the corner office

You get 'long words' 'cause you are all erudite-like and then you get 'long words' 'cause you are just too lazy to put spaces between lots of short words. I found myself taking umbrage at the fact that this BBC article about German word-pruning seems incapable of distinguishing between the two.

But the article got me to thinking about another language we all know and love, including this (I'd thought apocryphal) place name, and that led me to this. I'm a little too lazy to do a final tally but when it comes to teh crazy-long I think the language we all know and love is right up there.

As weeks go, last week wasn't one of London's best. A young man's life cut brutally short by a dumbass who ponced around justifying his butchery in the name of Islam by quoting from Exodus (h/t).

Anyway. Someone commented on Facebook about how SA is a better place to be than London. The best thing to do when it comes to arguing on Facebook is simply not to, and so I kept quiet, but since I looked up the numbers, I thought I'd note them here for posterity: the murder rate in London is 1.1 in 100,000. The murder rate in Gauteng is 29.1 per 100,000 (down from around 40 when we left). That means that in a city of 8 million people, religious nutters could go out and kill another 2,000 people this year and London would still be a safer place than Joburg.

None of which would be of any comfort to poor Lee Rigby's family, but I still consider myself lucky to be able to live here.

I've made peace with the fact that a circa-2013 introduction to classics like the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings will be through means unlike my own, the unsullied magic of the books replaced by movies which took liberties, and Lego computer games which take even more. But when my son refers to Sauron as 'that big robot guy who first had the ring', then I'm afraid I have to put my foot down.

I'm just not sure where to put it.

It's a grim job but someone has to do it and it's better that it be done with enthusiasm than with any sense of proportion.

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My kind of conference:

And the Darmstadt meeting was presented with an array of concepts that included the use of nets, harpoons, tentacles, ion thrusters and lasers.

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(also on the wife's FB, this is the extended version)

"Why is our house 3D?"

(when the wife and I have stopped laughing...)

"What do you mean, 3D?"

"3D. Our house. Why is it 3D?"

"We don't know what you mean son. Everything's 3D"

"No it isn't. Paper's 2D"

The other day I saw a pedestrian signal with a countdown timer (and raced across the road because there were only a few seconds left). But overall they're a good idea, right?

We find that although countdown signals reduce the number of pedestrians struck by automobiles, they increase the number of collisions between automobiles. We also find that countdown signals caused more collisions overall.

More here (via).

I'm usually a 'transparency is good' kind of person, but this is an interesting conclusion:

The findings imply welfare gains can be attained by revealing the information to pedestrians and hiding it from drivers. We conclude that policies which increase asymmetries in information can improve welfare.

I shall hereafter refer to that as the 'keep the missus guessing' principle.

Child descends the stairs while Mother relaxes in the lounge, the day's duties done.

"What are you watching?"

"$MOVIE"

"Is it a grown-ups' movie?"

"Yes"

"Then why am I watching it?"

Long-time readers know I enjoy having a bit of a moan about the annual celebration of the Middle Ages known as Earth Hour.

This year an article in Slate makes the case against it pretty well, including this:

Moreover, during Earth Hour, any significant drop in electricity demand will entail a reduction in CO2 emissions during the hour, but it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterward.

This is the kind of thing you can have fun with. Why "invade" the UK? It's not like the French don't have plenty of their own beaches on which to practise invasions.

I can just imagine the nationalist zeal such maneuvres might unleash. I have an image of people standing on surrounding hills with pitchforks and yelling 'go home Froggy bastards! Britons never will be slaves!' and then going home to watch Countryfile.

(P.S. and I can imagine the French sailors on the ships 'Yeah rosbifs! Shake your little pitchforks, 1066 eh!' or some such and then everybody locks and loads and they go off together and shoot some religious nuts in Mali).