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INKYTEXT 290
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Issue No 290 Wednesday 28 April 1999
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Editorial correspondence should be sent to InkyText@lancaster.ac.uk
Subscription requests to Inkytext-distribution-request@lists.lancaster.ac.uk
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AGENDA
Minutes, Amendments, Matters arising
1. Editorial: Introduction to Pataphysics
2. News: [held over]
3. Small Ads: Ubu Roi, Cars, Accommodation, Exhibition, Events, Vehicles,
Typing, Assistant deans wanted.
4. Readers' Letters: Kosovo, Cats and Buttered toast, Anti-Zionism, Factoids,
Plagiarism, Witches' Curse, Serbian nuclear waste.
MINUTES, AMENDMENTS, MATTERS ARISING
------------------------------------
Tomahawk cruise missiles are manufactured by the avionics and guidance
systems divisions of the Lockheed Martin Corporation.
1. EDITORIAL: INTRODUCTION TO PATAPHYSICS
-----------------------------------------
We live in a pataphysical age. The science of pataphysics was
developed a little over 100 years ago by Alfred Jarry, dramatist,
precursor of surrealism and pataphysician.
Pataphysics is the science of exceptions. Other sciences seek to
uncover rules: pataphysics uncovers further exceptions. But then, as
Jarry himself asked, what is a rule but an exception to the exception?
Pataphysics is thus not hostile to conventional sciences, merely
superior to them - as far beyond metaphysics, said Jarry, coiner of the
phrase 'realite virtuelle', as metaphysics is beyond physics.
We live in exceptional months. For the first time in human history a
war is being waged for humanitarian reasons rather than to further the
interests of the belligerent nations. That must be true: the Prime
Minister said so.
Exceptions such as this often repeat themselves to the point where
they become mere rules. That is why they warrant close scientific, or
more precisely pataphysical, scrutiny.
The most notorious living pataphysician, Jean Baudrillard, applied
this science to Bosnia. Writing in Liberation in 1994 ('No reprieve for
Sarajevo') he expressed a truth that can be applied directly to Kosovo
today and to who knows where tomorrow:
"To do something for the sole reason that one cannot do nothing never
has been a valid principle for action, nor for liberty. At the most it
is an excuse for one's own powerlessness and a token of self-pity. The
people of Sarajevo are not bothered by such questions. Being where they
are, they are in the absolute need to do what they do, to do the right
thing. They harbour no illusion about the outcome and do not indulge in
self-pity. This is what it means to be really existing, [....] This is
why they are alive, while we are dead."
Prospective students of pataphysics can pursue their learning in the
Nuffield Theatre Studio where at 7.30 students from European Studies
are presenting, in French, Jarry's most famous drama UBU ROI, wacky,
satirical and bellicose. It would be truly pataphysical to go to last
night's performance, but beginners may, more prosaically, have to
content themselves with tonight's or tomorrow's.
2. NEWS
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Because of the death of Miss Dando there is no news.
3. SMALL ADS
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FRENCH THEATRE GROUP PRODUCTION
Ubu Roi
by Alfred Jarry
Tue/Wed/ Thurs, 27/28/29 April
7.30 Nuffield Theatre Studio
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PETER SCOTT GALLERY
ANNE DESMET
TOWERS AND TRANSFORMATIONS
22nd APRIL - 28th MAY 1999
This touring show from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford is a retrospective
exhibition of the distinguished wood engraver Anne Desmet. It brings
together work produced between 1985 and 1997. Anne Desmet's work
details the changing nature of progression and concentrates on
classical Roman architecture, its aftermaths, and metamorphosis. Her
work is in a number of Public Collections including the British Museum,
the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an
introduction by Timothy Wilson, Keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford.
------------------------
CONTEMPORARY CERAMICS
ZEHRA ÇOBANLI
22nd APRIL - 28th MAY 1999
An exhibition of stunning and elegant work by Zehra Çobanli, Professor
of Ceramics at Anadolu University, Turkey.
-------------------
JUDITH DAVIES
22nd APRIL - 28th MAY 1999
These unique pots will be on display in the John Chambers Ceramic
Room. Artist's statement: "All pieces are coiled from
porcelain/'T'material mix, burnished and smoke fired in a saggar in a
gal kiln in a mixture of seaweed and wood shavings. Oxides, salt and
soda are added to the saggar to give colour flashes to the work, and
the kiln is fired to between 100-1,100c. dependent on the desired
result."
------------------
VACATION LET: Small, comfortable, terrace house available during the
period July-September 1999. Situated near the train station, and with
easy access to both the town and the countryside near the River Lune.
The property is fully furnished with all facilities, and would suit
either a visiting academic or postgraduate. Available at a very
reasonable rent to the right person. Please contact Dr Lynn Pearce
(L.Pearce@lancaster.ac.uk) or 01524-844-765.
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T H E G L A D L Y S O L E M N S O U N D
C D L A U N C H C O N C E R T
4-part harmony eighteenth century English Church Music
ST JOHN'S CHURCH, NORTH ROAD, LANCASTER
Thursday 6th May 1999, at 7.30
Tickets available (2.00) from Sheila Hargreaves, Music Department
(sheila.hargreaves@lancaster.ac.uk) or 3.50 on the door
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TO LET: 2 bedroomed, fully furnished town house overlooking Lancaster
Cricket Club is available immediately for rent. It has a small rear
garden, fully fitted kitchen and built in wardrobes to the master
bedroom. Allocated parking space at the front of the house. It is
located on a new estate (The Willows) close to Lancaster city centre.
Available for long or short term letting at 400.00 per month.
Returnable deposit of 200.00, plus references, required. Please ring
Rachael on Lancaster 383376.
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Thursday 10th June, European Parliament Election
Tearfund's "Sign of Hope" Campaign aims to offer everyone in the UK
who votes in the election the opportunity to sign the Jubillee 2000
petition. Volunteers are required for Polling Station Co-ordinators;
each one of whom would have responsibility of liaising with the polling
station presiding officer and maintaining the timetable for volunteers
asking for petition signatures, ideally throughout the polling day, but
specifically between 4.00pm and 10.00pm. For further details please
contact Margaret Rand (751965) or via email (g.rand@lancs.ac.uk)
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PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT SEMINAR
Nigel Dower
Aberdeen University
and External examiner for our MA programmes
will offer an informal presentation on
ENVIRONMENTAL CITIZENSHIP
Thursday 29th April
5.00 pm
C13 Furness College
followed by a ruby [SIC] at the Shebab
All Welcome
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ASSISTANT DEANS WANTED: Responsible? Are you going to be a Graduate
Student at Lancaster next year? Do you want a free room on campus?
There are a number of resident deanships available for Graduate College
available for next year - you will need to be level headed, a good
communicator and willing to be on call approximately 2/3 nights a week
- if you are interested please send a CV to Jo Hardman, Graduate
College Dean c/o the Students' Union. Closing date 21 May. If you wish
know more about the post please feel free to give me a call on 01524
593422 or extension 93422.
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TRANSCRIBING TAPES, COPY TYPING - FAST EFFICIENT SERVICE - UNIVERSITY
EXPERIENCED SECRETARIES - RATES NEGOTIABLE. Phone: 01524 77095/770227
E-mail: langhorn@jireh.co.uk
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17 PORTLAND ST IS UP FOR SALE. Built in 1875. Centre of Lancaster, on
University side. Walking distance to everything and everyone in town,
and to canal and open fields. Quiet street. Large quiet garden (64 ft,
19.5m long) with big ash tree, blackcurrant bushes, mature shrubs,
patio, lawn, and ponds with fish and frogs. Four bedrooms, three
reception rooms, good kitchen, large bathroom, two cellars equipped for
laundry room and workshop, gas central heating, windows facing the sun,
open fire and 'original features'. Friendly neighbours. Available
immediately - no chain. Contact the agents Irvine Taylor (opposite
Waterstones). Telephone 60524.
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FOR SALE: ROVER 216i (T-Bar) COUPE, M Reg (1994). Excellent condition,
full service history, 31,000 miles, recently serviced, taxed and
tested, 4 brand new tyres, metallic platinum silver, part walnut dash,
black cloth interior. Factory-fitted alarm and immobiliser. Two careful
lady owners. 7,200 ONO Extension: 594177 (day) Telephone: (01524)
410667 (evening) or Contact: c.odonnell@lancaster.ac.uk
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FOR SALE: HONDA (VF 500 FII), C Reg. Good Condition, 26,000 miles,
long MOT, red, white and blue. 1700. Contact: 01524 421408 (after
7pm).
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Seminars in the Law Department Lonsdale College
Tuesday May 4th Sam Banks, Huddersfield University, a paper on
Pedagogy and Ideology entitled ""Telling stories about the law: reading
through ideology. Legal education in the postmodern era"." 1 - 2 pm
A.36
Tuesday May 11th David Archard, Department of Moral Philosophy,
University of St Andrews, "Sexual Consent and Rape Law." 1 - 2 pm A.36
All welcome. Further details from Michael Salter, Law Department
e-mail m.salter@lancaster.ac.uk / tel. 592479
-----------------
4. READERS' LETTERS
-------------------
Without prolonging the debate on Israel in INKYTEXT, I want to respond
by noting that you granted Gerd Nonneman considerable space to use the
situation in Kosovo as a pretext for anti-Zionist rhetoric. Indeed, he
seemed anxious to find a reason for damning humanitarian aid by Israel
to the victims of Kosovo - the kind of aid that Israel regularly offers
victims of natural as well as human catastrophes worldwide. If one
letter writer is permitted to draw a farfetched analogy between 1948
Israel and 1999 Serbia, it is surely not unfair to allow another, in
response, to propose a more apt analogy between the Middle East in 1948
and Serbia in 1999. If you don't want political debates in INKTEXT, you
should stop them before they start.
Robert Segal
Department of Religious Studies
[NOTE: I obviously DO want adult political debate, but I am unhappy
about emotive expressions like 'anti-Zionist rhetoric'. Is any
criticism of Israeli government policy past or present _ipso facto_
'anti-Zionist'? Surely not. That would make my criticism of current
British policy 'anti-British', a suggestion I utterly reject. That way
lies totalitarianism.
And, sorry, but nor did I find the original analogy especially
'far-fetched'. Nor can I find in your original letter ANY new 'analogy
between the Middle East in 1948 and Serbia in 1999' - unless, as I said
before, you are implying that Serbian action in Kosovo is somehow
justified by centuries of persecution Serbs have suffered at the hands
of Muslims. (And surely you are not?) (Ed.)]
-----------------------------------
I had this from a friend in the US. I assume Marcus refers to the same
tale but I don't know its origin. By the way, the proposition is, of
course, false - as it will take more energy to hold the cat still while
the toast is applied than the monorail would take to make the journey
described!
"When a cat is dropped, it ALWAYS lands on its feet; and when toast is
dropped, it ALWAYS lands with the buttered side down. Therefore, I
propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat. When dropped,
the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground, probably into
eternity. A buttered-cat array could replace pneumatic tires on cars
and trucks, and giant buttered-cat arrays could easily allow a
high-speed monorail to link between New York with Chicago."
Lisa Whistlecroft
--------------------------
'Feline Aerodynamics'
"Question: If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will always land
butter side down. But when you drop a cat it will always land on its
feet. What would happen if you took a piece of buttered bread, strapped
it on the back of a cat (butter side up) and dropped both?
Answer: Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you
should be able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology
demand that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws
of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat cannot land on its back.
If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to
resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.
That's right! You have discovered the secret of antigravity! A
buttered cat will, when released, quickly move to a height where the
forces of cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This
equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter --
providing lift -- or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing
descent.
Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this
principle to drive their ships within planetary systems. The loud
humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of
several hundred cats.
The one obvious danger, of course, arises if the cats manage to eat
the bread off their backs. In this case they will instantly plummet.
Naturally the cats will land on their feet but this generally doesn't
do them much good, since right after they make their landing several
tons of red-hot starship and irritated aliens crash on top of them.
Actually, feline starship-propulsion technology is a little more
sophisticated than that these days. If you spin a cat with buttered
toast on its back in a gravitational field, the entire bi-stable
assembly will keep rotating indefinitely due to the alternating
gravitational attraction to the cats' feet and the butter.
Giant arrays of thousands of cattoast modules rotating at high speeds
are used to generate large amounts of electricity while the starship is
within the gravitational field of a planet like Earth. That electricity
is then used to heat large kettles filled with water. Ordinarily, all
that heat would soon cause the water to boil. But applying the
well-known "optithermal" principle that "a watched kettle doesn't
boil," a specialized "watchcat" is strategically positioned to stare at
the kettles for extended periods of time.
Of course, the water continues to absorb extraordinary amounts of
latent heat, far beyond that which would be required to make the water
boil under unwatched conditions.
Then, when the engineer determines that power is needed, a hood is
dropped over the cat's head so that the ultrasuperheated water is
suddenly put into an "unwatched" state and immediately starts to boil,
releasing huge amounts of pent-up energy as steam which can then be
nozzled through jets to propel the starship around the galaxy until it
starts to run down and needs to find another planet with sufficient
gravity and water (as well as cat food and kitty litter, of course).
I read all about it in, uh, "Scientific American." Yeah, that's it. I
can find you the article if you want. It's around here somewhere.
Honest!"
------------------------------
With regards to Marcus Duffy's question, I believe he has not
formulated it fully. Which way does the buttered toast face seems to be
the missing part of it. Interaction between the variables often tends
to be overlooked.
Wlodek Tych
CRES/IENS
----------------------------------
"Factoid" is a useful word, so let's get it established right. A
factoid is not a myth or error, as your entertaining piece in the last
InkyText implied; we already have words for these. It is something
which is true, but meaningless. For example:
"There are 50 million people in this country and many of them live
near elm trees." (Said by a safety officer of the danger of falling
elms during the Dutch elm disease epidemic).
"The average person dies."
"Distances can be quite long."
A factoid is thus not a tautology, or a lie, or a myth, but - well, a
factoid. It has all the formal characteristics of a factual statement
but is empty of significance. The words of the professionally vacuous
(politicians, quality wonks, chat journalists and newspeakers
generally) are full of them, as are exam scripts. They are
characteristic of those who must say something but have nothing to
communicate. I could go on, but you get the idea,
Factoids are not often memorable (which is why I can't supply many),
but once you recognise the type you see them everywhere. Let me then
attempt to launch a FACTOID APPEAL. Send me (or InkyText) your factoids
and I will establish a databank of them, broadcast it, and give the
world a new-minted concept. It can replace "refute", which has become
terminally degraded of late. (NB You cannot refute or contradict or
gainsay a factoid; you merely identify it and move on.)
Robert Poole
St Martin's College, Lancaster LA1 3JD.
[NOTE: Where did you get your definition? Are you making it up? I use
the word 'factoid' to denote 'facts' that are well-known to or accepted
by nearly everyone, but which are simply not correct. The best-known
topical one is the claim that 'we had to go to war to stop Hitler
killing Jews' (which, quite simply, no country ever did).
The term was coined in the press and the Daily Mirror's definition is:
"Factoid - piece of invented information, untruth
which by repetition becomes believed, item which
passes into the vernacular of history despite
never having occurred, annoying piece of detritus
which, like other -oids is difficult to get rid of."
The examples you give seem to me to be either just examples of
inaccurate use of English ('average') or quasi-tautologies,
self-evident truisms of the type the French call 'lapalissades'. (Ed.)]
----------------------------------
At UCLA, members of the English Department have exchanged a bit of
email recently regarding plagiarism and internet paper mills. One
exchange revealed some info I'd like to share: Amazon.com sponsors some
of these internet paper mills, including a site at
http://www.junglepage.com/asp/index.asp.
I would like to encourage college instructors and other concerned
members of this list to cease doing business with Amazon.com and to
write them at feedback@amazon.com regarding their irresponsible
sponsorship of plagiarism and academic dishonesty. Thanks for your
time.
Meg Powers Livingston
UCLA Department of English
[NOTE: Hmmm. Disagree I think. Others might consider it a generous
contribution made by Amazon to future developments in self-service
education. (Ed.)]
---------------------------------------
Something which we feared that might happen, seems very likely. I can
confirm now we expect that NATO planes will bomb VINCA Institute. In
the past several days we received this warning, but today we got this
information as serious threat from the highest authorities.
Our reactor is not working for more than 15 years, but the significant
amount of 235-U enriched and unused fuel is still in its interior.
Highly radioactive material for everyday activities is also located in
several research laboratories. I fear that a big disaster may occur. In
the worst case, no Balkan and even European country would be safe. Not
to mention ecological catastrophe.
I still hope that this disaster could be avoided, unless we are
already late. I would appreciate if you succeed in informing as many
people as possible on the eventual tragedy.
God bless you.
P.R. Adzic
VINCA Institute of Nuclear Sciences Fax:(381 11) 455-041
Laboratory of Physics (010)
P.O. Box 522, 11001 Belgrade E-mail:apetar@rt270.vin.bg.ac.yu
Yugoslavia peter.adzic@cern.ch
-----------------------------------------------------
I have been asked by a friend to find out the origin of the supposed
'witches curse' that prevents many from leaving Lancaster once their
studies have ended. My own understanding was that one of the accused
cursed the magistrate as a man of learning, and cursed all such men of
learning in the City. Can any readers confirm the above, and if they
can, do they have a better version of the 'quote'? In addition, any
notes on the development of the tale throughout the ages would be
gratefully received and forwarded.
Dave Boyle
--------------------------------