You have to hand it to The Onion. Somehow they have a knack of taking the mundane and satirising it joyously. This time, they’ve targeted those ‘how to improve productivity’ stories and surveys that I spend so much time reading (and writing) in Study finds working at work improves productivity. Here’s an excerpt:

To conduct the study, researchers split the staff of a Washington-based insurance company into two groups and assigned each group a series of tasks to be completed by the end of the day. The control group engaged in normal workplace activities, such as standing around and talking, staring vacantly at the computer screen, and surfing the Internet. The other group was instructed to do work and complete its given tasks. Incredibly, the group that did not do any work failed to get any work done, while the group that did do work finished all the work.

And then the trademark deadpan line…

The researchers believe that these lessons could possibly be applied to fields outside the insurance industry.

And the closing punchline…

Despite the staggering new findings, many American workers say that they still do not feel comfortable working on the job.

From this week’s Flight magazine (Straight and Level, 20-26 November 2007):

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise announced “DAE, the global aerospace manufacturing and services corporation, and GE have reached a memorandum of understanding for a global co-operation understanding.”

Then there is the American Airlines VP for passenger services called (seriously) Chuck Imhof.

I talked to a few publishers this year about doing a book of Badlangauge.net. I even wrote a few pitches.

The problem is that the book I wanted to write was different from the book editors wanted to publish.

I couldn’t put my finger on the problem except that they kept on referencing titles like The Tipping Point, The Long Tail, Freakonomics and similar titles.

Now, thanks to Wired, I can see what they were getting at. I loved and deeply dug their article last month: What’s the big idea? It contains a DIY guide to coming up with a catchy, paradoxical title and a winning premise.

As with Hollywood, the book that is good is different from the book that will sell. Anyhow, I’m flat out with business prose until Christmas at the earliest and then I probably have to put together a book for a client. I’m still working away on my book for pilots (If I’m going to write a book for no money, I might as well write it about something I love).  I guess BadLanguage.net won’t hit the bookshelves for a while yet.  But you can get it all here for nothing!

Technorati Tags: Wired, Paradoxonomics, books, publishing

I have to be clear about this. Jeremy Clarkson is a communications guru. He has a knack of making complicated things seem simple. My wife, who has no interest in cars, loves to watch Top Gear because he turns the subject into entertainment.

My favourite Clarkson quote: “this Aston Martin may look like Lord Greystoke but under the bonnet it’s all Tarzan.”

Then there’s the comment (I think I saw a similar sentiment in a P. J. O’Rourke piece) that his idea of a great evening’s entertainment would be a six pack of beer, a deck chair and the spectacle of the entire French air force crashing into an oil refinery.

But he’s just plain wrong about general aviation. His Sunday Times column ‘Biggles, you’re a crashing bore‘ misses the point completely.

So, the recipe for flying then. You drive to an airfield, check your plane for two hours, take off, sit still, speak gibberish into a radio, land, eat cheese and then sit still again till you?re home again. Repeat until one day you hear a loud bang . . .

The thing I want Jeremy to understand is that we don’t eat cheese. My friends and I are on a mission to eat in every Michelin-starred restaurant in Europe that’s within a taxi ride of an airport. Here’s a partial list: Guy Savoy, The Fat Duck, Le Clos St. Denis, Maisons de Bricour, Gidleigh Park etc. There are some reviews on my other blog: ModernPilot.com. It’s a rotten job but someone has to do it (like being a Top Gear presenter, I suppose).

The training, checklists, pre-flight preparation etc. that he complains about are all part of being safe. Most accidents are caused by careless pilots not faulty engines. But I admit that I take some pride in doing it well.

Oh, and the plane I fly does over 200mph with never a speed camera in sight. I can get to Cannes in a little over three hours without having to spend days in a queue at the airport. I can carry as much toothpaste as I want. The plane was built a couple of years ago out of carbon fibre, has an airframe parachute for emergencies and more computers than the Space Shuttle. And Angelina Jolie flies one.

Technorati Tags: Jeremy Clarkson, Biggles, flying, private pilots

One of my readers sent me this insightful comment: “My grandfather detested Latin and even into his late 80s, expressed doubt as too why he had to learn it.  He said late in life, “I thought I would have found out by now”.  He died at 89 (not of old age).”  

I’m tempted to say ’sic transit gloria mundi’ but I agree with him!

Blogstorm publishes a table of the top 100 UK blogs.  Belle De Jour is number 76. The author has a publishing contract and they’ve turned the blog into a TV series starring Billie Piper.

I am number 79.  Where’s my TV series?  Where’s my publishing contract?  I used to be jealous when “leading” bloggers (except me) were given free laptops by Microsoft but now I’m just cheesed off.

I mentioned this to some actor friends of mine last night.  They asked me what my blog was about.  I thought I would try to sex it up a little.  “Writing.  You know: grammar, Latin, how to write a press release, that sort of thing” I replied.  They weren’t impressed.

Technorati Tags: Belle de Jour, blogging, TV, jealousy, blog envy

I’m reading The Making of the Middle Ages by R.W. Southern. This small book is a time machine. It takes me back to a world that seems familiar but really is very different and very unexpected. Southern writes so well and concisely that he sort of invites you in. The book was written in the fifties and I guess today it would be 900 pages long (not 272) and full of impenetrable, specialist academic jargon.

The only curious thing about it is that he gives Latin quotes in Latin without any attempt at translation. He assumes that anyone reading the book will be able to read Latin. Which is as much of an insight into British academia in the fifties as it is into the middle ages.  Even though I studied the language from 11 to 21, I can remember so little of it now that I am unable to parse the stuff he quotes.

So my book learning has faded. But my enjoyment of well-written history books has not. That’s one gift that my history degree has given me.  The other one came to me when I was thinking about those Latin quotes. It is the memory of one of my tutors.

When I was at Oxford, I took a course in medieval Latin. A tutor at Corpus Christi College was giving it. (Oxford is divided up into dozens of colleges. I was at Pembroke.) The first week twelve of us showed up.  The second, four.  By the third week it was only me and a friend of mine.  So rather than give up the course, he turned it into a tutorial in his study.  For a year or so, we turned up and he taught us.  Each tutorial started with a cup of tea and a biscuit (cookie).  He was witty, shrewd and learned.  His study was more like a library.  Even the blinds of his medieval attic room had Anglo-Saxon inscriptions on them. 

A couple of episodes stick in my mind.  Once, he was teaching us about the oath of fealty between a lord and his feudal vassal. But rather than teach it, we reenacted it with him as the vassal and me as the lord.  Another time, one of the porters rang him up about a disciplinary incident (he was, I think, dean of the college). Some student had been caught vandalising or drunk or something.  All he said was “do send him my regards.”  I think the porter understood that this meant words of admonition and guidance but it was typical of his understated way of doing things.

Do I remember any Latin?  No.  But looking back, his generosity (he didn’t need to teach us at all), his hospitality (he didn’t need to give us tea) and his wry humour seem to be more valuable lessons.  Especially in an age of “educational attainment goal-setting.”

Technorati Tags: Oxford, Latin, R.W.Southern, Middle Ages, education

I wrote an article last year about distraction-free text editors, but I wanted to add one to the list: AloneWriter from Craig Ritchie. If you run it full-screen the menu only appears when you put the mouse over it. But it also works nicely in a window. I particularly like the very subtle word count at the bottom of the screen.

Having said that, I really find that I am happy to use Word 2007 with its word count always visible. When I’m writing long documents, I need the Document Map feature to navigate. For work where I’m trying to structure information, I use tables a lot. It’s funny how the tools we use affect the way we think.

However, there is one feature I would like for Word: a ‘concentrate on writing’ mode. With one click, it would hide everything else on the screen, give me a cut down ribbon menu and a live word count but nothing else. More importantly, it would mask incoming emails and IM. It would much more useful than the pointless “Full Screen Reading mode.”

Windows Vista has this feature for presentations and on HP laptops there is even a button on the keyboard to put you into presentation mode. What about ‘writer mode’? Or ‘concentrate mode’?

Technorati Tags: distraction-free text editors, WriteRoom, Dark Room, AloneWriter, Office, Word, 2007, concentration