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Book week 2019: Jane Setter's Your Voice Speaks Volumes

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Mon, 25 Nov 2019 17:28:00 +0000

Welcome to the first review post of Book Week 2019. See the intro to Book Week 2019 to understand more about what I'm doing this week.

I'm starting with the most recent book in the ol' pile of books from publishers:

Your voice speaks volumes
it's not what you say, but how you say it

by Jane Setter
Oxford University Press, 2019


Jane is Professor of Phonetics at the University of Reading (UK) and a recipient of the prestigious National Teaching Fellowship. (As you can see, we are on a first-name basis, as we travel some of the same Public Linguist circles.) I mention the teaching fellowship because it is relevant: Jane is excellent at making linguistics, particularly phonetics, crystal clear for the uninitiated. She uses that talent to great effect in her first book for the general public. 

This book speaks squarely to a general British audience — and to those who want to know more about English-language issues and attitudes in this country. I'm writing this on a day when my social media feed has given me (a) the story of a man wrongly arrested for public drunkenness in Brighton—because the police had mistaken his Liverpool accent for slurring and (b) a misreading of the relevance of accent in the US (as a means to say something about how accents are read in the UK). But I'd have at least two such things to tell you about on any other day when I might have written this post. Accents make the news in Britain because they matter inordinately. Differences that might not be discernible to those from other countries are imbued with layers and layers of meaning and subjected to piles and piles of prejudice. 

As I warned in the intro to Book Week, I have not been able to read the whole book. But I was able to get through much more than I thought I'd be able to in a single evening (four of the seven chapters: 1, 2, 3, 7). Part of my speed was because I could skim the bits that were explaining linguistic facts that I already knew. (That's not to say that the facts here are too basic. I've just had a helluva lotta linguistics education.) But it is a zippy read throughout. Setter uses personal and celebrity stories to demonstrate the everyday relevance of the phonetic and sociolinguistic facts that she's explaining. (Hey look, I seem to revert to last-name basis when I'm reviewing someone's book.) 

The chapters I haven't yet read are those that I'd probably learn the most from: on the use of linguistics in forensic investigations, on voices in performance (including accent training for actors and why singers' accents change in song—which she should know, since she's also a singer in a rock band), and on transgender and synthesized voices. I started with the chapter that relates most to my work ('English voices, global voices') and then went back to the beginning where I was most likely to run into things I already know. That's good from a reviewing perspective, because I can say with confidence that Setter covers well the things that I know need to be covered for her audience. But as I got further into the book, the more unexpected things I learned. I ended in the chapter on women's and men's voices, and I will tell you: I learned some things! To give an example, I liked her interpretation of a study in which women and men were asked to count to ten using various kinds of voices, including 'confident' and 'sexy'. It turns out men generally don't have a 'sexy voice' to put on, while women do, and this might tell us something about what we're sociali{s/z}ed to find sexy—and why.

It's hard to write about sound —and especially about linguistic sounds for a general audience. Writing for linguists is easy, because we have a lot of practice in using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). But you don't want to fill a book for non-linguists with letters that don't make the same sound as they make in English spelling, or letters they've never even seen before. Setter mostly talks about accents without having to get into the kind of phonetic minutiae that excite linguists and make laypeople glaze over. Where she does need technical terms (e.g. lexical sets), she explains them carefully and clearly. But happily for all of us, Setter wrote this book in the internet age. Throughout the book, there are scannable QR codes by which one can hear the sounds she's talking about. (You can get there without a QR reader too, the web URLs are provided.)

For readers of this blog with an interest in US/UK issues, there is plenty of comparison between UK and US and discussion of "Americani{s/z}ation". These are discussed with an assumed familiarity with British Englishes and less with American Englishes.

This book is an important instrument for fighting accentism and other linguistic prejudice in the UK. It might make a nice gift for that person in your life who says they "care deeply about the English language", but really what they mean is "I like to judge other people's use of the English language". 

But more than that, it is a great demonstration of what the study of phonetics can do. I really, really recommend it for A-level students in English (language) and their teachers, as it touches on many of the areas of linguistics taught at that level and would surely inspire many doable research projects. 

Let me just end with: congratulations on this book, Jane!


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Book week 2019: David Adger's Language Unlimited

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 18:18:00 +0000

Welcome to the second review post of Book Week 2019. See the intro to Book Week 2019 to understand more about what I'm doing this week. Next up we have:

Language unlimited
the science behind our most creative power

by David Adger
Oxford University Press, 2019


This is a book for people who like to think about HOW THINGS WORK. It's a serious work of popular science writing, which carefully spells out the mysteries of syntax. And by mysteries, I mean things you've probably never even noticed about language. But once they're pointed out, you have to sit back and say "Whoa." Because even though you hadn't noticed these things, you know them. Remember a few years ago, when the internet was hopping with posts about how we subconsciously know which order to put adjectives in? That's kid's play compared with the stuff that Adger'll teach you about the things you know but don't know about.

Adger (who is Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University, London) describes the situation carefully, clearly, and engagingly, using copious examples and analogies to communicate some really subtle points. (I particularly liked the explanation of form versus function in language, which drew on the form versus the function of alcohol. Chin-chin!) He draws in evidence from neurology, psychology, and computer science to both corroborate his points and to introduce further questions about how language works.

As I said in the intro to Book week, I have not read all the books I'm reviewing absolutely cover-to-cover. In this case, of the ten chapters, I read 1–3, 7, and 10—and skimmed through the other chapters. The early chapters make the case that there's more to linguistic structure than meets the eye and that human linguistic abilities must consist of something special—they must be qualitatively different from the types of cognition that other animals use and that humans use in non-linguistic communication. Later ones cover issues like how children experience and acquire their first language and what happens when computers try to learn human language. Throughout, the examples feature Adger's partner Anson and his cat Lilly.  I almost feel like I know them now. Hi Anson and Lilly!

Adger makes clear from the start that his book makes a particular argument in favo(u)r of a particular way of explaining language's mysteries—and that particular way is a Chomskyan way. This means that he makes the case for a Universal Grammar that underlies all human language. I was struck by his willingness and ability to take this all the way for a lay audience. By chapter 9, he is explaining Merge, the key tool of Chomsky's Minimalist Program. 

Now, here I have to say: this is not the kind of linguistics I do. It's not just that I'm not a syntactician—though I have, from time to time, dipped my toe into theories grammatical. It's also that I lost faith in theoretical monotheism when I moved from a very Chomskyan undergraduate degree to a more ecumenical linguistics department for my (post)graduate studies. When I arrived for my PhD studies, the department wanted to know which syntactic theories I'd studied, so they could determine which courses I needed to take. I could not tell them. After four years of studying Chomskyan linguistics, I thought I had spent four undergraduate years studying "Syntax". No one had told me that I was studying a theory of syntax, just one among several theories.

Ever since, I have tended to agnosticism and s{c/k}epticism when it comes to syntactic theory. (This is probably how I ended up as not-a-syntactician; I don't know that it's possible to have a career in grammatical studies without adhering to one theoretical church or another.) Being a lexicologist has meant that I don't have to take sides on these things. And so I play around with different theories and see how they deal with the phenomena I study. When I listen to the evangelists, I listen warily. I tend to find that they oversimplify the approaches of competitor theories, and don't learn as much from them as they could (or, at least, sometimes don't give them credit for their contributions). This is all a very long explanation of why I skipped to chapter 7—the chapter where Adger responds to some non-Chomskyan ideas (mostly personified in the chapter by Joan Bybee).

So (mostly BrE*) all credit to Adger for spending a chapter on this, and for citing recent work in it. I generally thought his points were fair, but I did what I usually do in response to such theoretical take-downs: I thought "ok, but what about..." I do think he's right that some facts point to the existence of a Universal Grammar, but I also think it's not the only interesting part of the story, and that it's premature to discount arguments that explore the possibility that much of what happens in language learning is based in experience of language and general cognitive abilities. But then, I would think that.

I definitely recommend the book for people who are interested in the scientific approach to language, but I'd skip the final chapter (10). It is an oddly tacked-on bit about sociolinguistic phenomena, precisely the kinds of things that are not even approached in the theory the rest of the book has been arguing for.

I congratulate Adger on this strong work that makes extraordinarily abstract concepts clear.





P.S. Since I'm not doing Differences of the Day on Twitter this week, here's little chart of use of all credit to (frequency per million words) in the Corpus of Global Web-Based English, for good measure.



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Book Week 2019: David Shariatmadari's Don't Believe a Word

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Fri, 29 Nov 2019 00:05:00 +0000

Welcome to the third review post of Book Week 2019. In the intro to Book Week 2019, I explain what I'm doing this week. In the end, there will be four posts. I thought there would be five, but one of the books has (orig. BrE) gone missing. Having had a day off yesterday, I will also have a day off tomorrow, so the final review will appear during the weekend. Probably.

Anyhow, today's book is:

Don't believe a word
the surprising truth about language

by David Shariatmadari
Norton, 2019 (N America)
W&N, 2019 (UK/RoW)


David Shariatmadari writes for the Guardian, often about language, and is one of the sensible journalists on the topic. The number of sensible journalists writing about language has really shot up in the past decade, and judging from reading their books, this is in part because of increasingly clear, public-facing work by academic linguists. (Yay, academic linguists!) But in Shariatmadari's case, the journalist is a linguist: he has a BA and MA in the subject. And it shows—in the best possible way. 

The book is a familiar genre: busting widely held language myths. If you've read books in this genre before, you probably don't need these myths busted. You probably know that linguistic change is natural, that the border between language and dialect is unfindable, that apes haven't really learned sign languages, and that no form of language is inherently superior to another. Nevertheless, you may learn something new, since Shariatmadari's tastes for linguistic research and theories is not always on the same wavelength as some other books directed at such a general audience.

Once again, I'm reviewing with a partial view of the book (this is the practical law of Book Week 2019). In this case, I've read chapters 1, 5, and 9 and skimmed through other bits. The introductory chapter gives us a bit of insight into Shariatmadari's conversion to full-blown linguist, as a reluctant student of Arabic who was quickly converted to admiration for the language and to the study of language as an insight into humanity. "It's not hyperbole to say that linguistics is the universal social science", he writes. "It intrudes into almost every area of knowledge."
UK cover

I chose to read chapter 5 because I'd had the pleasure of hearing him talk about its topic at a student conference recently: the popularity of "untranslatable word" lists. Goodness knows, I've contributed to them. What I liked about the talk was his detective work on the words themselves—some of the words and definitions presented in lists of 'untranslatables' are practically fictional. And yet, those of us who don't speak the language in question often eat up these lists because of our ethnocentric need to exotici{s/z}e others. This leads inevitably to discussion of linguistic relativism—the notion that the language you speak affects the way you think—and the bad, old (so-called) evidence for it and the newer evidence for something much subtler. The chapter then goes in a direction I wasn't expecting: introducing Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), an interesting (but far from universally taught) approach to meaning that uses about 65 semantic building blocks to represent and compare meanings across languages. NSM adherents make the case that few, if any, words are truly equivalent across languages. But while any word in one language may have no single-word equivalent in another language, that doesn't mean those words are untranslatable. It just means that translating them can be a delicate and complicated thing.

US cover
The final chapter (9) takes the opposite view to David Adger's Language Unlimited (in my last review), and argues that the hierarchical (and human-specific) nature of linguistic structure need not be the product of an innate Universal Grammar, but instead could arise from the complexity of the system involved and humans' advanced social cognition. While Adger had a whole book for his argument, Shariatmadari has 30-odd pages, and so it's not really fair to compare them in terms of the depth of their argumentation, but still worth reading the latter to get a sense of how linguists and psychologists are arguing about these things.

Shariatmadari is a clear and engaging writer, and includes a good range of references and a glossary of linguistic terminology. If you know someone who still believes some language myths, this might be a good present for them. (Though in my experience, people don't actually like getting presents that threaten their worldview. I still do it, because I care more about myth-busting writers earning royalties than I care about linguistic chauvinists getting presents they want.) It would also make an excellent gift for A-level English and language students (and teachers) and others who might be future linguists. After they read it, send them my way. I love having myth-busted students.


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Book Week 2019: Gretchen McCulloch's Because Internet

By separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com
Published On :: Mon, 02 Dec 2019 12:37:00 +0000


Welcome to the final review post of Book Week 2019. In the intro to Book Week 2019, I explain what I'm doing. The 'week' has turned out to be eight days. If you're perturbed about that, I'm happy to offer you a full refund on your subscription fees for this blog.

On with the show. Today's book is:


Because Internet

Understanding the new rules of language (US subtitle)
Understanding how language is changing (UK subtitle)

by Gretchen McCulloch
Riverhead, 2019 (N America)
Harvill Secker, 2019 (UK)


Gretchen McCulloch describes herself as an internet linguist: writing about internet language for people on the internet. She actually does a lot more than that, with daily blogging at All Things Linguistic for years and being one half of the Lingthusiasm podcast team and writing on all sorts of linguistic themes for all sorts of publications. So, I expect many readers of this blog will already know her and have heard about this book. 

US Cover
I expected Because Internet to be good, knowing Gretchen's work, but I also probably (in my grumpy, middle-aged, oh-do-we-have-to-talk-about-emojis-again? way) expected it to be faddish. There have been too many just-plain-bad, (orig. AmE) jumping-on-the-bandwagon books about emojis, and I've got(ten) a bit sour on the topic. 

This book is so much more than I expected it to be. 

I should have known better. Having read and heard much of her work, I should have expected that this would be a truly sophisticated approach to language and to general-audience linguistics writing. So far in Book Week 2019, I've recommended the books as gifts for A-level students/teachers, science lovers, and language curmudgeons. This book is good for all those groups and more. 

UK cover
The key is in the subtitle(s).* This is not just a book about emojis and autocomplete (and, actually, autocomplete isn't even in the index). This is a book about the relationship between speech and writing and how that's changed with technology. It seamlessly introduces theories of why language changes, how change spreads and how communication works in a time when the potential for change is high and the potential for changes to spread is unprecedented. 

That seamless introduction of linguistic concepts is the reason I've started this book from the beginning and not skipped around (unlike for other books in Book Week—where the rule is that I don't have to read the whole book before I start writing about it). In most books about language for non-linguists, I'm able to skim or skip the bit where they talk about the basics of how language works and the classic studies on the topic and the ideas springing from them. McCulloch covers those issues and those studies (the Labovs, the Milroys, the Eckerts), but since this is intertwined with looking at how language is changing in the 21st century—because (of the) internet—it was worth my while to read straight through. The great thing about the language of the internet is: even when it looks really different from non-internet language, it's still illustrating general principles about how language, communication, and society work. But it also shows how society is changing because of technology, particularly in changing who we are likely to interact with or hear from, In the process, it gives a history of the internet that's enlightening even for those of us who've lived through it all. (I've just flipped open to a section about  PLATO at the University of Illinois. One of my student jobs was working in a PLATO lab, playing Bugs-n-Drugs [aka Medcenter] while signing people in and out. That game was not good for my hypochondria, but I have awfully fond memories of PLATO.)


Another thing to appreciate about McCulloch's book is how unreactionary it is. She doesn't set up her discussion as "You've heard people say these stupid things about the internet, but here's the TRUTH." (A style of writing that I can be very, very guilty of.) She mostly just makes her case gracefully, based on what the language is doing, rather than reacting to what other people say the language is doing. Rather than 'This, that and the other person say emoji are a new language, but they're not', she just gets on with explaining how emoji fulfil(l) our communicative need to gesture. It's a positive approach that academic linguists will have had trained out of them by the requirements of academic publishing.

This is a bit of a nerdview 'review'. Usually reviews tell you some fun facts from the book they're reviewing, whereas I'm telling you what I've noticed about its information structure. That's because that's what I really look for in books as I prepare to write a new one. In terms of information, in this book you'll learn, among other things:
  • which "internet generation" you belong to and how your language is likely to be different from other generations'.
  • what punctuation communicates in texting/chat and how that differs from formal writing
  • how language change can be traced through studying strong and weak social links and geographic tagging on Twitter
Inevitably, the book is mainly about English, in no small part because English rules the internet. But it does make its way to other languages and cultures—for instance, how Arabic chat users adapted their spelling to the roman alphabet and how emojis are interpreted differently around the world.  In the end, she briefly considers whether space is being made for other languages on the internet.

It's a galloping read and you'll learn all sorts of things.


So, on that happy review, I declare Book Week 2019 FINISHED.


* I love the transatlantic change in subtitles, since it completely illustrates the point of chapter 8 of The Prodigal Tongue: that Americans like to talk about language in terms of rules, and Britons in terms of history/tradition. I've also written a shorter piece about my personal experience of it for Zócalo Public Square.


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Star Wars out this week: The Rise of Skywalker is just days away!

By clubjade.net
Published On :: Mon, 16 Dec 2019 11:49:00 +0000

Movie week!


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  • books and comics
  • sequel trilogy
  • star wars
  • star wars (2015 comic)
  • star wars adventures (comic)
  • the rise of kylo ren (comic)
  • the rise of skywalker
  • tros reference/nonfiction
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@Home This Weekend: DIY Room Divider

By www.craftster.org
Published On :: Fri, 15 Nov 2019 14:14:54 +0000

This weekend, wow your friends with a gorgeous room divider made from everyday objects. pookiemccool made this pretty screen using a printer box, some old curtains, leftover furniture paint, and duct tape. This would be perfect for a shared bedroom!


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@Home This Weekend: School Spirit Wreath

By www.craftster.org
Published On :: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 15:11:05 +0000

This weekend, show your school spirit with a decorative wreath. Powerhouseofthecell wrapped a wreath form with school colors and added bright flowers. Go team!


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Gates noch, Ken?, RKI beendet Pressekonferenzen, Overblocking

By feedproxy.google.com
Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 06:54:44 +0000

1. Das ist dran an Ken Jebsens großer Gates-Verschwörung (t-online.de, Jonas Mueller-Töwe) Ken Jebsen hat auf seinem Youtube-Kanal „KenFM“ einen halbstündigen Monolog veröffentlicht, der innerhalb von wenigen Tagen rund drei Millionen Mal angeklickt wurde. Das Opus heißt „Gates kapert Deutschland“ und gibt damit bereits die Marschrichtung vor. Jonas Mueller-Töwe hat sich die Mühe gemacht, das […]


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  • 6 vor 9
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Schlagzeile zur Umfrage auf Rekordtief

By feedproxy.google.com
Published On :: Sat, 09 May 2020 14:54:13 +0000

Seit Wochen schon fährt die „Bild“-Redaktion einen Kurs gegen die Corona-Maßnahmen von Angela Merkel. Nur: So richtig fruchten will das offenbar nicht — die Umfragewerte der Bundeskanzlerin sind so gut wie lange nicht mehr. So auch in einer aktuellen Befragung, die Bild.de heute präsentiert. Das Meinungsforschungsinstitut Insa sollte „in einer exklusiven Umfrage für BILD“ herausfinden, […]


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First ICE Detainee Covid-19 Death Occurred This Week

By feedproxy.google.com
Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 20:29:54 +0000

 A 57-year-old man from El Salvador who was being held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in California died from Covid-19 on Wednesday. This is the first confirmed death from the coronavirus at an ICE detention center. Carlos Escobar-Mejia has been detained at the center since Jan. 10 after having lived in the U.S. for 40 years. While at the detention center, he was on a list of people who are medically vulnerable to the virus and are therefore eligible for immediate release but was hospitalized before the list was fully put together. According to ICE, 705 out of 1,460 detainees tested positive for Covid-19. At the Otay Mesa center alone, there are 140 cases of Covid-19 out of the 649 detainees there, making it the facility with the largest number of positive tests among detainees. The Otay Mesa center is owned by the private prison company CoreCivic, which has not commented on the situation there. ICE maintains that it is caring for its detainees in light of the pandemic, but detainees have said that they do not have enough space to socially distance, that they do not have enough clean masks, and that guards are not adhering to CDC […]

No related posts.


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The Cure at Ejekt Festival

By craigjparker.blogspot.com
Published On :: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 16:58:00 +0000

July 17th, 2019
Ejekt Festival in Greece
Scheduled to start at 10:20 pm.
In the US that's a start time of 3:20 pm eastern, 2:20 central, 1:20 mountain, 12:20 pacific.

Setlist: Plainsong, Pictures of You, High, Just One Kiss, Lovesong, Last Dance, Burn, Fascination Street, Never Enough, Push, In Between Days, Just Like Heaven, From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, Shake Dog Shake, A Night Like This, Play For Today, A Forest, Primary, Want, 39, Disintegration

Encore: Lullaby, The Caterpillar, The Walk, Friday I'm in Love, Close to Me, Why Can't I Be You?, Boys Don't Cry


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The Cure at ACL Festival weekend 1

By craigjparker.blogspot.com
Published On :: Sat, 05 Oct 2019 22:08:00 +0000

October 5th, 2019
Austin City Limits Festival in Austin, Texas
Cure are scheduled to play from 8 - 10 pm central.

Setlist: Plainsong, Pictures of You, A Night Like This, Just One Kiss, Lovesong, Last Dance, Burn, Fascination Street, Never Enough, Push, In Between Days, Just Like Heaven, From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, Play For Today, A Forest, Shake Dog Shake, Disintegration

Encore: Lullaby, The Caterpillar, The Walk, Friday I'm in Love, Close to Me, Why Can't I Be You?, Boys Don't Cry.

 


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Weekly Photography Challenge – Everyday Objects

By feedproxy.google.com
Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 19:00:00 +0000

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Everyday Objects appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

Since many of us are still limited to where we can go, this week’s photography challenge topic is the EVERYDAY OBJECTS! Everyday objects can be anything from a cup filled with coffee, TV remote, shoes, pens, computer mouse to a guitar pick. You get the picture! Get creative with them, either with the photography style […]

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Everyday Objects appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.


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This week's New York Times Bestsellers (March 23rd)

By fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com
Published On :: Sun, 29 Mar 2020 00:35:00 +0000

In paperback:

Stephen King's The Outsider maintains its position at number 5 (trade paperback).


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This week's New York Times Bestsellers (March 30th)

By fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com
Published On :: Sat, 04 Apr 2020 00:37:00 +0000

In hardcover:

Rae Carson's The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition debuts at number 5.

Patricia Briggs' Smoke Bitten debuts at number 6.

In paperback:

Stephen King's The Outsider maintains its position at number 5 (trade paperback).


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This week's New York Times Bestsellers (April 6th)

By fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com
Published On :: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 23:40:00 +0000

In hardcover:

N. K. Jemisin's The City We Became debuts at number 9.

In paperback:

Stephen King's The Outsider is up one position, ending the week at number 4 (trade paperback).


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This week's New York Times Bestsellers (April 13th)

By fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com
Published On :: Fri, 17 Apr 2020 23:52:00 +0000

In paperback:

Stephen King's The Outsider is down six positions, ending the week at number 10 (trade paperback).

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale returns at number 14 (trade paperback).


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This week's New York Times Bestsellers (April 20th)

By fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com
Published On :: Fri, 24 Apr 2020 23:43:00 +0000

In paperback:

Stephen King's The Outsider is down five positions, ending the week at number 15 (trade paperback).


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This week's New York Times Bestsellers (April 27th)

By fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com
Published On :: Fri, 01 May 2020 22:48:00 +0000

In paperback:

Stephen King's The Outsider is up three positions, ending the week at number 12 (trade paperback).


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This week's New York Times Bestsellers (May 4th)

By fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com
Published On :: Sat, 09 May 2020 00:42:00 +0000

In hardcover:

Stephen King's If It Bleeds debuts at number 1. For more info about this title, follow these Amazon Associate links: Canada, USA, Europe.


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Pekanbaru City Delights Mar 2020

By www.travelblog.org
Published On ::

Saturday 7th March 2020It was awesome to start the day with a swim at the hotel's infinity pool. From where I stood the morning views of the city was unforgettable. At 8am this was probably the best time of the day to be at the pool when the


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Rumah Singgah Tuan Kadi Pekanbaru Mar 2020

By www.travelblog.org
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Sunday 8th March 2020 We still had sometime to explore the city this morning before our evening flight back to Singapore. After extending our room checkout time to 4pm we headed back to the town centre for breakfast. Porridge became my staple


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Day 04 Shimonoseki to Mojiko Jun 2019

By www.travelblog.org
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Wednesday 26th June 2019Dark clouds greeted me this morning as I woke up on my 40th birthday in Japan. Not a great start for me as I had planned to commemorate this special day with a crossisland expedition between Honshu Shimonoseki and Kyu


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COVID19 in Cusco Quarantine Week 4

By www.travelblog.org
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Sunday 5 April 2020Even though I can only see a sliver of the park and street from my windows that sliver includes two park benches. These past three weeks Ive only seen one person sit there. After last weeks scolding on Monday I have


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Derbyshire 82 Chesterfield Gabby is still parked up I spy Another three weeks of lockdown

By www.travelblog.org
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The brain this morning does not want to function . One side is saying get up get moving get out . The other side replies in a negative fashion . Let me stay in bed a bit longer. My foot aches . Underneath and on top. Shoes are rubbing toes from so much


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COVID19 in Cusco Quarantine Week 5

By www.travelblog.org
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Sunday 12 April 202028 days of quarantine down 14 more to goLike every Sunday in the new world of Peru under quarantine nobody is allowed to leave their homes today except for emergency medical services. All grocery stores pharmacies a


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Derbyshire 85 Chesterfield Every cloud and the bald man and the comb Where to head for now from Skeggy Week 5 Day 32

By www.travelblog.org
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Morning all I guess you will all be up and greeting the dawn . Sleep did not come easy last night . Tossing and turning . You get nights like that at times . Hoping that once your head hits the pillow you will fall asleep . Some nights you do. Others the


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Derbyshire 87 Chesterfield I won't lie to youa morning telekit and joy that the carrots are coming through Covid Blue

By www.travelblog.org
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I won't lie to you. My brain was Ok this morning accepting the fact that a walk was on the way after breakfast . It also knew that today was shopping day . The day of a telekit from work. It was my feet that were complaining . Complaining loudly at that


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Derbyshire 91 Chesterfield Borage Blue another weekend has come and almost gone a phone app to track our movements The Archers

By www.travelblog.org
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Thankyou to my travelblog friend you know who you are for introducing the colour Borage Blue to my collection of colours . She told me that the plant I struggled finding a name for yesterday was Borage . An electric blue and a stunning plant .Anothe


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COVID19 in Cusco Quarantine Week 6

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Sunday 19 April 202035 days down 7 more to goIve been looking forward to today all week My housemates and I have been planning a picnic on the roof today. I chose Sunday because were not allowed to leave the house and I wanted to h


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Oregon Trip 2011 week of July 4th Just me and Mom

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Oregon Trip 2011Day 1We left the house at 0600 and ate breakfast at Shoneys before heading to Nashville. After dropping off the car at Alexis Inn and Suites and after Mom was finally able to get up into the shuttle van lol we were off.The fl


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COVID19 in Cusco Quarantine Week 7

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Sunday 26 April 202042 days down 14 to goToday is my mothers 71st birthday. I called her in the morning and was glad to hear that she has a beautiful sunny day in Boise and plans to go outside. Social distancing rules in Boise and com


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Kedarkantha The Best Winter Trek in Uttarakhnd India

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Kedarkantha the Prominent winter trek in Garhwal Himalayas Uttarakhand INDIAKedarkantha Trekheight is around 3800 meters. And the Kedarkantha trek offers 6 days vacation


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Kedarkantha The Best Winter Trek in Uttarakhnd India

By www.travelblog.org
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Kedarkantha the Prominent winter trek in Garhwal Himalayas Uttarakhand INDIAKedarkantha Trek height is around 3800 meters. And the Kedarkantha trek offers 6 days vacation


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Derbyshire 101 Chesterfield 7000 steps by 9.30 from frost to blue skiesSkype. Risk assessments and telekits will life ever be the same again

By www.travelblog.org
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Surfacing this morning was difficult . It is a work day today . Last night we had a frost . Not a heavy one . Not the sort of frost you get in the Winter . Not the sort of frost that you have to scrape off the car windscreen. But a frost nevertheless . The


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Week 2 Revised

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300910 Cape Tribulation We hired a car today for a day trip to Cape Tribulation an area that Captain Cook ran aground on with 1 of his ships. On our way to Cape Trib we went up to the Daintree River and got on a crocodile spotting boat trip where we


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Our Last Week in Namibia

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After the excitement of the desert we then headed to Luderitz a small town sandwiched between the Namib Desert and the battered Atlantic Coast. There is little plant life here just dry barren rocks and colourful German heritage buildings.We drove to


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Lares trek notes in the margin

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Okay how is everyone doing After 3 weeks I finally figured out how to use my blackberry on WIFI Now I will send out my updates without any issues....I forgot another couple of updates from the LARSE trekOkay so everyone know that I have d


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Week 1 Part 3

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280910 Port DouglasThe main beach here at Port Douglas is called the 4 mile beach and I have stupidly set the challenge to swim as much as possible one way and walk back the other. Bring on the 4 mile challenge...Well we didn't make the challeng


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23 India Week 1

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Hello helloWell we did it. 1 week down 11 to go in India. It took most of the first week but we now have a room in a flat a reliable internet connection sim cards in our phones skype set up and a few Indian friends to boot. Still no running wat


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Lares Trek

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Hallo zusammenSo ich bin wieder zurueck vom Lares Trek. Es hat mir super gefallen. Leider war das Wetter nicht so optimal aber wir hatten Glueck dass es immer erst anfing zu regnen wenn wir bereits unsere Zelte aufgestellt habenSodeli von Anfan


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Day 24 Ho Chi Minh to Mekong Delta

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We left HCM at 8.30 by taxi and arrived in Mekong Delta around midday. We met our guide Nam and boarded a long wooden boat to take us down the river making several stops along the way.The first stop was a brick factory where Nam told me about how bri


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Week 3

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Okay so it's been a while but the last week and weekend were pretty well packed considering the combination of events and school work. The weekend before last the group attended an acrobatics performance which sadly I have no pictures from. There were


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Corona: Germany Weighing Strict Curfews If Rules Violated over Weekend

By www.spiegel.de
Published On :: Fri, 20 Mar 2020 10:19:25 +0100

The head of Angela Merkel’s Chancellery has warned that people’s behavior this weekend will be pivotal in determining whether strict shelter-in-place curfews are imposed in Germany to control the spread of the coronavirus.


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Groups seek $200B for education in coronavirus bill

By www.smartbrief.com
Published On :: 08 May 2020 09:18:57 CDT

A group of 90 education and other groups wrote a letter to US lawmakers Wednesday asking for $200 billion in federal funding  -More- 


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Hear the news of the week with The Tribune Friday morning on KCPW’s Behind the Headlines

By www.sltrib.com
Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 23:11:25 +0000


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Blood, sweat and swabs: UFC seeks safe shows in pandemic

By www.sltrib.com
Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 02:26:51 +0000


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Unheard-of May snow, icy cold temps, and high winds blasting in for Mother’s Day weekend

By www.nydailynews.com
Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 18:55:10 +0000

Weather extreme enough to shatter records across large swaths of the U.S. is heading our way this weekend, just in time for Mother’s Day. A storm system heading into the Northeast on Friday will smash into the polar vortex as it makes swing down from the Arctic, reported NBC News. This might sock the region in with heavy, wet snow all the way into New England.


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Lufthansa seeks €9 billion bailout amid political talks

By www.rte.ie
Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 07:14:17 +0000

Lufthansa is negotiating a €9 billion bailout with Germany's economic stabilisation fund to ensure its future, the airline said, confirming an earlier Reuters report.


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