James Tauber's Blog 2005/01/09
Annotated Word Association Sketch
One of my favourite (and perhaps the cleverest) Monty Python sketch is John Cleese's Word Association.
Below is a transcript of the sketch which I have annotated according to an initial analysis performed by my sister Jenni and I. There is an underlying talk being given and I have marked that up in bold. I have tried to group the phrases resulting from a word association on distinct lines and have repeated in parentheses where a word forms part of two overlapping word associations that aren't part of the main text or where a difference of spelling exists. (To recover the sketch, just ignore the parentheticals.)
Tonight's the night
I shall be talking
a-bout of flu
the subject of word
association football.
This is a techn-
-ique (eke) out a living
much used in the
practice makes perfect
of psychoanaly-
sister and brother
and one that has occu-
pied piper
the
majority rule
of my
attention squad by the right number one two three four (for)
the last five
years (here's) to the memory.
It is quite remark-
able baker charlie
how
much the miller's son
this so-
called while you were out
word associ-
ation (Asian) immigrants' problems
influences the
manner (manna) from heaven
in which we
(Wee), sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie
(beasti)-al
(all-)American
speak (Speke), the famous explorer.
And the
really well that is surprising
partner in crime
is that a
lot (Lot) and his wife
of the
lions' feeding time
we may
be c d e eff-
ectively quite unaware of the
fact or fiction section of the Watford Public Library
that we are even doing
it is a far, far better thing that I do now
(now) then, now then, what's going on
(on)ward Christian
(Christian) Barnard the famous heart
(heart)y part of the lettuce
(let us) now praise famous men
(men)tal homes for loonies like me.
So (sew) on the button,
my con-
tention (tension) causing all the headaches,
is that unless we take into ac-
count of Monte Cristo
in our thin-
king George the Fifth
this phenomen-
on the other hand
we shall not be able satis-
Fact or Fiction section of the Watford Public Library again
-ily to under-
stand to attention when I'm talking to you and stop laughing,
about human nature, man's psychological
make-up some story the wife'll believe
and hence the very meaning of life it-
selfish bastard, I'll kick him in the balls
(Balls) Pond Road.
UPDATE (2005-01-10): Thanks to Tim Bulkeley for his suggestion for "now praise famous mental homes for loonies like me."
UPDATE (2005-01-10): At the suggestion of my other sister, Leonie, I did a Google search for sleekit and came up with a poem by Robert Burns that begins: "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie"
UPDATE (2005-01-20): Further refined "beastie all-American"
UPDATE (2005-01-25): Made Lot clearer and corrected "eke out a living". Added "here's to the memory" (thanks to Bill Keller) and "Much the Miller's Son" (thanks to Bill Keller and Jason Hildebrand)
UPDATE (2005-02-22): Corrected the last line to be a reference to Balls Pond Road in London (thanks to Matt Peirse and Graham Douglas)
by James Tauber : Created on Jan. 9, 2005 : Last modified Feb. 21, 2005 : (permalink)
Bill Gates and the Creative Communists
By now most people in the blogosphere have heard about Bill Gates's statement, in response to a question on whether intellectual property rights need to be reformed, that "There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."
A lot of people have been up-in-arms about the characterisation of groups like the Creative Commons folk as communists, but even if Bill was talking about Creative Commons, many of the criticisms I've read seem to miss the main point.
The key point to make, in the context of Creative Commons, is that CC isn't about legal reform—it's about helping creators to convey their licensing intentions within current copyright laws.
Yes I think current copyright terms are stupid, but your works don't have to be subject to them if you don't want. As a creator of the work, you have the control.
That is what was stupid about Michael Moore being okay about illegal copies of Fahrenheit 9/11 before the election. If he was the copyright holder, and he wanted it to be freely distributable for non-commercial purposes, he could have made the film available under a CC-like license. It's ridiculous to reserve all rights (or assign them to an entity that does) and then complain that people should be allowed to copy the work.
If Bill Gates was talking about Creative Commons, then his comment was a straw man. CC is about helping creators to realise the flexibility they have. To give them choices. Even expand the incentives. And there are great market opportunities for publishers, music distributors, etc who want to work with this flexibility too. Artist doesn't like the deal from the label? Go somewhere else like Magnatune. Consumer doesn't like the redistribution terms of the song? Don't buy it.
Some people find incentive in money, others in fame, others in making a lasting contribution. As long as people are free to pursue any or all of those paths, that sounds pretty good to me. If someone truly was wanting to get rid of incentives (of any kind), then I'd have a problem. In as much as Bill was saying that, then I agree with him.
UPDATE (2005-01-10): See Glen Otis Brown's post on the Creative Commons blog. Notice he characterises CC as a "voluntary, market-based approach to copyright". Just that one phrase pretty much makes the point this entire blog entry was trying to. And it pretty neatly sums up why I'm a fan of CC.
by James Tauber : Created on Jan. 9, 2005 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Lost CGI Environment Variables in Python 2.4
Did something change between 2.3 and 2.4 that would affect os.environ being populated with CGI variables when using the BaseHTTPServer/CGIHTTPServer?
I received a bug report from someone trying to run Leonardo under Python 2.4 on Windows 2000. I was able to reproduce the problem under Python 2.4 on Windows XP Pro and confirmed that it worked fine under Python 2.3.
Simply printing out os.environ at the point things like PATH_INFO are extracted by Leonardo revealed that os.environ contained no CGI-related variables when run under Python 2.4 but did contain them under 2.3
I can't see in the code for the http server modules that anything changed in this area. Am I missing something?
by James Tauber : Created on Jan. 9, 2005 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)