When you're with us, the past is not even past: it's just something we make up stories about.
SuzyQ
Tourism Friday:
Big
Castle, Inverness
by Paigetheoracle
This is a nice-looking castle. If anybody's
been there beside Paige, would they like to tell us about what we're looking
at?
QotD
from the professor you wished you had.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.
Richard Feynman
Time
Travel: Guide for the Clueless
(Video)
Somewhere in the future, someone is not sending
us their best. This video has been updated with new, improved narration by a
robot named Oliver. He is a very British robot. Your Editor has had many
productive arguments with Oliver. He still doesn't know how to pronounce
'artisanal', but at least he no longer sounds like a proctologist.
Ode to
the AI-Detecting Software
(Which Is
Also AI)
by DG
As we embark on AI-driven 'journeys'
and uni provosts get caught 'writing' with
ChatGPT,
remember when you speed-dial your attorneys:
in the old days, admins stole from 'Aphorisms A
to Z'.
Today's Time
Travel:
History
and Folklore
(and how
to tell them apart)
by DG
This set
of reflections is a 'lost' piece of writing from 2021 that fell by the wayside
when the site got hacked in a drive-by. Hackers are picking on meatier targets
these days, like the FBI, and Snopes charges money unless you disable your ad
blocker. (Don't disable your ad blocker unless you want 150 cookies per
article. Removing them is tedious. Just learn to do your own research.)
You probably know that the website snopes.com got started as an urban legend discussion site for folklorists. You didn't? Okay, now you do. In those heady early days, they were more concerned with chasing down glurge and folklore than fact-checking politicians. They were inspired (as we all should be) by the work of Professor Jan Brunvand of Utah, author of such seminal works as The Vanishing Hitchhiker. Now, I've had a lot to do with folklorists, especially in Europe, and even published a book review in a folklore journal once. Okay, it was in the East Bloc, and in Romanian, so it's not exactly fame. But I did get involved, is what I'm saying. Back in the day, we thought our folklore research wasn't anything earth-shattering. I mean, it was interesting to us, but it didn't really relate to current events.
Boy, were we wrong.
In the early 1980s I got the first inkling
that folklore studies might not be such an academic exercise after all. Back
then, I taught English to the German military, among others. One of my
students, a paratrooper, warned me about the Bildzeitung.
The Bildzeitung is a tabloid. In fact,
it is the Ur-tabloid. On my way to work, I often saw its headlines on
the papers being read by my fellow trolley passengers. Headlines like 'Man
sticks head out of train window – beheaded!' or 'Man jumps into swimming pool –
it was empty!' Now, you could see headlines like that in the US, even then.
Usually in the supermarket. But the word in front of 'man' would have been
'Florida'. As in, 'Florida Man brings pet gator to Taco Bell, pays fine in
pennies.'
Anyway, we were about to go on our August
break, and my student warned me, 'Don't believe anything the Bildzeitung
prints in August. They bring out the same stories every year. It's a
tradition.' He gave me an example.
Every year, he said, they'd print the one
about the stolen grandmother. It goes like this:
A German
family – Mom, Dad, two kids, and Grandma – go on holiday to Spain. (It's
usually Spain.) They have a fine time camping at the beach until one day – oh,
horror! – Grandma dies suddenly. They're sad, of course, but glad she got to
enjoy the beach before she went. The problem is, what to do?
Now,
this was before the EU had made everything easier. They're terrified of the red
tape involved. They're afraid of the expense. Also, they don't want to have to
bury Grandma so far from home. So they decide on a desperate measure: they wrap
her body (carefully, respectfully) in a tarpaulin, They put it in the roof rack
and head home. They drive quickly because…well, it's summer. Also, they're
German and drive fast on general principle.
They get
past the border between Spain and France, big relief. They pull over at a rest
stop in France to have a meal and a break. But when they come back to the
parking lot…more horror! Their car has been stolen! With Grandma on it! And it
is never found!
I immediately recognised this story as a piece
of folklore. Snopes.com has an analysis for you, complete with themes and
variations. Jan Brunvand has included it in his collection. He says it goes
back to shortly after the Second World War, which would make sense, as that's
when most people started driving on holidays. Although I have always wondered
if there weren't an older version out there somewhere involving a camel
caravan.
You want to read some really old urban legends? Try the Gesta Romanorum. I won't say the tabloids haven't improved since the Middle Ages. I won't say that, not aloud, anyway. But I will think it.
Come to think of it, the old folks in the
hills used to be really good at telling the difference between folklore and
news. They knew how to appreciate both, but seldom confused one with the other.
If you started describing an event and branched out into fictional detail, one
of them was sure to stop you with, 'Now, that's a tale, son.'
Exaggeration for humorous effect was a
specialty of my ancestors. But they didn't confuse a good yarn with the facts
on the ground. We need to get back to our roots, people. We need to be able to
tell the difference between fact and fiction if we're going to make it in the
21st Century.
So the next time somebody tells you that their
second cousin's wife's hairdresser's brother-in-law has a really good cure for measles
that involves raw oysters, or they saw an absolutely genuine photo of a
15-foot-tall feral hog in Louisiana, just laugh. Don't get outraged. Just say,
'Now, that's a tale, friend.' And go about your business.
Praevaleat ratio.
TTFN,
Dmitri
Gheorgheni, Editor
I've not been to Inverness, so have no idea whether there's an older castle behind what is in the photograph, but what we can see looks modern, no more than 200 years old.
ReplyDeleteThe stones do not look weathered. The walls are designed to have large windows - they were not inserted after - so obviously it was built after large glass was available and as there is no sign of anything defensive, the castle is definitely post-Union. You're not going to hold out against a siege or rival raiders with that.
So it is a castle built with modern comforts but very much in a romantic style. Two possible periods spring to mind - but I'm discounting late 1850s/60s when Queen Victoria popularised Scotland by living in Balmoral as there aren't the little touches you would expect to see with Scottish Baronial architecture. That leaves 1820-1840 and the resurgence in Scottish mediæval identity following the influence of Sir Walter Scott.
So my guess is that what we can see of the main building at least is brand new, dating from about 1830 give or take ten years. Whether that's just a newer wing or a façade of an older building I don't know.
<BB<
Aha, good catch, I think! I'm suspecting the older castles are just underneath - since Wikipedia says there's been a castle there since 1057, but I agree, that thing reeks of Victorian Romanticism. Still, at 1836 (designed by Thomas Brown II, who wasn't related to his teacher Thomas Brown), it's still a few years older than the 1877 Hooverville jail, which looks like it would fit nicely in this complex's backyard. So you're spot-on.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Macbeths would recognise it now.
I like the Feynman quote. This can apply to Oliver and indeed all AI and any human on this planet. Like Frank Herbert the author of Dune said, “Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.” I would second that. What people want is a stable universe (less frightening) but as someone else said, the only constant in the universe is change; look at your bodies and read your minds (not page 32 it isn't relevant) - is your knowledge, body and control over either of these the same as it was as a baby? I think most people identify their 'selves' as being the adult form they now have (I'm still waiting for my mind to catch up as the editor knows and we bicker over this all the time but still he's American, what do you expect?)
ReplyDelete