Earl Spencer's eulogy for Princess Diana

Read the following - and think propaganda.

"I stand before you today the representative of a family in grief, in a country in mourning before a world in shock.
"We are all united not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana but rather in our need to do so. For such was her extraordinary appeal that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service all over the world via television and radio who never actually met her, feel that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours of Sunday morning. It is a more remarkable tribute to Diana than I can ever hope to offer her today.

"Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity. All over the world, a standard bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.
"Today is our chance to say thank you for the way you brightened our lives, even though God granted you but half a life. We will all feel cheated always that you were taken from us so young and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all. Only now that you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are now without and we want you to know that life without you is very, very difficult.
"We have all despaired at our loss over the past week and only the strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving has afforded us the strength to move forward.

"There is a temptation to rush to canonise your memory, there is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities not to need to be seen as a saint. Indeed to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being, your wonderfully mischievous sense of humour with a laugh that bent you double.
"Your joy for life transmitted where ever you took your smile and the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes. Your boundless energy which you could barely contain.
"But your greatest gift was your intuition and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what underpinned all your other wonderful attributes and if we look to analyse what it was about you that had such a wide appeal we find it in your instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives.
"Without your God-given sensitivity we would be immersed in greater ignorance at the anguish of Aids and HIV sufferers, the plight of the homeless, the isolation of lepers, the random destruction of landmines.

"Diana explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of suffering that made it possible for her to connect with her constituency of the rejected.
"And here we come to another truth about her. For all the status, the glamour, the applause, Diana remained throughout a very insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good for others so she could release herself from deep feelings of unworthiness of which her eating disorders were merely a symptom.
"The world sensed this part of her character and cherished her for her vulnerability whilst admiring her for her honesty.
"The last time I saw Diana was on July 1, her birthday in London, when typically she was not taking time to celebrate her special day with friends but was guest of honour at a special charity fundraising evening. She sparkled of course, but I would rather cherish the days I spent with her in March when she came to visit me and my children in our home in South Africa. I am proud of the fact apart from when she was on display meeting President Mandela we managed to contrive to stop the ever-present paparazzi from getting a single picture of her - that meant a lot to her.
"These were days I will always treasure. It was as if we had been transported back to our childhood when we spent such an enormous amount of time together - the two youngest in the family.
"Fundamentally she had not changed at all from the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school and endured those long train journeys between our parents' homes with me at weekends.
"It is a tribute to her level-headedness and strength that despite the most bizarre-like life imaginable after her childhood, she remained intact, true to herself.

"There is no doubt that she was looking for a new direction in her life at this time. She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment that she received at the hands of the newspapers. I don't think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling.
"My own and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this - a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.
"She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate and I do this here Diana on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.

"And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.
"We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born and will always respect and encourage them in their royal role but we, like you, recognise the need for them to experience as many different aspects of life as possible to arm them spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have expected nothing less from us.
"William and Harry, we all cared desperately for you today. We are all chewed up with the sadness at the loss of a woman who was not even our mother. How great your suffering is, we cannot even imagine.
"I would like to end by thanking God for the small mercies he has shown us at this dreadful time. For taking Diana at her most beautiful and radiant and when she had joy in her private life. Above all we give thanks for the life of a woman I am so proud to be able to call my sister, the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.

There's no hiding from the Marketing Junkies.

I'm sitting here, at half past eleven on a Saturday night, thinking of what drivel I'll write this week, and realising how cliché I'm sounding at the moment. I really don't know what to write about, and it's worrying me. Don't get me wrong though, it's not that I'm out of topics, it's that there's too much decision. I could write about Americans or the French (they both went down well last time, except with Ma'am Reyburn: she said I should stop saying that America is a useless waste of landmass that would be better off as a nuclear and medical waste dump and that the French are all arrogant... so I will), or I could write about that thing that everyone's going on about... global warming I think it's called, or I could write about how last week was very cold and wet (strange, that, what with all the global warming going on), or I could complain about how much work we've all got these days. I could also rant on until the cows come home about the endless stream of increasingly angry men who take lots of drugs and call themselves musicians when all they... um... sing about is how many hos they've acquired or how many times they've been shot. But no, today's topic may actually have some relevance to current affairs. Yes, this week I am writing about Valentine's Day (well, more specifically starting at Valentine's Day and branching off with whatever thoughts come my way...).

Does anyone else find it distressing how Valentine's day (and any other holiday your can think of) has turned into a marketing ploy. I was walking around the shops this afternoon and everywhere I looked there were signs advertising sales, specials and general cut-down prices which indicate that the mark-up was too high in the first place. There was even one store that was advertising a two for one special on 'Happy Valentines Day, my love" cards. I mean, what were they thinking? Maybe you'd give one to your spouse and one to your secretary? Anyway, the point is that I don't think there is anything left on this earth that hasn't somehow been turned into a plan to make more money. Think about fashion fads, for one thing. Items that are essential and everyday for certain jobs have been manipulated into becoming essential for looking 'hip and cool'. Examples of modern materialistic manipulation are Rayban aviators, bikers' leather jackets, and dogtags. How the hell can something designed to identify the remnants of a mangled, gory bomb explosion have become a fashionable item? But this isn't the worst part, oh no. The absolute worst thing about this whole money making system is the way all these things are advertised. Anywhere you go these days, you will be pummelled with advertisements. When I say anywhere I'm talking about if you go to one of Pluto’s far moons you may just have a slight chance of evading the marketing section of some or other small business, that type of anywhere. I don't mind people putting up posters around their local newsagengy to tell all the old people that they're selling small koala bears, because that's taking initiative (which is good), but ad's become a bit ridiculous when once you've walked into a store to buy a pencil you are suddenly greeted by an unending array of signs advising you to invest in housing developments in eastern Thailand. On any road in South Africa there is sure to be (and I will bet money on this) some sort of sign or billboard on the side telling you how Johnston's window repair is the best and cheapest window repair around, or something like that. It may seem like I am being pedantic, but I am just building up to something that I know bothers you. Something that affects the lives of South Africans so badly that some are driven to suicide. Something that proves that Man will never be perfect. This something is the current television ads...

I once was really into Scrubs and CSI, but other than that I've never really been much of a series fan. However, recently I have been tuning into SABC 2 on Fridays to watch an episode a week of NCIS (which by the way is brilliant) and every episode that is on is punctuated by several ad-breaks. This in itself is not a cadenza, but it is what is on during those breaks that utterly defy logic. There is one short 30-second ad about some other drama about Sipho breaking up with Jane who secretly loves Francis...etc, and for the rest of the five minute break they run these short and really annoying ad's urging me to SMS 'Love' to 31425 to receive a 'sexy poem or love tip' or 'Hit' to 34121 to receive 'the latest top of the charts music' NOW! for only 1 rand per tip/song (or something along the lines of that). Four things bother me about these ads. The first is the unbearable repetitiveness and frequency of the ad's (they're on ALL THE TIME). The second is how the broadcasting stations allow such utter drivel to be screened. The third is that there is so much fine line writing and terms-and-conditions that nobody notices that if they do send the SMS 'NOW!' they will be subscribing to a 'service' that charges something like R50 per subscribtion per day, which you then have to pay to unsubscribe from (This newfound knowledge of mine was acquired after much study of the ad's and very agonising attempts to read small print very quickly). But the fourth thing is the worst: the fourth thing that not only bothers but worries me is that anyone would comply with the advert and actually send an SMS. Doesn't anyone have the common sense to know that most if not all of these "SMSing" companies are absolute rubbish in the sense that they're as reliable and trustworthy as Krakatau (which, for those of you who didn't know, blew up quite spontaneously quite a while ago...). The really disturbing thing is that the numbers show that people don't realise this. All these SMS adverts must be working because the companies must be generating a huge income to pay for all those TV ad's. And that means that there are tens, if not, hundreds of thousands of people out there who will believe anything that is put on the TV. Think about it, ten or more thousand people in a country that's stricken with poverty, crime and political unrest, all doing what some small box with wires in it tells them to do. Now that's a scary thought.

________________________________________________________

On another matter, I've been getting some complaints recently from no-one in particular (that no one being the English teachers, of course) that I write pieces that are too long. My argument is that if it's too long for you to read then sod off. Please get back to me on this, because if the majority of you actually appreciate art and enjoy my long stories then I shall continue writing a lot, and if the majority of you are Philistines and don't like my long passages then, well, I'll probably ignore you and continue writing a lot anyway. But feedback would be nice, to anyone who cares.

English's 100 most beautiful words

It's official! The the 100 most beautiful words in English have been selected. Compiled by "Dr. Goodword" (a.k.a Dr. Robert Beard) the list aims to present the “most beautiful words in sounds and meaning".


Here they are (in alphabetical order, not in order of "beautifulness"):

1. adroit (Dexterous, agile.)
2. adumbrate (To very gently suggest.)
3. aestivate (To summer, to spend the summer.)
4. ailurophile (A cat-lover.)
5. beatific (Befitting an angel or saint.)
6. beleaguer (To exhaust with attacks.)
7. blandiloquent (Beautiful and flattering.)
8. caliginous (Dark and misty.)
9. champagne (An effervescent wine.)
10. chatoyant (Like a cat's eye.)
11. chiaroscuro (The arrangement of dark and light elements in a picture.)
12. cockle (A heart-shaped bivalve or a garden flower.)
13. colporteur (A book peddlar.)
14. conflate (To blend together, to combine different things.)
15. cynosure (A focal point of admiration.)
16. desuetude (Disuse.)
17. diaphanous (Filmy.)
18. diffuse (Spread out, not focused or concentrated.)
19. dulcet (Sweet, sugary.)
20. ebullient (Bubbling with enthusiasm.)
21. effervescent (Bubbly.)
22. efflorescence (Flowering, the opening of buds or a bloom.)
23. elixir (A good potion.)
24. emollient (A softener.)
25. encomium (A spoken or written work in praise of someone.)
26. ephemeral (Short-lived.)
27. epicure (A person who enjoys fine living, especially food and drink.)
28. epiphany (A sudden revelation.)
29. erstwhile (At one time, for a time.)
30. eschew (To reject or avoid.)
31. esculent (Edible.)
32. esoteric (Understood only by a small group of specialists.)
33. ethereal (Gaseous, invisible but detectable.)
34. etiolate (White from no contact with light.)
35. evanescent (Vanishing quickly, lasting a very short time.)
36. exuberant (Enthusiastic, excited.)
37. felicitous (Pleasing.)
38. fescue (A variety of grass favored for pastures.)
39. foudroyant (Dazzling.)
40. fragile (Very, very delicate.)
41. fugacioius (Running, escaping.)
42. gambol (To skip or leap about joyfully.)
43. glamour (Beauty.)
44. gossamer (The finest piece of thread, a spider's silk.)
45. halcyon (Happy, sunny, care-free.)
46. hymeneal (Having to do with a wedding.)
47. imbricate (To overlap to form a regular pattern.)
48. imbroglio (An altercation or complicated situation.)
49. imbue (To infuse, instill.)
50. incipient (Beginning, in an early stage.)
51. ingenue (A naïve young woman.)
52. inglenook (The place beside the fireplace.)
53. inspissate (To thicken.)
54. inure (To jade.)
55. jejune (Dull; childish.)
56. lagniappe (A gift given to a customer for their patronage.)
57. lagoon (A small gulf or inlet in the sea.)
58. languor (Listlessness, inactivity.)
59. lassitude (Weariness, listlessness.)
60. laughter (The response to something funny.)
61. lilt (To move musically or lively, to have a lively sound.)
62. lithe (Slender and flexible.)
63. loquacious (Talkative.)
64. luxuriant (Thick, lavish.)
65. mellifluous (Sweet-sounding.)
66. missive (A message or letter.)
67. moiety (One of two equal parts, a half.)
68. mondegreen (A misanalyzed phrase.)
69. nebulous (Foggy.)
70. niveous (Snowy, snow-like.)
71. obsequious (Fawning, subservience.)
72. odalisque (A concubine in a harem.)
73. oeuvre (A work.)
74. offing (That part of the sea between the horizon and the offshore.)
75. onomatopoeia (The creation of words by imitating sound.)
76. paean (A formal expression of praise.)
77. palimpsest (A manuscript written over one or more earlier ones.)
78. panacea (A complete solution for all problems.)
79. panoply (A complete set.)
80. pastiche (A mixture of art work (art or music) from various sources.)
81. peccadillo (A peculiarity.)
82. pelagic (Related to the sea or ocean.)
83. penumbra (A half-shadow, the edge of a shadow.)
84. peregrination (Wandering, travels.)
85. petrichor (The smell of earth after a rain.)
86. plethora (A great excess, overabundance.)
87. porcelain (A fine white clay pottery.)
88. potamophilous (Loving rivers.)
89. propinquity (A nearness, similarity, or kinship.)
90. Pyrrhic (Victorious despite heavy losses.)
91. quintessential (The ultimate, the essence of the essence.)
92. redolent (Sweet-smelling.)
93. rhapsody (A beautiful musical piece.)
94. riparian (Having to do with the bank of a river or other body of water.)
95. ripple (A small, circular wave emanating from a central point.)
96. scintillate (To sparkle with brilliant light.)
97. sempiternal (Forever and ever.)
98. seraglio (Housing for a harem.)
99. serendipity (Finding something while looking for something else.)
100. surreptitious (Sneaky.)

Now, who wants to try to write a story using all those words? It could be about an adroit, lithe ingenue in a beautific gossamer gown gambolling in the garden enjoying the petrichor. Or something.

Ma'am van Zyl

That's why

He asked me to write a poem about racism and I thought that that was just so typical of a black person

I am black
He is white

Just for today
Because we wanted to be
It would be cool
Deep

Sometimes we wonder if
We can be them
We don't want to be
But we do
Sometimes
Like today

So I did what he asked
Not because he's black
Because I wanted to
Because he wanted to

That's why

______

Alex Schorr

Today's debate

Greetings!

We really enjoyed your debate today.

A couple of things to bear in mind:

- The house that was arguing that 'facebook is the future' should perhaps have begun by defining what they meant by 'the future'. This might have salvaged some of your argument and kept you from being cornered by the opposition.
- Don't take things so personally...! :) Keep your cool.

And the winners are... The Opposition. Mostly because your floor was good. But it was close: James Langlands nearly swung things the other way right at the end.

facebook tragedy

Read the following article from the Beeld newspaper, for DEBATE : Tuesday 10 February

Topic: This house believes that facebook is the future.

'The time has come' 05/02/2009 23:19 - (SA)
Marida Fitzpatrick, Beeld

Pretoria - The former Affie who shot himself posted a suicide note on Facebook minutes before pulling the trigger.

"May it go quickly and clean, the time has come. Life's a b**** and then you die, so f*** it," was the last Facebook status by Rick Horn, 19, former pupil of Afrikaans Hoër Seunskool in Pretoria.
He also posted a note on the social networking site entitled "Death": "I would never have thought this morning when I got up that the day would turn out like this, but here I am at last, to do what I should have done long ago. Thanks for everything. Mwa."

A friend who has access to his Facebook profile, said this note was posted on Monday morning at about 10:50.

The police found Horn just after 11:00 on an open piece of veld in Polokwane. He'd shot himself in the head with a pistol.

Facebook hate group

His friends suspect problems in his matric year and a Facebook hate group had played a role in the tragedy.

"It haunted him," said Xander Coetzee, 20, his former roommate at Stellenbosch University's Goldfields residence on Thursday.

"The rejection had a bigger impact on Rick than people realised."
Horn made the headlines in 2007 when he laid a charge of assault against the Affies headmaster, Dr Pierre Edwards.

The case was later struck from the roll.

"His mistakes haunted him and people couldn't forgive him," said Ilana Taljaard, 21, a friend.
In 2007, Horn's matric year, a group was formed on Facebook where fellow Affies, among others, cursed and reviled Horn. The group still exists and has 123 members.

"It's cruel and had an enormous impact on him," Taljaard said.

'Sorry dude'

A few of the group members apologised after Horn's suicide.

"Sorry, dude. Hope you have found peace," reads one of the postings.

"I just want to sincerely apologise that I had been part of a group like this. It was a sensitive issue for matrics, but ... no one deserves to leave the world like this," reads another posting.
In the meantime, another group has been started on Facebook to pay tribute to Horn.

Coetzee said Horn had set the bad experiences from his past aside and enjoyed student life, "but we know there was always the sad part of Rick that felt rejected about the Affies incident".

Taljaard talked to him on the evening before his suicide. "He was . . .  happy and said he missed us and wanted to come and visit."

- Beeld

Big words?

I have always striven to have a large vocab, I cant spell half the words Im saying and I dont have a huge vocab. The thing is some people still think it nescasary to say big words to sound smart. Just the other day for instance the word "pedantic" came up. Being curious I enquired as to what the meaning is, the answer I was given was "you dont need to know what it means its just important that you use"(I wont use names...Herman). Its like as long as the person your talking to is as clueless as you its OK to use big words.

The big issue is that a huge portion of college, and the youth in general, dont use words that are bigger than four letters. The way I see it there are those who can speak english well, and those who no speak english good.

Then again I cant exactly kick a ball to the other side of the world, or hit a fly with a cricket ball blind folded. Yes I am refering to the jocks of the school. It doesnt realy matter that that they dont have a huge vocabulary, they've got their huge muscles. And I guess that both could be used to scare small children. Their most probably saying, there is two kinds of people jocks and not jocks.

Back to the point of a big vocab, use with caution. People who try to hard often end up looking like idiots. For example stay away from french sayings to try sound sophisticated (jen ay se qua...I spelt it how it soungds)

Just to end the passage the definition of pedantic from dictionary.referance.com is:
–adjective
1.
ostentatious in one's learning.
2.
overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, esp. in teaching.

Keagan Leamy

No Rain, No Pain?

I wasn’t going to post again until next week, as I’m sure that people will easily get sick and tired of hearing me rant on about the usual (i.e. school, teachers, discipline, Americans, etc) for too long, but I think that this morning’s rain storm has given me a rather good writing opportunity.

It wasn’t the biggest, longest or loudest storm I have ever experienced, but it definitely seemed like the wettest. It was really strange, because during the 11 minute Assembly there was absolutely no rain, and then five minutes later there was more water on the campus than in the Baltic Sea. I was in the library at the moment that the rain became really intense, and I decided to wait until it died down a bit before making a break to MacRobert. Now, you have to understand that the only people in the library at the time were Ross Friend and Pieter Strydom doing accounting homework, and a couple of Form 1s listening to a song by (and worth) 50 cents about how many times he had been shot (or somthing like that). As neither group offered much in the form of entertainment, I cut my wait short and decided to sod the rain and run for it. So, out of the library I ran like hell and high water (oh, the irony) back to MacRobert house. When I got there I assessed the damages. My blazer was soaked, my trousers were soaked, my shirt was soaked and for some very strange reason there was about three and a half litres of water in my shoes, so every time I took a step my feet made a funny squelching noise. So I got to my study, emptied my shoes and wrung out my blazer (an action which feels very strange and unnatural). I honestly thought the worst was over so I put on some dry things and walked out of my study...

I was slightly worried when I saw ‘Zeech’ (who lives in the same wing as me) staring at the floor and swearing. I thought he was going mad, until I saw just what he was staring at. There was a rapidly expanding puddle on the floor, the source of which was somewhere under Anthony’s door. The fact that Anthony was not present at the time caused somewhat of a dilemma. By the time we found him the puddle was not so much a puddle as a lake. He ran into the wing, looked at the puddle and said s***. Then he looked at his door and said s*** again. As he opened his door I saw the strangest thing I have seen in a long time. A pair of flip-flops floated (and I mean floated!) out of his door and down the corridor. He said s*** again. What had happened was that a large pool had formed outside and the water was flowing in through the bottom of the 'outer-leading' door. After about half an hour of swearing and bailing out (doesn’t that usually happen on ships?), things finally calmed down a bit. I was now able to see what else the rain had done. For a start, let’s just say that we won’t be watching the first team Cricket on the Oval on Saturday, so much as the first team Rowing. All the fields were flooded. I was told that the field next to the Spruit was especially flooded, so I went to check it out. As a result I saw the strangest thing I’ve ever seen since the floating sandals half an hour before: people were swimming on the field. Call me old fashioned, but isn’t swimming generally done in a pool or something?

And then, just as instantly as it had arrived, the rain stopped. Granted, there was still a light trickle, which could (I suppose) be called rain, but (next to the downpour) that would be like comparing a small, dripping tap to Niagara Falls. Although the rain has stopped, I don’t think this is over yet. For one thing, there is still a huge amount of water under the carpets in the Matric Wing in MacRobert, and although I’m no expert, I have a slight feeling that that will soon start to smell a bit.

On another matter, I think that something should be done about the amount of adults, especially teachers, who are influencing students into doing really rebellious things (oh, I don’t know... getting tattoos, for example?) Anybody who has any comments or queries (with specific reference to the passage named INK) please feel free to contact me.

Hosken

Breath

Click on this link for a review of Tim Winton’s novel, Breath, which is all the rage (http://australian-literature.suite101.com/article.cfm/breath_tim_wintons_latest_novel ).
We are thinking of prescribing it for the Form 3s in the second term. Have any of you read it? What do you think?

Some of you were asking about Cammy this morning (thanks!). The pic is of him doing his bit to make sure Ochse takes the Diligence Trophy… :)

Ma’am R

INK

It happened about twenty seven times. A student would put up his hand and catch my eye. So I’d walk over trying to put on my most intelligent-looking face and recall everything I know about Shakespeare’s Henry V. But inevitably, the question would have nothing to do with Henry, and everything to do with my tattoo (and the state I was in when I got it).

So, here it is. The story of my tattoo:

I was on a “gap year” in the UK when my cousin decided he wanted an enormous (and relatively ugly) dragon tattooed on the outside of his left bicep. I decided to tag along and watch.

So we took a train from London to Brighton (the tattoo artists there were cheaper than in London, and, being on a gap year, we were finding it hard enough to eat even one square meal a day, so we obviously wanted to spare every pence possible).

The tattoo parlour was a dingy place which had an obese, head-to-toe tattooed, bald lady as a receptionist.

While my cousin was being “inked” I decided that I wanted a tattoo too. Not very deep or profound, I know. But I just wanted one too.

It is a sun (which was on the back of my Van’s sneaker) and it has two intertwining eternity signs (which I copied from a ring I was wearing) in the middle of it.

So that was it. It cost £30. It was very sore – I think I bit my tongue until it was quite raw. I don’t regret it. And I was 100% sober when I got it. And no, I am not suggesting that you go out and get a tattoo too. But if you absolutely have to get one (when you are old and wise and no longer at school), here’s my advice: get it on a part of your body that won’t sag! ‘Cause a saggy tattoo is just gross. Eeew (involuntary shudder).

Ma’am van Zyl

Technicalities of technicians

If you are reading this then not only has the article passed under Ma’am Reyburn’s acceptability radar but the computer you are using has not yet fallen prey to the St Alban’s IT department.

Allow me to explain.

It all started on a lovely Sunday evening with a single thought: “Facebook”.
A simple desire by all accounts but one riddled with petty flaws.

As the Ochse House computers and their permanent residents have by this stage morphed into single beings I had no choice but to log on with my laptop, just as I had a week previously.
This required the simple act of connecting to the new and improved school network.
There was only one problem…I couldn’t.

For whatever reason I was now required to take my laptop to the “techies” up at STA-Tech for a few network adjustments. So, leaving my computer in the hands of the boffs, I left to fulfill my various sporting and extramural commitments.

Upon my return nearly three hours later I found my laptop exactly where I had left it. Amidst complaints of “…so many laptops to sort out these days…” (well DUH! Everyone with a laptop in the school has to bring it in to be connected) my computer was inspected.
After another half an hour of waiting I was told to return in the morning.
I was only too happy to oblige because, being in Form Four, I had practically no work and research to do that night.

The next morning during the third period I had IT where I needed my computer for fairly obvious reasons. So I began the journey from the maths classes where we do IT to TODD where people were doing maths.
After a few last minute adjustments and instructions on how to re-enter the wireless settings everytime the network disconnects for a second, I returned to IT for a period of Facebook.

So, with no standardised test the next day (it was business studies), I decided to get some information for future projects.
After a quick scavenger-hunt to try and relocate all my files and folders now randomly situated throughout the computer (except where I put them), I decided that it might be nice to listen to some music while working.
While waiting for I-Tunes to reinstall itself I noticed that my computer was not actually connected to the St Alban’s network.
I eventually found the one setting that the IT guy changed while I had watched him and did as he had done.

I clicked “ok” and waited for a second or two…
“at least one of the settings you changed did not change”
…
“ok”
…

Again
…
Again
…
Again
…

Ok…so maybe the new, improved system has some problems. I can just take it back again tomorrow.

Lets just do some accounting while listening to music.
Open I-Tunes.
…
?
…
What happened to all the music?

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Alex Schorr

Opinions on apostrophes...

Check out this article, forwarded from Mr Hamilton. (Then go on to read James's - note the apostrophe - seething, tumultous thoughts on Americans, and Pieter's tribute to Uncle Shane...)

When theyre gone, well all be struggling with English

Birmingham city councillors, trendy teachers and modern grammarians want to abolish the apostrophe but, says William Langley, proper punctuation should not be sentenced to death.

By William Langley Last Updated: 6:03PM GMT 31 Jan 2009

The problem child of English grammar is a tiny, tadpole-shaped bundle of trouble that makes no sound, but spells chaos. Three centuries after it invaded our language (almost certainly sneaked in by the French), the apostrophe continues to defeat, confuse and humiliate large numbers of people, and, in retaliation, they want to abolish it.

Then we wont have to worry about where its supposed to go.

Last week Birmingham city council announced that it would no longer use apostrophes on street signs . Councillor Martin Mullaney, the Liberal Democrat chairman of its transport scrutiny committee, claimed that dropping them would make the city's signage policy "more consistent", and easier for users of computer databases and satellite navigation systems. Apparently, if you have the misfortune to be a Mr O'Dowd, needing a minicab from the King's Arms in D'Arcy Avenue, drivers can't find you.

So, St Paul's Square, an elegant, late-Georgian landmark in Jewellery Quarter, will become St Pauls Square. We'll have the fashionably de-apostrophised Druids Heath and Acocks Green, but things are unlikely to stop there. Once they start to slide they slide quickly, and it surely won't be long before Great Charles Street, in the shopping district, becomes GR8 Chas St.

It is tempting to blame all this on the march of the knuckle-dragging illiterates who populate the lower ranks of officialdom, commerce and much else, but a substantial part of the responsibility lies elsewhere. Particularly with the fashionable clique of modern grammarians which has the apostrophe in its sights. Prominent among this bunch are the likes of John Wells, emeritus professor of phonetics at University College London, who argues that strict rules of spelling and grammar "hold children back", and the linguist Kate Burridge, author of Weeds in the Garden of Words, who wants the possessive apostrophe scrapped. Prof Wells wants to replace the apostrophe with a blank space, and when Ms Burridge argued at a public meeting that it should be dropped, she was loudly booed and told that she said "you know" too much to be taken seriously. She is now engaged on a campaign to have the "Yeah-but-no-but" catchphrase of Little Britain dimwit Vicky Pollard entered into the Oxford English Dictionary.

The apostrophe, then, is not entirely friendless. John Richards, a retired newspaper sub-editor and founder of the Apostrophe Preservation Society, based in Boston, Lincolnshire, believes that most of us are fond of it, and struggle with its complexities only because we are set a poor example. Think, he says, of Barclays Bank, Butlins holiday camps and all those ladies wear departments in the stores. And now Birmingham is abandoning the fight. "They are taking the dumbing-down route, setting a terrible example, and letting down everyone who tries to teach proper grammar and punctuation," he says. "How difficult is it, really, to use an apostrophe?"
Sadly, on the current evidence, too difficult. The misuse of the apostrophe has spread everywhere, including into our classrooms. A recent survey of teachers found that almost half were unable to place one accurately in the sentence: "The Smiths' house is a disused windmill." Two thirds wrongly inserted one into: "The 70s was a great decade for music."

Why so hard? The apostrophe only has two real functions. In contracted verbs and pronouns it indicates something left out. as in "aren't" or "he'll". It also forms singular and plural possessives – eg "king's" or "kings'". Compared with some of the orthographical horrors lurking within the English language it should be a piece of cake, yet even the best-read and brightest can fail, or, at least refuse, to grasp it. George Bernard Shaw denounced apostrophes as "uncouth bacilli", and conspicuously ignored them. The critic C C Barfoot called their use "the single most unstable
feature of written English". The antagonism continues to grow.

And so, towards its death bed, the apostrophe has slipped – hastened on its way by trendy teaching, the proliferation of punctuation-free emailing and the seemingly unstoppable spread of hand-scrawled signs in the High Street that say "Best Carrot's" or "Todays Special".

Yet the advantages of proper usage are all-too obvious. Consider two examples offered by Britain's leading apostle of the apostrophe, Lynne Truss: "Those smelly things are my brothers." Now drop in the apostrophe and you get a different meaning: "Those smelly things are my brother's." Or this: "The dog's like my dad." Without the apostrophe it becomes more agreeable: "The dogs like my dad."

Unlike the determinedly purist French, the British have no equivalent of the Académie Française to defend their language. No government body – certainly not the Estuary-spouting Tessa Jowell's absurd Ministry of Culture Media and Sport – stands up for the endangered glories of the English tongue. The best we have are the likes of Ms Truss, author of the hit grammar book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, and the BBC's John Humphrys, who believes text messaging is "doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago… destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary."

To fight back, we have to understand how the apostrophe became a feature – albeit a late one – of written English, and why it still has a role to play. Its roots lie in ancient Greece where the oratorical tradition included a device known as apostrophein, which literally meant "to turn away" but which, in practice, described the moment at which a speaker would turn from the audience to address people or things unseen. The word came to express the idea of something missing.

By the late Middle Ages it was appearing as "a floating comma" in books of Italian verse, and arrived in Britain, most probably from France, in the 16th century. Authors found it useful for forming elisions, and so making clear how a word was pronounced. Thus kiss'd would show that the word kissed had one syllable rather than two.

Confusion started when the apostrophe became an indicator of possession. Even educated scholars, according to Lynne Truss, struggled with "geniuses" and "genius's", and, particularly, the treatment of historic plurals such as "women" and "children". Slowly, the apostrophe gained a reputation for being awkward.

"But it isn't really," insists Richards. "It just needs to be understood, and treated with respect. I first started this society in despair at the number of mistakes I saw. I thought what a shame it was that something so useful was treated so badly." He began writing polite letters to proprietors of places such as "The Modern Mans Barbers Shop", and while not everyone took the advice kindly, his campaign made news around the English-speaking world. He was deluged with messages of support. "I've heard of people carrying felt pens and rolls of sticky tape around to correct mistakes," he says. "They are very attached to their apostrophes."

So they should be. In an age of falling standards, apostrophes stand as a line of defence. And when theyre gone, theyre gone.

A word on Ducks.

If you're reading this right now, you are probably under the impression that you are about to be entertained to a few facts on ducks. This is a reasonable assumption, as the title does imply that the passage is in some way connected to ducks. Unfortunately for all you duck lovers reading this, I have a confession to make. I lied about the title. The following passage is in no way connected to ducks. In fact, it's about as far away from ducks as you can get without going into stellar mechanics. Why did I do this, you ask? Because I can.

Whenever I log on to the internet to do research, no matter which website I am on, there are always adverts on the side of the page either telling me that I am the 1 billionth user on the site and that I've just won some small island off the coast of Asia, or else urging me to click on the picture of unclothed ladies with extremely large breasts, which in turn will take me to a site with more unclothed ladies doing rather disturbing things with small animals. Now, the first type of advert is bearable, because the style is not exactly conspicuous, so all you have to do is ignore them. However, if you are caught with the latter 'pop up' on your screen, you will instantly be dubbed a 'porn addict'. This is not the only instance where one mistake or misinterpretation can have dire consequences. For example, last week, Pieter Strydom, who is a rather clever bloke and has occasionally been top of the form academically, made a pronunciation error whilst reading from Henry V, during English. I'm sure that anyone who has read any of Shakespeare's works will agree that some of the words don't exactly flow, but of course the class didn't care and immediately he was boo-ed and hissed at. This somewhat ticked me off. Here we have someone who has been in the top five since Form 1, being attacked for stumbling over a word that's seven syllables long by people who occasionally have trouble with words like 'cat' and 'tree'. Honestly, the reading ability of some people is pathetic. Maybe it's not in this school, but I have heard people my age having so much difficulty reading English (their home language), that I thought they were trying their luck with Arabic or something. It's not only with the reading though: the more people I meet, the more I realise how disturbingly thick some people are. I'm not talking about if you have a low IQ, because there's nothing you can do about that, but nobody has the right to be an idiot. There's a difference between being not clever and being an idiot. If you're not clever you don't know the orbital speed of the moon. If you're not clever then you can't do calculus. If you're not clever then you can't design stealth aircraft. But if you're an idiot, then you're the type of person who thinks Australia is in Africa. You just can't be bothered to have the most basic of general knowledge about the world you live in. A prime example of this is when I went to England last year. I was constantly pressured to tell whoever I was talking to about how I have to fight off lions on the way to school. 80% of the people I met didn't know that South Africans had cell phones -or 'mobiles'-, let alone that we developed SMSing -or 'texting'-. But we're not perfect ourselves. I don't know much about politics (and I'm fine with that), but I do know enough to know that all these internal fights for power are squandering South Africa's resources. Really, why don't the people in government sort out their petty feuds once and for all and then get on with what they get paid to do: govern? In fact, come to think of it, the entire world is made up of idiots. South African politicians, who can't sort out their silly differences let alone lead a country; the British, who think that any country outside Europe is rural; the French, who eat snails; the people in the Middle East, who charge enormous amounts of money for oil (when they're not blowing stuff up); the Chinese, who came up with the most difficult language on Earth; and the Scottish, who don't wear underpants. But the worst of them all, the tip of the iceberg, the epitome of idiocy are the Americans. It's not my opinion, either. I'm sure all of you heard about or saw that programme on TV a while ago, where that guy went around the streets of America posing difficult questions like 'where is Iraq?' and 'how many sides does a triangle have?' to random people on the streets. How can citizens of the self-proclaimed last remaining superpower on Earth think that a triangle has two sides? How can they know who Ronald MacDonald is, but not Jesus Christ? How can some of them not know where the country that has been in their headline news for a very, very long time is? And how in the name of all that's holy, can the person who has been their president for two terms have said that the French don't have a word for entrepreneur?

It's not that I don't like Americans, I just think that they're a bunch of self centred arrogant pricks who are way too full of themselves (a bit like College Prefects, really). Generally. Okay actually that's not true. I'm sure most Americans are nice people, but it's those few who get noticed, the few complete imbeciles, the few who need to take off their shoes to count past ten who bring down the name of their country. I suppose I have to get to some sort of point, so just hang on a bit longer and I'll get to the very deep and meaningful point for this week.
There are two types of idiots, the introversial and extroversial. The introversial idiots are alright because they usually keep to themselves, but it's the extroversial idiots who need to be carefully watched. Racism, sexism, and all other '-isms' (including communism) are all offspring of extroversial idiots. People who believe that you can hate someone because of the colour of their skin, or because of what's between their legs should really be taken somewhere remote and then shot. If you think about it, most, if not all of the world's problems are made by idiots. Communism, wars, poverty, global warming and meteor showers are just some of the things caused by idiots, although maybe not so much the meteor showers... 'That may be all well and good,' you say, 'but how do we solve these problems?' Easy: we must prevent idiots from breeding. At the age of 18, everyone should take a test that asks various questions along the lines of 'What is Australia?' and 'Do you think Karl Marx was a nice guy?' and if they fail then, well, I'm sorry, but snip-snip, no more kids. It does seem a bit harsh, but think about all the hardships that will instantly go away. The only problem is, if we stopped all the idiots on the planet from breeding, well, then the world would soon be a very empty place.
On a different matter, apparently the Spanish Navy have recently announced the launch of their new submarines. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so that the new Spanish Navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish Navy.


James Hosken

What has the English Department done now?

Shrilly and piercingly “Uncle Shane” speaks its mind. All noise stops with the abruptness of a bird crashing into a solid brick wall in midflight. In some faraway high-school near the Eastern Cape coast-line a certain bald and shiny-headed educator, delivering the verdict to yet another disciplinary hearing, momentarily experiences a slight tug towards nothing in particular, followed by a fleeting yet splitting headache.

That was Ma’am Reyburn who had just blown the whistle for silence (called Uncle Shane after a rigorous process of physiological analysis, name-changing and a bit of embarrassment on the behalf of some) signalling the end to a heated debate between two groups of boys regarding the true nature of the character of King Henry V.

It is difficult to explain the true success of the form 4 English Co-Operative Learning Class. English is quite a tricky subject to teach, or so many would believe. But I think that the English Department has cracked it again. By creating a casual workplace among friends, all sharing an uncanny knack for English, they have allowed room for creativity to sparkle, opinions and ideas to flourish and precise and logical debates to fly. It is hard not to become overwhelmed by this fresh influx of knowledge achieved by a class room of College boys actually putting their minds to something. A new enthusiasm has taken residence in the hearts of many; thus revealed a passion and devotion now shared by almost all.

I take my hat off to the English Department – like I said – I really think they have done it again!

Pieter Strydom