ويكي

الخميس، 4 أغسطس 2011

Vocabulary test

A hat tip to Fritinancy for her post about the Test Your Vocab site.

Test Your Vocab is part of an American-Brazilian research project “to measure vocabulary sizes according to age and education, and particularly to compare native learning rates with foreign language classroom learning rates.” (The Brazilian project hasn’t launched yet.) The first part of the test determines general vocabulary level; the second part has “a larger but narrower selection of words to determine the vocabulary level with greater precision.”

I missed mawkish, pastiche, chivvy, adumbrate, disjunctive, melange, sedulous, epigone, captious, tenebrous, embonpoint, pother, valetudinarian, cenacle, cantle, clerisy, deracinate, fuliginous, oneiromancy, caitliff, funambulist, and opsimath. That's 22 words (which a certain blogger will find interesting). The test seems to measure only knowledge of conventional words, not the specialized vocabulary of science specialties, etc., and doesn't calculate your knowledge of non-English words. Feel free to brag about your results in the Comments.

The test is here. At the test's blog they provide this graph of vocabulary acquisition vs. age:

الأربعاء، 3 أغسطس 2011

CSI Page updated

Finally got a chance to take a good look at CSI's Wiki page tonight. I didn't look at how long it has been since it was updated, but it must have been quite some time as I was able to add about 20 Fellows to the list they provide. There are 32 more people who are Fellows but are missing Wikipedia pages. We probably should take a look at that also.

Here is the "before" page. And the "after" page.

I talk about using lists, and creating hyperlinks on earlier blogs. It is one of the simplest forms of editing besides correcting spelling and grammar. I added at least 25 hyperlinks on the CSI page to link to other Wiki articles, and corrected the spelling of two words.

Why are adding hyperlinks so important? We need to use each other as resources, gather hits from one site to another. Each of the 20 new fellows I added to that list will gain hits just because their name was found on the page. CSICOP received 2,348 hits to its Wiki page in June 2011. Not tons but we need to maximize each and every lead.

I'm really torn about adding the people who are Fellows but don't have a Wiki page to the CSI page. The names would appear in Black and not be linkable to anything, but I think I might just do it on the off-chance that they will get a page, and also that way the CSI Fellows page is complete.

IIG was not represented on their page, and I soon fixed that. Also had to update the normal IIG page to show that new affiliates in Washington DC, Atlanta and Denver are now IIG. There are a couple others almost finished becoming affiliates and when that happens I (or someone) will need to update both CSICOP and the IIG page.

I'm leaving this project unfinished in the hope that someone will take up the ball and help out.

One of the things next to do is to go to each one of the Fellow's Wiki pages and make sure that the affiliation with CSICOP is mentioned.

I've noticed that there is no mention on Asimov's page of his support (and I believe founding help) of CSICOP. Whoever updates his page needs to find a citation proving his link to CSI. Try www.csicop.org for the article(s) to link to.

The page is on my watchlist, so really looking forward to seeing some editing going on. As you find (note I didn't say "if") fellows whose pages are neglected and badly need updating, please comment here so others will know.

Thanks in advance!

الثلاثاء، 2 أغسطس 2011

Keep calm and carry on

A boy sits amid the ruins of a London bookshop following an air raid on October 8, 1940,

reading a book titled "The History of London." (AP Photo)

This boy exemplifies the attitude in the now-famous poster.

Photo from a collection of 45 images of the Battle of Britain assembled at The Atlantic, via Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder.

My dissatisfaction with audiobooks

For many years an old friend has been urging me to try listening to audiobooks while driving. I had always opted for satellite radio instead, but this year when the subscription renewal seemed too expensive I discontinued Sirius and headed to the library instead.

I checked out Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man because I had read it decades ago and thought the short story format would lend itself to short trips and the familiarity of the material wouldn't distract me while driving.

My disappointment became evident while listening to The Veldt, which seemed to drag on interminably. By the time I got to The Long Rain I was pushing the fast-forward button to skip ahead to the conclusion.

To define the problem I loaded the CD onto my computer and checked the runtimes of the segments. The Veldt covered 12 tracks, and required 32:14 to listen to. I then went back to the library and checked out a book of Bradbury short stories and sat down to read The Veldt at a normal pace (not skimming or skipping anything). It was 14 pages long and took almost exactly 14 minutes to read.

Listening to the audiobook required twice as much time as reading the text myself.

I certainly can't complain about the production values of the audiobook; the reading was excellent, reasonably paced, and professionally done. But somehow I can't see myself setting aside 12 hours to have someone read a novel to me. It's also true that when I'm watching a movie on a DVD I sometimes play it at 1.4X to speed over the boring parts. And when I'm heating a sandwich in the microwave I'll punch in "12 seconds" and then stand there saying "c'mon, cmon..." I can't watch just one TV channel if ads appear, and I switch radio stations immediately when commercials intervene.

I suppose I've become some kind of post-modern media consumer who demands quick consumption and rapid satisfaction. It's only when I get out in the natural world that I can wind down and spend unlimited time wandering fields and woods and setting up for photos and pondering the lives of little critters.