SLOW

Recently I came across an old Latin text, Metamorphosis, by Lucius Apuleius Africanus, who is famous for being the author of one of the funnier Latin texts, Apologia, his self-defence in his trial where he was accused of witchcraft.

The text, in one of its first English versions, is known as The Golden Asse, translated by William Adlington, published in 1566. What makes Adlington's text quite quaint is that the "original spelling, capitalisation and punctuation have been retained". It's very well translated, especially for its time, and it's obvious that he enjoyed the original.

The main story is about Apuleius (some of the story is sure to be autobiographical), who encounters a witch, accidently gets turned into an Asse while keeping his human intelligence, which helps him get into some very strange situations with humans, other animals and "gods celestiall and gods infernall".

Every now and then the text changes focus (as Latin texts often do) to tell a totally different story, like Chapter 22, which tells the story of the "most pleasant and delectable tale of the marriage of Cupid and Psyches".

Of course the original Latin text is also available (studiose lector), but I would recommend Adlington's version, if only for a lucid 16th century perspective on a highly original 2nd century text.

I've been experimenting with using a four-coloured deck when playing online poker, and I've got to say that I approve. A four-coloured deck is of course a variation on the more established, commonly available black-and-red decks. Clubs become green, diamonds become blue, hearts stay red and spades stay black.

Basically, there is no real reason why only two colours should be used. Four colours gives you the advantage of never being caught with your suit down. Four colours means the quickest glance at the cards will tell you if you have a flush or not. Four colours means never having to strain your eyes when watching card-playing on tv.

Sure, there's a bit of a problem when playing solitaire, but do we really want to hold back the evolution of playing cards just for the sake of solitaire (and possibly some other black-and-red based games)?

Check it out: isn't it cool?

With the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans being ravaged by some nasty storms, I got to wondering about the differences between hurricanes and typhoons. Why are they given different names, when it looks like they are pretty much similar?

A quick glance into my dictionary last night told me that when this type of storm happens in the Pacific it's called a typhoon and if it happens in the Atlantic it's called a hurricane. Fine. But why the different words? Which word came first? Are the words timeless, could they have survived the ages?

It looks like hurricane is preferred for Atlantic storms, because it stems from the Taino word, hura, meaning wind. There is a strange corrolation with the Afrikaans word, herfs, and the Dutch word, herfst, which means autumn, the usual season for hurricanes and typhoons.

Typhoon also has an interesting etymology, since it comes primarily from the Greek word tuphon, meaning whirlwind, which somehow found its way into Cantonese: taaîfung, which means great wind.

Of course this is not the kind of thing you worry about when the storm is raging, but I just wanted to weigh up the different words. Both seem vicious and apt for the different regions. So will we ever see a Hurricane Slow? I somehow don't think so.

Every now and then there is this crazy old guy outside my office. Why do I say he's crazy? Because he hops over to the robot on crutches, sits down on a dustbin, takes out a loud shrill whistle, and starts whistling orders for those wishing to cross the street. And he gets upset if anyone ignores his orders, jaywalks, or looks at him as if he's crazy. Then he whistles louder than ever, sometimes letting the whistle drop, so he can express his severe dissatisfaction with the offender's disobedience by yelling in some unintelligible tongue.

He seems to appear irregularly, doesn't always get the robot quite right, and freaks me out every time I need to cross the road.

Maybe he's a ghost, an hallucination, an undercover cop, a failed musician or a jaywalker who got hit. Then again, maybe he's got a vision of the future, where crazy old guys get jobs regulating traffic.