Also has some interesting stuff on the early history of buses in London. A French multinational was a big player, which after spinning off it's UK branch into a separate company became the monopolitistic London General Omnibus Company. For a while loopholes allowed Pirate Buses to compete though, which would dash in and steal passengers on the routes, often driving dangerously to do so.

The Routemaster does seem to have been genuinely innovative. It had an alloy body made of interchangeable parts, a monocoque construction instead of chassis and bolt-on body, and an automatic gearbox.

However I'm not a big fan of the nostalgia that wants to keep the Routemaster. It was its innovative nature that kept it in service for so long as other buses caught up. But it's not really true to the spirit behind it to keep an obsolete concept in operation for the sake of cosy reminiscences. Even Elborough can't avoid touching on the facts that almost every innovation in London transport has been hated at first. Even the Routemaster at first got a hostile review by bus-spotters in their magazine

What I'm Reading 2
In the Land of Invented Languages Linguist Akira Okrent takes a look around both the history of invented languages, and their present-day communities. Linguists usually seem to be pretty sniffy about invented languages, but Okrent seems to have become reluctantly fascinated. Linguists in general seem to be a strange bunch: it's as if there were Hammerologists whose intent was to study and catalogue all the different types of hammer in the world, but who exploded with rage any time a non-hammerologist suggested an improvement or criticized the quality of a new model, since hammers should only be described and never judged.

Okrent starts off in the Seventeenth Century with John Wilkins' Philosophical Language, which attempted to organize all concepts in a logical hierachy, and then have each word describe its position in the hierarchy. So the word for "dog" zitɑ literally describes a "clawed, rapacious, oblong-headed, land-dwelling beast of docile disposition". It never took off, but the classification system inspired the first thesaurus.

In the enlightenment period, invented languages often tried to be philosophically pure. By the Nineteenth and Twentieth century idealists had a different idea: they wanted to create a single language, that would promote world peace and be convenient for exchange. Esperanto was by far the most successful, though there were predecessors with similar ideas. One of the factors for its success was a kind of viral marketing, which urged readers to write a letter in Esperanto and post it along with a quick guide to a friend, who would then decode it. Okrent makes an interesting observation that while it was originally created to be simple and consistent, Esperanto has already begun to evolve irregularities. The accusative -n ending used to mark the object of a verb is beginning to be lost as speakers leave it out. However it's retained in common words like "saluton" (hello) and "dankon" (thanks).

More recent invented languages have a variety of motivations. Lojban (a fork of a similar language Logban) attempts to be very logical and free of cultural bias; but is very difficult to learn and use.

Blissymbolics tried to use combinations of symbols to represent fundamental concepts, in the way people used to think hieroglyphics worked. This actually proved immensely useful for helping some severely handicapped people to communicate: cerebral palsy sufferers could point at the symbols. However, they generally preferred to bootstrap onto written English rather than keep using it.

Láadan is a language for women created by science fiction writer Suzette Haden Elgin. I found this particularly interesting. The grammar requires that every sentence has a marker for whether the act is statement, question, command, request, promise or warning; and whether it is performed neutrally, in anger, in pain, in love, in celebration, in fear, in jest, in narrative or in teaching. So, you can never say something hurtful and then follow it up with "I was only kidding", since if you were kidding you would have used the in jest marker. I also notice that you could never say "I thought you were just making an observation that the rubbish bin was full": that would be obvious from whether the statement or command marker was used.

The vocabulary also has some interesting terms

• radíidin: "non-holiday, a time allegedly a holiday but actually so much a burden because of work and preparations that it is a dreaded occasion; especially when there are too many guests and none of them help.
• rashida:non-game, a cruel "playing" that is a game only for the dominant "players" with the power to force others to participate
• wonewith: to be socially dyslexic; uncomprehending of the social signals of others
• ramimelh: to refrain from asking, with evil intent; especially when it is clear that someone badly wants the other to ask.
• ab: love for one liked but not respected
• áazh: love for one sexually desired at some time but not now
• rathóo: non-guest; someone who comes to visit knowing that they are intruding or causing problems.

The key to the success of a language doesn't seem to be so much about the language itself, but the community you can create around it. Klingon and Esperanto are similar in that they have active communities who love to meet up and speak their languages together.

Definitely a very interesting book, well worth reading.

Review. Extracts.

Web
Socioeconomics. Trilemma of international finance. Hollywood accounting. Income stratification is global. Dunning-Kruger effect is dubious. Detecting Social Media Bullshit: A Sociologist’s View.

Pics. Realdoll factory (NSFW). Electronics redesigned 1970s style.

Politics. ConDem spending plans contradictory and incoherent, Jobbing Doctor anxious. Anonymity for rape suspects confirmed. Parliament should choose the next OBR head.

Stuff. Iraq marshes doing well. Anti exam cheating methods. The Spelling and Pronunciation of Shakespeare's Name.

Video. Japanese public health commercial.

Random. Zoomable, searchable 8-bit London map. Correctly spelled poem. Designer in doesn't like Helvetica shock. Nice chiming ring thing.