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Questions and Answers - Part 3

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A fall of geckos

14:09 / 07.12.05

The Trinian's uniform is apparently based on the uniform of the school that Searle's daughter Kate attended, James Allen's Girls' School.

There is a long standing rumour that St Trinian's itself is based on St Mary's School in my original home town of Wantage. I'm not sure of the truth of this, but it is backed up by the fact that local signposts (for Hanney etc) were used in the original film of St Trinian's, and I read in a Searle essay that friends of Searle attended St Mary's. The only other evidence of the St Mary's/St Trinian's link I've been able to find online is this excerpt from Panorama - "Cannabis from the Chemist".

"BRADSHAW: The St Mary's Girls school at Wantage, model for the famous fictional girls school "St Trinians". In the morning the chaplain takes the service. It's been a while since his wife Jo has been able to join him. Jo has the most debilitating MS of any patient we met. She also needs carers and winches to get up in the morning. Jo was an active young woman in good health until the mid 80s. Now at 58 she's almost totally paralysed."

Until recently the School stood in the centre of Wantage, educating the children of the rich. Almost every shop in town had notices either banning them from entry or ensuring that only one St Mary's School-kid was allowed in at any one time, due to the high shoplifting levels that seemed to accompany their visits.

Opposite St Mary's was a small shop with dusty empty shelves in the windows, called The Wantage Novel Library. This odd looking shop stocked Whimsy’s (small model animals last popular in the 1970's), models made of shells, book tokens and a few books by local authors. It never appeared to actually sell any of these. Shortly before I left Wantage, I was passing this shop and, overcome with curiosity, dropped in and asked the proprietor how they managed to stay open.

Turns out they made a fortune flogging duty free fags and beer to the St Mary's girls.

About five years ago, an entire year's worth of school-girls were sent home for rioting, looting shops and assaulting teachers. The local papers described them as being like a flock of locusts leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. The school shifted premises out of town shortly afterwards.

My turn for a question.

Do badgers hibernate (or is mine just really lazy)?

14:13 / 07.12.05

Is Igor Karakoff really badly stroking Krum's hair in that scene or what?

I'm going tonight, hooray!, so will be able to give you my considered opinion - but if you're ever passing a Borders and see the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Postcard Book, you will find a quite extraordinary photo of Karkaroff standing behind Krum with his arms round him and one of his hands cupped over Krum's pectoral muscle. (Um. My memory may have photoshopped that bit about the pectoral muscle very slightly, but the photo does show Karkaroff with his arms round Krum in real and not just in my brane.)

14:19 / 07.12.05

If you are talking the european badger, they don't technically hibernate, instead they go into a state of winter dormancy, depending on the climate of their home, much like the squirrel I imagine.

14:31 / 07.12.05

uggh. I just re-read my previous post and I sound like a big pedantic nerd of the worst stripe. Sorry, I really need to work on my posting skills.

22:58 / 07.12.05

Gecko, it was about 15 years ago they hit the national press. How time flies, eh? Wantage? I feel a PM coming on.

All Acting Regiment

19:05 / 08.12.05

Thanks for everyone's help with the shipbits. Now to literature.

What was the essay called in which T.S. Eliot talked about the difference between tradition- that is, a sequence of creative acts in which each person is aware of and builds on what has gone before- and convention, which he defined as purely following the status quo? Might make for a good thread here actually.

Also, what was that rather presumptuous Rudyard Kipling poem called where the Indian thief steals the English officer's horse and various tradings of sons and other manly stuff occurs?

19:33 / 08.12.05

I think it was something from Tolkien: Monsters and the Critics. I forget which. I only skimmed it and it was a looong time ago.

19:55 / 08.12.05

What's the deal with the weird patterns you see when you close your eyes and press on them? Am I going to go blind before I'm 25 because I used to do this all the time when I was young?

20:25 / 08.12.05

No, not by 25. Thirty-four... possibly, I'll let you know in a month or so. Hell, it's a free psychedelic lightshow which is a handy way to get into lucid dreaming (see Rick Veitch's Rarebit Fiends lettercols). I must stress, though, that I will bear no responsibility for popped eyeballs. Well, not yours, anyway. I swear, copper, it wasn't me.

unheimlich manoeuvre

22:08 / 08.12.05

Also, what was that rather presumptuous Rudyard Kipling poem called where the Indian thief steals the English officer's horse and various tradings of sons and other manly stuff occurs?

It think it is The Ballad of East and West, but with an Afghan horse-thief.

23:41 / 08.12.05

Awesome, thanks cube. Let me know if your eyes suddenly explode or something.

14:50 / 09.12.05

Bear with me on this:

Many, many years ago when I was just a lil' monk, I saw an episode of Dr. Who that scared the bejabbers out of me. I don't remember very much about it, but would like a hand with the name of the episode and the creatures that freaked my shit out so much.

The creatures were played by either children or little people, were pinkish-orangish and looked slightly melty. I think they lived mainly underground in a mine or somesuch, and were enslaved by a human male who forced them to work in the mine (or somesuch). At the end of the episode the little pink melty things had a revolution and stomped the slaver-human to death. There's even a shot of one of the little guys kicking the human's head across the room. I'm not quite sure what Dr. Who had to do with any of this.

What episode was this? What was the name for those little creatures? And could you kindly supply a still or two from the episode so that I can relive old horrors?

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:55 / 09.12.05

Hmmm... that actually sounds a bit like "the Web", but that's Blakes 7 rather than Dr. Who.

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

15:02 / 09.12.05

Arrgh. Can anyone tell me the name of (or, even better find words for) the English folksong where a shoemaker meets the Devil on a bridge, and convinces said Devil to drop the enormous pile of earth he's carrying to bury a town, which forms Silbury Hill. That's incredibly badly explained, but there's a song about it, the refrain being a 5-1 cadence to the words "on Silbury Hill". Google tells me nothing, and it's driving me bonkers.

15:10 / 09.12.05

Yaaaaaaaagh!

Thank you.

17:32 / 09.12.05

I've been learning Spanish again recently having abandoned it about 4yrs ago. I know there are a few Spanish students on the 'lith so does anyone know of any grammatically helpful websites that clearly explain stuff like verb usage/tenses/pronouns etc?

All Acting Regiment

18:22 / 09.12.05

That's the poem. Fairly sure it's an Indian bloke, though?.

20:03 / 10.12.05

I think this question has been answered repeatedly on Barbelith, but I wouldn't even begin to know what to search for. What's that thingy called when people believe something and it's reinforced everywhere they look because they're unconsciously filtering out any contradictory information/experience? Like for example you think "it always rains on Wednesdays," and you'd swear it's true because you always notice when it does, but forget whenever it doesn't.

All Acting Regiment

00:06 / 11.12.05

Hmm. Is there some sort of radio channel that we don't use, but that could be used for sending messages? Or perhaps in a different medium, like could you send frequencies through water?

Or in other words if you were keen on sending radio type messages but didn't want humans finding out, how could you do it?

12:44 / 11.12.05

Ibis, I think what you're after is cognitive dissonance reduction - does that sound right? I'm glad you asked actually because when doing a google search for it I discovered, not only that I have been spelling 'cognitive' incorrectly for some years, but that a post by me in which I spell 'cognitive' incorrectly is the top result on google for 'cognative dissonance reduction'.

13:28 / 11.12.05

I'm about to get access to broadband for a limited time, and I was wondering what a good file-sharing system is for music. I used to use Ares, which was fine, but I was wondering what other barbeloids use.

13:51 / 11.12.05

bit torrent.

All Acting Regiment

13:58 / 11.12.05

Where do the following lines come from?

The animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

14:18 / 11.12.05

Vincennes, thanks for searching but that's not it. Actually if anyone happened to be listening to an NPR show last week that was about the cognitive differences between men and women, one of the speakers used the phrase I'm looking for. She was saying that if you believe all boys play more aggressively, girls like dolls, etc., your real-life experience would seem to support your theories because you're unconciously scanning out all examples to the contrary. But I can't remember which NPR show it was nor when it was on. Aaaagh, going nuts.

17:30 / 11.12.05

Okay, I found it. Found the NPR show, and the phrase I was looking for is The Stereotype Confirmation Process.

19:36 / 11.12.05

NEW QUESTION ALERT!

Are there any freeware programs out there that fix audio/video sync problems? Please note, I'm not looking for a how to - I want the process automated.

I thank you.

unheimlich manoeuvre

20:23 / 11.12.05

Legba - That's the poem. Fairly sure it's an Indian bloke, though?

Definitely Afghan.

Where do the following lines come from?

The animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

It is quoted the Order of Things by Foucault but is originally from a short story, by Borges, The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

20:45 / 13.12.05

NEW QUESTION:
If anyone could give me a little help with this I'd be very thankful.
Did Nietzsche ever say something along the lines of intellectual power being the refuge of the weak and the actual strength and force being the only real power?
If he did, or if I'm confusing him with someone else, could you (oh helpful one) direct me to something quotable regarding this?

13:07 / 14.12.05

I've been googling for ages trying to see if this still exists with no joy. Does anyone remember a cool little site that had a graphic representation (flash? Java?) of how closely related bands were. I think it used the Amazon API, if that's any help. What on earth was it called? Graaagh. Damn you porous memory.

22:30 / 15.12.05

What happens to people when they die? Seriously. I want to know. My boyfriend knows, but he won't tell me. I know some of you must know. If you know, but you can't tell me, why not? How do I find this out before I die, if you won't tell me? And if I kill myself, will I be miserable after I die?

22:46 / 15.12.05

Opinions vary, fuckbaked. Start here maybe.
You okay?

13:59 / 17.12.05

thanks.

Yeah, I'm ok. I guess I was temporarily not ok, but I'm ok now, I think.

All Acting Regiment

15:12 / 17.12.05

Is it true that one of the Queen's uncles, the Earl of Glamis, was a huge deformed egg monster that was kept on the roof of Windsor Castle and ate birds and small mammals that it captured?

19:48 / 17.12.05

Aha. Found the bands thing.

21:22 / 17.12.05

Again I ask: Where would be a good place to hide next year during the soccer world championship?

I don´t want to be here, while "soccer fans" from all over the world take apart the city/pubs/subway and decorate the sidewalk with sick.

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