The Language Guy

Why I Pay No Attention to Politics

2010-09-23T11:57:00.001-04:00

This morning I encountered a headline in the Columbus, Dispatch blasting out, "GOP blasts mailings; Democrats blast spending." Who can take seriously people who communicate via blasting?

Of course, the politicians in question didn't blast their opponents. This is merely the editor's effort to drum up interest in his/her reporter's story. Still, the story did refer to "dueling media events." Did the politicians brandish swords or is this simply more media drivel? More media drivel. But the fact is that political discourse has dwelled in the muck for many years now, going back at least to the time of Nixon.

In the story in question, we get more blasting combined with the funniest thing I have seen in politics in years, a Republican complaining about "irresponsible, disrespectful untruths" from Democrats.

House Republican leaders blasted recent Democratic mailings, which Rep. Matt Huffman of Lima, the House GOP campaign chairman, called a “pattern of irresponsible, disrespectful untruths.”

Forgive me for telling the truth here but Republicans began the dirty tricks in politics with their vicious attacks on Dukakis (if not sooner)until finally the Democrats started fighting back. Not surprisingly, it was Clinton who did so, thanks to the advice of James Carville who argued that no charge should go unanswered for even a day.

In my opinion, Obama has made a mess of his Presidency. I beleive he may really have believed his election presaged a new day in politics where reason would replace rancor. Silly duck. And now his Presidency is circling the drain. Only a huge Republican screw up can save the Democrats in November and in two years. The Republicans are fully capable of that. They are, after all, the party of tea parties and Sarah Palin.

As long as there are Republicans there will always be irresponsible, disrespectful untruths.

Will Twitter and SMS Messages Kill Serious Communication

2010-05-12T09:08:00.000-04:00

I was asked the question posed in the title of this blog and was somewhat puzzled as to why one might think that communications restricted to 140 characters would somehow cause us to cease to be able to write serious communications. I then encountered the link associated with the title of this blog wherein it is said

Those that say that text-writing is not ruining communication are not living in the real world. I have heard from many freshman writing professors at colleges who complain about their student's writing. Why hasn't this been addressed before they reached that point? Why isn't anyone telling kids that it is not acceptable to write the same way for an academic paper as it is to write to your friend.

Of course, it is inappropriate to employ the same writing style in a term paper or exam as one uses in a sms or twitter message. But the problem is not that writing sms and twitter messages is harmful per se. The problem is that teachers are insufficiently stressing the importance of using formal language in writing test answers, essays, job applications, and anything else meant for adults, including especially people one needs to impress.

I think many adults who are being dragged into the world of electronic, non-voice communication find these highly abbreiated messages somehow offensive in and of themselves. The writer of hte previsiously quoted passage goes on to say

Personally, when my teenage daughter leaves me notes on the table expressing that she will "C U L8R," I cringe. I actually circle the inappropriate language and leave her a note telling her that I expect a better note than that.

This is some ugly stuff, no doubt but it is easy to figure the meaning out. But if the mother thought that this was too abbreviated, I wonder what she would make of a famous telegraphic exchange between Oscar Wilde and his publisher. The former sent the message "?" and the publisher replied "!". Each knew what the other was saying -- "How is the book coming along?" and "It is coming along well."

I agree that the very ugly abbreviations one finds in twitter messages and text messages can be quite off-putting to novices (such as myself). But they are, after all, abbreviations for words, not substitutes for them. They are no different from the messages doctors write on prescriptions such as "b.i.d." or "a.u." or "cc." I think we ought to be a great deal less happy with this sort of communication than the abbreviated texts of sms and twitter messages. The unfortunate thing about this is that if we could understand exactly what doctors are writing on our scripts, then we could catch any errors the pharmacies or, for that matter, the doctors make.

There is a positive side to the writing of sms and twitter messages. Anyone attempting to obey the 140 character limit (rather than simply sending one sms message right after another) will inevitably learn to craft succinct messages. This is a good thing. All writing is improved by developing succinctness in expressing oneself. And writing is improved simply by writing itself and what we are seeing from our children is vastly more writing being done now than in several generations.

Wearing a Burka in Public

2010-05-07T09:37:00.001-04:00

I just saw a news story coming from the BBC describing a case in which a woman wearing a burka in Novara in north-western Italy was arrested. The wearing of a full face covering in public places that prevents identification was made illegal in Italy as part of an anti-terrorism effort. The lower house in Belgium has just passed, with no dissent, a law against the wearing of burkas in certain public places. The French moved in this direction in 2009 but no law was passed as far as I know.

Now, there is nothing specifically linguistic about this of course except that a law banning a "full-face covering" would be one thing and a law banning a "burka" using these phrases specifically, would be interpreted very differently. A law mentioning the latter would constitute religious discrimination. A law banning the former would not even though it could have the same effect.

There are huge cans of worms lying about here. What about a child wearing a ghost costume that covers the face, as well as the rest of the body? Or, more seriously, the wearing of balaclavas in very cold weather, something that I have done. Compare the image of someone wearing a balaclava (upper photo) with one of someone wearing a burka (lower photo).

It seems pretty clear to me that the person wearing the balaclava is a woman but I could be wrong. That's less clear in the case of the burka. However, either garment would be very effective in concealing one's identity in a store robbery. Persons wearing burka's have committed crimes, as in a case in Bradford, England where two persons pistol-whipped a post office manager in a daylight robbery. Of course, the balaclava is the standard covering for those wishing to commit crimes without giving away who they are. There is a nice cartoon at cartoonstock.com in which an alien is depicted wearing a balaclava.

What we have here are items of clothing with significant symbolic meaning. In my mind, balaclavas signify something a bit disreputable -- when I wear mine when going out to a football game in November, I do not put it on until I am on campus where there is a good chance I will not be perceived as someone about to commit a stick up. Burkas obviously signify that the wearer is a Muslim. The problem with them is that to many non-Muslims, it signifies a woman under the control of a man. In the Italian case, the husband demanded that his wife not take the burka off. This kind of marital relationship is offensive to many non-Muslims such as me. Of course, to outlaw the burka would be a brute force way of expressing one's disfavor and wouldn't change the relationship between husband and wife. Burka's also, thanks to the association of head coverings like this to Muslim terrorists, signfy the possibility of danger. Two males wearing burkas covering vests packed with explosives in Afghanistan were shot dead before they could detonate the devicies.

Making it illegal to wear a burka/balaclava in the commission of a crime would not deal with the public safety issues raised by the wearing of such items of clothing. In the case of a robber who is later caught you could stick a few more years on the ends of his sentence. But, there is no similar punishment available to the successful suicide bomber. The the only recourse the society has is to make the wearing of either item illegal in public. In Quebec, when bill restricting the wearing of burkas was announced, it was said

This bill has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with integration and equality.

This is, of course, bullshit. Such an argument would make sense if it applied to all wearing of all ethnically identifiable clothing. As I noted, banning burkas doesn't change marital relationships so its not clear what sort of equality is achieved by banning them.

To my mind, there is one and only one sound reason for banning wearing of burkas and, for that matter, balaclavas, in public and that is to promote public safety. It is not often that a Muslim woman wearing a burka is going to be blowing up anything anywhere, but as in the Afghanistan case, burkas can be worn by men who wish to exploit the fact that women rarely commit crimes of violence. Adding the balaclava to the burka in one's law makes sense for they too have been used to conceal the identities of persons committing crimes and it rids the law of any association with anti-Muslim bias. I will find another way to protect myself from the cold in the future if such a law is passed. And, I can still wear mine at home when snow-plowing. However, it is not clear to me that the public safety issue is worth the trouble a law like this would create.

Toyota Apology

2010-02-12T09:28:00.000-05:00

I have been trying to find the full text of Toyota's apology for the safety problem that has finally resulted in a massive recall of their vehicles for repair of their accelerators. Sadly, I fear the full text consists of this:

“I offer my apologies for the worries,“ [Akio Toyoda] said. “Many customers are wondering whether their cars are OK.“

This is shockingly inadequate, as so may apologies these days are. This lays the problem entirely on the consumer -- consumer worries and wondering whether their cars are OK, not on Toyota's manufacturing defective cars and its failure to respond immediately to the problem once it was brought to their attention.

This is like the ubiquitous, "If I have offended you by [my saying that you are a fat cow], I am sorry." This sort of aplogy does not apologize for calling the person a fat cow but for offending him or her, which is entirely different and is consistent with the idea that the listener's being offended is his or her problem, not the speaker's problem. Mr. Toyoda could have said, "I am sorry that we made defective cars and put your lives in jeopardy," but he didn't. What is worse, we have here a classic example of "too little; too late." State Farm reported the problem to the NHTSA in 2007. Even more disturbing is the fact that NHTSA was getting complaints about acceleration problems in Toyotas in 2003. I have to believe Toyota was the first to know about it but chose to put its head in the sand. The recall is going to cost $900 million by one estimate. And they are losing something like $1.55 million per week in sales. No wonder putting their heads in the sand seemed attractive.

I own a 12-13 year old Toyota pick up that has served me well. And my wife has a Rav4. She is a little concerned that she will have accelerator problems. Her fears are due entirely to the fact that Toyota has been totally unforthcoming about exactly what cars, made when are vulnerable to the problem.

What Was Alan Alda Thinking?

2010-01-24T11:45:00.001-05:00

My wife and I just finished watching Alan Alda's PBS thing on the "human spark." He's a smart guy and funny but what was he thinking when he endorsed the notion that there is a "human spark?" And what were these Harvard and Oxford and other scientists thinking?

I have had some experience with media sorts and they are very fond of "hooks" that one can use to snag an audience and keep it. The hook this time is the notion of a "human spark" -- something we have but that chimps and no other species (on this planet) have. This is a terrible metaphor. We know that it takes a spark to ignite gasoline fumes in an automobile cylinder and that this is the most proximate cause of the piston's moving downward thereby assisting the engine in its effort to ... I don't want to get into automobile stuff. I would be way out of my depth. However, I am inclined to think that the evolution of those human qualities that distinguish us from chimps and other life forms might be just a bit more complicated than this metaphor makes it out to be.

The terrible thing about this metaphor is that it works better for "sophisticated" intelligent design people than for Darwinists. If intelligent design people are willing to concede that we and the chimps have a common origin, they need only then say, "Aha, Alda is with us. We are the life forms god sparked into humanhood by causing us to be capable of forming complex intentions, recognizing complex intentions in others, and imagining future actions." Unsophisticated intelligent design people need only say that God dropped us on the planet pre-sparked.

The show actually admitted that chimps are capable of forming intentions and recognizing intentions in others (but not as well as we do). About the future, they don't seem to think too much but to suppose they can't think about the immediate future is absurd. Indeed the show proved otherwise as when it was argued that alpha males may choose to share with females based on attempting to curry favor with them. Back in the day when I followed research on chimp linguistic development, I formed the view that the researchers who did this work were not always the sharpest academic tacks. In my view, they tended to be so empathetic with their research subjects that they were willing to think things that just might not be true.

In the show, the human spark seemed to be whatever "sparked" the conjoint abilities to "read other's minds and travel in time," as Alda put it. Let me show you a picture they showed of the areas of the brain that light up when these two abilities are activated. Notice that these two parts of the brain are not adjacent. Two questions arise in my mind: how did a single spark ignite abilities requiring two different parts of the brain to be be realized and how is it that so much of one part of the brain manage to be recruited for this realization.

Perhaps I am being a bit too simplistic here but I am not at all sure that these two abilities are so different. If a crucial feature of humans, one shared by chimps, is our socialization then thinking about the future -- making plans for the future -- must crucially have involved making plans in connection with others. And making plans in connection with others would seem to require an ability to form views as to others' intentions. A Harvard professor did note that both abilities involve escaping one's present point of view. I can imagine that being able to escape one's present point of view could have been a precursor to the gradual evolving of these abilities over a very long time.

Is Avatar Racist?

2010-01-20T11:01:00.003-05:00

Spoiler Alert -- Do not read if you haven't seen but plan to see Avatar.

I was directed by a tweet to an story in the Japan Times on line saying that a small but vocal minority of people believe that Avatar is racist. First, the phrase "small but vocal" wants to be looked at. What it may mean is that there are two or three people who are extremely talkative who believe this. This article begins

Near the end of the hit film "Avatar," the villain snarls at the hero, Both men are white — although the hero is inhabiting a blue-skinned, 2.75-meter-tall, long-tailed alien. "How does it feel to betray your own race?"

This is funny. The avatar is no longer an avatar whose brain is being controlled by a white man lying in a device that facilitates this control, but is instead a Na’vi man if someone in a manufactured Na’vi body whose human brain has been transferred into this body can be said to be a Na’vi person. The insulter should have said, "How does it feel to betray your former race?"

One idiot promoting this thesis says

"The ethnic Na'vi," he writes, "need the White man to save them because, as a less developed race, they lack the intelligence and fortitude to overcome their adversaries by themselves."

This is so inaccurate I have to believe the author did not see the movie or is incapable of seeing what is in front of his face. The Na'vi defeated the white devils thanks to Jake's knowledge of the white devil's military hardware and tactics and the intelligence and fortitude of the Na'vi and the assistance of other inhabitants of Pandora. Far from lacking fortitude, the Na'vi threw themselves into battle without regard for their personal safety. Jake's growing understanding of the Pandoran ecosystem played a critical role as well in that he (quite literally) plugged into the ecosystem seeking it to intercede on behalf of the planet. Had he not become an authentic Na'vi in spirit, that intercession would not have worked.

James Cameron set himself up for this criticism by using a white actor to play Jake and a person of color to play the Na'vi princess he fell in love with. Had he simply used an African American or English speaking African our critics would be in a hell of a position. It would no longer be a white man saving the blue-colored people but a person of color saving a person of a different color, but it would still be a human rescuing the people of Avatar. So, at the worst, Cameron's mistake was he cast a White man in the role of Jake. Casting a white man made economic sense, I suppose, but it isn't just white people who save others in movies. Will Smith saved the planet in one movie and I understand that Denzel Washington saves the planet in a new movie I haven't yet seen.

I am so tired of people playing the "race card" I want to vomit all over this blog. I got into the civil rights movement back in 1960 when it was a serious business because African Americans were denied most basic human rights in the South, including Texas and Oklahoma, as well as other places. The change over these 50 years has been stunning. And guess what? A lot of white people worked alongside African Americans to make the civil rights revolution happen. The lesson from that time is that when there is injustice everyone is obligated to do his or her part. That is the lesson of Pandora. The three white people who controlled the Avatars as spies all "got religion" and did what they could to help the Na'vi defeat the occupying army. It is a good thing when people of any color assist people of any color. The Haitian relief effort is a prime case. Is that relief effort racist because white people are helping persons of color?

The iTouch and the myTouch

2009-12-10T11:17:00.001-05:00

When I first saw a TV advertisement for the myTouch telephone, I thought instantly of the iTouch, which as I understand it, is an iPhone without the phone app (I have never held either in my hands and have only seen the former in anyone else's.) And having spent a few years working occasionally on the linguistic side of trademark law, I wondered if Apple did not have a case for trademark infringement. One of the tests is that the new mark evoke the notion that the product it identifies might have the same origin as the product identified by the earlier mark. If surveys were to demonstrate that a significant proportion of consumers share my perception, Apple would be a major step forward toward proving its case.
A case for infringement would have to consider the similarity of the marks. They are, of course, very similar. We have in the case of “iTouch,” a lower case “i” followed by the word “Touch,” and in the case of “myTouch,” we have a lower case “my” followed by the same word. The letter “i” when capitalized and only when capitalized refers to the person speaking or writing something. Here, though, it is not capitalized. In the case of “my” we have a word that refers to the speaker/writer of something or, in the case, of “myTouch,” the owner/user. One thing is clear, the “i” of “iMac” or“iPod” or “iTunes” or or “iPhone” is normally not intepreted as referring to the owner/user.
In fact, when the iMac was first introduced, Steve Jobs claimed (see the title link)

The iMac comes from the marriage of the excitement of the internet with the simplicity of Macintosh.

He went on to say that it was designed with the fact that the primary use people wanted a personal computer for was to get onto the internet. Jobs cited a set of "i"-words that he wanted to associate with the iMac, namely "internet, individual, instruct, inform, inspire." Therefore, the voice of he creator provides compelling evidence that there is no semantic connection between the “i” of “iTouch” and the “my” of “myTouch.” When he associates the iMac with these other "i"-words, he severs the relationship between "i" and the owner/user more completely even though one of these words is "individual." Note that this word is not equivalent in meaning to "personal." In fact, the iMac was and is used in environments in which many individuals use a particular machine.
The fact that the lower case prefix”i” is attached to a wide range of products distributed by Apple argues for it having only the meaning “a product distributed by Apple.” Originally, this “i” primarily referred to the internet though Jobs added some other associations. But the iPod breaks this connection. Apple crated iTunes in the hope that people would buy music using iTunes and then downloading it onto their iPods. That would involve internet connectivity. However, one could use an iPod without ever connecting it to a a program that connected to the internet by simply ripping one's own or a friend's music and converting it to a format the iPod could read and downloading it directly.
It is clear that there is a significant morphological similarity between “iTouch” and “myTouch” for they share a morpheme. However, the first has a prefix that refers to the internet primarily but also to other things or just signifies that the product is made by Apple, and the other has a prefix that refers to the owner/user. In addition to the morphological similarity between "iTouch" and "myTouch," thre is an enormous overlap in product function. In fact the only substantive difference is that the iTouch cannot be used to make calls. So, Apple would find it difficult to keep HTC and T-Moble from using the mark “myTouch.” Nevertheless, as I said, I suspect a survey of consumers aware of the iTouch, confronted with this new product, would connect “myTouch” to “iTouch” and thereby to Apple. At the very least, HTC would seem to be ripping off some of Apple's market good will. I am not a trademark lawyer but I think that is a 'no no.”

The More You Spend The More You Save

2009-12-05T22:00:00.000-05:00

This evening, I caught the tail end of a Zale's commercial exclaiming,, "The more you spend the more you save." Contrast that with, "A penny saved is a penny earned." Neither actually makes any sense except for the fact that if you do save a penny on day 1, then on day 2, it is as if you earned a penny on day 1 though of course you didn't. The Zale's ad is even stupider, which is troubling for it presumes (as is true for many people I fear) that people will be so seduced by the combination of the gratifying concept of spending -- don't we all love to spend? -- and the comforting concept of saving to rush to Zale's to buy diamonds. However, trust me, if you go by Ben Franklin's adage on day 1 you will have more money on day 2 than if you abide by Zale's.

At the Zale's web site linked to the title of this blog, you get a bit different version of this promotional scheme, namely "the more you buy the more you save." Notice that these two claims are linguistically different. We spend money to buy things. However, what the web site offers is savings in proportion to how much you spend, not how many things you buy.

According to Zale's, if you spend $250-$449, you save $25 dollars. Clearly the smart shopper would spend just $250 and get thereby a 10% reduction. If he or she were to spend $449. he or she would get a tiny bit more than 5%. If he or she spends $500 to $999, he or she wold get $50 back, which offers the same percentage reduction/savings.

Offers scale upward from the lowest level of spending upward to a maximum of $1,000 if you spend $5,000 or more. Notice that spending $5,000 gets you a savings of 25%. Wow, what a deal! The problem is that if you stayed out of Zale's and did not spend $250 there on day 1, you would still have $250 on day 2, but if you spend that $250, you would be down $225. So, spending money at Zale's doesn't save you money unless you are determined to spend $250 and don't go to a store that gives you a better break. In short, while a penny saved may not be a penny earned, a penny spent is definitely neither a penny earned nor a penny saved.

I am lucky. My wife has never demanded or even hinted she wanted diamonds or any other kind of pricey jewelry. I think I did once buy some pearl stud earrings in a fit of romantic fervor, but that would have been a long time ago. I suggest to men that they flee from any woman who really, really wants jewelry, other than, say, an engagement ring. My wife and I got married with no engagement ring and no wedding rings, but when we went to Scotland for a couple of months the next Summer, we had a craft jeweler make us matching wedding rings. I suppose that made us legal. It sure made my mother-in-law happier. It is possible to spend money on other, probably more sensible things.

Israeli Linguist A Bit Too Full Of Herself

2009-11-29T15:01:00.001-05:00

An Israeli linguist seems to think she has turned the linguistic world upside down with her new meaning for the word "most." A UPN article states

Professor Mira Ariel of Tel Aviv University says her research "is quite shocking for the linguistics world" and proves some of her fellow linguists are wrong in their definition of the word "most."

She claims that we linguists believe that

"most" generally means 51 percent to 99 percent of a group of people or objects.

but that in a survey she and her colleagues did, a number of persons

understood "most" to mean about 80 percent to 95 percent of a group and not the much larger range of 51 percent to 99 percent.

One very serious problem with her claims is that no self-respecting linguist would ever say that "most" means 51 percent to 99 percent of a group or means '80 percent to 95 percent of a group.' This is just now how we use the word "mean."

Professor Ariel seems not to understand the distinction between "meaning" and "use". It very well may be that people use "most" in a proposition like "Most Ps are Q" in circumstances in which 80-95% of the relevant Ps have the property Q. But that is not what it means. That is how we use it. I am not sure how to characterize what it means but I am sure that that is not what it means.

If I say, that most Ps are Q and it turns out that 97% of the Ps are Q is what I said false? Surely not. And if it turns out that 75% of the Ps are Q, is what I said false"? Again, surely not. This may not be how people generally use "most" but the meaning of "most," whatever it is, is consistent with these two claims being true and so long as that is true, then we can be sure that Professor Ariel is wrong about what "most" means.

The Right Wing Propaganda Machine

2009-11-27T09:50:00.001-05:00

After Obama was inaugurated, he made himself excessively visible. Anyone in show business knows that you always leave them wanting more. The problem is that Obama kept himself front and center, shoiwing up on TV virtually every day. Before we had time to want to see him again, there he was announcing this or that new appointment, putting forth this or that new policy, or giving an interview. As a result, Obama fatigue has set in and that has left him very vulnerable to the lies being told by the health industry about his and the Democratic Congressional health care bill, Fox News, and whoever else feels animus toward him, including especially those who harbor ill-feeling toward African Americans.

Naturally, the Antis will say they are pure of thought and that their objections to Obama are based on his actions as well as his apparent inaction. The Rasmussen Reports don't bear them out.

Seventy-four percent (74%) of African-Americans Strongly Approve along with just 19% of white voters (see other recent demographic highlights from the tracking poll).
Among all voters, just 34% now give the President good or excellent marks on his handling of the economy while 47% say he is doing a poor job in that arena. On national security issues, 42% say good or excellent while 41% say poor.
Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters believe that political correctness kept the military from preventing the Fort Hood shootings.

So, what we see is a striking division between Blacks and Whites as to how he is doing, which is a bit of a give away that racial attitudes are coloring perceptions. That sort of thing didn't keep him from being elected but given the continued high unemployment and many other issues, he is guarnteed not to have a second term. As James Carville famously said, "It's the economy, stupid."

The last of these three items is especially interesting. It is clear that the military knew that Major Hasan was a Muslim and that he was disgruntled. Naturally in a country Bush poisoned with his constant drumbeat of "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", etc, and given the disposition of people to posit conspiracies wherever they see something they don't understand, right-wingers and various and sundry other nutcases are sure this was part of a terrorist plot.

Conspiracy theories are the refuge of those who have agendas or are laboring in ignorance. I recall the theories graduate students had about admissions policies in my university department. Early on we used a Master's exam to help determine who would be admitted to the Doctoral progrm. A minority would not be admitted and the theory emerged that we had a quota, never mind that limiting the number of students we admitted actually hurt the department economically.

I first encountered the theory that Major Hasan's actions were the result of a terrorist plot on the Dennis Miller show and that political correctness, the bane of right wing, was in full flower in this case. I was rather surprised. Naturally, the military is reluctant to jump to the view that Hasan was acting out of an anti-American or anti-military political stance. That would be beyond stupid, bordering on being imbecilic.

Not so, the right wing in America tells us. At Right Pundits we find

Why are we able to so easily label Malik Nadal Hasan a terrorist? The fact speaks for itself. He is just as much a domestic terrorist as Timothy McVeigh was labeled so for his heinous act in Oklahoma City. And while McVeigh perpetuated his act from afar in silence, Malik Nadal Hasan shouted anti-American political views at his victims as he mowed them down with automatic weapons.

The first thing I learned about Major Hasan is that he really, really, really didn't want to go to Iraq. The military is not disposed to worry overmuch about where soldiers do and do not want to be posted, but they probably should in some cases. This would have been one.

The title of this article is "Malik Nadal Hasan: Muslim Terrorist Challenges Obama’s Timidity." I suppose this could be more misleading but I don't know how. I seriously doubt that Obama told the military how it should go about its investigation or how it should present the facts to the public. Nevertheless, Obama is vulnerable to any attack on anything American by any Muslim. Its a right wing freebie.

Obama neeeds to do the following by next year at this time.

1. Get the health care bill in place.
2. Somehow get unemployment to turn around. I can think of some ways -- how about using unemployment benefits as subsidies to businesses who hire the uneployed for a year, say.
3. Get the hell out of Iraq.
4. Render Al Queda and the Talliban totally impotent.

If he does 1 and 2, it is possible that he will get a second term. If he does 1-3, he will get one. If he gets all four he will be elected President for Life.

On Be Look Professional

2009-11-19T11:26:00.004-05:00

Many years ago (1967 or so), I bought a wonderful Yamaha 250 cc motorcycle, the manual for which had this instruction for shifting gears:

Tachometer tells the moment to do.

Unfortunately, the RPMs given for gear shiftng kept this very fast motorcycle operating a little slower than a motor scooter. One evening, I told a friend who had ridden behind the original owner that the instructions couldn't be right and he offered to ride behind me and tell me when to shift. He did not look at the tachometer. He used his ears. I suppose the manual could have said.

Ears tell the moment to do.

Once I got the pitch right, I was golden. I suspect that some junior executive at Yahama persuaded his bosses that his English was excellent and he could ably translate the manual. On balance he didn't do badly.

Today, I happend across a web site while hunting for information as to what might be down the line for Blackberry phones given the buzz surrounding the iPhone and the new Androd phones. I came across this paragraph.

The Blackberry mobile phones are looking professionals and stylish mobile phone with can peoples are attract to this phone. Blackberry is the smart phones which is the most popular in the world with its charming features. It offers accessibility to an extensive variety of applications many wireless instruments across the world. It provides accessibility to an extensive variety of applications on several wireless instruments across the globe. by data and other services.

This piece of prose shocked me even more than that Yamaha manual.

This articale comes from Weblineindia, a link to which is associated with the blog title. That's what's shocking. If I have prejudices in regard to India, they are (1) Indians are very smart and very well-educated; (2) Many if not most Indians know English either natively or fluently; and (3) India has a bunch of great cuisines.

I clicked on the link and the first paragraph that popped up was this one:

Now a day ecommerce is a very popular among the internet users, so what is Ecommerce? People are habituated to sell and purchase their products or any types of items on the internet, its called ecommerce, and to online sell products you need ecommerce web...

So, it only gets worse. It is possible that these articles were written in some regional Indian language and run through some bad translating program. More likely, we are dealing with people who have big brains (see prejudice 1 above) but smal English language centers (see apparently false prejudice 2).

These articles are represented as "free content for your website or blog," which further confirms the axiom that you get what you pay for. I know that what I am writing is rather snobish, possibly even mean-spirited, for I would seem to be making fun of people who are, after all, doing their best. To that, I say, "bullshit." If I planned to publish something in German or Spanish I sure as hell wouldn't translate it myself.

Surely, if you are actually trying to inform people, to say nothing of sell things to them, you will want to do better than this:

The Blackberry Solution is used to access mobile email and personal information. Also other of the self applications are also used. But the development Blackberr software for the solution of Blackberry. Also Blackberry application, for assistance if issues arise.

This reads as if they are offering some sort of spyware ("access personal information"). If that isn't true, then they are very engaging in linguistic self-abuse.

Iran Disinformation in re Israel

2009-10-27T08:01:00.004-04:00

I watched a BBC show "Endgame" last night about how the fall of apartheid came about and I was interested in learning more so I "prayed" through the good offices of Google to "God" (the Internet) and hit upon the idea of checking out the CIA World Factbook, an excellent source for basic information. This search collected the link associated with the title of this blog. According to the report, which makes a prima facie case for the demise of Israel within 20 years with the Jews in Israel emigrating to the US, Russia, and Europe.

This "report" noted (my words) that seismic shifts such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the deconstruction of the Soviet Union, and the fall of Apartheid can happen with surprising speed. This is true. The problem is that the report is a phony. The origin of this story comes from an Iranian web site. Read the changing headlines at the top of the page and you will see that it has an Iranian bias -- that is, a bias toward stories concerning Iran and its enemies.

I have long wondered why Iran hates Israel so much. There has never been direct Iranian-Israeli hostilities; Iran's borders don't touch Israel's; Iran is not an Arab country; Iran is Shia while most of the Arabs that Israel has engaged in military conflicts with are Sunni; Israel actually cooperated with Iran when it sold them arms in the notorious Iran-Contra affair; and etc. So, why?

The reason, according to an interesting blog, The JC.com, is that Israel is a Western country which presents the same threats to any fundamentalist Muslim society that the rest of the West does, in that it offers freedom of speech and action, something that is anathema to fundamentalist Muslims. The Mullahs know that freedom and speech and action will lead inexorably to the importation of Western values, starting with their kids wearing blue jeans, listening to and playing pop music, and, alors! dancing while touching. That will lead to the sort of sesmic shifts that the phony Iranian story noted.

I do not know whether Israel's proximity in any way has hastened the importation of Western values, any more than would have happened anyway. The Internet brings the world to everyone. However, Iran can't focus its hatred on all Western devils, including those of Europe, for that would would make their craziness all the more apparent. Focusing on Israel and the US, which have a close relationship of course, gives them traction with and influence over fundamentalist Muslims in the Arab world, especially those who are fairly frequently in active hostilities with Israel.

Usually, Iranian propaganda is overt. This time it was subtle. And way more persuasive. It gulled a bunch of dimwits to parrot its message such as those of Al Jazerra (who possibly didn't really care whether it was true or false), Global Research.ca, Ease News.net, and The San Franscisco Bay View. As in all things, it is best to do a little research before you buy into anything you read.

The End Is Nigh!

2009-05-22T09:45:00.010-04:00

It is now five minutes until midnight, midnight for the human race, as the link associated with the title of this blog indicates. Midnight, of course, represents total darkness, the end of life, or, at least, the end of human life. Cockroaches will, of course, survive whatever damage we do to the planet.

The clock in question is offered up by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and began "ticking" in 1947 and gave us just 7 minutes to live:

As the Bulletin evolves from a newsletter into a magazine, the Clock appears on the cover for the first time. It symbolizes the urgency of the nuclear dangers that the magazine's founders--and the broader scientific community--are trying to convey to the public and political leaders around the world.

This clock doesn't tick and actually doesn't even count down. After dropping to 2 minutes in 1952, it soared to 12 minutes in 1963. It then had plummeted to 3 minutes in 1984

U.S.-Soviet relations reach their iciest point in decades. Dialogue between the two superpowers virtually stops. "Every channel of communications has been constricted or shut down; every form of contact has been attenuated or cut off. And arms control negotiations have been reduced to a species of propaganda," a concerned Bulletin informs readers. The United States seems to flout the few arms control agreements in place by seeking an expansive, space-based anti-ballistic missile capability, raising worries that a new arms race will begin.

It then bounced up to an optimistic 17 minutes in 1991 but since then has been falling to 14, and then 9, and then 7, and now 5. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was the cause of the jump to 17 minutes. It began to fall again during the Clinton administration with the 9 minutes left "prediction" being due both to some tough talk about Russia reverting to the ways of its past and to the beginning of concerns about terrorists getting ahold of nuclear weapons. At the time of the next drop, Pakistan and India were testing nuclear weapons. Then comes a post 9/11 prediction that we had only 7 minutes to survive when the Bush Administration was talking about developing nuclear weapons capable of taking out hardened, deeply buried targets (e. g., the underground nuclear labs in Iran) as well as an announcing that the US would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The drop to 5 minutes in 2007 is due to concerns about N. Korea's and Iran's development of nuclear weapons and a concern with global warming.

Climate change also presents a dire challenge to humanity. Damage to ecosystems is already taking place; flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt are causing loss of life and property.

While one might want to grant atomic physicists a certain expertise in the area of nuclear threats in the world, I am not at all sure that they have any special expertise as to whether or not there is global warming, not that I doubt that that there is, to say nothing of what threats it imposes or how imminent they are.

The clock of the physicists has no predictive power. It doesn't even count down the way any respectable clock does. It is like the wall clock I hear ticking right now which is powered by two descending heavy weights and which runs out when the weights touch the floor and cannot descend further. We have to reset it constantly due to our inattention to its needs and, somewhat like the clock of our atomic scientists, we have to turn it backward to reset the time. A clock that goes back and forth is no clock at all. I keep threatening to shoot this clock but my wife would have me committed to a mental hospital. I am not yet ready for that.

Much more interesting is the notion that the world will end on December 22, 2012 when the Mayan calendar runs out. I cannot say whether any Mayans think the world will end then but religious crazies are happy to tell us that the Rapture is nigh upon us. Maybe. It seems that their Doomsday Clock is a bit like that of the atomic physicists.

Bible Prophecy is driven by human free will and the evil path that nations choose. Free will can accelerate us or slow us down to the inevitable: The Apocalypse, The Great Tribulation, the "Time of Testing".

So it too can back up as well as go forward.

The author of this colorful and entertaining page gave a time frame between "SEPT 2006 and DEC 22 2012 AD." We lucked out and survived past the 2006 date. Can we make it into 2013? I think not. "13" is an unlucky number after all.

What is an American Auto Company?

2009-05-06T09:51:00.005-04:00

I see in the morning New York Times that the US government has approved the sale of most of Chrysler to Fiat. and that the bankruptcy judge has denied a claim of creditors that liquidation of the company, among other things, might yield greater value. The last time I checked, Fiat is an Italian auto maker. So we are not exactly saving an American auto company. What then are we saving?

Jobs, of course. I do not oppose this but we do need to be clear about what is going on. Had anyone suggested that we should be alert to the needs of Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai, all building cars in the USA and all suffering cutbacks, I suspect that the American people would have raised holy hell. However, the moment Chrysler and Fiat executives sign on the dotted line, Chrysler will join Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai and cease to be an American auto company.

There is another way of looking at this and that is to see any auto company building cars in the USA as an American auto company. They do hire American workers and, we hope, pay taxes here. The only downside is that should the world go to hell in a hand basket and we need the auto companies to start making tanks and other military vehicles, will these foreign owned companies agree to do this? There are complicating factors, less with Fiat than the Asian companies, and one is that we might be fighting China and China may threaten Japan and Korea should they in any way assist us. This war is very unlikely. More to the point, we could just nationalize the companies. In such a circumstances, there could be no blow back from Korea or Japan.

There are going to be some major benefits from Fiat ownership of Chrysler. The first is that there will be Americans working in the auto plants. Second, any technology Fiat has that is superior to what Chrysler had will surely be employed in the Chrysler plants. This technology will become de facto American technology. Third, any skills the American workers acquire will reside in the brains of these American workers. Should a set of American investors want to recapture Chrysler, they would acquire workers who are more skilled than before who are using more advanced technology.

You say, "But the profits will flow to Italy." I reply, "Who cares since American capital and jobs have been flowing out of the country for years and Italian capital will, in fact, be used to rehabilitate Chrysler's plants." In the 60's a couple of leftist friends trying to convert me to their way of thinking argued that nasty American companies were creating factories or buying farms in Latin American countries and rather than plowing the profits back into enterprises that benefit the people of these countries, these American companies were bring it back here. Moreover, we paid the people there a pittance. This is an hellaciously bad argument. First, note that American capital had already flowed into these foreign countries by way of building the factories or clearing the land and planting banana trees or whatever and these efforts employed people there. Second the businesses themselves employed people. Did they pay as much as they should have? "No," let's say, but when have any companies anywhere been any more generous to their employees than they had to?

As for acts of benevolence by foreigners owning companies here, I draw attention to this NY Times report last December:

workers at the Toyota Tundra truck factory here are taking classes: how to handle tools safely, how to get along better with colleagues of varying backgrounds. Some have even cleaned local parks and fed the hungry while Toyota paychecks.

I suggest that when we refer to American auto companies, we cease to refer to just those owned by Americans and include Fiat and the Asian companies mentioned earlier. What matters most is not who owns the company but the fact that it is that Americans who are being employed and that we are receiving taxes (I presume) from all cconcerned.

Dr. Mercola

2009-04-23T07:52:00.003-04:00

I followed a link on Facebook to Dr. Mercola's web site provided by a relative who was impressed by the claims Dr. Mercola had made as to the true origins of certain "organic" products. The most shocking on the face of it was that Burt's Bees, whose various lip and hand salves were well-known to me, are produced by Clorox. That may seem like a bad thing, but how bad is it really? Clorox makes an excellent product though it is hard to see how one could get Clorox wrong. Add sodium hypochlorite to water and bottle. To its credit, however, during WWII when a shortage of chlorine gas arose, Clorox chose to reduce its production, rather than dilute its product. So, the fact that Burt's Bees is owned by Clorox may not be a bad thing at all.

Dr. Mercola's employs his assassination by association technique by noting that organic Horizon milk is made by the food giant Dean. He does not say what bad practices Dean is employing other than that large scale milk producers commonly feed grain to their cows rather than letting them graze. Dr. Mercola is a big time grass guy. He wants his beef to be grass fed and his milk cows to be grass fed. He makes some claims about the superiority of grass to grain as a feed but sites no solid research.

I invite you to read how Aurora organic milk cows are treated and fed. One thing seems clear and this is that the issues are very complex. The choice is not between grains and grass. In the winter in Wisconsin, there is no grass for cows to graze on so the choices are between hay (i. e., dead vegetable matter) of various sorts and grain.

Dr. Mercola trades on our suspicion of big business. He is right to question whether these large businesses can or even want to maintain high standards in milk production. But, he provides no solid research behind the answers he gives. One of Dr. Mercola's claims is that children should be drinking raw milk. He writes

There is no substitute for clean, raw milk as a food, so far as children are concerned. Science has not yet succeeded in providing, in the pasteurized variety, those essential qualities that are the only real foundation for a healthy child.

He doesn't say how we ensure the raw milk is clean and that's the rub. I have seen dairy cows being milked by hand and by machines and the opportunities for the invasion of bacteria and other contaminants is nontrivial. Dr. Mercola also urges that one buy locally. So, I am to imagine that I should hunt down raw milk that is locally produced. Good luck since it is illegal to sell it. I invite you to read the Wikipedia section on raw milk vs pasteurized milk. I have made cheese and would love to get access to raw cow's milk but any cheese I made would have to age for 3 months (according to my last information).

Dr. Mercola engages in a florid writing style in which careful reasoning doesn't play a part. He says

Much of our nation's nutritional deficiency epidemic is caused by a "Big Business" perceived need for cheap, mass produced, convenient food products.

First, note that Dr. Mercola puts "Big Business" inside quote marks. I just did the same thing in the preceding sentence, but there is a significant linguistic difference between the two. I am using quotes to indicate that I am citing the phrase he used but he is using quote marks as what a philosopher once called "scare quotes." Moreover, in capitalizing the "B's" he further evokes scorn. This use of "Big Business" evokes Orwell's notion of "Big Brother," a notorious political pejorative, typically used by liberals. Conservatives have "Big Government." Dr. Mercola is engaging in an irresponsible practice in what purports to give sound medical and other advice. One wants accurate, unslanted advice from any doctor.

Which brings me to the most damning feature of Dr. Mercola's web site. He is a huckster, who sells a wide array of things from tanning beds, natural foods like raw honey, nutritional supplements, vitamin sprays, and juicers among many other things. Those who find his health warnings persuasive very well may find his nearly hysterical arguments for the purchase of his products and objections to opposing choices will likely find his reasons for buying his products persuasive.

I hope you will read his appeals on behalf of his tanning beds -- why you should use them and why you should use his -- and a few other products to get a taste of his style. You might also take a look at the qualifications of the physicians used in his clinc. My problem is that any doctor who purports to treat patients and offer medical and nutritional across the nation should not be engaged in selling. I have run into this sort of problem with doctors who treat sleep apnea and sell the equipment that patients need. They have access to the data supporting or not supporting the use of the products they sell and few of us could interpret the data by way of checking on his or her honesty. One has to very carefully assess the ethics of your doctor, should you, like I, have sleep apnea in an effort to answer the question whether the doctor, who has a clear conflict of interest, is acting in your best interests. I have absolutely no confidence in Dr. Mercola. I am reminded of Dr. Atkins, who not only had a medical practice and wrote diet books, he also was associated with a company that makes products for dieters.

Academic Jibber Jabber

2009-03-13T07:27:00.006-04:00

Ohio State University just voted to move from a 10 week quarter system (3 quarters per academic year plus an additional summer quarter) to a semester system, the specifics of which will be identified later. Absolutely no serious academic reason for doing this was given. Most prominent among the reasons for doing this is that it would enable students more easily to transfer credits to and out of Ohio State. That is not an academic reason.

The real reason was political

“We need to think really hard about turning our backs on the chancellor, governor and the legislature,” Faculty Council Chairman Dick Gunther, a political-science professor, told the group.

One Timothy Gerber, a music professor and chairman of the semester-conversion committee recommended this change, claiming

“We’re talking about a calendar that lets us do creative things and put students first while focusing on faculty success,” he said.

This is the sort of gibberish that gives academics a bad name. What in living hell are these "creative things" we will be able to do in a semester system that cannot be done in a quarter system. There very well may be some but Dr. Gerber doesn't -- maybe can't -- come up with one. I can see why the fraidy cats in the administration chose this man to lead the conversion effort. He would be easily influenced to "do the right thing" and cave to the politicians.

There is to me a certain dissonance to "creative things." "Creative" evokes a variety of notions of genuine importance such as "thinking" and "innovation" and "ideas" and "art" whereas "thing" is the dumbest word in English. But the real gibberish is

put students first while focusing on faculty success

I would think that putting students first would entail focusing, not on the faculty, but the students. It is also a lie that the university is going to put students first. Getting research money is way too important to the finances of the university for the administration to make that mistake. Moreover, it is in the self-interest of faculty to spend more time on research than on teaching except when preparing new courses. This isn't to say that the faculty doesn't care about teaching students. It is just not their main concern. The administration silently endorses this attitude by rewarding those who do research, especially those who bring in lots of money, for a good bit of this is legitimately raked off by the university to cover overhead.

The fact is that the quarter system allows for a much greater diversity in the education of students and theoretically even more contact hours between the faculty and students in undergraduate lecture courses. If in a quarter system of 10 weeks, undergraduate lecture courses were taught five days a week, as was common when I first arrived on the campus, there would be 50 contact hours between the faculty and his or her students. In a semester system of 16 weeks with 3 contact hours a week, there would be just 48 contact hours a week. However, if one believes, as I do, that learning requires cognitive gestation and that takes time, then there is reason to go to a semester system for it gives students 16 weeks to engage in this process. Moreover, writing good papers in more advanced undergraduate, to say nothing of graduate, courses is more productive in a semester system for the same reason.

The notion of "cognitive gestation" is vague and I can't make it more explicit but I do know from personal experience that there is "thinking" going on in learning that we are not explicitly aware of. When I was writing my dissertation, I had to face head on a problem I had not been able to solve in some 4 or 5 years of thinking about it (not all the time of course). At one point, with a Chicago Bears football game going on in the background, I had an "eureka" moment. Three facts passed through my consciousness at a "speed" I couldn't keep up with consciously but I knew that there were three facts that provided the solution to my problem that I somehow "knew" but just hadn't put together before. The trouble is that I didn't know exactly what these facts were. After 30 minutes of serious thinking I was able to bring these facts to full consciousness and see how they provided the solution to my problem. This was the result of thinking by me at a level I wasn't explicitly aware of. I have had many other instances of this and seen it in my students. Once, a student at the University of Illinois who had taken a syntax course from me a month or two ago passed by me some 30 yards away who yelled out, 'Professor Geis, I finally get it." It was a bit late for her grade but I was happy about it and she seemed to be too.

Obama Effect on AA's Test Performance

2009-01-25T08:27:00.006-05:00

Vanderbilt University's professor Ray Friedman found that at key moments during the Obama campaign, performance on tests drawn from the GRE (Graduate Records Exam) by Whites and African Americans were indistinguishable, specifically when Obama was front and center in the news in a positive way. There was a drop off by African Americans during points when Obama was not at the center of the press's attention.

In the study, tests were administered to a total of 472 participants using questions drawn from Graduate Record Exams (GREs) to assess reading comprehension, analogies and sentence completion. The tests took place at four distinct points over three months during the campaign: two when Obama’s success was less prominent (prior to his acceptance of the nomination and the mid-point between the convention and election day) and two when it garnered the most attention (immediately after his nomination speech and his win of the presidency in November).

This result represents a striking repudiation of the view that African Americans are inferior to Whites intellectually. It also confirms the view of Liberals that racism continues to negatively affect African American's intellectually. I urge you to read the story for it applies, I would suggest, to how we educate minorities here and everywhere else on the globe.

It has long been noted that how children perform in school is strongly affected by the expectations of others as to how well they can perform. My parents both had college degrees and my mother had a master's. I grew up always knowing I would be going to college. Even financial reverses in the family did not affect this expectation. Can it be a surprise that I and all my siblings as well as other persons of my generation in my extended family graduated from college? I suspect that the record of our extended family had less to do with any native intelligence we might have had than in the examples afforded by our parents and the expectations placed on us.

The results of this study make clear that bridging the difference between Whites and Blacks economically depends critically on training our teachers to act as if they expect all of their kids to succeed and doing our best to see that teachers do this. Enough African Americans have entered the middle class in the last decade and before to suggest that the opportunities will be there for Blacks if they will take care of business in our schools. We cannot expect that glass ceilings for Blacks will not hinder them for there are conservative Whites with power who will erect as many glass ceilings as they can for Blacks (and women and others who are not White and male) However, where people with power can see that their self-interest can be advanced by promoting deserving African Americans, they will usually do so in my opinion. A striking number of Whites made that sort of choice on election day and seem, according to recent polling to continue to believe that promoting Obama was a good thing for them.

I began this sermon with a reference to my family's effect on my development and so must acknowledge that it is imperative that poor families be encouraged to focus on education as a goal for all of their children. We must also enhance the Head Start program as a vehicle to improve on what the families of disadvantaged children have done for them. There is much that needs to be done by African Americans themselves to help fix what is broken in their communities and their families. The larger society can't fix this. All it can do is provide the conditions that favor a positive outcome.

There was a time when Jesse Jackson promoted self-help for the Black community. Years ago, before he entered Presidential politics, I heard a speech he gave in California in which he argued that Blacks can't claim that going hungry inhibits the ability of Black children to learn, noting that hunger didn't stop some of the same children from growing up to becoming great athletes. That is the sort of message our most influential Black leaders need to get back to instead of seeking out opportunities to engage in "cry racism" politics. With Obama in place in the White House, we have a great opportunity for people like Jackson to preach this sort of sermon.

My Dear Galileo Galilei

2009-01-02T09:08:00.007-05:00

My Dear Galileo Galilei, "It gives me great pleasure to inform you that we have reconsidered your case. A small mistake was made by our Vatican astronomers in the determination of the relationship between the earth and the sun. It was an easy mistake to make. I'm sure you will agree, since it was obvious to all that the sun moves from East to West in our skies whilst we remain in place. We regret that you were put in prison and that you were forced to recant under the threat of torture. As a result of the discovery of our mistake, it is our determination that you should no longer be confined to your home."

That wasn't the only mistake the Vatican made in the case of Galileo. They didn't much like his atomistic view of the universe. In recent decades the Vatican has tried to undo their mistake. Pope John Paul II blamed the Church's error on "tragic mutual incomprehension." This concession was beneath contempt since Galileo certainly understood the position of the Church. I suspect the church understood what Galileo was saying as well. Otherwise, why jail him, threaten him with torture in order to force him to recant, and then confine him to his house?

Thanks to protests of the faculty at Rome's La Sapienza University concerning the appropriateness of allowing Pope Benedict to talk there, the Pope canceled a lecture. It was argued that his hostility to science made him an inappropriate speaker at a public university. This seems to have put the Vatican in full retreat. At a Vatican conference on science, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the right hand man of the Pope, said Galileo was an astronomer, but one who "lovingly cultivated his faith and his profound religious conviction." Say what? How did they miss this fact about him 1633? I suspect he wasn't the only victim of the Inquisition who had profound religious convictions. By the way, what does "lovingly cultivated his faith" actually mean? Don't reply to this question. I can figure out some things it might mean, such as "he went to mass" and the like. The Vatican's sugar coating their grotesque acts during the time of the Inquisition with language like this is insulting to thoughtful person.

Good old Bertone also said, "Galileo Galilei was a man of faith who saw nature as a book authored by God." We dealt with this "language of God" nonsense in my last blog. The more religious folks talk about science and religion the stupider they seem to get. If nature were any kind of book then why in hell have we not come to understand all of nature? Does it have too many pages? Or is it that some of the chapters are written undecipherable languages? I need help here.

Charles Darwin is lucky he didn't live at the time of the Inquisition. He would have been burned at the stake for the idea that apes and men have a common ancestry (which isn't to say of course that we are evolved from apes). And the Catholic Church is lucky as well. Pope Paul, who tried to get ahead of criticism of the Church's treatment of Galileo, made peace (on his terms) with the theory of evolution by noting that it is more than just a hypothesis and is consistent with Church teachings. That has not been the last word on catholic views of evolution but the Catholic Church has the advantage of not being literalist in the way that fundamentalist Christians are.

The Language of God

2008-12-18T07:59:00.003-05:00

I have been going through all my blogs the last few days to delete a 100% perfect spam job that attached some impenetrable gob of Chinese authored by someone or some computer named "sexy." In the process, I encountered one of my blogs on religion and decided to Google "The Language of God" to see what sort of nonsense there might be out there on the internet and found that some nitwit has a book titled just that. I am a couple of years late in noticing that but gratuitous slaps at religion are never too late or too early.

In an ABC news story prompting this diatribe, I discovered that former President Clinton and the "leader of the international Human Genome Project," one Francis S. Collins, are described as conspiring to claim, in the words of Clinton,

"Today," he said, "we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift."

I'm sure I have blogged on the idea that there could be a language of art or music, pointing out how silly such notions are, but worse than these is the notion that the code that determines our genetic make up is written in some sort of language

3 billion letters long, and written in a strange and cryptographic four-letter code

which is amazingly complex. Yo, dude, if this code is so complex and wondrous how in hell have humans been able to crack it? We linguists haven't been able to understand the structure of any human language. We must be dumber than geneticists or, more likely, the human genome just ain't that difficult to crack and certainly an unworthy candidate as an example of the language of anything but a very minor god.

Actually, if the human genome is a code then it isn't a linguistic system on a par with Chinese or Spanish or Xhosa, which are anything but code like. Human languages consist of expressions that refer to elements of the natural world as well as a multiplicity of quite abstract notions (justice, democracy, infinity). The strands of DNA don't refer to things outside the organizm from which the DNA is drawn.

This geneticist must be an admirer of the equally silly intelligent design (non)theory for like it, it is restricted to one phenomenon -- the origin of the species. There is no intelligent design theory of physics or linguistics or anything other than the origin of the species. Similarly, the "language" of DNA, while it might bear the slightest resemblance to the graphical representations of organic chemistry being taught way back when (and maybe even now), it bears no relationship to the "language" of physics. Are we to say that the mathematical representations in physics are not instances of the language of God or is it that He is bilingual or multilingual, with one language for the human genome, another for physics, another for statistics, and still another for syntactical structure, etc.?

How a scientist of this guy's reputation could come up with so silly a theory is beyond my simple imagination. But then, whenever my wife says I am imagining something, my reply is allways, "I have no imagination." Neither does this dude.

On Extended Warranties -- Betting Against the House

2008-12-16T08:43:00.002-05:00

Now that the gift giving season is upon us, anyone buying an appliance, electronic devices that cost more than $40 or $50 (not sure where the cut off is exactly), or automobiles will face the dread question, "Would you like to purchase an extended warranty?" A certain fear kicks in. What if the thing ceases to function properly the day after the regular warranty expires? The pricer the product the greater the fear.

Yes, I did get the extended warranty on an automobile once. It was very expensive (relative to my income) and was a new, limited edition car, a turbo-charged all-wheel drive Celica. "Sexy and sinister looking" one car magazine termed it. That warranty paid off. In the rare cases since then that I have bought extended warranties, they have not been useful. In the rest, cases when I did not purchase one, I have not regretted not purchasing such a warranty.

Extended warranties provide one with "protection," which is just what one needs when one is fearful. What if the $3,000 TV breaks down the day after the normal warranty expires? Do I go out and buy another #3,000 TV? Who can afford to do that on a regular basis?

I am here to allay your fears. Words like "protection" are very comforting. However, it is important that one think through the "logic" of extended warranties. The manufacturer or merchant who offers an extended warranty is betting you that his product will not fail until after the extended warranty has expired. If you purchase one, you are betting that the product you are buying will fail -- not during the period in which you are "protected" by the normal warranty, but during the period of the extended warranty, namely for the year or two years, etc., of the extended warranty.

This is crazy stuff. The manufacturer/merchant is betting that is product is soundly enough made to function properly until at least the end of the extended warranty. He is actually standing behind his product. He could raise his price to cover the cost of his occasional duds and offer a 3 or 4 year warranty to everyone. However, he knows he will make more money by lowering his price and offering the extended warranty. When you buy an extended warranty, you are, for all intents and purposes, betting against the house and we know that when you are gambling, and buying an extended warrant is tantamount to gambling, you should never bet against the house.

The reality is that we are better off self-insuring against any product going bad during the very unlikely period of the extended warranty than to buy these extended warranties. I say "unlikely period of the extended warranty" because most things which last a year are likely to last for more than 2 or 3 more years. This is especially true of electronic devices. They tend to go bad quickly (manufacturing glitch) or after some years (wears out in one way or another). That has, at least, been my experience. If you are tempted to buy an extended warranty tell yourself this: I am now about to purchase of piece of crap that I am betting will die or need extensive repairs during the time betweenwhen the extended warranty kicks in and it expires. If you think about that, you will be protected from buying protection.

Too Happy To Post

2008-12-04T09:58:00.002-05:00

It seems that I am more engaged as a blogger when I am angry rather than happy. The combination of venting in regard to the abortion controversy, Creationism and Intelligent Design (which is anything but intelligent), the Bush Administration, Bush himself, retarded views of language, deceptive advertising, deceptive and illegal practices in the prosecution of death penalty cases, racist, misogynist, and other offensive uses of language, etc. and the results of the last general election have perhaps made me too happy to post. Election night itself brought me to tears because of the election of Obama, which meant we would not have Bush III, the large Democratic majorities in Congress, and the comments of an African-American of my generation who remarked that he could remember demonstrating to open up lunch counters in the South to African Americans by way of contrasting how things were to how they are. I was brought to tears because I participated in a demonstration to desegregate lunch counters in downtown Houston in the late Spring of 1960, a demonstration that appears directly to have caused them to open up.

Houston at the time had the most segregated large school system in the South, which should indicate the nature of the situation there at the time. I went to the all-White Rice University and hobnobbed with wealthy racists at debutante balls (an amazing social institution, but one that did provide free booze, food, and an opportunity to dance) though I was more or less penniless. I developed a distaste for rich people and racists which has stuck with me for 40 years. In any event, in late Spring of 1960, some 7 or 8 of us White Rice students went over to Texas Southern University, an all-Black school, and volunteered to join them in the upcoming afore-mentioned demonstration, a march around the City Hall building. It occupied a relatively small square of land and we managed to stretch all around it.

Shortly after we began our demonstration, some 15-20 motorcycle cops showed, which alarmed me somewhat. We were, after all, being quite peaceful. A very large number of cops showed up in the first hour, a hundred or so. I suspect they were there not to protect our right to freedom of assembly, but to protect the building. In any event, it was intimidating to say the least. There were TV crews there, of course.

The right wing uncle I lived with (free room and board to go along with Rice's free tuition for all is why I could go to Rice, so I was grateful) saw the demonstration and TV and I was marked in his eyes as a radical in training if not a radical already. My voting for Kennedy later on cemented his theory that i was at least pink. But his loyalty to family kept him from tossing me out. I am still grateful for his help.

The funny thing about this story is that the following summer, either Newsweek or Time ran a story praising one of the two big Houston papers for its journalistic excellence in some respect or another. A week later, as I recall it, Time magazine ran a story Blackout in Houston, which described a late summer agreement of African-American and White leaders to cause the integration of downtown lunch counters and an agreement by the press to embargo the news about this for a week. It was the news embargo, a phenomenon not in keeping with high journalistic standards, that upset Time. It was probably a good idea however, since, though the story does indicate word got out to some degree, it did make the integration of these lunch counters a fait accompli and so no counter-demonstrations resulted.

Why lunch counters? It seems like such a trivial thing. But as I noted above, this was a racist city and I suspect it is still is with the shift of focus being from African-Americans to Latinos (or Hispanics, whichever is now correct). There are parts of Houston now that have Thai or Vietnamese street signs (don't recall what language), so those Whites who busy themselves hating people different from themselves have a lot of work cut out for them. The lunch counters were important because a lot of African-Americans worked downtown and there was nowhere they could go for an inexpensive hot lunch. Buses and lunch counters were the first targets of the civil rights movements because they were of greatest importance to the poor.

It is my guess, with Texas Southern and Rice being about to open their doors for students for the new school year, White leaders in Houston decided that the best thing for White Houston was to get rid of the source of radical agitation so they did. Rice, by the way, is no longer all White. It is my understanding that to break the charter created by William Marsh Rice that caused Rice to be all White, the school argued, falsely I believe, that it would go broke as a no tuition school and thus needed the charter to be broken. The courts agreed. Apparently busting one provision of a charter busts the whole thing. So, Rice integrated.

Rice was very important to my social, intellectual, and political development because of the very bright students I got to know and talk with and some very smart, good professors, not just good mentors but good people. I learned about DWB (Driving While Black) from the psych professor Trent Wann, the most influential man in my life, from his stories of the travails of a good friend who taught at Texas Southern. So Rice was all White but it wasn't all bad. The students were almost all conservative, of course, since most came from Texas, a state that didn't know yet that it was a Republican state.

I apologize for this pretty self-flattering story but I assure you I was not and am not now all good. What I hope young people will take from it is the fact that though we have much that we need to do to combat racism (and the other -isms), we have come a very long way. I hope you will also take away from this the fact that protesting injustice can be effective.

Kilpatrick is on a Which Hunt

2008-11-19T08:41:00.005-05:00

It seems that James Kilpatrick, whom I must confess a near life-time disdain for, has declared that the award for November's (who knew months had this?) award for the ugliest word in English goes to which. He writes:

It grates; it pouts; it scratches. It rubs the wrong way. It rarely accomplishes anything not already well-served by that.

Actually, there are words that are way more offensive by Kilpatrick's standards. One that instantly comes to mind is church. Why? The alleged phonetic problem with which is not the initial, quite inoffensive voiceless fricative, nor the vowel, which is also inoffensive. It must be the palatal voiceless fricative "ch." Church has two of them as well as one of the ugliest vowel sounds of English, a rhoticized (r-colored) vowel I shall not attempt to describe further having years ago been shown the folly of that by an Ohio State phonetician. Why wouldn't Kilpatrick identify church as being phonetically offensive? That would be offensive to church-goers and Kilpatrick wouldn't have the guts for that.

So, Kilpatrick's phontetic objections to which are bullcrap. I think he was probably frightened by a witch when young and is fearful of any word pronounced in a similar way to witch. And, we are told it rarely accomplishes anything not accomplished by that. This too is nonsense. Consider the following hypothetical conversation:

Customer: I want one of those scarves.
Clerk: Which one would you like?

Clearly, this occurrence of which cannot be replaced by that. Nor can the which of

Clerk (alternate reply): You may have whichever one you want for $20.00.

So we have collected two types of occurrences of which that cannot be replaced by that. Much uglier than whichever would be thatever.

There are other uses of which that are not replaceable by that. Consider:

He was wearing a blue or green cap. I don't know which it was.

This counterexample, like the others, involves a choice from among a set of alternatives -- one scarf from a bunch (isn't bunch as ugly as which?) of scarves or a choice between a set of two caps.

What this nitwit should have said is that he objects to the use of which as a relative pronoun. Consider

The dog which bit me.
The dog that bit me.

I bought the dog which Mary wanted.
I bought the dog that Mary wanted.

In the continuation of my first paragraph following the example I wrote

The problem with which is not the initial quite inoffensive, voiceless fricative nor the vowel, which is also inoffensive.

Here we have a nonrestrictive relative pronoun use of which. This is clearly not replaceable by that.

The problem with which is not the initial quite inoffensive voiceless fricative, nor the vowel, that is also inoffensive.

The reality is that Kilpatrick knows little about English grammar and what he knows he doesn't understand except at a superficial grammar school level. As a linguist, I am offended that his grammatical "knowledge" is respected.

I mean, "I mean" is driving me crazy

2008-11-11T06:57:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I mean.

The phrase "I mean" very often occurs in contemporary English as an assertion preface in replies to questions by interviewers. An example of this sort of use of "mean" is:

Q: How well do you think you played today?
A: (Well) I mean I think I played a little bit better than last week.

After the Ohio State vs Northwestern football game, the very, very (academically) young freshman QB for Ohio State prefaced virtually every response with "I mean." Some others used it frequently. Some not at all. The beginning sentence in this post is from my speech. I was in a friendly argument with an uncle during a telephone call and "Yeah, I mean" prefaced an interruption by me. I heard it later in the day from a political person on CNN or MSNBC with "well" where I said "yeah". So, this is infecting the nation I fear. Sadly there is no protective medical treatment.

The main problem with this use of "mean" is that it is not at all transparent in meaning, which is a bad thing for the word "mean" to do to us. It is not a constituent of the utterance it prefaces and so contributes nothing to the meaning of the utterance. So, it is very different from

1. a."Ich" means `I'. Conventional meaning equivalents.
b. "I" refers to the speaker/writer of an utterance/sentence. Conventional meaning, but in this case dealing with the referent of the expression -- reference is meaning in this case.

Nor it is exactly like

2. a. I did not mean to hurt you.
b. Life without faith has no meaning.
c. Dark clouds mean rain.
d. McCain's choice of Palin is unpatriotic -- I mean, how can putting so unprepared a person one heartbeat from the Presidency when you are quite old.

So, what does "mean" mean in the odd cases we have focused on? I believe the answer is that it is an extension of the use of mean in (2d) where one is explicating the foundation or underlying "gist" of what was said (see my blog The Meaning of Meaning). It is like "what I mean is that." However this analysis does not fully square with the examples that got me interested, namely those of the football players. I think it is possible that the speaker is attempting to communicate "gist"directly and thereby direct attention away from actual wordage and the conventional meaning of what he is saying to the gist of what he is saying. This is not terribly different from (2b) where the "gist" of what was communicated is being supplied.

I could easily be wrong about this. Please advise me as to your views.

The Concept "Consumer"

2008-10-31T08:40:00.003-04:00

I have been watching CNBC recently because (a) our personal holdings have declined significantly as have most other people's and I want to know what's up with our declining economy, (b) they have beautiful women anchors and reporters and I am now, as always, a dirty old man, and (c) it is one place where you get intelligent discussion of the issues.

I was troubled yesterday -- why did it take so long, I wonder -- at the references to you and me as "consumers." Damn but if that is not a very demeaning term to use for us. I was struck by the resemblance of that concept to that of "johns," the people that prostitutes service. We are needy people and our role in the economy is to buy all manner of crap. We, however, have smartened up and are acting to bring down our personal debt rather than buying more crap. Wall Street is very unhappy about that. Since I am someone who has finally cut the cord on my fanatical desire to own the more toys by the time I die than anyone else in my economic weight class and am focusing relentlessly on cutting debt, I took offense.

One of the things that made it hard for American businesses to get products into Japan during the time the Japanese were dumping everything they made into the US besides the incredibly many obstructions businesses had to get past was that the Japanese consumer wasn't consuming as much as us. He and she were saving. That was once, in fact, a virtue we extolled -- "A penny saved is a penny earned," as Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have said That needs to be revised to "A penny saved is 0.67% of a penny earned," if it was saved in the form of purchasing into the stock market."

The thing that pisses me off about this reference to us as consumers is that we are also workers or as in the case of my wife and me, former workers. That is of interest to market people only if busineses are increasing or decreasing the number of us they employ. In this case we are viewed as little more than pawns in the great economic chess game Wall Street is playing by way of selling stakes in, real and contrived (check out the concept of a "derivative") financial instruments.

Can it be any wonder that the Bush Administration, ever the tool of the rich and powerful, treat us with so little respect -- tax cuts for rich investors (the people that control the chess board) being more important than tax cuts for us (pawns). Anyone who votes for McCain is saying, "I love being a pawn." Right now, the Bush Administration is working on all manner of ways to deregulate industry by way of favoring the rich and powerful. We are, after all, nothing more than tools. Oddly, so are the rich folks but they are so mentally screwed up that they can't quite recognize that they actually drink out of the dirty lake we drink from.

Take the good with the bad

2008-10-17T08:25:00.003-04:00

I hear athletes somewhat frequently saying during interviews that they would need to "take the good with the bad." This is an inversion of how the expression once was and for most of us (I believe) still is, namely "take the bad with the good." The obvious idea of the latter is that what we want are the good parts of something, but inevitably, taking the good parts will have undesired negative consequences. I want a piece of cake. That's the good stuff. Unfortunately, eating it is likely to have several undesirable health consequences.

I struggle to understand what "take the good with the bad" is trying to suggest. Interestingly, the second Google offering for this phrase was to The Free Dictionary wherein it was transformed into "take the bad with the good." So, it seems, Google gags on the phrase "take the good with the bad." However, I googled "young people take the good with the bad" and the fourth entry (but the first relevant one) referred me to a New York Times article. I was not suprised that page referred to was in the sports section. The title of the story was

Mets Take the Good With the Bad (Again)

This title, as it turns out, is strange given the fact that seems to have initiated the story. The first two paragraphs read:

Even when the Mets have good news to report, they still cannot shake the dark clouds.

Such was the case yesterday when the club eagerly announced signing Lance Johnson to a two-year contract extension, but then revealed that pitcher Paul Wilson may need arthroscopic surgery on his right throwing shoulder.

The problem here is that this takes the misuse of the original "take the bad with the good" to another level. The original phrase has it that one must take the bad aspects of some single thing along with the good things one wants. I presume that the same holds for the inverted phrase "take the good with the bad." However this New York Times story involves two quite unrelated things, the signing of one player and the need for surgery for another. It wouldn't be the first time a sports journalist, even with a highly regarded (by some) newspaper, used language in a way prescriptivists wouldn't like.

I have a confession to make. As I typed this blog, I found myself writing "take the good with the bad" instead of "take the bad with the good." This is a bit puzzling because I don't commonly do that sort of thing. Why would I do that? As I play with the two expressions in my head, I find that "take the good with the bad" flows more tripplingly off the tounge and sounds better to the ear (if not the brain). Am I nuts? Well, of course I am nuts. But do you share my experience?

How can we make PETA illegal?

2008-10-12T08:19:00.004-04:00

Usually when people hope to brainwash us they don't announce what their plans are exactly. PETA, however, has decided to go after sports and commercial fishing and the keeping of an aquarium or any other non-natural aquatic environment in which we imprison water creatures by causing us to think of fish as "sea kittens." They are apparently in no hurry, as perusal of their web site Save the Sea Kittens makes clear. Only a very young child, or someone dim-witted enough to buy into the advertising of McCain and Palin, are vulnerable to this sort of site.

The problem is that these people seem to be serious. Don't they have something better to do in their spare time? Or is it that Peta's national organization is going broke thanks to the Wall Street crash which has surely dried up contributions in recent weeks and need a new shtick. Since they have got all of the land and air animals covered already, the only source of new revenue is to drum up contributions for their sea kittens campaign.

I have blogged already on the Orwellian notion that language can determine thought and so am not too worried about about the term "sea kitten" causing children to see fish as warm (not so much), fuzzy (not so much), cuddly (not so much) animals. Moreover, when children get old enough to see that kittens grow up to be not so cuddly cats, as so many do, they will surely begin to wonder what sea kittens grow up to be.

We already have the term "catfish" but the presence of the morpheme "cat" doesn't seem to inspire people to want to save them from being fished or cultivated on catfish farms or eaten. Their protection, such as it is, consists of nasty projections coming out of their heads ("cat whiskers"?) that can inflict grievous bodily harm as I have myself discovered. So, I don't hold out much hope for the fate of "sea cats" as helping PETA brainwash our children and our vulnerable adults. So our sea kittens will have to stay forever young.

The thing is that for PETA to gain traction with children they ought to encourage them to have aquariums so that they can learn to love fish but PETA has ruled aquariums out. Indeed my keeping a number of aquariums once did reduce my lust for catching water creatures. They weren't pets, but they were very alive. I took notice.

Home aquarium fish will be small normally so that will perhaps cause them to be seen as lovable little things. I found a web site kids can go to find sample pet fish names. And, as an added attraction, with careful training you can get some home raised fish to accept being hand fed but I don't know how to do that exactly. However if you try to take an aquarium fish out of the water to pet them then something bad is likely to happen.

We have had "bad people -- good water mammal" movies but they haven't inspired anything more than demands that people who hunt whales stop doing so and that people who fish in ocean waters make sure they don't trap dolphins. I haven't seen or heard of any "good fish -- bad people" movies but there might be some. Of course, we have also had "bad fish -- good people movies" such as Jaws. That won't do much for PETA's ambitions. I suppose PETA will take a pro-shark position and simply demand that we quit getting into the oceans and seas they inhabit on the grounds that we are "trespassing" in their waters. So we will have to restrict ourselves to playing on the beach.

I think that the answer to this blog's question is that we can't make PETA illegal. However, if their new campaign to save the sea kittens is any indication, they have pretty much run their course as a viable organization. At least I hope so.

“You should think of that as unthinkable.”

2008-09-24T07:25:00.004-04:00

W's deputy press secretary, Tony Fratto, told reporters, when asked what would happen if Congress does not pass some sort of economic bailout of Bear Sterns, AIG, Freddie Mac, Fanny May, and other companies that are failing or contracting this week, “You should think of that as unthinkable.” What an idea! The reasoning of Mr. Fratto presupposes a contradiction -- something that has clearly been thought of is deemed unthinkable. Funny thing about that is from a contradiction all propositions including other contradictions become provable.

As it turns out, the week is not yet over and a rescue the rich plan has not been agreed to by the Congress, and we come close to the unthinkable not only being thinkable but being a fact. One of the really troubling things about the efforts of Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Ben S. Bernanke to persuade Congress to approve their bailout plan is their arrogant presumption that their plan is the only workable one. In fact, insisting, as many Democrats have, that the executives that have driven their companies into this dire situation be stopped from profiting in any way from the bailout, is not a part of their plan but would have no impact on the workability of their plan.But Bush didn't want it. He thought it would be punitive. What a dolt! The American people want these bastards punished and punished good. Some Congress(wo)men have advocated putting a ceiling of $400,000 per year for CEO's of bailed out companies. Usually people who fail as they have are simply fired so $400,000, far from being punitive, is generous.

There are other approaches that have as much credibility as W's boys' plan. According to the Washington Post, which sketches three alternatives to the plan of Paulson and Bernanke, Simon Johnson, a former chief economist for the IMF and current MIT professor, drives a stake in the heart of the Administration plan when he claims that the plan P & B have put forward is neither comprehensive nor decisive. This last concern should trouble everyone. If this bailout fails to stop the collapse of these companies, then this could mean that we do slide into a national economic crisis affecting us all.

I have my own solution which is predicated on the most basic principle of free enterprise, the "Upward Percolation Principle" according to which capitol is formed from the profit of the sale to consumers of goods and services. I just coined this principle but I bet you could find it in some economic text.

My plan is to provide to mortgage investment companies the funds to cover all mortgage obligations that have not been paid for all homes in foreclosure or headed that way due to the failure of home owners to make a payment or two. This gives an immediate influx of cash to these companies and makes the home owners "whole." Then we convert all ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) to fixed rate mortgages at some reasonable rate close to that which homeowners had once been able to pay. This will provide a continuous influx of money to these failing compaies but will result in another shortfall for them since they depend on rises in rates of ARMs when interest rates rise. My plan is that the government provide loans to these banks at a rate lower than what they can charge consumers and businesses for new loans. This is the single bailout they get. It seems just since we are also bailing out the persons that obtained ARM mortages they cannot pay due to rises in rates.

I, of course, have no idea what I am talking about. But, does anyone else? The solution to the current economic crisis may itself be unthinkable. This is not like a math problem for which a solution is guaranteed if you can only find it. This is a problem that may have no single solution and we could end up chasing our economic tails for years. The great irony in all of this is the AIG ads that had children expressing their fears about how their parents are handling their finances which conclude with a smug little brat who announces that his parents are with AIG, that, apparently, being enough said. I have not seen an AIG ad recently. I don't expect one.

Al Queda #2 Has Alzheimers

2008-09-09T07:11:00.004-04:00

I base my claim that Ayman al-Zawahiri is suffering Alzheimer's or some other form of senility for he has recently charged that Iran is a "collaborator" with the United States in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. That is just one piece of evidence but it is probative. In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I have no medical degree nor any competence in physical and mental health.

There are two alternatives to this psychiatric diagnosis. One is that he is simply mentally ill, suffering from the delusion that Iran and the United States have important interests in common. The only evidence I can think of for that is both want a compliant Iraq. However, Iran wants Iraq to be subservient to them and we, or rather our government, wants Iraq to be subservient to us. Therefore, I say al-Zawahiiri has a paranoid personality and suffers from serious political delusions. In support of that analysis is the fact that al-Zawahiri lives in caves. Only crazy people live in caves these days.

The third possibility is that al-Zawahiri is so cut off from news that he has no idea what is going on. However, if his cave has all mod cons, these would include electricity and a satellite dish and receiver and a monitor. His claim is that the US and Iran both support the "hireling governments" of Iraq and Afghanistan but this similarity is like the other one. They both support the government because the US can leave only, so it says, if the government can run the country and Iraq can't fall into a state of anarchy until we leave, a state that Iran will find it easy to exploit, at least for awhile. Iran might suffer the same fate as the US has. We liberated them from Saddam (and from fresh pure running water, electricity, sewage treatment, etc. ) but the day after we were unwelcome. Iran is a Muslim theocracy, which ought to please the Iraqis, but they are the wrong kind of Muslims for the Sunnis and the Kurds (who really don't count since they already have set up an independent Kurdish state), and much more important, they aren't Arabs.

For reasons I cannot quite explain, I had the feeling in reading this that I had on listening to the Weather Underground back in the late 60's. As I listened to the latter (in teach ins that I ran at the University of Illinois) it became clear to me that being against the war wasn't good enough for the Weather Underground. One had to be against it for the right reasons, that is their reasons. The WU was promoting revolution so one had to see the Vietnam War as a colonial war and see the government as fascist. Their arguments would play out better today in connection with the Iraq War since the Bush government is much more interested in suppressing our legal rights than were the governments of Johnson and Nixon.

So, al-Zawahiri is pissed at the Iranians for making nice with the Iraq government even though Iran is as close what bin Laden wants for S. Arabia as any other large Muslim country, namely it is a state run by religious zealots. A more rational course might be to applaud Iran and bitch at, say, Jordan or S. Arabia or the Gulf States for collaborating with us.

Mr. 85

2008-09-05T08:46:00.005-04:00

Mr. Chad Johnson is, perhaps, the most infamous attention seeker in American professional sports if Mr. Terrell Owens is not. In fact, since Mr. Owens went to the Dallas Cowboys, he has dropped out the sports headlines, perhaps because he feels appreciated by the management and his team mates. He has, it seems, abandoned the field to Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson is nothing if not inventive. Last season, he engaged in an unneeded leap into the air to catch a 3 yard touchdown pass which in the words of the Commissioner of the league,represented a "flagrant display of athletic ability was 'gaudy' and 'went beyond the bounds of good taste.' Certain actions on scoring a touch down have ling been regarded as unwanted such as doing flips into the endzone, diving into the endzone when it was not done to evade being tackled, and making gestures of various sorts that are seen as instances of one upmanship that are regarded as taunting. However, Mr. Johnson's action was performed while engaged in doing what he was supposed to do, namely catch footballs, preferably in the end zone. The odds are that this was a premeditated action waiting for an opportunity to be performed, as so many of Mr. Johnson's actions have been.

Johnson's unnecessary leap might be viewed as the football equivalent of dunking a basketball in some elaborate manner. If it goes in, not too many people will complain at the athleticism displayed in dunking a ball. The football commissioner's reference to Mr. Johnson's display of "bad taste" is comical, as it seems to situate football in the same social space as, say, a tea party where someones engaging in an staged loud fart would be said to be in bad taste. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but it is a funny choice of language by the commissioner.

Mr. Johnson makes the most of the few props available to him. Once he pulled up an endzone pylon and used it to putt the football he had carried into the endzone. In another case he pulled out a sharpy and signed the football and gave it to a fan (if I recall correctly). The problem many have with Mr. Johnson is that football is a quintessential team game. Mr. Johnson is drawing attention to himself on a touchdown reception without regard for the fact that the quarterback had to throw the ball he caught, the other receivers ran routes that drew defensive backs away from him, and sundry linemen and running backs will have blocked attackers trying to sack the quarterback before he could throw the ball. From this perspective, Mr. Johnson's antics are deplorably self-promoting however entertaining they may be. The commissioner knows that if he does not fine the man, his opponents on the field will one day display their unhappiness by taking out one of his knees.

I have long watched the NFL fight against touchdown displays and such things as dances made by linebackers around a quarterback they have sacked. Initially, the celebrations were pretty mild, but were never liked by old white guys. In my opinion, African Americans and White people take a different view of what is a reasonable public celebration. And in sports, where once Whites, but not African Americans were allowed to play, a very rigid code of sportsmanship emerged, too rigid for the tastes of the African Americans who began to be allowed to play such games. I think there is a real cultural difference between Whites and Blacks in regard to what is acceptable behavior on the field of play and what is not, which is not to say that there is not a great deal of variation in attitudes within both groups. The first quarterback sack dance was done by a White guy, for instance. The first "high five" was done by a Black person. Interestingly, as the "high five" has evolved, Whites have chased after each variation of celebratory hand gestures that has emerged as Blacks keep changing them to stay ahead of Whites (in my opinion).

This is a long-winded path to my title, "Mr. 85." The most recent "antic" by Mr. Johnson has been to legally change his name to "Chad Ocho Cinco." Someone seems to have told Mr. Johnson that the number of the back of his jersey would be pronounced "ocho cinco" in Spanish. His first effort to get "Ocho Cinco" on the back of his uniform was nixed by his coach I believe. In this case, it was easy for Mr. 85 to comply for it was a tear off addition to his uniform. But having changed his name legally, there is nothing anyone cand do to stop him. However, the joke is on Mr. Ocho Cinco. The English phrase "eighty five" is translated into "ochenta cinco." Moreover, "85" in Spanish is, well, "85." So, I propose that the sporting world begin calling Mr. 85 by either "Mr. 85" or "Mr. Ochenta Cinco" in the interests of language correctness.

"Retard"

2008-08-21T06:54:00.003-04:00

I was greeted in the letters to the editor section of my morning paper the other day with a note damning the use of "retard" as a put down. The writer was responding specifically to its frequent use in a new, highly rated movie, "Tropic Thunder, a Ben Stiller movie. Of course, it couldn't be used in that way if it weren't negative. On the other hand this is a comedy and comedy and comedians have usually been given wide latitude.

Apparently disability rights groups have condemned its use, saying it is hate speech which, in the words of the writer, "heaps insult and harm on a group that has a long history of being stigmatized and vulnerable." He likens it to the use of terms like "nigger," "spic," and "slut" though he does not cite these specific words and he is right, of course.

In an utterance like "You retard" "retard" is being used as a noun, a use that isn't mentioned in the on line edition of the Merriam Webster dictionary which speaks to its marginal position in the language. Like a good deal of slang, it could someday be replaced by something else equally pejorative. In fact, it is likely to be repaced because put downs like this need a certain "freshness" for maximum effect. Use of the word "idiot" instead of "retard" would not have anything like the same import though it comes down to the same thing. "Idiot" is not fresh.

I have great sympathy for the position the writer takes but it is a hopeless cause. The problem is that the word "retardation," from which "retard" is derived, is in common use among those who study or provide assistance to those who have learning disabilities and such other conditions as the term encompasses. This puts "retardation" in a very different linguistic position than words like "nigger," "spic," and "slut." And it may cause the word to stick around for awhile. Ironically, every letter to the editor on the use of this word reminds us of its availability should one feel the need to put down another person.

If those who don't like hearing "retard" want to kill it off, they need to start with all the agencies and organizations that use "retardation" in their names. This use gives automatic legitimacy to "retardation."

The World's Greatest Olympian

2008-08-13T07:12:00.005-04:00

NBC is declaring that Michael Phelps is the Greatest Olympian ever. They are doing it not because it is true but because NBC is shilling its product -- TV coverage of the Olympics. They want you (if you are in the US) to watch all of his upcoming races and, while you are at it, all the rest of the coverage of the Beijing Olympics.

No one at NBC has asked the question, "What does "Greatest Olympian ever" mean? The fact is that there are really two questions here which have been compressed into one. The first question is, "What are the criteria for determining who is the greatest Olympian ever?" The second is, "Who best satisfies these criteria?" NBC seems to think that the person who wins the most gold medals is the greatest Olympian ever. Another consideration is whether or not NBC believes that only Americans count. Would they be shilling a Nigerian one wonders?

Clearly, any reasonable answer to our question would begin by considering who is the greatest Olympian in each sport, broadly conceived. Nadia Comeneci could be said to be the greatest of all time since she forced a revision in how gymnastics is scored -- too many "10's". Or, perhaps, Larissa Semyonovna, who won 4 gold medals in the 1956 Melbourne Olympiad in gymnastics and was the first female athlete to win nine Olympic gold medals. (Information and some phrases stolen from a top 20 list.) We have track and field candidates (Jesse Owens/Carl Lewis) or Al Oerter (excellence over multiple Olympics -- 4 straight discus wins, each with a world record) It seems that gymnastics, track and field, and swimming will provide the only serious candidates.

At this point we must, I think, ask the question whether sports that allow for multiple wins in a single Olympics, thanks in part to the existence of relays (swimming and track) and team medals (gymnastics) shouldn't be devalued in some way. In fact, though I think none of the great swimmers ever won such a medal one can get a medal in a swimming or track relay race even though one does not race in the finals. If one participates in the preliminary heats that is enough. In my opinion, no relay medals should count and medals from events that are fundamentally different in nature should be upwards valued. Though speed in the run up to the board in the long jump (formally broad jump) is crucial, it does require additional skills. By the same token each of the different swimming strokes requires different skills.

In my opinion, the clear winner of the "greatest Olympian ever" contest should be the Dutch athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen. She won golds "in the long jump, the high jump, and sprint and hurdling events," according to Wikipedia. There is no question that these four events require quite different skills. On second thought, perhaps it should be Comeneci for she not only revolutionized scoring thanks to her perfect performances, the different skills in gymnastics are clearly ver different. But, if we are to go in that direction the winner should, perhaps, be some male gymnast since the men do more events than the women. By now, you should be convinced that our exercise is a very, very silly one. Sadly, humans generally cannot think well enough to see how silly it is. And, even more sadly, we are going to let such people chose the President of the United States.

Is McCain Stupid, A Liar, or Just Extremely Forgetful?

2008-07-30T06:55:00.003-04:00

Harking back to my last blog, I ask whether it would be politically incorrect to discuss John McCain's age. The answer is probably, "Yes," though age per se doesn't tell us anything substantive about a candidate for President. Claims that someone is too young or too old to be President presupposes a truly idiotic use of statistics -- a claim to the effect that the average 35/72 year old male is too X to be President doesn't entail that any specific person aged 35/72 is too X to be President.

However, let's not let McCain off the hook this easily. Though I don't recall the issue ever being brought up before but whether or not a person's cognitive health and cognitive capacity and his stamina are sufficient to allow him to be a successful President is of very great importance. IMO, both Obama and McCain should be vetted by one or more panels of appropriate medical experts who are competent to diagnose how senile a 72 year old is or how much stamina he has. McCain's campaign might benefit greatly by a positive result. I know that my memory is not as good as it used to be and I am too years younger than McCain.

Perhaps the example or Reagan, who either was already in the clutches of Alzheimer's or engaged in selective memory (= some combination of lying and memory failures) when he testified under oath during a deposition in regard to Iran Contra shortly after his Presidency. The charitable view is that his brain was already damaged. I have a close relative (not a blood relative) who suffers from Alzheimer's (she's in her latish 80's) and the experience of visiting her terrifies me as to a possible fate for me or my wife or anyone else I know or any of you or McCain. She has a wonderful personality but can't remember much of anything, including especially things she has just said.

My concern about McCain derives from the extraordinary errors he is making. Any Presidential candidate who is worried about the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border should immediately withdraw himself from the race. McCain has made clear that he is not Internet savvy, itself a troubling fact, and does not realize I think that everyone in the world with Internet access can fact check what he says, including contradictory claims made within a short period of time. Check out the contradictions on this YouTube bit, slices of real life on the John McCain Crooked Talk Express.

Political Correctness Gone Crazy

2008-07-25T14:18:00.006-04:00

It seems that a British borough council banned use of the phrase "brain storm." I want you to try to figure out why they might have chosen to do that. I am betting you can't.

It seems that these highly empathetic people, not burdened by the strictures of a Second Amendment, were worried about the harm that hearing or reading this phrase might do to the psyches of those who suffer from, well, brain storms, as this term was used in the late 1890's until the contemporary use began to be used in the 1940's.

Interestingly, even after a group of epileptics, when polled, said they found nothing offensive about the phrase, the doughty councilors have resolved to stand their ground. The irony in all of this is, of course, that in deciding to protect epileptics from unfeeling people who like to call their brain storming "brain storming" they have managed to brand epileptics as damaged or defective in some way that I suspect epileptics will find offensive.

Our deep thinking councilors have come up with the alternative language "thought shower." It is just what one might have expected from them. Let me add that this phrase is inadequate to the purpose of describing an interactive group's efforts to solve some problem collectively. A brain storm, as I understand the phrase, suggests people throwing out ideas they bounce off each other either to be shot down or developed further. A thought shower does not suggest an interactive process at all. In rain showers, the rain typically falls straight down.

I think that people would do well to wait until some aggrieved group, such as epileptics, complain about a linguistic practice before they take action. Before seeing this story the idea that "brain storm" was at all connected to epilepsy had never occurred to me. I suspect epileptics would be more concerned with being treated badly in the work place.

Mental Retardation -- Political Correctness

2008-07-08T08:41:00.002-04:00

State and local agencies in Ohio that work with those suffering from "mentally retardation" seem to be worried about the impact that language might have on perceptions of their clients and those who haven't changed the name to some permutation of "developmental disability" will soon vote on doing so. The older term reflects a time when clearly identifying persons was the only consideration in coming up with language. But now we must consider what I have called the "significance" of a term, as well as its literal meaning in my blog on "The Meaning of Meaning."

One difficulty of the adjective "mentally retarded" and the noun form "mental retardation" is that they implicate some force acting on them that is holding them back. Some clear cases of terms that have this meaning and significance would be "we retarded the growth of invasive plants by ..." or "we retarded the destructive effects of acid rain on stone statues by ..." In the case of mental retardation there is no force acting on those afflicted with this problem that holds them back. They appear to have some condition that is genetic or caused by poor nutrition or an injury or whatever might cause mental disabilities. The term "mental disability" is therefore more accurate than "mental retardation." That is reason enough to change the term.

Notice that if one takes the term "mental retardation" seriously one would do research on the problem by looking at causes of retardation and make efforts to lessen the forces that are doing the retarding. So, there could be a cure for this by lessening or stopping the effects of these forces. In the case of "mental disability" the focus of research would be on efforts to assist those afflicted to learn. Moreover, this more accurate term suggests that one should also focus on research on types of disabilities and this could lead to differential means of dealing with their disabilities.

I have no expertise in this field so please take my comments to apply just to what the language suggests.

The Privatization of Social Securty

2008-06-23T07:44:00.005-04:00

Interestingly, the front page of John McCain's primary web site lists a number of issues with brief comments on his position(s) but there is no mention of social security. I was a little surprised by this until I realized that along with Bush's war policy, McCain supports Bush's privatization of social security. Its not good for a rich old man, rich thanks to marrying a rich woman (what is it with guys like Lyndon Johnson, John Kerry, and John McCain and rich women?), to be meddle with the AARP.

McCain, as is his way, has waffled in regard to the privatization of social security. He both supports and opposes Bush's privatization of social security, according to statements from McCain published in the Huffington Post. On June 12, McCain said 'I'm not for quote privatizing Social Security, I never have been, I never will be." That, unfortunately, is a lie. He voted for Bush's 2006 privatization bill. And in a March interview by the Wall Street Journal, he said "On Social Security, the Arizona senator says he still backs a system of private retirement accounts that President Bush pushed unsuccessfully, and disowned details of a Social Security proposal on his campaign Web site." So, what is the truth? He backs privatization but he doesn't back it? In the unhappy event that he is elected, we will have to change his title to "Waffler in Chief." I suspect that the real truth, as in anything else to do with the economy, McCain simply knows little and thinks less.

The concept of privatization is a very tricky one. Privatization of, say, the railroads would mean selling them off to private investors of one sort or another. Privatization of social security is not so clearly interpreted linguistically. The problem we face is the words "private" and "personal" occupy almost the same semantic space. "Private" is an adjective and from it we can form the verb "privatize" and this in turn can be turned into the noun "privatization." The on line Merriam dictionary says of the adjective that it "means" "belonging to or concerning an individual person, company, or interest". Note the term "person" in this "definition." (I am snigger quoting here because as I have made clear elsewhere in this blog that dictionaries don't give definitions or meanings but instead give word and phrasal equivalents. "Personal" on the other hand is "defined" as "of, relating to, or affecting a particular person." Private thus has a broader reach than personal. Therein lies the problem.

When I have heard talking of "privatization of social security," most have been people that are sure that they can beat the returns to them of their social security taxes if they could only get their hands on this money. But, of course, neocons like Bush and McCain do not have in mind giving the Average Joe a shot at use of this money as the Average Joe sees fit. Instead, they will give it to some sort of private, as opposed to governmental, investment companies who cannot fail to profit -- they will take a cut of the money no matter what. The reason for this is clear -- the government knows that if it lets you and me invest this money as we see fit, many of us will fail to invest wisely and the government will be faced with bailing us out -- by creating an uber-safety net we might call "Social Security Plus."

Barack Obama is a White Man

2008-06-09T08:23:00.004-04:00

I don't get it. Obama is seen as a Black man. Why not see him as a White man. He is, if I understand his parentage, 50% White and 50% Black. Moreover, he went to Harvard. This constitutes unimpeachable evidence (sort of) that Obama is a White man. Tiger Woods is 50% Black and 50% Thai. How in hell does that make him into a Black man. His father raised him, it seems, to be White in that he taught him a mostly White sport and sent him to mostly White Standford University (the last is a guess). I suspect that Tiger has more White friends than Black ones. I hereby claim him as a White man.

Back when I was a full time faculty remember I looked over a class I was about to teach Sociolinguistics for the first time and remarked that it was too bad there were no African Americans in the class since we would be talking about issues of interest to them. A girl right in front of me said, "What makes you think that there aren't any Blacks in this room?" I took a good look at her essentially White freckled face and her red hair and said, on observing that her hair was "kinky" in the way the hair of Blacks can be and replied, "If you say so." The next class two relatively clear cases of Black students showed up.

Since that "error" on my part, I have observed all manner of athletes on TV whose race I find it impossible to tell. They could be very light skinned "Black" people or White people. Certainly their skin color is often lighter than that of certain so-called "White" people from Europe.

It seems that there has been a "one drop" rule for distinguishing Whites from Blacks in America. Wikipedia puts it this way;

The one-drop rule is an historical colloquial term in the United States that holds that a person with any trace of African ancestry (however small or invisible) cannot be considered white[1] and so, unless the person has an alternative non-white ancestry that he or she can claim, such as Native American, Asian, Arab, Australian aboriginal, the person must be considered black.

This is asinine. One might as well have a one drop rule for making someone White.

When I was an undergraduate at Rice, I wrote a paper on race in which I cited research that showed that if one abstracted away all of the defining characteristics of race -- hair color and consistency (straight, curly, kinky, etc.), lip shape, nose shape, skin color (taking shades seriously), butt size, etc. and valued them equally, we could come up with some pretty wild racial groupings if we were to take any one of them as the single most important criterion.

Should we take blackness of the hair as most important, we would be inclined to put Orientals and Blacks together. Were we to take the straight/kinky hair characteristic as definitive, we would lump together Blacks and certain Semitic peoples. Should we take straightness of hair as definitive, we might lump certain Whites, Orientals, and some or all of Amerindians together into one race. But we didn't do any of these things. The Black-White distinction was picked and in America and elsewhere, the one drop rule was adopted for racial identification. That is sad.

In fact, the Black/White thing is ethnic more than any other thing. On that ground alone, Barack Obama is more White than Black. I have seen him engage in certain sporting activities. He would be on the outer reaches of the Bell Curve for acquired and native athleticism of Black's based on what I have seen. He and his wife seem to be very different in their ethnicity but I surely have missed something. I would need to see him at, say, a family reunion of his wife's family. This is probably going to sound racist but I don't mean it to be. Michelle Obama acts more Black than Barack does and I suspect that at a reunion of her people, we might find him acting more like she does. Who knows? None of us should really care.

A year or so ago, I saw a film of a family reunion that might look a lot like Barack's parent's family reunions might look like -- lots of Blacks and Whites and In Betweens. They seemed to get along quite well with each other. Indeed they seemed to act quite lovingly toward each other. That should be the model for America. We have a chance with Barack Obama to make it so. We Whites should claim him for ourselves.

The Language of Time

2008-06-01T16:47:00.006-04:00

Once in grad school at Rice, I read Husserl's "Phenomenology of Time Consciousness" in German because it had not been translated and I was interested in Husserl's philosophy and in the concept of time. I don't remember a word. whether German or English, but I have remembered some other things philosophers have side about time. I have been most fond of St. Augustine's claim that

"who denieth the present time hath no
space, because it passeth away in a moment?"

Indeed,time hath so space in that it is infinitely divisible.

Grocho Marx is famous for saying in a movie

"“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana”"

Thus was a legendary linguistic ambiguity born. I heard the first clause from Noam Chomsky in a lecture who used it as an illustration of syntactic ambiguity. Since some seem to find it difficult to grasp the ambiguity, note that were there such things as "time flies" then perhaps such flies could like an arrow. Why not? Now, the syntactic issue is whether "time" is functioning as an unmodified noun and "flies like an arrow" ascribes a property of time or "time" is modifying the noun "flies." Of course, time would have to bend, which is, if I may be forgiven a digression, may explain why fruit is said to fly like a banana. However it is to ask too much of any comedian to make total sense.

I am drawn to make these not always sensible remarks about time because I was listening on NPR this afternoon (Sunday) in which a man was describing a contest his father had suckered him into as to who could make the best photographs of his dying grandfather. The young man, a teenager, didn't realize that the point of this competition was to get the kid to attend to his grandfather during his last days. Interestingly his buddies, with whom he worked at a restaurant thought that this was very cool and they followed him home each night where they drank beer, helped him lift his grandfather off his soiled sheets so his hideous bedsores would be less painful, and clean him off and sheets changed -- all things one does not often think of young men being willing to do. It ended with someone saying

"its just a matter of time now"

This is a very interesting use of time for it seems somehow to attribute a certain causal efficacy to time.

Indeed, at the point this referred to there was nothing medicine nor nursing care could do for the old man. He was going to die soon. Of course, we also ascribe the opposite causal efficacy to time as when we say that time heals all wounds (except, of course, the ones that kill you.) People mourning the loss of someone to death or a break up of some romantic relationship are invariably told by others that they just need to give themselves some time to recover. Time kills and time heals. Can it do anything else?

I am inclined to think that there is really no such thing as time. Saint Augustine made it quite clear that time can be infinitely divisible. So far as i know, physicists have not discovered any infinitesimally small particles. Perhaps, instead time flows, another time dishonored metaphor/cliche. Amazingly in a press release from the University of Chicago headlined "Scientists zero in on why time flows in one direction" we have not just the "flow" of time, we get the arrow as well." And flowing of all things!

[Sean] Carroll and [Jennifer] Chen's research addresses two ambitious questions: why does time flow in only one direction, and could the big bang have arisen from an energy fluctuation in empty space that conforms to the known laws of physics?

The question about the arrow of time has vexed physicists for a century because "for the most part the fundamental laws of physics don't distinguish between past and future. They're time-symmetric," Carroll said. "

I would suggest that physicists might be less vexed if they quit using metaphors.

The fact is that time per se does not exist. It is simply a means by which we keep track of processes and events. It is no less an instrument of measurement than is a ruler. Now, if physicists are vexed that their formulae can be run forward or backward with respect to time then they need only recognize that what is not reversible are processes and event sequences. If they were, then our dying grandfather could, at least in principle, be deaged with his bed sores going away and his good health recovered. Even if that were made possible, what would stop the man from being an infant and then a fetus and then a spermatozoon and an egg and then a gleam in daddy's eye and ... This way of thinking lies madness. Thinking of time going backward somehow is not a problem since, not existing, who cares whether physicists use a construct that allows for the possibility that once the big bang is spent, the universe might collapse in on itself, and form a very tiny, very heavy mass and blow up again. Of course, if that happened, it would not deexpand in the exact reverse of how it expanded because that would mean processes could be reversed and that is not possible. So, physicists, relax. Your problem is not a time problem. It is a dying problem. I suspect the universe's way of dying is to expand forever until gravity ceases to exist.

America is not America

2008-05-23T07:50:00.005-04:00

Yes, I would appear to have contradicted myself but hear me out. Last night my wife and I watched the finale of this season's episode of Boston Legal. Two themes dominated -- one was on the nature of friendship. The other was what does America stand for? The conflict that drove the latter theme was that the city of Concord, MA wanted Alan Shore, a liberal lawyer with Crane, Poole, and Schmidt, to bring an action against the United States to sever its relationship to the country. The second theme was driven by the fact that Denny Crane, who has "Mad Cow" (aka Alzheimers) and is a cognitively impaired (but mostly in regard to his behaviors) patriot and Alan's best friend decides to defend the US against this secession law suit.

Alan was very good as an advocate for Concord's suit. Denny was, to everyone's great surprise, a good deal better. He countered Alan's argument that the US under George Bush has ceased to abide by the values held by the founding fathers of the country in allowing torture, imprisonment of people, including Americans, without any access to family members, to say nothing of lawyers, invading another country for totally fabricated reasons, etc. We all know what the Bush Administration has done. Denny responded by pointing out that America has been violating the principles held by the founding fathers, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. from the very beginning His argument, then, was that there is nothing new under the American sun.

Is Denny right? During my time working for Civil Rights in the early 60's and against the Vietnam War in the mid-60's to the mid-70's I wondered why I was getting so worked up about how Blacks were being treated in Texas, where I was living during the time of my civil rights activity, or our fighting in Vietnam in order ostensibly to make S. Vietnam free of Communist rule. (America's actions toward Vietnam began with our canceling an election that would have unified Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, who, by the way, had been an ally in WW II, which was totally at variance with our professed values.) The answer I came up with was that the values I was taught in civics class in Junior High or High School seemed to be being violated and I believed it was my duty to do what I could to bring our behaviors in line with our values. We were taught about all the wonderful things we stood for and the wonderful actions we had taken to help others. We were not taught about all the rotten things we have done, such as imprisonment of perfectly innocent Japanese Americans during WW II, among very many other quite rotten things. Had our text book and teacher been honest, I might not have grown up to be the Idealist I came to be (and still am despite all the evidence that it is a pretty hopeless perspective on the world). I shouldn't forget, of course, that my parents promoted the same values as those taught in my civics classes. I suspect that ver few parents tell their kids the ugly truths about America.)

The way Conservatives talk, they had their brains frozen after their educations in all the wonderful things America stands for. The result is that they brand anyone who draws attention to our flaws as a traitor.

America was not America when it was founded. The language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is totally inconsistent with slavery and Founding Fathers knew this but chose to ignore this inconvenient truth in order to form our "more perfect union." Note now that slavery -- at least the sort of slavery that Blacks had to endure -- does not now exist. At the height of my disdain for the United States (I would cringe during the playing of the national anthem) for its failure to provide equal opportunities to all people and and its fighting in Vietnam on behalf of puppet leaders, my wife and I went to Edinburgh, Scotland, where I did research at the University of Edinburgh. While there it became apparent to me that Great Britain was some 20 years behind the US in its race relations and that did it have the military power of the US the UK would likely be engaged in even worse military atrocities. At the time, if memory serves, the UK was the only country that continued to supply arms to the White government of S. Africa. I decided that maybe the US was not as bad as I thought it was.

I learned from that experience that the values I believed America stands for are less a reality than an ambition. It is our ambition that minorities of all sorts (even when they are majorities, as in the case of women) should have equal opportunities but that is not yet a reality. With a simple change from the quite evil government of George Bush, to an administration led by Obama or Clinton (I'm much less sure of McCain) we will make a quantum leap toward making America's values a bit more of a reality.

Sadly, Obama is going to get the nomination in the Democratic Party to run for President and he is going to lose. America's reality is that it is too racist to elect a Black man -- even one who is very different from the sorts of Blacks who have run in the past (with perhaps the exception of Shirley Chisholm) that White America has been afraid of in some sense of the term. However, if the superdelegates in the Democratic Party were to see this truth for what it is -- a truth that the voters in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and now Kentucky have made quite evident -- and decide to move over to Clinton's side, then Hillary would lose as well, for Blacks would be very, very angry at this. What they would do, I do not know.

So, my prediction is that America is insufficiently evolved to elect a Black man and that is a shame

When an Apology Isn't

2008-05-06T07:28:00.004-04:00

Roger Clemens, possibly the greatest pitcher in baseball history, continues to wreak havoc on his reputation. Last week The Daily News of New York City claimed that

Roger Clemens carried on a decade-long affair with country star Mindy McCready, a romance that began when McCready was a 15-year-old aspiring singer performing in a karaoke bar and Clemens was a 28-year-old Red Sox ace and married father of two, several sources have told the Daily News.

This is an interesting sentence since it refers both to an affair (sexual) and a romance (possibly not sexual). So, it is not asserted that Mr. Clemens committed statutory rape. Clemens' spokesman claimed that she was a long time friend of his family. Ms. McCready said

"I cannot refute anything in the story,"

So, she denies neither that she had an affair nor a romance with Clemons.

What interests me is, first, that Clemens does not speak for himself but rather uses a spokesman. This may be because Clemens is involved in a suit and counter-suit with his former trainer, Brian McNamee, the source for claims that he used performance enhancing drugs. The second thing that occurs to me is his apology. Clemens said, according to the Columbus Dispatch (the AP being the source)

"Even though these articles contain many false accusations and mistakes, I need to say that I have made mistakes in my personal life for which I am sorry," Clemens said in a statement issued by spokesman Patrick Dorton. "I have apologized to my family and apologize to my fans. Like everyone, I have flaws. I have sometimes made choices which have not been right."

This is as far from a genuine apology as one can get. He claims that he has made "mistakes" in his personal life. I trust it is clear that sleeping with a 15 year old, if he did that, is rather more than a mistake. It is a crime. And cheating on his wife is not my idea of a mistake. We use the quite powerful term "adultery" to refer to that sort of "mistake". Perhaps he needs a scarlet "A" tattooed on his forehead. If I were his wife I would insist on it.

I am totally fed up with people referring to serious errors of judgment leading to actions that are reprehensible as "mistakes." Getting the result "5" on adding "2" and "4" is a mistake. Committing adultery is not a mistake. It is an immoral action of a particularly nasty sort for it betrays the one person in one's life who should be able to count on you. (This is my former Baptist self speaking.)

Roger's biggest "mistake" was to sue Brian McNamee for outing him as just another jock who used performance enhancing drugs, for this made him vulnerable to McNamee's lawyers during their depositions. These disclosures about his personal life might have stayed quietly buried in the past had Clemons simply ignored McNamee. He should simply have said, "These pernicious allegations are unworthy of comment."

The lamest part of Clemons is his statement that "Like everyone, I have flaws." So, now he is saying that statutory rape (something he might have done) are excusable on the grounds that everyone does stuff like that. Sorry, Roger. We don't all make "mistakes" of that sort.

The McNamee camp is itself not lacking in flaws. The Dispatch reports

"I think what it says without saying it is that he apparently admits he cheated on his wife and family. And if he cheated on them, I think it's reasonable to assume that he cheated his fans and baseball," Richard Emery, one of McNamee's lawyers, said in a telephone interview.

Sorry Mr. Emery, cheating in one compartment of one's life does not mean that one cheats in all parts of one's life and that would have to be true for this squalid inference to hold.

Bush's Anti-Terrorist Language Reform

2008-04-25T08:08:00.005-04:00

Having failed in defeating Osama bin Laden with military weapons, the Bush Administration has decided to give a linguistic reformation a go. Perhaps because of a misguided belief in Orwell's thesis that political language can determine political thought, the Bush Administration has decided that we should no longer call Al Qaida a "movement." One wants to ask whether it was okay to call them that right after 9/11 but not now? Was it ever okay to call them that?

Bush doesn't want us to see Al Qaida as "an organized effort by supporters of a common goal, a leader of the labor movement," as Answers.com puts it.The reason, of course, is that there is no evidence that Al Qaida is organized in the way that the labor movement is. The problem is that the Bush Administration has been using the threat of concerted actions by members of Al Qaida to destroy us for the last seven years to scare us into letting him do whatever it is he wants to do to kill them off -- undermine our civil rights, engage in torture, etc. So, unable to defeat the Bogey Man, Bush now tells us that there is no Bogey Man. Good luck with that.

According to the AP story I am referencing

Federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center, are telling their people not to describe Islamic extremists as "jihadists" or "mujahedeen," according to documents obtained by the Associated Press. Lingo like "Islamo-fascism" is out, too.

The reason is that

Such words might boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates.

Since bullets, bombs, and other weapons of war have failed to kill bin Laden or those who practice terrorism, it seems that we will use language. The AP story continues with this amazing statement:

Language is critical in the war on terror, says another document, an "official use only" memorandum circulating through Washington.

Maybe these people didn't get the memo most children get that sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. I hate to be the one to break it to our government officials, but our linguistic reforms will have no impact whatsoever on the actions of those who hate us for this, that, or the other thing.

One of the reasons that we are so widely hated in the Muslim world is that we are occupying several Muslim nations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait. Another is that we are killing ordinary people in Afghanistan (and maybe Pakistan as well) and Iraq who have never shot a bullet in our direction, committing the very crime that we accuse terrorists of, namely the killing of innocent civilians. Perhaps we do not do so deliberately but the law in the United States reserves cells for those who kill without the intent to kill. At the very least, this counts as Involuntary Manslaughter.

I'm afraid that the Bush Administration thinks that a linguistic reform will achieve what he has not been able to achieve with his sticks and stones. It may help to ease the fears of domestic Muslims but to think that seriously is an insult to these Americans. They are not as stupid as our Bush Administration linguists. What the Bush Administration might think of trying is such things as (a) an even-handed approach to Israel and Palestine, economically and militarily, (b) a withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Kuwait, and (c) a determined effort to get Muslim states to join with NATO in the effort to root out the terrorists along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. If we cannot get them to join us, then that will be pretty good evidence that we should consider withdrawing from that country as well. The fact is that the correct way to deal with terrorism is to see it as a policing problem. Where training camps pop up, I would suggest asking the host nation to destroy them with or without our help using carrots (money) and sticks (uninvited strikes by American special forces units), when carrots don't work. It would be a simple thing to tell countries that if they host such camps there will be consequences.

Are We Better Off Overall?

2008-04-23T07:51:00.005-04:00

This morning, I decided I needed a jolt of Morning Joe to become fully awake. One of the commercials run during this MSNBC show offered up by the Democratic National Committee directly attacks McCain's credibility. I have created a table that reasonably accurately presents what went on. All of the responses were from a single sitting -- the background is the same behind McCain. It is possible that the opening question (which I have abbreviated a tiny bit) came from that same session.

Democratic National Committee TV Commercial
Off Screen Background Question	McCain Answers	Graphic Countering Facts
Senator McCain, Are Americans better off than they were 8 years ago?	Americans, overall, are better off; pretty good prosperous time.	Household Income Down $1000
	Low Unemployment	Unemployment Up
	Low Inflation	Highest Inflation In 17 years
	A lot of good things have happened	Gas Prices Up 200%
	A lot of jobs have been created	1.8 Million Jobs Lost
	I think we are better off overall	Do You Feel Better Off
		Is John McCain the Right Choice For America's Future?

The question, "Are you better off now than you were N years ago?" seems to be an effective campaign query and it can work both for an incumbent or his or her opponent. In this case, we have neither. However, McCain, perhaps making a colossal campaign blunder, takes on the mantle of defending eight years of Bush failures rather than saying simply that he is not Bush and that he has a different way of looking at the world and will have policies that differ from those of Bush to varying degrees, some small and some large. He is, after all, a self-described "maverick." Perhaps he should dress himself up in Bret Maverick's outfit, which you can see in this You Tube clip. Better yet, maybe the Democrats should.

The answer McCain gives to the "Better Off" question is as lame as I can think of -- we are better off overall. What in living hell does that mean? Nothing in particular, so McCain elaborates some particulars which you can see in the second column. The third column refutes the claims of the second column. The response that household income is down $1000 per se does not do so, but if one adds increased unemployment, increased inflation, including in particular an increase in gas prices that makes doing everything from going to a job, to the grocery store, to one's church, and to movies and other entertainments, we have a resounding refutation. My wife and I are not more prosperous. We have suffered a decline in stock values and a decrease in the spending power of our retirement income and income from stocks. So, it is easy for me to calculate the effect of the cost of the War in Iraq and various other stupid Bush policies on our degree of prosperousness.

I am delighted that McCain has decided to run on the Bush record. He will, of course, run for the hills once the one-on-one campaign heats up. Unfortunately, I am convinced that in the very unlikely event that Hillary wins, African Americans will either not vote, vote for the Megalomaniac Nader, or vote for McCain. Meanwhile, if Obama wins, I fear White racism will kill off his chances. The White vote for Hillary played a major role in her win in Pennsylvania. Much of that White vote will go to the old White addle-pated guy, McCain.

Did I mention that after his answer to all but two of his assertions, he closed his eyes. In one of these two cases, his reply was cut off too quickly to see it. The Democrats should run it about 20 milliseconds longer. And, though it was hard to tell given the McCain sound bytes, it seemed that he closed his eyes before making his next point. It is as if he had bought into the first monkey's injunction, "See no evil," the evil being his intentional falsehoods. Allegedly one of the signs someone is lying is closing one's eyes.

One of my favorite Eagles songs is Lyin' Eyes. Having suckered a rich old man into marrying her, the bored wife decides she needs a bit of a change.

So she tells him she must go out for the evening
To comfort an old friend who's feelin' down
But he knows where she's goin' as she's leavin'
She is headed for the cheatin' side of town

You can't hide your lyin' eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you'd realize
There ain't no way to hide your lyin eyes

The Difficulty in being French

2008-04-16T08:52:00.005-04:00

The French have a very long history of trying to preserve the French language and culture in the face of the insidious influence of Anglos -- both the Brits and the Americans. Years ago, an effort was made by the French to restrict the percentage of American movies shown on French television stations. Thanks to them, the EU has gone along with this same protectionist policy. A study of EU, especially French, protectionism notes

The 1989 EU "Television Without Frontiers" directive and quotas implemented by the French Government limit the number of American films shown in French theaters and on French Television. The EU Broadcast Directive was passed inOctober 1989 in an effort to protect and promote the Europeancultural identity. The directiverequires that EU member-states reserve a majority (51 percent) of entertainment broadcast transmission time for programs of European origin. France lobbied hardest to pass the EU directive and has since implemented the most stringent quotas within its national system.

The study notes that when France produced movies as good or better than American movies they welcomed them. One may reasonably infer that the French people want to see more than the crazy French Arts Facists are comfortable with.

Interestingly, the Brits and Aussies have robust movie industries and both make very high quality movies. You should check Aussie movies out. They do not see protectionism as a problem. What they do is train great actors and ship them off to the US. Indeed, if anyone needs protection it is American actors for Aussie and British actors litter the landscapes of our movie screens and I couldn't be happier about it. Who could object to seeking Kidman and Watts in its nation's films. I believe that if Aussies, for instance, didn't appear in high quality Aussie movies, their actors wouldn't be invited over.

At this time, the French are in a terrible quandary. It seems that there is an Eurovision song contest and the French entry has -- Alors! -- some English lyrics. It seems that the French entry comes from France's culture minister, Sebastien Tellier, and "his entry, entitled Divine, combines both English and French lyrics with electro music.
France's culture minister has defended his song, saying the country should fully support his bid for victory."

Only the weak need employ protectionist policies. If French movies can't compete with American movies now, the solution is to produce better movies, not restrict the import of movies from elsewhere. I would suggest that the French follow the lead of Australia in developing the performing arts.

Gains in Iraq

2008-04-09T07:34:00.005-04:00

General Petraeus is back in the USA shilling for his version of the Bush "stay the course" policy in Iraq. His argument before the Senate Armed Forces Committee was that there have been gains as a result of the surge but that they are "fragile" and "reversible" and so we cannot, as promised, be reducing the number of troops in Iraq. This is a thoroughly Orwellian statement for it can be argued that gains that are fragile and reversible aren't gains at all. This reminds me of gambling. If one goes to Las Vegas, plays poker and wins $1,000, you and I know that that this gain is fragile and reversible should one play poker longer. So, if your intention is to play poker longer, have you actually won $1,000?

Recently the leader of Iraq, without consulting the American military until his military plan went down the tubes and his troops needed rescuing. Why did he do that? Probably because he didn't want to explain to the American officers why he wanted to engage in this battle. It was probably politically or personally motivated. Of course, he might have wanted to display to us and his people that his government was on top of things in Iraq.

In the most amazing testimony I have heard or read about by an American officer to the Senate can be found at the Washington Post's web site

Asked repeatedly yesterday what "conditions" he is looking for to begin substantial U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq after this summer's scheduled drawdown, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said he will know them when he sees them.

Now, though it makes no sense in fact, we let people get away with saying things like "I can't define pornography but I know it when I see it." The reason we shouldn't take even that sort of claim seriously is that reasonable people differ in what they say is pornographic. We damn sure shouldn't take Gen. Petraeus seriously. In academia we call this "hand waving." I think it should be likened more to the General showing his middle finger to the Democratically led committee.

John McCain's Temper

2008-04-08T16:50:00.002-04:00

I heard today on my local liberal/progressive radio station that John McCain in a display of temper referred to his wife as a "trollop," a linguistic choice which indicates his very advanced age, and as a "cunt," a linguistic choice that indicates that this is not a very nice man, certainly not the sort of man a woman ought to be with. Both illustrate the fact that he has a temper. Fact checking brought up The Atlantic.com's reference to these linguistic droppings.

The author of the Atlantic blog offering asksW

hat do you think the age cutoff is below which it becomes utterly implausible that someone would use the term "trollop" in a non-ironic context?

My answer to that question is that the person would have to be older than my 69 years. My guestimate is that maybe 85-90 years old would be a reasonable cutoff age for someone to have "trollop" in his productive vocabulary. To actually have it in one's active linguistic vacabulary, one would need to be totally out of touch with the world he lives in.

The Washington Post has a 1999 article bringing McCain's volcanic temper to the attention of the nation, claiming

In a front page article and separate editorial Sunday, The Arizona Republic said it wanted the nation to know about the "volcanic" temper McCain has unleashed on several top state officials.
Those who have been on the receiving end of a McCain uproar include Republican Gov. Jane Hull, former Republican Gov. Rose Mofford and former Democratic Mayor Paul Johnson of Phoenix.

The article went on to say

McCain blamed the Bush campaign for helping plant recent temper stories and said the "hothead" portrayal was inaccurate.

"Do I insult anybody or fly off the handle or anything like that? No, I don't," insisted McCain.

Clearly we are dealing with a long standing problem.

There was a time when Presidential temperament was a major issue in selecting Presidents. Obama clearly has an even temper. Hillary gets high marks though Bill no longer does (when defending his wife). McCain does not. He is also very, very old, even older than I am if that's possible. I will probably have more to say about this but I will leave you with this thought: no one ever says anything that is not on his mind. Watch your guard, Mrs. McCain who though very made up hardly looks like a trollop. She's actually very nice looking to my ancient eyes.

Freedom of Expression vs Social Responsibility

2008-03-28T16:33:00.004-04:00

A Right Wing Dutch politician has made a film that is perceived as anti-Islamic and some Islamic countries have responded as one might predict. Unlike Christianity, Islam brooks no criticism, even from those outside the religion. I have no religious dog in this fight but I do have a dog in the fight for freedom of expression.

What chaps my butt is that the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations has also condemned the film. According to the BBC News web site, "The film sets verses from the Koran against a background of violent images from terror attacks." The Secretary General says, according to this web site,

"I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders' offensively anti-Islamic film," Mr Ban said in a statement.

"The right of free expression is not at stake here," he added. "Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility."

Unfortunately, while the notion "free expression" is very clear in meaning -- it means (entails) that you and I may say or write any damn thing we like. There is a substantive problem with the Secretary General's notion of "social responsibility." The problem is that there is no internationally accepted set of standards of social responsibility.

Local communities like to pretend that they have standards of social responsibility. They pretend, for instance, that the community is agreed that certain representations are obscene. Photographs of naked women, if artfully done, might be seen as art and therefore as not appealing to our prurient interests. In another photograph, women might be shown engaging in sexual acts with each other. A museum that tried to put that on the walls might be forced to take it down. I happened to be in Cincinnati, Ohio during the time the infamous Mapplethorpe exhibit was on display. It contained photographs of naked men and of a crucifix, perhaps one with Christ on it, in a glass of urine. I have no doubt that these depictions violated the standards of social propriety in Cincinnati. Had it been on display at the Wexner Center at The Ohio State University I suspect it might not have been so controversial.

The idea there are local standards of propriety or social responsible behavior, while a bit of a fiction, does have some value. It allows us to (try to) keep certain materials out of the hands of very young children, for instance. What I very much doubt is that there are international standards of propriety or social responsible behavior. I, for one, am not a bit offended by this right wing Dutchman's film, as described. I am offended, however, by some of the Islamist's responses. An Al-Qaeda linked web site calls for his death and for increased attacks on Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan. I recently watched the Dutch movie, Brothers, and was not offended by the depiction of the extraordinarily brutal Al-Qaeda/Talliban actions toward two Dutch prisoners held n Afghanistan. I suspect that many Muslims would have been angry about this sort of depiction.

The reality is that there are very few international social mores that would be agreed to by the international community as a whole. There seems to be fairly universal distaste for incest within the nuclear family (father-daughter, for instance). There are not many other sexual mores that are universal condemned. And, people generally don't agree as to what sorts of criticism of a religion are acceptable. Perhaps the fact that there is no established church in the US is why we don't get very worked up about criticism of religions because implicit in having so many different religions and sects within our religions is that there is disagreement about basic principles.

I suspect this is the only thing I would agree to among the various beliefs of our Dutch Right Winger, but I do agree that there is nothing at all wrong with juxtaposing images of Islamic violence and passages of the Koran, the reason being simply that those who engage in this violence maintain that they do what they do in defense of their religion. I believe that our Secretary General must be an idiot. He is telling us that saying "Don't say 'P'" doesn't restrict what we can say. Claiming an exception to freedom of expression based on certain social values is ridiculous. As the Secretary General, he in some sense speaks for all of us. I don't want him to be speaking for me if this is the sort of thing he has to say.

Lipo This and Lipo That

2008-03-19T07:57:00.002-04:00

The product "Lipozene" is being advertised on television these days as a -- you should be able to guess -- a weight loss product. It is one of huge number of weight/fat loss products that uses the morpheme "lipo," which means "fat." As it turns out, Googling "lipo*" brings up a wealth of such products. We are greeted with products that involve injection of a drug into fat deposits (Lipo-Dissolve), application of a cream to the thighs (Reviva Lipo Zyme Thigh Cream), a spray (Now Foods B 12 Lipo Spray) that is applied to foods, a gel (LIPO SCULPT GEL TOPICAL FAT LOSS 8 OZ BODY DEFINING) that, like the cream, is applied to the body. a combo cream and massaging tool (Lipo Reduction Anti-Cellulite Cream & Body Shaping Massager) for the price of $142, as well as a host of pills, caplets, etc.

You will be happy to know that if you buy the combo cream and massager, you will get "discrete shipping." This reminded me when I read it that when I was in junior high school (grades 7-9) I succumbed to a print entreaty to purchase a "spot reducer," which turned out to be a round electrical massager that, of course, did nothing at all except jiggle fat deposits. It too promised discrete shipping. I hid the product in a discrete location in the house and someone discretely lifted it for their own use.

These products all exploit the term "liposuction" by way of suggesting that there is an easier way to go than to have a doctor suck out fat from your bod, a disgusting sounding procedurey. Of this wealth of products, there seems to be one reasonably substantive product, the injectable Lipo-Dissolve, which, it seems, is awaiting FDA approva, something none of the others claim. A process like this has apparently been used for some time in Europe but the US requires more verification of the effectiveness of a drug or procedure before it is approved. I would wait until the FDA says that the procedure works.

I trust that none of you has fallen prey to the unscrupulous makers and advertisers and sellers of these products. Actually, I shouldn't be so optimistic because, at least in the US, we have stores that teem with pills and powders and liquids that when ingested are supposed to provide some health benefit. Someone is clearly buying these products.

Ferraro's Stupid Counterfactual

2008-03-11T20:24:00.002-04:00

Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to appear on a Presidential ticket, has infamously said

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

What makes this counterfactual stupid is that, as David Lewis demonstrated in his book, Counterfactuals, one cannot, in attempting to determine the truth of a counterfactual ("If P, then Q", where "P" is false) simply alter the world in the single respect specified by the antecedent ("P" in our example) and see whether "Q" is true or not.

In point of fact, if you changed Obama into a White man, then he certainly wouldn't be in his current position because this is a state of affairs that began back when he, as a Black man, ran for the state assembly of Illinois. Its my understanding that he ran for that position while living in a predominantly Black legislative district. So, if you turned him into a White man, you will have put him in the very difficult position of winning a seat in a Black district against, presumably, a Black opponent. Now that could happen but it isn't likely. So, you would have to move him from that area to a White area. Of course, it would matter which area he was in. If you happened to make him Polish, you wouldn't want to put him in an Irish area or Italian area. As one can readily see, this way lies madness.

Scientists use counterfactuals in empirical research by controlling all of the parameters affecting the outcome of an event but for one, which they vary. In their hands, counterfactuals do not do harm. They are okay in the hands of other people trained in their use such as logicians, for instance, but shouldn't be used by the average, educated, even highly educated, person. This is specialist stuff. So, I hereby direct you not to make claims like, "If Hitler hadn't been born, Germany wouldn't have turned fascist." Or, "If I were better looking, Mary wouldn't have divorced me." You get the idea. Maybe the best rule is "NEVER USE A COUNTERFACTUAL." Nothing good can come from doing so.

One thing that pisses me off every time I hear it is when some White Middle-Class American Protestant male background makes some disparaging remark about the government providing support for poor Blacks or Hispanics or Appalachian Whites saying that they worked for what they have and these other people ought to have to do so too. I was born to White middle-class parents who did suffer economic setbacks, but my mother had an MA degree from Columbia and my father a BA from the University of Illinois. Already, I had one truly fundamental advantage over many of my peers -- all my life it was a given that I would go to college. And, indeed, I and my three siblings all got degrees from universities.

But I had another advantage, namely a rich uncle who said that if I could get into Rice University, I could stay for free at his home in Houston (one long block from River Oaks, the classiest neighborhood in Houston at the time. I got in, and my degree from Rice helped me get into MIT. I could go on and on specifying major advantages I had, some of which I had to work hard to exploit, but which wouldn't have been available to 95% (wild guess) of the American people. Oh, yes, we can add to my advantages that I was born in late 30's in the United States, rather than in Russia.

Ferraro had become addle pated. She needs to be ignored by everyone. One of the funniest aspects of this is that twice she tried to win a Senate seat but failed both times. Obama tried once and succeeded and he succeed in a state that is predominately White.

Who are the White Ethnic Voters?

2008-03-04T18:20:00.004-05:00

MSNBC political pundits are, as I write, refering to a class of voters in Ohio and other states, as Ethnic White voters. What in hell are Ethnic White Voters? On the MSNBC web site, it notes that exit polls suggest that "white, blue collar and older voters" are trending toward Clinton whereas African Americans are voting for Obama. In short, for the most part, Whites go for Clinton and Blacks for Obama. These are, of course, overlapping descriptive terms since a single person could be white, blue collar, and old.

I already knew that America is a racist country with Blacks being every bit as racist if not more racist than Whites. The difference in this election is I suspect that a greater percentage of Whites are voting for Obama than would be true of Blacks in regard to Clinton. These Whites would, of course, be liberals. This tendency is magnified by Obama's seeming to be the more liberal candidate. The more extreme liberals would be anti-Clinton since Bill moved the party toward the center when he was President, which accounts both for his getting elected and the successes he had as President. Much to the chagrin of Republicans, Clinton stole some of their most basic tenets -- free trade, balanced budgets (forget that Reagan and W have been pro-deficit -- Reagan was a Reagan conservative (no taxes for the rich) and W is a neocon, a very different kind of rat), and the like. So, now you know why White liberals don't like Hilary. She isn't noticeably liberal (any more).

But that brings me back to the intriguing concept of the Ethnic White. There was a time when I saw Italian Americans and Irish Americans as classic cases of Ethnic Whites -- Whites who maintain their ethnic identity. I don't think that this is what the pundits on MSNBC have in mind exactly.

These pundits also speak of Working Class Whites. At this point, I am massively confused. Are Working Class Whites the same as Ethnic Whites or different? Historically, Ethnic Whites did tend to hold blue collar jobs back when such jobs existed. I think that these MSNBC pundits are using "Ethnic White" to refer to what are sometimes called "Red Necks." Nowhere in these discussions is there any reference to "Whites who continue to be fairly racist" but we all know that there are still plenty of them around -- indeed, they abound in Ohio. As I write this, I am no longer watching the political coverage because there is a competing Ohio State basketball game to watch so I don't know how Ohio will go. I am betting we can expect our Ethnic Whites to make the difference for Hillary. There is an irony here -- no President has been as pro-Black as Bill Clinton but now, assuming I haven't totally misread the situation, the historic White racists are voting for Hillary. That's okay by me since gobs of Black racists are voting for Obama.

I hope I have been reasonably coherent. It is hard to compose prose and watch a basketball game at the same time.

Body of Work

2008-02-29T20:30:00.002-05:00

If you want to understand how nauseating a trite expression can be, just listen to sports people evaluating their own teams if coaches or teams and players if analysts. It will not be long before you run into "body of work," the most nauseating trite expression I have encountered in my life, easily eclipsing "think outside the box," which, at least, deals with a not easily expressed concept. Something like "You need to take a fresh look at this" doesn't convey what "think outside the box" does. Something like "I advise you to abandon your preconceived views when approaching such-and-such" comes much closer. Another possibility might be, "I advise you to abandon conventional wisdom when considering this problem." The problem with this last is that it contains a trite expression itself.

Some may wonder (I did) whether I should be calling these things cliches. Well, I entered "cliche" in the little box at the upper right corner of Mozilla Firefox and used the Merriam dictionary search engine for an answer and got "a trite phrase or expression" and "a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation." I popped in "trite" and got "hackneyed or boring from much use : not fresh or original." In short, there is little difference between the two terms though I would say that "cliche" fits better than "trite" for "thinking outside the box" while the reverse seems more applicable to "body of work."

What does a sports person mean by a "team's body of work"? Usually he or she means just the record of the team -- whom they beat and by how much and who beat them and by how much. That's all. In this case, we have people who have discovered that they can seem quite bright (at least to themselves and their peers, who also talk this way) if they use this phrase. It is like "at the end of the day," which is another trite expression/cliche that helps to make you seem smart, or once did, I think. It is also used by sports people. It replaces, more or less, "in the last analysis." Their might be better paraphrases for this.

I recall always being confused by accounts of the concepts "trite" and "cliche" by my literature and writing teachers. Obviously, they wanted their charges to use fresh expressions or, more reasonably, characterize something familiar in a fresh way. In the back of my mind, I tended to see their objection to the use of trite expressions by the common person (namely undergraduates) as snobbish. I had fun telling fellow students, whom I deemed snobbish, that practically everything Shakespeare wrote is trite. They would, of course, look at me as if I were mad, and they were, of course, close to being right. Hey, if you aren't a bit of a mad man you have little chance of avoiding hackneyed ways of expressing oneself.

My fellow students once their astonishment passed would defend Shakespeare by saying that when he wrote things like "All the world's a stage..." and all the other great lines they weren't trite at the time. I pointed out that that made no difference since we who were reading Shakespeare were being required to read copious amounts of trite material. I have always liked being a bit mean to snobs though, if truth be told, I am a bit of a snob myself but about different things usually. The reality is, when it comes to reading Shakespeare, these "trite" expressions are very comforting. One knows one is in the presence of genius.

I have used "think outside of the box" on occasion when too tired to talk or write outside the box. Saying this reminds me of another very tiresome expresion, "walk the talk." There is nothing wrong with the concept of course. It is just a tiresome expression. The main reason to avoid cliches/trite expressions is that if you do there is a chance that what one says will be original or at least not beaten to death by others.

Michelle Obama, the word "really", and the Right Wing

2008-02-19T07:33:00.004-05:00

Poor Michelle Obama made the mistake of saying “For the first time in my adult lifetime I’m really proud of my country,”according to the Daily Cardinal, the campus nespaper of the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Interestingly many other sites have dropped the "really" from what she said. The Boston Hearld dropped the "really" from her sentence.

The problem is that she said two nearly identical things in Madison, Wisconsin that day according to the Boston Globe. In one it seems as if there is no really. However, in that tape there is a glitch between "I'm" and "proud." Check it out. Whether the video has been clipped by some trickster or not I can't say, but there is a glitch. Perhaps somone with some good sound editing software can comment on this. In another case, she clearly says "really." So, your political position will, it seems, dictate which version you decide is the "authentic" one.

Joe Scarborough, being a conservative Super Patriot, of the Morning Joe show on MSNBC was clearly distressed, wondering idiotically if the "really" in her sentence was all that important to the meaning. His lovely and clearly much more intelligent sidekick, Mika, tried to explain what Ms. Obama had meant.

The aptly named Hot Air web site took her to task, titling the story Michelle Obama hasn’t been proud of America in at least 26 years? On and on we go as the right wing revises the language of the left of center as it pleases, hoping to create, I'm sure, a mini-Swift Boat controversay surounding Ms. Obama.

Yes, Joe, the "really" really counts. The sentence

I really like you.

is completely consistent with

I like you.

Similarly,

I am really proud of my country today.

is fully consistent with

I am proud of my country.

To anyone but a dummox like Scarborough and other Right Wing ninnies, these are indisputable facts.

During the Vietnam War, I was not proud of what my country was doing. In fact, I was incensed by it. If someone asked if I was proud of my country in general, I would have to have thought a minute since there was an active Civil Rights movement going on that was running into Southern resistance. Am I proud of America now? Not so much. Any country that can elect a cowboy like Bush is not worth of a lot of respect. However I am proud of what has been going on in the Democratic party where we have had a closely fought battle between an African-American and a White woman that has been reasonably civilized so far. I do not expect this to continue. Hillary got crushed in Wisconsin yesterday. I take this to mean that the Democrats (and Independents and Republicans) who voted in that primary have decided that we Democrats can win with him. That has been with many of us the key question.

What counts as a mistake?

2008-02-15T16:01:00.003-05:00

In this week's ESPN the Magazine, Stu Scott, an ESPN broadcast personage and writer says of Roger Clemens that "even if it is shown that he did do steriods, I would still have him in [the Houston Astro's "mini"] camp [as an instructor], because making a mistake shouldn't make you a pariah." The mistake would have been taking steroids and human growth hormone in an effort to allow him to train more effectively and thereby increase his strength to a degree not possible with normal weight training.

Now there are mistakes of all sorts. I suspect I will have a spelling mistake in this blog or make some grammatical error. These would not be intended and would count as mistakes. Should they be the result of an inability to spell the word correctly or not know that the grammatical error was an error, one of you would surely chastise me. After all, am I not The Language Guy?

So, we have unintentional mistakes made out of, say, negligence or ignorance. Let us suppose, however, that some young woman is induced to try ecstasy (X) at some club even though she knows that it may not be the smartest thing in the world to do and then manages to get inveigled to go to a young man's apartment where she has sex though in her right mind she would never have done this. Suppose further, that she gets pregnant. I think one could fairly describe her decision to take X as a mistake, an error in judgment. However, if she were to routinely take X at parties and routinely end up the evening having sex with some guy would we say that she has made a mistake? Surely something one does multiple times, knowing it to be a problematic action, shouldn't be described as a mistake or even a bunch of mistakes. She would have crossed over into the domain of irresponsible behavior.

Similarly, calling Roger Clemens' steroid and HGH use over several years "a mistake" seems to me to be a gross misuse of the term. This is a not uncommon occurrence these days. Hardly a week goes by when some young man, often an athlete, does something that violates the rules of the NCAA or gets in a bar fight or sexually or physically abuses some woman. Usually, the young man's defenders call the actions a mistake, hoping I think to minimize the offense.

I shall cut this a bit short (for me). I am struggling to overcome the aftermath of a hip replacement. I think that the hip replacement was quite successful. However, I managed somehow to screw of the knee on that leg and my spirits are a bit low. Mostly because I suspect I did something I shouldn't have done and should have known not to do. Such is life for the mistake prone elderly man.

The Meaning of Life

2008-01-30T09:56:00.000-05:00

The other day I was struck by the notion that I should blog on the meaning of life. Exactly why I am not sure since I usually don't think about it unless forced. The reason for that is probably that what I hear from others is some jazzed up religious nonsense. I suppose the fact that I am having a hip replacement surgery on Super Tuesday might have been the reason. How do you avoid thinking about death when you go into surgery? And contemplating one's death morphs quite naturally into a consideration of what life is about.

The question, "What is the meaning of life?" is not normally answered in empirical terms. The same is true of the question, "What is the meaning of death?" I Googled the phrase "the meaning of death" and got Death is the irredeemable loss of consciousness. This is an empirical fact but is not the sort of answer we are looking for. A site interested in the scientific and philosophic understandings of the meaning of death offered

-Death is an enfeebled form of life
-Death is a continuation of life
-Death is perpetual development
-Death is waiting

I confess that I don't have a clue what any of these things mean.

One thing you do not find in discussions of the meaning of life or death on the internet is an explicit characterization of what the writers mean by "meaning." This is an important omission. If you have read my blog, The Meaning of Meaning, you know that the word "meaning" has a number of senses (i. e. meanings). The one of interest to us here is "significance." When you ask "What is the significance of life?" and "What is the significance of death?" you will, I think, be lead to think about different things than if you think about the meanings of life and death and your thinking will, I believe, be a bit more productive.

When I used Ask.com to search for entries matching the search expression "meaning of life," I got a book (What Its All About?, the title of which is ungrammatical for there is no way that a construction like that can be interpreted as a question. Not surprisingly, this book takes up religious topics. There are explicitly religious urls (Meaning of Life Ministry) and (Life's Greatest Question?), which is also ungrammatical unless the author means to question whether or not some unidentified other question is the greatest question. The third result (Soon you will understand .... the meaning of Life) is sort of fun. It gives a "divine recollection" Talmudic approach. It starts off saying

The Talmud teaches:
Just before a baby is born,
an angel shows it everything there is to know
and learn on Earth.
Then at the moment of birth,
the angel touches the infant’s upper lip,
and the child forgets everything.
We spend the rest of our lives
remembering what the angel showed us.

Plato famously took the view that acquiring knowledge consisted of Divine Recollection or Illumination.

Religious views of the meaning or significance of life are just too easy for they are necessarily supernatural in nature and no one can say anything supernatural that can be proved. However there is another approach to the question of what life means (what is the significance of life) that is empirical and rings true to me. My last philosophy paper at Rice University was on Martin Heidegger's concept that humans (Dasein) are a throwness (into being) toward death (Geworfenheit zum Tod). I struggled with this paper to the point that I called the professor and said I was totally stuck and he said to just cut and paste what I had typed and turn that in. Everything would be fine he intimated. Instead, I had an epiphany as to what Heidegger meant and knocked out 12 pages, wadding up just one (which is what I did when I was blocked or stuck) in the process. There were times I could fill a room with wadded up paper.

The thesis that man is a throwness into being toward death needs no sophisticated exegesis. We normally have no recollection of our earliest years. At some point we come to be aware of ourselves. I don't remember that event and I doubt that you do either. We just find ourselves here. And we find that we and all that is around us is in motion. We grow. We do things. We are going forward as beings in the world. At some point we realize that where we are headed is toward death.

When we are young, the fact that we are headed toward death usually has no significance. However, as we mature (I think some never do mature) we come to realize that our time on earth is limited. If we are women we know we have this biological clock that ticks off the hours until one cannot conceive children. But any of us who are trying to accomplish something are to some degree I think, hurried up in this process by the certain knowledge we will die.

I was sure that I would never make it to retirement since I was a boozer and smoker and was overweight. I quit the first two -- easily as it turns out -- and from time to time would reduce my weight. I am now 69 and know that my time is limited. Now that I have a granddaughter I seem to be focused on maximizing my time with her. I love sports, especially Ohio State sports, and there are championships to be won and I want to experience as many of those as I can. I want to see as many great movies as I can. I want to be with my wife and daughter and son-in-law as long as possible. And I want to see a Democratic President and Congress straightening out the colossal disaster that has been visited on the country by Bushilla. Something impelled me to blog. It was guilt I think. It was due to my realization that I was wasting my time, the limited time I have before I die.

The unassailable fact is that we are here without having asked to be here and having no clear recollection of when or how we got here though we are told about the birds and the bees at some point. And we know we will die. This is a general answer but that is the best one can do. However, each of our lives can come to have meaning (significance) as a function of what we do while we are here. The meaning of your life consists entirely of what you make of it.

Symbolic Acts and Symbolic Words

2008-01-28T13:16:00.000-05:00

We like to think that we are rational beings moved to take action upon reading or hearing or mongering up for ourselves some rational argument favoring taking that action. In fact, that is rarely the case. We much more reliably respond to symbols (the flag) and symbolic speech(I regret that I have but one life to give to my country).

Many Americans respond with anger if they see anyone, especially another American burn the flag. The people who burn one know this. They could have chosen to burn their Levis but didn't. In recent months, reprobates of the worst sort have taken to hanging nooses in various places. We all know what that means. Just hanging a rope would mean nothing. Flags and nooses are mere things but they have meaning just as "I hate America" and "I hate Niggers" do but with the possible exception of the word "Nigger," they are more powerful than the language.

Today, I saw the power of actions and words in politics, when Teddy Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter and Teddy's niece, and Patrick Kennedy, Teddy's son, all spoke at a Barak Obama rally in Washington by way of endorsing him. They made quite clear that they meant to be passing on the Kennedy "torch." The Kennedy political line is coming to an end and I think they saw Barak Obama as a way of keeping its social and political values alive.

I first saw Teddy when he spoke on behalf of his brother in his campaign against Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic Nomination. Later, during the campaign against Nixon, I saw JFK give a political speech in Houston, Texas and then latter that evening saw him face a bunch of Baptist Preachers who thought they needed reassurance that he would not be answering to the Pope. Don't be surprised if desperate Republicans start questioning whether Mitt Romney will be answering to the Mormon church Elders.

Their speeches as well as that of Barak Obama were powerfully moving to someone of my age. As I watched Obama's speech, I could see Patrick and his gaze was riveted to Obama and he smiled and applauded when you would expect a true believer to do so. I suspect that Teddy was moved to act in part because what Obama had been saying resonated with him in the way his brother's speeches must have and in part because he was pissed off by Bill Clinton's attacks on Obama. As I began writing this blog, it occurred to me that Teddy might have seen what Bill Clinton was doing to Obama as little different from what Johnson and his supporters did to JFK in their effort to defeat him for the nomination.

Before they spoke, Hillary had a nice edge nationally over Barak. We will see if the action the Kennedy's took in endorsing Obama and the especially eloquent language in which they expressed their support will have a power that goes beyond your garden variety endorsement and endorsement speech. Super Tuesday may give us the answer. Alas that is the day I undergo a hip replacement and I may be too groggy that night to follow the election returns.

This Issue of Code

2008-01-26T11:07:00.000-05:00

After posting my last blog, I turned on MSNBC for a full day of politics and immediately saw in succession two Black men, one old and one young, claiming that some things the Clinton's have said are code -- that they have social meanings for Blacks that are negative in nature. I think that they are wrong and that what they are saying is as divisive as anything that the Clintons might have said. For something to be code, it has to be shared. It was not in this case.

First, we have to understand that all language has to be interpreted relative to the context in which it occurs. That is a given. Second, there are two types of code of interest here. One is code that is actually a cypher, as when one does some sort of letter substitution known to writer and reader or speaker and hearer that allows them to communicate without others who are not intended to receive the message understanding it. The codes of the military, CIA, etc. are examples of this.

There is another type of code in which people use language that on its face seems harmless but is understood as having some sort of negative meaning. The problem here is that like a military code it too is conventional in that there is a regular association of the negative meaning with the language used. Sports announcers often refer to certain receivers as "possession receivers." The great majority of these are White. In fact, I think that broadcasters automatically assume that if a receiver is White he is a possession speaker. In the 2006 football season, Ohio State had two great receivers, one Black and one Hispanic, the latter as White as any White man. The Hispanic one was constantly referred to as the "possession receiver" even though he was nearly as fast as the Black guy (who had near Olympic class speed), and regularly caught deep passes. Both were first round draft choices and both had successful first pro seasons.

Now there are things that Whites say that Blacks see as deliberately negative. Hillary said, "“Dr King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” This is factually true. It says nothing whatsoever negative about Dr. King or Blacks or anyone else. Clinton was trying to make the point that Presidential leadership is critical to obtaining changes in policy that people want. Activists inspire -- politicians achieve. This is a fact. This in no way denigrates Dr. King's contribution. Without his inspiration, the dream would have come but surely much later than it did. But without Johnson's driving force and political skills, which were enormous, it probably wouldn't have been realized in law as soon as it was. We had the conjunction in time of the right activist and the right politician, both wanting the same thing.

The reality is that Blacks in general are as racist as Whites are. The problem is that Whites in general have power and Blacks in general do not. So long as that is the case, Blacks will often have a legitimate reason to see some remark a White person makes as racist or racial (evokes race but not as a put down per se). That does not mean that speaker meant it that way. I do not think Hillary's remark was either racist or racial. Obama turned into a racial issue.

Now, had Hillary said, "Martin Luther King was very well-spoken man and he was a great Black leader, but President Johnson is the one responsible for getting legislation through Congress and signing it," then we would have a racist statement. She didn't come close to that.

Race and Gender in the Democratic Race

2008-01-26T06:05:00.000-05:00

Were it not for George Bush, the worst President in American history, and a dismal array of Republican candidates, I would be somewhat fearful of the fact that H. Clinton and Obama continue to be the leading candidates for the Democratic party, for we have never elected a woman or an African-American President before. People are slaves to their habits and voting for white men for President has been our habit from the beginning.

Democrats do have a white male in the race but he has not been able to compete successfully. How much this has to do with him as a campaigner and how much it has to do with the qualities of H. Clinton and Obama I can't say with any assurance. Since Edwards is a quintessential Democrat, in fact a liberal Democrat by today's standard (as opposed to the standard in the 1960's), and is quite presentable, I have to assume that it is H. Clinton's star power (fame and notoriety) and Obama's novelty (the first African American to run who did not come out of the civil rights movement) that is forcing him into the shadows.

Obama's initial appeal to Whites, I believe, was that he has not been running primarily to advance the cause of African Americans or what the very tiresome Jesse Jackson has called the Rainbow Coalition. Rather, he has represented himself simply as running for the Democratic nomination, just as Hillary and Edwards have been. That was a real novelty. African Americans could expect that he would look after their interests, although he was not saying so, but so would the other candidates I imagine.

Then Hillary said, what seems to me to have been a quite innocuous point that it took politicians to enact Martin Luther King's dream and Obama took exception to that. That was, I think, a very stupid thing to do. Her remark would not have been questioned were neither running for President. Obama knows that activists all by themselves can't accomplish very much of anything besides winning the hearts and minds of the people. It takes politicians to realize or, much more commonly, almost realize the reforms of activists. Obama knows this.

Why Obama simply didn't leave this alone I can't say. It has clearly helped him in garnering Black votes and, I suspect, he will win in S. Carolina today thanks to stripping away Black voters (especially women) who might have supported Hillary. But this victory will I think be a Pyrrhic one.

Americans, in contrast to others, have sometimes been described as less racist than racially conscious. Of course both could be true. A symptom of one's being racially conscious is feeling the necessity of including the word "Black" (or whatever other word you use) in sentences like, "I saw this Black doctor yesterday who said I have a stress fracture in my foot." Clearly, the doctor's being Black is totally irrelevant. This verbal behavior is a clear sign that you are racially conscious. Men very commonly would include "female" as a descriptor in the same sentence evidencing clearly that they are gender conscious.

Even if Obama hadn't taken issue with Hillary's statement, race would have become an issue because the media would make it one. It wasn't an issue in the early caucuses and primaries. They all occurred in states in which Blacks were a small minority. But it is an issue in S. Carolina and inevitably the media in analyzing pre-election polls, and the exit polls taken on election day and in post-election analyzes, will break down the voting by race. Once that has happened Obama is doomed unless something unforseable now occurs.

Why do I say he isn't going to win? A continuing problem in America is that while White Americans are often or even usually perfectly comfortable with individual Blacks they are not, I think, all that comfortable with Blacks in general. And in my experience, African Americans are no different from Whites in this respect (except it is Whites in general they aren't comfortable with). I will never forget a Black friend of mine telling me that he would root for an African runner in an Olympics event over a White American. I was stunned. And, I saw Black college students cheering the O. J. Simpson murder trial verdict on TV. That came very close to breaking my heart. They were no different in my mind from the racist Whites that cheered when KKK murderers were found innocent by White juries.

All of this goes back to the fact that we are hard-wired to be suspicious of those who are different from us. During the period in which humans were quite primitive, one's survival depended making sound judgments as to who were and who were not a threat to us. Strangers would normally I think have been perceived as dangerous until they showed they were not. This provides the seed for racist feelings today.

Here is my prediction: Obama will win S. Carolina. (I have not turned the TV on to any news or information channel so I am not cheating here.) This victory will be due to the fact that some whites will vote for him and most Blacks will. Hillary and Edwards will split the rest of the votes. I have heard that Edwards might edge Hillary out. This victory due to Black solidarity -- as ugly a phenomenon as White solidarity or male solidarity -- will, I think, inspire Blacks to gravitate to him and this will lead Whites to move away from him and toward Hillary and Edwards. The net effect will be that Obama will not get the nomination.

Many years ago, I heard a paper at a conference at Georgetown concerning a class room experiment the speaker had run at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He raised a question for debate that he had earlier determined was one that did not break down as to the yeas and nays on racial lines. He picked a Black male and a White male and gave one the nay and the other they yea. By the time the hour was up, the entire class had polarized along racial lines. In a nutshell (the speaker gave a deeper analysis) the division in the class had more to do with debate style than the arguments that were given. The Black speaker was more aggressive than the White speaker and Whites began to see the Black male as hostile when he wasn't at all and the Blacks saw the White speaker as lame though his arguments were as robust as the Black guy's.

I fear there will be considerable racial polarization within the electorate as the campaign continues. It is hard to say whether gender polarization will also occur but it will be very hard to tell sexist attitudes from anti-Hillary attitudes in such a case. What I hope is that Clinton and Obama quit fighting and spend their time and energy on presenting their views on the issues. I think Bill may not let that happen. One benefactor could be Edwards.

Beating up on Hillary

2008-01-09T07:38:00.000-05:00

It seems that Obama and Edwards paid dearly for their ganging up on Hillary in the New Hampshire debate, handing her a nice victory thanks to angering women. Male political talking heads, who also have been treating her in predictable sexist ways, may also have helped her out a bit. At the same time, the "First Black President" did not do her candidacy much good when he attacked Obama's proposals as being "fairy tales." The latter seems to have irked some, perhaps many African Americans.

Interestingly, Bill Clinton called Al Sharpton's radio show and, according to an article in The Trail, a section of the Washington Post devoted to the election campaign,

Sharpton began by asking Clinton about the criticism he's received, especially from Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking African American in Congress, who told the New York Times that "To call that dream a fairy tale, which Bill Clinton seemed to be doing, could very well be insulting to some of us."

If Rep Clyburn believes that Clinton's comments had a racial subtext, then he has a problem because the comment has no racial implications whatsoever, especially given Bill Clinton's record. Surely not all attacks on Clinton aren't sexist and not all attacks on Obama aren't racist but I suspect we will hear a lot of charges of sexism and racism as the election heats up. With any luck it will be over before too much damage is done.

The reaction by women and by Rep. Clyburn, who is not alone in his feelings, serves as an indication that from now until the end of the General Election women and African Americans will have their "feelings outsticking" as my father used to say of himself and others in circumstances in which people were being a bit too sensitive. There is no question that it would be best for the party if everyone behaved and stuck to the issues. However, there is a fundamental difference between Clinton and Obama. Clinton has been a great deal more forthcoming about what she would do as President. Indeed, yesterday Bloomberg.com reported that Hillary has proposed a $70 billion dollar program to deal with the predicted impending recession. This caught Obama and Edwards with no plan at all.

The problem that Obama and Edwards face is that they can't use the phrase "tax and spend Democrat" to poke a stick at her on this issue since that would make them sound like Republicans. We should understand that Bill Clinton meant to be communicating only that there has so far been no real substance to Obama's campaign. He is against the war in Iraq but has no specific program for dealing with terrorists and the nations that in one way or another support them. Like Obama, I was against going into Iraq, but like Obama, who was in the Illinois legislature at the time, and unlike Clinton, who was in the US Senate, I did not have to vote on the issue of giving Dubya the powers he thought sufficient to invade. It is easy for him to say that he didn't support the war.

From now until the end of the Democratic Convention, I would like to see Hillary and Barak tone down their rhetoric and run on the issues with personal attacks being forbidden. This will be very difficult since women and African Americans do seem to have their feelings outsticking. I plan to focus my blog between now and then on this question, not because I care a whit about political correctness issues per se but because I want the Democrats to beat the living hell out of the Republicans in the General Election and my ideal ticket includes both of them.

A Tiresome Liberal Fallacy

2007-12-27T09:05:00.000-05:00

I am worn out by a way of reasoning that some liberals cannot seem to avoid. A week or so ago, there was an article in the Columbus Dispatch concerning the fact that the Ohio State University Athletic Department is bringing in over a hundred million dollars a year. This was claimed to be a terrible misallocation of our financial resources given how much poverty, homelessness, etc. there is. Let's suppose that the Ohio State Athletic Department were to shut down in 2008 and therefore would sell no tickets to games, accept no donations, and sell no clothing or other things that contain OSU logos. How much of the something like $107,000,000 saved by Buckeye fans do you think would be given to charities that help out the poor and homeless people in Ohio and elsewhere. I suggest that very little of this money would find its way to a hungry or homeless person.

My first encounter with this sort of fuzzy headed liberal thinking (I am a liberal but try not to be fuzzy headed) was in connection with military spending. The idea was that if we reduced military spending, our government would be able to help those in poverty who needed it. Not surprisingly, this sort of reasoning can be found today. One J.R. Mooneyham writes

The less money nations spend on their militaries [sic] and intelligence and security measures, the more they have for education, medicine, and other social needs-- or alternatively, the lower the tax burden on average citizens can be; thus is nourished greater peace and prosperity for a people, while making war is discouraged.

The part of this passage that interests me (the rest is incoherent) is the bit that occurs before the dashes where we have the argument in pristine form -- the less we spend on the military the more we have for social purposes. This is certainly true but the moment we cut back on military expenditures conservatives will instantly call for tax reductions.

If the country elects a liberal Democratic President and a Democratic Congress then there is a chance that money spent on the Iraq War may be diverted to help with social measures. However, that would take better judgment by the public than it has shown in the last two elections.

Ironically, money contributed by the public to the OSU Athletic Department and tax money that supports the military serves social ends. Ohio State's Athletic Department supports 20 women's sports teams. That, in itself, is a worthy consequence of the public's buying tickets to Ohio State's football and basketball games. Another is that it brings children of families that cannot afford to support their children's college educations to campuses. In many cases the kids aren't all that interested in school, as opposed to playing their sports, but any learning that does go on is a good thing for the society. One valuable aspect of university sports programs is that they are meritocracies -- it is how well you play, not how much money your family has or what your race or ethnicity is, that determines whether or not you can participate in sports.

The military is another meritocracy. We should not be spending a cent on the Iraq war but money spent on the military in general does lead to minorities, including women, getting opportunities for meaningful careers that they otherwise might not have given the level of prejudice against minorities we have in the private sector. Moreover, a great deal of our military spending on equipment goes to American businesses (I would assume) which hire American workers. I haven't "fact-checked" this last claim but if it is not true, we would be at the mercy of other countries who might decide not to make us any more weapons. The French disapprove of the Iraq War (as do I) and might decide to stop selling us any more Dassault Rafale fighter aircraft were we to be using that airplane. That would put the Bush administration in a mell of a hess.

The "I smoked pot but I didn't inhale" Excuse

2007-12-18T07:33:00.000-05:00

When people in the public eye are suspected of doing something wrong and are questioned about it, some opt for a variation of Bill Clinton's account of his use of illegal drugs. He said he had smoked pot but hadn't inhaled it. He is fortunate that not many people cared about his pot usage but the credibility of his account of his drug use was zero on a scale of zero to 10.

Clinton could have made his lie/true account much more credible if he had said, "Yes, like many young people of the time, I smoked pot a few times but stopped because it wasn't doing anything for me. A few years later, I discovered why it didn't do anything for me -- you have to inhale the smoke and I didn't."

The key difference between these two accounts of Clinton's pot smoking is my account provides a reason for his stopping that is credible -- he didn't get high. People might have made fun of him for not inhaling but wouldn't see him as lying even if he was. It is very important when giving a mea culpa to actually say one is guilty but give account that minimizes the extent of the illegal or immoral action that is believable.

Recently, Andy Pettite, a pitcher for the New York Yankees was outed for his use of illegal performance enhancing drugs by a man who claimed he had injected Pettite with HGH (human growth hormone) some 2 to 4 times. The claim by the trainer was published in the Mitchell report. I understand that when Pettite was asked about having used performance enhancing drugs (henceforth PEDs) before he was outed in the Mitchell report. he denied it. This is a serious mistake. The odds that someone will out you is much too great to reasonably believe one will be able to get away with a total denial.

After being "formally" outed, Pettite did a Clintonian mea culpa. He admitted to using HGH twice, the lower figure used by the trainer who injected him, and he explained that he had been injured at the time. He goes on to say

I felt an obligation to get back to my team as soon as possible. For this reason, and only this reason, for two days I tried human growth hormone.

His actual "apology" was

If what I did was an error in judgment on my part, I apologize.

There are several problems with Pettite's account of his use of HGH.

The first problem is that he didn't actually give a mea culpa. Saying "if what I did was an error in judgment, I apologize" is too ridiculous for words. It is obvious to all that what he did was make an error of judgment. If he hadn't made an error of judgment he wouldn't have been outed. Rule one of an admission of guilt -- don't make it conditional. Say what you did was a mistake or error in judgment. The second problem is that his account is totally self-serving in that he represents his use of HGH as altruistic -- he wanted to get back pitching regularly as soon as possible to help his team. This plays into a basic sports mantra, namely that athletes must focus their efforts entirely on helping their team. If they are ever seen as acting to further their own interests rather than the interests of the team, they will be in deep trouble with the press and fans. The third problem is that his claim that he only used it twice is itself not credible since the trainer said it was 2-4 times. Admitting one did it "several times" would have been much better. A fourth problem is that he gives no explanation for quitting. If it wasn't an error in judgment, then why quit? My version of Clinton's mea culpa admitted his use and explained why he quit. You have to do both things in an apology or explanation.

If I had been advising Pettite, I would have said that I had used HGH a few times because I had been told that it would facilitate a quicker recovery from my injury and I was afraid that if I didn't heal quickly enough I might not get my spot back on the Yankees' starting rotation. But I knew that this was a prescription drug and I was therefore taking it illegally. Since I am not by nature a law breaker, I decided I had to stop even if there was some risk that I might not heal as quickly. The virtue of this account is that Pettite would have pled "guilty" but given a very credible explanation of both why he took HGH and why he stopped and in the process painted a picture of himself as being basically law abiding. Sports fans would have found it easy to forgive him. Everyone understands the pressure of trying to keep one's job.

Andy Pettite's sidekick, the 40-something medical marvel, Roger Clemens, who despite his advanced age remained a first rate pitcher with one of the lowest earned run averages in baseball, was also outed. He could still throw the ball hard and managed to win something like 3 Cy Young awards during the "steroids" era we have recently gone through and are probably still going through. A real problem with Roger is that like Barry Bonds, the first major star to be outed, Roger was a much bigger and stronger at 40-something than he had been as a 30-something pitcher. Since he had always worked out hard this didn't make much sense but his taking steroids would make sense out of it. Steroids allow one to recover more quickly from work outs and therefore allows one to work out hard much more frequently.

Roger Clemens, unlike Andy Pettite, flatly denied using PED's after the Mitchell report came out. This denial puts him in the awkward position that for him to go on and confess he must first admit that he lied about his use of PED's and then admit that he took the illegal drugs. Pettite too had lied but not after a "formal" charge had been leveled at him.

Barry Bonds is no longer the sole poster child for use of PED's. He has been joined by Roger Clemons and a legion of others. Barry himself gave a Clintonian style defense of his use of PED's. He claimed that he didn't know that what he was getting (the cream and the clear) was illegal. No one believes that either.

Another group that is in denial is baseball writers. They are poking holes at the report on a variety of grounds. Some have claimed, for instance, that it is based on hearsay. In fact, the report, insofar as it concerns Pettite and Clemens, is based on confessions by the person who administered the drugs, which makes the claims stronger than eye-witness testimony, and where it does involve hearsay evidence (i. e., Roger or Barry or Andy tells the report's source that he used PED's), the evidence would be admissible in court under the exception that it was an "admission against interest." The fact that baseball reporters are so angered by the report is interesting. They have been shown to be lousy reporters since they didn't dig up this information themselves, unlike the reporters who outed Bonds several years ago. And, if they pile onto those who had been outed, they are unlikely ever to get an exclusive interview with the athlete they have criticized. Furthermore, their jobs are seen by themselves and many others as important because they cover the actions and thoughts of people others deem important.

I have no useful advice to Clemens as to how he can get out from under the allegations against him. As Pete Rose, who continues to be denied entrance into the Hall of Fame, can tell Roger, it doesn't help to admit one lied about one's actions (Rose's actions were betting on his own team when he was a manager) if one waits too long.

Are Mormons Christian Enough for the Right Wing Chistians?

2007-12-05T07:55:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning's paper tells me that Mitch Romney is going to give a speech in which he tells the Christian Right (aka the Christian wrong) why his Mormonism will not pose any problems for them or the country should he be President. He then will try to do what JFK did when he tried to explain to Southern Baptists why his being Catholic would pose no problems for them or the country. JFK was successful.

I was actually present when JFK submitted himself for questioning by a battery of Baptist preachers thanks to my being friends with someone who had access to passes. It was amazing to see him deal deftly with their concerns. I felt some sympathy with them since I was raised as a Baptist and Catholicism was our main nemesis. My father was a prejudice-free man except for his strong anti-Catholics views. I got over my early indoctrination. In fact, I am not sure I ever bought into it since one of my friends was Catholic and I spent time in their house and knew his family.

I think Romney is making a mistake by giving a speech rather than by doing what JFK did. JFK approached the Baptist ministers at a personal level by allowing them to question him. Indeed the setting was almost intimate since very few people were in attendance. As far as I can tell, Romney will use the Orientation Theater of the Bush Library at Texas A & M for his address. It holds around 148 people. In using a theater, Romney will be putting distance between himself and his audience. If I were him, I would give a brief address and then sit on the edge of the stage and answer any questions members of the audience might have for as long as necessary. That way he makes himself completely vulnerable to them. If he survives, he wins.

There is a nasty irony to the problem Romney faces. It seems he will be trying to say that though the Mormon religion is hierarchical in nature, he believes fully in the separation of church and state and will not be influenced by the views of the leaders of his religion. Interestingly, Kennedy said

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote ... "

The nasty irony is that the Religious Right does not believe in the separation of church and state and its ministers try to influence how members vote. They want the state to pass laws that dictate that there will be no abortions, that homosexuals should not be afforded normal human rights, and other nefarious views. I believe that Romney may once have believed that some abortions were acceptable and that gays should be given the same rights as everyone else. However, he seems to have caved to the Religious Wrong.

I don't really care who the Republicans put up but I am beginning to care about the Democratic choice. Hillary has dug deeply into Obama's past to reveal that Obama has, contrary to his claims, always wanted to be President by citing a paper he wrote in kindergarten claiming that he wanted to be President. This is the sort of mean-spirited, double-dumb mistake that costs people elections. She also allied herself with Bush's hawkish views on Iran and its putative nuclear weapons program. She swallowed Bush's rhetoric whole. Two bad Bush was lying about what Iran was up to. This makes her look like a triple-dumb person.

God Spoke Life into Us?

2007-11-15T08:26:00.000-05:00

In what may be one of the nuttier efforts to reconcile the theory of evolution with religion is offered to us in a book "The Language of God" written by a former atheist and DNA expert, one Francis Collins. I was made aware of this "theory" in a Columbus Dispatch article. I will be honest with you: I have not and never will read this book for the title alone is so phenomenally uninformed that it cannot be other than a total waste of time. Even, and maybe especially, if you are religious.

The notion that DNA is a language, let alone that it is God's language, is even crazier than references to the language of music or the language of art which I dealt with in an earlier blog. First, to claim that DNA is God's language presumes that there exist entities with whom He converses. One might claim that God is speaking to persons like Dr. Collins, people who try to map the genomes of various species or obtain the DNA profile of a specific individual, perhaps a criminal. There are two problems with this idea that come immediately to mind. The first is that there is no known language in which there exists only one entity who speaks the language with all others being restricted to "listening" to him/her/it. Does God ask questions using DNA code? If so, He isn't getting any answers. I believe it is fair to say that He does not issue requests or commands in DNA. Or make statements. The other problem with this notion is that humans have been around thousands of years but only recently have we begun doing genetic research into DNA. This means that all the Biblical persons who have said that they spoke to God would have to be lying since they couldn't have spoken or understood the so-called language of DNA.

Collins appeared in Columbus, Ohio before two groups of people along with some other speakers having a similar perspective. He and these others made claims about DNA which are totally mind-boggling. In fact, the claim that DNA is a language is itself incomprehensible. I am anything but a DNA expert but I think I can safely claim that there are no properties of DNA that are linguistic in character. There is no signaling system and that in itself blows up the idea that DNA is a language for all languages, even made up ones like Esperanto have some sort of signaling system.

Collins said that DNA is is "how God spoke life into you and me." We might call this the "Shazam!" theory of the creation of life. "Shazam!" is a magic word that, when uttered causes some change in the world. It was used by a wizard to turn Billy Batson into Captain Marvel. From then on, Billy could turn himself into the adult Captain Marvel simply by uttering this word whenever he needed to do heroic things. Note that I have to resort to a comic book to find an instance in which a use of language can cause a material change in the world. I cannot, for instance, say, "Shazam!" and cause the house to be clean or the lawn to be mown.

Another mind-boggling use of language in these talks came from one Jeffery McKee who claimed that "God's writing is in the sedimentary rocks..." Try to imagine how you would make sense out of this. Notice that the striations in sedimentary rocks bear no relationship to DNA. I believe that those trying to reconcile science and religion need to get on the same page. Does God write in DNA or in rock striations or floods or whatever is happening at any given time. The scary thing is that Dr. Collins is the director of the National Human Genome Institute. That is like making a creationist a President of the USA. Oh, we have done that in the last two Presidential elections.

The Christian Right and Ostriches

2007-11-08T08:04:00.000-05:00

Today, I read an op-ed piece claiming that abstinence programs have been ineffective. Duh! It takes a special kind of stupidity to believe that programs that teach abstinence will lead children to want to preserve their virginity until after marriage. Even more stupid is the belief that teaching abstinence instead of the use of birth control devices to help girls avoid becoming pregnant and the use of condoms in particular to thwart the transmission of STDs such as chlamydia, genital herpes, genital warts, gonorrhea, hepatitis A, B, and C, syphilis, aids, and crabs, etc.

The specific kind of stupidity I am referring to is that which assumes that if you legislate against something, that something will not happen. When I was of college age, I got into an argument with an older guy I was working with at a summer job who was advocating that the alcohol prohibition laws in Oklahoma be kept. I asked him why and he replied that this was the only way to keep people from drinking alcohol. I told him I would bet him such-and-such amount of money that I could get a bootlegger to bring a fifth of bourbon to where we were were within a half hour. This was a bit of a bluff on my part since I had never used a bootlegger but I knew a guy who had and who I knew had his telephone number. I also reminded him that the Constitutional Amendment outlawing alcohol was a total failure.

A doctor and mother of a girl I was dating at the time told me that the police blamed prohibition laws in Oklahoma for the high incidence of public drunkenness. She said they believed that people in possession of a bottle of booze would drink the whole bottle so as not to risk being caught with a bottle with just enough alcohol left in it to support an arrest. When I was in Scotland in the summer of 1970, the laws governing the hours during which pubs could sell alcohol to two different periods, one being something like 11:00 a. m. to 2:00 p. m. and the other being something like 5:30 or 6:00 p. m. to 9:00 p. m. Bartenders would announce "last call" early enough that those who wanted to buy 2 or 3 pints at once could do so for the law governed not when pubs had to close, as in the USA, but when the sale of alcohol had to stop. So, many people, after several hours of drinking (often shots of hard alcohol combined with pints of beer) would then engage in a mini-binge before leaving for home. Alcoholism was a major problem in Scotland at the time, the principle being the same as in Oklahoma -- prohibition laws can lead some to greater, not less drunkenness.

Facts have never been much of a problem for the Christian Right for "the Bible told me so" used as a supporting argument always trumps real world facts in their minds. When I was in high school and my mind turned to girls, I had two great fears concerning engaging in sex. One was the fear that I would knock up some girl I had no desire to marry. The other was that I was afraid of getting syphilis, gonorrhea, and crabs. I didn't know about the other STDs. My fears concerning knocking up some "easy" girl who was not someone one would want to marry were based on the illegality of abortion, the social pressures on males to "do the right thing," and my embarrassment at buying condoms in a public place. Like any young man raised to be a Christian, I was, of course, taught that I should "save myself" for my wife, who would, of course, be "saving herself" for me. This teaching of abstinence was, of course, irrelevant to my concerns.

The landscape has changed. We have safe abortions now in most places so one does not have to marry someone just because they got knocked up. On the other hand, there are many more STDs than before. It seems to me that the most effective way to control unwanted pregnancies is to teach birth control and the most effective way to prevent transmission of STDs is to teach kids to use condoms, as well as sufficient information about STDs and the failure rate of condoms to scare the bejesus out of kids. Fear, as long as it is not over-done, is a great motivator.

As I mentioned, we have abortions that are safe if they are done early enough and by someone trained to do them (who will not use a coat hanger). But the Christian Right, engaging in still another instance of this special kind of stupidity -- belief that making something illegal that people want to have (booze, sex, and abortions being the main things) will prevent it. I don't know whether ostriches really hide their heads in the sand as a tactic for deterring predators but their "reasoning," if you will, is pretty much the same as that of the Christian Right in these three cases.

At the Republican convention in 2008, I suggest that they vote to replace the elephant with the ostrich as the symbol of the party for ostriches, better than elephants, symbolize their manner of thinking.

A Solution to the Problem of Feisty Reporters

2007-10-27T08:52:00.000-04:00

FEMA followed up its disastrous response to Katrina -- disastrous to the citizens of New Orleans and to the vanishing image of the Bush administration -- to holding a completely fake news conference in response to the California fires. It was fake in that there was insufficient time to alert news organizations as to their holding the news conference so they used their own employees as reporters. Not surprisingly these "reporters" "asked questions many described as soft and gratuitous."

Even funnier than that a representative of Homeland Security said

"We have made it clear that stunts such as this will not be tolerated or repeated," Laura Keehner said, adding that the department was considering whether or not to reprimand those responsible.

So, they are considering whether or not to reprimand the persons responsible. I am wondering why they are not considering whether or not to fire those responsible for this violation of our fast eroding democratic values.

I am not sure whether or not it was common practice in the Soviet Union to hold press conferences like this one but it does sound like what they might have done. FEMA even made sure to provide the normal structure of a press conference by calling for a "last question" the report says. I'm quite sure the Soviets would have done the same thing. Appearances are as good as reality to some.

What is most puzzling about this is why FEMA just didn't provide a live TV feed of someone detailing their plans for dealing with this disaster in California and, in the process, announce that a press conference would be held in, say, two hours. This would have been reasonable given that they didn't have time to gather real reporters and it would have accomplished all of their goals -- providing information and, a bit later, making sure that reporters had an opportunity to grill them.

FEMA just can't seem to get anything right. To me, this is simply a sign that George Bush doesn't give a damn about the American people -- especially Black people, as his response to Katrina made quite clear. If he did, he wouldn't have appointed a crony for the job of heading up FEMA early on who was the father of the lack of a response to the Katrina disaster. And he would be replacing incompetents every time one raised his or her head.

Another sign that the administration has little regard for the American people is the abuse of the National Guard -- ostensibly citizen soldiers but actually not different than the active military in how they are treated. These people have families and civilian careers. They made the mistake of enlisting. People will not make that mistake in the future.

Still another sign that the Administration has no regard for the people is that, in the words of a BBC web news story

The US state department has said it may have to force some diplomats to work in Iraq to fill vacancies at the embassy in Baghdad.

So, the administration is now forcing people to work in a very dangerous environment. It is interesting that the BBC picked out the Orwellian feature of the language used to announce this action.

About 250 foreign service staff are to be told they are "prime candidates" for nearly 50 jobs, state department human resources director Harry Thomas said.

Who could resist being thought of as a "prime candidate." I suspect that the main criterion for being a prime canidate is stupidity.

If not enough volunteer (many carrots will be offered), some will be ordered to go. And if they refuse, they will be sent to the guillotine in the basement of the State Department and their heads will be lopped off. There will be no TV of this and so no need for fake reporters.

Confusing Grammar and Meaning

2007-10-17T07:03:00.000-04:00

James J. Kilpatrick has a syndicated article on the subjunctive in my morning Dispatch that has as its title,"If subjunctive tense were dying, would we care?" Calling the subjunctive a "tense" would be a significant blunder but it seems that either the syndicator or the local paper wrote the headline and the error is theirs, not his.

Kilpatrick's article starts off with

Farewell, subjunctive mood. Nice to have known you.

Here Patrick betrays his own confusion of grammar and meaning. Insofar as meaning is concerned, we will never lose the subjunctive. What we have been losing are the traditional linguistic forms for expressing the subjunctive.

Kilpatrick cites this phrase from the New York Times

"a price that might well rise if there was no competition."

He takes the Washington Post to task for saying

"As if that wasn't bad enough, Mr. Nagin slipped on the mantle of political martyr.

He goes on to say

There was a time when both editors would have opted instinctively for the subjunctive -- if there were no competition and if that weren't bad enough. The rule used to be to trot out the subjunctive to express conditions contrary to fact:

First, we need to discuss the curious locution that the editors of these papers would have "instinctively" chosen a different linguistic form for counterfactuals. There has manifestly been some linguistic change afoot across the land according to which traditional ways of expressing the subjunctive have been replaced. The current editors no less "instinctively" chose to express the subjunctive the way they did than did editors in the past.

The idea that we have an instinct that leads us to express ourselves in one way rather than another is patently ridiculous. The notion of an instinct is muddled by a confusion between innate behaviors, innate behaviors that have undergone some sort of modification due to learning, and automatic behaviors. Many genuinely instinctive behaviors have to do with issues of survival. Animals have an instinct to flee from danger. What they see as a danger would, I imagine, often be learned from adults. We also use the notion of an "instinct" to refer to purely automatic actions. It is pretty clear that this is what Kilpatrick had in mind. I'm not sure how Kilpatrick advances our knowledge by suggesting that choosing to express the subjunctive one way versus another is due to our instincts. He should write an article berating himself for using the language in that way.

The suggestion that the subjunctive is dying betrays a fundamental confusion in Kilpatrick's mind between grammar and meaning. The subjunctive meaning is going nowhere since we will always have a need to talk about counterfactual states. Sentences like

If you would come to the party, I would too.

and

If you were to come to the party, I would too.

are logically equivalent -- they say exactly the same thing. What is lost is the use of what are now old fashioned ways of expressing counterfactual states. Now, I happen to be old fashioned and would likely choose the latter way of expressing myself but I have no trouble understanding those who use the other form.

I have a bit more sympathy with Kilpatrick's concern with preserving modes of writing than with the efforts of others to chastise how persons who speak nonstandard versions of the language. The reason is that the less that our written language changes the more likely it will be that people of different times and in different places can understand each other. We can still read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to some degree but understanding how persons in Chaucer's day spoke would have been a great deal more difficult. Since Chaucer's time, our vowels have undergone the Great Vowel Shift and this would have wreaked havoc with our understanding of how they spoke. The fact remains that how we write is also undergoing change whether we like it or not.

Chris Mathew's New Book Ripped by Jon Stewart

2007-10-04T11:20:00.001-04:00

Chris Mathews is a very powerful, well-connected pol (worked for Tip O'Neal when he was Majority Leader of the House) turned broadcaster with two or more TV shows. I have seen him time after time harass guests by interrupting answers to his questions or putting wholly new questions to guests while the poor slob being interviewed is trying to finish an answer to the previous question. It is not how hosts ought to act in my opinion. Matthews got a taste of what being on his show is like when he appeared recently on Jon Stewart's Daily Report to promote his new book Life's a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success. He made a serious blunder by equating success in political campaigns and achieving our goals and then coming on Jon Stewart's show. He could have picked another word besides 'campaign."

Stewart eviscerated him right in front of my eyes. Matthews' book seems to be about what we can learn from how politicians manage to rise to the top. One of the most important things, he says, is that politicians, to be successful, must listen to others. He cited Bill Clinton as an exemplar of that. He then went on to say that Clinton said that it worked for him in school in gettinbg girls. You can imagine what Stewart did with that. Think, "Monica."

When Matthews asked Stewart what he thought of the book, he replied that it seemed like a recipe for sadness, not success. He was also distressed that Mathews didn't mention being honest as a way toward being successful. Matthews replied that a book has already been written on that sort of thing, namely the Bible. At this point Steward said that Chris's book has also been written already, namely The Prince.

There is still another book that has been written that, along with The Prince, covers the content of Matthews' book, namely How to Win Friends and Influence People. Right now I don't have time to take another look Dale Carnegie's and Machiavelli's books or Matthews' book to see if the former cover the material in the latter. So, maybe Stewart and I are a bit off base. Still, Stewart performed a public service I hope he has learned from. Namely, hosts should be polite to guests and let them speak.

I wonder if Stewart was as annoyed as I am with Mathews' “interrogation” style of interviewing where his agenda rather than the guest's is promoted or that Mathews simply has laid himself open to the best comedian in the country, at least insofar is intelligence, knowledge, wit, and quickness of thought are concerned. What was funny was seeing Mathews, who is seen by many as a big mover and shaker, turned into a totally flustered, helpless man. Mathews got what he deserved to have the chutzpah to write a “self help” book predicated on how politicians, some of the least admired people in the country, behave in order to be selected to run for office. If I write a book like that you are allowed to put me in the stocks for a day. Check out the Comedy Central site.

Defining "Double Jeopardy"

2007-09-28T07:08:00.000-04:00

I commented in a response to my last blog that the Virginia prosecutor's filing charges against Michael Vick for what are essentially the same offenses is double jeopardy though I am quite sure the legal community won't agree. I found the following definition of "double jeopardy" at lectlaw.com

DOUBLE JEOPARDY - Being tried twice for the same offense; prohibited by the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. '[T]he Double Jeopardy Clause protects against three distinct abuses: [1] a second prosecution for the same offense after acquittal; [2] a second prosecution for the same offense after conviction; and [3] multiple punishments for the same offense.' U.S. v. Halper, 490 U.S. 435, 440 (1989).

It is clear that the concept "same offense" is central to understanding double jeopardy.

As usual, the legal system provides itself with an "out."

Separate punishments in multiple criminal prosecution are constitutionally permissible, however, if the punishments are not based upon the same offenses. In Blockburger v. U.S., 284 U.S. 299 (1932), the Supreme Court held that punishment for two statutory offenses arising out of the same criminal act or transaction does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause if 'each provision requires proof of an additional fact which the other does not.' Id. at 304. [same site]

This passage allows legislators to craft several "statutory offenses" out of the "same criminal act."

When O. J. Simpson went into the hotel room in Las Vegas and demanded "the return" of his memorabilia (I have my doubts that O. J. can own any property of this sort thanks to the civil case that went against him) at gun point, he committed "robbery" and thanks to the use of a gun, "armed robbery" as well. Is that one offense or two? If one gets fussy about this, the two offenses could be revised into the separate offenses of "robbery" and "use of a firearm during the commission of a crime" and be tried for both. In addition, he was charged with kidnapping. There were other offenses I'm sure such as conspiracy charges .

Normally, we think of kidnapping as grabbing someone and taking them to some other place where they are imprisoned and not allowed to leave. However, even simply not allowing someone to leave a place where they are already at also constitutes kidnapping. I suspect that there are places where the classic concept of kidnapping is separated into forcibly removing someone from some place and holding them at this new place. That way one can take "one crime" and turn it into two.

When one adds on the fact that victims can take alleged offenders to court for unlawfully ending someone's life, one can actually have a situation, as O. J. discovered, in which one might be found innocent of a criminal charge but guilty of essentially the same charge in a civil court case where loss of money, rather than incarceration is at issue. Could one have a case where one was found guilty in a criminal court, but innocent "of essentially the same charge" in a civil court. I believe that is possible.

Suppose that the O. J. jury decided, along with the judge presiding over the preliminary hearing, that the initial search at O. J.'s property which involved going over a wall without a search warrant was legal and found O. J. guilty of first degree murder. But, what if a civil court judge or jury or both in which the Goldman and Brown families were attempting to take all of O. J.'s money (not counting certain things like pensions) decided that that search was illegal and that all the evidence that was found there were fruit from the forbidden tree, as they say. They might find for O. J. in that circumstance.

I watched the Preliminary Hearing before going to England and mercifully missing the first half of the actual trial and it seemed to me that the cops testilied at that hearing and the judge should have thrown out all that evidence. That would not change the actual verdict, of course, but it would help people to understand why this predominately Black jury acted as it did. African-Americans generally don't much trust the police. I don't blame them.

The Race Card -- With Thanks to Donovan McNabb

2007-09-19T19:12:00.000-04:00

Mr. McNabb is not having a great year. And he is taking heat. And this is because he is black. Or so he says.

I am so tired of the race card that I think it needs to be taken out of the deck. Jesse Jackson makes racist comments about me (telling us that Obama is "acting like he's white,") and my friends (the Hymies in NY). I am white and I presume that I act white most of the time. I didn't know that that was bad. Is Jackson in trouble for that? Of course not. Should he be? Of course. But he is too busy these days playing the race card on behalf of Blacks. When it uses it against a Black by equating him with people like me, then that must be okay.

I have blogged on this phenomenon in various discussions making the point that it is actually impossible to insult people at the top of any social pyramid by using some putative slur. Suppose you say, "Hey, Mike, you white son of a bitch, if you don't quit hitting on my wife, I am going to knock the snot out of you." I am not going to be insulted by your calling me "white." I probably won't even take offense at "son of a bitch." I have heard it too many times. The term "honkey" was brought out to try to offend people like me. You can see how successful that effort was.

The "Hymie" reference Jackson laid down on the city of New York did need some corrective work on Jackson's part. Jews don't much like being insulted, especially those in New York. Look at all the items on this page. You see denials that he used this anti-semitic slur. Then he bitched at journalists for hounding him about it. Then he admitted it. A hell of a preacher he is.

Back to Donovan. The man must be an idiot. Does he not know what position he plays? Does he not know what city he plays in? I will remind him. He is a quarterback and any quarterback who does not meet the standards the fans and media expect of him will be excoriated by the fans and media until they are hounded out of town. Rex Grossman catches constant grief in Chicago. And for good reason. What color is he, Donovan? Donovan McNabb plays in Philly, the most notorious city in the country for booing their own players. They think their football stadium is the Roman Colosseum. And they treat their gladiators in the same way the Romans did. Thumbs up if they played hard and smart. Thumbs down if they played badly or made stupid errors.

Bret Farve, who may go down as one of the top five quarterbacks in history (there will in a few years be too many for five to be the limiting number) has been criticized in recent years for throwing monumental numbers of interceptions. He is a football diety and even he has been booed in Green Bay. What color is he, Donovan? He is having a very good year this year. He deserves it.

When a Black multimillionaire bitches about people bitching about his play and says that part of that bitching is because he is black probably has had too many concussions and ought to retire before the brain damage is total. Does my saying that make me a racist? Probably. Please don't tell Jesse about my blog. I used to love McNabb and would have made him the first pick if I had had the first pick. Now I must see him as a pitiful whiner.

How important is language death?

2007-09-19T07:56:00.000-04:00

There is a news story being distributed by the AP that laments the loss of languages. It claims

While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them.

The langugage of this sentence is interesting. Languages are said to "die out" and "linguistic experts" are "struggling to save at least some of them." The death of languages is being treated as if we are dealing with the death of people.

An assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College says

"When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday."

Here we see the death of languages as again being like the death of people. Maybe worse. Notice that should some culture die out overnight due to a terrible plague, it could be said that

With the loss of these people we have lost centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday.

This would be a sensible thing to say because knowledge is possessed by people, not languages.

You can examine Prof. Harrison's bio at the link provided. It is pretty impressive, which came as a bit of a surprise to me since one does not tend to find outstanding linguists at small colleges. I suspect that all the linguistics departments in large universities are still too busy fighting theoretical battles to house someone like him. However interesting his bio is, I must still introduce some sanity to this issue.

When we lose a language we do not lose "centuries of human thinking" about anything. Human thinking is encapsulated in sentences/propositions, not vocabularies. The problem for Prof. Harrison's view is that if we have a written language that is no longer being spoken, as in the case of Latin, then we haven't actually lost all this knowledge. It or some of it would be recoverable from the written documents. But if the language is a spoken language only, only the death of the people who spoke it would entail the death of this knowledge.

Since when languages die, this normally involves a people's gradual movement to another language. The danger here is not the loss of a language per se but the loss of a culture for it is with the loss of a culture that we lose the knowledge that is specific to this culture. As the speakers of an Amerindian language move to English or Spanish instead of continuing with their native language, they may cease to communicate their cultural heritage to their children. If they do then, indeed, we have lost these things that Prof. Harrison laments the loss of. However, if they continue to transmit this heritage to their children, this knowledge is not lost even though the original language of these people may have been lost.

In my view, the real danger that the loss of a language represents is the possibility that examples of linguistic phenomena that might be critical to the development of linguistic theories may be lost. Consider the case of "click" languages, languages containing consonants that have two points of articulation with a vacuum existing in the space between these two points of articulation. When the closures are released a relatively loud popping or clicking sound results. I am pleased to say that while in graduate school I had a Black friend from S. Africa who lived in my apartment building and it was I who brought him to the attention to Professor Morris Halle, the primary phonologist at MIT. Morris was teaching phonology and lamented that no one he knew had had a chance to study click languages. I told him I knew a guy who spoke one and was instantly cheered but when asked what language he spoke I said I didn't know since what interested me was the political situation in S. Africa. That drew boos. As it turns out he spoke Xhosa. Nevertheless, I put him in touch with Morris.

If the Whites had managed to kill off all speakers of click languages, an event that would surprise no one I suspect if it had happened, then we linguists would not know of them and our phonological theories would be incomplete. That would be sad. The loss of a culture is always sad. But the loss of a language simpliciter is normally not as important as the loss of a living animal species such as whales.

Bush will lie about Iraq again and isn't even hiding his chicanry

2007-09-10T08:56:00.000-04:00

Yahoo news has provided me a Reuter's story that says:

The assessment by Gen. David Petraeus could be a turning point in the conflict and is considered vital to any decisions by President George W. Bush on force levels as he faces demands from Democrats and some senior Republicans for U.S. troops to start leaving Iraq.

The problem with this is that Bush just went to Iraq to discuss ongoing events in Iraq and I imagine that he told Petraeus what he must say when he returns. Why else would Bush make such a trip -- to prove that his pilot knows where Iraq is?

In fact, Bush went to a military base in Iraq very far from Baghdad. You younger souls do not know this but there came a time when the only places that Pres. Lyndon Johnson could deliver his speeches was at military bases. These were the only places he could avoid the chant, "Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?" Since the chanters couldn't easily get on army bases, this ploy was pretty successful. Of course, it further isolated an already isolated President.

President Bush is, I think, a man who, like Hitler, would prefer to bring the USA down around him (figuratively) rather than face a post-Presidential life of ignominy worse even than that of LBJ. He would be able to hob nob at country clubs, his ranch, and other protectable places. He is not going to be able to do as Carter, another unpopular President, did by becoming a statesman. Indeed, the idea is laughable.

President Clinton gads about in public because he knows that except for Right Wing Republicans, he is pretty well loved by the American people. Have I told you that a retired officer relative of mine has a joke that goes, "The two greatest Americans are named "Bill." Bill Gates and Bill Clinton." Pretty good choices. I wish I could believe BC's wife was anything like him but I don't.

So, back to the Petraeus Report, aka "The Petraeus Report as dictated to him by Geoprge W Bush." He will not be able to bring back bad news. Presidents hate bad news. This is what wrecked our Vietnam war effort. Johnson and then Nixon demanded the truth as they wanted to hear it. This will be what we get from Petraeus. Bush's ears will not burn with the truth about his failed enterprise. He will be able to smile and joke around. Then he will look stern and say that we need to keep force levels high bringing just a few troops home for we are on the verge of victory as George W Bush defines the term "victory." One National Guard unit will, it seems come home. They should never have been sent.

The American Exit from Iraq

2007-09-03T10:13:00.000-04:00

No, I don't know when this will happen. I am pretty sure it can't happen under Bush. He is too vain to admit defeat. And Republicans have created an impossible situation for him should he wish to orchestrate a graceful exit because they have referred to this to a "surrender."

The Republicans seem to have perfected the the art of biting oneself in the butt. The poor Senator from Utah, who apparently somewhat successfully managed to stay in the closet for some years, is being bitten in the butt by the Republican prejudice against gays, a prejudice he himself adopted when "being a Republican" as opposed to "being a human" was required. Of course, the party has bitten itself in the butt as well. Democrats don't blink when a Democrat is outed or outs himself since they do not practice discrimination toward gays. In fact, the hypocrisy of the Republican Party in regard to gays is heightened because the Utah senator's proclivities were known to the leadership, just as were those of Sen. Foley.

In referring to Democratic proposals to end the war in Iraq, some Republicans have referred to this as a "surrender." They have also referred to this policy as a "cut and run" policy. Of course, for a withdrawal from Iraq to be a surrender, there would have to be someone to surrender to. Would it be the head of the government? Some Shiite cleric like Sadr? The head of the insurgency whomever he might be? Or would it be the top Al Queda guy if there is one? Without someone to hand your sword too, you can't surrender.

Cutting and running might be more relevant. I am guessing that what these Republicans have in mind is a case in which one might go crab fishing using a pretty big hunk of meat and one catches an alligator instead One might want to cut the line and run though it would be smarter, if one were really afraid, to leave the alligator attached to the line and run.

I am tired of two cowards like Bush and Cheney continuing to demand that our soldiers submit to extended stays in Iraq thereby increasing their chances of being killed or maimed or, should they survive, being psychologically damaged by the continued stress of combat against an enemy who hides in the shadows, a kind of stress neither Bush, flying around in National Guard planes when he wasn't AWOL, nor Cheney, studying at Wisconsin with his student deferments, during the Vietnam War could possibly understand.

Of course, if the Democrats can get their act together and defeat the Republican candidate for President and take both houses, then they must find some way to leave that doesn't expose them to Republican ridicule of a sort that might stick. If I knew how to do that I would tell you. We could, of course, adopt Sen. Aiken's proposal during the Vietnam War and declare victory and leave with our heads held high. A verbal declaration of victory is as close as we will come to victory, whatever that means.

Auquafina and the Meaning of "Pure"

2007-08-25T17:07:00.000-04:00

Aquafina has been outed -- it is just city water in a plastic bottle. But we are assured it is pure. Or are we? I have just come downstairs from a Boston - Chicago baseball game where I have seen a TV ad that said its water was filtered, filtered again, purified, then filtered and filtered again and filtered and then purified and then filtered and maybe filtered again. The word "pure" means to me "free of all impurities -- period." And "purified" being a causative verb in this usage would have to mean (to me) "cause to come to be free of all impurities." But if Aquafina isn't lying through its teeth, it is being quite redundant. One purification should have been enough.

And what is their method of "purification?" The one I have in my house that Kinetico installed and services (now 3 times a year given my increased use of water making soda pop for my wife and me that I know the ingredients of), namely a reverse osmosis system and "other filtering methods."

Now wait a damn minute. If reverse osmosis is another filtering method, then they are doing no purifying at all. They are simply engaging in multiple filterings of their water. My water filtering company does not claim to give me pure water. It can't because there is no filtering method alive that will get rid of bacteria (correct me if this is wrong). Sadly, it is bacteria that can make water dangerously impure. Any filtering method that got out all the bacteria wouldn't be able to let water molecules through if my impoverished knowledge of biology and chemistry is correct.

Years ago, before most of you were born, I worked at an Air Force lab where I created deionized water. That was what we used in the lab. Fortunately we were doing inorganic chemistry because our friendly neighborly encyclopedia tells us that deionized water cannot rid water of some organic. Even distilled water is not guaranteed pure. But I am pretty sure that bourbon and scotch are pretty safe. You might drink that if you are desperate not to be poisoned by your liquid. It could be bad for your liver. And lead you to do stupid things.

Any time someone says they do something twice, they may not do that thing once. I'm in a hurry. I have to get back to my game.

On Believing Generals on Active Duty

2007-08-21T10:33:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me after doing my last blog on the Petraeus report that I missed the deeper point that it doesn't really matter whether he or George Bush writes this report. George Bush isn't believable because he has proved over and over that he will lie when it suits his purpose. Hell, I'm not sure he has ever told the truth. But what about Generals?

During the Vietnam War, there was an early phase in which reporters would hang out in Saigon bars as well as Saigon brothels, I would imagine, and show up for the daily briefing. This would be swallowed whole and regurgitated on the pages of our newspapers and our nightly news broadcasts. Then reporters started going into the field and they saw a very different picture from what was being told to them in these briefings and coverage of the war began to change. I didn't have a TV at the time but I understand that moving pictures of some of the events of that war were presented on national news shows while people ate their dinner.

I knew that war was a fraud almost before it began, thanks to a two page piece in the Houston Chronicle sometime in the late 50's on how the S. Vietnamese people felt about the Viet Minh (the precursors to the Viet Cong) and the Saigon government. What became a permanent memory for me is that it was reported that the people didn't seem to care who was in control of the part of the country they lived in. I decided that if they didn't care, why the hell should I?

As is well known, General Westmoreland and the rest Generals and the Pentagon and our Department of Defense lied through their teeth every day about progress in Vietnam. They had to lie because they had no clue whether they were making progress or not. Body counts began to be the norm as a way of keeping score. Unfortunately for the truth, an individual dead body, identity unknown, would be seen as a bad guy (unless he or she was an infant), and would routinely be counted multiple times as each unit that encountered it would count it. It could be that General Westmoreland's minions inflated the body counts so as not to piss him off with bad news.

The generals and the Pentagon civilians lied to our Presidents who, themselves, did not cover themselves with glory either. Indeed, the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident was a total fabrication, probably ordered by the President. I know that the incident was a total fabrication but can't tell you how I know. Even the report refenced in the link just given admits that we provoked the attack. But, believe me, there was no attack. I have a record for telling the truth as I know (remember) it so I hope you will accept this as an honest report of the facts. We needed reasons to level N. Vietnam. We finally had it. The problem with trying to level any third world country is that it is so easy for them to rebuild. The N. Vietnamese recovered from the destruction of its buildings way faster than New York has recoverd from the 9/11 attack. Indeed, some firemen were killed yesterday trying to put out a fire in a building damaged in the 9/11 attack. The reality is that nothing we did seem to inhibit the ability of the Viet Cong and the N. Vietnamese Regulars to kill enough Americans to make this war intolerable to the vast majority of Americans.

The fact that the Right Wing has no problems lying has led to a great deal of revisionist history about that war as part of their effort to smear Sen. Kerry. I have a Right Wing relative who told me that we actually won that war since we are now friendly with N. Vietnam. This is a highly educated person. But this is among the most stupid things I have ever heard. It provides a nice picture of the workings of the Right Wing brain.

Our current war is intolerable and has gone on too damn long. One reason is that the American people actually believed the Shrub, Rummy, Chaney, and the war leaders. They were heroes for good long while. But they lied through their teeth about everything concerning Iraq. I fully expect that Petreaus will lie about progress in Iraq. He has a reputation to try to uphold. If he really wants to do the right thing and possibly salvage his personal reputation (though also destroy his career) he will tell the truth. Whether the Shrub would have the guts to fire him after that would be fun to watch.

Do not ever believe what any General says about a war he is in charge of. The military is the paradigm Cover your Ass organization.

The Petreaus report as brought to you by...

2007-08-18T07:56:00.000-04:00

I am clearly a little stupid. I had thought that General Petreas would come to the US and present Congress and the American people with a report of the positive and negative outcomes of the infamous "surge" that was supposed to make Baghdad safe for Democracy or, at least, safe. Of course, that hasn't worked and we all know it.

The other day we learned that Congress in its lack of wisdom had demanded of the White House a report on progress in Iraq in mid-September. And that seems to be what we will get. Petraeus will report to Bush and Bush and his political hacks will tell us what they want us to know and will call that "the Petraeus Report." It will be "The Petraeus Report as written by George Bush," as when a book about some NBA players life and loves comes out under his name with, below it, the phrase "as written by ..." Some sports writer will have written the book. So, General Petraeus's report will be ghosted by the White House. None of this is new. Generals do what they are told.

General Petreaus will also testify before Congress. What will he do? Testilie? Will he craft all his replies so they are consistent with the White House interpretation of his views? Or will he tell the truth? General Petraeus can be a great war leader only if he wins the Iraq war, whatever that might mean. What we can be sure of is that he doesn't want to be the General in power at the time that we "cut and run" as we surely will some day.

Bush has run out of options. He has played the "Wait until the September Petreaus Report" card and can't play the Petreas card again, especially now that we know that it won't actually be a Petraeus report. What matters now is what the Republicans in Congress will do. Will they work with Democrats to craft an end the war policy or not. Interestingly Deborah Pryce, a powerful House Republican is cutting and running. And this morning I learned that Dennis Hastert, the former leader of House Republicans is also cutting and running. I thought that Republicans are against cutting and running.

Maybe they will give the country a nice going away present by working with the Democrats to end this stupid war. They know that the Demos will take over the House and Senate and the Presidency unless they screw things up, as so many of us fear they will do. Who should be the Demo candidate? Hillary has real positives to go with her "negatives." Despite my opposition to the Iraq war, I am not a dove. In fact, IMO, we should have stayed in Afghanistan until every last Al Queda and Talliban member was dead or had cut and run. And then we should have chased them to wherever they set up their camps and bombed the living crap out of them. Just no stupid wars. Or should it be Obama. He has the virtue of having lived as a child in a Muslim country. That has surely given him a good perspective on the world. Unfortunately, a buddy called Obama "Obambi" in an email to me. This renaming, unfair or not, has colored my perception of him since.

Correcting Others

2007-08-06T12:59:00.000-04:00

A certain party, who shall go nameless (a life saving measure), has the habit of responding to linguistic errors of mine by going blank and looking at me as if I am stupid (which I may be, at least relative to this other person who is going nameless). This party then corrects me. I then get ticked off. However, the behavior continues.

Today, this party blundered by saying that at least half of the blue cheeses in the supermarket made explicit that they were made from pasteurized cheese. I decided to pay this person back by saying, "Don't you mean, milk?" This person replied, "Oh, right, milk." What is the correct thing to do when someone misspeaks in this manner? The answer is to continue the conversation without making a correction. Here is a real conversation that illustrates the correct way to deal with these situations:

Him: "He," referring to guy on stage playing an alto sax, "also plays an alto sax."
Me: "I know."
Him: "I mean, soprano sax."
Me: "I know."

Emulate me in all future conversations. (A smiley should go here.) Unless, of course, some sort of serious confusion might be involved.

There are two kinds of corrections of adults of interest to me here. One is correcting another person's word choice. In some cases, the adult, say, someone like George Bush, seems not to know the word. You will have to decide for yourself whether you have the right sort of relationship with that person to correct him. Here is another real conversation. My friend was in the Air Force and wrote every letter and document his commanding officer signed. Once he used the word "vacillate" in a draft of something, knowing perfectly well his commanding officer didn't know the word. His boss asked him what it meant and he told him.

Commanding Officer (after his troops had been ordered to fall into line): "Stop vacillating and get in straight lines."
My Friend: (said nothing and didn't laugh out loud)

In the case of a child, especially your child, it is perfectly reasonable to correct word choices. Teaching words is the one thing you can help their kids with insofar as language learning is concerned. It is important, of course, to read to them as often as you can and even when you think you are too busy. If they ask you what some word in the book means tell them. What you are reading gives them a context of usage so the book does some of your work.

Now we come to the issue of correcting grammar and pronunciation. With young children, the answer is a simple one: don't do it. The reason you should not correct grammar with young children is that it may confuse them . The reason is simple. We adults usually know what the notion "grammatical sentence" means. We know it has to do with form, not content. Children do not know that. Explain to your three year old what you mean by "sentence form." I dare you. It is hard enough to teach that concept to college freshman. It is, after all, a quite abstract concept. As a result, since kids who don't understand the concept of grammatical sentence do understand the distinction between a true and false sentence, the odds are good that your child will think you are telling them that what they are saying is false when, in fact, it is true.

If you provide Standard English for your child when you talk to them, your work is done (except for word teaching). They will do the rest. There is a widely accepted belief that we teach our children language. The fact is that 99.9 % of parents don't have a clue as to the rules of English (Spanish, etc.) grammar -- I mean the real rules, not the superficial things our grammar teachers focus on. When children are 9 to 10 years old it will be time to clean up some of their errors to make sure they are on the path to Standard English but understand that some language learning goes on until a kid is around 12 years old, the last I heard. Any time we learn a new subject in college or read anything of any intellectual interest we are likely to have to learn some new words. That part of language development should continue throughout your life. I hope I sometimes provide examples that make you turn to your dictionaries for help. In many cases you will be undergoing some cognitive development as a part of understanding this new subject. This is a good thing, as Martha would say.

When your children are very young, it is a huge waste of time to correct their mispronunciations. They should be encouraged to speak and any corrections may discourage them. Depending on the stage of language development they are in, they may not be able to make the desired sound. So, if your 3 year old says "wed" for "red" don't try to correct her. Your child probably can't make an "r" sound yet. If the child is 12 and still makes that mistake, you may need to intervene. In general children's mispronunciations are funny. Enjoy them. At one point our kid said, "breakstress" for "breakfast." We enjoyed that. She said "moi" for "more." We thought that was cute.

One thing your children may do is illustrated by the following made up conversation, modeled on some I have read about in the literature.
Mom is grating some cheese for pasta.
Child: Can I grape some?
Mom: No, say, "May I grate some?"
Child: Yes, can I grape some?
The child in such a case seems to be hearing herself as saying what you are saying. If that is true, then trying to fix your child's English would be a real mistake. They will get it right eventually.

Though we each had Ph.D.'s in Linguistics, my wife and I never once corrected our child. She speaks perfect English. But then so do we. Fortunately she decided to use us for our models. Sadly, there are a lot of models out there that I wouldn't want my kid emulating.

Bridges and other dangerous things

2007-08-01T15:18:00.000-04:00

The American Society of Civil Engineers is, fortunately, not a branch of the Bush Administration and as a result we can go to them for a truthful account of the progress the Bush Administration and Congress, which was, until recently Republican, have made in the improvement of our nation's infrastructure. If you compare our infrastructure in the momentous year of 2001 with what it was in 2005, the last year that the ASCE gave out grades -- there should be grades coming out this year -- you must conclude that our infrastructure under a fully Republican controlled government has gone from bad to worse, with two exceptions. These are aviation and schools. In some cases grades were not given out in 2001 so a comparison is not possible.

Of course, Osama Bin Laden may be partly responsible for improvements in aviation. And Bush's "No Child Left Behind" could have helped with our schools. The "No Child Left Behind" is a wonderful linguistic slogan, but it is also, like most slogans (the "War on Poverty" and all other similar slogans involving wars on problems that do not require soldiers) fatally deficient. Bush's goal is totally unachievable for some kids are very, very dumb or have very, very dumb or poorly educated parents who provide poor examples and poor guidance or the kids simply don't give a damn.

In every other category things either stayed the same -- bridges (still C), dams (still D), solid waste (still C+) -- or got worse -- drinking water (now D-), the national power grid (now D), hazardous waste (now D), navigable waterways (now D-), roads (now D), transit (now D+) and waste water (now D-). In two cases, no grades were given in 2001. One was security, which gets an incomplete because there is too little information and rail, which gets a C-.

The big story the last couple of days was the bridge collapse in Minnesota. Osama Bin Laden did not bring down that bridge. WE DID. And that was a bridge that had been deemed merely "structurally deficient." Let us suppose that a structural engineer looked at your house and deemed that a recent earthquake had made it "structurally deficient." Would you keep living in it if you had a spouse and two kids? Here's an easier question, closer to the current situation with bridges. If you were buying a house and the house inspector you hired told you it was "structurally deficient," would you buy it? How is it then that we drive over bridges with that designation? The answer is easy. We don't know which bridges are and are not structurally deficient. There needs to be a clear label on every bridge in the country as to its reliability.

We either have a very serious bridge problem or a very serious language problem. Given how I interpret "structurally deficient bridge," I would not knowingly drive my new grandkid over one. In my view, any bridge that gets that designation should be condemned until it is replaced or repaired, if that is possible.

We have the money to repair or replace all our bridges. Where is it? It is in Iraq. In fact, fairly recently a great deal of money was budgeted for infrastructure by Congress. What happened to it? It went to pork barrel projects. We should not be a bit surprised by that.

Yesterday, my wife and I drove over to our kid's house with their dogs to await the arrival of the new kid and her parents. I assessed each bridge and elevated ramp as to when it was built. Essentially all of the ones we went over were built since we arrived in 1971. That felt good. Coming home we went over some that were decidedly older. I was driving this time and I forgot to keep track of the bridges and other elevated structures. Oh well, such is life in the United States.

I don't think I have ever said anything kind about the French. Let me repair that by noting that I would like to go to France just to drive over its very long and very beautiful suspension bridge which was innovative both in regard to its design and in how it was built. This 1.6 mile long, 1,132 feet tall (at its highest point) bridge was the subject of a high definition Discovery Channel program that I watched. Of course, the French did build a superhighway that it intended to go into Italy without having any idea how cars would cross the Tarn River Gorge. The result was a lot of congestion for years as cars wended their way over old roads and through medieval villages. Alls well that ends well, of course. Too bad we can't say this about our thousands of structurally deficient bridges.

A Desperate Blogger

2007-07-30T09:58:00.000-04:00

I suggest that you take a look at the link associated with the title of this blog. I found the phrase "sloppy speech" on the site's first example of an "error" in the use of English, namely the claim that "It is nonstandard and often considered sloppy speech to utter an “uh” sound in such cases." The cases concerned uses of "an." Does anyone actually use "uh" for "an"? Usually, it is used for cases of "a" as in "a boy." Interestingly this highly prescriptive site doesn't comment on this sort of usage. I find it hard to avoid and I am a speaker of academic English. I am just not a prig.

The phrase "sloppy speech" is a pejorative way to refer to what linguists call "casual speech," speech that we all use, including our prescriptivist I suspect, in casual or informal speech contexts including intimate speech contexts. We say things like "lesko" for "Let's go" when talking to friends. When the two words collide we have the intolerable sequence "tsg," which is basically not a possible consonant cluster. So, we delete the "t" and turn the voiced "g" into its voiceless counterpart thanks to the "s." No one has any trouble understanding us when we say that. Partly that would be due to context -- two or more people have been talking about going somewhere, most likely.

I am struggling to come up with Blogs, as the beginning of this blog may have suggested to someone. It seems that I have touched on an enormous number of topics, almost all of which involve language. That restriction is somewhat limiting. I cannot, of course, talk about Clinton vs Obama unless I have something they said or that has been said about them to deal with. Actually, I do have my good friend, Ralph's, renaming of "Obama" to "Obambi." If that caught on, Obama would be toast, partly because it seems apt.

One reason I am struggling is that I am spending a lot of time trying not to think too much about the fact that I am going to be a grandfather tomorrow with any luck. I notice that no matter what I do, I cannot refer to this possibility (note the use of "possibility" and the earlier use of "luck") that I will soon be a grandfather. My son-in-law said something like he doesn't want to jinx the pregnancy. I asked him if he really believed in jinxes and he said he didn't but he didn't want to tempt fate. I quit bothering him since I have been doing the same things verbally.

If any of you have any topics you want me to discuss that I feel competent to write about (no guarantee that I am competent to do so), please suggest them in the comment area. I need some help, much like the women of Desperate Housewives.

The "N" Word

2007-07-10T07:06:00.000-04:00

Years ago, Dick Gregory, a comedian of some fame, published a book called, "Nigger." His thought was that if this word was brought out of the closet and into the light, it would lose its sting. Naturally, his plan didn't work. It continues to be used. It is difficult to change verbal habits but even harder to change human prejudices.

Currently, according to the Houston Chronicle, Tammie Campbell

is making an effort to "bury" the "N" Word. She is leading a diverse Houston-area group focused on eradicating the term's usage and teaching its history. They are hosting an unusual event at 9 a.m. today at a Pearland cemetery to ''bury the N-word" in a coffin.

I wish her luck. She is going to need it. The Chronicle article says says that various communities have in one way or another tried to forcibly reduce use of the "N" word by making it a misdemeanor crime or passing nonbinding resolutions banning the word. The problem here is that anything with teeth would surely run afoul of the First Amendment right to free speech. The only way these efforts can succeed, in my view, is in connection with a systematic push to make the word "politically incorrect" along with encouraging people to shun anyone who uses it. That too would probably not work but just that sort of action did cause people's attitudes and behavior in regard to smoking to change.

The word "nigger" continues to be widely used by African Americans addressing other African Americans either as an insult or as a way of signaling solidarity. This "paradoxical" use is like one White friend meeting another he hasn't seen in a long time saying, "You SOB, where have you been keeping yourself?" Talibah Newman is quoted at Taylor Siluwe's web site as saying

Many would say that it is wonderful that blacks as a race can take something so negative and turn it around. I say why bring something so demeaning back into the African American community and tempt some Caucasians to the point to where they think it is ok to say it. As always African Americans then believe that they reserve the right to get angry with whites for using the word as a racial slur.

Fighting against this sort of usage is like trying to stop a moving train with one's body. The fact is though that there are Whites who say they believe that the use of this word by African Americans does legitimize its use by Whites. This is nonsense in my view, a purely sophistical defense of its use. The fact is that an African American male who addresses some stranger who is also African American as "Hey, Nigger" to get his attention and in a less than friendly tone of voice is likely to be going in for dental surgery very soon thereafter. The paradoxical uses of "nigger" will normally be used by friends with friends or in rap music.

There is a very interesting analysis of the various uses of this word can be found at a web site page written by Mike Daley

Black semantics are highly context-bound. A notable example, and one which will be applicable in a study of rap lyrics, is the use of profanity. It is used in both negative and positive ways, depending on context. Sometimes it has no "meaning" at all, and functions as a kind of rhythmic/semantic filler in speech contexts. Smitherman gives an example of "multiple subjective association process" in the use of the word "nigger/nigguh". She lists four possible meanings of the words, depending on context:

1. personal affection or endearment
2. culturally Black, identifying with and sharing the values of black people, as opposed to "African-Americans", which has a more middle-class connotation
3. expression of disapproval for a person's actions
4. identifying Black folks - period (Smitherman 1994:62)

Anthropologist Claudia Mitchell-Kernan further comments on the context-bound meaning of "nigger": "The use of 'nigger' with other black English markers has the effect of 'smiling when you say that.' The use of standard English with 'nigger,' in the words of an informant, is 'the wrong tone of voice' and may be taken as abusive (Mitchell-Kernan 1973, 328)."

The only thing I would quarrel with here is the apparent presumption that "nigger" is unusual in being context bound. All language is context bound.

Years ago, during my first year teaching at the University of Illinois, I lived in an apartment complex with a not very well educated and not especially bright working class White guy and we fell into a discussion of his racial views. He asserted that he was better than African Americans. I, somewhat astonished, asked if he was better than all of them? He said he was. I then ran though some prominent African Americans' names asking each time whether he was better than that person. Every time he said he was. It is that sort of thing that is the problem. The working class see themselves as lower on the White totem pole than professionals, business men and women, and others who are better educated, have better jobs, and make more money. This seems to exacerbate a need to feel superior to someone so that they can maintain their own self-esteem. And, at the time, in Illinois the group that he would need to feel superior to would have been African Americans. And so long as African Americans are the ones selected for abuse there will be a need for the word "nigger" for such people.

Do Women Talk Too Much?

2007-07-05T17:16:00.001-04:00

I have heard all my life that women talk too much. A few days ago, however, I watched an report on CNN of a study that showed that showed that men and women talk about the same amount, i e., use roughly the same number of words per day). Naturally, I couldn't remember the name of the researcher who was quoted, so I googled the topic. Using one set of search terms, I found references to the Brain Lady, Dr. Louann Brizendine, claiming that women talk very much more than men as well as references to the male stereotype that women talk too much.

I used another set of search terms and came up with an ABC news story citing the same research that the CNN report discussed, which was an eight year research project headed up by Matthias R. Mehl, a psychology professor at the University of Arizona. This research was based on the use of voice activated digital recorders that subjects (college students) carried around with them throughout the day. The study found that men and women average about 16,000 words per day with women having a negligible edge. The ABC story also reports that the Brain Lady herself very quickly found out after publication of her book that her claim was based on faulty research. She asked the publishers to remove the claim. Unfortunately for Dr. Brizendine, her false claim will probably live with her forever and cause people to wonder a bit about her judgment in citing research from unfamiliar fields in publications which, though not scholarly, nevertheless depend on being seen as based on sound research. In any event, it seems, we have a definitive answer to the question of who talks more, men or women. the answer being neither.

It is difficult for me to understand why anyone would actually care whether men or women talk the most. If four women going to lunch together use more words per hour than four men having lunch together, why would either gender care since it has no impact on them? What matters most is not how much men and women talk per se but such things is (a) what do men and women talk about, (b) how much they does each talk about specific topics, and (c) most of all, how much men and women do talk when they are in mixed gender groups. The stereotype is surely not based on assessments by men as to how much women talk to other women when men aren't involved since they wouldn't be in a position to know this.

So, who talks the most in mixed gender groups? Contrary to the stereotype, women do not talk more than men in mixed gender groups. They talk less. However, in every study I have read that I could take seriously, this question is extremely difficult to answer in one word, as I just did when I wrote "less." In fact, when males and females are of equal in status, there are relatively few differences both with respect to how much each talks or how they talk. One Prof. Robin Lakoff wrote a book years ago that was based on nothing more than her perceptions (prejudices) that said that there is a fundamental difference between h0w men and women talk. In somewhat more modern terms, the claim was that women used less powerful language than do men. Robin's claims were not without some justification but as I just noted, when men and women have equal status they talk in very similar ways. The problem is that for years women couldn't achieve a social status equal to that of their "bread winning" husbands.

I had the good fortune to be in a discipline (linguistics) in which there has many women members for many decades and in a department in which there were always women. Indeed, the department was founded by a woman and currently has a female chair. One result of this is that essentially every negative stereotype of females that had leaked into my brain over the years was resoundingly falsified. This education began at Rice University which though it had more men than women students, had only smart women. Unfortunately, most males do not have such edifying experiences.

In the preponderance of studies I have read over the years it has been shown that men talk more than women in informal social gatherings. Given this fact, it is difficult to see how the stereotype that women talk too much could have emerged since that would have been the sort of context that would foster such a view in men. The Brain Lady suggests that one reason men might think that women too much is that "women want to talk when [men] really don't want to listen" (taken from the ABC story). Moreover, of course, men and women tend to want to talk about different things. According to the Mehl study the ABC report cited, "men in the study tended to talk more about technology and sports, while women talked more about their relationships" (also taken from the ABC story). The fact that males and females prefer to talk about different things could lead to the perception that women talk too much because they talk about things men don't much care about.

I can't say why stereotypes emerge, but I think I know why they survive even when contradicted by experience. There are two ways that apparent counterexamples to a hypothesis can be taken. They may be taken as genuine counterexamples, that is they may be taken as facts which falsify the hypothesis forcing one to abandon it. Or they may be taken as mere exceptions to the rule, and thus as being of negligible interest. So, any man who believes women talk too much may see instances of women who are dominating a conversation as confirming their belief while seeing instances of women who say very little as mere exceptions to the rule. In any event, it is time for men to give this silly idea up.

Verbal Chaos -- Naming the Original Inhabitants of Canada

2007-06-29T14:53:00.001-04:00

In a BBC News story on an uprising by the original inhabitants of Canada, the headline read "Canada natives in day of protests." In the first paragraph, the term "aboriginals" was used. In the second paragraph, we find both "indigenous people" and "First Nations," which I will cheerfully admit has me baffled. There is a later reference to "native protesters" and then "First Nations groups." Then comes another reference to "First Nations" and "indigenous groups."

The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, an umbrella group representing Canada's indigenous groups, has called for peaceful and non-disruptive protests.

Reading down further we find a use of "native protester" and then "aboriginal ancestry."

So, the first inhabitants of Canada (that we know about) are alternatively "natives," "aboriginals," "indigenous people" and members or citizens of "First Nations." This verbal blizzard cannot be a good thing. It suggests that journalists are in deadly fear of the PC police. Sadly, what these uses of language signal most is that there exist for Canadians a set of people who are seen as "not one of us." Perhaps that is how the native, aboriginal, indigenous members of First Nations in Canada feel about the rest of the Canadian population -- they are "not us."

I came to reading this story after reading another on violence between the Lebanese army and "protesters" who claim that all they wanted to do is get back to their "refugee camps." Quite remarkably, it seems that

Lebanon has 12 refugee camps housing more than 350,000 Palestinians. They are people who fled or were forced to leave their homes when Israel was created in 1948, or their descendants.

I am guessing that by now that we have some three generation families in these camps where one could speak of first generation refugee, second generation refugee, and etc.

In the case of the Palestinian refugees there seems to be just one name but the situations between the native, aboriginal, indigenous members of First Nations in Canada and the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is quite similar. Both seem to live in camps. And both are groups of refugees. I suspect that the the native, aboriginal, indigenous members of First Nations in Canada could leave their reservations if they wanted to and go to live wherever they wanted. I don't know whether or not this is true of the Palestinian refugees though it is clear they can leave the camps if only temporarily.

In 2003, the BBC had a web story on American Indians in which we do not find quite the same level of linguistic variation. In this story, the people in question were called Indians or American Indians or Native Americans. In 1999, the BBC web site had a story titled "North American Indians to pool resources." In this story, reference is made to a meeting of what collectively are called "North American Indians." Of some interest is that the BBC makes reference to "indigenous people" who came from elsewhere around the world and it was observed that "aboriginal leaders" from around the world hoped to form political partnerships. I suspect the writer(s) didn't have a clue how exactly to refer to these others.

It is clear that Americans (i. e., the people of the USA) have settled on an agreed term for referring to the original inhabitants of the country, namely "Indian" and that this term is used by both Indians and non-Indians. I have no way of knowing who writes the Canadian stories for the BBC but I would imagine Canadians do this. The question I would raise is why there is so much variation in the linguistic references. Does it reflect a lingering guilt by other Canadians or what?

The Meaning of "Reward"

2007-06-19T10:50:00.000-04:00

I have bought a number of things from Best Buy and signed up for their "Reward Zone" program when I bought my first item, which happened to be an expensive TV set. They send you your Reward Zone card, which, of course, just adds to the other crap one has to carry around. Best Buy pushes the word "reward" whenever possible, even having a special web site called MyRewardZone.com. Notice the "My." The "My" is you.

The way it works is that if you spend X amount of money you get Y amount of reward zone points. When you get 250 such points, they mail you a $5 off coupon. This means that they are, in essence deciding for you when your points will be converted into a certificate. You can't accumulate them over several years and end up with large enough coupon to buy some big ticket item. There are other businesses that would allow you to do that. Frequent flier miles work that way. I was told that a $3,000 TV purchase would earn one a $50 dollar gift certificate. This tells us that we are getting a whopping 1.67% return on our "investments" in Best Buy products. Color me "unimpressed."

There is, of course, an expiration date on these gift certificates. This means that they decide when to spend your Reward Zone points and then they tall you when you have to redeem the coupon. If you happen not to want to buy anything right then -- who needs $5 off on a $2,000 TV set? -- your coupon will expire and those points you had accumulated will have vanished into the ether. It is clear that Best Buy is the only one getting a reward -- if the coupon expires they lose nothing and if you spend it on something you don't really need, they will make some money. We have here a SpendMoneyatBestBuyZone program.

This is a bit different from a rewards program run by several grocery chains in our area. According to the one we use, one gets a one time ten or twenty cents off per gallon for every $50 dollars or so we spend in the store in a given month. The amount off will continue to grow over the month until you decide to buy gasoline. So, you are making the decision when to spend your "cents per gallon off" benefit. There are two differences between the "rewards" that our grocery chain is offering from that offered by Best Buy. The first is that we actually need to buy both food (what gets you the reward) and gasoline (where the reward comes in) each month whereas we do not need to buy MP3 players or HDTV's or movie DVDs or any other electronic product each month. This is a huge difference in the nature of these rewards systems.

This brings me to another major misuse of language we ran into when buying a car recently. (Yes, we are doing our best to stimulate the economy.) We were offered the opportunity to purchase an extended warranty. I gather that people financing cars with banks and see thei cost of an extended warranty in monthly terms and may not find adding another $20 or so dollars per month onto the payment (paying interest on the retail cost of the extended warranty, of course). We used a combination of cash and our line of credit to get our car and thus, from the perspective of the car dealer, we were buying the car with "cash." Apparently people like us tend to balk at paying some $500 more for an extended warranty. We were also offered the opportunity to pay big bucks for a program whereby some company or the police (I wasn't listening too closely to this since I knew I would turn it down) can determine exactly where your car is when it is stolen and the police can go pick it up and maybe arrest the chop shop people or the thief "red handed." When we said, "No," the salesman reminded us how much we were spending and wondered why we wouldn't want to "protect our investment."

This is a curious use of "investment." I would not call anything that is guaranteed to depreciate 5 or 10 or 20% the moment one purchases it and which will ultimately become worthless an "investment." An extended warranty is purely and simply an insurance policy but, for some reason, the salesman didn't chose to use that word. We have some actual investments, namely money we have put in mutual funds. However, there is no way whatever that one can protect an investment like that other than by securing the services of a good adviser who has a plan that emphasizes preserving capitol in down times at least as much as increasing it during good times.

Extended warranties are insurance programs for us but licenses for printing money for those who sell them to us. I no longer ever buy extended warranties for I realized one day that they represent a special case of gambling. I just bought the computer I am writing this blog on. The salesman said that I got a one year warranty but could pay $120 more dollars to extend the warranty by two years. I pointed out that the retailer was betting that my product would not fail for at least three years. I, on the other hand, would be betting that my product would fail in its second or third year. Think about that a minute. That's a crazy bet, especially in the case of electronic goods. In my experience, if a TV or MP3 player or computer is going to fail, it is most likely going to fail fairly early in its life. If it survives for a year, the odds are very good it will survive for a number of additional years. We still have a TV set that I bought some 15 years ago that is still working. One we bought around 10 years ago is still working. It is a replacement for one that failed early on during the initial warranty period.

When you buy an extended warranty you are betting against the house. The manufacturer knows how long his products last on average and gears its extended warranty plan to terminate during the useful life of the product. They are betting you that their product will not fail during the extended warranty period. In the case of my computer, I would have been betting that the computer would fail, not in the first year, but in the second or third year. That's a crazy bet to make. It is much smarter to bet with the house. The house always wins. Well, almost always.

A World Spinning our of Control

2007-06-15T08:17:00.000-04:00

A Lebanese MP is killed. A Lebanese broadcast journalist "gloats" about it not knowing that her microphone was "live" and she and the person she was talking to were sacked. Some Lebanese soldiers were killed in an attack on a refugee camp -- how can there still be a refugee camp holding those that left Palestine in fear of the Jewish people. Correction: how can there be a second and surely a third generation of people descended from those who left Palestine who are still in a refugee camp? That was 60 or so years ago. Is their presence there due to their belief that they will soon or someday get to return and don't want to put down roots elsewhere or because life is good in refugee camps in Lebanon (that is not a serious question) or what?

We move to Gaza where Hamas has driven out those Fatah military and political leaders they have not killed. And quickly on to the West Bank where Fatah is going after Hamas leaders. This will surely mean that Israel cannot possibly make peace with a Palestinian state since there will be two of them and Hamas is very unlikely to want to deal with Israel and conversely. Meanwhile, Israel, in what has to be an act of desperation has made the 283 year old Simon Peres President. I may be off on his age a bit. Israel still has clearly not recovered from their very costly "victory" over Hezbollah.

Moving over to Iraq we find that everyone is at war with everyone else. It is impossible to sort out what the dynamics are there. At least, from this chair I can't figure out how Islamic militants can bomb Mosques that have been in place for a very long time because they are being used by some other group of Muslims. The US did its best not to bomb a mosque when it won its great victory in Iraq by toppling Saddam. This is a paradigm case of a Pyrrhic victory. I do not know who we are fighting against, if anyone. Apparently it would be bad for an infidel state to bomb a Mosque but okay for a rival Muslim group to do so. So far, at least, the Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians, and Saudis have not condemned this sort of thing (as far as I know). Occasionally I read about the US killing some insurgents but there are at least two sorts -- the pro-Al Queda group or set of groups and the non-pro-Al Queda group or set of groups. Are we trying to fight Shiites too? I did read that Sadr has suggested that Shiites loyal to him should cool it. Meanwhile, I have read that Turkey has invaded Iraq. They, of course, are terrified of a union of some sort between Turkish and Iraqi Kurds. I gather we did not rush northward and start shooting at Turks. They are our allies after all.

Meanwhile much of the West is condemning Iran for this, that, and the other thing. The most remarkable thing I have read about Iran is that "Fifty-seven Iranian economists have launched a scathing attack on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." I hope that they are not killed. If not, this would be the one good thing I have read about the Middle East this morning. I am grateful to learn that the US Secretary of State, Condy Rice, opened an Iranian art show or, rather, an art show featuring Iranian artists in the US. There have been interactions between American and Iranian wrestlers as well. This brings to mind the cultural exchanges between the Soviets and Americans during the Cold War. It took a long time for those exchanges to do any good, assuming, probably counterfactually, that they did any good at all. Condy made the fatuous and totally meaningless because hopelessly false claim that art is a language and that art can help two different peoples understand each other. The claim she made is that art is "the language of peoples who need to know each other and understand each other." Art is not a language. And having an art show in the US of Iranian artists will not help Americans and Iranians understand each other. How in hell can one understand a country that has a bunch of Ayatollahs who seem to run the country, a whacked out President who seems to run the country, a Revolutionary Guard that seems to act on its own, and an elected body that manifestly does not run the country (at least as far as I can tell). To be fair I ought to concede that I am not sure who runs the US -- it is some combination of George Bush, rich people, corporations, and the religious right. I think we would have to forgive the Iranians who find it difficult to understand us.

I am going in for surgery today to have my tongue surgically removed from my cheek. This post does have something to do with language, thanks to Condy's unbelievably ignorant statement so I have not totally violated your trust.

The Inadequacies of K-12 Teaching

2007-06-05T08:09:00.000-04:00

There is, to use the words of Pat Smith in an op-ed piece in the Columbus Dispatch a couple of days ago a "disconnect" between high school teachers and college professors as to how well prepared the students they train are for college work. Citing The American College Testing Program which assessed the attitudes of high school teachers and college professors, she writes:

The disconnect is substantial in all subjects: Seventy-six percent of high-school English teachers think their students are well-prepared for college work, whereas only 33 percent of professors think so. In reading, the gap is 72 percent to 36 percent; in math, 79 percent vs. 42 percent; and in science, 67 percent vs. 32 percent. In other words, students appear to be no better prepared than those in previous years, despite all the attempts to improve their performance.

I can reasonably be charged with bias on this question because I was a college professor for many years and never have been a high school teacher but the fact is that the people who are best qualified to assess how well college students are prepared for college work is the professors who are actually teaching them. High school teachers may have gone to college but that in itself does not qualify them to evaluate how well they are preparing their students for college level work.

It is worth asking why our teachers are failing to prepare kids for college work. The first answer that came to my mind was that the problem lies in the fact that our teachers are not particularly good and that that itself is due to the fact that the kids who gravitate toward K-12 teaching are not the brightest bulbs in our university chandeliers. However, in an effort to find research on the intellectual abilities of our teachers using Google Scholar, what I found is that there seems to be little correlation between teacher intelligence (in an IQ sense) and their ability to teach effectively. So, I will reluctantly abandon that thesis.

The single most important problem our teachers face is that they are caught between a rock and a hard place that has resulted from our "one size fits all" approach to education. The rock is holding back kids who do failing work and the hard place is "socially promoting" kids who do failing work. In regard to this problem, reading specialist, Debra Johnson, in a report prepared for the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory writes:

Extensive research indicates that neither holding students back a grade nor promoting them unprepared fosters achievement. Studies indicate that retention negatively impacts students' behavior, attitude, and attendance. Social promotion undermines students' futures when they fail to develop critical study and job-related skills.

President Clinton argued in a State of the Union address that schools systems must stop the practice of social promotion. Some apparently did. However, many have not. But as noted, simply holding kids back is no solution.

The reality is that we are born in this world with different abilities and we develop different interests. If we want our schools to succeed, it is imperative that we match kids up with programs of study that match their abilities and interests. According to The Onion

If you work hard, believe in yourself, and never lose sight of your dreams, you can achieve anything you want, the make-believe children's-book character Chipper Chipmunk said Tuesday.

This theme that kids can be whatever they want to be seems to be common in children's books. It is, of course, total crap. Moreover, it is dangerous crap for it sets kids up for huge disappointments. Until we match students up with appropriate programs of study teachers will always be between the rock and hard places mentioned above.

It pains me to cite "Fair and Balanced" Fox news but it has a useful story titled "Flunking Out of School? Get a Lawyer" which started out "Some parents have slapped lawsuits on teachers, saying their kids deserved better marks and should be allowed to graduate from high school despite their grades." How it is that parents believe that they are in a better position to judge the academic work of their kids than teachers are is a complete mystery to me. Maybe these parents believe that their kids can be anything they want to be, thanks to reading children's books to them.

Teachers appear to vary a great deal in their ability to teach. A very interesting web page on teacher quality cites Stanford University researcher Linda Darling-Hammond as showing that "teacher ability is a stronger determinant of student achievement than poverty, race, or parents' educational attainment." Unfortunately, teachers associations have resisted formal evaluations of the abilities of teachers. Teachers give exams but they don't want to take them. However, George Bush managed to do an end run around the teachers' associations by getting his "No Child Left Behind" bill passed. There have been a lot of legitimate complaints about this bill, the worst of which may be that it has led teachers, perhaps at the direction of administrators, to teach kids to pass the standardized tests rather than teach their subject matter. The wonderful HBO show, The Wire, had a very nice program featuring this practice last season. Even so, what these tests are proving is that our schools are no damn good, which is, more or less, what professors are saying when they claim that high schools as failing to prepare students for college.

Saying what you mean

2007-05-30T08:57:00.000-04:00

In a Leonard Pitts, Jr. op-ed piece in my morning paper, he asks why people who say things that damage themselves don't just confess that they meant what they said. The NFL player, Clinton Portis, defended Michael Vick's involvement in dog fighting saying that he didn't know whether Vick actually engaged in this practice but said that it is his property, his dogs, and if that's what he wants to do, that's fine with Clinton. A few hours later he issued a statement saying he wished to make it clear that he didn't condone dog fighting.

Clearly we have a contradiction here. Former President Carter after correctly saying that George W. Bush was the worst President in history insofar as our impact around the world was concerned was forced to provide a semi-retraction. He later said that his remarks were "maybe careless or misinterpreted." This amendment to what he said employs the weasel word "maybe" which makes his "correction" inoperable for it could mean not just "maybe careless or misinterpreted," but also "maybe not careless or misinterpreted." Careless speaking can arise when one is not being as precise as one could be and perhaps should be, but this is not such a case. However, journalists and talking heads who neglected to use his qualification, "as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world," preferring instead the dramatic claim that George was our worst present ever President, were clearly acting in an irresponsible manner in that it counts as a willful misunderstandings of what Carter said. I give you Aljazzera.net, which had a story titled "Carter: Bush 'worst president ever'." The first paragraph says, "Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has called George Bush's presidency "the worst in history"," which repeats the deliberate misrepresentation but then in the third paragraph finally gets around to providing the qualification. I suspect it was this sort of misrepresentation that led to Carter's semi-retraction, for it represented him as making a vastly stronger claim than he actually made.

A "Media with Conscience" web site, ironically, has "Carter: Bush 'worst president ever' ," and has as its initial sentence, "Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has called George Bush's presidency as "the worst in history while also condemning Tony Blair, the out-going British prime minister, for his close support for Bush's policies.." This particular statement appears at a number of sites " and illustrates one of the greatest failings of journalism, namely the mindless repetition of claims others have made. They offer the mysterious statement, "By Agencies," to indicate the source of their story whereas Al Jazerra indicates that it got the photo it displayed from the AP but also used "Agencies" to indicate where it got its story from. I suspect we have some cheaters here who copy AP material without directly attributing the stories to it since that would involve paying the AP a fee and they protect their butts in a minimal fashion by using a totally oblique reference to "agencies" to indicate the source.

What Carter should have said is that his remarks were being misrepresented by journalists in order to provide readers with more dramatic claims than were actually made. It should not come as a surprise to any of you that journalists do this sort of thing, even so-called "responsible journalists." We live in a world of "sound bites" -- juicy clips taken from the mouths of those journalists wish to cover which may or may not accurately represent what the speaker said. Indeed, the first rule of journalism is "Grab the attention of the reader/listener," the second is "write/talk in language that represents events as immediate in the sense provided by Webster's on line dictionary of "occurring, acting, or accomplished without loss or interval of time." Thus, TV reporters often say things like, "The top US commander in Iraq says the US effort there may become even harder before it gets easier," as KWTX (a TV web site) put it on their web page. Way down on the list of journalistic rules is something like "Tell the truth."

The use of the present tense in journalism where the past tense is normally required for accuracy is a time honored practice. In doing research for my book on the language of politics, I ran into a text book that advocated use of the present tense to give immediacy to stories. In what seems to be a Kansas University web site [clip off "-edit/heads.html" from this url], we find "Effective headlines usually involve logical sentence structure, active voice and strong present-tense verbs" on a page that is headlined, "Making an impact — accurately."

So, Clinton Portis said what he meant and then contradicted it in a retraction doubtless inspired by his agent leaving us with a certain knowledge that he meant what he said the first time. But President Carter was misrepresented. His real offense was to violate the time honored practice of former Presidents not to criticize past ones, especially ones still in office. This is a very unfortunate principle since former Presidents may be able to provide us with much more substantive criticisms than others can. I suspect they do this so that the current guy won't trash them when he is out of office.

How do We Know When a Policy has Failed?

2007-05-25T08:23:00.000-04:00

In my morning paper yesterday, there was a story presenting Tony Blair's reaction to the escape of 3 suspected terrorists who were under "partial arrest." The Brits were holding them to keep them from traveling overseas to carry out terrorist attacks. In short, the Brits were trying to protect others from terrorist attacks. Blair wants to toughen the British laws for dealing with such terrorists. The predictable response of Civil-liberties campaigners to Blair's call for tougher measures was

"Punishment without trial is a failed policy on both sides of the Atlantic," said Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human-rights group Liberty.

This raises the question as to when can we definitively say that a policy has succeeded or failed?

For anyone to make a warranted claim that a policy has failed, one must articulate what one takes the goals of that policy to be and then demonstrate how the policy has failed to satisfy those goals. Our Civil Libertarian did not do that, and for good reason. He can't. The goal of the British and American anti-terrorist laws, however distasteful they my be, is to prevent terrorist attacks. And, since the 9/11/01 attack in the US and the attacks on the London transport system on 7/7/05, there have been no substantive terrorist attacks in these two countries despite the fact that they are the two countries which, not counting Israel, are most despised by Muslim terrorists. By any concrete measure of success or failure, one would have to conclude that the domestic security policies of the two countries have been successful.

It is always possible, of course, that the absence of terrorist attacks in the US and UK since those in 01 and 05 is not at all due to the special domestic security laws of the two countries. One could make an argument that conventional police work has been sufficient to stop most terrorist attacks. Sometimes it is the incompetence of the terrorist that causes a failed attempt. I give you Richard Reid. who wanted to bring down an airliner with a shoe bomb. He was caught by persons on the airplane after an initial effort to set the bomb off failed and then tried, convicted, and sentenced in an American court of law, not some secret military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay.

It could be that the draconian Homeland Security laws have nipped specific attacks in the bud but officials aren't telling us this because they don't want to provide potential terrorists with information as to how we go about catching them. Or we have not heard about such successes because there haven't been any. This is the Catch 22 that the CIA was in during the Cold War. We heard about its failures but it didn't want to tell us about its successes. One of the reasons why they might not have wanted to tell us about their successes is that they might have been more disturbing than the failures. I have in mind the overthrowing of the Allende government in Chile.

I understand why the US government wanted its Homeland Security apparatus. Terrorists represent a special class of criminal. I presume that some criminals might be reformable but terrorists are not in that class of criminals. Bank robbers know they are criminals. Terrorists believe they are not. They do what they do for reasons that seem to them to be perfectly rational and they see their actions as fully justified. American criminal law is ill-suited to dealing with terrorists.

Suppose that we have two groups of people we believe intend to engage in criminal acts. One group plans to rob a bank. The other intends to blow up the bank and kill everyone in the building housing the bank. One cannot arrest either group without probable cause and, given the application of standard provisions of criminal law, one cannot detain either group for more than a relatively short period of time without charging them with a crime. In advance of their carrying out their plans, the best one could hope for is a conspiracy charge. Sadly, that would surely mean that they would be offered a chance to get out on bail and move forward on their plans.

On a well-scripted TV show, our two sets of criminals would be shown putting their plans in action with, perhaps, our terrorist group planting of C4 all over the bank. At the last second, our heroic cops come in and arrest the bad guys red handed. In reality, while we may be willing to let the odd bank robbery happen because we didn't have enough evidence to arrest and incarcerate the bank robbers before the act, we cannot allow the odd terrorist attack to take place because our ordinary criminal laws are insufficient to stop the attack. And that is the rub. The American system of justice is designed not to protect us from future crimes but to capture and punish those who have committed crimes. By its very nature, conventional criminal law is incapable of dealing with terrorists.