A Bookstore Anecdote

As promised below, here we have the first in what will probably become a short series! And this one deals with the Comparative Literature section of the Bookstore. Unfortunately, the signage in said section employed a perhaps unfortunate and anatomical abbreviation, one which I'll let you bright sparks figure out on your own. Thus it was that a couple of days into rush, the floor manager tasked me with removing all of the offending signs, and replacing them with something a little less controversial. I assumed that there had been complaints; however, it actually turned that somebody had taken a picture of one of the old signs and posted it on a widely read internet site. The only real shock was that it took as long as it did for this to happen, since the old signs had been up for years.

The funny bit occurred a few days after the signs were replaced, when a young fellow, accompanied by his girlfriend, stopped me and asked for directions to the Comparative Literature section. "Follow me!" I said, and they did. However, when we hove in sight of the section and its new signs, both their faces fell, and they stopped. I must have looked at them quizzically, because the male half of the couple muttered something about it being "far too complicated to explain," and then they scurried off, out of the store.

So yeah, we actually had tourists making trips to the Bookstore expressly and only to look at the funny Comparative Literature signs.

A Return, And A Departure

* Blows dust off blog, again *

I'm back! And where have I been for the last month? Well, toiling in the University Bookstore through the September textbook rush, for the most part. The scene below is a reasonable facsimile of the sort of job it was:

Trust me, there will be anecotes, oh my yes!

However, it is not the goings-on at the University Bookstore that concerns us today, but rather a somewhat odd news story that cropped up last week. Here it is:

Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on
Fri Sep 21, 2007 4:54pm EDT By Simon Rabinovitch

LONDON (Reuters) - About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.

And so, farewell, noble hyphen! Well, not entirely "farewell," as the article goes on to point out that hyphens will be hanging around in situations where confusion would result otherwise (the word "twenty-odd" is cited as an example). Furðermore, one must recall ðat ðere are æt least a handful of letters which have been þrown out of þe English language, so perhaps þe partial removal of a piece of punctuation is not such a big deal (For the record, the three obsolete letters used in that sentence are, in order, eth, ash, and thorn. We've also lost yogh and wynn). Still and all, I think I'm going to miss the ice-cream.

The Lack of Knowledge of Local History! It Burns!

There are days when I don't know why I read the "Venting" column in the Journal. Generally, it serves as a forum for the city's knuckle-draggers to display their ignorance, passive-aggressive tendencies, and horror at the existence of people with interests different from theirs. And every so often the dumbassery gets taken to new and impressive lows.

Last weekend saw the annual dragon boat races on the river here in town. In the wake (hah!) of that, one Venter revealed its displeasure at the entire concept:

Instead of dragon boat races, why don't Edmontonians celebrate our own history and culture and use voyageur canoes?*

To be fair, the Venter has, like the proverbial blind pig, found a truffle; a voyageur canoe race on the river is an awesome idea. That said...



For those of you who do not know this, in the late 19th century something like 17,000 Chinese labourers came to Canada to work on the Western expansion of the railway. Sir John A. MacDonald is reported to have said that without them there would have been no railway, and as the writer of that link notes, without the railway there might not have been a country. Early Chinese Canadians were not treated well (just google "head tax"), especially in economically tough times.

The first Chinese Edmontonian seems to have been a fellow named Chung Gee, who arrived in 1892, the very year that Edmonton officially became a town. His reasons for coming here are not known for certain, but there had been anti-Chinese rioting in Calgary, and it is possibly that he was fleeing from that. Whatever, the case, the Chinese population of Edmonton increased steadily from that beginning. The city's Chinatown, in roughly its current location, was firmly established by 1911, when the Chinese population of the city numbered in the hundreds.

So, just in case anyone is still missing the point, the dragon boat races in Edmonton do in fact have a very strong historical and cultural basis. And some people need to do a little bit of research before beaking off to the newspaper.

*The link will probably die in a couple of days, since the Journal does not seem to archive the Vents. Here is the hard-copy citation:

Anonymous. "Venting." Edmonton Journal. August 25, 2009, p. A14.

In Which Chunklets Previews A Sporting Event Before It Actually Begins...

Ah yes, on to Serie A, which gets going this weekend! Here are some questions to ponder for the upcoming season, along with possibly true answers:

So, who's going to win it?

Inter Milan

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Um, you need to say a little bit more, I think.

Oh. Well, as the offseason transfer market got going, I not only had Inter down as champions, but thought they would probably have the title in the bag by about Christmas. Unlike, well, every other team in Serie A, they had actually succeeded in bringing in some major talent, in the person of Barcelona's Samuel Eto'o. Now... I still think they'll win it, but they may find themselves pushed by Juventus, who've very quietly made some good acquisitions this summer.

Ok, what about the other Champions' League spots?

This is where it gets exciting! Much though I don't want to, I've got to put AC Milan down for third place. Yes, they've lost their best player, as Kaka betook himself off to Real Madrid. Yes, Philippe Senderos went back to Arsenal. Yes, their owner is a lunatic who's prone to public criticism of his coaches. However, they've got too much talent, and too much money for reinforcements.

After that, though, things get really interesting, as a large handful of clubs will have their eyes on the last Champions' spot. Fiorentina, Roma, and Napoli probably have the best shot at it, but if those three stumble then Udinese, Sampdoria, Lazio, and maybe even Genoa and Palermo will all be looking to take advantage. I think, in the end, that it could be Roma's turn this season. They're still relying too much on Francesco Totti, but Fiorentina didn't do much in the transfer market, and Napoli, who did make some useful pickups, are involved in acrimonious wrangling with their top striker.

Passing lightly over the middle of the table then, who's going down?

Bari, for starters. The newly-promoted Puglians did nothing to strengthen their side, and just plain look over-matched. As for the other two... well, it saddens me, but I'm once again looking at Siena as relegation fodder (Note that I was wrong about them last time, though). And I've got a bad feeling about Bologna, who are experiencing some chaos behind the scenes, and who's centenary season may turn out to be memorable for all the wrong reasons.

And here's the prospective final table:

1	Inter Milan
2	Juventus
3	AC Milan
4	Roma
5	Fiorentina
6	Napoli
7	Sampdoria
8	Udinese
9	Genoa
10	Lazio
11	Palermo
12	Parma
13	Catania
14	Cagliari
15	Atalanta
16	Livorno
17	Chievo Verona
18	Bologna
19	Siena
20	Bari

Disturbing...

I am rather glad at this moment that Nefertiti is an indoor cat.

Many posts ago, I referred to my occasional habit of grabbing on-the-bus coffee at the local Quik-E-Mart, and I have in fact been doing that this week. Now, it is not at all unusual to find the odd "Missing Cat" poster taped up at the bus-stop outside the little convenience store, but I was a bit depressed to discover two of them yesterday. And then there was a third one up this morning.

There are, of course, all kinds of possible explanations for this sudden eruption of MIA cats. It could be simply coincidence. All three of the missing cats are young toms, so another possibility is that they simply chose the same week to head off on their travels. Or, on a grimmer note, it's possible that somebody in the neighbourhood is up to no good; they are out there, after all. However, I have my own suspicions, and they revolve around this fellow:

Canis Latrans

Apparently there several hundred of the critters dwelling in the city, which is one of very cool results (and I do mean that sincerely) of having an undeveloped river valley which serves as a wildlife corridor all the way to the Rocky Mountains, not to mention a significant rabbit population. Furthermore, the neighbourhood wherein these cats have gone missing is very close to the river valley, as well as to several wooded ravines. So I do rather wonder if there isn't a new den somewhere down there.

In any case, if I were the owner of an outdoors cat, I would think very hard about keeping it under supervision while it was out there!

Premiership!

Yes, it is that time again! Or rather, it was that time again last weekend, when the 2009-2010 Premiership season actually began. However, it's not too late to take a look at what's likely to happen over the coming months!

The top of the Premiership table is likely to look a lot like it did last year. In fact, I think it's probably Manchester United's title to lose again, despite the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo et al. They're too well-managed, and none of Liverpool, Chelsea, or Arsenal significantly strengthened their teams over the summer.

As always, one big question revolves around whether anybody is going to be able to catch one of the big four, and this year's prime candidate is Manchester City, who are now the richest soccer team on the planet (yes, seriously) and have been throwing the money around in a meaningful sort of way. I have heard some speculation that Arsenal are vulnerable, but I just don't think that Manchester City are quite ready to make the jump just yet. It's pretty much a given that they will qualify for the Champions' League one of these seasons, but it's probably not going to be this one. Other teams with European aspirations will, as always, include Aston Villa, Everton, and Tottenham.

At the other end of the table, the general consensus is that Hull City and Portsmouth are dooooomed, and I tend to concur. Hull City were dismal towards the end of last year, and Portsmouth are in deep financial trouble. The third relegation spot is far less certain. It's always tempting here to include one of the newly promoted sides, and I'm afraid that this time the finger of Fate points at Burnley. It's their first season in the top flight since 1976, and it's likely that they'll need a couple of tries to establish themselves among the big teams. The other two teams who came up, Birmingham City and Wolves, have recently experienced Premiership soccer, and should be better prepared.

And what of Millwall this year? Well, it's going to be very tough. There are about five clubs in League 1 this season who really should not be there on the basis of their resources and fanbase, and it's tough to see Millwall getting by enough of them to earn promotion. That said, nobody thought we'd come within 20 minutes of going up last season, either...

Anyway, here's your predicted Premiership table:

1	Manchester United
2	Chelsea
3	Liverpool
4	Arsenal
5	Manchester City
6	Aston Villa
7	Everton
8	Tottenham Hotspur
9	Sunderland
10	West Ham United
11	Fulham
12	Birmingham City
13	Bolton Wanderers
14	Wigan Athletic
15	Blackburn Rovers
16	Stoke City
17	Wolverhampton Wanderers
18	Hull City
19	Portsmouth
20	Burnley

Newses & Noteses

I have been reacquainting myself with the Benny cat this week, and I am pleased to say that he is in fine form, despite the presence of workers doing renovations on the house. Benny's general comfort level is steeply and inversely proportional to the number of people around him at any given moment. And, as we discovered the other night while cooking dinner, he's not a huge fan of the smoke detector; its triggering resulted in him betaking himself to the back of the closet for a couple of hours.

I also managed to get together for dinner last night with some old friends, some of whom I had not seen for a decade or more (Facebook is a nifty thing!). Cue much reminiscing about archaeology-related adventures abroad! One of the people at the gathering is involved in museum work, so, in light of recent decisions, I was happy to be able to bend her ear a little bit about the field. To make a long story short, it appears that I am on the right track at least in identifying which programs are worthwhile! I'm trying to find programs that concentrate on the conservation/preservation side of things (I'm particularly interested in doing that sort of work on-site, basically as soon as the artifacts come out of the ground), rather than those whose emphasis is on museum management and the like. Anyway, the food and company were both excellent, and I imagine that there will be more get-togethers like last night's when we can manage it!

Pitch Invasion

In which a last season's tense Ligue 1 match between Bordeaux and Nancy is watched, and participated in, with apparent enjoyment:

Soccer Notes

A couple of wee tidbits:

• England lost a one of the good ones today. A genuinly classy individual, as well as a very fine manager. He also was known to employ an interesting turn of phrase, every once in awhile...
  
  
• The Canadian men's national team just returned from the CONCACAF Gold Cup, and I actually think it went pretty well. Canada faced as tough a group as they did during the WC qualifiers, but the boys defeated Jamaica and El Salvador, and managed to tie Costa Rica, thus in fact winning the group. The Canadians then bowed out at the quarter-final stage, losing to Honduras on a very debatable penalty call (aren't they all!). Most impressive of all, in the games that I saw, there was actually evidence of forward-thinking tactics, something that was too often lacking during the Dale Mitchell era. Oh, and Ali Gerba's goal against Jamaica was truly a thing of beauty:
  
  
  
  
• The new manager of the Canadian men's team, Stephen Hart, has enjoyed a fairly bright beginning (well, it's not really a beginning, since he was interim manager before Mitchell got the permanent job). Under Hart this time around, the team's record is: Played 6, Won 4, Drawn 1, Lost 1, 8 Goals Scored, 3 Conceded. Pretty good, I'd say.

Latin Choices

Page from a 15th-century manuscript of Augustine's City of God

As this summer's Latin class surges towards its completion, we're once again reaching the point in the curriculum where I need to start coming up with some things for them to read. I do not believe that students should escape Latin 102 without reading at least some unedited ancient works, warts and all. Interestingly, and encouragingly, I've actually had some requests for things to read this year, in addition to my usual choices. So, what are they going to get? Well...

• Catullus 3. A yearly tradition! I send them away for a couple of weeks to come up with a really nice translation of this poem, in consultation, if they wish, with other scholarship on it.
  
  
• An excerpt from Tacitus' Agricola. Of the "big guns," there's probably not a tougher Latin prose author than Tacitus, so if they can handle him, they can handle anything. I generally roll out some part of the speech of Calgacus before the Battle of Mons Graupius (in addition to being fairly translatable, for Tacitus, it's really good).
  
  
• Something, still undetermined, from St. Augustine. This was actually one of the requests that I had this year, from the philosophy student who's working on Augustine. I still haven't decided what I'm going to give them; something from City of God is tempting, since it's full of fun bits of Roman history and mythology. However, Augustine does not take a postitive view of Roman history and mythology (Paraphrase from Book 2: "So Sallust thought that 'the good and right' in Rome derived from the character of the inhabitants rather than from legal coercion? Excellent! Let's discuss how the rape of the Sabine women fits into that notion."), and the above-mentioned speech of Calgacus probably fills this course's Rome-bashing quota. So perhaps I will go back to The Confessions, and find something there.
  
  
• I've also had a student ask to learn how to scan Latin poetry! I have never before taught that, so I'm working now at getting myself back up to speed on the topic. I'll at least get them introduced to the notion, and walk them through a couple of the more common forms of Latin poetry. I'm leaning towards elegaic couplets, which will also serve to show them how to scan a line of dactylic hexameter, and the from generally known as Phalaecean Hendecasyllabic (hello, Catullus 3!), which sounds horrible but is actually really easy to work with.

Given time constraints, I doubt we'll be able to do any more than that and still cover the required grammar. However, it should enough to get them thinking about how to do translations (and scan poetry), and that's more or less the point!

Hat Fail

I had to look at this one for a moment before it dawned on me, and then I snorted coffee through my nose.

see more Fail Blog

Rage!!!!

Ok, you want to know who just made The List? It's the guy who changed all the keyboard macros on this lab computer, so that, for example, when I try to embolden highlighted text by hitting ctrl-b, the text is deleted and replaced with a single, solitary, "ß". That's who just made The List.

A Nostalgic Musical Interlude!

Have you ever had one of those moments when, for no particular reason, you suddenly though: "Hey, you know what artist/musician/band/&c I haven't listened to in a long time?"

I had forgotten what a voice Karen Matheson has!

We Need More Headlines...

...like this:

Just When You Thought It Was Safe… Giant Squid Terrorise Californian Coast!!!
Divers spooked by tales of assaults as swarms of aggressive jumbo flying squid invade the shallows off San DiegoAssociated Press in San Diego guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 July 2009 15.25 BST

Yes folks, "aggressive jumbo FLYING squid" (my emphasis) have apparently risen from the depths, and are tormenting anyone who ventures into the waters off San Diego. And that, of course, means that it's only a matter of time until this fellow shows up:

For you see, at the same time that tenticular doom was descending upon California, here in the Warrens, hundreds of miles from the sea, strange phenomena were at work. On Saturday night the sky turned a sort of nasty greenish-grey, thunder rolled, high winds threw things around and tore strong limbs from trees, and all the lights went out for awhile. Oh, and there was hail. Coincidence? I think not.

Anyway, as we await the arrival of the horrid denizens of R'Lyeh, here's a bit of a look at their advance guard:

You Know What Seems Silly?

So, I actually got out and attended a professional sporting event last night, as I went down to watch our Eskimos host the boys from B.C. (Canadian-rules football, in case you're wondering). Now, as has become commonplace at sporting events, scores by the home team are greated with pyrotechnics, and, in the case of our particular team, the sight of a vintage fire engine, painted in the team's colours, driving around the running track with its lights flashing (just to add to last night's spectacle, it was '60s night, so the players were wearing smart-looking retro uniforms, the cheerleaders were wearing go-go boots, etc. It was quite something).

Anyway, during the second half, the Eskimos found themselves on offence, but pinned way back on their own 2-yard line, with their backup quarterback in. In other words, they were in deep trouble. But, lo-and-behold, they drove the ball 108 yards down the field, scored a touchdown, and then followed that up with a two-point convert! And the fireworks duly went off, the fire engine drove upon its appointed course, and the cheerleaders and mascots leapt around gleefully.

Now, here's the bit where the silliness arrives. You may remember how I mentioned that this occurred during the second half? Well, to be specific, there were exactly 12 seconds left in the game, after the touchdown. And the touchdown made the score 40-22. For B.C. And I thought that it would be a bit of an idea for the folks running "the show" to say: "At this point we are 100% likely to lose this game badly, and maniacly celebrating the fact that the margin of defeat will be 18 rather than 26 points is not only silly, it's kinda pathetic."

Just a thought, anyway...

So, How Did We Do?: Part 2

Back again, and looking at how we picked Serie A over the last season! Here's the chart:

	Ye Olde Scrying Cauldron		Reality
1	Inter	1	Inter
2	AC Milan	2	Juventus
3	Fiorentina	3	AC Milan
4	Roma	4	Fiorentina
5	Juventus	5	Genoa
6	Napoli	6	Roma
7	Sampdoria	7	Udinese
8	Udinese	8	Palermo
9	Bologna	9	Cagliari
10	Lazio	10	Lazio
11	Torino	11	Atalanta
12	Palermo	12	Napoli
13	Cagliari	13	Sampdoria
14	Genoa	14	Siena
15	Atalanta	15	Catania
16	Chievo Verona	16	Chievo Verona
17	Lecce	17	Bologna
18	Reggina	18	Torino
19	Catania	19	Reggina
20	Siena	20	Lecce

Well, then, kudos to the Seers for a) correctly picking the champion, and b) correctly picking one of the relegated teams (poor, poor, Reggina). And hey, we succesfully nailed the final positions of three teams (Inter, Lazio, and Chievo Verona), one better than we did in England! Beyond that, there were some real shocks, as a number of teams were well away from where we'd picked them.

Genoa versus Juventus back in April. Genoa (in red and blue) won 3-2.

First of all, the good. The big story of the season was Genoa, who amazingly came within a lick of overhauling Fiorentina for the last Champions' League spot. Tiny Siena, whom we'd picked to finish dead last, not only survived but for once did so comfortably. And, even though they finished only three spots above where we'd picked them, Juventus had a far better year than I foresaw.

And now, that bad. I would think that the season's biggest disappointment had to be Napoli, who started very brightly, and then basically stopped getting results around Christmas-time. Of their final 21 games, Napoli won 3, although one of them was a fine victory over Inter, and so a club that maybe had an outside shot at the Champions' League won't be playing in Europe next season at all. Bologna, as well, didn't live up to expections. We mentioned them in the prediction article, saying something like "keep an eye on Bologna," and keep an eye on them we did. We watched as they strolled into Milan on opening day and beat AC, and we felt very smart. And then we watched as they nearly got relegated, and we didn't feel so smart anymore! Torino somehow managed not to avoid relegation. And finally, Genoa fans had two reasons to celebrate, as their cross-city rivals Sampdoria had a dreadful season, and finished well in the bottom half.

Yeah, it was kind of like that for Napoli in 2009

It's going to be very interesting to watch Serie A in the next few seasons. At this point, for the first time in decades, the big talent is flowing out of Italian club soccer, not into it. This has also been happening in German soccer recently, and the result this year was that the Bundesliga had a first-time champion in VFB Wolfsburg. It's also been a feature of Dutch soccer for about the last ten years, and there too we are seeing lesser-known clubs (AZ Alkmaar, this year's champion, for example) mounting serious challenges to the big boys. So, it is just possible that we may see the big four in Italy coming back to the field a little bit, which would actually be rather fun!