Feb 062010

Criminal charges laid on 4 UK politicians

Jan 272010

[A quality assurance organisation recommends that] the University finalise its academic integrity policy and procedures in order to strengthen education‐related academic honesty processes.

Jul 022009

Jonson loved thieves’ cant, market slang and any other mini-lects he could pick up by walking around London. The Web would fry his circuits.

For the past month my nearfield desktop system has been rather simple by audiophile standards. All AC power goes through the PS Audio Quintet power device, which I’ll write about in detail later in the column. Input sources include an EAD 8000 Pro CD/DVD player, Pioneer MJ-D707 minidisk player, and i-Tunes via my Intel MacPro quad computer. The EAD and Pioneer digital signals go through a Monarchy Audio DIP box so that I can switch between the Pioneer’s Toslink and EAD’s coaxial feeds and convert them to an AES/EBU digital output. The Mac’s USB feed goes into a Trends USB audio dac UD-10 that converts the USB feed to a Toslink output. The Trends also supplies an analog output for my Stax headphone system. The AES/EBU and Toslink digital feeds then go into a Meridian 518 which upsamples the 16-bit digital signal to 20 bits and feeds a Meridian 561 via digital coaxial. The Meridian’s main single-ended analog output is split via a Monster L-connector into two single ended outputs which go to both the Bel Canto S-300 amplifier and Earthquake Supernova Mark IV 10″ subwoofer. The Bel Canto drives a pair of ATC SCM-7 loudspeakers. As I said, it’s simple by audiophile standards.

The product under review is a class T amp retailing for around US$150.

Apr 172009

Glum news in The Australian this morning. Some Scottish constables want ‘a return to plain English’. They say people make fun of them when they talk. The Plain English Campaign is also calling on police to use simpler language.
And just when I’d learnt the right name for copspeak (see also here).

Interesting that it’s people at constable rank who want the reform. It is further confirmation of Wordability’s Law of Plain Speaking in Organisations (LOPSO) which states that only people at the top or at the bottom of an organisation are permitted to speak plainly. If you want to know what’s going on, ask the CEO or the bloke in the mail-room.

Dec 122008

Well, as Joan Didion once remarked, either you care about commas or you don’t. If you are one of that select band do not miss this glorious email from Giles Coren . One indefinite article was removed from his restaurant review. Yes, an ‘a’. It kept him awake; it brought him to the edge of resignation. God bless the Old Country, occasionally.

Aug 112008

The thing about Rakim

Credits

Header pic by Dr Michael Phillips. You can find more of his work here, and his breathtaking research here.

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