Hydrgnc

May 16 2013

“Getting the reissue together has been a really interesting project for me, because it involves going through old boxes of tapes, which necessarily means exhuming the corpses I became at several turns between then and now.” The Mountain Goats | News Archive | Requiem for Red Southern Curl

May 15 2013

“Facebook users should be both smart and selective about what they like. The act of liking a page can associate a user with that page’s content, and with these underhanded “Like Farming” pages, it’s best not to give them what they want.” How “Like Farming” Facebook Scams Work | Facecrooks.com | How to Avoid Facebook Scams

May 13 2013

“Green is R.E.M.’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience , and while it should be all over the shop, it coheres staggeringly well – put that down to good sequencing, great songwriting, an underlying naivety to even the bleak songs and allowing the sweeter music to take the lead. And less analytically, the band simply appeared incapable of doing any wrong at this time.” R.E.M. - Green (25th anniversary edition) / Releases / Releases // Drowned In Sound

“To be clear, five of the six “surveys” cited by the Department of Education in backing up a claim by a cabinet minister were PR-commissioned puff-polls. They were commissioned, not to find out information in a trustworthy and repeatable manner, but to ensure that stories about UKTV Gold, Premier Inn, the Sea Cadets , Bomber Command Memorial and “teacher-set exam revision service” Education Quizzes found their way into UK papers.” Michael Gove revealed to be using PR-commissioned puff-polls as “evidence”

May 12 2013

“Until a few hundred years ago, most people believed human history was cyclical - a series of rising and falling civilizations in which what some generations gained, others lost. Today, nearly everyone thinks otherwise. The modern world is founded on the belief that it’s possible for human beings to shape a future that’s better than anything in the past. If the Gormenghast novels have any continuing theme, it’s that this modern belief is an illusion.” BBC News - A Point Of View: Leaving Gormenghast

May 11 2013

“It has become so well-used in the journalistic ecosystem that it is on the edge of cliche and on its way to becoming an idiom. Any story that runs for more than a few minutes, and in which further comments or developments are expected, just becomes a -gate for ease of reference. I have no objection to its use among consenting adult journalists in conversation, but using it in print just betrays a lack of imagination.” BBC News - Turning a scandal into a ‘-gate’

“To the outsider, the Nottingham accent might make the person speaking it sound thicker than Barry White’s shit on Boxing Day morning, but don’t kid yersen; it’s actually the most complex dialect in the UK., drawing in and absorbing speech patterns and slang from Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire and the South before spitting them back out in a concentrated stream of inflection, tone, tempo and swearing.”

Aah Ter Talk Notts - Nottingham Culture - LeftLion.co.uk

- also, the Wikipedia article on East Midlands English is good: “Those who speak traditional regional dialects are not trying unsuccessfully to speak Standard English. East Midlands English follows a series of distinct grammatical rules.”

“All language has grammar, otherwise it wouldn’t be language. Grammar is what gives words sense. We produce language in strings of words, and the means by which they stick together and make sense is grammar. This applies to all language, all dialects – not one particular way of speaking and writing. So grammar is not a matter of being correct or not. It’s a way of describing how all language works. All linguists believe there is grammar, but linguists do not all agree on grammatical terms or categories. Pretending that there is only one correct way to describe language is confusing and untrue.”

Michael Gove and ‘correct grammar’: let me explain this slowly | Michael Rosen | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

- everything in this article, but the quote above in particular.

May 10 2013

“We are constantly creating and recreating our narratives of identity, cultivating a sense of who we are and where we fit within our cultural contexts. We want to understand ourselves, and perhaps even more so, to be understood by others. I suspect our compulsion to record and save and archive everything arises from this keen desire to narrate our story to others, and find connection. Sometimes, when a dozen parents stand up in the front rows of the audience at the school play, videotaping their kids on stage, I wonder if we take this process too far. How much do we have to do before it becomes over-the-top data collection, which consumes us to the point of eclipsing experience (think of the sight-seers and tourists who spend more time clicking photos than admiring the landmarks). Why do we do it? Are we collecting evidence for some future narrative?” Writing, Time Machines, and Memory | Play

“In the last few weeks, I have had messages from people saying that I should not be campaigning against Tesco, that I should be supporting its stance as a Conservative. But it is precisely because I am a Conservative that I am opposed to how Tesco is treating its workers. Conservatism was never meant to be about big corporations: it is about the rights of families and ordinary people; about helping them to stand up to monolithic corporations and big government.”

Tesco’s treatment of its workers shows why we must stop subsidising it

- I have to admit that the phrase “[I] am a Conservative trade unionist myself” completely stopped me in my tracks.