Category: General
A Proper Scrabble in today’s Irish Times editorial
An editorial in today’s Irish Times [with added links]:
…Proper Scrabble
QUIXOTRY: According to Webster’s, “Quixotism, or visionary schemes”. And 365 Scrabble points for Michael Cresta on a record-breaking night in October 2006, including a “triple-triple”, covering two triple-word scores with one word – worth nine times the value of the word – a double letter score on the X, plus the 50-point bonus for using all seven letters.
Not to put a tooth in it, however, what we were concerned with this week was definitely not a “visionary scheme”. More like crass commercialism, a pandering to youthful ignorance, and the debasement of a great game played in 121 countries and 29 languages. For Scrabble’s manufacturer Mattel, horror of horrors, had apparently announced it intends to make the first major rule changes in 62 years, allowing inter alia the use of proper nouns including geographic names, celebrities and even products and companies “to enable younger players and families to get involved”.
The reports unleashed a torrent of righteous indignation around the world from traditionalist Scrabblers and the press. The Thunderer thundered. An Australian [Canadian?] writer compared the changes to poet Robert Frost’s view of free verse as akin to playing tennis with the net down.
How to fence a Trinity poli sci PhD?
From The Mitchell and Webb Situation (2001; British Comedy Guide | imdb | Wikipedia), Hons, Dons and two smoking MA Oxons:
Hat tip: Elaine Byrne.…
I’m sorry, HAL, I’m afraid iPad can’t do that
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Image: One astronaut to another, as they look at a monolith on a bleak lunar landscape.
Caption: Well, I’ll be darned, it does have the Apple logo on it!
Bonus link: Oxford Dictionary’s; Waitor required, fluent in English; and Ladie’s powder room; blooper photos via Turner Ink.…
Undergraduate Awards, 2010
Last week, Peter Sutherland gave a speech about the Irish university sector. It generated quite a lot of controversy at the time, and an edited version appears in yesterday’s Sunday Times. Unfortunately, the speech has rather overshadowed the occasion; this is a pity, since it was the launch of the Undergraduate Awards of Ireland and Northern Ireland 2010. This is the second year of the initiative; the IUA website has information about the last year’s winners as well as about this year’s competition. Submissions from undergraduates in the form of essays or projects can be entered into one of 26 categories. The first round is especially for final and penultimate year students together with part-time students who have secured at least 1/3 of credits necessary to graduate, and their deadline is 12 March 2010, so it’s approaching rather quickly. According to the criteria on the website, “your submission should represent the highest standard of intellectual and scholarly achievement in your chosen field … [and it] should embody a piece of independent and original work together with a clear identification of its aims and objectives”. So, no pressure then.…
Birthday Times
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The above image is the front page of the first ever Times newspaper, first published as the Universal Daily Register on 1 January 1785. From today’s Times Online:
…The Times celebrates its 225th birthday
How a former bankrupt with a big idea started a feeble rumbling that became The Thunderer
On this day 225 years ago the very first issue of a newspaper that would soon be renamed The Times appeared on the streets of London. … its beginnings were, to put it mildly, inauspicious … Yet the paper did survive, and prosper, thanks in part to the energy and vision of its creator, John Walter, a former coal merchant, entrepreneur and Lloyd’s underwriter who had declared himself bankrupt after he was ruined by a combination of the American War of Independence and a Jamaican hurricane. …
In 1789 he was put on trial for libelling the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Cumberland. He refused to reveal his sources, and was sentenced to a year in Newgate Prison, fined £50 and ordered to stand in the pillory at Charing Cross for an hour. This last part of the sentence was lifted, although editors of The Times have occasionally been pilloried since.
New year’s resolution
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Image: Two clinking glasses of champagne.
Caption: A new year’s resolution … is something that goes in one year and out the other.
Happy new year!…
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