With the advent of the Android operating system for mobile devices, which was eventually purchased by Google, a family of fonts known as Droid was commissioned.
Pretty, easy to read, and free!
AScender Corporation’s Steve Matteson began work on them in late 2006, and my do they look nice. Although the OpenType versions (with ligatures, glyphs, and other obscure characters) cost $30 each, you can get the bog-standard TrueType ones (released under the Apache License) from here at Android’s git repository.
In this rather famous segment from a 1982 episode of the candid camera show The Live Mike, Gay Byrne is repeatedly prevented from recording a scene in Trinity College Dublin. I liked it, not just because seeing an infuriated Gay Byrne is hilarious, but because of the few glimpses of Parliament Square back then.
Glossolalia, or simply ’speaking in tongues’ is a phenomenon interested me for some time now. It does, of course, refer to the phenomenon of supposedly speaking some unknown language, especially during religious worship. Explanations as to why people suddenly burst into glossolalia range from divine intervention (a popular one among Pentecostal Christians) to blunt mental illness.
Comparative studies seem to indicate that glossolalia somewhat resembles ordinary language, in so far as it demonstrates some degree of phonological structure, rhythm and accent, yet studies in neuroscience claim that it shows brain activity which differs from everyday speech when it is being uttered.
Finding a video which sufficiently demonstrated the tara ba rumeso kare mapoti shalafa ‘ sound but which doesn’t spill over into religious instruction proved difficult. This is the best I could come up with:
The ‘meaning’ of these utterances is an interesting topic in its own right. Glossolalists believe that ‘tongues’, or whatever you want to call it, actually constitutes a real language, one with its own lexicon and grammar. Yet if asked to repeat what they say or translate it into their native language, most are unable (or are unwilling) to do so. The ability to speak in tongues is, according to them, a divine gift from their deity.
The consensus from the viewpoint of linguistics seems to be that is that glossolalia does not constitute a truly meaningful language. Rather, the seemingly random speech sounds serve as a sort of tool to express deep belief in and attachment to a higher being. Nonetheless, speaking this pseudo-language is generally a deeply significant and emotional experience for the person involved.
Somewhere in the middle there are believers who do think that the descriptions of ‘tongues’ in the new testament (notably in Acts, apparently), refer to the God-given language which modern-day worshippers describe. They do not, however, believe that the utterances of modern-day worshippers, such as those in the following video, relate to this language, dismissing them on-the-spot and meaningless.
I definitely fall into the ‘pseudo-language’ category, but I find the whole thing fascinating nonetheless. I am still amazed at the effect religious belief has on people’s minds, and sit here wondering whether the glossolalists consciously make themselves behave this way, or whether it’s a sort of out-of-body experience.
In the past week or so we have witnessed two extraordinary interruptions.
First, some background information:
The first interruption occurred when Barack Obama delivered his healthcare reform speech to a joint session of Congress. As he once again confirmed that his proposed health plan would not cover illegal immigrants, Obama was childishly and loudly interrupted by GOP congressman Joe Wilson, from South Carolina. You could see the shock and anger on Nancy Pelosi’s face as she heard ‘You lie!’ from the opposite chamber. Presumably after being smashed about by his party whip, the congressman came out afterwards and apologized.
The second interruption, while in rather different circumstances, was equally inappropriate and laughable. As Taylor Swift stood up to accept her first Video Music Award, the gold-plated imbecile who is Kanye West burst in to declare that ‘Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time’, then stormed off the stage. Again, he calmed down, and issued an apology to minimize the media carnage.
What unites these two events? While it’s true that Obama commented on Kanye’s temper tantrum, calling him a ‘jackass’, I think this video sums it up more eloquently:
The customer is authorised to use the bike in accordance with the terms hereof,
provided that such use is reasonable, which excludes the following:
any use contrary to the provisions of the Rules of the Road and current traffic regulations;
any use on land or under conditions that are likely to damage the bike;
the transportation of any passenger under any circumstances;
any use of the bike causing a danger to the customer or to third parties;
any dismantling or attempt to dismantle all or part of the bike, and more generally, any abnormal use of a bicycle.
Assuming similar regulations exist in Paris, this video probably depicts the violation of every single one.
Note the hilarious description:
Aucun des Vélib’ utilisés dans cette video n’a été maltraité
Most Irish readers will be aware that Dublin City Council has given 15 years of advertising rights in Dublin to the advertising company JCDecaux in return for providing one of its public bike schemes, the first of which debuted in Paris in the summer of 2007 as Vélib’.
I was in Paris not too long ago, and although I didn’t get to try one of the bikes out for myself, the whole thing seemed to be a raging success. There are now close to one-and-a-half-thousand stations in operation, with 20,000 bikes between them. That said, however, there have been instances of vandalism and theft. There have been reports of Vélib’ bicycles turning up all over France. rollingresistance.net even suggests that they have been found far away from Paris in Romania.
Naturally, the introduction of ‘Dublinbikes‘ has been met with some scepticism. As I can attest, Dublin is not the most pleasant place in which to cycle, and a lot of people (myself included) question whether Dubliners will treat the ‘dbs’ with the same respect as their Parisian counterparts.
I took these last summer, when I was at the execrable Irish Jamboree 2008 (or Shamboree, as it’s known colloquially), and they somewhat cheered me up from the poorly-organized activities and torrential rain.
I accidently messed with the exposure settings on my camera somehow, and after pointing and shooting at the lamps in the car-park, this was the result.
A bit of PHP and CSS means that stephen-shaw.net now has a proper image-viewing system. From now on, posts like this and this containing loads of images can be viewed with ease, with big images, captions and fancy navigation buttons. Wow.
I noticed this anti-lisbon poster sitting high on a lamp-post the other night (or more accurately, the other morning) as I walked home through Rathmines.
