Playful Technology Limited: Video: The Entropy of "Alice in Wonderland"

Video explaining an entropy-based keyword extraction technique, using "Alice In Wonderland".

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War of the Worlds: Part 1

The BBC's adaptation of The War of the Worlds is a fantastically produced adaptation, and definitely had some impressive moments - seeing the invasion ships launch from Mars was a brilliant opening. But one major problem became apparent over the course of the episode - the adapter had written more of it than HG Wells.

Peter Harness has previously written for Doctor Who, a show strongly influenced by HG Wells. Unfortunately, his episodes tended to be a bit heavy-handed. Here, he moved the time frame forward from "the last year's of the 19th century" to "the first years of the 20th", and introduced a diplomatic crisis involving Russian attacks on fishing boats that quickly became irrelevant. Most of the episode was taken up with a soapy subplot about the relationships between the protagonist George, his mistress Amy, (not in the original), his estranged wife Lucy (perfectly happily married in the original), and George's brother (another new character). At one point Lucy (who will be conveniently killed off so that George and Amy can live happily ever after once the invasion's over - it has been clumsily foreshadowed) complained that she'd been replaced by someone younger and prettier, despite looking identical to Amy. All of this was based more on Wells' life than his novel. 

There were also confusing scenes of two human figures wandering round what appeared to be Mars. These later turned out to be a flashforward to a Mars-like Earth, some years later. Again, not in the original.

There's a bit of a trend amongst adapters at the moment to take big liberties with the source material. ITV recently adapted Jane Austen's Sanditon, of which she had written so little when she died that it was all used in the first episode. And I gave up on the BBC's adaptation of Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders after a subplot involving Poirot having a shady past turned into a Message From Fred - "He's not Poirot." The overall impression is that adapters are more interested in telling their own stories than those they're working from. But if that's what you want to do, write an original story, not an adaptation.

The War of the Worlds is a classic for good reason. It's a foundational text of Science Fiction, the original alien invasion story, and a principled critique of colonialism. The best bits of the adaptation were those that stuck closest to the original. Peter Harness and the BBC should have had more faith in the source material.

Playful Technology Limited: Apple, Bias, Credit

The importance of understanding your data before using it to train a model.

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Speculative Grammarian Needs You

A few years ago, I found myself thinking, "Children don't know any linguistic theory when they learn to speak." Then I imagined the sort of person who thought they jolly well should do. I sent this in to Speculative Grammarian, and I've been writing for them ever since. Indeed, I've now written so much that as of the November issue, I've reached the dizzying heights of Contributing Editor.

However, it's not just about me contributing — we're always on the lookout for fresh blood, as Count Dracula said. So, if you've ever fancied writing something funny about linguistics, send it to us. Unlike Dracula, we don't bite.

<;p lang="en" dir="ltr">Hey Linguists! Got a paper to write — or many papers to grade — this weekend? Looking for a way to procrastinate? Work on something for SpecGram! Articles, reviews, letters, poetry, cartoons, ads—we want it all! https://t.co/ihxFbSMlXf (You can also help by sharing this call!)

&mdash; Editors of SpecGram (@SpecGram) October 4, 2019

Playful Technology Limited: The Grammar of Truth and Lies

Using computational linguistics to detect fake news

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Stock Photography

The contract market has been a little too quiet recently, so I have decided to diversify my business a little. I've set up a portfolio on IStock, which has some of my photos (mainly nature and landscapes, some buildings). I'm quite proud of some of these, so please take a look, and if you know anyone who might need some stock photos, pass it on.

Playful Technology Limited: Neural Isn't Always Better

Neural networks don't match the performance of the Viterbi algorithm for Word Sense Disambiguation.

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