correct.

Almost all people who are religious have adopted the religion they were exposed to while they were children. It is undeniable that this is the most effective way to spread religious belief. Children are sponges.

Now, I’m confident that the maker/s of this video had nothing but the best of intentions when they outlined this strategy; they are likely convinced that nothing but good can come from introducing children to the teachings of Jesus and to ensure their eternal salvation by doing so.

Here are my thoughts on a more ethical approach:

If they are your own children or if you are their caregiver then I can think of no better gift than teaching children how to think rather than what to think. If you believe something to be true but you are aware that there is some controversy then, by all means, let them know what you believe but make an effort to present the alternatives. And let them know that they are entitled to make up their own minds in their own time.

If they are not your children (i.e. the ones targeted in this video) then leave them alone. Feel free to provide aid for the needy, even basic education, but please don’t turn their minds into your personal battleground. The best you can hope for is that their caregivers exercise the same restraint when it comes to the spreading of their personal beliefs.

“Don’t do to other people’s children what you wouldn’t want people to do to your own”.