Heavy Thoughts

I was out shopping the other day and, as so often happens, an interesting new book jumped off the shelf and concealed itself among the groceries until I reached the checkout, by which time I was, of course, obligated to buy it. The new book is The Worst-Case Scenario Almanac: History, by Joshua Piven, David Borgenicht, Piers Marchant, and Melissa Wagner, and it contains all sorts of interesting (whether true or not) information about history presented in the fashion of the Worst-Case Scenario book series (you can see the rest if you click the link above and scroll down to the "also bought" section).

I was interested to note in the section on the Middle Ages a chart which compares the weight of a suit of armor to the weight of a 21st-century business suit. Here's how it breaks down:

Suit of Armor: Helmet, breastplate, gauntlet, and leggings - 45 pounds; sword and scabbard - 8 pounds. Total weight: 53 pounds.

Business Suit: Jacket, pants, shirt, tie, and belt - 5 pounds; shoes - 3.5 pounds; gadgets (PDA, cell phone, etc) - 1 pound. Total weight: 9.5 pounds.

All things considered, I'm glad I'm able to wear a business suit, not least because arguments over seats on the bus could get really ugly really fast if we all wore armor and carried swords.

Related question: does a police officer wear a law suit?

Moving on to the Renaissance, the book offers a comparison of the most and least fearsome names of European rulers. The "Most Fearsome" are:

Vlad the Impaler;
Charles the Hammer;
Peter the Cruel;
Ivan the Terrible;
John the Fearless; and,
Richard the Lionhearted.

While the "Least Fearsome" are:

Ivar the Boneless;
Radu the Handsome;
Philip the Good;
Ivan the Great;
Louis the Pious; and,
Theodoric the Great.

I wonder how they missed the ever-popular and unfortunately-named Ethelred the Unready.

This, of course, makes one wonder why we don't still use colorful names for our leaders. History might record such mighty and not-so-mighty leaders as:

King George the Decider;
Lady Sarah the Moose-Gutter (our answer to Vlad the Impaler);
Lord Cheney the Aimless; and,
Bilbo the Bewildered.

I'm tired of thinking. Time to go to work so I can stop.

Have a good day. Wear the right suit, and make sure your greaves match.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Damned if You Do, Damned If You Don't, etc.

Just when you thought the ongoing presidential campaign couldn't get any worse...

Controversy has broken out over the cover of this week's issue of Newsweek magazine, which featured a close-up of Governor Sarah Palin's face. Here is the cover in question:

The problem, evidently, is that the picture is a warts-and-all, non-Photoshopped photo. You can see that the governor has ... gasp! ... wrinkles and blemishes! If you look really closely, you can see that she has a few stray hairs on her upper lip. The horror! Why, some Republican media strategists are asking, would Newsweek run such an awful picture? Why not run her official photo as governor of Alaska? Here's that one, with all the offending blemishes and such artfully brushed away:


At the risk of sounding "sexist" (whatever that means), let me say I think that Governor Palin is a very attractive lady. I'm a guy. I think unfortunate things like that when I see attractive ladies. Now, the fact that the governor is an attractive lady obviously doesn't make her as qualified to be vice president as much as, say, living within sight of Russia makes her an expert on foreign policy, but who cares? The reality train left this campaign station a long time ago.

You may remember a few years back, one of the news magazines (I think it was Newsweek) ran into a huge buzzsaw of outrage when it ran a full-face photo of a scowling O.J. Simpson during his murder trial. At that time, the issue was that the photo had, in fact, been Photoshopped to darken Mr Simpson's complexion and make him look more menacing.

As long as I'm taking observational risks, let me crawl further out on the opinion limb by comparing the Simpson apple to the Palin orange. When is it kosher to Photoshop a picture? Clearly, the adjustment of Mr Simpson's picture to make him look worse showed an astounding lack of editorial judgment, if not common sense and human sensitivity. But why is it then wrong to complain about not Photoshopping Governor Palin's picture? She certainly doesn't need digital enhancement to look attractive...we're not talking about the Wicked Witch of the West, after all (at least in the looks department...political philosophies are a discussion for another day).

'Nuff said.

Speaking of attractive ladies, I noted this morning that the indefatigable Hugh Hefner is down to two live-in girlfriends, having broken up with main squeeze Holly Madison.


Read all about it here. It seems that Ms Madison was unwilling to continue on with the 82-year-old Mr Hefner because he didn't want to get married and have children.

Duh...

Somehow, the thought that the over-80 Mr Hefner, surrounded every day by beautiful golddiggers, would want to settle down to a life of changing diapers and playing with toddlers strikes me as being a little ... well ... naive. After all, as Mr Hefner was quoted in the article as saying, "There's been moments that I've been down in the dumps about all this, and (my personal assistant) told me to cheer up and pointed out that there are girls lined up outside the front gate. At my age, that's hard to believe, but it seems to be true."

Go for it, Hef. I'll stick with my grandchildren. Somehow, I think I'm happier.

Have a good day. Send me your favorite picture - Photoshopped or not - of yourself. Mike, the one from the Post Office will do fine.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Recognition

Everyone likes to be recognized for their work. Napoleon once said that "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon," and it's true that military people often crave the recognition inherent in a colorful medal, ribbon, or sash. In the world of business, we present workers with certificates, small gifts, or similar things (often in lieu of cash). Those sorts of things aren't always received in the right spirit, though. Years ago when I was working in Berlin, our commander presented a certificate of recognition to one of our more outspoken local national employees who, preferring a raise or bonus to a piece of paper, took the certificate, looked at it, ostentatiously folded it roughly in quarters, and shoved it into his back pocket before returning to his seat.

There are all sorts of professional recognition. Actors crave receipt of an Oscar (although the Academy Awards are somewhat diminished by the proliferation of awards for obscure things: "Best Use of Left-Handed Cross-Dressing Midgets in a Scene Filmed in Less Than Four Takes," for instance). Musicians want Grammies. Theater actors want a Tony. People who design and produce annoying TV commercials would love to win a Clio. And so it goes.

A week or two ago came the announcement of the 2008 Ig Nobel awards, presented annually by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to scientific research that "first make people laugh, then make them think." My favorite of this year's Ig Nobel prizes went to an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico who knew of existing studies that found women are more attractive to men when at peak fertility. The professor and his assistants decided to expand on this knowledge by studying the earnings of ... um ... exotic dancers. They ... er ... studied 18 "subjects," learning that, on average, they earned $250 for a five-hour shift. However, the same ladies earned $350 to $400 per five-hour shift when they were at their most fertile. The practical result of this research appeared to be that, based on "anecdotal evidence," some lap dancers scheduled their shifts at times of maximum fertility to enhance their earnings.

Now that's my kind of scientific research.

You can read the whole story of this year's Ig Nobel awards here.

I think I'm going to propose some research worthy of an Ig Nobel award for next year. My topic will be "Harnessing the Energy of Political Campaigns: Proposals for the Capture and Efficient Use of Hot Air and Bull...t."

There's no shortage of research material, after all.

Have a good day. Do something worthy of an award. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Change of Seasons

As Agnes and I get older and think about what we want to do and where we want to live when we finally really retire, we've been debating the pros and cons of various places. We considered living in Germany, but after listening to Agnes's parents complain about how bad things are there, I'm not so sure...Mom must have said Deutschland ist neemee schoen ("Germany's not nice any more") about a gazillion times while they were here. We've considered Florida (too hot), Alaska (too cold), the Carolinas (too religiously fundamentalist), and Texas (too hot, too full of Texans, and too small to hold both Bilbo and George W. Bush). We have grandchildren in Virginia and Ohio, and much of my family still lives in Pennsylvania.

But wherever we finally settle has to have four seasons.

I need the change of seasons. I need to be able to watch nature come back to life in the Spring, and watch beautiful women in skimpy clothes in Summer. I love the crisp, chilly mornings of Autumn, and the ability to turn off the AC and sleep with the windows open. And it's nice in Winter to (occasionally) look out the window and see smooth, unbroken expanses of glistening white snow.

Of course, each season also has its drawbacks.

Getting caught in a chilly Spring shower is no fun; a 90-degree-and-100%-humidity Summer day just sucks the energy out of you; colorful Autumn leaves are pretty to look at, but will eventually turn into heaps of ugly brown mess needing to be raked, bagged, and disposed of; and those smooth, unbroken expanses of white that look so beautiful right after the Winter storm all need to be shoveled away.

Sigh.

Right now it's definitely Fall. The leaves are turning color and starting to fall. Mornings and evenings are chilly, days are warm, and football is starting to edge out baseball on TV. Every local high school sports team is selling something to buy uniforms and equipment or finance a trip somewhere. Newspaper inserts are advertising Halloween costumes and giant bags of candy to feed eager trick-or-treaters.

And the local Costco wholesale store has had major displays of Christmas decorations for almost a month.

Double sigh.

Where to settle down eventually? Don't know yet. But I need my four seasons.


No, not those.

For now, I'll just think about the best side of Autumn with this quote I culled from a New York Times editorial many years ago...

"The glory of autumn leaves drifts across lawn and meadow, rustling at the roadside. For a time, gold and rubies will gleam and glint in the sunlight and whisper in the breeze. Then frost and rain will dull the colors and still the restlessness. The leaves will blanket the earth and slowly become again a part of the soil from which they grew."

Very poetic. And it beats thinking about raking and the roar and snarl of leaf-blowers, the curse of Autumn.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Punctuation - Not Just for Puncs!

Last Wednesday I published a post titled Of Big Numbers, Punctuation, and Other Random Stuff in which I mentioned that I'd missed National Punctuation Day on September 24th. In a comment she posted, Amanda suggested I write something about punctuation anyhow, so if this post bores you, you can complain to her.

The act and art of writing probably developed from the drawing of pictures on cave walls, and was created as a way to record speech for posterity. Punctuation developed over time in order to pictorially convey the unspoken pauses and divisions that provide shades of meaning in oral communication. In English, we have settled on thirteen basic punctuation marks:

The Apostrophe '

Brackets [ ]

The Colon :

The Semicolon ;

The Comma ,

The Dash —

The Ellipsis ...

The Exclamation Point !

The Hyphen -

The Parentheses ( )

The Period (or Full Stop) .

The Question Mark ?

and

Quotation Marks (or Inverted Commas) " "

Different languages use different marks or forms of the marks. For instance, in written Spanish, an inverted exclamation point or question mark appears at the beginning of a sentence which ends with those marks, and in written German, quotation marks sometimes appear below the beginning and above the end of the sentence, rather than both appearing above.

Punctuation marks should not be confused with diacritical marks, which indicate shadings of pronunciation of written letters in many languages. The diacritical marks generally appear above the modified letter, and include:

The Tilde ~

The Circumflex Accent (or Carat) ^

The Acute Accent ´

The Grave Accent `

The Ring º

The Cedilla ,

and

The Umlaut ..

These lists are not all-inclusive. There are many versions of the lists, and not all agree with each other. And some writers tend to be ... well ... unusual in their use of punctuation. The poet e. e. cummings comes to mind. But this very broad overview will give you a start to what I think is a fascinating topic. Of course, I have a degree in linguistics, so I'm a little biased. Who'd a thunk it?

And you may also find today's post in Strange Maps to be interesting in the context of a discussion of punctuation - it tells the story of a classic April Fool's prank played by The Guardian newspaper in England in which the paper extensively reported on the island nation of "San Serriffe." It's hysterical, and you can read about it here.

And now it's time to pack my lunch and head for work, so let's put a period on today's post.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Them's Fightin' Words...

Yesterday's Washington Post published a very interesting letter to the editor from a local resident named Don Denny. You can see it at the link, but since it's short, I'll quote it in full here:

"'Economic Jabs, Then Punches on World Affairs' (front page, Sept. 27).

'There were no knockout blows in the first presidential debate ...' (David Broder, op-ed, Sept. 28).

'I think (Barack Obama) won the debate, on points rather than by knockout...' (Jim Hoagland, op-ed, Sept. 28).

Why must a presidential debate, a conflict of ideas on matters of the gravest importance, be likened to a boxing match, a particularly brutal and degrading type of entertainment?"

Why, indeed?

The use of metaphors of war and battle is common in American discourse. Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen wrote about this phenomenon in her superb book The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue, which I have written about in this space before, and which I strongly recommend you read...especially now that we are in the middle of a typical no-holds-barred-and-no-metaphor-too-outrageous presidential campaign.

As Professor Tannen points out, we may use language, but language also uses us. The way we describe things shapes our thinking about them. If we see everything in terms of battle imagery, we are more likely to harden our opinions about the opposition, to dig in and fire back when faced with an opposing argument. Our arguments may be shot down, politicians battle for office, and a political debate may be described as a liberal-conservative shoot-out. In the recent Congressional drama over the "economic rescue plan," the President and senior members of Congress twisted arms to get quick action while employers slashed jobs. A front-page article in yesterday's Washington Post reported that the Republican party is "...readying a newly aggressive assault on Senator Barack Obama's character."

As a lover of language, I know that words matter. My mother may have said that sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you, but she wasn't quite right. Her point, of course, was that one shouldn't take stupid insults to heart...but we all do. We remember the slights. We notice the hurtful and divisive language and unconsciously file it away for use when we need ammunition with which to shoot back.

Metaphors of war and conflict may be appropriate to some sporting events (the Washington Redskins may crush, slam, or bury the Dallas Cowboys, but those words are probably not appropriate to reporting the outcome of, say, a croquet match or a billiard game). But when we use violent metaphors indiscriminately to describe matters both trivial and grave, they lose their power to rally us and stir us to action when such action is needed. They also harden our views unnecessarily, preventing the give-and-take discussion that leads to the resolution of problems and conflicts.

It's not just military metaphors that can hinder effective action. Did Congress pass a Wall Street giveaway or an economic rescue plan? Did they save fat cats from the results of their greed, or did they help out the little guy on Main Street? How we view the causes of the economic tsunami that is sweeping over us, and the efficacy of the plans proposed to resolve it, shapes the language we use to describe how we try to cope.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone else, as you know if you've read some of my admittedly-intemperate raging broadsides over the last week. I'm not immune to the problem I see. But I have to go back and think about the words we use and the mindsets they foster.

Maybe it's time to take the linguistic equivalent of a deep breath and try to discuss problems and issues in less inflammatory words. It's not as satisfying, but we'll probably get more accomplished, faster, and feel better about it when we're done.

We can use language to generate heat, or to generate light. Right now, we need the light more than the heat, but the heat's easier to generate, so we've learned to live with the darkness.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - how about a pair of applicable quotes?

"Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be." - The Bible, King James Version, James 3:5-10.

and...

"One often contradicts an opinion when what is really uncongenial is the tone in which it was conveyed." - Friedrich Nietzsche

B.

Cartoon Saturday

Congress has passed and the President has signed the $700 billion economic bailout plan, O.J. Simpson was found guilty of armed robbery and kidnapping, Fannie Mae is forgiving the mortgage of a 90 year-old woman who shot herself when sheriff's deputies tried to evict her from her foreclosed home, and Hollywood legend Paul Newman has passed away.

You really need Cartoon Saturday.

Yes, the economic bailout package is now the law of the land. You can see a few examples of the more egregious pork items included in it to sweeten the deal for reluctant lawmakers here (my favorite is the tax exemption for a specific kind of arrow used by child archers, estimated to cost $2 million over 10 years, and worth $200,000 to an archery company in Oregon). I got my quarterly IRA statement yesterday, so this cartoon speaks to me...

Perhaps the worst thing about the current economic mess is that no one quite agrees on how to fix it, beyond shooting every third investment banker and mortgage broker and burning most of the rest at the stake. That got me thinking about directions, which led me to these three guidance-related cartoons...


And if you're one of those unfortunate people trying to unload an overpriced house in the current economic climate, your realtor's advice may be getting increasingly specific...


I hope you have a good weekend, in spite of the best efforts of Wall Street to screw it up for you. It still doesn't cost anything to take a long walk with someone you love, look at a beautiful sunrise or sunset, or watch a child at play.

Yes, some of the best things in life are still free. Enjoy them now, before they're taxed to pay for the next round of the bailout.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Debate...So Much More Than What We Use to Catch De Fish

Yesterday evening, fortified by a good beer, I listened to the vice presidential debate between Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden.

I don't think I learned very much, but the beer was excellent. 'Nuff said.

There was a wonderful article by Kitty Burns Florey in MSN Slate Magazine yesterday: Diagramming Sarah. It took a grammatical look at some of Governor Palin's famously tortured sentences by attempting to diagram them as we learned how to do back in grade school. Well, as you learned how to do if you went to grade school when they actually taught us how to write. Here's an example from the article, using a sentence from her interview with Charlie Gibson. First, the sentence:

"I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people."

Now, the diagram:
You can click on the image to make it larger...not that it will make it any clearer.

In fairness, Governor Palin did a competent, if not statesmanlike job in last night's debate, while Senator Biden contained his famous tendency to ramble and shoot himself in his rhetorical foot. Lincoln and Douglas they weren't, but both came out unscathed.

Now we move on to the second McCain-Obama debate. I'm ready. I still have beer left.

But it's Friday, and tonight I can go dancing. I'm ready for some fun. And it's only 36 days until our vacation.

I am sooooo ready.

Have a good day. Cartoon Saturday coming tomorrow.

Bilbo

Thursday Thirteen: A Few Good Quotes

The vice-presidential wannabees will debate tonight. I bought a six pack of Magic Hat's Circus Boy beer last night to help me watch. Thanks to my wonderful daughter for introducing me to this fine antidote to political nonsense.


Amanda usually does a "Thursday Thirteen" theme, and I decided to pick up on it to help keep me from mumbling incoherently about the economy and the election. Herewith thirteen random quotations from my vast collection. Any implied political commentary is purely intentional...

1. "Furious activity is no substitute for understanding."
- H. H. Williams

2. "I tried writing for the public, but the public ignored me. So then I tried writing for the critics, but the critics ignored me. Now I write for myself. And now my self ignores me."
- John Alejandro King, a.k.a. The Covert Comic

3. "Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people."
- Kin Hubbard

4. "Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
- Henry David Thoreau

5. "It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting."
- Tom Stoppard

6. "After all is said and done, a lot more will be said than done."
- Unknown

7. "Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man."
- Robert G. Ingersoll

8. "Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it."
- Maurice Chevalier

9. "Many years ago in a period commonly known as next Friday Afternoon there lived a king who was very gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so sad thinking about how unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely mournful he would be on Wednesday."
- Walt Kelly

10. "The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right."
- G.K. Chesterton

11. "As scarce as truth is, the supply is always greater than the demand."
- Josh Billings

12. "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
- George Orwell

13. "Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't stand for election, they run for office."
- Jessica Mitford

Go out and say something worth quoting. Chances are, nobody will do it during tonight's debate.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo.

Of Big Numbers, Punctuation, and Other Random Stuff

Well, I think I've said everything I need to say about the economic crisis. I'm tired of raging and ready to talk about some new things for a change. And speaking of change, if you've got any to spare...oh, never mind.

All the talk about hundreds of billions of dollars for bailouts and such makes my head hurt. But math does that in general. Big brains like Mike and John trade physics quizzes, and Rima has gone back to school to study math and other stuff. Me, I'll stick with things like German and Russian grammar that are easier to understand.

All of which leads me to this site, circulated around the office yesterday by one of my coworkers: The World's 23 Toughest Math Questions. The list leads off with something called The Riemann Hypothesis, which is so complicated that I couldn't even understand the explanation in Wikipedia, and continues on with gems like "Perelman's Proof of Thurston's Geometrization Theorem" and "The Smooth Poincare Conjecture in Dimension 4."

Heck, my mathematical skills max out with the addition and subtraction of two-digit numbers. I can usually count to ten...twenty with my shoes and socks off...and twenty-one with my fly down. Forget anything dealing with math that has words like "conjecture," "theorem," "hypothesis," or "stocastic" in the name. AARRGGHH!!

By the way, one of my coworkers says he deserves the $1 million dollar prize for solving this question: "What are the Physical Consequences of Perelman's Proof of Thurston's Geometrization Theorem?: Can profound theoretical advances in understanding three dimensions be applied to construct and manipulate structures across scales to fabricate novel materials?" His answer is "No." Now he wants the money.

On another topic, I've been so busy railing about the state of the economy that I missed National Punctuation Day on September 24th - a day dedicated to the proper use of the 13 major punctuation marks of English. If you read the wonderful little book by Lynne Truss titled "Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," you can appreciate National Punctuation Day. I was also reminded of Daniel Keyes' classic short story Flowers for Algernon, which includes a wonderful and poignant scene in which Charley, the mentally-retarded character who is the subject of an intelligence-enhancement experiment, first learns about the mysteries of punctuation. You may have seen the film version of the story, called Charley, starring Cliff Robertson. You may also know of the punctuation-oriented song by Culture Club - Comma Chameleon, ha, ha.

Enough for now...time to get ready for work and another day of anxious waiting for the start of our vacation - now 38 days away. Yippee!!

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo