Gallimaufry of Whits
Being for the Month of 2007-12
These are quick notes taken by Sean B. Palmer on the Semantic Web, Python
and Javascript programming, history and antiquarianism, linguistics and
conlanging, typography, and other related matters. To receive these bits of
dreck regularly, subscribe to the feed. To browse other
months, check the contents.
If you're one of those people who, like me, doesn't want to see the American
Culture Machine swallow up the world, then what forenames ought you give your
backing to? To settle that question, I used the lists of most popular names from Behind the Name
for 2000 to 2006 in the USA and UK to find that out, giving a double negative
weight to the US names, a positive weight to the UK names, and adding them all
together.
Note that I only did this for girls' names, because boys' names are
arse-boring. Also I stripped out all of the silly names for you so that you
didn't have to. The results, namely all those names that were left over with
positive scores, are as follows:
Isobel, Rosie, Harriet, Libby, Georgina, Jodie, Louise, Charlie, Cerys,
Zara, Gemma, Matilda, Kirsty, and Eve.
Note the Welsh (Cerys) and Scots (Kirsty) contingent in there; that gave me
the idea of loaning from the Celtic nations to bolster things up a bit too
which might help if you're naming a child and don't like any of the above. Also
you could always borrow from the continent, in this time of cultural
crisis.
Incidentally, if you found this list because you're having a baby boy
(congratulations!) and you really want to use a very British boy's name then do
email me and I'll do the male list too.
Oh and for any friends of mine who are raising an eyebrow at this, no, I'm not
pregnant. I'm just a dedicated follower of culture.
Literally ninety-five seconds after I announced the list of most British
female names, I was asked to produce a
similar list for boys. So here it is!
Rhys, Ewan, Finlay, Tom, Freddie, Lewis, Louie, Theo, Ben, Harry, Jamie.
Note the strong Celtic contingent again. By the way, just in case you're
wondering what got the lowest score for each list, it was Ashley for
female names and Christian for male names. One interesting anomaly was that
Demi scored very highly on the Britsh ratings... perhaps Demi Moore is much
less liked in America than in Britain?
One possible way of negating the influence of American culture that
presumably gave rise to Demi scoring so highly would be to go back to the most
common names from the '60s, '70s, and perhaps '80s before the influence was so
strong, though then of course you'll be getting names that are a bit out of
date.
Several days ago I uploaded a video of Charles Godefroy Flying Through the Arc de
Triomphe to YouTube, being my first YouTube video.
I'd settled on Arcs as the name of my Semantic Web UA, and the backend that
it uses is called Trio, so I was thinking about "Arcs de Trio" which brought me
to Wikipedia's entry on the Arc de Triomphe and the bit about Godefroy. It
mentioned newsreel footage of the event and I thought hey, that must be online
somewhere!
It was harder than I thought, but thanks to a little help from Robin
Berjon I managed to find a clip on the French National Archives website. I just
snipped the video from there, it being part of a longer montage about the Arc
de Triomphe, and turned the sound off to make sure I was only using the public
domain part of the video.
Godefroy did it, apparently, to honour those who fought in WWI, and to give
some optimism to the post-war country; something to cheer about. It was 1919,
and he was flying a Nieuport biplane, which was apparently a famous sporty
plane of the time.
The thing that gets me is that they didn't even stop the traffic when
Godefroy flew through! It must've been known about since the camera crew were
there...
The Flog is one year
old! Hooray for Whits-the-Younger. Hmm... this means that Simon's Flogwhits
spin-off must be coming up to a year old soon too.
And I still haven't properly released the latest software! I kinda plan to
redo it yet again anyway. As usual, I'm having ideas about it.
A while ago I rang up my favourite cartoonist, Peter Plant, whose Bogart
strip had been in the Daily Mail for years over here in the UK, and said "dang
man, you should have a website". To my surprise he heartily agreed, and so I've
made a Bogart website with him,
updated every day with a fresh new strip.
It's hard to describe just how bizarre the process has been because cartoons
are crafted to be little worlds whose contexts you don't really think about.
Going from being just a fan to someone who's involved in making sure that the
presentation of the thing is pixel perfect is strange, but at least the old
"don't meet your heroes!" adage is totally wrong in this case: Pete's hilarious
to work with.
So anyway, enjoy all the free cartoons!
Penny Tranter used the word "parky" today on the weather report, which made
me wonder about its etymology. I found several interesting things which I then
submitted to the OED. Here's what I wrote:
☃ ☂ ✻
The OED traces it back to 1895, but is uncertain of the etymology. I have
found evidence that the OED's suggestion of "Perh. < PARKY adj.1" is
correct, from a 1902 book of slang:
Parkey (or Parky), /adj./ and /adv./
(tramps').--Cold; uncomfortable:
as when sleeping in the open.
1898. /Pink \Un and Pelican/, 273-
'Morning, William; cold s'morning?' re-
marked the victualler patronisingly. 'It
is a bit PARKY,' assented William.
- Farmer, John Stephen and Henley, William Ernest (1902). Slang and
its Analogues Past and Present. Volume V, p.140. London.
http://www.archive.org/details/slangitsanalogue05farmuoft
And a bolstering of this still being the accepted etymology seventeen years
later:
'Parky', said Mrs. Bailey, 'cold; like a park.'
- Dorothy Miller Richardson (1919), Interim, p.86.
Later on, however, Eric Partridge came up with an interesting datum:
parky; incorrectly parkey. Cold; chilly.
(Only of weather; in Midland dial., how-
ever, it = witty, smart or sharp of tongue.)
From 1898 or a little earlier. Prob. ex
/perky, parky/, characteristic of a park; cf.
dial. /parkin/, ginger-bread.
- Partridge, Eric (1973). The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang.
p.667.
His suggested link to "smart or sharp of tongue" sounds vaguely plausible to
me as having a part in the emergence of the word, but without further input
it's hard to tell.
I don't have any antedatings for you, but I was able to find interdatings
from 1896 and 1899 that I will provide you upon request. They don't give any
context that is helpful to ascertain the etymology, unfortunately.
The folk etymology that's built up around the term on the web seems most
commonly to link it to "parka", an overcoat to keep out the cold, for which
I've found no evidence in the literature.
☃ ☂ ✻
Sadly the OED only just updated words starting with "p", so it'll probably
be some years before they get around to incorporating this new material if they
want to use it.
When you license a package under a permissive license like the Modified BSD
or MIT licenses, normally you put the 25ish lines of license text in a file
called LICENSE or LICENSE.txt, and then put a boilerplate in the files
themselves.
There are two problems with this. First, nobody bothers reading the LICENSE
or LICENSE.txt if the boilerplate is succinct enough. But secondly, the
licenses don't actually protect the boilerplate: it can be taken out of the
files!
Wouldn't it be nice if the license was as small as the boilerplate? Then
there'd be no need for a separate file. In fact there are a couple of licenses
that are almost fit for the task:
Spurred on by Noah Slater, who volunteered
to make a Debian package out of Phenny if I picked a license, I combined these
two together to cover up their faults whilst making them shorter, and came up
with the Æsthetic Permissive
License. Here's how it reads at the moment:
Copyright <Year>, <Entity Name and Optional Metadata>
Copying and distribution of this work, with or without modification, are
permitted provided this entire instrument is preserved as a notice.
DISCLAIMER: THIS WORK IS WITHOUT WARRANTY.
This is the text that I submitted
to the OSI and to the
FSF. So far there's been no negative feedback, just a suggested revision
and a bit of admiration and a mistaken interpretation of my review submission
from a well known licensing individual.
In reponse to the first comment I drafted this possible alternative:
Copyright <Year>, <Entity Name and Optional Metadata>
Entities may use, copy, sell, and distribute this work, with or without
modification, provided this entire instrument is preserved as a notice.
DISCLAIMER: THIS WORK IS WITHOUT WARRANTY.
Whatever the eventual text, it'd be really great if we managed to get an
eminently usable license out of this.
Sean B. Palmer, inamidst.com