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Today's the day

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Eddie Mair | 07:06 UK time, Saturday, 10 November 2007

that we launch iPM. Apologies if you're already bored rigid with the previews and appeals and trails. We'll calm down after today.

I do want to say what a bang-up job the team have done. As you'll see from the iPM Blog, they have done a ton of great work - I find it really rewarding to have a rummage round the blog. One of their great ideas is the "favourites" feature...asking a variety of people what web sites they've saved for regular access. I'll be doing mine soon.

Yesterday we recorded three items for the programme - all great guests. A discussion on Enoch Powell was fascinating, and best of all can be heard at its full length on the iPM blog, along with links to articles and most importantly, the original 1968 Powell speech so you can judge it for yourself. The item was almost dropped from the running order but our interest perked up after contact from a listener. And there are already responses posted to an as yet unbroadcast (on Radio 4) interview. It's as interactive as it gets

Perhaps my favourite piece so far was talking to Mr Design from Transport for London about the new tube map. He was saying that copies had been distributed to stations ready for unveiling tomorrow, but if the one on display at Great Portland Street last night was any guide, someone's ahead of the game. I should have taken a pic shouldn't I?

1030 UPDATE: By the way we are aware that the 502 error messages are back. Great day for it to happen, no?

Comments

  1. At 01:01 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Fearless Fred wrote:

    Well, I'm looking forward to it, Eddie. :)

  2. At 02:10 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Ed Iglehart wrote:

    How did you get through the 502 torm, FFred?

    xx
    The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry, and sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question "How can we eat?" the second by "Why do we eat?" and the third by "Where shall we have lunch?".
    -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    502

  3. At 02:19 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Ed Iglehart wrote:

    How did you get through the 502 torm, FFred?

    xx
    The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry, and sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question "How can we eat?" the second by "Why do we eat?" and the third by "Where shall we have lunch?".
    -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    502

  4. At 02:21 PM on 10 Nov 2007, DI Wyman wrote:

    the Teddy Bears have their 502 picinc.......good luck!

  5. At 02:40 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Eddie Mair wrote:

    Yeah come on Fred...how did you do it? Did you BREAK IT in the first place?? Mmmmm?

  6. At 04:45 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Deepthought wrote:

    My beach posting today was 502'ed; I did not do anything else, but later on, there on the beach was my scrabble hand; anyone know enough Polish to get a word out of it?

  7. At 05:45 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Frances O wrote:

    What's a torm, Ed?

    1st attempt: 1740, listening to iPM
    1748

  8. At 06:00 PM on 10 Nov 2007, tony ferney wrote:

    Please, sir, can I have some more?

    Like this coming Monday for instance.

  9. At 06:47 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Ed Iglehart wrote:

    A storm without it's dentures in place.
    ;-)

    ed

    Graduate students and most professors are no smarter than undergrads.
    They're just older.

  10. At 07:43 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

    One of the things I love about Eglish language is the 'apostrophe its' business. I enjoy reading phrases for what they say rather than what the writer intended. For example, Ed @ 9 writes

    'A storm without it's dentures in place.'

    which of course means 'a storm without it is dentures in place'.

    I have fun wondering what 'it' is, and why the lack of it should lead to the emplacement of dentures.

    :-))

  11. At 08:48 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Frances O wrote:

    Maybe the 'without' is in the old sense of 'outside'.

    'a storm out side it is... dentures in place'

    'a storm outside... it is dentures in place'

    Any clearer?


    I thought not.

    But there was me thinking our Ed was using a techie term. Or torm.

  12. At 09:54 PM on 10 Nov 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

    Frances O @ 11, How about that fine old word from Ed's own neck of the woods, 'outwith'?

    'As torm outwith, it is dentures without.'

    Why is a torm like a set of dentures?


    :-) love the language...

  13. At 01:18 AM on 11 Nov 2007, Ed Iglehart wrote:

    It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
    -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News

  14. At 02:06 PM on 11 Nov 2007, Squirrel wrote:


    Are those banana's?

    No they're not, those are MY lunch!

    It's its use of the possessive I object to too!

    Do other languages even have a word for dyslexia?

    I always get upset by the use of " CD's " (rather than "CDs")

    btw: Why do americans insist that their language is ENGLISH when it so clearly isn't?

  15. At 04:34 PM on 11 Nov 2007, nikki noodle wrote:

    Just to be utterly and completely pedantic, many plurals in Old English ended with 'es'

    so that by eliding the 'e' and substituting an apostrophy, one may infact be more correct historically speaking.....

    Chaucer would agree with me I'm sure!!

  16. At 05:34 PM on 11 Nov 2007, Frances O wrote:

    Well, Chris, I was thinking of 'outwith', but in the interests of londoncentricity, decided not to use it. Well spotted, that fish.

    'There is a gree hill far away
    Without a city wall'

    ... which has probably puzzled generations of schoolchildren and churchgoers.

    I won't even mention Gladly, the visually-challenged bear.

  17. At 07:02 PM on 11 Nov 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

    n-n @ 15, you won't convince me: I don't think Chaucer necessarily agreed with *anyone*, even when they agreed with him. :-) The only poem of his I had to deal with in manuscript facsimile (three versions) for an editing exercise didn't have any apostrophes at all, and I don't trust modern transcriptions. Opening the Riverside at random takes several pages to locate one (line 47, G text of *The Legend of Good Women*, in case it matters to anyone) and that is the notable phrase "That I n'am up and walkynge in the mede", which isn't exactly helpful. The book goes for page after page with nary an apostrophe, and I can't find either its or it's.

    Frances O @ 16, how about singing 'for his mercies ay endure' before I learnt to read, and the notion that gave me of the mercies of God?

    O go on let's use 'outwith'. It's *good* for them. So is 'grue/grew' and so is 'scunner', and those two are in Chambers; I have a feeling that 'outwith' isn't, which makes it even better.

    Fifty per cent of my posts this weekend have got through to posting; the others have been accepted, then vanished into a black hole. How lucky do I feel, punk?

  18. At 09:04 AM on 12 Nov 2007, Ed Iglehart wrote:

    I thought 'outwith' was A Scottish-ism, but whatwith British politicians running I may be getting a wee bit confused.

    Salaam/Shalom/Shanthi/Dorood/Peace
    Namaste -ed


    fortune: cannot execute. Out of cookies.

  19. At 09:36 AM on 12 Nov 2007, Fearless Fred wrote:

    Ooh 'Eck! Was the weekend our English revision time? Does this mean there's going to be a test???

  20. At 09:57 AM on 12 Nov 2007, Gillian wrote:

    Ed I (18) I thought so too. One of my favourite Scottish-isms is calling the morning the forenoon, and tomorrow is the morn. The first example was used by ''older'' colleagues in Aberdeen about 15 years ago, so may not be in use very much now.

  21. At 10:23 AM on 12 Nov 2007, CG wrote:

    Can you ask whoever is running this blog:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2006/11/are_domestic_wind_turbines_an_ecocon.html

    why they took my post about Windsave's new WS1200 wind turbine off the postings. I put it on about two weeks ago, it would have been about number 280. It ran for about a week, but now it's gone. Is it because I used the term "bullshitting"? Oh dear, I've done it again.

  22. At 03:16 PM on 12 Nov 2007, Aperitif wrote:

    Ed (9), Frequently I would concur, but recently a colleague of mine overheard one of the many new undergradutes in his Sociology seminar on Marxism asking her friends whether they thought that the Bourgeoisie were so-called beacsue they could afford only 'Bourjois' brand cosmetics...

    I think we have some way to go...

  23. At 06:10 PM on 12 Nov 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

    Someone in my class at school once said in all seriousness, when we were reading the 'what a piece of work is man' speech in Hamlet, "Oh, I know this bit! He got it out of 'Hair'."

    This was an eighteen-year-old A-level English student.

    There is probably quite a long way to go.

  24. At 10:17 PM on 12 Nov 2007, Val P wrote:

    Of course both would be 'historical' to your student, eh Mr Fish?

  25. At 11:42 PM on 12 Nov 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

    Val P @ 24, bless your heart! :-) 'Hair' was still on the London stage when she said it -- for the first time, just in case they have put it on again since. I think it may even still have had Marsha Hunt in it.

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