Pleasing your man; and some other stuff

Dot writes (like Ken’s post just now this arises from our evening slump over the Guardian): a survey conducted by the University of Aberdeen of women’s stated reasons for having cosmetic surgery has found that British women are more likely to say they did it to please their partner, while American women are more likely [...]

Insensitive Semantics

Ken writes:
I’ve just finished Cappelen and Lepore’s Insensitive Semantics, and I have to say that I’m a bit disappointed. Some of it has to do with reasons of style. A part of me used to like the playground humour of the Lepore and Fodor oeuvre, and this book is clearly in the same mold. For [...]

Spontaneity!

Dot writes: over dinner on Friday Ken and I were wondering why we haven’t managed to get out of Dublin for ages when we could so easily hop in our faithful, battered little car and zoom off to some interesting Irish place. So then we spontaneously decided to go to Waterford (pretty near, connected with [...]

Beating the travel system

Dot writes: today Ken and I went to Mothercare and had our first proper look at buggies. In particular, we went to look at an Atlan Eclipse lightweight travel system that Mum had found on the internet and that happens to be on offer at the moment, as well as being in any case about [...]

Taproots of society

Dot writes: on Friday I read an article that argues determinedly that Beowulf passes Peabody’s tests for orality; the author works on the assumption that it is ‘a copy of a recording of a performance’ (Robert P. Creed, ‘The Beowulf-Poet: Master of Sound-Patterning’, in Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord, ed. by [...]

Project Prawn: An Interim Report

Click on the thumbnail for a larger version. 
Extraordinary as it seems, we are nearing the end of the second phase of construction on Project Prawn. (The books differ about when exactly the third trimester starts. Your Pregnancy Week by Week goes for 29 weeks; I’m now at 26 weeks 2 days.) The very small bundle [...]

Impotent rage; or, The jagged gash of the rusting shopping trolley cleaves the brotherhood of man

Dot writes: every morning on the DART we pass along a quietly lovely stretch of coastline. First there’s Killiney Bay, where the loveliness is actually quite loud: the roads and villas have Italian names because the Victorians thought it looked like the Bay of Naples, and on a sunny day it really does. Closer to [...]

Poor English

Ken writes:
The Observer reports that an exasperated Imperial College London lecturer is publishing a compilation of student spelling mistakes. As someone who makes plenty of such mistakes myself, I have to protest that it shows nothing about their intelligence or ability. OK, they need to be more thorough, and to read the work through for [...]

Counterfactual Irish History

Ken writes:
I’m reading Anne Enright’s “The gathering”, right now, which has been long-listed for the Booker prize. I’m only a couple of chapters into it so I won’t comment on it other than to say that the style is absolutely wonderful. It is elegant and simple. Almost Japanese: All matt colours and plain textures and [...]

Art imitates life imitates art

Dot writes: there’s a report in the newspaper (hooray once more for the Guardian) about a Polish author, Krystian Bala, who is being tried for murder after details in a thriller he published in 2003, ‘Amok’, resembled rather too closely the death of one of his ex-wife’s friends. The friend died in 2000. To me [...]