Oh dear - Lois and I are both book-lovers, and today Lois has been reading out to me some annoying news from her copy of "The Week" magazine - this is the magazine that gives a digest of the last week's news from home and abroad.
Lois reads out to me some annnoying excerpts from her copy
of "The Week" magazine - oh dear!
She says a lot of the new books coming out, and maybe appearing on Amazon, have been written by computers - they're just a bunch of AI rubbish.
What a crazy world we live in!!!
Apparently an 86-page book, title "Fire and Fury", has just been published all about the wildfires that broke out a few days ago on Maui, Hawaii, and it briefly jumped to No. 1 in Amazon's "Environmental Science" category. The writer is alleged to be a mysterious person called "Dr Miles Stone" - somebody's having a laugh here, aren't they!
And Dr Stone is a busy man, because he found the time to write another two books in the same week as "Fire and Fury".
According to Scott Rosenberg, writing in Axios, there are more and more of these so-called "books" coming out - and you can't go by the review if you're trying to decide whether it's a computer-generated book or not, because the reviews may well also have been generated by AI software.
Scott Rosenberg, Axios journalist
And similar AI-generated junk is also finding its way all over the internet, Rosenberg says. A Microsoft guide to Ottawa recently listed a food bank as a destination for hungry tourists.
Not only that, but all this AI-generated rubbish is likely to be used by AI-software to generate even more rubbishy output, and ultimately "spiral into gibberish".
"We're about to fill the internet with blah!, " he says.
What a madness it all is !!!!
16:00 I do a bit more work on my so-called "presentation" on Elizabethan English, the one I'm supposed to be giving next month to Lynda's local U3A "Making of English" group. The date for me to lead ths session is getting ever nearer - yikes!!!!!
Luckily, my ace in a hole is Barbara Strang's useful and workmanlike "History of English", which could save my presentation from being a complete disaster, fingers crossed!
Today I find that Strang explains why there are a significant number of differences between British and American English, not just in pronunciation but even in grammar etc.
Strang reveals that, at the time when English people started settling in North America, there had been almost no significant progress towards standardisation of the language in England, and the dialects developed in various regions of the country were still very distinct - and not only that, people thought that such a situation - a proud diversity - was completely natural, and there was no feeling even that there ought to be a standard form.
the first English settlers landing at what became Jamestown, Virginia
This meant that when English settlers arrived in America, they were likely to be living next to people speaking the same language, English, but maybe a totally different dialect from the dialect that they themselves and their neighbours back in England had spoken. And this resultant "soup of accents" acted as a powerful "randomising" element in the creation of the standard form that English eventually took in the New World. And this is what caused many of the differences between the standard languages of the two countries.
See? It's all starting to make a funny kind of sense now, isn't it!!!
Barbara Strang of Newcastle University, author of "A History of English"
Plus we have to remember that, in the early emigration by English people to America, Londoners weren't a particular significant element, in any case - the settlers were a very mixed bunch from all over the country, including lots of people from rural areas.
Fast forward to 1800, however, and by this time, the English of the capital, London, had achieved a position of prestige and supremacy and was widely familiar and easily understood in pretty much all regions of England. Also, unlike in the case of North America, immigrants from London formed a significant proportion of the settlers that travelled to Australia.
the "Founding of Australia"
So, when you think about it, it's not so surprising that Australian English doesn't differ nearly as much from British English as American English does.
Isn't it nice, when people explain things haha!!!
21:00 Lois and I get the chance later to test Barbara Strang's ideas on the couch, when we settle down to watch another episode of the Australian sitcom, "No Activity".
This is pretty much a dialogue-based series, typically featuring scene after scene of two people sitting and talking because nothing is happening, which sounds promising, doesn't it, for lovers of dialogue like me, anyway!
We get, mainly two incompetent detectives, Hendy and Stokes, sitting in a police-car, doing a surveillance operation at the docks, a stake-out in which not much is happening, and, meanwhile, back at Police HQ, two incompetent policewomen on the night-shift, there just to answer the phones which aren't ringing very much.
What's not to like haha !!!!!
two incompetent detectives on a stake-out, Hendy (left) and Stokes
two incompetent policewomen answering the phones on the nightshift
back at Police HQ: April (left) and her supervisor, Carol
As we sit down to watch this episode, Lois and I are aware that since the previous episode, Detective Hendy and April at HQ have been on their first date. We want to know how it turned out, but it's difficult to judge based on Hendy's account to Detective Stokes, and on April's account to her boss Carol, two accounts which differ in a number of important respects - my goodness !!!!
First, Stokes gives a glowing report on the date to his partner Stokes, as they wait for something to happen out at the docks.
Meanwhile, back at Police HQ, April gives her boss Carol a different perspective on the date.
A promising start to tonight's episode, which makes Lois and me realise that we've got a televisual treat in store for us. My goodness, yes!
Do you remember the classic Japanese movie, Rashomon (1950), in which four people tell completely different accounts of a man's murder and its aftermath? And do you remember how each of the four people turned out to provide at least one truthful element to the story about what really happened?
Well, this episode of "No Activity" is shaping up to be another "Rashomon", no doubt about that!
Detective Hendy explains to Detective Stokes that he took April, on their first date ever, to an old-school classy restaurant, Werriston's, and he acted his gentlemanly best, pulling out the chair for her to sit down, telling April, with a little bow, that she looked lovely tonight.
A couple of tables away, a man had just proposed to his girlfriend, so Stokes told the waiter to provide "a bottle of your finest fizz for the happy couple".
When April tells her boss Carol about the evening at the restaurant, she has a different take on it, however.
Hendy tells Stokes that after the meal, he suggests getting a cab together to take her home to her flat. He says that as soon as they went inside, April spent 15 minutes in the bathroom, probably making herself look lovely, he imagines, so he took off his shoes and jacket and sat down on her bed.
April tells the story differently, though. She was throwing up, violently, that's what she was actually doing in the bathroom - oh dear!
And when April finally emerged from the bathroom, Hendy says, they started "making out" on the bed, super-passionately, like a couple of teenagers. Once again, April tells it differently when she's recalling the evening to Carol.
Then Hendy tells Stokes, "The next thing I did was I pulled out my trump card". Hendy has apparently always been a bit of a clarinet player, so he decided to play April a romantic solo, and when April became drowsy and "blissed out", he just kissed her on the forehead and tiptoed quietly away.
April, however, tells it like this:
Summing up, Detective Stokes is full of praise for his partner Hendy's performance on the date.
April herself, though, has a different angle on it again.
Interesting! And I wonder if we'll ever get to know the truth about the date - was it like Detective Hendy recalled it, or was it more like April recalled it? Or maybe something in-between?
Perhaps we'll never know!
[Remember, it's only a story, Colin! - Ed]
Fascinating stuff !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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