KEV67

She should hang.

What do they study in philosophy? It's a big subject. I think epistemology might be useful to know.

I don't know, this Moll Flanders. I am not sure how many husbands and children she has had now. As far as husbands go, one is definitely dead, three are probably alive. At least she took some care to secure her latest child (or has she). The midwife / abortionist / baby farmer could have sorted that little encumbrance for less money.

I do find 18th Century books quite interesting. At the bit I have reached Moll is discussing her economic prospects. She's a middle aged gentlewoman with no income, no husband and no male relatives. She has a bit of money but not enough to live off the interest. She reminded me of the friend Anne Elliot had, who lived in near poverty in Bath. Daniel Defoe was interested in economics. There was quite a bit in Robinson Crueso.

Poor old Moll. She's not a bad girl really. She just has bad luck. Edit: that said, I have lost count of the children she has had. Some lived, some died. When one of life's viscititudes hits her, she leaves them in the care of someone and then moves on.

Thanks for the converter. I have seen websites like that before, but they do not tell the whole story. I first became interested when I read in Great Expectations about Pip receiving £500 from a mystery benefactor. Did that make him a professional footballer or what. The converter on your link says it is the equivalent of about £28,000, but it is not really. Comparatively, Pip is much richer than most people, although not extremely rich. I generally multiply Victorian money amounts by a hundred. For working class people it does not work so well. For example, London costermongers earned about £1 a week selling fruit and veg. Multiplied by 100 that is £5000 a year. It would be impossible for someone to subsist on £5000 a year in London today, but it may still be an accurate multiplier because most people were really poor back then. There is another complication is that the middle class did not have labour saving devices in those days; they had servants; which meant that they were employers. Pip had one servant iirc, but he was a page boy I think. He split his £500 with Herbert Pocket, believing the money to come from his aunt. Knowing that £500 is worth about £50,000 today is important, because living on £25,000 is a lot different to living on £50,000. Living on £250,000 may not be that different to living on £500,000. At the end of the book Pip is arrested for a debt of about £117 (I cannot remember exactly). Joe pays it off. As a blacksmith Joe may have saved up that amount. Multiplied by a hundred, £117 is the sort of debt you can run up on a credit card. It is not evil spendthriftery. On the other hand it is the sort of debt it would take time to pay off if you suddenly had to work for it in a not very well paying job. I was surprised to see Pip could buy 47 horses with his £500. They must have been mostly nags. A decent hunter cost about £80 in Middlemarch. They cost about £8000 when I checked online, which was another justification for my 100x multiplier.

The English Baccalaureate. I do not usually like educational policies handed down by the government, but when I first heard about this I thought it sounded like a good idea. However, it looks like I misunderstood what it was. Either that or the conditions have changed. I thought it would get you an English Baccalaureate if you got GCSEs in one science, maths, English language, a language and a humanity. I thought the humanities would include history, geography, religious education and English literature. I hoped it might include a cultural language like Latin or Welsh. If it was once science then I wondered which would be best to do. I was leaning towards chemistry. However the government website lists the subjects you have you pass as (link) English language and literature maths the sciences geography or history a language But for science you have to study either two combined science GCSEs or three single science GCSEs: physics, chemistry, biology, computer science. For English you have to study English Language GCSE and English Literature GCSE. Only geography or history counts as the humanity. Any ancient or modern language counts for the language. So that is seven or eight GCSE passes. Personally I think that is rubbish and designed to keep teacher in work. It is important to study English Language and Maths of course. There are no social sciences in the list. The closest are geography and history. Geography is half a physical science. I honestly do not think English literature should be all that important. Subjects like geography, history and English literature are mainly practice in writing essays, which is basically practice in writing English. There are thousands and thousands of books in bookshops in which you can knock yourself out on literature, history and geography. You will never get to the end of them. Apart from a potted history of dates and battles, I do not think there is great deal of value in learning history. It is more important to learn a bit of epistemology: how do you know what you know; how to look for bias; history from different view points; corroboration of the written record with other sources of knowledge. I think a cultural language such as Latin or Welsh is more a humanity than a language. If you study Latin then you are studying different parts of language, but you also get taught about another culture's history, myths, literature, wars, religion, politics and value systems. In Latin GCSE you have read and possibly write a bit of Latin, but you do not have to speak or understand it spoken, so it is not like a modern language. Welsh would be a bit different, but I suspect there is quite a bit of Welsh poetry, history and mythology in that subject. A modern language like French, German or Spanish is a different skill. You have to communicate in a different language, which means tuning in your ear. It is very difficult.

When I did my MSc in Renewable Energy, my dissertation or project was on maintenance of offshore wind farms. It was a computer model of condition monitoring of offshore farms, compared to other forms of maintenance. For instance preventative maintenance, in which you replace parts before they break, or the other sort where you replace the parts after they break. In condition based monitoring there are sensors in the equipment which tell you ahead of time when a part is breaking down. Anyway, I think in most Masters degrees you have to do a dissertation in the third trimester. So what would you do yours about? I have several ideas I would like to research: Which was more critical in the British contribution to winning WW2: the Spitfire or Hurricane Were the British heavy bombers in WW2 overmanned How much was a Pound Sterling worth in 1824 compared with today Linen as a form of wealth in the 18th Century

Moll's life brought her to a plantation in Virginia. I though 'Ah-oh, slavery again. ' Daniel Defoe appeared to have a bit of a blind spot regarding slavery. He acknowledged the state was an unpleasant one, but did not regard it as evil. However, the workers on the Virginia plantation do not appear to be Africans at this point. They are either indentured labourers or transported convicts, rather like the convicts sent to Australia. Most of these convicts came from Newgate Prison. That reminded me of Great Expectations, which was set about 100 years later. Another thing that interested me was that Moll counts some of her wealth in linnen. Linnen appeared to be a form of wealth in those days. Clarissa (Samuel Richardson) made presents of linnen to people she cared about. Jane Austen writes a fair bit about how wealth was an important factor in choosing a marriage partner, on both sides. In this book it is even more explicit.

I think she is somewhat like the Wife of Bath. I don't think she is like Fanny Hill, although I have only seen a porno of that and I don't suppose they kept to the plot very tightly.

Moll Flanders is not exactly like Clarissa. On the other hand she is not as bad as Becky Sharp.

Have you read Toby Young's book, "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People"? Your post reminded me of this scene:

I have read Robinson Creuso by Daniel Defoe. I thought that book was a bit patchy. The part on the island was good but the beginning and ending were not. I have just started Moll Flanders, supposedly the memoirs of a 'lady of the night' who made good. It has a cynical and hypocritical preface. The person who transcribed the memoirs said he had to tone down the language and cut the most graphic bits, but that the story served as useful instruction to readers, as a warning of what not to do. He said the earlier, more morally abhorrent parts of the story were a necessary contrast to the penitent's later state.

Nearly finished. The last few stories were the best I think. Maybe the story about the feckless drunk was the best. I thought the story about the young man who fell in with the rally drivers was the weakest. A couple of the stories seem to stop part the way through. In the last chapter there was mention of the term 'West Briton' for an Irishman who did not want independence. The only other book I came across this term was in Roddy Doyle's A Star Named Henry. The woman who said this suggested the chap she called a West Briton to go on holiday with them to the Aran Islands. This is a place where all the inhabitants speak Irish. That amused me slightly. I once cycled from Mizzen Head in the south of Ireland to Malin Head in the north. I thought I was being clever one day by cutting off a corner by getting a ferry to the Aran Islands in the morning and another ferry back to the mainland, and ended up stranded there for most the day. There did not seem to be a great deal to do there. You could cycle half a mile in one direction and half a mile in the other. I should have cycled through Galway instead.

Beowulf just chopped through Grendal's mum's neck with a giant sword he found in her lair. I can see the influence in J.R.R. Tolkein's books. Magic swords and mail, precious jewels, giants, monsters, dragons, trolls. In Beowulf the word 'faege' (I think) meaning fey. In The Silmarillion heroes and villains were usually fell or fey or both.

So far I would say the best bits of Ulysses were better than Dubliners. It is just that there are a lot of boring bits and incomprehensible bits in Ulysses. I still think Cider With Rosie pisses over Dubliners.

Apart from writing poetry he re-edited his old novels. Some of the editions make quite a big difference. I am thinking of Tess of the d'Urbervilles in particular.

Oops, Frankenstein is as 9.

I dunno. Dubliners is a much easier read. Apart from giving you a feel for Dublin in the early 20th Century, I could not say it really helps with Ulysses very much. To understand Ulysses you need to read another book that explains what it all means.

The book jumps about in time a little bit. One story is set about 1895. Another is set possibly up to three decades later. The outcome of one or two of the stories is a little bit predictable. Not as good as Cider with Rosie so far.

Started reading this. It is a much easier read than Ulysses. The book is reminds me most of, so far, in style, is Cider with Rosie.

Finished The Waves. Not my cup of tea. Maybe I am just prejudiced against Virginia Woolf. According to the BBC 2015 poll conducted among foreign academics and journalists, the top 20 British novels were 1 Middlemarch 2 Mrs Dalloway 3 To the Lighthouse 4 Great Expectations 5 Jane Eyre 6 Bleak House 7 Wuthering Heights 8 David Copperfield 9 Frankenstein 10 Vanity Fair 11 Pride and Prejudice 12 Nineteen Eighty-Four 13 The Good Soldier 14 Clarissa 15 Atonement 16 The Waves 17 Howards End 18 Remains of the Day 19 Emma 20 Persuasion I do not know why Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse or The Waves are so highly rated. They are experiments in literature so far as I can see. I did not like The Good Soldier either. My favourite out of that lot was Great Expectations. I also thought Middlemarch, Bleak House, Wuthering Heights, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Clarissa were great. The others were good (except the Virginia Woolf's novels and The Good Soldier). The next one on the list that I have not read is Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy at 23, but I swore not to read that after watching the film. It was a good film, but I did not like what Hardy did to the innocents.

The phrase was 'The man on the Clapham omnibus.' I expect omnibuses is the correct plural in English and Latin. The word 'bus' is used in computer technology. There is the data bus and the address bus. They are a collection of very thin wires carrying either the address of an item of data or the item of data itself. I wonder if it has the same etymological roots. Etymology is the study or words and not insects, isn't it. There was a good joke in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer about that.

I am into Victorian novels about misers, but it is a very small subgenre. The only ones I have found so far are A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and Silas Marner by George Eliot.

I have read Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes. I found it quite an odd book. The reason I read it was that I had read all George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman books. He was a character invented by Thomas Hughes. He was a bully who was expelled from Rugby Public School.