I thought this was pretty low, and imagined a list of explanations. Are more male authors published? More male authors reviewed? Undoubtedly.

And then I thought: science! I wonder if my “connections” (LT automagically finds a list of up to 100 libraries of similar makeup) do better?

(“o/c/u” is “other / contested / unknown”, e.g. Poppy Z. Brite; “n/a” is mostly corporate authors, e.g. Grant Naylor)

On average, my connections do better than I do. A real surprise to me!

In mitigation, two of my 100 connections have near 50:50 ratios, which seriously skews the mean. But this is no excuse: if they can read that way, why don’t I?

I hereby pledge, as of yesterday’s visit to the public library (which is when this thing kicked off in my head), to try out at least as many new female authors as male ones.

I also feel that happiness has scarcity value. It’s not always easy to come by. For me, for this purpose, some people/places/things are better than others. If you found a better lode of happiness elsewhere, wouldn’t you consider moving toward it?

This might be further evidence that I value place a lot, and people perhaps not enough. (I’m quite content with how much I value things, thank you.) More food-for-thought for me.

(Incidentally, I am using the construction I’d've on a daily basis. I love it. I hope this is a passing phase.)

I live here: SF is wonderful. I have this idea that I’d like living in San Francisco, and I’m not doing anything else with my life, so why not? But I can’t really try it out from 5,000 miles away. I can visit, when I can afford to do so, and I can read and watch and learn. So that’s what I do. I love finding out things about stuff, anyway, and it’s become the one ongoing project that doesn’t lose my interest.

Me being me, I’m keen to experience fully, fall in love completely. I want to get deep perspective, broad perspective, all perspectives. And the thought occurs that I’m not the first to like the idea of moving to this city, and maybe the natives are very tired of the newcomers acting newcomerly. I’m sensitive to how I imagine I’m perceived. Not wanting to fall into old traps (can’t avoid the new ones, sadly), I love reading and learning from these San Franciscans’ diverse stories. It’s not diminished my desire to move, and I can feel my newcomer’s worries dissipate.

Separated by a common language is also wonderful. The sidebar helpfully says it all—’observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK’—and gives the Shaw quote of the title—’England and America are two countries separated by a common language’. Again, I’ve simply been enjoying the examples, and the good writing. But perhaps I should delve into the archive and start taking on board some lessons. I like using my bastardized U.S.-UK-Ned version of English, but I’d like to take more control of it, get a better handle on cultural norms, and deviate from them at will rather than at random.

I reckon I’m liking these for very personal reasons, but I know good stories, good photos, and good old-fashioned linguistics appeal to more than just me. Enjoy.

When someone says “FAIL”, what they’re really saying is, “I’m failing to understand a creative person’s constraints.”

This is a bold claim, too bold for my liking. When I say Fail, I’m saying ‘this doesn’t work as advertised’, ‘this isn’t doing it for me’. Such a response is impermissible? Really?

I like that I can tell the IT department or the TV network to go back to the drawing board when they get it wrong, and that I can do this with just four letters. I wouldn’t use Fail to criticize art—because I’d rightly be ignored—and I wouldn’t use it to criticize an individual—because I try not to be a dick.

Fail

marks a lack of human empathy, and signifies an absence of intellectual curiosity

Maybe. There is an empathy problem on the web—people forget pixels represent other people—and intellectual incuriosity remains a lousy basis for criticism in any medium. But watch the words ‘marks’ and ’signifies’ here. The problem here isn’t slang, for that’s all Fail is.

Slang is fine. Slang is, dare I say it, creative:

Attack the real problems, not the markers, the signifiers. Wood’s not trees.

This strenuous effort is so I can tackle the great pile of non-library books still awaiting reading. They were Christmas presents. Birthday presents. Job-leaving presents. A birthday present from 2007, come to that.

But I’m not proud of achieving the goal I set myself. While part of my mind dedicated itself to virtue, another part has sneakily, surreptitiously opened a blank TextEdit file, titled it ‘To read’, and added more books.

I’m not even fooling myself.

And tweet tweets too:

I think I just still enjoy wordles, and this is the corpus I have to hand.

Also, too many of my tweets are moans, and from this I can tell that they’re often moans about London, the office, the weekend not arriving soon enough etc. I’d suspected as much, but here’s graphic confirmation. I will stare at this image next time I think of tweeting the same moan twice.

I imagine a collaborative website might work here, e.g. “SO 543 was very kind in showing me the way to the station”, “Think SO 258 might be racist”, “SO 330 just attacked my newspaper-vending friend in cold blood” etc.

Obvious problems: police will game the system, police will break their own bloody rules anyway. Needs more thought…

Derbyshire: Look a little light as a lot of experienced players have gone since the end of last season. … the bowling attack is not good and I predict they will once again finish in the bottom half.

Essex: The loss of Graham Napier to the IPL is a blow but they should have him for the rest of the summer.

Glamorgan: Matthew Maynard has got to do something down in Wales this season. … the pitch favours batsmen and this season could be another hard slog. I think they will struggle.

Gloucestershire: They simply have to perform better than they did last year, be that in the one-day or four-day form of the game.

Kent: Stuart Clark may yet be a great signing …

Leicestershire: The Foxes are still nowhere near being major candidates for silverware or promotion. They are a middle of the road side and simply do not have enough money to improve vastly a squad that is too reliant on young players.

Middlesex: They will be stronger when Shah is available.

Northamptonshire: It’s hard to see any progress at Wantage Road this season. … They could struggle to improve on last season, when they won only three out of 16.

Surrey: They need to plan what they want to do and how they want to do it. … I’m not sure they can be promoted straight back.

Yes, I’m cherry-picking, and yes, this is shooting fish in a barrel, but golly is he grumpy. He’s ‘nice’ about three of the nine counties, and even there you can hear his bored, boring tones. I find him so hard to reconcile with the legend of ‘81. Maybe he’s been jealous of Botham’s fame ever since?

Mr. Mitchell: … the obsession with employing consultants. We employ them for every problem that comes up, and the resulting bill is enormous. Overall, it amounts to £70 billion or more, but the assumption is that the necessary expertise is no longer available in the civil service. …

The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury: Where did my hon. Friend get his figure of £70 billion for Government spending on consultants? For the record, the amount is £900 million. That total fell by 31 per cent. between 2005 and 2008 …

Mr. Mitchell: I admit that the figure that I quoted was my own concoction, but I did not hire a consultant—I made it up myself.

Mr. Bacon: I think that the Minister was getting a bit excited at the thought that suddenly there was nearly £70 billion that the Treasury did not know about that could be used for something. We all know the hon. Gentleman’s aesthetic temperament when it comes to statistics. I have completely forgotten what I wanted to say in this intervention! It was something to do with consultants and, if I remember, I shall let him know.

Mr. Mitchell: The figure includes consultants employed by local government.

Mr. Bacon: I have remembered what I wanted to say. …

Hansard reference: HC Deb 12 March 2009 c488-93. Similar Canadian nonsense is occasionally posted at Hansurdity.

That is all.