January Notes Page
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January science readings.
An interesting interpretation of dots and lines on cave art.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal : "An Upper Palaeolithic protowriting system and phenological calendar"
I started writing this as a WEIT column, but it's going wider.
They assert that dot counts and a "y-shaped" symbol on Palaeolithic cave art encode information about the breding/ gathering or migration times of the depicted species, compared to a "spring thaw" start date in the year.
It's an interesting idea - but it's a long way from Ventris and Linear B. As a syllabic writing system, Linear B has around a hundred elements, each of which represents (approximately) one concept (sound). So the proposal "Linear B means this set of sounds" has around a hundred elements on which it can be tested. That's enough elements of communication to be able to convey effectively any message in the language. What the computing people call a "Turing complete" system.
This proposal though ... I see four elements to the "writing system" (dots and lines representing a single item ("lunar month", it is proposed) ; the concept of counting itself ; the "Y" symbol, representing "giving birth" ; and implicitly they also need an agreed way of recognising "start of year" - which would probably be the winter solstice or some such marker of "start of year". Which is a bit thin for a writing system. Most non-ideographic writing systems contain a few dozen characters (alphabets, such as the Latin script I'm typing in), or a hundred or so (for syllabaries, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics, Cuneiform, and Linear B).
Archaeology, at least in Europe, is replete with structures that seem to have some
relationship to annual astronomical events, for which a calendar purpose is often imputed. That would align temptingly with the need to have a point in the year to count lunar months from. But ... when you look closely at such structures in one area, you can see up to 45 degrees difference in alignment between adjacent structures. Which puts assignment of this structure to that calendar point, e.g. mid-winter solstice] onto creakingly thin ice.
Reading the paper itself ... they use the French term "bonne saison" meaning the springtime thawing of rivers, melting of snow and greening of the landscape as their reference time, not the mid-winter solstice. Makes reasonable sense.
[I don't know how much American monumental construction has survived to be recognised. I'd be surprised if there were none, but it's not a field I'm familiar with.]
This proposed four-element writing system reminds me of some of the "esoteric" programming languages - specifically Whitespace, which uses [Space], [Tab] and [Linefeed] (but not [Carriage Return], probably to make it DOS-compatible) as the elements of it's writing system. That is sufficient to implement a Turing complete language. But a lot of other common understandings between writers and readers are needed to get meaning out of what is literally a blank page. (Obviously, Whitespace allows comments. So in a program listing, anything the programmer can read will be ignored by the compiler. And of course a Whitespace program can be steganographically hidden in an otherwise innocent text.)
It's a very interesting idea for interpreting these artworks though. It may even be correct that it represents, for some "ritual" purpose [archaeological sense], something about birth/ death and or seasonal cycles. But to actually test that ... quite hard.
How this relates to modern writing systems is another big question. There's 35000-odd years between the peak of preserved cave art and the origins of our current writing systems. Which have fairly complete records from pictographic origins to their present alphabetic (and ideographic) - so these are very unlikely to directly represent a source for those writing systems. These markings may represent the roots of the idea of recording information for use by future generations (or just for teaching the next generation) - which is a necessary step. (The paper puts it as "artificial memory systems (AMS) or external memory systems (EMS) to coin the terms used in Palaeolithic archaeology and cognitive science respectively".) But a direct connection ... I'm not convinced (and the paper doesn't claim that :
"We may not be convinced that the Upper Palaeolithic sequences and associated symbols can be described as written language, given that they do not represent grammatical syntax, but they certainly functioned in the same way as proto-cuneiform. We may not describe them as ‘administrative documents’ as would a Sumerologist (e.g. Van de Mieroop 1999, 13), but that is exactly what they were, record-keeping of animal behaviour in systematic units of time and incorporating at least one verb. We do not want to press the controversial (and in many senses, semantic) question of whether writing was a Palaeolithic invention; perhaps it is best described as a proto-writing system, an intermediary step between a simpler notation/convention and full-blown writing"
- but it's going to be represented as that.
A bit of a change, notes on a book I was given.
link
Several months back a friend asked me to read a "based on fact" book - in whose real-world events he played a minor role. So, I did so. I'm not sure he got what he was looking for - I completely didn't engage with the topic of the book, but I was interested in how the author had been let down by the the publishing process. Which might raise some questions for people who are in their own process of writing a book.
Title : Sniper One
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 978-0-718-14994-9
Number of pages: 350
Published 2007 (I note that there is a 2008 edition which is some 30 pages longer. Some of my issues may have been addressed in this. I don't know, and without a friend nagging at me, I'm unlikely to hunt it down to read.)
The subject of the book was the activities of a British Army squadron (platoon, whatever - like I said, it's not a subject I'm interested in) working in southern Iraq during the "peace keeping" activities after "Gulf War 2" and the "regime change" which has been such a remarkable success. But that's not the fault of the squaddies on the ground.
The claim to fame (infamy?) of this “deployment” is that they were involved in the longest sustained firefight of a British Army unit. While "peace keeping". We really should re-introduce the row of pike-mounted heads of politicians ... over the entrance to the Houses of Parliament maybe? The book is full of various military derring-do, and a moderate amount of jargon. Which is where the technical problems start to come in.
The author used a ghost-writer. Well, no shame in that. Even royalty does it! But it's clear that the ghost-writer didn't have the same level of familiarity with the equipment and jargon that the professional (and nominal author) did have. So when the reader also lacks familiarity ... who did what, to whom, using what becomes unclear. Now normally, that would be something that an editor or copy-editor would pick up on, and send the manuscript back with a small forest of post-it notes for the author (or ghost) to attend to. Well, that round of editing certainly hadn't happened with the version I read (see note above about a 2008 edition). Which doesn’t speak well for Penguin Ltd, whose job this is.
There’s another complicating factor for books like this (by serving soldiers, in particular) – they have to go through a military censor too. I doubt they were In the slightest bit interested in whether the book was clear, or if the author made a fool of himself – as the current furore over some Royal’s autobio and his “kill count” shows.
In the following listing, page numbers refer to the 2007 UK hardback.
Error listing for Sniper One
| Page number | Comment or query |
| Front matter, x - xi | The location map. My contact tells me that the version they had “on the ground” was decorated with various coloured legends on particular roads, allegedly intended to make life difficult for people listening in to radio traffic. “Going to roundabout Red 5” being less clear than “Going to roundabout between Amarah Street and Nasiriyah Road”. Which is fine enough in itself. Unfortunately, the reproduction in the book is in monochrome, and these distinctions have been lost.
That’s a common problem in publishing – getting figures to come out well, particularly in the body of a book (photographic plates are a different matter). So if you’re trying to get your book published, really pay close attention to what your editor tells you about figures. They (the publishing companies) probably can make do with a sketch in paint on toilet paper, but they’ll do a much better job if you can present your figure as a PDF, or some other electronic image format. The production process is electronic from the ghost writer to the delivery carton at the bookshop, and you may as well accept that, not fight it.
That doesn’t guarantee success (a correspondent in the 1990s was still let down by the quality of printing and poor contrast in his “trade” book, despite having done academic publishing for decades) but it improves the odds. |
| Front matter, x - xi | Separate from how the presented maps were processed and reproduced is an issue of scale. A single figure isn’t adequate to give the reader either the strategic overview (where this site was in relation to Baghdad, to the British forces bases in Basra and to the British advance base from which this “CIMIC” outpost was supplied. Similarly the “town size” map doesn’t really display the environment around “CIMIC”, the fire lines, the ranges of mortars and different guns … That lack is in the hands of the author (and to a lesser degree, the ghost-writer). In my opinion. |
| Front matter, xix | The author refers to heat detonating a high explosive bursting charge in a device. Which is not, typically, how high explosives work. As my soldier friend confirmed in subsequent conversations, this is covered in training (it’s important for rigging demolition charges, for example), but clearly someone had forgotten. Discussing that in a pub, we were both expecting the armed police to come bursting in at any moment – alerted by someone ear-wigging from the next table. |
| pages passim (Far too many to list.) | This is a jargon-rich field. Lots of GMPGs and Gimpys and DishDash. For enthusiasts, this may be fine. But for the casual reader, it gets very confusing.
The edition I was reviewing had 10 blank pages at the back. There was room for a glossary, and a crying need for one. |
| 38 | A related matter – both the original author and (probably) the ghost writer made some technical errors. One that caught my eye was a reference to a “silver compass”. Which sounds like military extravagance, but in fact refers to a trademark of the Silva ® company, who supply mountaineers and others with robust, single piece, easy to use compasses. Yes, I’m being picky, but I was asked to be picky. See also p.76 |
| 40 (when I noted it) | Another point for the glossary : there is (unsurprisingly) a fair bit of discussion of ammunition. But which ammunition could be used in which weapon (so, which weapon’s ammo would be a backup for which other weapon) was something I still haven’t worked out. Again, it’s probably something that an enthusiast in this field knows already, but it’s (still, after conversation with my soldier friend) obscure to me. I’d hope an editor would catch such failures to communicate.
I had quite similar thoughts about batteries, battery packs etc. At that time, my soldier friend tells me everything ran on single-use alkaline cells, but rechargeable power packs are likely becoming more of a thing these days. |
| 63 | More for the editor – how long does it take to re-load a magazine. (My soldier friend tells me the bullets come on disposable metal-&-plastic strips, and it takes a few seconds. The Hollywood thing of pressing bullets one-by-one into a magazine is Hollywood bullshit. As is taping two magazines together so you can jam one up with dirt.) |
| 72 | In the description of an ambush, there was concern about leaving an immobilised vehicle behind, because (paraphrasing) it contained “sensitive” communications equipment. But if it’s that sensitive, shouldn’t it carry a self-destruct? Or the crew carry thermite grenades for it’s destruction. |
| 76 | Another bit of slip-shod editing : repeatedly the General Purpose Machine Gun, “GPMG” is mentioned. But when a “GMPG” is mentioned … the reader spends some time working out why that sounds wrong. Or is there actually a “GMPG”? Much brain-sweat is wasted. |
| 81 | I noted this as another point where I couldn’t get the text description to align with the map. |
| 109 | More sloppy copy-editing. Some of the right words, in – to misquote Morecambe and Wise - some of the right orders. |
| 179 | An unexplained item for the glossary : a “multiple” seems to be a grouping of people from several units. There is also a lot of radio traffic discussion that totally confused me. There seems to be a logic to this, but what it is isn’t at all clear. |
| 188 | Rules of Engagement prohibited shooting at non-combatants, and I raised the question of how an enemy sniper’s “dicker” differed from the author’s squad of snipers, each of whom had their own “spotter”. Therefore both are targets.
My soldier friend tells me that a later senior officer in that area agreed with that interpretation … and the “dickers” learned to keep their heads down. |
| 189 | A “dicker” is mentioned carrying a radio. Which raises the question of whether their side had encrypted or scrambled radios (we had a chat about Hedi Lamarr – which was news to my soldier friend), or whether the “Allies” had adequate listening capability. |
| 191 | The maps question from page x – xi got bad enough that I had to start trying to sketch my own map to work out who was where. |
| 192 | More glossary entries, an UGL (Underslung Grenade Launcher) and a Джке (Dshko ? – a Russian sniper weapon?). |
| 201 | This is where the need for an area map (S Iraq, or the area controlled by British forces) became obvious enough to prompt a note. Also, a “tree hook” was mentioned, leaving me somewhat puzzled. |
| 203 | What is a “sling set-up”? |
| 242 | Possibly related to p.201 and p.203, I asked about a “cheese cutter pole” – which is a protection against throat-cutting wires strung across a tank’s route. |
| 254 | Islamic martyr mythology doesn’t promise jihadis any “Vestal Virgins” – they were the (all too) human attendants of the hearth and temple of Hera in ancient Rome. If they got caught having sex, they’d be bricked up into the temple walls while alive. |
| 287 | I asked about the (popular) myth of a rifle being able to kill someone through a wall. To which the response was “what sort of wall”? |
There were several other “Glossary” notes. Frankly, if asked to proof-read this I’d have gone through the whole text file, adding both “Index” and “Glossary” entries, then sent the pages to the author to be filled out. [Different word processors, different procedures.]
Well, I was asked to make comments on the book by my friend. I’ve done so. It’s not a genre I’m particularly interested in, but I learned more about military operations than I ever really wanted to. Now I can put it on the bookshelf and stop worrying about it.
Duolingo notes on French
PDF stored on Box
You'll have to click the "Download" button on the page that links to. Probably I can find a better supplier, but it's good enough for me.
I study various languages on Duolingo, which is a challenge-response based language teaching app. As I go along, I make notes of the Challenge-Response pairs, some of their grammar notes, and anything else that grabs my attention. Then, after each session, I go back through and revise my notes with the electronic equivalent of a highlighter pen. The link above is the first chunk of my notes from the French course. I completed the course in late 2022, with my note-taking methhodology developing in the process, ... and almost immediately Duo Inc® updated the course structure. Odd that. Not the first time either. Well, the PDF is 63 pages of notes from the first part of the course (I messed up, losing the intra-document links in making the PDF ; I'll fix that later with a revision.). The new bits of the course are more detailed (another 17 pages, just for two units of about 20 new "units") and I'm probably more consistent in my highlighting and links between grammar sections and course content section. But that'll come later.
It's a bit hard to see (this is not a site report!) but the meandering path of the deeply incised entrance runs away towards the dig which is in material piled up behind dry-stone dyking at the downstream end of the entrance passage.
