vision of 2010
Jan. 1st, 2010 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacAs grrm has pointed out, we're living in another Arthur C. Clarke novel. Hope it turns out better than the last one. Trying to remember to pronounce this one "Twenty-ten."
Found a less-than-enchanting New Year's present when I got up and went downstairs. Cats should not be encouraged to think outside the box.
Driving up to Oakland this afternoon, I listened to our roguish local classical station playing their invariable favorite symphony, Beethoven's First. (They like it because it's his shortest, leaving the most room for commercials.) Somehow it sounded fresh, a suitable emotion for a New Year. Reminded me of when I first learned it, in a year ending with 0 a while ago, and how maybe I should pull out those old favorites more often.
Arrived prepeared with the answer to another musical question that had been posed to me late - very late - last year. The final episode of The Prisoner is (in)famous for, among other things, a clip from The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love." It's a little startling to remember that this was quite a new song at the time. Question: Exactly how new?
Answer: About seven months. Song first appeared on a broadcast in late June 1967, single released a few weeks later in July. The Prisoner began airing in September; the final episode was filmed about December, and first aired in early February 1968.
Gave long-awaited Hawai'i quarters to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cynthia1960, who in turn let me try out the Kindle application on her iphone. I didn't want to just look at this, but to try actually reading from it for a bit. I like a large view when reading: a large context of words and a wide column; could I tolerate this? After a chapter or so from the middle of what appeared to be a light fantasy novel about a woman who's acquired a genie and is not sure what to do with it, I could say ... hesitantly, if I acquired one of these I might know what I wanted to do with it. No scholarly texts or other serious reading, definitely; but light pleasure reading, especially if it was something that caught my eye or that I already knew well and was re-reading, I could see myself working with this, at least for limited periods.
Found a less-than-enchanting New Year's present when I got up and went downstairs. Cats should not be encouraged to think outside the box.
Driving up to Oakland this afternoon, I listened to our roguish local classical station playing their invariable favorite symphony, Beethoven's First. (They like it because it's his shortest, leaving the most room for commercials.) Somehow it sounded fresh, a suitable emotion for a New Year. Reminded me of when I first learned it, in a year ending with 0 a while ago, and how maybe I should pull out those old favorites more often.
Arrived prepeared with the answer to another musical question that had been posed to me late - very late - last year. The final episode of The Prisoner is (in)famous for, among other things, a clip from The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love." It's a little startling to remember that this was quite a new song at the time. Question: Exactly how new?
Answer: About seven months. Song first appeared on a broadcast in late June 1967, single released a few weeks later in July. The Prisoner began airing in September; the final episode was filmed about December, and first aired in early February 1968.
Gave long-awaited Hawai'i quarters to
cynthia1960, who in turn let me try out the Kindle application on her iphone. I didn't want to just look at this, but to try actually reading from it for a bit. I like a large view when reading: a large context of words and a wide column; could I tolerate this? After a chapter or so from the middle of what appeared to be a light fantasy novel about a woman who's acquired a genie and is not sure what to do with it, I could say ... hesitantly, if I acquired one of these I might know what I wanted to do with it. No scholarly texts or other serious reading, definitely; but light pleasure reading, especially if it was something that caught my eye or that I already knew well and was re-reading, I could see myself working with this, at least for limited periods.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 07:35 am (UTC)I'm waiting for color ePaper or something like that. I read a lot of Science and Astronomy Magazines. Once I can get those on an eBook reader, then I will think about getting one.
Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 10:01 am (UTC)Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 10:41 am (UTC)In any case, 25 June-1 Feb = 7 months +.
Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 10:48 am (UTC)As for the different dates of broadcast for The Prisoner, that's just the way it was - but for the purpose of your question, the earliest date would seem to be the relevant one.
Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 11:03 am (UTC)Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 11:21 am (UTC)As for whether the first broadcast date is the relevant one ... not necessarily. This isn't a footrace. The date the the decision was made to put the song in is also relevant, and as for who saw it ... well, the production people presumably saw it before anybody else, and if we're tracking public consciousness, Scotland isn't nowhere but it isn't all of the UK either.
Film release dates for Oscar eligibility are defined as in L.A. within the previous calendar year, so a film scheduled to be released in Jan. or Feb. often gets a brief nominal release in one theatre in L.A. in Nov. or Dec. so that it'll be up for the Oscars at the same time it's getting critical buzz instead of having to wait a year till it's old. That may be the legal release date, but it shouldn't be mistaken for the actual release date.
Therefore I fuzz the issue and say "early February" which is accurate for the bulk of the U.K. "1 February" is misleading.
Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 11:30 am (UTC)I think of MacDonald's as a reference-cum-critical book, and more particularly as an obsessive's book, which latter quality is what leads me to trust it on matters of fact. (As a matter of fact, I entirely disagree with his critical appraisal of that song - and lost much respect for him when he apparently failed to notice that "see how they run" in "Lady Madonna" played on the idea of mending stockings.)
Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 11:52 am (UTC)As for trusting obsessives, it all depends on what they're obsessive about. I haven't compared MacDonald's lists of performing assignments against Mark Lewisohn who I think was his principal source, but he seems to transcribe these automatically and then critique them in his entries. What the heck is actually going on here is something I'd need a lot more expertise on this subject to judge.
True, "early February" is as subjective a way to describe the air date as "1 February" is. But the latter carries a misleading air of precision which the former does not. I believe in accuracy and that includes not pretending to an accuracy one doesn't have or can't justify.
Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 03:40 pm (UTC)I don't know what the context of this is, but assuming Wiki is right about the broadcast in Scotland being on Feb 1st, I can't honestly see why it's inaccurate to say that that was the date of the first broadcast. It's not as if people in London are realler than those in Edinburgh! And a country of five million or so isn't the equivalent of one cinema in LA.
Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 04:30 pm (UTC)A scholarly work would identify all of these, and indeed it does: that's where I got this information from. (The Prisoner: The Original Scripts, ed Robert Fairclough, v. 2, p. 424) For the purposes of my casual post identifying how long it took the Great British Public to hear this song on The Prisoner, "early February" is much more accurate than "1 February." Once again, this is not a footrace. And "early February" does cover the Scots, because 1 Feb. is part of early February! Instead of worrying about their feelings, how about the poor Granada subscribers who had to wait a whole month and are not covered by "early February" at all?
Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 04:43 pm (UTC)But it also has a footnote, where it explains that that was the broadcast was in Scotland. I apologize if I misunderstood the point of your analogy with Hollywood screenings.
As I say, I don't know what you need this information for, or at what level of detail. There's quite a wide scope between 'nothing' and 'everything', and your question was simply 'how new' the song was when the episode was broadcast, which I think we can safely say has been established...
...except that, now I look again, I see another footnote on Wiki informs us that the world premier was actually on 5 September 1967, in Canada!
Re: Just over six months (according to Wiki)
Date: 2010-01-02 05:01 pm (UTC)What do I need the information for? To find out how new the new song was at the time it showed up on The Prisoner. As I gave the answer in the form "About seven months," obviously I don't need the answer to the exact day. And if I did, why stop there? Why not find out what time on 25 June the "One World" broadcast was and when in the programme the Beatles appeared, and what hour ITV Scotland broadcast The Prisoner (7.30 pm, in fact), and then go to our DVDs and measure how many minutes into the episode the song appears? Why not measure it to the nanosecond, carefully adjusting for the time that the electrons coursed through the wires and over the air, and then measuring the distance from the set to the living room couch of the closest receiver, so as to determine how long it took the Beatles' sound waves to travel from the box to the listeners' ears?
My point is, this obsession with 1 February is misplaced. I wrote "early February" deliberately to be more accurate.
By the way, the 5 Sep 1967 world premiere was of the first episode, so it's irrelevant to the case. Except insofar as it might mean that the final episode also broadcast in Canada before the UK (Fairclough doesn't address this, as far as I can tell), in which case, and since we don't know for sure, it's even more accurate to give an approximate rather than exact date.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 02:35 pm (UTC)It's true that the year 1910 is routinely pronounced "nineteen ten." But the year 1900 is routinely pronounced "nineteen hundred," so that's sort of consistent (it would be more consistent to say "nineteen zero," but utterly unidiomatic). On the other hand, the year 2000 never was, and could not have been, pronounced "twenty hundred." So saying "twenty-ten" is not required by consistency. There are two competing patterns: the special pattern of "two thousand X," carried forward from "two thousand," and the general pattern of "twenty X," imitating "nineteen X." Which one to use is not a question of grammatical correctness but an optional style issue. And a person who cannot tell the difference is not a competent grammatical authority.
To my personal ear, "twenty eleven" sounds okay, but "twenty ten" does not. So I'll change over next year.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 05:11 pm (UTC)It may be relevant to quote what I wrote in the comments section of the article, which was:
"'Twenty-ten' is a vision rating.
Nevertheless these people are right: it's easier and makes more sense in the long run to say it that way.
Just don't go around huffily correcting people who say 'Two thousand and twenty,' all right?"
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 08:24 pm (UTC)