Arthur's Seat

A new member of the Parish

Please welcome a new member of the blog parish; he likes pandrops too.

Office politics

David at Freedom & Whisky (two noble concepts in one excellent site) asks us to reveal Arthur's Seat. Here we are; the calendar was a Christmas present from Mrs Seat; the books are mixed and the PC is hers.

Sometimes Arthur's Seat is here,

and looks out onto this.

Now that we've also seen where Mr and Mrs P-G find their inspiration, we should have a peak into the think tank that is the KP residence.

International Talk like a Pirate Day

Ninme draws our attention to the fact that we should be buckling our swashes and splicing the mainbrace; today is International Talk like a Pirate Day.

The TLAP website has a handy translation device which rendered these fine words of Sir Winston Churchill into pirate; the close proximity of the translation to the real thing suggests that the old man had more than a touch of the buccaneer about him:

We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on t' t' end. We shall fight in France and on t' seas and oceans; we shall fight with growin' confidence and growin' strength in t' air. We shall defend our island whatever t' cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landin' grounds, in fields, in streets and on t' hills. We shall never surrender...

Blogging - the tail that wags the dog?

My good friend the Pedant-General draws my attention to Joel Achenbach's article on the seductive lure of blogging. His mantra, "Ignore the blog. Do your work.", is as effective for him as it is for me - it doesn't work. Paradoxically, the busier I am the more compelling is the urge to break off from whatever it is I am doing and consign some random thoughts to a post. August, traditionally the quietest month at Seat Towers, has seen a diminution of contributions, perhaps because my time is being spent tidying up and preparing for the end of this business year (next month) and the advent of the next. I suspect, though, that my creative faculties are still on holiday somewhere in the Cilento, and will only rejoin me after next week's Bank Holiday.

But, back to Mr Achenbach. His blog started "...in January as a catch basin for mental detritus, for the kind of stuff not good enough for print, but too good to waste on casual conversation or, worse, mere thinking." But, then along came visitors - and vistors who left comments. Then the blog became a conversation - but one which became focused on a few key issues. "It's obvious what people want: political screeds and celebrity gossip." He complains, "The more you mention people like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the more readers you will have, and the more links, and the more you will rise in Google's estimation."

Well, if you must blog about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, let alone Karl Rove, the great conspiracy of the religious right, alien abduction, Jessica Simpson or even Iraq, the inevitable Googlanche of visitors will undoubtedly fall on your head.

Mr Achenbach's cries have sparked a thought, though. It's time we had another competition and once I've drawn the strands together I think we'll have a contest for the best poem incorporating a series of random words which might inspire Googlers to visit your blog. Sharpen your pencils and prepare to get poetic.

Grammar and international relations

Quite a ding dong going on over at Infinitives Unsplit - moral equivalence and moral relativism; not bad for a Friday afternoon in August.

Free science

After avoiding all those "Which Pope/Pirate/Philosopher are you?" tests, I have just completed an MIT Blogs survey. Happy to help.

I may be a statistic, but I don't need an ID card to prove it.

Sense on stilts

Please welcome my good friend Hew BG to the blogosphere. His first entry puts my "5 favourite books" entry into context (i.e. I should have been a bit more thorough..!)

This will be an excellent site.

A couple of glitches

We appear to have slipped out of the TTLB Ecosystem. We had risen to the giddy heights of a Flappy Bird, and then it all went blank. Any technical support very welcome.

The Top 100 Scottish websites is a new entry, and we are working on the code so that we can shrink the link box, and make the link register hits.

An English Gentleman writes...

Iain Murray is back blogging, and saying some kind things about this small homestead in the wild blogosphere.

Brain food

Lots of interesting stuff over at Knowledge Problem. A discussion on the sugar industry, a lesson on the merits of private ownership on conservation (one we should learn in Scotland where state owned land often provides the worst examples of conservation; yet, our legislators continue to erode private property rights), and the pleasures of Beethoven.

While the learned authoress of KP (and KP spouse) were enjoying the musical culture of Old Europe, Mr and Mrs Seat were at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh for an evening's homage to Tom Lehrer; perhaps the greatest musical satirist of the 20th century, before the advent of Monty Python.