Winter-Kreationen 2017

Rejoice, for winter is upon us! Or, at least, Ritter Sport's Winter-Kreationen are upon us, and it didn't take me long to get hold of them.

Spekulatius: 9/10
It's amazing that this one didn't exist before (well, I've never seen it). It's basically a variant on Knusperkeks, except that the giant biscuit in the middle is a speculoos, with its signature cocktail of spices. I'd rate it just as highly as the original Knusperkeks.

Weisse Zimt Crisp: 6/10
This one is absolutely bursting with flavour: you open the packet and an explosion of cinnamon assails your nostrils. Unfortunately for me, that is a rather traumatic experience, as it brought back memories of the time a friend knocked a jar of cinnamon powder off the shelf in my kitchen and it smashed, showering cinnamon everywhere. I had to live with the consequences for months. So maybe it's just me, but I can't quite deal with how cinnamonny this is. It's also an extremely sweet combination, with nothing to cut the inherent cloyingness of the white chocolate, though the crunchiness is good.

Gebrannte Mandel: 6.5/10
Meh. Tasty enough, good and crunchy, but more or less just works like any other version with tiny smashed up nuts in it - not very distinctive.

Fame and fortune: the Cambridge effect

One thing that you often hear when at Cambridge, usually said by people not at Cambridge, is that you're going to university with people who will one day be famous. For me, at least, that never seemed very realistic at the time. I'm feeling reflective now, though, so here's a quick look back.

I was involved in at least 20 theatrical productions in Cambridge, depending on how you count, but the first one was a biggie: in December 2004, when this blog was in its infancy, a bunch of us got on a bus and performed Romeo and Juliet in venues around Europe (mostly Switzerland), then at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge in January 2005. This is the European Theatre Group tour, and, considering that it's featured folks like Stephen Fry and Sir Derek Jacobi, it's a good place to start in more ways than one.

My role was as a humble "fresher techie". I'd assumed that my experience of occasionally pressing buttons on a 20-year-old lighting deck and carting props around for the Tideswell Community Players would set me up well for this. In fact, I was touring with several people who'd worked with state-of-the-art sound and lighting setups at their secondary school, who had serious ambitions to go into technical theatre, and who took the whole thing very seriously. I certainly learned a huge amount - it was another instance where I had to rein in my inherent arrogance and lap up what was thrown my way. Once or twice, being able to speak semi-decent French or German actually made me more useful than just another pair of hands. Most importantly, I guess, I had a great time. Anyway, enough about me. More important are the interesting people I was touring with.

Twelve years later, the fame thing is very clear when you look at the cast. The most striking fact is that, of the eleven of them, six now have their own Wikipedia pages. Obviously that's not a perfect proxy for stardom, but not a bad indicator of success either, given that all these people are broadly the same age as me. The standout is probably Lydia Wilson, who played Juliet and has now played a good-sized role in a flippin' Star Trek film, but it's hard to compare. Two of the other cast members, Simon Evans and Alexandra Spencer-Jones, are now successful directors in their own right (as is the director of the play, Max Webster). The other cast members I know about are also doing just grand for themselves. On the crew side, the only one with a Wikipedia article that I know of is designer Simon Fujiwara, but of course crew by their nature prefer to stay in the shadows, on the whole.

What does all of this mean? I revisited this lot out of curiosity, not because I wanted to make a point, and I still don't. There are lots of points to be made. The obvious ones are about nepotism and about the Cambridge brand value. While there's obviously something to be said for both of those, it's also the case that, to the extent to which one of those is explanatory, the other is less so; and there are also questions about the direction of causation. The other obvious point is that people who go to Cambridge are often very capable and (perhaps even more importantly) incredibly ambitious. And that there are established routes into the theatre world that people are aware of should not be very surprising to anyone: it's not a huge industry and by its nature has to cluster around particular cities, neighbourhoods, and theatres. Furthermore, who you are, and who you can be, matters in theatre - for actors it probably matters more than anything else, and so it would be hard to envisage a theatre industry that wasn't nepotistic at least to some degree by necessity. Good looks don't hurt either (and I now know that good looks are much more a matter of hard work than I was aware in 2004-5).

So you're welcome to read into this retrospective what you like. It's clearly illustrative of something.

Lactose-free, gluten-free milk chocolate

A quick and easy Ritter rating:

Vollmilch Laktosefrei: 9/10
The reason this one is easy is that it literally tastes exactly the same as its non-lactose-free, non-gluten-free counterpart. If only it were always this straightforward! (NB: apparently this one contains no more than 0.1% lactose.)

Why I'm voting Pirate in Manchester Central

I'll be voting for the Pirate Party in the upcoming general election. Here's why.

Lack of digital literacy among the major parties

It's time to end digital illiteracy. Internet policy is an area on which the major parties are both astonishingly ineffectual and terrifyingly illiberal. Amber Rudd has been much mocked for her reference to people who "understand the necessary hashtags". Less amusingly, but more importantly, Rudd has spoken of her desire to ban encryption, a move which is both anti-privacy and anti-business. End-to-end encryption is crucial for banking, for instance. You'd think there'd be outcry, or at least that Labour would use the issue to score some points. But that hasn't happened.

Online privacy and security is a matter of life and death, as the recent NHS attacks have shown. It's an open question whether the underfunding that allowed our NHS to get so royally screwed over was a result of miserliness, cynical targeted defunding, incompetence, or all three. In any case, it's clear that this isn't a purely abstract issue: increasingly, it's a matter of defence. This could well be the form that future warfare typically takes. Anyone who made as many gaffes when discussing Trident as Amber Rudd has made when discussing encryption and digital rights would be considered a danger to national security, and unfit to hold office. Meanwhile, the Labour manifesto only mentions "cyber warfare" in the vaguest of terms (p120), and elsewhere states that it will require tech companies to take measures against online abuse and inappropriate content for children (p96), without any indication of how this could be done while respecting basic civil liberties. (The corresponding section in the Conservative manifesto, p79, basically sings from the same hymnsheet, but is even more disturbingly authoritarian.) I'm sick and tired of the continual erosion of our civil liberties in the name of the fight against terrorism and paedophilia.

The Pirates understand the necessary hashtags. Just look at their manifesto.

Distrust for the Labour candidate

Lucy Powell is a Labour careerist, who has almost never defied the whip: only twice in 607 votes, of which the most recent rebellion was in order to support airstrikes in Syria. To me that indicates a lack of independent thinking and moral fibre. She was also part of the damaging attempted coup against Corbyn. I've written before about my reservations with regard to Corbyn, but he didn't deserve that - and, more importantly, neither did the country, given the move's deleterious effects for Labour credibility in the run-up to this election.

The first time I emailed her about an issue I considered important, I got no reply, but I was added to her mailing list.

"But we need to get the Tories out!"

I'm a leftie and a liberal, so I agree. If I were in a swing seat, I'd be voting for the party most likely to oust the Tories. But Manchester Central is an incredibly safe Labour seat, where Labour have never received less than 50% of the vote.

A futile gesture?

Perhaps. Certainly the chances of getting a Pirate elected are vanishingly low. But we shouldn't underestimate the effect on policy that an electoral threat can have, even without elected representatives. The prime example here is UKIP, who never once succeeded in getting an MP elected (if we discount temporary turncoat Douglas Carswell), but whose policies are nonetheless reflected to an alarming degree in the current Conservative manifesto. The Labour Party in the northwest has called out the Pirates by name before: then-MEP Arlene McCarthy was concerned about potentially losing votes over net neutrality.

One thing's for sure: this is not a protest vote. I'm voting for the party that I want to win. I would love it if a Pirate MP was elected in Manchester Central. The combination of liberal principles and evidence-based policymaking is a great one, and so I wish Neil Blackburn all the best for his campaign.

Full disclosure: the author is a former member of the Pirate Party UK National Executive, and is currently living and working as an immigrant in Germany.

Sommergenuss 2017

Three new varieties for me to try! That means little that's new until the autumn... but I've already noticed some that have sneaked in below the radar since I was last paying proper attention (2007), so it won't be an entirely choc-free summer.

Brombeer Joghurt: 9/10
This one definitely does it for me, to the point of being one of my all-time favourites. When you open the pack, the blackberry flavour just bursts out at you, and it's well-balanced in terms of sweetness and sharpness. Pity it isn't going to stick around.

Pink Grapefruit: 4.5/10
I'll admit: I'm biased. I don't think anything should ever be grapefruit-flavoured, and I don't think I'm alone in that. So the main saving grace of this one is that the grapefruit flavour is fairly moderate, rather than overwhelming as in the Brombeer Joghurt. White chocolate was a nice touch, but can't save it.

Eiskakao-Creme: 7/10
Nice, but it's pretty uninspired compared to the other two, and reminds me a lot of Eiscafé (which recurred in 2014 and 2016). Are Ritter running out of ideas?!!111

The all-time Ritter Sport ratings so far

Now that I'm back in Germany for good, it's time to get serious about Ritter Sport. The last time I summarized my 'findings' was back in 2013, so it's high time I do so again. But first, some brand new reviews:

Weisse Joghurt-Mousse: 7.5/10
This one reminded me so much of my first Magnum that I couldn't help but be swept away to Carlisle in my childhood, where I was treated to one by my dad as part of a steam rail excursion. Mmmm. Still, it was better cold.

Honig & Crisp: 5/10
On the basis that anything less than 5 I actively disliked, I'm giving this one a 5. It doesn't taste of anything very much other than some sugary mush in a chocolate bar. Certainly not honey, certainly not crisp. Very disappointing.

Johannisbeer Streusel: 8.5/10
See, this is exactly the kind of Ritter Sport that does it for me: sweet, citrus, with chocolate, and a great texture. Happy George.

Schokobrownie: 8.5/10
Another one that falls into the category of 'uncanny'. Very tasty, very brownie-esque. One of the big fat mousse varieties, but cunningly constructed.

Macadamia: 8/10
I usually don't get hugely excited about the nutty ones these days, but this was a nice surprise. No-nonsense dry nuts and happy creamy chocolate makes a great team.

And here's the run-down:

Cherry & Mini Smarties: 10/10
Caramel Orange: 9.5/10
Rhubarb, strawberry and yoghurt: 9/10
Milk Chocolate: 9/10
Alpine Milk Chocolate: 9/10
Knusperkeks: 9/10
Caramel & Nut: 9/10
Kakaosplitter: 9/10
Coffee & Hazelnuts: 9/10
Mixed Fine Nuts: 8.5/10
Corn Flakes & White Chocolate: 8.5/10
Cookies & Cream: 8.5/10
Johannisbeer Streusel: 8.5/10
Schokobrownie: 8.5/10
Nougat: 8/10
Cappuccino: 8/10
Hazelnut (milk chocolate): 8/10
Hazelnut (dark chocolate): 8/10
Edel-Bitter: 8/10
Rum, Raisin & Nut: 8/10
Orange & Marzipan: 8/10
Amarena Kirsch: 8/10
Eiscafé: 8/10
Baiser Nuss: 8/10
Brombeer Joghurt: 8/10
Macadamia: 8/10
Fruits of the Forest & Yoghurt: 7.5/10
Peach & Passionfruit: 7.5/10
Bourbon & Vanilla: 7.5/10
Himbeer-Cranberry Joghurt: 7.5/10
Erdbeer Vanille-Waffel: 7.5/10
Strawberry & Mint: 7.5/10
Weisse Joghurt-Mousse: 7.5/10
Marzipan: 7/10
Blood Orange: 7/10
Raisin & Nut: 7/10
Coconut Batida Liqueur Truffle: 7/10
Vanilla Liqueur Truffle: 7/10
Knusperflakes: 7/10
Stracciatella: 7/10
Vanilla Cookie: 7/10
Waldbeer Joghurt: 7/10
Crema Catalana: 7/10
Vanilla Mousse: 7/10
Chocolate Mousse: 7/10
Edel-Bitter mit Edel-Kakao aus Ecuador: 7/10
Buttermilk & Lemon: 7/10
Vanilla Chai Latte: 7/10
Milk & White Chocolate: 6.5/10
Alpine Cream & Praline: 6.5/10
Hazelnut & Almond Crumble: 6.5/10
Sunny Crisp (sunflower seeds): 6/10
Espresso Crunch: 6/10
Half Dark Chocolate: 6/10
Marc de Champagne Truffle: 6/10
Amaretto Truffle: 6/10
Whole Peanut: 6/10
Hazelnut (white chocolate): 6/10
Raisin & Cashew: 6/10
A la Crema Catalana: 6/10
Nusskipferl: 6/10
Buttermilch Zitrone: 6/10
Nut in Nougat Cream: 5.5/10
Dark chocolate with Creme a la chocolate mousse: 5/10
Jamaica Rum: 5/10
Kakaocreme: 5/10
Peppermint: 5/10
Bourbon Vanille: 5/10
Honig & Crisp: 5/10
Whole Almond: 4/10
Golden Peanut: 4/10
Yoghurt: 4/10
Napolitaner Waffel: 4/10
Lemon: 3/10
Egg Liqueur Truffle: 3/10
Coconut: 2/10
Diet Half Dark Chocolate: 1/10

Guess what?

I ate some more chocolate - summer varieties 2016 this time. Here is the outcome.

Buttermilch Zitrone: 6/10

This one's certainly flavoursome - in fact, a bit too much so for me. The lemon packs a punch and overwhelms the softer taste of the buttermilk, except for the fact that the whole combination is also a little bit too sweet. Recommended if you want to give your tastebuds a spring clean, or need waking up.

Brombeer Joghurt: 8/10

This is a much better balanced offering, though would have been better with dark chocolate. Crunchy, warm and comforting, it was quite a pleasure to munch. What exactly the crunchiness is supposed to represent is unclear, though it does add to the combination.

Eiscafé: 8/10

Another solid that tastes like a drink. Ritter's powers of chocolate-making now verge on the uncanny!

China chocolate

On the way to China I had to change at either Amsterdam or Frankfurt. I chose Frankfurt for the Ritter Sport Winter-Kreationen.

Vanilla Chai Latte: 7/10

This tastes... like a vanilla chai latte. That's actually a pretty impressive feat given that the drink is a drink and this is a solid. The particular chai-ness of chai lattes is in there. There's not much of vanilla in it, but then there isn't much in the drink, either. 7/10 as it's nice for a change but not my favourite beverage.

Nusskipferl: 6/10

A tasty, nutty, biscuity, slightly creamy combo that’s just right for a winter afternoon. I’m only giving it 6/10 because it’s not particularly distinct from a number of similar varieties I feel like I’ve tried over the last few years. Maybe that’s just me becoming jaded.

Ritter Sport 2015

Some new flavours thanks to an invited talk in Frankfurt.

Strawberry & Mint: 7.5/10
This one presents a pleasantly stratified experience. The minty freshness hits you first, and the sweet strawberry notes come in later, so that as you suck down the last remnants you feel like you’re eating an entirely different Ritter Sport. The sharpness of the initial taste also helps to correct a flaw in the normal strawberry-flavour chocolate, which can be monotonously cloying. Not going to become a firm favourite, but certainly worth a munch.
Buttermilk & Lemon: 7/10
With a smooth, consistent tanginess, this too is nothing to write home about, but nevertheless a pleasure to suck on. Given that the original Lemon (which is one of my all-time least favourites, and which I haven't seen in a while) was so poor, I don't quite know how they could have got this so right, but the fact remains that they did. White chocolate worked just nicely here.

Other blog posts you may enjoy

I've been blogging elsewhere. Here are some links:

• The case for Open Access (PPUK, March 2013)
• Linguistic necromancy: a guide for the uninitiated (OUPblog, Oct 2014)
• Research funding: the Christmas countdown (PPUK, Dec 2014)
• Time to put mental health front and centre for this year's general election (PPUK, Feb 2015)

Here are some errata for the "Linguistic necromancy" post, which was put together in too much haste:

• "1900s" should read "1800s" or "19th century".
• "Pfoste" should be "Pfosten".

Edel-Bitter

Trip to Vienna via Frankfurt, so I was able to get my hands on a new one. Couldn't find the winter varieties, though, sadly.

Edel-Bitter mit Edel-Kakao aus Ecuador: 7/10

This is the least Ritter-Sport-like Ritter Sport I've sampled thus far. After the mousse varieties with larger, squishier squares, this one has smaller, harder squares. As a result, and also because of the dark bitterness (at 73% it's much darker than the normal Ritter dark chocolate), it's a slow one to eat, and I savoured it over the space of more than 48 hours. This is in complete contrast to the vast majority of the varieties, where the challenge is really not to polish the whole thing off in one go. Actually a very pleasant experience, but only 7/10 because...  well... it's just not very Rittery.

Coffee & Hazelnuts

The title says it all. I have my estimable colleague Wendell Kimper to thank for this one.

Coffee & Hazelnuts: 9/10
As the first mouthful entered my mouth I knew what I was going to say about this one - or at least I thought I did. "The coffee flavour is too strong!" I'm not sure what happened next. Either the hazelnut came through, or, more likely, I realized that it the hazelnut had been there all along in a magnificent blend of chocolate, nut and coffee. After that? Well, my only complaint was that the experience went by too soon, and I really have no one to blame for that but myself.

I'll be passing through Germany on the way to Vienna this Christmas, so hopefully will get the chance to pick up some more. Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof had better be well stocked!

Ritter Sport ratings 2014

Some more Ritter Sport. The first two I picked up and reviewed in Marburg at the DGfS conference but must not have got round to posting. The next two, Eiscafé and Chocolate Mousse, I picked up myself while passing through Munich on the way to and from Budapest for a conference. The last two were gifts from Tine Breban, who thoughtfully raided a petrol station to fuel my addiction.

Baiser Nuss: 8/10
These very fine, dry, crunchy nuts give one a taste experience akin to walking over gravel, with a warm autumnal aftertaste. Highly recommended.

À la Crema Catalana: 6/10
Not much of a likeness to the eponymous dessert (though there are hints). Again, rather yoghurty, with a strong and cloying aftertaste.

Eiscafé: 8/10
This experience is eerily reminiscent of the Continental caffeinated beverage with ice cream. That combination of warm and cold, in a chocolate bar? No way? Yes way, apparently.

Chocolate Mousse: 7/10
Ritter cleverly divided their square into 3x3 rather than 4x4 "für mehr Mousse-Genuss". That gives a nice squidgy bite to this one and to the below. Ultimately a bit bland, though.

Vanilla Mousse: 7/10
As above, really. Very creamy, lots of vanilla. Straightforward.

Caramel Orange: 9.5/10
Oh. Oh, my. I've carped on in the past about Ritter combining citrussy sharpness with much mellower tones, and this one really delivers the goods. The caramel is dreamy enough to float away on, while the orange delivers a sharp kick up the backside. My life is substantially better after having eaten this one. A rare Winter-Kreation, picked up out of season by Tine, for which I am eternally grateful.

Open Access Linguistics: You're Doing It Wrong

If you're a linguist - any kind of linguist - then you, like me, will probably have received an email from the Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, inviting you to submit your work.

I'm extremely committed to open access in linguistics, and in academia more broadly; here's why. But OJML is doing it wrong, and the rest of this post aims to explain why. The tl;dr list version of this post is as follows:

• Don't ever submit your work to OJML.
• Tell your friends never to submit to OJML.
• If you know someone who's on the editorial board, gently ask them not to be.

So, what's so very wrong with OJML? The short answer is that it is run by the wrong people and threatens to bring the entire, very promising, open access movement into disrepute by charging stupidly high APCs and skimping on quality both in terms of typesetting and intellectually.

The "costs" of progress: predatory publishers

Let's take a look at OJML's guidelines on Article Processing Charges (APCs). It's $600 per article, but only if that article is within ten printed pages: in linguistics, that's barely out of squib status. For each additional page above ten, an extra $50 is whacked on.

This may not seem like much, given that Elsevier charge up to $5000. But for a 20-page article, which is still short by linguistics standards, we're talking $1100. Moreover, this kind of incremental model penalizes thorough argumentation and, in particular, proper referencing. It might even not be so bad if what you paid for was worth it - but I'll argue below that it isn't even close.

The open access community has a name for this kind of publishing practice: "predatory". Jeffrey Beall maintains a list of predatory publishers on his website, along with criteria for inclusion. Surprise, surprise: "Scientific Research Publishing" (SCIRP), the publishers of OJML, are on the list at number 206.

What's in it for them? Large amounts of money, made from academics' naivety. Last year, journalist John Bohannon conducted a "sting" operation by submitting a series of 304 deliberately deeply flawed manuscripts by fictional authors to gold open access journals, many of them ostensibly peer-reviewed. More than half of them accepted the papers, including many that apparently sent the paper out for review, and 16 journals accepted the papers despite the reviewers spotting their damning flaws.

The journal Science, who hosted Bohannon's piece, were keen to trumpet the failure of open access (unsurprisingly, as they represent the status quo that open access threatens). However, there are a lot of problems with Bohannon's approach, which have been ably summarized elsewhere. In particular, since Bohannon didn't include a "control group" of traditional subscription journals, there's no evidence that open access peer review practices are any worse than those. And even if they were, the existence of exploitative behaviour within open access of course doesn't entail that open access itself is a bad thing. But it's clear from Bohannon's experiences and those of others that, where there are new ways of making shady money, there will be crooks who leap to seize them, and that gold open access (and OJML) simply illustrates one instance of this general principle.

Bad production standards

One of the areas where any publisher can claim to add value is in ensuring the formal quality of their published submissions: typesetting, copy-editing, proofreading, redrawing complex diagrams or illustrations, etc. If a publisher does this well, they may merit at least some of the fees that they typically charge for open access. However, OJML's performance in this area shows that they hardly even look at the papers they publish. Here are some examples from Muriungi, Mutegi & Karuri's 2014 paper on the syntax of wh-questions in Gichuka (which, at 23 pages, must have cost them a pretty penny):

• Glosses are not aligned (e.g. in (6) on p2).
• The header refers to the authors, ridiculously, as "M. K. Peter et al".
• There are clauses which contain clear typographical errors, e.g. "the particle ni which in Bantu, which is referred to as the focus marker", on p3.
• In (17), the proper name "jakob" is not capitalized.
• There are spelling errors: "Intermadiate", in table 1, p8.
• The tree on p14 has been brutally mangled.
• Some of the references are incomprehensible garbage: "Norberto (2004). Wh-Movement. http.www.quiben.org/wp.content/uploads"

A quick glance through any OJML paper will reveal that these aren't isolated occurrences, and little of this is likely to be the fault of the authors: at least, any linguistically-informed copy-editor or proofreader should have picked up on all of these points instantly, and any proofreader at all should have picked up on most of them.

Low quality papers

What about the academic quality of the papers accepted? I don't want to pick on any particular paper: in fact, I'm sure that there are nuggets of gold in there (the Muriungi et al. paper mentioned above, for instance, is a valuable syntactic description of an aspect of an understudied language). But I invite you to skim some of the papers and draw your own conclusions.

In particular, the dates of acceptance and revision of the papers aren't exactly indicative of a thorough review process. For instance, the paper by Muriungi et al. was "Received 7 June 2013; revised 9 July 2013; accepted 18 July 2013". Again, this isn't unusual for the papers in this journal. It's certainly not impossible for quality peer review to take place at this speed - and it's certainly desirable to move away from the unacceptable slowness of some of the big-name journals - but it is at least doubtful. And one thing that is extremely eerie is how many of the articles are dated as having been revised exactly one month after receipt, suggesting that the process may have been even shorter and that SCIRP is trying to cover itself, by means of outright lies, against exactly the kind of allegation I'm making.

The fields of linguistics given under their Aims & Scope don't inspire confidence, either, with "Cosmic Linguistics" and "Paralinguistics" among them.

Why is this important?

OJML is symptomatic of exactly the wrong approach to open access. Open access, to me, is about disintermediation, about putting power back into the hands of academics. There are several good open access operators out there: Language Science Press is a prime example in the domain of books, the e-journal Semantics and Pragmatics has been performing a valuable no-fees open access service for years, and the Linguistic Society of America recently took a step in the right direction by making papers in its flagship journal Language openly accessible after a one-year embargo period. These initiatives are all run by researchers, for researchers.

In contrast, OJML is about opportunistic money-making. Here's a quote from SCIRP's About page, in relation to why their base of operations is in China while they're registered as a corporation in Delaware: "What SCIRP does is to seize the current global trade possibilities to ensure its legitimate freedom with regard to where to do what." If this sort of creepy graspingness doesn't put you off submitting to OJML, and the problems outlined in the previous sections don't either, then I don't know what will.

Unless we nip this problem in the bud, then it threatens to damage the reputation of the Open Access movement more generally. Time to boycott OJML, and to spread the word.

On dieting

There will be aspects of grumpy rant to this post, but in order to contextualize it I'll need to do a little autobiographical sketch first. Please excuse both the self-indulgence and the rant.

I've never been skinny, and I have reason to suspect I never will be (genetics, and also past experience; see below). When I was younger I was always one of the fat kids, though never one of the really fat kids, and because of that I was the butt of jokes. When I came back from my Year Abroad in Germany in 2007 I was like that: a bit flabby, but nothing too noticeable. Over the course of my fourth year I gradually put on a fair bit of weight, causing someone who hadn't seen me for a year in the summer of 2008 to make an oblique reference to "too much good living". There were probably a number of reasons for this: I had a flatmate who was an absolutely wonderful cook, but who indulged me in a lot of carbs, and besides there was the stress of the final year in Cambridge (at one point I wrote 16 essays over an 8-week period, I believe).

During my MPhil year (2008-9), nothing much changed. I was getting on well, but was eating the carb-rich diet I was used to, and sometimes snacking grotesquely. Besides that I was drinking a lot of beer. Towards the end of that year I felt like a change was in order, and I took up a friend's offer to introduce me to the local gym. The guy who did the induction seemed like a nice bloke, and offered some trial personal training sessions afterwards, which (after checking my bank balance) I accepted. At that stage when I stepped on the scales I was 107.6 kilos – well into the 'beached whale' section of the BMI chart.

Things changed. I stuck with my personal trainer, kept a food diary, and completely turned my diet around as well as exercising for an hour three times a week. Between the summer of 2009 and the autumn of 2010 I lost about 30 kilos of weight, which I'm told is pretty good going. Not sure exactly what my lowest weight was, but for a while I was consistently under 80 kilos. I didn't feel skinny, and that's because I wasn't: I still had a belly that jutted out, and some handles that shouldn't have been there. Though I felt pretty good about myself, I didn't have girls queuing up to check me out, and my BMI was barely into the "normal" range (for my height, 5'11", normal is below about 81kg, and obese is anywhere above about 97). Okay, these are both stupid metrics: girls aren't that interested in BMI, which in any case is a terrible measure of healthy body composition. I should certainly have cut myself some more slack: at this stage I was doing 10km runs fairly regularly, and did elicit one or two positive comments about my change of shape from people who'd known me for longer.

I managed to keep this up for... not sure how long. A year? By mid-2012 I was up to ninety-something kilos, anyway. Then I moved to Manchester, stopped worrying about my diet, stopped exercising, and just kind of hoped that living a normal life would cause me to stay at a healthy weight. Unfortunately I hoped wrong. By the end of 2012 I weighed in at over 100kg, so I signed up to the local gym. Time constraints and general apathy meant that I didn't go more than about 10-12 times over the course of the year, though. My weight has stayed pretty much constant since then, at about 111-113kg. I cancelled the gym membership at the end of 2013 - figured it was a waste of money - and instead bought an exercise mat and bench and some dumbbells. My reasoning was this: a) these things will last me for much longer than the year of gym membership, b) I can exercise in the comfort of my own home rather than surrounded by meatheads and scarily-fit old people, and c) strength training was always the part of my gym workout that I actually enjoyed. I would go running too, but the only local options seem to involve canal towpaths strewn with broken glass.

The weight gain is unsurprising: I was stressed with a new job and new place, and started eating pretty badly as well as stopping exercising. I'd like to get fit again, since I feel that my posture is being damaged by my oversized belly and I'm often robbed of breath by things that wouldn't have bothered me three years ago. Plus, who wants to be at increased risk of diabetes and heart disease?

The dieting is going to be crucial here, though, and I need to explain how that works for me. My basic meal structure hasn't changed since the time in Cambridge when I lost all those kilos. It goes like this, when I'm at home or on a normal working day:

• Breakfast: poached egg; porridge (made with jumbo oats and water); pint of water
• Lunch: salad (any combination of lettuce, peppers, tomato, cucumber, coleslaw, olives) with chicken, tuna or some other meat; banana; pint of water
• Dinner: roast chicken (sometimes something else like breaded fish); two green veg (usually broccoli and green beans); small yoghurt or two; pint of water

I know this is a good template. I know that because it helped me lose 30kg of body fat. The problem is what else I do. When I'm at work I frequently buy a chocolate bar, a latte and a muffin as an afternoon snack. And on the way back from work or other events I will buy a bag of Sainsbury's double chocolate chip cookies and scoff the lot, and this is by no means a rare occurrence. I also snack a lot on cheese and oatcakes.

So that's me, and that's where I am today. I'm not my own best friend, sure, but judging by the above you might not expect me to be as fat as I am. (I also walk to work for half an hour every day and back, for instance.) That's bad genes for you, and I've learned to accept that.

This incredibly long confessional was meant to be a prelude to a grumble about dieting. It goes like this: pretty much every piece of dieting advice I've ever seen or heard is bad. The worst are the ones that pretend that you can keep eating the things you love. "It's not one of those faddy diets that require you to give up X and Y! You can keep eating wholesome and nutritious meals that are exactly the things you would eat anyway!" Really? WTF? If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't go on a diet in the first place. My sympathies are actually with the faddy diets, since at least they're not pretending to achieve the impossible. And the science behind the diets seems to be all over the place. The Hairy Dieters state that "we focus on the energy equation: your calories in via food and drink versus your calories burnt through exercise". There must be something to it, because it's a bestselling product, right? But I was told by my trainer in no uncertain terms that calorie counting was a radically misconceived approach to fat loss, since not all calories are equal – and that seems to be the standard line in Atkins-style approaches to dieting.

Something else I have heard on occasion is "dieting is bad". Really? Well, I guess it depends what you mean by dieting. All I mean is a change in diet, and there does seem to be evidence (to put it mildly!) that doing that is useful for weight loss. Certainly in my case it worked (for a while). So dieting can't be all bad.

But dieting is hard. Do you a) give yourself absolute prohibitions against certain foods, or b) acknowledge that certain foods aren't great and therefore resolve to limit your intake of them? The rigid a) approach has been problematic for me, since it leads to cravings of exactly those foods. The looser b) approach has in my experience tended to lead to "food creep" where the consumption of those foods has become more and more common. It seems to be a lose-lose situation.

The one thing that I'd hold up as fact throughout all the bullshit is this: dietary change requires willpower. There's just no way around that. I successfully dieted for long enough that I don't think it can be called a faddy phase that I eventually reacted against. If I had the willpower (and maybe I do?), I could do so again. But dieting is hard, and what I hate about most of the dietary advertising out there is that it pretends that it's easy.

Wine per head of student population

Following the publication of this, giving the amounts spent on wine by the different Cambridge colleges, I thought someone ought to compare it to this, the number of students in each college, and do the maths. Here are the results:

College	Number of students	Total spent on wine	Per head
King's	677	£338,559	£500.09
St John's	912	£260,064	£285.16
Jesus	814	£212,256	£260.76
Trinity	1044	£223,291.98	£213.88
Pembroke	668	£141,692	£212.11
Peterhouse	412	£82,133	£199.35
Trinity Hall	641	£127,186	£198.42
Emmanuel	709	£131,127	£184.95
Sidney Sussex	581	£97,507	£167.83
Corpus Christi	490	£79,254	£161.74
Magdalene	542	£68,192	£125.82
Gonville and Caius	829	£96,994	£117.00
Christ's	614	£71,055	£115.72
Downing	675	£77,798	£115.26
Queens'	987	£111,112.64	£112.58
Churchill	801	£87,685	£109.47
Clare	768	£79,989	£104.15
St Catharine's	695	£62,432	£89.83
Selwyn	583	£49,498	£84.90
Robinson	556	£44,722.39	£80.44
Clare Hall	236	£17,400	£73.73
Murray Edwards	518	£32,917	£63.55
Girton	699	£30,051	£42.99
Wolfson	927	£39,647.10	£42.77
St Edmund's	459	£19,304	£42.06
Newnham	656	£27,263	£41.56
Fitzwilliam	767	£23,028	£30.02
Darwin	674	£17,510	£25.98
Hughes Hall	594	£14,033.58	£23.63
Homerton	1342	£27,974.55	£20.85
Lucy Cavendish	341	na	na

Both sets of figures are based on the 2012-13 academic year. Figures per head are rounded to the nearest 1p.

There's no particular reason to suspect that the amount spent on wine would correlate particularly well with the number of students. Other factors are likely to be much more important: perhaps size of endowment, age of establishment, etc. And we shouldn't pretend that the students and staff actually get to drink all this wine for free. Many colleges actually sell their wine to the students for formal dinners. I suspect also that these figures include wine bought to be served at conferences hosted at the colleges, in which case the colleges will likely be making a hefty profit.

Still, when the data are presented like this, some small colleges (Peterhouse, Trinity Hall) come off looking spendthrift, and big colleges like Queens' don't look quite as bad. It's interesting also to note that colleges for a) graduates/mature students and b) women are clustered at the bottom of the table; too bad we don't have data for Lucy Cavendish, which is both.

Ritter Sport again

In my brief jaunt to Bamberg & Würzburg last month, I only managed to pick up one new Ritter Sport to road-test. And it was a pretty good one:

Erdbeer Vanille-Waffel: 7.5/10
Well played, Ritter, well played. If this had been just a strawberry waffle combo, it would in all likelihood have been overly sweet. As it is, the vanilla adds a touch of creaminess to the proceedings, which in turn is then put in relief by the crunchy waffle. (The waffle makes this variety particularly satisfying to open using the Knick-Pack technique.) For some reason, I can't bring myself to rate this one among my all-time favourites, but it was nevertheless a highly pleasurable experience.

And here's an updated list of my all-time preferences:

Cherry & Mini Smarties: 10/10
Rhubarb, strawberry and yoghurt: 9/10
Milk Chocolate: 9/10
Alpine Milk Chocolate: 9/10
Knusperkeks: 9/10
Caramel & Nut: 9/10
Kakaosplitter: 9/10
Mixed Fine Nuts: 8.5/10
Corn Flakes & White Chocolate: 8.5/10
Cookies & Cream: 8.5/10
Nougat: 8/10
Cappuccino: 8/10
Hazelnut (milk chocolate): 8/10
Hazelnut (dark chocolate): 8/10
Edel-Bitter: 8/10
Rum, Raisin & Nut: 8/10
Orange & Marzipan: 8/10
Amarena Kirsch: 8/10
Fruits of the Forest & Yoghurt: 7.5/10
Peach & Passionfruit: 7.5/10
Bourbon & Vanilla: 7.5/10
Himbeer-Cranberry Joghurt: 7.5/10
Marzipan: 7/10
Blood Orange: 7/10
Raisin & Nut: 7/10
Coconut Batida Liqueur Truffle: 7/10
Vanilla Liqueur Truffle: 7/10
Knusperflakes: 7/10
Stracciatella: 7/10
Vanilla Cookie: 7/10
Waldbeer Joghurt: 7/10
Crema Catalana: 7/10
Milk & White Chocolate: 6.5/10
Alpine Cream & Praline: 6.5/10
Hazelnut & Almond Crumble: 6.5/10
Sunny Crisp (sunflower seeds): 6/10
Espresso Crunch: 6/10
Half Dark Chocolate: 6/10
Marc de Champagne Truffle: 6/10
Amaretto Truffle: 6/10
Whole Peanut: 6/10
Hazelnut (white chocolate): 6/10
Raisin & Cashew: 6/10
Nut in Nougat Cream: 5.5/10
Dark chocolate with Creme a la chocolate mousse: 5/10
Jamaica Rum: 5/10
Kakaocreme: 5/10
Peppermint: 5/10
Bourbon Vanille: 5/10
Whole Almond: 4/10
Golden Peanut: 4/10
Yoghurt: 4/10
Napolitaner Waffel: 4/10
Lemon: 3/10
Egg Liqueur Truffle: 3/10
Coconut: 2/10
Diet Half Dark Chocolate: 1/10

That means, by my count, that I've sampled 57 varieties. Heinz would be proud.

More chocolate!

This blog has got awfully serious, hasn't it? Time to talk about chocolate again. Today's instalment of the Ritter Sport ratings comes to you courtesy of my chocoholic colleague (chococolleague?) Tine Breban, who raided the stores of the Ritter Sport Welt in Berlin specially. Good batch, too!

Cookies & Cream: 8.5/10

This is an excellent translation of the concept of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream into chocolate-bar form. It has the right notes of salty crunchiness combined with sweetness, and feels delightfully indulgent.

Crema Catalana: 7/10

An inspired idea, rendering crème brûlée in Ritter Sport form. And it does translate well, with the creamy layer very reminiscent of its target. Rather lacking in execution, though; what I love most about crème brûlée is the slightly burnt, dark and crispy layer on the top, and this was missing from this interpretation, which consequently receives a somewhat lower rating than it may deserve on its own merit.

Himbeer-Cranberry Joghurt: 7.5/10

This one has crunchy, but is overwhelmingly sweet. The cranberry, by contrast, is easy to miss entirely in the powerful assault of raspberry. I have a sweet tooth, but this one was really too much for me. A little less brutal and it could have been a firm favourite.

Thanks also to chococolleague Laurel MacKenzie (of TV fame) and chocoholic collaborator (chocollaborator?) Anne Breitbarth, who also kept me supplied with delicious chocolate over this beautiful Spring period. But because it wasn't Ritter Sport, you don't get to hear about it.

Journal of Historical Syntax: interim report

My little Journal of Historical Syntax has been in existence for a year and a half now. The Executive Committee of the LSA has requested some facts and figures on the eLanguage journals, and I thought that readers might be interested to see these numbers as well. Enjoy!

Since its inception in summer 2011, the Journal of Historical Syntax has received 13 submissions: 1 in 2011, 9 in 2012, and 3 so far in 2013.

Of those 13 submissions:

3 were rejected.
4 were advised to revise and resubmit (of which 1 was subsequently accepted).
4 were accepted with changes (plus the 1 mentioned above).
2 are currently under review.

36 individuals have been involved in reviewing. The average time between receipt of the manuscript and date of the decision (not counting papers that were not sent out for review) is 97 days. 2 peer-reviewed papers have so far been published (1 in 2012, 1 in 2013). For these two, the times between receipt of the manuscript and publication were 275 and 187 days respectively. The articles have received 158 and 138 views respectively, and their abstracts have received 454 and 257 views respectively.

2 book reviews have also been published (1 in 2012, 1 in 2013), and a third is in the works. The two reviews have received 200 and 106 views respectively, and their abstracts have received 420 and 184 views respectively.

Many thanks to all our reviewers, authors and readers!

The case for Open Access

The Pirate Party UK asked me to write a piece for them on Open Access. You can find it here:

http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/blog/2013/mar/30/the-case-for-open-access/

I'm glad I've finally got my views on this down in writing somewhere! This sort of material was originally intended for another "What's wrong with academia?" post, which I probably now won't write. It glosses over some important issues, such as the whole furore (pointless, in my view) around CC-BY licenses, and whether to opt for green or gold Open Access. But as a quick introduction to an increasingly complex debate, I'm quite happy with it.