Without my glasses, sometimes Topsy looks like a goat. (How she got hold of my glasses… etc.)
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Without my glasses, sometimes Topsy looks like a goat. (How she got hold of my glasses… etc.)
A Bad Guide
Three goats in a wood (not forgetting the dog).
She’s lovely :-)
We always say that our dog looks like a sheep.
I was going to propose him as a participant in the experiment Trond and Empty are planning for your goats…
How many goats does Crown have if you call Topsy a goat?
It depends… What happens if you call Holly a dog or a cat or a person…?
Yes, all bets are off at that point.
I was thinking of the tail/leg saying attributed to Lincoln.
Topsy would always take part, whether you asked her to or not.
It’s just like the three musketeers who were four.
One four all, all four one.
On all fours.
Four ever.
One should be very careful with canines in the collider. There’s much public concern over the possibility of creating a black howl.
canines in the collider
In the teeth of the teravolts.
The scientists at Cern that I’ve heard talking on the box claim that such collision events must have been very frequent at the extremely high densitiy and temperature supposed to have obtained just after a big bang. That’s why they want to present what they learn from the collisions as being knowledge gained about how the universe started off.
However, one also knows that there are big questions about whether the laws of physics which have been established for the corner of the universe we can observe are also applicable in big bang conditions. Time and space are both just emerging. The gravitational forces which describe (determine ?) the behavior of space and time are enormous because of the high density. Gravity and electromagnetism have yet to be brought into line with each other in a Grand Unified Theory.
So this is very much like the problem of the chicken and the egg. The egg is trying to hatch a chicken at the very instant as that same chicken is trying to expel from its butt the egg it’s hatching from. Since this is a hard question to deal with, scientists prefer to avoid it, instead drawing our attention to niggly details about space and time that they hope to clear up at an expense of trillions of dollars – such as whether it’s the butt or the cloaca of the chicken that is involved, and whether an egg timer has the necessary quantum resolution.
The very idea of high density and temperature at the big bang may be another shortsighted idea. Most physicists apparently still believe that reality is really “out there”, and has nothing to do with a higher intelligence, or any intelligence at all.
But consider the eighties, when a CD burner was extremely expensive and builky. 25 years later, half the inhabitants of industrial nations run around with a recording medium that fits in their pocket. Suppose that at some point in the past a bunch of dumb aliens got together for a party, each one trying to outdo the others with his own SHC (small hadron collider). Billions of years later, we think we see the traces of a big bang, but in fact it was just a big binge.
Is anyone following the latest discovery of the written Pictish language by the miracle of Shannon Entropy?
I wonder if Hat has seen this.
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/ancient-scotland-written-language.html
As near as I can make out, they have taken something called the Pictish Symbol Stones and run them through a Shannon language collider with Mycenaean military lists in Linear B, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights text in eight languages, and the Heraldic Arms of British Extinct peerages (but not Viking commemorative stones), and come up with a very impressive set of scatter plots with circles and arrows that prove the pictures of horses, dogs, and other animals on the stones contain a written language and not just art or some other such thing. No, I am not making this up, I think, although I have never heard of this Royal Society outfit. Here is the full text, you can even scroll down for an image of one of the stones that can be enlarged. Sadly, they do not mention goats.
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/03/26/rspa.2010.0041.full
BTW, looking for the Higg’s bison may be a misapplication of the Large Haedine Collider. The right mathematician could probably figure out how to use this Shannon technology to get the goats to use the LHC for the world’s first caprine written communication. Imagine what this might add to our understanding of the field of philosophy alone, and you might as well add religion to the list of discoveries, because with Topsy in there, well, you know what dog spelled backwards is. Forget the God Particle; this is an opportunity to find the TOAG Particle.
And if you collide/compound the dogs and goats, surely you come up with an anagram…
Well, what is it?
Someone would have to find out what led up to the big binge. The answer to “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” is “The fish”, and I’m sure there’s a similar kind of answer to the other questions.
Is anyone following the latest discovery of the written Pictish language by the miracle of Shannon Entropy?
I read about it at sci.archaeology last night and found this page from the University of Strathclyde with pictures and listing of symbols for each stone. I meant to go looking for the original article today, and thanks to you I didn’t have to go long.
I’m sort of waiting for someone to suggest that the Big Bang is a vanishing point, an artefact of our three-dimensional outlook, and that the anomalies of the universe, like vacuum energy are glimpses of matter on the horizon of the observable universe. Or one or the other. Or something like that. Quite likely someone has suggested it, and been thoroughly debunked.
There has been speculation that the Lamb shift is caused by goat collisions.
I see that “[a] different perspective relates Zitterbewegung to the Lamb shift”. That would seem to suggest that it’s a result of goat-to-aspen collisions.
My wife and I once had a lovely short holiday driving south from Inverness and visiting lots of the Pictish stones. It’s a good tip for July and August when it tips it down in the West Highlands – stay east of the mountains and the weather in the rain shadow is often lovely.
(Complementary tip – go to the West Highlands in May and early June when the Easterlies are blowing, bringing rain to the east. (And, historically, bringing Vikings.))
Thanks for the non-tipping tips.
The aspens generally come out rather the worse for wear in these encounters.
I’m sure there’s a similar kind of answer to the other questions.
This will seem really obvious once I mention it, but the answer is “42”.
vacuum energy
This does not convince me, as any gardener knows that “nature abhors a vacuum.” It is impossible to get a complete vacuum in the laboratory, so any “lamb shift” observations seem suspect as well.
That University of Strathclyde site isn’t very helpful. You have to choose each image with several clicks starting from a small map with overlapping and confusing red circles. You would think they would have a page with thumbnails at the very least.
I haven’t done the maths, but I’ll say that I’m skeptical to the entropy approach. Or rather: I think it can be used to show that something definitely isn’t language, but proving the opposite is something of a stretch, at least without much more data on the properties of the full range of natural and (especially) man-made sequences.
You have to choose each image with several clicks starting from a small map with overlapping and confusing red circles.You would think they would have a page with thumbnails at the very least.
Ouch. I forgot to say: Press “Search” on the page I linked to, and you get a table with thumbnails and a list of symbols for each stone.
The name ‘t Hooft must surely come up in any discussion of ungulate interactions.
If Des were here he could tell us if Hooft has anything to do with ungulates and their interactions. I know of another Hooft person (besides the British royal family).
Press “Search” on the page I linked to
Oh, I see it now; there are several options in the fine print.
“Pictish writing”
The claim seemed bogus to me – given March 31st as the date of publication, I thought that it must an April Fools’ joke. The symbols on the stones must have meaning, but that does not mean that they are a type of writing: for instance, simplified designs for “men” and “women” on washroom doors do have meaning, but they are not what is called writing, since they are meang to be interpretable in any language, unlike the actual written words. To mention a more elaborate system of representation, medieval European churches or some temples in India are adorned with a variety of carvings which may be allegorical or refer to well-known episodes of the religious traditions (and therefore recur from one building to another), but those representations do not constitute writing. Some of the Pictish stones have realistic drawings of horses, etc, others have abstract symbols, but they do not look like writing, As another example, Mayan steles typically show both realistic representations (even though many might be allegorical) and writing. The designs on the Pictish stelae (I have not tried to look at all of them) do not seem to be writing.
The comments in the first article (not the statistical one) quotes people who are obviously not linguists (such as “Pictish must have been a complex spoken language” – any actual language, spoken by people, is extremely complex). I looked briefly through the statistical article – way beyond my competence as concerns statistics – but I doubt that the authors know anything about the structure of language or the characteristics of written languages (although they seem to think that they do).
Read Mark Liberman’s comments about the statistical article here:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2227#comments
Thank, m-l. I thought as much myself, but my reason was just that it was arranged around April fools’ day.
Yeah, thanks. This saved me from making sense of the maths. Liberman hasn’t looked into the “more sophisticated” measures that I think may be attempts to characterize script in more detail, but he implies that there isn’t much point in it, since the line of argument is the same and the comparison is equally irrelevant. If I could just overcome this holiday laziness I may still have a look – if nothing else I’ll be better equipped the next time anything like this pops up.
I was pretty sure it wasn’t April fools’, since I remembered that Rao et al. meant it seriously a year ago.
Here’s the full text of the Rao
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/33/13685.full
AJP, Trond, yes, Rao, Lee, etc are part of a trend wherein non-linguists looking for statistical research projects (I assume) are taking on linguistic problems without understanding what the linguistic issues are. Actually the Rao thought that the Indus script could not be actual writing, while the Lee team arrived at the opposite conclusion, using (what seem to me to be) similar methods. I think each team arrived at the wrong conclusion.
marie-lucie: I just added a comment on that Language Log post in which I gripe about the confused mathematical “arguments” of Lee et al. Unfortunately the formatting in my comment vanished, so it’s not easy to read.
I’m not sure that the mathematics in the paper is necessarily “beyond your competence”. It does seem to be beyond the authors themselves, though. What is needed here is a marie-lucie for statistics, to gently but firmly impose clarity where guff held sway.
Somebody removed my Language Log gripe, so I’ve now griped about that at my own blogsite.
That’ll be Mark Liberman He’s a fine example of an octopus.
I just went to the Log, and all your comments seem to be there.
Thanks, Stu. That put words to my own experience. I read, and read again, and every time the vital parts seemed to elude me. I thought it was me being unable to focus.
Even in spite of the obvious lack of understanding of what constitutes language, I hoped for some interesting tidbits in there, e.g. some first approximation to useful statistical characteristics, but it seems not.
I have no idea why I couldn’t take this theory seriously, sort of like picking up an antique and deciding by the feel that it’s a reproduction; I’m a little relieved that m-l and the real linguists aren’t convinced either. Liberman nailed the math.
Undeciphered scripts have a reputation for attracting harebrained analysis. This Royal Society–they seem like an academic type outfit, why would they publish something so iffy? Maybe no linguists on the staff?
It seems the whole Rao/Lee/Markov analysis is about what symbol follows what in an inscription, and yet these stones have typically only one or two symbols. How can you possibly apply a theory about a chain of events to something with one event? So that’s one thing that bothers me.
The Pictish stones don’t really qualify as “very short sequences of regularly placed symbols”. If you look at the Indus inscriptions, they have a large picture and a series of smaller symbols one after another that actually look like writing. The symbols on the Pictish stones that I pulled up were placed irregularly, and I thought rather decoratively across the stone. So that’s another thing that bothers me.
Then, the statistics. In the applications I’m familiar with, for a statistically significant result, you need a sample size of around 1000, although that’s still rather smallish. The Pictish stones have what, 30 some samples of symbols across 30 monuments?
I saw something yesterday that sort of shed some light on the linguistic problem, if I can find it again I’ll post it.
Excellently put, Nijma.
The symbols on the Pictish stones that I pulled up were placed irregularly, and I thought rather decoratively across the stone. So that’s another thing that bothers me.
Yeah. I noted, somewhere else apparently, that since the symbols are scattered in no particular order the results would reflect the registration algorithm.
Then, the statistics. In the applications I’m familiar with, for a statistically significant result, you need a sample size of around 1000, although that’s still rather smallish. The Pictish stones have what, 30 some samples of symbols across 30 monuments?
Some 300 monuments apparently, but there’s never more than seven symbols on a single stone, if I understand it correctly.
I just went to the Log, and all your comments seem to be there.
Yes, I was too quick to take offence. I did wonder if Liberman had taken the comment down merely to reformat it for me, but I didn’t wait to see, being in a feisty mood and all.
Before going to visit friends this noon I posted a note here retracting my meta-gripe, but it must have gotten sucked into the maw of Crown’s WordPress machine – like the original formatting of my comment at LL.
How can you possibly apply a theory about a chain of events to something with one event? So that’s one thing that bothers me.
Nijma, you got it in one ! That is precisely one of the issues Lee et al. try to sidestep. But many so-called statistical arguments have this failing.
it must have gotten sucked into the maw of Crown’s WordPress machine
It’s not there now. Usually it takes comments arbitrarily and consigns them to the can of spam, but the can is empty at the moment… I don’t mean to imply a connection between Empty and spam.
since the symbols are scattered in no particular order the results would reflect the registration algorithm.
Trond, I think I know in a general way what you’re getting at, but I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “registration algorithm”. I find that there are difficult technical issues associated with the visual representation of scanned data, for instance in medical and robotic imaging, that are addressed by registration algorithms. You seem to be using the expression here in a metaphorical, not-very-technical way. Are you intimating that these published Pictish “symbols” (question-begging word !) are being sneakily represented as having a kind of inherent order (“registered”), but that that order must of course be due in part to the person processing the “symbols” for publication ?
One thing’s for sure: it’s no accident that the “symbols” are presented in such a way that they don’t look upside-down. Somebody has already introduced an orientation, and so already imposed a half-interpretation on the findings.
Thanks, m-l. Here’s the thing I was looking for, in trying to figure out why the study went as far as it did:
It’s from a letter to the editor from a Clyde Winters of our own local Governor’s State University, who calls Rao et al. “good science”, and who as it turns out is not a linguist. Maybe better is the writeup about the Indus script from The Straight Dope, although it’s probably going too far to refer to “Joycean (Ireland, A.D. 1900)” as a “mystery script”.
Nijma, thank you for those references. The Straight Dope article is very good (I think the Joycean reference is tongue in cheek!). It does not mention the Maya script, but there are similarities in the various approaches to that script and the earlier difficulties before Egyptian decipherment, including the existence of modern languages related to that of the inscriptions, spoken in the very territories where the inscriptions are found.
About Rao, which apparently considers the Indus script as true writing, I may have mixed up the reference with another relatively recent study which concluded that it was not writing, so I would add a question mark on my previous comment on the topic.
The largest study of the Indus script that I know of is by A. Parpola, who did a much more comprehensive study of it than any others before or after (eg classification and frequency of the characters, potential Dravidian affiliation based on known Dravidian words and culture, etc). The book is large and I suppose very expensive, but some large libraries will have it.
Are you intimating that these published Pictish “symbols” (question-begging word !) are being sneakily represented as having a kind of inherent order (“registered”), but that that order must of course be due in part to the person processing the “symbols” for publication ?
Nah, I’m goofing with terms, so I should have put ‘registration algorithm’ in scarequotes. What I mean is:
1. The calculation of binary entropy requires that the symbols in each inscription are ordered in a line.
2. If they are in no obvious order on the stones, the order would be determined by the one putting them to paper. Or “paper”.
3. If the binary entropy measures anything at all, it’s likely to be some aspect of the process of writing them down.
I don’t mean to imply anything sneaky or sinister about it. They may simply have used a previously published list of stones and symbols without stopping to think, or they may have used their own readings while not recognizing the problem. However, if they built on somebody else’s compilations, it’s odd that there’s no mention of it, and if they made their own, it’s odd that there’s nothing in the paper about the method. Or maybe it’s there and I just didn’t find it.
marie-lucie:
I think you may be thinking of Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat and Michael Witzel. “The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization”, 2004.
Rao et al. “Entropic Evidence for Linguistic Structure in the Indus Script”, 2009
came as a response, and FS&W attacked it along the same line as Liberman.
I seem to remember that Sproat joined the Language Log discussion then (as he has done now), but there’s no comment thread to the archived LL post.
(Links to pdf versions on Rao’s and Farmer’s homepages. There’s more available for those who bother to edit the urls.)
No methology, exactly. If this is “good science” it should be repeatable by someone else using the same methods. And then there’s that pesky “peer review” thing. Looking further,
Rob Lee is not listed on the staff at the University of Exeter School of Biosciences.
Philip Jonathan is not listed as staff at University of Lancaster Department of Mathematics and Sciences.
And guess what, Pauline Ziman does not appear either at PHS Consulting Limited or at the Chemical & Industrial Consultants Association the business affiliates with.
Chemical & Industrial Consultants! This is starting to look more and more like a waste of time.
I couldn’t get either of Trond’s PDF links to come up. I have no idea what the problem is–I had trouble with a PDF file yesterday too. But looking at the comments on the Smithsonian article from Rao’s homepage:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/51140197.html
suddenly everything becomes clear. It’s all either part of some skin-color-based theory of of language, or fits in with territorial claims from various groups. So now I am wondering who exactly Lee is. Maybe this is only coincidence, but if Lee really does come from the University of Exeter, it looks like their chancellor is an actress with an honorary degree. But now that it’s not about language anymore, but about how something like this came to be published, it’s not so much fun anymore.
I think the chancellors of British universities are elected and the post is without any onerous administrative role (in other words, chancellors don’t do what the president of an American university does). I could be wrong. Scottish universities elect rectors; John Cleese was the rector of St. Andrews.
The Chancellor in a British university is a figurehead; the Vice Chancellor is the CEO. If you are a good enough uni, you get Prince Philip as Chancellor; if not, not. I don’t know how many exceptions there are. Oxford elects its Chancellor, though he is, as far as I can see, just a puff-ball. They used, for instance, to have Woy Jenkins and now have Chris Patten.
I don’t know how my own universities appoint our Chancellors, since we’ve had Prince P throughout my time.
Prince Philip’s another one who has only honorary degrees.
Back to the Picts: I looked at some of the stones in the Pictish database (thank you, Nijma). Most of them have realistic (animals) or apparently abstract designs, but one of them includes an Ogham inscription along one vertical edge. Ogham was a true alphabet designed by Celtic speakers, although it is difficult to recognize iy as writing since it consists of short straight lines in combinations of numbers (1 to 4) and angles (right or oblique) on either side of a baseline (which is often the edge of a standing stone). I don’t know Celtic and cannot read Ogham, but the inscription in question can be read by a competent person, just like Latin inscriptions in Rome, for instance, for a person knowing Latin. Other abstract designs on the Pictish stones must have had a meaning, but cannot be called “writing”.
I suspect that those stones were offering odds on horse races.
Richard Sproat at Language Log says he might be able to read the Ogham inscriptions, I hope he gets to it.
It was actually Trond who found the link to the Pictish monuments database, but he wouldn’t have posted it if I hadn’t posted the link to the text of the study.
Thanks for all the info about chancellors; it somewhat relieves my paranoia. I’m still not sure exactly what an American chancellor does–we have a chancellor for the whole system of colleges. I know one of our school’s former presidents, said to be a protege of a former chancellor, resigned when the chancellor retired. This was the chancellor who once said response to a question about making ESL instructors full-time employees with health benefits, etc. “if you want a job with full time status, we will help you look for one” (widely interpreted as a threat). but looking at a different system of universities,
http://www.library.illinois.edu/archives/archon/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=64
there seems to be a chancellor for each school, with quite a variety of areas of interest.
Oghams
Some of the monuments have oghams listed as symbols by some compilers, and I did see several when I was looking, but they don’t come through in a search. It’s too bad the thumbnails aren’t large enough to see them all at once and pick out the ones with oghams without clicking on 300 separate photos. Without going back to look for them all again, it seems some of them looked like they were part of the original design and some looked like they were done by a different hand.
I used to have a book about oghams somewhere….
The world has a long history of reusing stones, even gravestones. I’m thinking about the runes carved on the side of some famous British gravestone. Also there are Viking runes carved on a lion in Venice, although they are no longer readable. I’m also half remembering something about using the runes for magic at the same time as a different writing was used, maybe accounts of the Níðstöng níðstangir cursing pole, but I’m not sure how many alphabets were at use at the same time; I think the runes had to be reddened with blood or red paint to make the curse work, so maybe they could still use runes for writing without invoking magic.
I’m also thinking of the frequency of the crescent symbol on the Pictish stones and the Scandinavian A M symbol used to mean Ave Maria. I have seen this symbol on photos of (medieval? pre-reformation?) Swedish crafts, and more recently on the altar design of a Norwegian Lutheran church built in the U.S.
It was actually Trond who found the link to the Pictish monuments database, but he wouldn’t have posted it if I hadn’t posted the link to the text of the study.
But I’ve confused myself by discussing it several places. I should have mentioned the Ogham runes here already when I posted the link.
Runes were used into High Medieval times as a means for simple notes and messages. (Those weren’t written on stone monuments, though. That would take some Gaul.)
I’ve never heard of oghams referred to as runes though, always the futhark and its variations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_alphabet
Since I’ve searched and cannot find, I shall ask… what variety of dog is Topsy? and the goats, what variety are they? and are their fleeces destined for yarndom?
(so delighted to find your blog)
How very nice of you to say so.
Topsy’s an Irish soft-coated wheaten terrier, with an Irish (i.e. not American, which is more poodle-like) coat. We got her because we’re allergic to most dogs and she doesn’t shed her fur (we have to clip it occasionally). She’s three.
The goats, three of them, are Angora (as in Ankara, in Turkey) goats, also called mohair goats, and yes! they have fleeces of mohair that we (really my daughter) sheer twice a year. My wife spins it sometimes & they both knit with it, but we’ve got tons of the stuff that we haven’t yet used. The goats are about seven years old. Most people who walk past think they’re sheep, but they definitely aren’t (not that there’s anything wrong with sheep).
I ought to put up some background information about the animals.
I like your blog too! That’s interesting about Leonard Woolf in The Believer. Do please stick around. The postings are getting more irregular now that spring is here, though.
I shall quite definitely stick around. I feel I know you well since I’m a mostly silent lurker of Language Hat’s.
An Irish wheaten! of course. This is the second time I’ve had that answer when enquiring about a fabulous looking dog. They’re always bigger than I think they should be. That’s probably because I assume all terriers should be the size of my own flea bag who stands a defiant 13″ at the shoulder, although obviously 43″ in spirit.
Fleeces! Spinning!! Knitting!!! Pictures?
Oh, you’re a Language Hat lurker! Yes, I remember your name now. I thought you must be from the LRB, being British.. I’m really sorry about the election, but think of what Mervyn King said: whoever wins this election will be out of office for the next couple of thousand years because of the cuts they’re going to have to make.
Topsy is such a lovely dog. The first one we’ve ever had. She’s 43 centimetres at the shoulder according to my daughter, that’s… nearly 17″. We also have my father-in-law’s (he died) Yorkshire terrier, who is 15 years old and a foolishly brave little dog. 13″ is a giant, by comparison.
I don’t know why I’ve never thought of doing the spinning wheel & knitting pictures. That’s a good idea.
(Imagine some commentary here that would convince WP this isn’t spam.)
Kids in the Hall – The Terrier Song.
Genius. That video. I’m planning to put a bandana on Maizy tomorrow. And hoping she doesn’t sever an artery (mine, not hers) in the process.
I did arrive via the LRB in point of fact. Shows I’m not paying sufficient attention round at LH. Too much knitting.
I didn’t know that “Kids in the hall” group. It’s quite right, of course, I like terriers the best. Our dogs occasionally wear clothes. I blame my daughter, except for the old sweaters that they wear outside in mid-winter: they are very welcome.
Maizy was the name of the best friend of my first-cousin-twice-removed.