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CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)
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N R Scott


In: Middlesbrough
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If the you scroll back through the blog the Nefertiti bust is a recurring theme. In this post from 2016 the writer notes that it's possibly fake.

https://buddhable.tumblr.com/post/146521617173

So the 2019 post is essentially an update saying "See, I was right with my suspicions." It's out of context for us, but for regular readers of the blog it fits a wider context.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Thank goodness Virgin have installed a new doobry-thing that guarantees me uninterrupted access to the internet at speeds several times faster than before and many, many times the speed the great Virgin unwashed of Britain enjoy in their cheerless coppered hovels. I was less happy with Virgin insisting I accept an eighteen month free subscription to Sky Movies as a reward for allowing them to do it because this is really eating into my time.

Which is at a premium at the moment because my internet keeps getting cut off and the whole thing crawls along at speeds last seen when Mr Sugar was in charge of my computer's links with the outside world. Blimey, it's as if Labour had won the last election and had nationalised the whole thing. Sorry, 'provided high speed internet access to every hard-working family in Britain via a publicly-funded organisation'.
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Mick Harper
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My credit card has expired and they've sent me a new one that expires three years hence. Meanwhile people have been badgering me to give details of the new card in exchange for continuing their services, which I am anxious to do. From their point of view I would have thought this is the simplest, most frequent and most profitable exercise they undertake so they will make sure it runs smoothly. For both our sakes.

Problem Number One Only two outfits have badgered me which is a worry. Are all the others -- I have no idea who they are but there are quite a few of them -- going to just stop providing their services when the present card expires at the end of the month?

Problem Number Two The two that have bothered include in their email

Michael, your credit card is about to expire
Click below to update your billing information and ensure uninterrupted access to Acrobat Pro DC
Click Here to renew your card
Update Card

This is a friendly reminder that your credit card expires at the end of the month
Before it expires, please update your card information with A Medium Corporation
Update now

Clicking on the respective boxes takes me not, as one was confidently expecting, to a page that would allow me to change a 1 into a 4 and exchange my three number security code on the back of the old card for another three-number security code on the back of the new card. Not a bit of it. Both times, clicking the box takes me to a page that indicates it scarcely knows who I am and it certainly doesn't know why the hell I'm bothering them.

Problem Number Three After an hour navigating around and not being allowed to do what I want to do and what they want to do, I am in a quandary. I have been madly filling in details and pressing buttons and, at one point, Adobe flashed up the words 'Your card has been saved' but the words disappeared after a few seconds, before I was able to find out which card, old or new. If either. I can't get the words back for love or money. Though I may end up taking out two subscriptions if I try too hard. As for medium.com I had to cancel my subscription and take out a new one which presumably has done the trick. Though I might have lost all my old material [I'm in the middle of discussing whether having one's hair shorn is or is not a suitable punishment for sleeping with the enemy when they are occupying your country.]

Ah well, I won't have to go through that for another three years. Apart from all the other services as they fall due. I suppose that's a good thing since if I don't notice, it probably means I didn't need it in the first place.
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Mick Harper
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This morning's Google burn-bag has given me an idea for the title of the new book (imminent)

The History of Britain Revealed : the Shocking Truth about the English Language , rev . ed . ... Evolution 50 – 1 , 63 – 92 • Hoad , Terry , ' Preliminaries : Before English ' , The Oxford History of English
https://usakochan.net/download/anglo-saxon-england-reissue-with-a-new-cover-oxford-history-of-england/

Why not call it the Oxford Book of Museums or somesuch? They haven't got a monopoly on the name and if the OUP or anyone else sues the arse of me, that's all to the good. But I won't. Haven't got the nerve. Always been my problem: massive brain, big yellow stripe down back.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Talking of OUP reminds me of a curiosity (as befits this Cabinet of Curiosities topic).

There seems to be a grey area (or twylight zone) over what constititutes a "University". Redgate (a maker of very good software) has no trouble promoting its own "University".

https://www.red-gate.com/hub/university/

Get started and master the fundamentals of Redgate products with easy to follow video courses.

A while ago, I asked them "Are you providing degree courses?" (or something like that). The answer was "no". It looks like Redgate has cleverly applied the literal or original meaning of "university".

The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". The modern university system has roots in the European medieval university, which was created in Italy and evolved from cathedral schools for the clergy during the High Middle Ages.

Which is appropriate for Redgate, as software developers (script writers) could be the current Scriptorium inhabitants.

Anyway, who gets to be "proper" university?

https://www.gov.uk/check-a-university-is-officially-recognised

Institutions that offer degree-level courses in the UK are called either ‘recognised’ or ‘listed’ bodies. Recognised bodies are higher learning institutions that can award degrees.

But they don't explain what "recognised" means or who does it.

The Privy Council is also responsible, under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, for approving the use of the word 'university' (including 'university college') in the title of a higher education institution, and may also approve an institution as competent to grant degrees.

https://www.privy-council.org.uk/output/Page27.asp

Ah, I think I've got my head round the distinction. You'd need Privy Council approval to put the word "university" in the name of the business/organisation, or trade with that name, or make money from the output of such.

Start a new section of this website called "AEL University" with training videos (not degrees), and you can slip through the cracks.
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Mick Harper
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Exquisite Guardiana (no 223)

Growing up in a working class area of Sheffield, any possibility of literary possibility came more out of the great working class and black traditions of oral storytelling (the soap-box orators of Harlem or the Griots of ancient West Africa) than the classroom. Johnny Pitts, The Week in Books
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Mick Harper
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It's only bleeding snowing. Here in 'four degrees warmer than the countryside' London. I cannot remember when there was last snow on the ground. Not as long ago as the last London fog but before global warming. The Reykjavík of the south, some are saying. I'm staying indoors, me.
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Mick Harper
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Bastard snow's all gone. Didn't last ten minutes. It's the kiddies I feel sorry for.
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Mick Harper
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My new computer has new 'directed' advertising which I haven't worked out how to get rid of. It consists mainly of "Do you want to publish a book?" which is understandable since it knows the book is nearly ready to go. Interspersed with 'Anusol -- for relief of piles' which is also understandable because of how long it took.
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Mick Harper
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PS Anybody wishing to receive a hard copy of Missing Persons 1.0 (the version that goes out to reviewers et al) should send me their snail mail address. Since this costs us a fair bit in time and money do not do so unless you are resolved on being helpful. You do not have to read all of it but you do have to give chapter and verse why you didn't.
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Mick Harper
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More wearying and puzzling grief because my card has inexcusably been replaced with an identical one but with a different closing date. Now it is Worldpay who one would have thought would be pastmasters in facilitating this simple exercise. Nope. They keep sending me emails, they keep telling me what to do, they keep refusing to let me do it.

This has reached the crescendo when, in desperation I ring them and they ask me to key in the 8-figure number on the email. A pleasant sounding woman keeps telling me she doesn't recognise it which goes on for a bit until a gruff-sounding man cuts in to tell me they are busy, to ring back later and the line goes dead.

There may be nothing for it but to sign up for my Google Alerts as a new customer. I'll probably get all sorts of discounts but I'd much prefer to be exploited as an old customer.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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DPCrisp wrote:
Etymology online gives silly O.E. gesælig "happy"...

NSOED agrees silly is a version of sele, seely: happy, fortunate, lucky; favoured or blessed by God, but the first thing it says of silly specifically is "deserving of pity, compassion, or sympathy".

"Isles of the Blessed" or "Isles of Poor Sods All But Washed Away By Rising Seas"?


On the topic of silly sea-going stories, I was amused by the Case of Rumpelheimer v Haddock.

On the 21st March last Mr. Rumpelheimer was driving his motor-car along the thoroughfare known as Chiswick Mall, which runs beside the north bank of the River Thames. Now, it appears that during the high spring tides, particularly those of the equinoctial seasons, the waters of the Thames overflow the banks and cover the highway to a depth of from two feet on the river side of the road to a few inches on the landward side.

The road is indeed liable to flooding.



Such was the condition of affairs a little before high water on the date in question, when Mr.Rumpelheimer, who had an important business appointment in the City, began his voyage along the Mall. His evidence is that he was keeping carefully to the left or landward side of the road, where it was still possible to drive through the shallow water without fear of damage. While thus engaged he was startled, he says, to see ahead of him, and coming towards him on the same side of the road, the defendant, Mr. Haddock, who was navigating with a paddle a smallboat of shallow draught.

Up the creek with a paddle.

The plaintiff blew his horn vigorously, but the defendant held his course. Mr. Rumpelheirner shouted courteously, 'Out of the road, you fool!' and Mr. Haddock replied, as he admitted under cross-examination, 'Port to port, you foxy beetle! Are you not acquainted with the Regulations for Prevention of Collision at Sea? I am going to starboard.

I believe ColRegs have been a topic of conversation here on AEL as well.

The plaintiff, driver of a flashy Italian motor car, swerved to the right to avoid the defendant's canoe, thereby going into deeper water and floodinghis motor, which then stopped. Due to a nasty exchange of views, he was forced to sit in his water-logged vehicle until towed ignominiously to a garage because the defendant Haddock, "in gross breach of the customs of the sea, declined to convey [Rumpelheimer] to the shore or pavement.

At this point, I should declare a conflict of interest. I too have been a driver of a flashy Italian motor car. Alas, a foolish owner, because the car was notoriously unreliable. On balance, therefore, I am inclined to believe the plaintiff's judgement was equally deficient.

But back to the main story...

Rumpleheimer suffered financial loss, for which he brought an action at law, but the King's Bench referred the case to Admiralty (the Division of the High Court then known as "Probate, Divorce and Admiralty," or, more colloquially, "Hex, Sex, and Wrecks"). The Admiralty judge heard the case with a nautical assessor (i.e., one of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House).

Trinity House? You can see what direction this is heading...

"Now, the law or custom of the road is that when two vehicles meet, each shall keep to the left. But the law or custom of the sea is that when two vessels meet they shall go to starboard and pass port to port. That is, each shall keep to the right.

This tradition is lost in the mists of time, but colloquially believed to related to starboard (meaning steerboard) being on the right. Passing port to port means each vessel protects its steerboard and steerage.

Mr Haddock contends that when the tide covers the road that road becomes a part of the tideway, that traffic upon it is thenceforth governed by the regulations and customs of the sea, and that he did right, therefore, to steer so as to pass Mr Rumpelheimer on his port hand. Further, it is the duty of a steam vessel to keep out of the way of a rowing-boat; and Mr Haddock argues that the plaintiff's motor-car when navigating the tideway has the status of a steam-vessel, and that the plaintiff has nobody but himself to blame.

Steam gives way to sail. Except for ferries and HM Royal Navy (force majeure) which tell sail to bugger off (force manure)

With considerable reluctance we find there is some substance in these contentions. The law of the land says one thing; the law of the water says the contrary; and it seems elementary that (upon navigable waters) the law of the water must prevail. It is idle to say that Chiswick Mall was not at the time of the accident navigable water.

What was the conclusion?

The fact that a certain area of water was once dry land and is expected to be dry land again is unimportant. Much of what we now know as land was once covered by the ocean, and vice versa; but a motorist would not be allowed to appeal to the customs of the sea because he was crossing the Romney Marshes, on the grounds that that land used to be sea. In the same way it is idle for the plaintiff to urge that Chiswick Mall used to be dry land. The question in every case must be a question of fact- Was this area at the material dates water or dry land? And neither geographical size nor extent of time is a relevant consideration. We find in this case that the scene of the mishap was water, and tidal water.

I refer my honourable colleagues ...

https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1807&context=faculty_scholarship
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Mick Harper
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Don't tell Ishmael about this, he's just spent months working out how much water is going over Teddington Weir.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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How much water is going over Teddington Weir?

The answer is : not enough.
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Mick Harper
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Lock-Down Value for Money Offers

It's new, it's from Tesco, it costs five of our English pounds:
2 x elevenses-sized garlic breads
3 x tea-time dips
1 x pepperoni, stuffed-crust pizza, too large to get in your oven and hence good for two evening meals.
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