Reporter’s diary

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Cracking hearty

A BOLDLY-lettered sign: “Stop. Beware rolling heads,” greets visitors to the Ministry of Works and Development offices in Madras Street. While this may be amusing for staff who are fortunate enough to be a safe distance removed from the Earnscleugh debacle, we wonder how many laughs it would raise in the Ministry’s Dunedin offices. Linguistics

ANYONE having trouble with their Macedonian or Punjabi need not despair. Help is at hand, thanks to an appeal by the Canterbury Promotion Council to consulates, clubs, associations, and the language departments of Canterbury University and the Christchurch Polytechnic. More than 60 persons who speak or write languages other than English have offered interpreting and translation services to overseas visitors here for business or pleasure. As part of the national effort, the Canterbury Promotion Council now has local assistance available in Arabic, Bulgarian, Czechoslovakian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Malaysian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rumanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss, Taiwanese, and Yugoslavian.

Piano wanted

THE ORGANISERS of the Christchurch Festival urgently need a baby grand piano. Anyone who can help should telephone 67-515. The festival also needs pencils, about 1000 of them. They

need to be usable, but second-hand will be fine. They are needed to go with questionnaires designed to assess the economic impact of the festival. The questionnaires will be filled in by patrons at the festival’s various venues.

Space-age Shakespeare SHAKESPEARE has moved into the twentieth century with the development of computerised synopses of plays for students to use on their home computers. Six plays on computer cassettes

will be launched in England next month, and later in Australia and New Zealand. They have been touted as “the first truly revolutionary breakthrough in the study of literature since the invention of printing.” Students can use the Shakespearian software to investigate characters, themes and images, and to search for relationships between them. It gives a fast way into the texts of the plays to research essay questions or to revise a play before an examination, although the makers maintain that the software is not designed to replace the text or provide students with “glib answers.” Close enough JAPAN is renowned for some of the things it does with the English language. Hitachi has continued this tradition in fine style by calling one of its computer showrooms a “Humanication Plaza.” Silent removals “TIN CITY” Runanga, said to be the only township still using rubbish tins in the Greymouth area, will finally get plastic rubbish bags in April. The Runanga Borough Council’s decision comes after “problems over the years,” and a number of complaints to the council. Residents asserted that the rubbish removal men had been “a bit rough on the tins.” The rubbish removal men in turn maintained that the condition of the tins was poor any way. The supply of

52 plastic rubbish bags to each household is expected to soothe the discord and get rid of the clanking and banging of the weekly collections, which will continue as usual. Taking no chances SEEN IN the Main North Road at Belfast yesterday morning: A man wearing safety goggles to hoe weeds on his grass frontage.