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Comments

1. At 10:47 AM on 09 Jul 2007, wrote:

   Question Time maybe?

   Knew you'd posted this pic thanks to Twitter, and you adding me as a friend. I think that means it's a useful thing to have!

2. At 11:05 AM on 09 Jul 2007, admin annie wrote:

   looks more like Noel's House Party to me but happily can't be of course.

   Val P and other pedants - for reasons I won't bore you with I was looking at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland Writing Scotland website this moring. In the entry on Hugh MacDiarmid they managed to use 'compliment' instead of 'complement' and 'principle' instead of 'principal'. I was fairly shocked.

   In other news...I have heard several newsreaders/commentators say Kuznetsova correctly since I posted on the subject of how wrong they were getting it, but I feel this is probably coincidence and nothing to do with me.

3. At 11:06 AM on 09 Jul 2007, wrote:

   Newsnight!

   What on earth are they.

   I see you have been twittering about these heavily edited diaries. What a fabulous advertising vehicle the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has become for Alistair?

4. At 11:19 AM on 09 Jul 2007, wrote:

   Re:- admin annie, we all do however make mistakes from time to time.

   At 02:02 PM on 04 Jul 2007, admin annie wrote: why have you decided not to put him on air? if you did, we could decided whether he really *is* the most boring peson in the world. Because I know a fw people who would be in contention.

   ;-)

5. At 11:44 AM on 09 Jul 2007, Charlie wrote:

   ...equally perhaps, as these items resemble the assorted instruments a Proctologist might use (the picture shows marginally enlarged and "glitzed-up" versions, doubtless for television clarity) it could be that the 'Beeb" is re-introducing that wonderful series, "Your life in their hands..."

   The very idea brings a tear to the eye

   Just a thought Eddie but, well, I wouldn't go sticking my hand-up today. No, let me re-phrase that...

   I'd be VERY careful of anyone in an executive position (whatever that might look like) asking for volounteers today...

6. At 12:14 PM on 09 Jul 2007, admin annie wrote:

   jonnie, well yes I know we all make mistakes and I freely put up my hand to acknowledge mine, however they are generally typos which the errors on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ site are not, they are using the wrong word. Plus I sometimes check my entries, and I sometimes don't, but there again this isn't an official site and theirs is. Presumably this had therefore been proof read by at least one person other than the original author.

   Also you may not ever have come into contact with the 'But it said on the ´óÏó´«Ã½...' brigade. In my former life as a tax accountant I came across this constantly. Some people think that anything written/said on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has the force of Holy Writ. In the circumstances it behoves the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to get it right.

7. At 12:33 PM on 09 Jul 2007, Vyle Hernia wrote:

   AA (6):

   "Some people think that anything written/said on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has the force of Holy Writ."

   What force has Holy Writ these days? Not much, seemingly.

8. At 12:57 PM on 09 Jul 2007, admin annie wrote:

   Vyle - I suspect it depends on which writ you have read!!

9. At 01:00 PM on 09 Jul 2007, wrote:

   Re: Annie - Welll I don't think I really warranted such a nice reply.

   I thought searching for one of your comments (with a mistake) may be either impossible or at best unlikely but 'admin annie PM' in google came up trumps first time.

   I agree with you - and do find it strange that the posts aren't checked - esp when it involves the wrong spelling giving the word a different meaning.

   On the same topic but more understandable, we have News 24 on at the gym. Sound turned down with subtitles. I presume the subtitles must be computer generated. If you ever need some amusement try it sometime. However I'd wait for some Wimbledon names to crop up.

10. At 01:01 PM on 09 Jul 2007, wrote:

    AA & Vyle,

    Sadly, "" is the child of literacy, the destroyer of oral culture and progenitor of the present age and its domination by documents and those who create and process them, accountants and lawyers.
    

    Phaedrus. Your question needs no answer; but I wish that you would tell me what you say that you have heard.
    ..
    Socrates. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts.
    ..
    But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit.
    ..
    Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them.
    ..
    And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.
    ..
    The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
    

    Similarly, folk (including myself) get riled when others misspell their names, which they had long before they became written items.

    Spellcheckers compound the trouble, because one assumes that it's OK if the spellchecker OKs it, and doesn't ask if you meant complement or compliment, to, two, or too, etc.

    xx
    ed

    Malicious? Not really.

11. At 01:03 PM on 09 Jul 2007, wrote:

    Strange that twitter (above on the blog) still states you are tracking down someone who is reading the diaries - yet when you log in to Twitter it says :

    
    With Friends Previous 21/7 verdicts coming in

    and the one after that - 17 minutes ago?
    

12. At 01:25 PM on 09 Jul 2007, wrote:

    :

    Phaedrus. Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country.
    ..
    Socrates. There was a tradition in the temple of Dodona that oaks first gave prophetic utterances. The men of old, unlike in their simplicity to young philosophy, deemed that if they heard the truth even from "oak or rock," it was enough for them; whereas you seem to consider not whether a thing is or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country the tale comes.
    ..
    Phaedrus. I acknowledge the justice of your rebuke; and I think that the Theban is right in his view about letters.
    ..
    Socrates. He would be a very simple person, and quite a stranger to the oracles of Thamus or Ammon, who should leave in writing or receive in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better than knowledge and recollection of the same matters?

    ;-)
    ed

13. At 03:15 PM on 09 Jul 2007, Aperitif wrote:

    What are you all twittering on about???

14. At 03:31 PM on 09 Jul 2007, Vyle Hernia wrote:

    Ed, you're confusing me.

    You seem to be trying to write-off all writ, no matter what its claims. An enthusiastic atheist once suggested that the only benefit to have come from the Church was that it had preserved ancient texts. The texts of Homer are believed to have originated in "Oral tradition", and I doubt if they would have survived to date but for writing.

    Do bear in mind that Plato attributed many statements to Socrates that were probably not his, particularly in his "Republic".

    As for Ammon, you'll find him in Holy Writ at Genesis 19:38

    Of course, we wouldn't be able to communicate like this if we didn't have letters.

15. At 03:31 PM on 09 Jul 2007, Aperitif wrote:

    What are you all twittering on about???

    btw, Annie I haven't heard "behoves" for ages! what a great word! :-)

16. At 04:10 PM on 09 Jul 2007, Molly wrote:

    Aperitif (13)
    Thank goodness- thought it was me!

    Nice little truck- very smart.

    Mollyxx

17. At 05:34 PM on 09 Jul 2007, wrote:

    Vyle,

    "The texts of Homer are believed to have originated in "Oral tradition", and I doubt if they would have survived to date but for writing."

    Ironically, they wouldn't have 'survived' as definitive fixed versions, but would probably have survived as living tradition. We also only have Socrates because, while he was questioning the value of writing, Plato was madly scribbling away.

    "Sometimes I could get out a bit into the provinces, and less often I could sit in on village fires, and slip in a bit of earthier humour, what with ploughing the furrows and livestock and gathering wild fruit and such. Ah, those are some of my best memories! My big mistake was getting scribes to write it down; it became holy writ, literally, but only the 'approved ' version, with all that bullshit about noble rulers and priestcraft. I had to put in the disclaimer, we all did it, you know, 'the muses came to me and told me all this stuff. If you disagree, it ain't with me.' You lot now just say 'the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the editor, etc'.....Like I was saying, the problem seems to have begun with writing it down. It lost its fluidity; it was never the same again, because it was always the same, you know. " --

    
    I don't believe for a minute that I'm confusing YOU!
    xx
    ed
    

18. At 05:48 PM on 09 Jul 2007, admin annie wrote:

    Appy I know - behoves, awfully old fashioned. But I couldn't think of an alternative, it's probably somethinn to do with my age.

19. At 06:16 PM on 09 Jul 2007, Frances O wrote:

    Gosh, EdI, you must have got that Hesiod from the oral tradition, or else it's a very modern translation

    ;o)

    
    Bah! Why have my 'remember me'-d details been forgotten?

20. At 07:03 PM on 09 Jul 2007, wrote:

    Frances (19),

    "personal communication", actually. I also do have a very good modern translation, which I recommend to all and sundry. knows it's oral poetry, and his translations are 'scripts' for oral performance. His Iliad is so good I read it at one go. Imagine that for any other translation you might have seen.

    Stanley is head of Classics at U Kansas, and also a Zen Master who has translated Lao Tzu. (name link)

    He told me his meeting Wendell Berry "strongly influenced my Hesiod". No wonder I liked it.

    xx
    ed
    

21. At 12:35 AM on 10 Jul 2007, Aperitif wrote:

    Annie (18), I wasn't joking -- I like it! I think it ought to be used more often!!