August 14, 2008
Why listen to this man?
In an interview on Shine TV (an evangelical Christian station) with John Key, conducted by Bob McCoskrie, John Key had the following to say about legalising prostitution:
There was a part of me that said, well look, mainly women but woman and men find themselves in that position and it’s a terrible position and how can we help them. But then on the other side of the coin I thought, what sort of message does it send when parents have to go and tell their children, well technically it's legal and it sends completely the wrong message in our society in my view.
I don’t know, maybe it would send the message that you care about helping people who need help? And society frowns on or would rather not have lots of things that aren’t illegal. Should we think of the children and make being poor illegal? How about divorce? How about telemarketing?
And really, if you’re going to spout off on morality, legality and prostitution from a position of privilege, the least you can do is ask, “what would Jesus Christ do?”, and then shut the fuck up because you’re a sanctimonious hypocrite.
John Key, you fail at living according to Christian principles, at being a decent human being, and you fail at thinking clearly.
May 14, 2008
I am a convert
Since I first learned anything about web statistics (that is, statistics relating to website usage), I have treated them as tainted goods, and — perhaps as a consequence — been forced to generate and interpret them as part of work since 2001. This has only increased my loathing, not so much of web stats, as of those who have any unalloyed appreciation of them.
However, I have finally seen them in their true glory. logstalgia presents Apache log files as a game of Pong — which can be run against live server logs. This is sheer genius (a request that returns a 404 passes through, rather than bouncing off the bat); the only thing that it lacks is sound.
January 19, 2008
The next after
I now have a copy of Oupnek’hat, the work I mentioned in a previous entry. It is far more wonderfully strange than I had anticipated, with its mixture of Persian, Latin and Greek, with of course Sanskrit filtered through Persian.
Here are a couple of samples from the introduction (the only part I have yet transcribed), to give a taste of it.
Latinus sermo, quemadmodum persicus, arabicus, herbraicus, phrasium inversionem admittit, quandoque cum solâ verborum differentiâ. Sic doctus Maraccius Alcorani textum orbi litterario explanavit, versione latinâ rudi sed arabicum sermonem pressiùs referente: sic versiones biblicæ interlineares, et ipsa interdum Vulgata, textum hebraicum fideliter expressum exhibent.
De multis, inquit Strabo (1.o sæculo), scriptoribus Alexandri ævi suffultus,cum Græcis (Brachmanas) sentire, ut quòd mundus sit ortus (genitus φθαρτὸς), et sphæricus; et quòd administrator et conditor (factor) Deus, universum eum pervadat (διαπεφοίτηκεν); universarum rerum primordia diversa esse, mundi (fabricationis mundi κοσμοποιΐας) autem aquam; et præter quatuor elementa, quintam (Akasch) quamdam naturam (φύσιν) esse, ex quâ cælum astraque constent, terram in media sitam universi: de semine, de animâ, aliisque compluribus similia eos dicere; texere etiam fabulas quasdam, quemadmodùm Plato, de immortalitate (incorruptibilitate, ἀφθαρσίας) animæ, et de judiciis, quæ apud inferos fiunt, et alia hujusmodi non pauca. Ac de Brachmanibus quidem hactenùs.
I really must find out more about when the macron came into use, to replace the circumflex and grave for marking vowel length in Latin.
I also want to find out what the character 
is. I’ve only seen it so far in two contexts: 
and 
(both definite articles). It only occurs when these articles are used within running Latin text, as part of a single word. Omicron, upsilon, and omega are used in this context, so it might be an alpha or eta, or a combination, except that no option seems (in my limited understanding) to make grammatical sense in all the cases I've come across. Very odd!
July 27, 2007
id est...
Aurélia’s Oratorio is beautiful.
Oupnek’hat, id est, Secretum tegendum : opus ipsa in India rarissimum, continens antiquam et arcanam, seu theologicam et philosophicam, doctrinam, è quatuor sacris Indorum libris, Rak Beid, Djedjr Beid, Sam Beid, Athrban Beid, excerptam : ad verbum, e Persico idiomate, Samskreticis vocabulis intermixto, in Latinum conversum : dissertationibus et annotationibus, difficiliora explanantibus, illustratum / studio et opera Anquetil Duperron is a translation into Latin, with bits in Greek, of a Persian translation of the Sanskrit Upanishads, in two volumes, published in 1801 and 1802. I want to make my own, physical edition of this (in a single copy). (Actually, I would like to include the Sanskrit and the Persian.)
Shortly after conceiving that notion, it became apparent that it is not easy to find copies of this work. After that, I learned that Canterbury University Library has a copy. Shortly after that, I learnt that their copy is missing. After that, I thought that a simple Sanskrit and English version of eleven of the Upanishads would be a pleasing thing to make. I await the next after.
For further reading, see Introduction to the Upanishads. First Translation of the Upanishads.
July 12, 2007
Inappropriate response
When Australia played New Zealand a couple of weeks ago at rugby, before the kickoff there was the singing of the national anthems and then the All Blacks performed the haka. And then some singer or other led the crowd in a few rounds of Waltzing Matilda. And right there I was annoyed.
I don’t have any objection to the song, nor to people singing it at a rugby match. What I object to is the category error of having this singing be an official (time was specifically set aside for it) part of the pre-match ritual. The rationale, I am assuming, is that the All Blacks get to do a haka, so the Australians should get to do something too. And that would be entirely reasonable, and in fact occurs when, for example, New Zealand play Samoa. But this was not the Australian team responding to the New Zealand team — indeed, the Australian team just stood around waiting for everything to get underway.
My point is that the haka is performed by the team, and any response should be delivered by the other team. If they don’t have any ritual to perform themselves, they should just not make a response. Leave the crowd to do whatever the crowd does, but don’t privilege it by giving it the place and role of the haka.