Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
As the world, and in particular the UK, emerges from the period of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, regular service is resumed — by which I mean the usual mix of the stupid and the bizarre.
[Update: This episode was edited on 25 September 2022 to reflect developments across the weekend in the Optus data breach story. If you’re after just that update, scroll in to 55m02s.]
Continue reading “UPDATED: The 9pm Trickle-Down Containers of Hackers and Grief”
The spring series of The 9pm Edict kicks off in a strange week, especially in British politics and the monarchy. This episode is a disjointed set of personal observations and complaints.
Continue reading “The 9pm Delusion of His Anserine Highness, Princess Timothy of Kew, and Other Observations”
A family in Florida is shocked by some unusual behaviour. Bob Katter talks about his cunning nature. And Scott Morrison continues to be Scott Morrison, telling us he doesn’t trust governments
Continue reading “The 9pm Low-Energy Bob Katter Lovefest with Unexpected Nudity”
The winter series of The 9pm Edict continues with special guest David F Porteous joining us from Edinburgh in the actual Scotland. He’s an author, he’s a social researcher, he’s a podcaster, and he’s a lovely chap to chat with.
Continue reading “The 9pm Extensive Salad-Tossing of the Monarchy with David F Porteous”
I cringe when people talk about the “train station”. “It’s ‘railway station’, you morons,” screams my brain. Well as it turns out, they’re actually not stupid — at least not for that reason. It’s just another relatively modern shift in language.
The chart at the top of the post is a Google Ngram search of their entire English corpus since 1820 — the first public steam railway in the world was the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which opened in 1825 — comparing the usage of “railway station” (blue) versus “railroad station” (red) and “train station” (orange).
You can click through to the full-size chart, or run the search yourself.
As you can see, the most common usage has almost always been “railway station”, with “railroad station” distinctly second-place. A “train station” wasn’t even a thing until the 1950s, but it rose in popularity quite quickly. “Train station” has been the most common usage since the mid-1990s, although it has been declining again since around 2000. I wonder why.
My understanding is that many railway terms derived from the military, because until the railways came along nothing else had been organised on that sort of trans-national and even trans-continental scale except armies. Hence trains have “guards” for their safe operation, and “stations” along the line where staff are stationed to maintain the entire railway system — including fuel, water, trackwork and signalling.
Railway stations are therefore part of a railway’s entire operation, not merely “train stations” for trains to stop at. For me, someone talking about “train stations” is showing their ignorance of how railways work: it’s more than just the trains.
Since I had the Google open in front of me, I thought I’d look at the variations in US versus UK English. It seems that “railroad station” isn’t the dominant American usage that I’d imagined.
Continue reading “Why people who say “train station” sound stupid”
I am so many different kinds of expert these days. On Friday I was on SBS TV’s World News talking about the UK’s High Court decision to order the country’s largest internet service provider BT to block access to a website that provides links to pirated movies.
The video of the news story is embedded in the website article.
SBS has also posted the complete 7-minute video of the interview they recorded.
Yes, I’m wearing a hoodie on national television. At least it was a clean hoodie. I’d taken a cab to SBS straight from the airport. It’s actually a small miracle I had any clean clothes with me at all. Besides, the cameraman chose the hoodie over my black shirt because he wanted to “break things up a bit”. The TV news has too many men in suits and business shirts for his liking, it seems.