Tom Roper's Weblog

Crimes against the travelling public

'We're not going to knee-jerk a reaction out of this because one element of one project of one big programme overran', Saturday's Financial Times, quotes the Chief Executive of Network Rail Iain Coucher as saying, apropos the West Coast line shambles. Do I lead a sheltered life? This is the first time I have heard the clichéd phrase 'knee-jerk' used as a verb. As fares rise again, trains run late, over-crowded or  not at all, they could at least show mercy to the language. If Stephenson, Brunel or Gresley were living, they would feed Coucher into the fire-box.

 

Plumpton: Sussex National day

My selections for today. How inadequate this bald list is at conveying the excitement of the afternoon
12.55: Kavaloti
1.25: Kruguyrova
1.55: Kavatcha
2.25: Migwell
2.55: White on Black
3.25: The Hardy Boy
3.55: Half Cocked

Tolworth hurdle day

I'm off to Plumpton tomorrow for the Sussex national meeting. To pass the time until then , I make the following selections for today:
Sandown 1:00: Chomba Womba

Chepstow 120: Sharajan

Sandown 240: Breedsbreeze

Wincanton 320: Spring Lover

Sandown 345: Principe Azzurro

European première of Hollywood Librarian

I see that the European première of Hollywood Librarian is to take place in Athlone at the Irish Health Science Libraries Group conference. I believe a UK showing, organised by CILIP, is not far off.
See the trailer on YouTube

Libraries once, twice, three times in the THES

In today's Times Higher Education Supplement (soon to become the Times Higher Education) I was surprised to find two items of interest in among the tedious lists of establishment gongs. Michael Jubb of the Research Information Network discusses the differences between librarians' and researchers' ideas about what librarians should be doing. Subject expertise and information literacy training are best delivered by academics, the researchers believe, and while librarians have tried to find a place in the open access movement, and in the management of institutional repositories, Jubb reports that most repositories are 'short of content and little used'.
Elsewhere, Rebecca Knuth reviews Lucien Polasatron's Books on Fire: the tumultuous story of the world's great libraries*. Her review appears twice, on page 24 with the headline, 'a flaming injustice that destroys our records' and again on page 25, with the same headline but shorn of the initial indefinite article. The final paragraphs of the two versions of the review differ. Another review appears in full on page 24, and then its latter half is repeated on page 25 with the headline repeated and an accompanying picture. A pity; too much sherry at the THES sub-editors New Year party, I suppose.
*Polastron, Lucien X
Books on Fire: the tumultuous story of the world's great libraries
London: Thames & Hudson, 2007
9780500513842

Technorati Tags: judd, libraryhistory, Polasatron, RIN, THES

Latest Racine

As I watch my selections at this afternoon's Cheltenham meeting, I discovered that passage in Virgina Woolf's diaries, the entry for 15 February 1922, where she mentions how Lytton Strachey misread a newspaper placard at Waterloo station saying 'Latest racing' as saying Latest Racine, thinking it referred to a new production of Esther, translated and adapted by John Masefield. I knew the anecdote, but had never come across the source.

At Cheltenham this afternoon, I select the following:
1.00: Millards Lad
135: Predateur
215: Vodka Bleu
245: Star de Mohaison
320: Wichita Linesman

Woolf, Virginia
The diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume II: 1920-1924
London: Hogarth Press, 1968

Technorati Tags: lyttonstrachey, virginiawoolf, racine, woolf

Simon Hoggart and Minerva's owl: '...die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug'

Simon Hoggart, in a review of the year in parliament, finds John Reid's use of a quotation of Hegel, the owl of Minerva flies at dusk, weird. Reid was answering a question about when the 'war n terror' would be concluded. It's quite probable that a politician like Reid used the quotation to obscure his meaning, rather than clarify it, as a more elaborate way of confessing that he hadn't a clue.
But Hegel's meaning is not that hard to understand. I have always taken it to mean that Minerva's owl, that is to say philosophy, Minerva being the Roman goddess of wisdom and the owl her symbol, can only understand events at their end, that is in retrospect.

Technorati Tags: hegel, minerva, waronterror, hoggart, reid

Leopardstown Festival Hurdle day: Hardy Eustace will win

Leopardstown 155: Hardy Eustace
Newbury 205: Hell's Bay
Musselburgh 220: Tucker
Leopardstown 225: Grangeclere Lark
Newbury 240: Elusive Dream
Musselburgh 325: Along the Nile

The tenth krater

As always, the BMJ turns frivolous for its Christmas issue. Greek scholars may enjoy an article examining classical Greek attitudes to sensible drinking, based on a fragment from Eubulus' Semele or Dionysus (the fragments seem not to be in the Perseus digital library)

Classically intoxicated: correlations between quantity of alcohol consumed and alcohol related problems in a classical Greek text
Christopher C H Cook, Helen Tarbet, David Ball
BMJ 2007;335:1302-1304, doi:10.1136/bmj.39420.333565.BE

Technorati Tags: drink

Kauto Star for the King George

I can't see Kauto Star losing this afternoon. Paul Nicholls kept him out of the Tingle Creek, to save him for today's King George VI Chase
Kempton 120: Joe Lively
Kempton 155: Harchibald

Kempton 230: Kauto Star