Regulars here will know that I collect bridges. So, here's a rather pretty one, this being one of a number of pictures that appear here. That's right: Eton. I found it while concocting this posting.

Why I was younger I too had a brief phase playing with objects like this, although on a smaller scale. Hyperbolic paraboloid was what my things were called, although the maths at the end of that link remains utterly foreign to me. My things, like the bridge also looks, were constructed entirely of straight lines, but were pleasingly curved.

Which makes me suspect that this bridge was probably built by Etonians. It looks like a boy thing.

Posted by Brian Micklethwait at 01:01 AM

Kind words from the Relaxed Homeskooler about my Education Blog, referring to this posting there.

So, kind words from me to her, about her photos. I especially liked these two.

The first is just a fun shadow. The second is not only a fun photo but a fun photo of two other things that are fun too – not that little girls in bathing costumes aren't fun, but you get my drift.

Fun thing number one is the mighty Towers of Chicago Illinois, the Birthplace of the Skyscraper.

Fun thing number two is that the mighty Towers of Chicago Illinois are not photoed direct, but rather are reflected in something called by its creator "Cloud Gate", but apparently known to all in Chicago as The Bean. I (by which I mean London) want(s) one too. It wouldn't necessarily have to be bean shaped, as per Chicago. It could be more elaborate than that. But the super-mirroredness idea is definitely one to copy. And it should be big. Like the artist says, you should be able to see the clouds in it.

You know how I feel about reflections. They are a fantastic source of fun photos, especially on a summer day, because they keep the scene with all its contrasts but moderate the strength of the light, which (like the artist says – reprise) is especially great for getting the complexities of clouds. This object gets that process a little bit organised. And think how many Billion Monkeys I could snap in one Bean photo, me included of course.

This is a perfect example of how very, very much public sculpture has improved since the meaningless lump phase of a few decades ago.

Here's another picture of The Bean. Relaxed Homeskooler concentrated on what you could see bouncing off The Bean. This photo shows you the overall shape of the thing.

I am also going to check out this photoblogging contest, and probably enter one of mine, maybe several if that's allowed. Are you also a Billion Monkey? Which are your favourites of the ones you've taken? Post at your place, and link to hers. She decides.

Posted by Brian Micklethwait at 01:11 PM

I did a posting a day or two ago about the education of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), at my education blog. The point of it was: it was all of it, entirely, in Latin. No "English literature" was involved at all.

So, forty years after William Shakespeare (1564-1616) had been and gone, the people in England with the best educations didn't learn anything at all about the likes of Shakespeare, or not in their school lessons, or anything else merely in English.

What this tells me is that Shakespeare really was the "commercial" entertainment of his day, as opposed to "high" culture. One of the central conceits of the movie Shakespeare in Love – Shakespeare then equals Hollywood now – is right on the money.

By "low" I don't mean the upper classes shunned it. After all Judy Dench (otherwise known as Queen Elizabeth I) used to go. But the upper classes have always liked to let their hair down with lowbrow entertainment, as well as the posh stuff. Desert Island Discs usually has a pop song or two in among the Mozart and the Beethoven, of whatever vintage the celebrity happens to be. Posh people were going to the movies long before the culturally posh finally accepted movies as a bona fide art form.

By the way, Michael Blowhard linked back only yesterday to the piece Friedrich Blowhard wrote in the early days of the 2 Blowhards blog, and which I remember with great pleasure because it finally made me read Peter Hall's Cities in Civilization, about the economics of the theatre in Shakespeare's London. Recommended now as much as when Friedrich B first wrote it.

The big difference between now and then is that whereas in Samuel Pepys' time, high culture was international, and commercial culture was in the local vernacular, now it's the other way around. Now high culture is locally based and locally supported, and locally worried about, in the face of: commercial culture, low culture, which is now international. Pepys learned Latin not just to "train the mind" but to enable him to communicate with the rest of the ruling class of Europe.

I will not expand on this thought. I need more education myself about such things to do that. But I definitely count it as a thought, and I hope you do too.

Busy weekend, starting now, so no more today, and maybe no more until Monday.

Posted by Brian Micklethwait at 02:56 PM

I've just done a posting at my Education Blog that may be of interest to passers-by here, about the unofficial socialising cultures embedded in among the official school-work culture of schools, Cher in Clueless, original Cher dancing on a battleship, etc. Geeks versus anti-geeks. E-ducation. Steven Pinker gets a mention. Go there if that appeals.

Posted by Brian Micklethwait at 03:39 PM

I've just done an extremely and I fear excessively long posting at my Education Blog about the idea of education as a social display mechanism. Education as peacock feathers, I called it, and it was inspired by a piece at 2 Blowhards. So if a daily fix of culture from Brian is necessary to you, you will almost certainly have to make do with that.

I warned you all about this kind of thing a long time ago, before any of you were actually reading this, so maybe I should say it again. There is usually (although not always) something here each day. But that something is not always a real post. Sometimes, as today, it's a bullshit post.

I am having some thoughts about photography, but then again, I have a DVD out from Blockbuster which stars Julia Stiles. My thoughts about photography. Julia Stiles. Good night and see you some time tomorrow.<

Posted by Brian Micklethwait at 10:44 PM

So, The Goddaughter sent me an email about a week or two ago:

i just decided to look on your culture blog to see woh you were gettin on. Do u pay to make your wbsite?

I told her the bad news about what it costs to have a website, and her next email suggested that she write stuff for my blogs, presumably because that's cheaper for her, and maybe also less of a bother:

want me to tell you anyfink 2 put on u r web? if u do, justr tell me wat ya wanna know

Fair enough. So my reply included the following:

Here are some questions that you could answer, if you feel like it:

What are your favourite books, and why?

What is your favourite music, and why? Do you like classical at all, or do you really like only pop? How's that awful cello playing coming along? And the singing?

What schools have you been too? Which were the best and which were the worst? Who was your best teacher, and what made that teacher so good?

I'm interested by the way you write emails. No capital letters. "2" instead of "to". "u r" for "your", "u" instead of "you", wanna instead of want to. I think I know why this is fun. It's creative, it saves screen space on small screens, and it annoys stupid adults. Is that it? Or are there other reasons for it?

As you can see, I was looking for stuff for my education blog, as well as for here, but I'll give the whole answer here, because what interests me most about what The Goddaughter had put is beyond mere education. It is, of course, the way in which she puts it. Is the word for it "Txt"? I'll call it that here from now on.

Mi fav books R Nancy Drew books cos i like detectiv books. She's 18 and shes the daughter of a lawyer called Carson Drew. She has a b/f called Ned (Nickers)on

I dont necesarly like POP, its just mor modern music dat i like. I like da new singer Avril lavigne. Shee's OK. I like classical as well, but it depends wat it is.Im gettin a bit betta on da cello. I had a lesson 2day wiv my "teacher". I also had a singin lesson 2day. I like singin but id like 2 do mor.

At skewl we R startin da choir. I hope dey R gonna chose me as a solo. Its an english song.

I've bin 2 loads of skewls and the best 1 was Wimbledon House skewl cos i was best of da clas. I was alwayz da best of da class in england!!!!

My fav teach was Mrs. Whales cos she was loads like me. I dont know y, but i just like her.

And this was the answer I was most eager to hear about. What's wiv all the Txting? Y, oh Goddaughter, do u, best of da clas at Wimbledon House skewl, rite like dis?

I rite like dis cos its easier. U make a mistake and u hav an excuse! But this is also easier cos instead of havin 2 think about da word be4 ritin it u just rite it as it is pronounzd!

The Goddaughter is no under-educated underclasser. She was, just as she said, best of the class at Wimbledon House School. Yet here she is riting like dis. Her answer, about why she likes doing this Txt stuff is, I'm sure, all true, and I thank her for it. Very interesting, and most informative. Alice Bachini, who visited me this afternoon and who read all this, commented that when kids write like this, they always seem to be happier, and I bet they are, for all the reasons The Goddaugher itemises, plus they are having creative fun. I bet they have permanent grin on their faces, because of the last little bit of phonetic inventiveness they did. They are playing, rather than working. Doing what they want, rather than following someone else's rules. When you play, there is no wrong answer. Txt turns writing from science into art.

But having lived for almost half a century longer than The Goddaughter, I can assure her that hers is not the first generation of children who would have liked to rite somewhat like dis. The big story here is that modern electronic communication has finally created a world in which The Goddaughter and her millions of contemporaries are writing Txt rather than Standard English because they can. Who can stop them?

Email, and text messaging, and – I'm sure – lots and lots of blogs, have made a world in which Grammarians no longer rule the language. So what if Most People disapprove? Most People aren't reading your Txt messages. In the case of the Goddaughter emailing The Godfather, Most People aren't The Godfather, and if The Godfather is willing to read decypher this stuff (I am), then where's the problem?

This style of writing used to be confined to isolated school subcultures. A billion notes handed around at the back of the class have no doubt been written in a million local variants ofTxt, although even school subcultures were surely heavily infected with Standard English. But Modern Electronics has joined all these subcultures together, and turned them into a vast linguistic arena which is no longer divided and soon if not already conquered by Standard English, but rather one that is an imperial linguistic force in its own right.

Old Guys like me write producer prose about what we want to write. In my case that means doing it in educated English, with the odd spelling error or grammatical carelessness but with no major language games. True, I like the occasional sentence without a verb, and I quite often resort to Not Strictly Correct capital letters, but mostly, I play no games with the language code itself. My games are all in what I write about. But the same freedom I have to put what I want here, in my educated prose, enables The Goddaughter to tell her story her way, in her particular version of Txt. And if Txt doesn't include much in the way of Standard English spelling or punctuation, then that's just 2 bad 4 Standard English.

I can already hear the grumbles when the Fogey tendency over at my education blog comes here and reads the thoughts of The Goddaughter, if they do come here and can stomach the stuff. "Tell your Goddaughter she'll have to spell correctly if she wants to get a Decent Job." Well, no worries. The Goddaughter is tri-lingual in English, French and Roumanian. And she is, to my certain knowledge, bilingual also in Standard English and Txt-ing, or whatever we call it. She'll get a Decent Job.

But more to the point, such Fogeys are missing the point here. The Txt sub-culture is rapidly becoming simply a culture. Who says that people won't ever be able to get jobs if all they can write is Txt? What happens when the Txt-ers are the ones doing the hiring? My guess this process is already well under way, in computer games emporia, pop group management companies, and the like. For many jobs, I should guess that an inability or unwillingness to converse in Txt rules you out of consideration.

The printing press standardised spelling and grammar. (Remember all those jokes about there being fifteen different ways to spell Shakespeare.) It looks to me as if Electronics could be un-standardising it. That's a huge event in the history of language.

Or maybe, the spellcheckers will still function, but with greatly expanded vocabularies L8 will be included by the software writers just after Late. Y, u, 2 and 4 – for why, you, too and for – are already there of course. But, I suspect that a sprinkling of red and green underlinings will be considered de rigeur for your real Txt-er, in other words that for all practical purposes the spellcheckers and grammar hecklers will be switched off.

And yes, you're right if you seem to remember me having written about this Txt thing before. It was in connection with this Samizdata piece.

But this is the first time I've had a real Txter feeding Txt into the postings herself, and what's more she's one I know well. That, for me anyway, gives the whole issue an extra punch.

Posted by Brian Micklethwait at 12:58 AM

I've just done a posting on my education blog that could equally well have been put here, about the decline of Britain's art schools, kicking off with quotes from a Spectator article on that subject. Just so you know.

Maybe one day my two specialist blogs will merge, into plain old Brian's Blog. Feel entirely free to comment favourably about that. In the short run such comments will make no difference. In the long run, they just might.

It has, in particular, been a surprise to me how much sense, now that I am thinking about it and reading about it, the idea of "cultural education" is starting to make, as an essential component of the good life. I even found myself confronting this idea head on when I visited some home schoolers. By this I do not mean that I am suddenly converted to the notion of compelling children to sit through classical music broadcasts or gawp at paintings which disgust them; I merely mean that those children who do acquire such artistic interests are more likely to lead not only more enjoyable, but also more more productive lives.

People who have "culture" are better at entertaining themselves – they enjoy their own company more – than those without "culture". That means that, in a pinch, they need less money and energy to keep themselves amused and diverted, and in general have more money and energy to devote to other things. They are freer. Freer people do better economically.

If you are the sort of eonomic thinker who believes that what matters is turnover, this may not impress you, but if the purpose of economic activity is to increase human happiness, then "culture" will, if what I say about it is true, impress you very much.

I am enriching the world with this blog. Trying to, anyway.

Posted by Brian Micklethwait at 11:16 PM