April 20, 2007
Binary Birthday
It’s my birthday today and this year it’s a binary birthday.
I haven’t had one for sixteen years and won’t have another for thirty-two years.
For the past sixteen years, I’ve been 24 + n : where (0 ≤ n ≤ 15).
Today I’m 25.
That means I now need a whole extra digit to represent my age in binary.
Yesterday I was 11111.
Today I’m 100000.
Egad.
But I’m only 20 in hex …
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April 05, 2007
I’ve discovered that there is something that bothers me more than misplaced apostrophes and even more than misuse of the locution ‘begs the question’.
What is this heinous crime against sense and grammar of which I speak? None other than the prevalent and ever increasing abuse of reflexive pronouns.
Offenses against the apostrophe can be understood, and sometimes even forgiven, as the rules for its use can be a little complicated. Anyone with a fifth grade education should, of course, be able to correctly deploy their punctuation marks but, as we all know, what should be the case very rarely is the case.
But this aggression against reflexive pronouns will not stand.
For some reason, people seem to have got it into their heads that reflexive pronouns sound more ‘formal’ and start throwing them around willy nilly when they’re trying to sound ‘proper’.
So we get locutions like:
‘Many people, myself included, have no idea about grammar.’
‘John and myself went camping on the weekend.’
‘If you have any questions, ask myself or Fred.’
‘Should I get anything for yourself or Sue?.
The use of ‘myself’ or ‘yourself’ in each case above is incorrect and sounds stupid. It doesn’t make you sound ‘correct’ or ‘formal’ or clever. It makes you sound like an idiot. Stop it. Seriously.
Instead, try using the correct damn pronouns - they’re there for a reason people:
‘Many people, me included, have no idea about grammar’.
‘John and I went camping on the weekend’.
‘If you have any questions, ask me or Fred’.
‘Should I get anything for you or Sue?.
The rules for using reflexive pronouns - myself, yourself, himself, herself, oneself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves, itself - are not difficult. Not even remotely. They’re used always and ONLY when the subject is also the direct or indirect object. Loosely speaking, this means when the person acting is also the thing acted on (when the agentivity is reflexive).
In other words, only use ‘myself’ if you’re doing something to yourself.
For instance, I can hurt myself, correct myself, improve myself, or make a fool of myself. Likewise, you can entertain yourself, educate yourself, convince yourself, give yourself to someone, or give yourself an early mark (indirect object).
It’s not rocket surgery.
Difficulty seems to arise most often in coordinating pronominal phrases. Don’t use a reflexive pronoun just because you’re referring to two people. If you’re unsure, think about which pronoun you’d use if you were referring to only the pronominal referent.
You wouldn’t say ‘Myself went to the beach yesterday’, so don’t say ‘Sue and myself went to the beach yesterday’.
Similarly you wouldn’t say ‘Ben gave I a lovely present’, so don’t say ‘Ben gave Sue and I a lovely present’.
When you use the incorrect pronominal case in trying to sound ‘proper’, you just make yourself sound like a moron.
Here endeth the rant.
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April 03, 2007
She’s eleven today!
It seems like only yesterday I carried her home in the palm of my hand.
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March 05, 2007
Available now at all good book stores.
Here it is on the shelves at Readings Carlton.
I’ll be holding a launch at Readings on Monday April 23rd at 6:30pm - all welcome.
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February 17, 2007
Although I find it very difficult to believe that anyone actually does take this seriously, apparently it turns out the Earth is flat and all evidence to the contrary is readily explained by the sekrit conspiracy (shhhh) that all the world’s goverments, airline pilots, and space agencies are totally in on, for obscure and unexplained reasons that are suggested to probably ‘involve money’.
You couldn’t swing a cat on their FAQ page without hitting an internal inconsistency.
Does this site represent the biggest collection of morons since the Texas Taliban and the Kansas School Board had their annual ‘Nutjobs Against Rationality’ conference, or is it just poorly executed satire? You decide.
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January 18, 2007
A Sacramento morning radio show decides it would be just hilarious to conduct a ‘Hold Your Wee For A Wii’ competition, whereby contestants will be forced to drink bottles of water at regular intervals without peeing, hoping to win a Nintendo Wii.
The DJs contemplate, on air, during the competition, that you can actually die from ingesting too much water.
One suggests that maybe they should have done some research.
Another argues that as the body is 98% water, you should be able to ingest as much as water as you like.
A third jokes that they’ve all signed releases.
The guy who thinks the body is 98% water then asserts - from his obvious vast repertoire of medical knowledge - that if you drink too much water you’ll vomit (and be out of the competition) before any harm can come to you.
A listener calls in and explains that you can, in fact, die from water intoxication. Medical Boy casually rebuffs her with his vomit-before-harm theory.
During the competition they ask the guy who’s supervising the the competition whether anyone’s dying there yet. He jokes ‘we’ve got one guy about to die here!’. The reply, ‘Make sure he signs a release!’.
It’s a terrible shame that the station never sought any medical advice, despite recognising a potential risk, and that no medical staff were on hand to supervise the competition.
One of the finalists was 28 year old Jennifer Strange.
By the end of the competition she was complaining that her head was hurting. She was reassured that this was perfectly normal. She said, immediately after dropping out of the competition:
“they keep telling me though that it’s the water, that it will tell my head to hurt and then it will make me puke.”
The DJs laughed at her appearance during the post-event interview, telling her she looked terrible and that her stomach was so distended that she appeared to be notably pregnant.
It’s surely criminally negligent that she was given eronneous medical advice and that at no time was she provided with, or enjoined to seek, medical attention.
The pain she was feeling was her brain swelling against her skull as she’d ingested seven and a half litres (two gallons) of water.
A few hours later she collapsed and died from water intoxication.
She was a mother of three who had entered the competition for her kids.
In the latest reports, the Sacramento Sheriff had handed the case over to homicide detectives after listening to a recording of the show.
Here’s a five minute audio clip of the salient parts. News reports in the local paper here and here.
Ten people have been sacked. Here’s hoping for criminal charges.
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