Thread 17 - TalkLair: "Okay, first of all, what's with the outfit? Live in the now, okay? You look like DeBarge."

[RasaSayangEh]

(Previous thread 16).

Spring is springing, daffodils blooming all over our LairGarden, which have not all been picked by a neighbour's kid...

In the TalkLair, the hearth is glowing, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, cosy rugs are down on the floors looking a bit stained by cat hairball regurgitation. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch though, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

Oh yes, poetry. I loved studying poetry despite my lack of classic literature interest. I had a huge collection of poetry books but I sold a lot of them recently because I hadn't looked at them for so long. I kept my favourites though. I currently have a T.S. Eliot collection on my coffee table that I've been dipping in and out of. If it weren't for him I'd never have become a musician, because he taught me how to write about how I feel without writing about how I feel.

One of the great things about living in America is that I’ve been introduced to the work of a whole host of modern American poets. A large chunk of my degree was American Studies (half history, half literature) and my MA was Modern English and American Literature (by which Leicester University meant 20th century) but that was in 1972 and I hadn’t really read American stuff after that. We have some terrific poets here in Maine, and I’ve read stuff by other contemporary Americans I really like. I’ve taken classes with Mark Doty, whose work in both poetry and prose is terrific. In fact he was kind enough to write me a blurb for my new book, which finally found a publisher. I signed the contract last week and it’s coming out next spring.

Great work, Brit!

I read Far From the Madding Crowd for level and The Mayor of Casterbridge for a level and hated them both with a passion. About a decade ago I thought I'd give them an other go. Started with the crowd realised that some of it was hilarious and enjoyed it. Mayor, not funny but cracking. I'm in no great rush to read more but I don't resent giving him another go.

A good way into Jane Austen is the famous first line of P&P. "It's a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Reading it when young I thought it meant that he really must need a wife now he'd got lots of money next stop he's lady hunting. Of course if he wants a woman he can have his pick, etc. And then you get older and your head tells you it's irony! Every woman in the county is after you! And it's such a delicious sentence that even if you take out the irony it's a little foolish and silly. You have to just give into the humour because she is hilarious and wanders very close to the edge of what's acceptable.

And, yes the social history of the period is interesting and makes her funnier and darker. In northanger abbey our heroine fears all these wicked gothic barons who murder their wives and Jane shows there's a greater cruelty she should expect.

Sorry. I've become far too Austen. Time to stop boring on and have a nap. Laters lovelies.

While we're on literature, I've just been reading this study on how Eng Lit undergrads interpret (or, depressingly, often fail to even attempt interpreting) texts.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922346

Someone on TwiX tried to argue it wasn't young people's fault they aren't familiar with now-vanished historical concepts like

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um

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snow and compound interest.

If the point had been about the caboose of collier brigs I might have accepted it, but compound interest?!

Young people today....

it wasn't young people's fault they aren't familiar with now-vanished historical concepts

If they don't understand, why don't they look it up? Surely that's the whole point, and pleasure, of studying, to find things out.

The study specifically gave them reference materials and let them search on their phones.

I do miss snow! I remember it snowing before Christmas in about 2010ish and my students (mostly 18/19) being utterly astonished that snow in December was even possible!

We're getting dumber. And lazier. I'm damn sure the education I got in the 60s was way superior to the one my DS got in the 90s/00s, and I expect most people of my generation would say the same. And surely, that's screens winning out over books.

Re: compound interest.

A few years ago, coffee break chitchat, our about-to-graduate PhD student announced that he planned to buy a house immediately after graduation. No, he didn't have a lucrative job lined up nor a gigantic pot of savings. It emerged that his plan was get a 100% mortgage because it'd be so easily worth it, with an interest rate of only 3% (or whatever it was at the time), what a no-brainer, why didn't everybody just get on with buying a property instead of moaning about rent.

We oldies felt rather bad having to explain to him about compound interest.

I definitely think AI is making students lazier. Every teacher at college level or even high school level I know is having to use software to check plagiarism, and students get irate if told they're not allowed to present AI generated work as their own. And they don't bother checking the AI for even errors that would be screamingly obvious if they'd done any kind of background reading.

Reminds me of a book I wrote a review of on Goodreads, called The Yard by Alex Grecian. It was set in Victorian London. He had brownstone houses in Trafalgar Square, pub landlords called barkeeps, a supposedly middle class woman inviting a chimney sweep working in her house to call her by her Christian name, the basement being used as a living area by the family... it went on and got worse.

Am I alone in finding lacking the concept of "snow" just a wee bit more surprising than not knowing about compound interest?

I mean, my sister was born in May and moved to Singapore at the age of about 3 months. We came back 3 years later, just in time for the winter of 1962/3, and she recognised snow when she saw it!

Snow? As in these people don't have a concept of snow? Does not compute.

There is definitely a dumbing down in lots of areas and as one of those is reading and comprehension which is a dangerous place to lose knowledge because it allows the Trumps and Farages of the world to flat out lie and people just slack jawed believe it. There have always been people who were limited like that but as it becomes a larger percentage of the population it's easier to tell even more brazen lies. Whenever Farage says he will get rid of the two children cap (they are actuallly reporting this as I type), bring back the heating for the elderly. We'd all love that but he never talks about how he'll fund it. Trump is no longer worth listening to on Tariffs because it will always be the same. He'll say 100% Tariff and you know a couple of hours before that's supposed to happen he'lll back down and tell us that South Africa are murdering white farmers.

Critical thinking is so important. It's disappearing. We know it's in the interest of the establishment and their billionaires who have more power than unelected people should, but it's been coming a long time. They've educated the masses too much and now they have the perfect way to take that backwards. Screens. Toddlers sat in front of tablets. Blah.

To think people used to agonise about 'baby-sitting' their kids with Children's TV. How benign that now seems by comparison!

Today I was looking up stuff about Oh! Canada.

51st State and all that. Looking at maps, blah and thinking it would be the largest state if the US got hold of it. It has the longest coastline in the world so ... Nope. I knew Alaska was big but it's bloody huge! It's bigger than Canada which is also huge! Brain esplode!

It would also mean that Alaska would be contiguous to the rest of the US for the first time and leave Hawaii as the only non-continguous state and probably pretty happy about.

I know. I was thinking why was it different, cf radio. TV wasn't on all day and night I guess and as children we got children's TV a lot of which was educational and I know I was allowed to watch certain things outside of that loop because I was a little swat who'd say "Can (yes you can, may I!) I watch the paintings for an arts programme and if it was 8pm then I was allowed to stay up a little later on a school night but otherwise I was in bed with a book by 7-8pm and perfectly happy, but I was a child who was always happier with a book.

@FagsMagsandBags Looking at maps, blah and thinking it would be the largest state if the US got hold of it. It has the longest coastline in the world so ... Nope. I knew Alaska was big but it's bloody huge! It's bigger than Canada which is also huge! Brain esplode!

Er, even MrG (whose brain imploded long ago) said "WTAF?" at that. He used to be an American, poor lamb, until the late lamented Richard Nixon unilaterally and illegally denationalised him. ("Yippee!" he cried, having already become Canadian.) Canada is second only to Russia in area and - as you say - unrivalled in the coastline department.

Yes, Canada is way bigger than Alaska and with a much larger population.

What tf. I read everyhere earlier that Canada was smaller than Alaska and now I'm seeing vice versa. Make it make sense. I must have been misreading and it does make sense that Canada would be bigger than Alaska which is what made my brain esplode! Now you have to tell MrG that I'm an idiot, @Gonners . That said there are pages saying Canada bigger and pages saying Alaska bigger. It doesn't help that they are giving measuremets for Canada in km and Alaska in miles because that's helpful to all and sundry!

Then Canada is 9 times bigger or 5 times bigger or not bigger at all. All of the Canada big was what I thought from the start and in fact I was looking at it from the point of view of is it/will it be the largest state which I thought it obviously would because it looks bigger than the US - it is.

I am sorry for messing with heads. I even went down the pages because AI is so unreliable. Everyone is unrealiable! Anyway, I say that anyone who wants to make a bigger country that people like better part of their country should give it a go because it's not idiotic at all. Oh Canada!

I knew about Alaska's population being teeny tiny. The Proposal with my girl Sandra Bullock made me want to go to Alaska but I don't think it was filmed there, so I just want to go to a place that looks like Alaska and where the family's house is a big old log "cabin" for comfortably rich people that looks all wood inside with ridiculously comfortable looking beds and the best quilts. It is set in a town called Sitka which I think still has a large population - not that large given populations that aren't tiny - of Russian descent. I find the Russian aspect of Alaska interesting but it was Sandra Bullock who made me want to go there. I should watch it again!

I think Finland might be more fun. The few Finns I have known have been gloriously eccentric and all spoke about 5 languages - as you would, if your mother-tongue was Finnish.

TBF to the students in the study, there's no indication that they didn't know about snow. (One of them, however, did think an advocate was a type of cat).

It was the random TwiX user who thought snow was the sort of outrageously old-fashioned thing that kids today couldn't be expected to be aware of.

@Gonners I was thinking about the general area of Scandanavia - I watched the second of the three part documentary that lovely young man who does good travel stuff does. He was in Norway and Iceland, I need to watch the first when he was in Finland and I'm guessing maybe Lapland or even Greenland. This Sunday he's in Sweden and Denmark. I really wish I'd got to at least one of those countries. and if it was only one then probably Denmark but with money I think I'd like to have travelled on the smallest most ecofriendly cruise ship type think all the way round the different countries and to have gotten trains/sleeper trains to get to the boat. I find that area of the world so interesting and would love to get a glimpse of how/why they're so much happier than other countries. I mean I have a good idea but! I would have gone to the blue lagoon in Iceland, anywhere in Finland - do you remember our man in Finland, he was a scientist and called something like Saab? - if I didn't do the Fjords in Norway when on an actual boat I'd be some sort of genius idiot to miss them. Sweden and Denmark, I'd have to see The Bridge which I think is amazing and probably spend a good time in both capitals. I would want to see design museums in both countries and if there's an Ikea museum, yes please.

But I didn't get round to it and I'm going to make friends promise to see things there for me.

Oh I would have bought wool in Iceland too. They have a lovely rough wool and it's reasonably priced. I'm a strange sort.

Ooh, I might go back and watch the beginning of The Bridge. That was a real starter place for later in life Scandi lovers I think. I remember doing a project on Denmark at primary school where we got to pick out ideas that we would like to do projects on. I can't say it stayed front and centre in my mind for all those years, but at the back of my mind there were things I really liked which came out in later things I found myself liking in design. If you'd said "do you remember, do you think?" I would have but, blah. I think the Scandanavian countries are easy to like.