March 2008 Archives
I recently read Words Words Words, by David Crystal. It's a popular science book (or should that be "popular lingustics"?) inviting readers of all backgrounds to discover the magic of words, and lexical investigation in general. The book is split into six parts: the universe of words; the origins of words; the diversity of words; the evolution of words; the enjoyment of words; and becoming a word detective, with between four and seven chapters per part.
Crystal writes in an easy-going informal style, which makes it very easy to follow and read through. Crystal's deep passion for words, and the English langyage in particular, is evident in his prose, with the enthusiasm leaping out the page at you, in the form of diverse quotations from literature both classical and contemporary, pictures from around the world, and amusing anecdotes about words and word-usage. Crystal's passion is infectious. Although I study linguistics, I can't say I find the lexicon to be the most fascinating area of study, and I get quite annoyed when people think that I "study words". Yet this book has really opened my eyes to the vast panorama of lexical beauty available to us - to all of us. And with chapter headings like Wordsmithery, Wordmelodies, Worddeaths, and Wordworlds, who can say no?
Along the way, Crystal addresses the language critics, naysayers, and doom-mongers who "reflect gloomily on the present state of the language, make dire prophecies about its future, and wish things were like the earlier golden age they remember so well" (p156), noting that such comments are as old as the language itself. He notes the perfectly natural stages of semantic shift and of word death, while also pointing out that new coinages or borrowings can greatly enhance English's expressiveness.
If you're interested in words, and in the English language in particular, but don't want to have to deal with preachy, badly-researched books, nor wade through a dense academic text, this book is ideal. Crystal is filling a sorely-felt gap in the popular linguistics genre - books written by actual linguists! As influential as Melvyn Bragg or Lynn Truss may be, they have no formal linguistics training, and often serve only to give linguists a bad name.
One, very minor, criticism I have of this book is that the references are scattered throughout the text, and not collated at the end. Having said that, Crystal is very methodical in his reporting of sources, and encourages us to be likewise. You can read his blog here.
Crystal, David. Words Words Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. (UK Paperback edition.)
My blog publishing software Movable Type has a fairly good comment spam filter, it's caught thirteen spam attempts in the last 24 hours. Every so often, however, one will fall through the net, and it'll be brought to my attention as an "unapproved" comment that I need to moderate. And even less frequently, a spam comment will end up being published as a real comment.
That's not a big deal, right? It just means I have to click the "mark comment as spam" button, and everything's cool, right? Well, technically, yes. But what if the spam is non-harmful? Most spam is a bunch of random words, and some URIs thrown in. But what if the spam is coherent, and non-linking?
Case in point: check out the latest comment on my References and Transcription entry, by one "Attassusa". It looks fairly innocuous. How do I know it's spam? I don't know for sure, but there are a number of factors: the comment is fairly vacuous; the email address provided is a free Russian webmail service; the comment arrived at the same time as other, more definitely spam-like, comments.
So the question is now, do I keep this comment, as it is harmless (as far as I can tell), or do I delete it out of principle? There's always the chance that this is a) a real person, with unlucky timing, or b) a test of my spam defences by spambots, and by letting it stay I've opened the floodgates for unmitigated assault. Any ideas?
The Baha'i New Year, Naw Ruz, falls on the 21st of March every year, roughly at the time of the spring equinox. (In fact, I learned a few days ago that Baha'is in the middle east and Iran don't celebrate on a fixed annual date, but rather on whatever day the Spring Equinox falls. But that's needless digression into comparative calenderology (there must be a word for that) which I don't really feel like doing today. This year I was lucky enough to be able to attend not one, but two celebrations - one in Edinburgh, and one in St Andrews. While both the celebrations differed greatly in scale, organisation, activities, and attendees, they were both characterised by an amazing spirit of joy, friendliness, and love.
Please read Wendi Momen's thoughts and observations on this time of year (via Alice's Adventures in China).
I'm writing this entry on my new Asus Eee PC 4g Surf, which I got just over a week ago. The Eee is designed as an ultraportable laptop - and with a 7 inch screen, and weighing less than a kilogram, it's fairly good at it. The Eee comes with a 900Mhz Intel Celeron processor, 512Mb of DDR2 RAM, and a solid-state hard-drive (the size depends on the model). Except for the internal fan, which only operates occasionally, there are no moving parts, which makes it fairly durable for travelling. However, the solid state drives don't have great capacity - ranging from 2gb to 8gb. I got the 4gb model. While that is very small, I am using this computer as an auxiliary to my main computer, rather than as a replacement. As such, I don't need to have all my gigs of TV shows, music, documents and so on stored on this laptop. Any work I am doing I can keep on USB sticks, or SD cards. (The Eee has three USB ports and an SD reader.)
The Eee ships with Xandros Linux installed (although Asus have started shipping with XP preinstalled), which boots in under 30 seconds. I'm not totally unfamiliar with Linux but I am far from proficient. Luckily, Xandros is the most user-friendly distro of Linux I've ever had the pleasure of using. Also, thanks to the widespread and enthusiastic user community, there's a shedload of guides and hacks on the web that help you get started and to tweak and configure your OS to the way you like it. You don't even have to use Xandros - like I said earlier, the laptop works fine with XP, and people have also put Vista, OS X, Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distros on it. As well as a basic OS, it also comes with a full package of free programs, for office work, internet access, multimedia, and so on. The price of the Eee will depend on where you get it from, naturally, however you can expect to pay around £300. I got mine for slightly less, which I think is great value for money, especially compared with other ultraportables on the market.
I mentioned the Eee's user community on the internet. A good portion of this community is involved in actively modding the Eee - it turns out it's suited very well to hardware mods. For example, upgrading the RAM to 1 or 2gbs; upgrading the processor to 1.2Ghz; replacing the screen with a touch screen; adding internal bluetooth capacity (no need for an external dongle); adding an extra 32gbs of storage space; adding a 3G HSDPA card to allow internet access wherever there is mobile coverage; upgrading the wifi card to support 802.11n ; adding GPS (with antenna); adding a modem; adding an FM transmitter; and many others are thought possible.
Now, the evaluation. I'm still getting over how small this thing really is. The picture to the right shows the laptop closed beside a CD (Martyn Bennett's Bothy Culture). Luckily, the keyboard is of a good size and typing is fine and easy to do after half an hour or so's worth of practice. Not all of the hardware is up to scratch, however. This is actually the first time in my life I've bought an Intel processor, and it's not bad. However, I have issues with the WiFi card. It only supports 802.11b/g, not the latest wireless standard 802.11n. That's not the real problem, however. Software support for the wireless adaptor is patchy, with several ways to accomplish the same thing, not necessarily with consistent results. The signal pickup is occasionally weak - right now, I'm sitting not more than 3 metres from my wireless router, and getting only 3 bars out of 5 on the wireless icon in my task bar. Oh, it just popped up to 4. On the other hand, just this morning I managed to leave my flat, go down 2 flights of stairs, go outside, cross the road, and get on a bus, all while still being able to listen to internet radio. Some amount of buffering may have been at play, however.
As well as the WiFi being patchy, I've found the trackpad to be often fussy, sometimes refusing to move the mouse at all. It comes with a small area on the right for vertical scrolling, which I have found to be even fussier. Luckily for me, I have a small USB mouse that I use for mouse-intensive operations (such as Starcraft), and at other times I generally eschew the mouse, being a big fan of the keyboard. The battery life is around 2 hours, which is fairly short, but considering the size and weight of the battery this is hardly a surprise. I'm considering buying an extra battery or battery pack for that extra boost.
Moving onto the software, it felt to me that out-of-the-box, the Eee was fairly limited, and one is required to do a good few hacks in order to attain full functionality for power users. On the other hand, for surfing the internet, word processing, and the like, it's practically ideal. It's perhaps worth noting that for any new computer I'd probably spend several hours configuring and installing software to get it working the way I want it, so the Eee is not exceptional in this regard.
Overall, I really like this computer. It's small and portable, reasonably priced, and works fairly well without the need for many modifications. It's also very customisable should you decide that it needs some mods, like a touch screen. Speaking of which, if I ever do pluck up the courage (and the soldering iron) to do any mods on this little beauty, I'll put pictures and details up here.
The period from March the 2nd until March the 20th (inclusive) is the Baha'i month of fasting. (Remember I mentioned that the Baha'i month is 19 days long.) During this time, Baha'is abstain from eating and drinking from sunrise until sunset.
I have to say, the fast is probably one of my favourite times of year. It usually involves getting up before dawn for breakfast and prayers, and having a large meal in the evening just after sunset with friends. The community spirit the fast brings is something I really enjoy - last year's fast I ate breakfast and prayed with other Baha'is almost every morning, which was a fantastic way to begin the day. And then getting together in the evening to break the fast is usually greatly fun too.
That's not the main reason I like the fast though. In the Baha'i writings, it says that physical fasting (abstaining from food and drink) is actually just a symbol, and isn't really that important. What is important, and what the physical fasting symbolises, is the spiritual fasting. The fast is a time of self-renewal and prayer; of reflection and contemplation; of discipline and selflessness.
This material fast is an outer token of the spiritual fast; it is a symbol of self-restraint, the withholding of oneself from all appetites of the self, taking on the characteristics of the spirit, being carried away by the breathings of heaven and catching fire from the love of God.
Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Bahá, p70
As well as being an ongoing reminder of the spiritual fast and our duty to strive to improve ourselves, I also find the fast a reminder of our frailty as humans. Our physical bodies can not survive long without nourishment, and fasting reminds us of this - it also reminds us of the analagous situation, that our spiritual selves cannot survive long without spiritual nourishment.
O my Lord! Make Thy beauty to be my food, and Thy presence my drink
Bahá'u'lláh,p261
Living in the wealthy Western world, it's easy to take food and other commodities for granted. The fast leads me to appreciate my food and be thankful for it. I fast out of personal choice. Some fast as they have no other option. While we're on the subject of choice, I've always considered the fast to be the ultimate expression of free will - a complete denial of our natural instincts. Not that our natural instincts are bad or wicked, but being able to deny them is a display of who is really in charge: me, not my hormones.
As a supremely spiritual act, the fast is between an individual and God. Shoghi Effendi, the guardian of the Baha'i Faith, while calling the fast a "universal obligation", also notes that:
the observance of the nineteen day fast has been made by Bahá'u'lláh the sole responsibility of the individual believer. No Assembly has the right to enforce it on the friends, or to hold anybody responsible for not observing it. The believer is free, however, to ask the advice of his Assembly as to the circumstances that would justify him to conscientiously break such a fast. But he is by no means required to do so.
From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, March 9, 1937
There are numerous exceptions to fasting in the Baha'i Writings. And rightly so - as mentioned above, physical fasting is but a mere symbol of a spiritual process. For example, if you are ill, pregnant, breast-feeding, menstruating, doing heavy manual labour, or travelling for a long time, you are exempted from the fast.
A man is not fit to do service for God with brain or body if he is weakened by lack of food.
Abdu'l-Bahá, quoted in J. E. Esslemont, Baha'u'llah and the New Era, p184
The physical fast being merely a symbol means that if you simply just don't eat, fasting doesn't really work - "mere abstention from food has no effect on the spirit" (ibid). I remember the first time I fasted I loved it, it was really great and I learned a lot about myself. The second time the month of fasting rolled around, I thought "great! I'll just stop eating, sit back, and let the spiritual bounties come over me." Except they didn't. I've found that what you get out of fasting is directly proportional to what you put into it.
Getting up before dawn every day, not eating lunch, and not snacking throughout the day all leave you with a bit of extra time in your schedule. I try to use this time to reflect on my behaviour and how I treat others. If I can manage, I'll meditate or pray for longer than usual. I'll go out of my way to make those around me comfortable and at ease. Other Baha'is will do similar things - although the fast is a very personal time of reflection so I can only speculate. Speaking of meditation, I heard from a nutritionist that a period of fasting is often the best time to meditate - as no blood is being directed toward the gut, more blood and oxygen are available for the mind, giving you a keener and sharper awareness of yourself and the world around you.
The fast ends on the 20th of March. The 21st of March is Naw Rúz, the Baha'i new year. This coincides with the spring equinox. As well as the spring equinox having symbolic value of renewal and rebirth, the equinox is also when there is maximal balance between the length of daytime and nighttime - a perfect time to fast from sunrise to sunset!
