dianora

I just finished reading "The Cat's meow" (by Jonathan B. Losos) which was featured on Quirks and Quarks. Loved the book. I like cats the way they are. A little bit of the African wild cat still left in them making us treat them at least as equals and not as slaves.

Judging by all the new builds I see lately we will have more space for our useless junk we store than for people to actually live in. Apart from the new large building going up at the old Canadian tire at Clyde and Baseline I noted a new large building up at Lincoln fields which has actually been up for a while.
So we pay good money to store stuff we likely will never use but meanwhile we have a homeless problem and housing shortage.

Octavia Butler is not a writer I have ever had a pressing need to read, but when partner and I were at a school book sale I bought it, as I had heard she was a good writer to read.
I suspect I entered the middle of a trilogy as I had to do a lot of guessing as to what was happening but nevertheless I was reading along until I came across this:

"They were siblings- Human-born and Oankali-born, The smaller one was Oankali-born and the more androgenous-looking of the two." g. 136 of my paper book copy.

This is an obvious typo or so it seemed. In this context the word should have obviously been "androgynous"
but the word "androgenous" does exist. From the Oxford https://www.oxfordreference.com, "Producing only male offspring. Often confused with androgynous, which has a different meaning and a different etymology. [From Greek andros a man + genes born or produced + -ous having or characterized by]"

So how does this happen? The obvious is she simply got the word wrong and no one caught it. Obviously a normal dictionary checker would have flagged it as an unknown word since it is quite specific to Biology.
But what if the spell checker was a better one which also included the esoteric (to us) word "Androgenous" ?
In that case a spell check would have simply not flagged the word and perhaps we have a *reverse* Cupertino effect? see http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002911.html

I am surprised no copy editor caught it.

Speaking of auto-correct this article insists auto-correct is making our spelling worse:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/aaronko/files/2020/08/Final-Project-Article.pdf

And this (from the Atlantic) insists it's not.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/auto-correct-not-ruining-spelling/327785/

You decide!

P.S. FWIW Dreamwidth spell check did not find any spelling mistakes.

Now I don't speak German so I have no idea how well the online translator got it but I had bought my life partner a subscription to Der Spiegel and, they complained they couldn't keep up. I made the suggestion that perhaps what was needed was the equivalent of those "Basic English" broadcasts/news etc. but in German. e.g. 'Basic German'. Of course not only would 'Basic German' have to use a smaller vocabulary, in all aspects as in shorter words, but the sentences would also have to be shorter.

Amusingly one of Immanuel Kant's philosophy books, "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" (Critique of pure reason), in particular, is easier read in English and some German philosophy speakers do that. Kant's German is particularly bad in this book since he rushed to get it into print due to contractual deadlines. There is a wonderful quote in my copy. "Most first-time readers will share the experience described by the Austrian writer Robert Musil of his adolescent hero, Türleif, "When he stopped reading in exhaustion after half an hour he had only reached page two." Maybe a "Grundkenntniss in Deutsch" would have helped this book? Of course maybe 'Basic German' is actually English without the Norman french words! This would of course be Anglish see https://wiki.anglish.info/wiki/What_Is_Anglish

I've opined before that if the COVID-19 virus had have been one that turned people into real-life Zombies we'd all be eating brains by now. However that got me to thinking - what happens if we were all Zombies? Would we have to turn to eating monkey brains or cow brains? Can Zombies contract BSE (madcow) disease?

Memories are funny. Watching some TV chef cooking some concoction with potatoes (Jamie Oliver as it happens just before the news hour) brought back memories of my father. He died January 16, 2007. That's a long time ago now but I still remember him making scalloped potatoes at Xmas time 2006. He loved scalloped potatoes so insisted on making some every time my parents had a holiday meal. There he was seated peeling potatoes then slicing them into the baking dish along with sliced onion. He was in the chair since at this point he had to sit down because he was getting very short of breath. He had lung cancer because he stubbornly refused the bladder cancer treatment for months and now a stubborn man in death too. Carefully planning his funeral from beyond the grave (somehow) so it coincided with the coldest damn day of winter. I know it sounds like poor taste but he would have heartily approved. Dark humour and risque jokes were his forte.

A few weeks ago my partner in crime remarked that a trip outside the house especially to Parkdale market seemed so exciting compared to last year. It's true many things we took for granted are rather different. The other day I noticed a driver ed car with both the occupants in the front that I saw wearing masks. I'd be terrified of catching COVID-19 but I imagine so many people, including this poor instructor, have no choice.

Still I think the idea of eating popcorn and watching Rocky Horror on Halloween sounds like a grand idea. Speaking of which, Rocky Horror is such a tame movie compared to when we both originally saw it. No one would bat an eye if the movie had have come out now compared to back then (1970's !) I can't even remember when we first saw it.

We managed to get some prescriptions filled yesterday and while I was in the drugstore I picked up some needed supplies for the duration. We'll get out of solitary some day but at least we can do it in style.
I also received parcel from Russia of bandpass filters I had ordered for the radio club, so this morning off it went to the person putting the filters together in a box. Unfortunately we will not be having a normal Field Day this year but they'll be ready for 2021.

I'm running slightly late on getting garden tomatoes and seeds planted but egads it was nasty outside yesterday. Looks like it actually might rain and cool things down today.

Dreamwidth may have been HAX0RED I read so changed my password.

I'm happy to say Cassie and I are the proud parents of a loaf of no knead sourdough bread. No knead bread is well known to need a long rising time since the gluten isn't being encourage by the kneading. This was no different and I baked it rather late in the day. It was very good. ;)

The warden let both of us off for a few hours in the morning yesterday on parole. It was nice to get out although the guards were still present at a distance. We shopped for much needed provisions at our local grocery store since we were starting to get low. The luxury of fresh fruit and vegetables!