Friday, June 05, 2009
Puzzles
Three construction puzzle today. First, there is a house just past the evangelical charismatic Church of England church of St Paul's (http://www.saintpauls.co.uk/), of white rendered brick construction, just like our own. For the last couple of days, the builders have been stripping the rendering off, taking it down to the probably not very good quality brickwork underneath. Now why would you do such a thing? Is the house moving around so much that the rendering has gone off key? Maybe I will trot down and ask them if they are still at it when I next visit the baker.
Second, there is the house a few doors up which has had the builders in for months and which has a large container - the eight foot six by eight foot six by forty two foot sort of thing - parked where you might otherwise park the car. Now what is in the container? Has the owner of the house put all his furniture in the thing, for the duration, while he and the wife are off on a world cruise? I would have thought that over the months stuff would get a bit damp in such a thing.
Third, there is a parade of shops next to TB, half of which was knocked down maybe two years ago in order to build a new block - two storey thing plus dormers. Very ugly. How did it ever get past the preserve the built heritage folk? The top parts were built out of some kind of timber units - 1 foot by 6 feet by 9 feet sort of dimensions, lots of angles and faced with some kind of low grade block board. For some reason I think that they came from Estonia, the home of up market, innovative forest products. All made to measure and fitting together quite neatly. But it seems that the builder forgot to grease the palm of the building inspector and the building was condemned. It sat 90% finished for maybe a year. Some talk that maybe there was going to be a small Tesco, which would kill off the next door Spar - who has done good service over the years. But no, some gang from Hampshire has now moved into the thing, took down the original hoardings and scaffold, put its own up and is now busily dismantling the roof. So what are they going to do? What did the building inspector find fault with? Why did he wait until the thing was nearly finished until he pounced? One presumes the original speculator has taken a terrible hit on the thing. Terrible timing and terrible building combined to make terrible squared.
Two more dribbles from the TLS. First, I learn that the Edwin Mellen press has published a learned tome entitled 'The development of the PhD degree in Britain: an evolutionary and statistical history in higher education'. Getting on for 800 pages at getting on for 10p a page. Now we always thought that academe was a bit precious, incestuous and prone to disappear up its own orifices. Now we know! How could someone (a femmy name) spend years doing research about research. Not necessarily rubbish, but a bit drear compared with studying something real, like the things I talked of yesterday that go bang. Perhaps not a coincidence that this particular press is often moved to publish stuffy little auto-puffs (that is to say they are puffing themselves rather than one of their authors) from minnows from the swarming aquarium that is academe. Claims not to be a vanity publisher but it looks rather like one.
Second, of more serious interest, a peice about the Koran, to stick with the received spelling in this country. It seems that not all that much is known about its origins, beyond its being revealed to Muhammed between around 610AD and around 630AD and transmitted orally, the prophet being believed to have been illiterate. One pointer to this last is, it seems, that very early texts are written in an early sort of Arabic which misses out spaces between words, vowels and accents. All of which would have made it very hard to read to anybody who did not know the text pretty well beforehand. There have not been, or at least we in the west do not have access to, the sort of hard core literary archeology which biblical scholars in Germany were keen on in the 19th century. Be interesting to know more. Maybe I will give Amazon a prod using some of the clues supplied.
Second, there is the house a few doors up which has had the builders in for months and which has a large container - the eight foot six by eight foot six by forty two foot sort of thing - parked where you might otherwise park the car. Now what is in the container? Has the owner of the house put all his furniture in the thing, for the duration, while he and the wife are off on a world cruise? I would have thought that over the months stuff would get a bit damp in such a thing.
Third, there is a parade of shops next to TB, half of which was knocked down maybe two years ago in order to build a new block - two storey thing plus dormers. Very ugly. How did it ever get past the preserve the built heritage folk? The top parts were built out of some kind of timber units - 1 foot by 6 feet by 9 feet sort of dimensions, lots of angles and faced with some kind of low grade block board. For some reason I think that they came from Estonia, the home of up market, innovative forest products. All made to measure and fitting together quite neatly. But it seems that the builder forgot to grease the palm of the building inspector and the building was condemned. It sat 90% finished for maybe a year. Some talk that maybe there was going to be a small Tesco, which would kill off the next door Spar - who has done good service over the years. But no, some gang from Hampshire has now moved into the thing, took down the original hoardings and scaffold, put its own up and is now busily dismantling the roof. So what are they going to do? What did the building inspector find fault with? Why did he wait until the thing was nearly finished until he pounced? One presumes the original speculator has taken a terrible hit on the thing. Terrible timing and terrible building combined to make terrible squared.
Two more dribbles from the TLS. First, I learn that the Edwin Mellen press has published a learned tome entitled 'The development of the PhD degree in Britain: an evolutionary and statistical history in higher education'. Getting on for 800 pages at getting on for 10p a page. Now we always thought that academe was a bit precious, incestuous and prone to disappear up its own orifices. Now we know! How could someone (a femmy name) spend years doing research about research. Not necessarily rubbish, but a bit drear compared with studying something real, like the things I talked of yesterday that go bang. Perhaps not a coincidence that this particular press is often moved to publish stuffy little auto-puffs (that is to say they are puffing themselves rather than one of their authors) from minnows from the swarming aquarium that is academe. Claims not to be a vanity publisher but it looks rather like one.
Second, of more serious interest, a peice about the Koran, to stick with the received spelling in this country. It seems that not all that much is known about its origins, beyond its being revealed to Muhammed between around 610AD and around 630AD and transmitted orally, the prophet being believed to have been illiterate. One pointer to this last is, it seems, that very early texts are written in an early sort of Arabic which misses out spaces between words, vowels and accents. All of which would have made it very hard to read to anybody who did not know the text pretty well beforehand. There have not been, or at least we in the west do not have access to, the sort of hard core literary archeology which biblical scholars in Germany were keen on in the 19th century. Be interesting to know more. Maybe I will give Amazon a prod using some of the clues supplied.
# posted by Jim @ 3:08 AM 
