"pixillate"
FCS
up the majority of the readers of this post, Max
Mosley is the son of Oswald and Diana Mosley,
leaders of the UK's "Blackshirt" National-Socialism
movement and strong influential on its more moderate
"Brownshirt" offshoot movement.
The sway which such movements held led to the
prohibition of specified articles of clothing being
used to epitomise political belief--and may well be
connected to the practice of wearing flags, in lieu of
clothing, amongst various distinct demographics in
the UKGBNI today.
Old Maxie is also the head of the FIA, the governing
body of Formula One motorsports, and was caught
on video in a sado-masochistic fetish orgy the other
week.
In the reported proceedings of the court sessions in
which Max is claiming illegal nefarity on the part of
the newspaper which arranged the sting - after all,
he'd been doing it with total confidentiality for the last
45 years and his wife is very very upset indeed at the
news - it is claimed that the reporter who filed the
copy in the first place had promised to "pixillate"
the faces of the other participants.
Well hold on. A "pixel" is a homophone for a "pic' cel"
or a "picture cell", taken from the name of the celluloid
films on which each frame of animation was drawn, in
the days before computers.
So surely that should be "pixellated".
One doesn't expect such glaring oversights from THE
TIMES.
This apparent editorial gaffe should be taken with a
pinch of salt though, as it follows quite hot on the
heels of news that the next edition of the OED is
about to hit the million word mark--and one measure
of currency is press reports containing the word in
a typical usage. Or should that be in typecal use?
Given that journalism is variously a trade and A
Profession--depending on to whom one wishes to
appeal, how nice they are, and most importantly,
how much money and influence they can bring to
the life of the poor downtrodden hack in their nice
detached pad with land furnished with review items
from obliging manufacturers, perhaps this brazen
attempt to get a homophone in the OED represents
the standards of Honesty and impartiality one can
expect from titles at all levels.
Then again, maybe it's just a witty allusion to the
fetish archetype of the naughty faerie--generally
popular amongst the more schoolgirl-y fetishist
as it involves being winsome, lissome, and pretty,
and air-headedly self-centred I gather, thanks to
Hugh Heffner, who in all fairness makes enough
money from the schoolgirls round here that it would
simply be neither honest nor truly capitalist not to
given them airtime in his increasingly dated round-
ups of the erotic, pornographic and bizarre.
Then again, in terms of the way the lexicon of
British English at least is evolving, it does have a
nice cross-correlation with the states conservation
workers are finding their chosen habitats in.
Do we really need 1 000 000 words that much, or
rather, quite so badly?
Can we look forward to reading about the time
Max spends playing the Back Nein at The Belfry?
Can we look forward to property supplements in
our local rags advertising the latest kind of disris
as nicely campact and bejou?
Will used-car dealers be considered rather more
honest if they place ads selling "good ranners"
which are "in knead of sum attintion" as a shorthand
for a weld-up with mismatched paint work?
We shall see. But, as English clamours to complete
its target lexithon, we maybe also should be more
mindful of the Ad Hoc neologisms we saw in the
late 1980s that went the rounds of the dinner parties
and the "cool" "sets", only to sink without a trace once
the then target of 3/4 of a million had been hit. And
whether the lexicographologing of these has been
at the cost of updating existing definitions which are
sorely in need of expansion--e.g., "Bondage" itself, which
dwells on the Scriptural dimensions as espoused
by St Paul of Tarsus and the ensuing International
Slave Trade Britain led the way in establishing and
maintaining, and totally misses the point by merely
nodding to fetishist practices and, as such, is of use
only really to A-Level English Literature students who
may have to read old texts and stories, rather than
the more average contemporary reader and non-native
speaker who merely wants to understand their newspapers,
magazines, television and computer-mediated information.
G DAEB
COPYRIGHT (C) 2008 SIPSTON
--
R H Draney
>
>In the reported proceedings of the court sessions in
>which Max is claiming illegal nefarity on the part of
>the newspaper which arranged the sting - after all,
>he'd been doing it with total confidentiality for the last
>45 years and his wife is very very upset indeed at the
>news - it is claimed that the reporter who filed the
>copy in the first place had promised to "pixillate"
>the faces of the other participants.
>
>Well hold on. A "pixel" is a homophone for a "pic' cel"
>or a "picture cell", taken from the name of the celluloid
>films on which each frame of animation was drawn, in
>the days before computers.
Actually, it's from "picture element", and refers to the smallest discernible
unit of area in a graphic....
>So surely that should be "pixellated".
Spelled as it was printed, it's a colorful euphemism for "drunk", inspired by
the "pixies" who make people do odd things...okay, so it's the wrong word, but
it *is* a word....r
--
What good is being an executive if you never get to execute anyone?
Mike Lyle
[...]
>
> Do we really need 1 000 000 words that much, or
> rather, quite so badly?
Well, you certainly seem to. The rest of us usually strive a little
harder for brevity.
[...]
--
Mike.
Andrew Heenan
> One doesn't expect such glaring oversights from THE
> TIMES.
Why ever not?
Few newspapers take subediting seriously, and none continue the tradition of
multiple proof checks before going to press.
This is largely a cost saving exercise, of course, but also reflects the
need to get the stuff in print before the Internet renders it out of date.
Much more serious is the complete lack of fact checking by most newspapers,
including 'The Thunderer'
Don Phillipson
news:6ea615F...@mid.individual.net...
> "FCS" <sipst...@my-deja.com> wrote ...
> > One doesn't expect such glaring oversights from THE
> > TIMES.
> . . .
> Few newspapers take subediting seriously, and none continue the tradition
of
> multiple proof checks before going to press.
>
> This is largely a cost saving exercise, of course, but also reflects the
> need to get the stuff in print before the Internet renders it out of date.
In the Canadian capital, which now has only two daily
papers in English (and one in French), neither is now
read by editors for common sense before publication.
A recent big local news story concerned rural rezoning
of "wetlands," important because this prohibits farmers
draining part of the land they own (and pay taxes for.)
Naturally this was accompanied by a map showing
wetland regions before and after the change. But the
map was 80 per cent wrong (as was indicated the next
day by a correction notice a tenth the size of the original.)
My concern is that newspapers today no longer even
attempt to review the finished page to catch errors in
picture captions, unintended puns and howlers in
headlines, etc. They say they have no time or budget
for this nowadays, i.e. say computer typesetting entails
abandonment of the work norms of the "journal of
record" 20 or 30 years ago.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
The UnInmate
"Don Phillipson" <e9...@SPAMBLOCK.ncf.ca> wrote in message
news:g5qdsd$l1i$2...@theodyn.ncf.ca...
Which makes sense, Don, because they are no longer journals of record. They
are an obstinate holdover rump of the print world which will not exist in 10
years. We just need something more suitable than the Blackberry for news
reading on the go.
Literacy and error-checking at online news outlets such as MSNBC seems to be
generally, though not consistently, better.
Andrew Heenan
> They say they have no time or budget
> for this nowadays, i.e. say computer typesetting entails
> abandonment of the work norms of the "journal of
> record" 20 or 30 years ago.
Hard to believe that just thirty years ago, every word, nay, every
*character* was set in hot metal.
Andrew
Mark Brader
> > They say they have no time or budget
> > for this nowadays, i.e. say computer typesetting entails
> > abandonment of the work norms of the "journal of
> > record" 20 or 30 years ago.
> Hard to believe that just thirty years ago, every word, nay, every
> *character* was set in hot metal.
The reason it's hard to believe would be that it's not true.
Oh, it was true for *some* publications, and at many newspapers
the printers' unions tried their damndest to keep it that way.
It might even be true for all the British papers -- I see that this
thread is crossposted into a newsgroup for those. But phototypesetting
is a technology more than 50 years old. I was using a phototypesetter
myself in 1975.
--
Mark Brader | "No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor
Toronto | or Foreign Secretary ... Anyway, I wouldn't want to be
m...@vex.net | Prime Minister." -- Margaret Thatcher, 1969
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Andrew Heenan
>> Hard to believe that just thirty years ago, every word, nay, every
>> *character* was set in hot metal.
> The reason it's hard to believe would be that it's not true.
Aplogies; my Brit roots showing.
It certainly *is* true of British newspapers, I didn't realise the rest of
the world was so far ahead (though I did know the technology existed).
--
Andrew
UK Residents:
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Sign the petition to stop the government stealing from the
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Don Phillipson
news:lvadnTc8_4mTaB3V...@vex.net...
> Andrew Heenan:
> > Hard to believe that just thirty years ago, every word, nay, every
> > *character* was set in hot metal.
>
> The reason it's hard to believe would be that it's not true.
>
> Oh, it was true for *some* publications, and at many newspapers
> the printers' unions tried their damndest to keep it that way.
> It might even be true for all the British papers -- I see that this
> thread is crossposted into a newsgroup for those. But phototypesetting
> is a technology more than 50 years old. I was using a phototypesetter
> myself in 1975.
By chance I worked at The Canadian Press HQ in Toronto
1964-67, just when newspaper technology was changing at
its fastest.
1. "Hot metal" was indeed used by newspapers, as the
second stage (after setting type) in "stereotype" printing
technology. Stage 1 was setting type (cf. Mergenthaler
or Linotype machines) assembled into pages (Forms)
in traditional style. Forms were grouped together to
provide negative matrices for a multi-page Stereotype
including usually four pages (depending on the width
of the printing machine. What the printing machine
actually used was positive moulds made (in hot metal)
from the Stereotype.
2. Photo-composition was introduced in two stages.
Chronologically first was offset printing rather than
hot type, from Stereotypes made in the traditional way.
Computer technology enabled from the 1970s direct
assembly by editors of how a page would look, and
its transfer into offset printing mats directly rather
than via hot metal or Stereotypes.
A main practical concern of the newspaper business
is always return on capital. Except on rare occasions
(e.g. founding a new newspaper or moving an old
newspaper into a new building) proprietors did not buy
new technology because it was new, or even more
efficient: they needed beforehand to get their money's
worth out of the capital they had earlier spent on now-
theoretically-obsolete machinery.
Thus in 1964 the "wire services" remained important,
providing via teleprinter 50 to 90 per cent of what any
US or Canadian daily paper would print. Before 1964
teleprinter links worked ONLY IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
A regional newspaper would receive 50 to 100 thousand
words a day from its wire services, and print 10 to 20
thousand words, every one of which had to be keyed
(with capitalization) by a Linotype operator (after punctuation,
revision and cutting by local news editors, of course.)
The firist innovation in 1964 was "computer type setting,"
viz. teleprinter receipt of the same text in upper as well
as lower case, permanently recorded in a Baudot
punched paper tape, that could be input into a (new
style) typesetting machine, instead of using a human
typesetter. Only three or four Canadian newspapers
had this machinery when the service began, but as
existing machinery wore out it was replaced by CTS
technology.
No longer needing to key in wire service copy also
provided a strong incentive to newspapers no longer
to edit it for themselves. It was faster and cheaper
just to print a local selection of what the wire
service provided, truncated to fit available space.
This increased at wire service headquarters the importance
of the Wire Editor, gatekeeper of the output, who had to
approve before transmission every word of the wire copy
(and could send back for revision or re-checking
anything he disapproved, or change it to his own
satisfaction and send it out.)
There was a daily written evaluation of the previous
day's output, collecting together any complaints from
wire service users or errors spotted by the staff. On
arrival at work each day, every staff editor would
reread his "blacks" i.e. carbon copies of all the stories
he had worked on the previous day (identified by
personal codes: mine was DxP) and report up the
chain any error or important omission (especially
mistaken changes, if any, by the Wire Editor.)
This single man (three men for a full 24-hour cycle)
personally controlled 50 to 90 per cent of what any
Canadian would read in any Canadian newspaper.
The work was like running a racing car within the
speed limit. For 90 per cent of the time it was routine
work that could be done on auto-pilot. But you had to
be on the qui vive for any error of any sort (from a
spelling mistake to misreading NOT for NOW* or the middle
name of an obscure legislator), and capable if possible
of fixing it yourself immediately. because the distribution
teleprinter cost money every minute of the day, running
or idle. No errors were tolerated and no delays either.
(After three years on staff I was chosen and trained for
this job, but then had to decide if I wanted to do this
same thing next year or for 10 years or for 20 years --
and I went looking for a different job.)
* The frequency of mistaking NOT and NOW in the
teleprinter days contributed to a distinct stylistic feature
in N.American newspaper writing. The word NOW
had to appear in any sentence in a position NOT
would not occupy, to avoid confusing the typesetter
1000 miles distant. You would write "after passage
of the XYZ Act, the government now will legislate . . . "
If you wrote "will now" anyone might transcribe this
as "will not." The words are reversed by a single
pencil scrawl of the wire editor, so even if his output
teleprinter mistakes and keys "NOT WILL" the
newspaperman at the other end will spot the anomaly
and knows how to put it right.
Mark Brader
> By chance I worked at The Canadian Press HQ in Toronto
> 1964-67, just when newspaper technology was changing at
> its fastest.
Hey, I worked there once too. I was an employee of a company that
placed me with different clients of theirs, and I worked at CP as
a programmer for I think about 9 months in 1984. I had very little
contact with the people that actually dealt with the news, though.
The first part of the work was preparation for the 1984 federal
election, and after the election I worked on the editorial system
they were developing. The programming was in C on VMS.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | I am a mathematician, sir. I never permit myself
m...@vex.net | to think. --Stuart Mills (Carr: The Three Coffins)