Oddities | Steve Woods

Greenwash Capital: stuff air quality, let’s build power stations

10/11/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Politics

If one only read the Bristol Post, there’d be no way that residents in the wider city would have any inkling that three polluting standby electricity generating stations were currently awaiting planning permission in the European Capital of Greenwash.

Fortunately, this dreadful development has been picked up by Bristol 24/7: and here’s the unsurprising bit; they are all in the more deprived parts of the city.

It is believed these power plants will form part of the Short Term Operating Reserve (Stor) network of reserve power banks which provide additional generating capacity to feed into the National Grid at peak times.

Firstly, a planning application (ref. 15/02310/F) has been submitted on behalf of Plutus Energy for a 48 unit diesel generating plant and 2 diesel storage tanks with a capacity of 22,000 litres for 6 Feeder Road, Bristol and Avonbank, Feeder Road, Bristol, (both in the deprived Lawrence Hill ward. Ed.) close to St Philips Marsh School.

Forty-eight diesel generators will doubtless chuck out a fair old quantity of particulates, which is a component of air pollution implicated in human cancer,heart and lung damage, and mental functioning.

The applicants have not conducted an environmental impact assessment for the site since its small size (0.5 ha) is below the threshold for such a requirement. Nevertheless, local ward councillors believe such an assessment should be carried out due to the size and impact of the proposed development.

In addition, some skulduggery is evident in the noise impact assessment that has been carried out. Edward Road was chosen for the noise impact, significantly further away from the site than St Philips Marsh School. Again, local councillors think this study should be reviewed and amended to include the impact on the school and the nearby Severn Vineyard Church.

A diesel generating plant somewhere in Africa

Despite the fact that inner city Bristol already has dreadful air quality, this is not the only dirty diesel generating plant planned for the city.

An application (ref. 15/04297/F) for another such facility has been submitted for Romney Avenue in Lockleaze, another of the city’s not so prosperous areas. Once again the applicants are Plutus Energy, who want to put 32 generators on this site close to a major housing estate and obviously care very little indeed for Bristol’s air quality.

Finally, yet another application (ref. 15/04420/F) has been filed by UK Power Reserve for 10 diesel or gas generators for in in New Gatton Road in St Werburgh’s, with ten 12-metre high exhaust flues.

Below is a short video on the St Werburgh’s scheme made by local residents.

It’s quite scandalous that UK Power Reserve and Plutus Energy are even considering putting polluting power stations in or next to residential areas. On account of the need for extra domestic heating and lighting, these back-up power stations are most likely to be used on cold, foggy winter days when something called a temperature inversion occurs; this causes cold air to sink, trapping the warm air in a bubble enveloping the city, thus enabling urban pollution to build up to dangerous levels, perfect for increasing the incidence of respiratory ailments. The fact that both companies have cut corners in the form of environmental and noise impact assessments shouldn’t be forgotten.

These dangerous unwelcome schemes should be thrown out by councillors.

Finally, a language note. Over in the United States of America, this dumping of dirty, polluting and generally unwelcome facilities on poor, deprived communities has a name – environmental racism. In Wikipedia, environmental racism is defined as follows:

Environmental racism is placement of low-income or minority communities in proximity of environmentally hazardous or degraded environments, such as toxic waste, pollution and urban decay.
Turnip tops = clitoris; Google Translate strikes again!

04/11/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Tech

Today’s Guardian reports that organisers of the “Feira do grelo” food festival in As Pontes in Galicia were shocked when their event celebrating the culinary delights of turnips tops, a traditional staple turned out to be celebrating a rude part of the female anatomy.

To quote The Guardian’s piece:

But for the past few months, the small town was marketing a very different kind of festival after it used Google Translate to put the Galician word grelo into Castilian Spanish, ending up with it inviting people to take part in a “clitoris festival”.

And quoting yet again:

It meant the town’s “Feria [sic] do grelo” or rapini festival – held every February with tastings and awards for the best grelos – became “Feria clítoris” in Spanish.

Clitoris? Yes, according to Google Translate!
Furthermore, The Independent adds that the error was not discovered until Castilian-speaking rapini fans visited the site to read about the upcoming festival and found themselves reading about a local clitoris festival instead of the benefits of the local vegetable.

The humorous consequences were fully reported in The Local.

The Castilian Spanish version of the town council’s website’s content about the festival included such howlers as “The clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine,” and “Since 1981, the festival has made the clitoris one of the star products of the local gastronomy.”

The reason for this embarrassing howler is that Google Translate mistakes the Galician grelo for the Portuguese word grelo – which is both the word for the vegetable as well archaic slang for clitoris.

“It’s a very serious error on the part of Google and we are thinking about making an official complaint for Google to properly recognise the Galician language so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again,” said town hall spokeswoman Montserrat Garcia.

Along with Spanish, Galician is an official language in Spain’s north-western region of Galicia, where over 2.4 million people speak the regional tongue.

Hat tip: ashleyrpz.
Leaping salmon

26/10/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

Wikipedia informs us that the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is found in the northern Atlantic Ocean and in rivers that flow into the north Atlantic.

The salmon’s journey through life from fresh to salt water and back to fresh is not just an aquatic journey, but a terminological one too, as shall be shown.

The salmon spend their early life in fresh water, when the immature salmon are known firstly as alevin, then as fry and finally as parr, this final stage being when the juvenile salmon prepare to migrate to salt water.

When the parr develop into smolt, they begin their trip to the ocean; this occurs mainly between March and June. The length of time that young salmon take before journeying from sweet to salt water can vary between one year and eight years.

Once large enough, Atlantic salmon change into the grilse phase, when they become ready to breed and return to the same freshwater tributary from which they departed as smolts. It is believed that the salmon’s navigation for this journey involves a combination of magnetoception and the fish’s sense of smell as it nears its destination.

This return from salt to fresh water occurs from September to November, the time of the salmon run. After spawning most Atlantic salmon die and the salmon life cycle starts over again.

Many obstacles – some natural, some artificial – face salmon as they migrate upstream to their spawning grounds. One of these is formed by Shrewsbury Weir on the River Severn, the UK’s longest river.

This year jettybox.com was on hand to record the salmon run over the weir; and do so in slow motion, which adds a poignant beauty to this annual spectacle.
Translator tampered with meeting minutes

25/10/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Social Media

It’s been an open secret for many years that FIFA – the international governing body for football – has been as reliable as a nine pound note.

Following the departure from its HQ building by disgraced president Sepp Blatter, further details of malpractice in FIFA’s governance are now coming to light.

Yesterday’s Daily Mail reported some of this fall-out under the headline “FIFA translator: I was told several times to doctor records of ExCo meetings“.

According to the Mail, FIFA are investigating claims that a junior member of staff was told to falsify official records of FIFA’s meetings of its Executive Committee (ExCo) between 2001 and 2010.

Former FIFA employee Scott Burnett first worked as a translator and then as an assistant to FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke, who like Blatter, is currently suspended.

Mr Burnett dropped his bombshell via 3 tweets, as follows.

Tweet no. 1:

I wrote the minutes of FIFA ExCo meetings from 2001 to 2010. During that period, I was instructed several times to misrepresent discussions.

Tweet no. 2:

The instructions to misrepresent meetings came from the President’s office among others.

Tweet no. 3:

I did not share this information before because I was concerned about the repercussions and I did not know who to trust within FIFA circles.

We linguists – irrespective of whether we work as translators or interpreters or both – deal regularly with privileged and confidential information. This is why I rarely discuss the content of my work in public. As such, I have great sympathy for Mr Burnett since being told to falsify records must clearly have conflicted with that inbuilt sense of integrity which all linguists need to do their jobs.

Mr Burnett is no longer employed by FIFA and currently volunteers to support grassroots football.
Chronological capers

25/10/2015 Steve WoodsOddities, Social Media

At 2.00 a.m. this morning British Summer Time (BST) came to an end, the clocks were turned back one hour and the UK reverted to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and evenings that get dark earlier.

This for me marks the gloomiest time of year – at least until we’re over the winter solstice and the day of least daylight!

However, the changing of the clocks is a major job for some. For instance, for the curators of the Palace of Westminster’s Great Clock (which bongs Big Ben. Ed.), the process involves careful precision and split-second timing. As well as re-setting the time, it gives them an opportunity to make close inspection of the clock mechanism as part of a rolling maintenance programme. The process is described in detail on the UK Parliament website.

On a lighter note, the Stonehenge Twitter account decided to have some fun with the change, as shown by the following screenshot.
Spiritual leader moonlights as police officer

14/10/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

Reading the captions on photographs in the local press can be a real education.

For instance, thanks to those dedicated people who write captions for articles on the Bristol Post website, I now know what a branch of discount retailer Lidl looks like, although I shall have to travel to Paignton to see the real thing.

However, far greater secrets can be revealed by photo captions. An article in yesterday’s Bristol Post revealed that, unknown to the rest of the world, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, is actually a police officer in Avon & Somerset Constabulary, as shown by the following screenshot.

His Holiness must have found some body-altering drugs during his recent visit to the Glastonbury Festival! 😉
Bristol’s rudest place name?

10/10/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities

The other night conversation down the pub turned to Bristol place names.

Wherever one is, place names give a locality character. They commemorate local personalities, such as Mary Carpenter Place in Bristol’s St Pauls area, as well as national figures, e.g. Nelson Parade in Bedminster.

Others were named after the trades practised or goods traded on them. Bristol used to have a Milk Street and a Cheese Lane; it still has a Wine Street and a Corn Street, together with Old Bread Street.

Some street names are stranger and Bristol does not disappoint here either. There’s Zed Alley in the city centre, along with Counterslip down by the floating harbour. Counterslip is a corruption of Countess’ slipway, a reference to one of the long-vanished amenities on the then tidal River Avon of Bristol’s long-demolished castle.

However, odd street names are not confined to Bristol’s centre. Up in Clifton one can find There and Back Again Lane, whose signs are a favourite target for the larcenous intentions of drunken student. Just beyond Durdham Downs, towards Stoke Bishop, is Pitch and Pay Lane. The origins of the lane’s name apparently hark back to times of plague when goods and money would be exchanged by being thrown across the thoroughfare.

Besides food and drink, other bodily needs are also commemorated. Along with other medieval towns and cities, once boasted a Grope Lane – to use the polite version – where ladies of negotiable affection were purported to ply their trade. The earliest written reference to Bristol’s Grope Lane I’ve found relates to 1433. It was previously known as Halliers Lane. Nowadays it’s better known as Nelson Street.

Besides streets and roads, fields also have names: and it is to one of these that one has to turn to find Bristol’s rudest place name – Fockynggroue.

Below is part of the abstract of a paper by linguistics professor Richard Coates of the University of the West of England (UWE):

The lost field-name Fockynggroue is recorded in the perambulation which constitutes the bulk of a Bristol charter conjecturally of 30 September (inspeximus 30 October), 47 Edward III, that is 1373. This document was drawn up when Bristol was granted county status.¹ The field was in the region north(-west) of Brandon Hill between locations identifiable in modern times as Woodwell Lane and Crescent (names now lost, near and in St George’s Road) and Cantock’s Close.² A. H. Smith, the editor of The Place-Names of Gloucestershire, offered no explanation, although he had obviously reflected on it because he classified it in the element-index as containing a ‘significant word’ (i.e. not a personal name), but without further elaboration.³ Perhaps he thought it too risqué to dwell on or too obvious to deserve comment, but, if so, he omitted to address a consequent issue in the lexical history of English. He did not cite the additional forms given in Bristol Charters.⁴ These are taken from perambulations of the city boundaries taken between the granting of county status and 1901: ‘Fukkyngroue, Pocking, Fokeing, Foking or Pucking Grove’. The name certainly lasted till around 1900, when a printed abstract of title for Hither & Inner Pucking Grove from 1707–1842 and a sale agreement of 1899 for the place were in existence.⁵

In modern times Fockynggroue has been diverted from its past as a location of carnal pleasures. Where it once helped generations of locals enjoy loving trysts and the pleasures of the flesh, it now caters for the intellect, having been built over as part of the campus of the University of Bristol.
Robins named stand after folker Fred

10/09/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities

There’s an astonishing revelation in today’s Bristol Post, the city’s most unreliable source of news: the late Fred Wedlock (pictured right), the local folk singer best known for his UK hit single “The Oldest Swinger In Town”, has had a stand named after him at Bristol City‘s ground at Ashton Gate.

This emerges from a report written by Ian Onions, the Post’s political editor, over a lifelong Robins fan’s wait for the club to honour its pledge over its 1990s ‘Buy-a-Brick’ campaign.

A screenshot of the article is also shown as confirmation of the existence of the Fred Wedlock Stand.

Ian may be a knowledgeable chap when it comes to politics and the skulduggery down at the Counts Louse (Bristolian for “City Hall” © Mayor George Ferguson. Ed.), but when it comes to the beautiful game, he really doesn’t know his onions, since it was dear old Fred’s grandfather Billy (pictured left) who played for and captained the Robins, as well as playing for the England squad and it is after him that the stand is named.

Ashton Gate also has a Williams stand. I wonder if Post reporters believe this was named after Andy of that surname rather than a former player. 😉
Bing Translator shows its cluelessness again

05/09/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Tech

This blog recently drew attention (posts passim) to the fact that Microsoft’s Bing Translator tool had difficulty distinguishing English from Norwegian.

It now seems this is not the only two languages with which it has trouble since it also cannot differentiate between Dutch and English, as per the following screenshot of a tweet from Hallen FC from my Twitter feed this afternoon.

I wonder if the rest of the Beast of Redmond’s software offerings are as reliable as Bing Translator. 😉
Can’t tell Norwegian from English? It must be Bing Translator

31/08/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media, Tech

According to Wikipedia, Bing Translator “is a user facing translation portal provided by Microsoft as part of its Bing services to translate texts or entire web pages into different languages.”

Or it would be if only it could actually recognise languages accurately.

Twitter uses Bing Translator as an interface ostensibly to help users with languages they do not know.

However, Bing Translator still has some way to go before it recognises languages accurately, as shown by the following screenshot.

Whilst it is understandable that online machine translation tools can occasionally get confused between closely related members of the same language family (Google Translate has been known to confuse Norwegian and Danish. Ed.), this is the first time I can recall such a back end helper being a real tool and getting muddled over languages as distinct from one another as English and Norwegian.

Perhaps any passing Microsoft developers would care to explain this anomaly in the comments below.

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