Why I Pay No Attention to Politics

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.