Predatrix

Getting geeky about Chaucer, from a comment on chris-the-cynic's "Stealing Commas" blog

2017-09-17T19:45:08Z

She was talking about a small audio clip from the General Prologue
(gets geek on)
This is very close to the Neville Coghill reading I heard once on audio cassette and never forgot when I was reading the General Prologue for 'A' level (Brit pre-university exams). I remembered it well enough to be able to read aloud at my college interview and hear in my head when later studying other chunks of the Canterbury Tales at college.

Pre-Great Vowel Shift, so the vowels sound like the vowels in the other European languages--"ah", "ay", "ee", "o", "oo" (or u-umlaut/French u) rather than "ay", "ee", "I" "owe" "you". "Gh" is sounded out like the final consonant in Scots Loch. All final 'e's are sounded. Some of the pronunciations are influenced by French, as one might expect from court or merchant class Southern English after the Norman Conquest, but the poet admits in the case of the Prioress that she speaks French "after the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe/For Frensshe of Paris was to hir unknowe". Incidentally, AFAIK, nobody knows why The Great Vowel Shift happened. It just turned up one day, like an early version of Brexit, and cut us off from the continent (in linguistic terms)

It's worth noting that a lot of pronunciation differences between standard educated Southern English and the more 'common' or 'lower-class' Northern English are still in place in modern English but turn up fairly clearly in Chaucer, I think the short 'a' as in 'bath' (longer a in the Southern dialect) is in there somewhere.

The 'Gawain' poet (author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) uses a dialect called West Midlands that is far more influenced by German/Norse/Old English models so it's much harder for a modern reader. It begins "Sithen the sege and the assaut was sesed at Troye/The borgh brittened and brent to brondes and askes/The tulk that the trammes of tresoun there wroght/Watz tried for his tricherie, the trewest on erthe". Alliterative hammer-blows, like Norse or Old English. Although there are some French-influenced words which are easier for a modern reader to follow, things like "tulk", "trammes", "brondes and askes" (burning brands and ashes) and "trewest" for "most dreadful" are harder to follow.

You do have to piece through Chaucer a bit, but once you've got the 'tune' in your ears it's not too hard to follow (even if you may need notes).

And one detail in the General Prologue has been bizarrely validated by modern science: small birds actually do sleep (in flocks) with one eye open in that the birds on the outside keep watch with one eye although their brains are mostly asleep--ready for escape is necessary.
(/geek)

Snippet from current story I'm writing, because it amuses me

2016-04-13T20:31:18Z

It's my own version of a scene in canon, but I loved writing this, particularly the last paragraph.
---------
There was such a press of people, such an explosive roar of noise, so much brightness from all the lights... he forgot his pride, and his determination to at least meet Childermass half-way in making the effort, and tried to head right back out, except the path had closed behind him like a lost fairy road.

His second-best option was to find the least-intolerable room in the house, and after a while he stuck his head round a door and found a room empty of people but full of books. He was so upset he didn't trouble to find either a comfortable chair or an enjoyable book, but dug his heels in right by the ill-lit shelf and started to read a legal treatise. His legs were trembling very slightly. He was going to get the head-ach.

Some gentlemen came in, and were withering in their contempt for a man who would read a book at a party. He tried to ignore them.

Then the prettier one (in a very fussy style that was not to his taste at all) began to boast about knowing a magician, who was one of his closest friends. Suddenly Mr Norrell was very interested indeed! Who was this person? Might he be a danger?

He did not really know how to react when the magician turned out to be himself. It would be terribly embarrassing for the man, but Mr Norrell could not stand by and let this falsehood go uncorrected. So as modestly as he could, he stated, "I regret to disagree with you, gentlemen, but I believe that I myself am the object of the conversation, that is, Mr Norrell, a learned gentleman of York."

He almost admired the effrontery of the man. Turning his conversation upon a sixpence, this "Drawlight" (as he proved to be) set himself up to be Mr Norrell's dearest friend he had not yet met, a very John-the-Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness to make way for "Mr Norrr-ELL!"

Mr Norrell frowned. Quite aside from dubious religious imagery, he did not care to have dear friends thrust upon him out of nowhere like this, and he was quite sure that when he put his name on that morning, it, like his linen-stock, did not have quite so many frills.
-----------

The Bore's Head Carol

2015-10-12T21:58:01Z

This is an oddity I made on Tumblr. Someone wanted to see a "Raven King visits 21st-century Britain", and (being of a none-too-serious cast of mind) my immediate reaction was "I want to see the Raven King pwn David Cameron". Since no-one-else wrote it, I did.

It's Strange/Norrell slash, but not at all explicit. For me (evil laugh).

Please note there's a cut-tag here because at least one person missed that when I wrote it, which may have contributed to nobody noticing it!

Update: since I added the previous para the cut-tag stopped working.

The Raven King had come back. The two of them had known it from their place in Darkness, but it was only later they realised that the Raven King always came back--never stopped coming back--came back at all times and in all places, and particularly where he had been condemned and forgotten--or loved and worshipped--it did not seem to matter which.

Once the pair of them together had fine-tuned a spell that could wander time and space, and offer not merely visions but speech through their scrying-bowl, they found the oddest things.

One of their discoveries was in a possible future when, as it appeared, England had turned her face from magic in favour of steam, and steel, and science, and forms of knowledge they barely understood. After Mr Norrell had been headed off from a lengthy disquisition on precisely why this was a Very Bad Idea, and Mr Strange had explained how it was aesthetically and in all ways a disaster, they called for the King who ruled in this time. The surface fuzzed. The Queen who ruled England? A plain, housewife-looking elderly lady in an inelegant frock.

Mr Strange said, "Oh, come on!"

Mr Norrell felt a momentary (extremely momentary) sympathy for the monstrous Fairy that had had such a decisive effect on his life. From what Mr Strange had said, its judgement was largely aesthetic, and it had been horrified at the plainness of the King.

Then the surface fuzzed again.

"Wrong question?" suggested Mr Strange. "All right, who rules England--Britain I suppose--in the House?"

This time the image was stable. A man in most peculiar long pantaloons stood before a crowd of similarly-dressed--they hesitated to call them gentlemen. There were loud roars of approval, and the reverse.

"At least the House is much the same, though I cannot find this a reason for congratulation," said Mr Norrell sadly.

The man was entirely undistinguished in facial features, although they did find the extreme shininess of his face moderately remarkable.

The really remarkable thing was the sudden appearance of a man with long dark hair and a style of clothing which would have seemed antiquated even in their own time. He said something. The accent, which appeared somewhat Northern and slightly French, was hard to construe, but the gesture and its result were unambiguous.

The shiny man was now upside-down, and would have been entirely naked if it were not for a costume of raven feathers. If the feather costume had been in proper trim, as it would be on a raven, with the gleaming feathers interwoven and flattened into appropriate directions, it might have seemed almost impressive. The feathers were tattered, dulled, and sticking out at odd angles.

A roar of laughter with scattered applause went up.

He did not seem to observe that he was in danger, and merely said indignantly, "Do you know who I am? What is this costume--a CGI effect or something? I demand that you remove it immediately and remove me from this ridiculous position!"

"As you choose," said John Uskglass, and gestured again.

Now the shiny man was naked, on his back, on what looked like an enormous silver platter. The only thing he wore seemed to be a rather odd headdress representing the head of a pig with an apple in its mouth.

A crowd of drunken men were surrounding the shiny man and calling him "Dave". They raised their voices in song, "Caput apri defero/Reddens laude domino".

Mr Norrell shuddered at the pronunciation of Latin in this benighted time, and Mr Strange shuddered at the off-key rendition of the carol.

The image faded.

Mr Norrell put his arms round Mr Strange. "Please take my mind off those things, Jonathan."

Mr Strange seemed to regard this as a considerable implied compliment to his amorous abilities, "In the daytime as well, Gilbert!"

Mr Norrell sniffed, and said it was by no means daytime, merely differently night.

"I didn't say I objected," said Mr Strange. "I should rather like to see the refreshing image of a naked person who is neither shiny nor adorned with a dead pig."

They retired, and shortly afterward the horrors they had seen were considerably eased from their minds.

Dear me, that sank without trace...

2015-08-30T20:16:31Z

(Seeing as I've pretty-much jumped fandoms by now)... Anyone want to make me a Norrell-based icon to put on my LJ/Tumblr/whatever?

Request for gift-fic for birthday

2015-08-24T01:03:44Z

I have been away from home (and away from cat) for the weekend, and I feel I have been writing nearly all the slash on the JSMN kinkmeme for my favourite character (the poor sulky little dumpling!) and my vile cough kept me awake all night, the only plus side being I made great progress on the bonding fic (venerable trope, I know) I'm writing for the JSMN kinkmeme ('magical compatibility' prompt). So I cracked and requested a birthday-fid on the kinkmeme to cheer me up, and that got stamped on. Oops. Wrong place for it.

So I'm posting it to Tumblr & LJ

If anyone wants the parameters for a possible gift-fid I would love to receive for my birthday on 1 September (or belatedly just as happily), these are the sorts of things I write and would love other people to write occasionally. Will read most JSMN slash that's Norrell-centric--he's my favourite character. I love flawed awkward imperfect possibly-slightly-autistic characters who aren't noble or likeable enough to deserve love (but get somewhat loved anyway). Erotically, it's mainly the thing about getting somebody who starts out prim-and-proper utterly soiled, ruined, dishevelled, etc. Maidenly Modesty driven Suddenly Sluttish, perhaps. That's the way I write, and anything within shouting-distance of that would work for me. I have no angst!muse, which explains why all my fics turn out to be sex-comedies. Can read angsty stuff happily as long as non-tragic ending. Pairing: most keen on Childermass or Strange but would accept others. If people want to see the stuff I've written it's on AO3.

Basically, I feel that in this fandom, where I fell fast & hard and wrote tons of fics for others, I 'deserve' a gift-fid much more than in the fandoms where I wrote more sporadically!

New story up on AO3 now

2015-08-01T19:28:49Z

...if anyone wants to read it.

Whee!

2015-07-26T21:34:26Z

Jules likes my story (and thinks it's sweet and funny).

Having had it seen by two readers who think it doesn't suck, can I put it on AO3 yet? (It's had a lot of editing-while-writing compared to some of my other stories, so it might actually be OK).

Writing again, but, oops, not old stories!

2015-07-25T20:53:54Z

That is, people are trying to get me to post my old stories and/or get back into my older fandoms, but I seem to have fallen head-first into a new fandom's rabbit-hole.

I loved the book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell when it came out, loved the TV series more recently, and have been writing for several weeks (a couple of short fics on the kink-meme and AO3, plus one long story which I'll post if somebody betas it or it's halfway adequate (it's had a lot of re-writing for one of my stories)). neyronrose was kind enough to say it's good despite her having almost no kinks in common with the ones I was using. Like many sensible slash-fen, she wants to write about the characters who are nice/pretty/kind/deserving. I seem to have a thing for characters who are flawed/plain/undeserving, make a show of all their worst characteristics while barely permitting their better natures to peep shyly from the undergrowth (and someone puts up with them anyway). I like characters with a slightly academic turn of mind, possibly somewhere on the autism spectrum. I also have a massive kink-button for characters who are ostensibly prim ending up dishevelled, sluttish and insatiable.

So I'll be in my bunk. With a bunch of Childermass/Norrell stories, some of which I had to write myself.

Anyone wanting to beta my longer story (and not put off by my sort of writing), give me a shout. Jules can but she's busy writing a killer-long piece of profic herself (or she can tell me if it's good enough for AO3 already? I mean, no magic disintegrating clothes etc caused by my lack of visualisation, no plotholes, etc). Incidentally, I hate criticism, but after a while I usually manage to integrate it and use it to make my work less stupid than it would otherwise be.

I await with interest anybody telling me they want to read/beta any of this stuff...

Oops

2015-03-28T20:38:51Z

I looked at my LJ inbox after some time, and was about to reply to someone who can't find one of my stories (it's on AO3). Unfortunately their account had been deleted. I should have replied earlier.

On the other hand, the person asking about my story _Sans Merci_ has been told that... I'm trying to get a clean edited copy for AO3, so this will come to pass, although not quickly.

Anyone else want a story put on AO3?

R. I. P. Terry P

2015-03-12T20:34:08Z

I'm even sadder about this than Leonard Nimoy. His books were there for so much of my life, and so consistently good and varied. He should have had longer. We should have had more of him, as a writer and a person. I'm glad the works and the characters he created will stay with us.

(It's difficult to write a short fan's eulogy while I'm surrounded by feline stench. I definitely have (in _The Unadulturated Cat_ terms) a Real Cat, complete with smells)

(Irritable muttering)

2014-12-16T00:38:33Z

This entry started out as a comment on a Cracked article on 6 Simple Things Too Many People Don't Know How To Do. The things are: Swimming, Parallel Parking, Googling Efficiently, Riding A Bike, Driving a Manual Transmission and Exiting a Conversation Gracefully. It's being posted here because I've seen the trolls in the Cracked comment threads and would rather hang around here.

Gosh. I can only manage 5/6 of being an adequate modern human.

Swimming is difficult, I never managed it.

I did manage to learn to ride a bike, complete with difficulties going in a straight line, difficulties balancing, and difficulties being in the road. I went on with it until told not to. Then I learned to ride a trike, which meant my balance was a lot better--until I broke a bone falling off it, because I couldn't compensate for momentary losses of balance.

Driving takes away the balance problems and adds an entirely new set of problems. I gave up on it in my teens because I'd given it a couple of years without getting any better, so there was no sense in throwing more money at it (perfectly sensible). I could drive in a straight line for up to fifteen minutes while concentrating on that. My peripheral vision and driving in a straight line while doing anything else, were rubbish. I'd managed to get about on foot by walking, only slowly, and staying on the pavement. Driving doesn't let a person choose their pace, and requires exact position.

"Exiting a conversation gracefully?" Fuck you, madam. Aspie types like me are usually working at the A-level end of the social curriculum: Basic Eye-Contact, Reciprocal Conversation and Social Code Decryption. The more empathic women here can (and are expected to) facilitate for other people, which is degree- or PHD level. With the best will in the world I can't get there from here. I'd rather work nearer my own level than trying to aim spectacularly high.

I spend ages thinking of myself as only minimally disabled, and then I get reminded by something like this that there are these life skills I don't have.

The only one I've got is efficient Googling. I am geeky, and have been known to complain about the Google UI for string literals: if using text completion, it swallows the initial " you just typed in showing you were actually looking for a string literal and does an AND search instead. Which is less useful.

In order not to get drowned or eaten by a bear (can't remember how that comes into the article) have decided to live on Google.

At least I have a warm cat on my lap.

Speech Recognition

2014-09-21T19:48:51Z

(is geek)
I have been having fun with speech recognition on iOS. The thing that's changed since I last mucked about with speech recognition is that it appears to have acquired some fairly clever algorithms for working out what words make sense to put together. It's possible to see this real-time by watching the first guesses get replaced when you hit "Done". Businessy sentences work best because they're easiest to guess, so those of us writing fiction or anything like that are going to find more glitches, but it still works surprisingly well. (In the last sentence "find more" originally came out as "phone no", but I could see that replaced with a better guess without having to fiddle with it myself).

The most annoying detail I found so far is that on my Very Expensive Rectangle I can't seem to get "quote" and "unquote" to work properly despite some effort (I know, I know, #firstworldproblem).

My Portable Brain manages this perfectly, I think it's to do with the microphone placement, or having two microphones on an iPhone, but the little microphone button on the keyboard of the iPhone is harder to hit.

Incidentally, the Apple-specific terminology comes out suspiciously perfectly, mixed case and all.
(/is geek. Of course if I were a real geek, I would've played around with speech recognition on iOS 7 when it came in. Oops.)
(Sits back and waits for somebody, probably Jones, to comment).

This & that

2014-09-17T00:02:39Z

Listen is my favourite NuWho ep this series. Managed to surprise me, scare me, and (with Clara's disastrous dates) give a nod back to earlier Moffat comedy like Coupling. I like Capaldi's unnerving version of the character.

In other news, have been finding my favourite Yank-in-a-Brit-fandom howler this week. John and Sherlock (now living elsewhere) drop in on Mrs Hudson with her favourite sweet treat, a sherry trifle... and promptly cut each of them a slice to hand it round! Crikey. And it was doing so well up till then.

Am trying to think up amusing blog entries for a leather fetish shop's website, with some other people. Have nasty feeling the only role left for me to take up is female-submissive, which isn't really where my ideas go habitually. Still, am going to have a friend visit me next week so conversation may help jump-start my ideas (or be better at that than miaowing).

I Can Haz Shiny Too (cf Julesjones)

2014-07-28T23:32:21Z

I have an iPhone. It is the amusingly-coloured version, and unlike the iPhone 4 I already had, the Home button works.

My mother and sister are going over to using iThings. My sister has been using iPads at her school, and wants (I think) one she can put apps on. My mother wants to shift over to modern social media after only using her computer for spreadsheets, because Dad is old enough (80!) that she can imagine being alone in the house miles from her daughters unable to drive, and she'd rather have some practice with the new tech so that it becomes second nature before she gets too isolated. She had a Kindle already, but the Amazon ecosystem is so heavily skewed towards buying more Amazon stuff that there's a strong possibility she'd try to make it work and fail. Android is a bit hackish. iOS is probably the least user-hostile for people trying to get into stuff. Am expecting her to make it onto FaceTime (iOS/OS X VOIP widget) any day now.

Meanwhile, Dad is trying to get his e-mail onto her (now his) Kindle. It's about as user-friendly as I thought it wasn't. He sounded fraught on the phone.

Good & bad things I've seen lately...

2014-04-18T00:43:57Z

The Good:

Am giggling at a TV play called Psycho Bitches, which is a (usually) smutty send-up of various historical figures being psychoanalysed (by a therapist played very straight by Rebecca Front). I like their version of Mary Whitehouse, who they write as so innocent of homoerotic subtext that she likes the 'healthy outdoorsy' art of Tom of Finland (giggle).

And Edith Piaf deciding she does regrette quelques choses (more giggling).

There is a version of Frida Kahlo which will only serve to confuse most people, because it appears to be a one-joke setup about facial hair.

It's a bit of a blunt instrument, more based on people's mythology or mental images about historical figures than knowledge about them, but it is actually funny.

There is a lovely soft fluffy cat next to me. He has done his best to destroy my computer case with his claws, then settled down on it and gone to sleep (it's been the Cat Bed for the last few months). Unaccountably my Dad doesn't think it's a sensible use of money to get another computer case so I can leave that one for feline use.

The Less Good:

Have been reading a blog-book created by police officers writing in. Before reading it, I had a generally positive view of the police, as public service officers struggling with difficult tasks like dealing with mentally-ill people, scraping drunk people off the pavement, and being the last port of call whenever anything involves weapons. After reading the splenetic outpourings of many serving officers, I am uncomfortable at how many of them seem to think the educated middle-classes are 'the enemy', and how many of them think that their real job is duffing up crims, as an enjoyable paid alternative to rugby. I feel uncomfortable at having been taken to mental hospital when I was unwell -- I wouldn't really have noticed it, but was this something they felt as being beneath them?

And there was a real doozy of a rape-culture bit in it. One officer expressed in no uncertain terms how annoyed he was that there was a reported rape attempt from a woman who'd gone home happily with a man, making sure to collect a condom from her friend first, made a fuss about nothing which he had to write up, and then completely forgot about it. The idea that sexual willingness is a contract that can be negotiated while both partners are vertical, dressed and in a public place, somehow proved by having a condom, and then cannot be un-consented from or re-negotiated, is disturbing. I suppose the officer may have meant that because all the evidence he saw/heard about in public previously (from the woman and her friend) was consensual, and the woman then didn't make a fuss later, everything was fine because if she had been raped she'd have made a fuss the next day, but the Unfortunate Implication that the woman doesn't seem to be within her rights to change her mind once consent has been given seems to shine through the murky depths. There must be lots of occasions where people have gone out more-or-less looking for sexual contact and then decided not to. Some of them were even men. They don't need a better reason than 'no', 'not feeling it now', 'gone off it', or 'maybe another time' (if they do want to try later), because they Don't Have To Justify It. It no doubt sucks to be the other person, but all you're 'owed' is to wait until you're alone at home (muttering imprecations if the other person was inconveniently late in deciding) and masturbate or wait for your bits to cool down, according to taste.

(feels irritable and goes to look at kitten pictures)

Well, that was a vent, mostly, except for the TV and cat bits. But it's time I posted something, and those were the things I was thinking about today.

Cuddly Orac

2014-01-09T21:47:51Z

In a conversation with lichfieldgent about the 'Big Lie' (see previous entry) he tried to work out what would count as Big Lies. He came up with "Orac goes friendly and cuddly", and I had to point out that Orac canonically falls in love with Avon under the influence of Evil Alien Sand... Obviously Blake's 7 is Too Weird to Warp.

Am now trying to write a drabble.

One Big Lie

2014-01-06T23:44:19Z

Following reading a humour fic I really didn't like in the Sherlock kinkmeme. Was deciding why it really didn't work for me. Sherlock was oblivious to the point of idiocy. John was a selfish git. Everyone talked American (I hate this in fics for British shows). And there was a weird meat obsession throughout for no readily-observable reason. Basically the writer had just thrown everything violently into reverse. Why did this bother me?

After a little cogitation, I decided it's mainly to do with the fanfic equivalent of a bit of writing theory. Googling didn't find me a source for this, but there's a well-known saying that speculative fiction can stand One Big Lie without breaking the reader's Disbelief Suspenders. So you put in manticores, or monsters, or parasitic tapeworms (have just been reading the premise of a *really* creepy horror novel). You think out the consequences of what-if the One Big Lie were true, and make it all self-consistent -- any subsidiary lies must also fit without haring off in separate directions. Then you make everything else (character, plot etc) realistic.

I think the fanfic equivalent is that the One Big Lie is your creative premise, the thing that makes you want to write fanfic instead of a novelisation. The alternate setting, or omegaverse, or crossover, or non-canonical-pairing/sexuality, or different interpretation of something, or branching-off. All the *other* stuff has to stay recognisable, not just in terms of 'realism' but in terms of 'canonical realism'.

Still aten't dead, and have been watching Sherlock trailer

2013-12-09T13:37:47Z

Have been watching the Sherlock trailer (I usually don't bother to watch trailers). The best bit was "the one person Moriarty didn't think mattered to [him] at all". Ever since TRF I'd been wondering, there ought to be another person on that list, and of course, it goes straight back to ACD canon as well (am being mildly cryptic in case there's anyone out there objecting to being spoiled).

Splutter! (escaping simile of the day alert!)

2013-11-06T18:31:39Z

Found on AO3 in a LOTR fic:
"Frodo wept, his cheeks flushed unattractively, the light once in his eyes now draining through his tears like a watering can with holes in the bottom."

Fleeting fannish thought inspired by an exchange of comments on my AO3 account...

2013-08-15T20:06:19Z

Why is fandom (the writers I enjoy anyway) disappearing down a huge sink marked 'Avengers' at the moment? Everything's comics/graphic novels/superhero flicks. OTOH I have a mild kink for xenobiology, genderfluidity and Norse myth, so I enjoy odd bits of Thorki I've read. Although I tend to like Loki and think Thor is A Bit Thick Really.

No serious answer required--just that the fandoms I love to read and sometimes write (Doctor Who (Doctor/Master), Harry Potter (Snape/anybody), Sherlock) are beginning to haemorrhage authors in the direction of the Marvelverse at the moment, and I'm just Not Too Bothered. To be fair I've never read/watched original canon, maybe it's just that inspiring?

Things I've read lately

2013-07-25T21:17:20Z

1. As regards the cat vs dog bit, it's neatly encapsulated by a Lolcats entry today:

Human with hand on door -- "Back in two weeks"
Cat (languidly waving paw) -- "Fine, fine, just leave the can opener on the floor"

Human with hand on door -- "Back in five minutes"
Sad-looking Dog -- "But how will I poop?"-

:-))

2. A recently-read fanfic which I can best describe as "once read cannot be un-read" is a very pornographic Johnlock story, which wouldn't be bad on its own except that the characters don't sound at all like themselves. Read my take on it at weepingcock.livejournal.com (a.k.a. The Internet Is For (Bad) Porn).

Specimen sentence:
“I’m shooting in your arse!” I heard through the fog of my draining orgasm
and now think to yourself that's meant to be John Watson listening to Sherlock Holmes. You're welcome.

Annoying Experiment mentioned on Horizon doco about cats...

2013-07-19T23:34:51Z

...apparently some dim scientist decided the way to tell whether Cats Really Love Us is to do the following experiment.
i) repeat the experiment where they distract a small child with a stranger with toys, and see what happens when the mum leaves the room. The child rushes to the mother when she returns.
ii) repeat the experiment with a dog in place of the small child.
iii) repeat the experiment with a cat.
To no-one's surprise, the cat remained unruffled.

This is not a study of affection/attachment. It's a study of need. The small child or dog needs its mother or owner to meet every need it has, whether food and drink, entertainment or shelter. It orients itself around the parent/owner in a new situation.

The following quote from a light crime novel whose heroine is a pet-sitter expresses it very well:
...dogs are needier than other pets. Leave a dog alone for very long and it'll start going a little nuts. Cats, on the other hand, try to give you the impression they didn't even know you were gone. "Oh, were you out?", they'll say, "I didn't notice." Then they'll raise their tails to show you their little puckered anuses and walk away.
--- Blaize Clement, Curiosity Killed the Cat-Sitter

Meanwhile, I suspect quite a few cats would have panic attacks in the same test because they do orient themselves around their owners that way, but the majority of cats wouldn't. There's a large variation in feline attitudes to humans from: 'I dislike humans' (mostly ferals), to 'I like and trust and maybe need my family but avoid other humans' to 'I can take them or leave them' to 'Humans are clearly put on this earth to serve our needs, so if I miaow they will let me in or feed me'.

But the scientist was needlessly blinding himself to the subtleties of feline social behaviour by trying to make it align with a human or canine model. Lots of cats clearly do have complex arrangements of social behaviour (the Horizon doco itself, before mentioning that scientist, did a good job of showing how cats manage to co-exist). Probably the majority of cats that grew up as pet cats show us affection, but on their terms. A purr and a slow blink is probably less noticeable than a lot of dog behaviour, but it's clearly affectionate.

It's even a limited 'attachment' test for people, because it started with small children. That particular test might work for small children, and the 'overgrown puppy' or 'overgrown kitten' sort of dog/cat, but that's it. Imagine the child grown up to be a teenager. Toss them a new videogame and they'll barely notice if their mum leaves the room, and then barely notice when the mum comes back. But I think it'd be hard to argue that the teenager has no attachment to their mother simply because of that. They still need their mother, just in different ways.

W00t! I Haz A Shiny!

2013-06-05T16:37:18Z

Switched operating systems again. Not actually from Mac as much as sideways.

The thing that had been attracting me about the MacBook Air was that it was fast (particularly a solid-state drive speeds things up).

Ended up getting a Chromebook because Chrome OS is so stripped-down it's pretty-much instant-on. It's not so much a computer, more a web browser, but in fact it's what netbooks should have been if they didn't have underspecced speed, screens and keyboards. And it's a quarter of the price of a MacBook Air (although I wish it didn't look quite so much like one). Apparently Google do a fair degree of upkeep so it gets updates done in a few seconds. Beat that with a Real Operating System!

At the moment am sitting at my real computer trying to pour all my documents onto GDrive in preparation for living in the cloud.

My computer is still my old Macbook, which is a reasonable workhorse. I will use it until it breaks. Then I'll get as cheap and simple a Windows or Linux box as I can get away with, and that can be my computational workhorse behind the scenes. 95% of my computing life is in the web browser or creating documents, which I will use the Chromebook to do. Meanwhile slow processes aren't going to bother me half as much if I'm not watching them, and when I'm no longer in Apple's walled garden (I still love Macs but I don't feel I can justify buying them with the not-much-money I have) I will mind a lot less about using Windows or Linux as long as I don't have to look it in the Big Stupid Face day-to-day.

So I've moved sideways. Mac is probably still better-built and Teh Pretty, but I'm pleased to have a Really Thin Thin Client.

Further micro-rant: No, We Don't Got Diners Here

2013-05-10T00:21:20Z

(rant moved from comment I would have left in the Pit of Voles on a nearly above-average story, because I can't be arsed to register with ff.net. Ever)

Author's note on Potterfic: ' don't know if there have ever been any diners in England? I know that setting should probably have been a pub but I couldn't help being widely inaccurate and leaving it as a diner.'

Couldn't help? Couldn't help?!? (backs away from fic)

Nope, absolutely not. Threw me out of what had been recommended as quite a good story instantly. Brits have 'cafes', 'tea-shops/coffee-shops', 'greasy spoons/caffs' (lower-class equivalent, maybe quite close to the idea of a shabby greasy diner), restaurants (evening meals or Actual Lunches, not snacks), or pubs. Pubs do serve coffee nowadays, but when they serve food people go up to the bar to order unless it's a Particularly Posh Pub.

My mental image of a diner is that Edward Hopper picture of one, light streaming out into the night and a huge polished bar where the customers sit, lost in their own thoughts. (looks it up: Called 'Nighthawks. Apparently a big part of how effective it is comes from the fact that big fluorescent lights were really new when it was painted, so Hopper was showing something haunting and unusual, having to figure out how to get the effect right).

There is an example of that sort of thing in the Deathly Hallows movie where Harry, Hermione, and Ron are on the run. Formica-topped tables, not necessarily that clean, one lacklustre waitress keeping an eye on it. It's what Brits would call a 'greasy spoon' or particularly in this case a 'late-night caff'. Late-night caffs probably only exist in urban centres in Britain (probably the bigger ones like London, Birmingham and Manchester). They're the closest to what is probably meant by 'diner'. We're also more 'fragmented' because it's often particular *types* of hot-food shops that open late. The low end of fish and chip shops, kebab shops and pizza places are likely to be open late, but it's not the same. They might have two or three uncomfortable seats, but trade is usually take-away rather than eat-in.

It's my understanding from fiction that 'diners' offer waitress service and cheap but not necessarily horrible food until startlingly late at night. And that there's a great reliance on 'pie', particularly sweet pies. There's the cultural difference again: AFAIK diners do American food (coffee, dinner, pies), while British eating-at-night places specialise in food from particular cultures.

The Yanks have probably got things a bit better, from that description. They certainly don't need to envy us kebabs from a hot cupboard that have been hanging around...

Micro-rant: why does everybody use the word 'sentient' wrong?

2013-05-09T12:14:17Z

'Sentient' species? The word already has a meaning, and it means 'feeling'. Therefore, 'sentient' applies to us, but also cats, dogs, rabbits, otters, foxes, crows, hippos, tigers, monkeys, pigeons, and buzzards, among many others. All these things have a complex central nervous system and are capable of pain, pleasure and sensory experience.

'Sapient' species (as in 'homo sapiens') should be a word for the species which is capable of language, science, arts, war, printing, medicine, agriculture, humour and technology. Many animals have touches of those things, but only one animal (as far as it knows) has made its mark on the planet with what its brain can do. In the future, we might meet sapient aliens (I think it might be the making of us to have an equal sibling species, as long as we don't try to bomb it) or find that other intelligent species on the planet are catching us up (corvids, cetaceans, other primates).

There have been times when dodgy scientists were very invested in claiming that animals 'didn't really feel things', probably because it made it easier to do stuff to them.

I think we need 'sentient' to mean what it means because so many animals feel things, and we need to remember that.

Conversely, we need 'sapient' not to pat ourselves on the back but because we need a word to cover all those odd and important things other animals don't seem to do. In science fiction, we want to explore what might happen if we weren't the only ones. If other animals, aliens, AIs, had the ability to have conversations with us, what would that mean?

Two words, two meanings. Not so difficult at all.