Country of the Blind

Mnemonics for Pronouncing Chinese Characters

2012-01-05T16:30:00.000-05:00

Photo by Felix_Nine

For me a new mental gimmick is the best kind of toy there is—better than a new electronic gadget. My latest toy is a technique for memorizing the pronunciation of Chinese characters—my own invention, I am proud to say. This might end up being my greatest contribution to civilization, even better than my killer nacho recipe.

Lots of attention has been given to the problem of remembering how to write Chinese characters (see, for example, my review of Heisig and Richardson's book). By comparison, remembering how to pronounce the characters has been the neglected well-behaved sibling. But pronouncing the characters is by no means trivial—especially since the Chinese (Mandarin) language uses important sound contrasts that just don't exist in English, including of course tone of voice.

With my system I can link just two concepts (as is done in most memory systems) to represent the pronunciation of any Chinese character, including the tone. If you are using Heisig and Richardson or something similar to remember how to write characters, this is the perfect companion. You can also use the system to memorize spoken Mandarin words even if you don't care about writing them (not what I would recommend, but some people like it). It will take a bit of time and effort up front to memorize the basic correspondences, but this will be paid back with interest pretty quickly (within a matter of days in my own case). This post gives a complete description of the method—so bear with the length. You might also learn a little about Mandarin phonology.

The fact that this is possible at all is thanks to the Chinese "one character = one syllable" principle and also thanks to the rather constrained Chinese sound system, which makes it possible to list all Mandarin syllables in a rather modest table. My system uses a similar table, but pushed and pulled around a bit. It also has much in common with the "Bopomofo" system, which represents every possible Chinese syllable with one to three symbols taken from an alphabet of 37 symbols. I won't use the rather exotic-looking symbols themselves here, but their pinyin equivalents.

21 out of the 37 symbols can appear only at the beginning of a syllable:

b-, p-, m-, f-, d-, t-, n-, l-, g-, k-, h-, j-, q-, x-, zh-, ch-, sh-, r-, z-, c-, s-

Another 12 can appear only at the end of a syllable:

-a, -o, -e, -ê, -ai, -ei, -ao, -ou, -an, -(e)n, -ang, -(e)ng

(...although certain syllables in both cases consist of a single symbol such as s ["si" in Pinyin] or ai, so that the beginning of the syllable is also the end.)

Three more symbols, representing -i-, -u-, or -ü-, can appear at the beginning, middle, or end. The -i- and -u- sound essentially like they would in Spanish, whereas -ü- sounds like a French "u" or a German "ü".

Examples:

zh+ang = zhang in Pinyin
u + ang = wang in Pinyin
zh + u + ang = zhuang in Pinyin
zh + (e)n = zhen in Pinyin
i = yi in Pinyin
j + i + (e)n = jin in Pinyin

If you have been paying attention, you should have noticed I have only listed 36 of the 37 symbols. The remaining symbol, representing er, never combines with another and represents a syllable in itself.

All Mandarin syllables are made up of a limited number of such combinations. (Compare this with the rough-and-ready situation in English, where a single syllable might be "strength" or "boxed" or "splashed". Good luck finding a table of English syllables.)

The Basic Approach

The first step in the method is to use a mental picture of a given individual (real or fictional) to represent each of the initial symbols. We're going to call these representatives personages. I have made the following assignments, but you can use others if you like them better:

Babe (Ruth) for b-
Peter (Pan) for p-
Mark (Twain) for m-
Frazier (Crane) for f-
Darth (Vader) for d-
Tarzan for t-
Noriyuki (Morita) for n-
Leonardo (da Vinci) for l-
Groucho (Marx) for g-
Karl (Marx) for k-
Herman (Munster) for h-
George (Washington) for zh-
Charlie (Chaplin) for ch-
Sherlock (Holmes) for sh-
Ringo (Starr) for r-
Zach (Galafianakis) for z-
(Christopher) Columbus for c-
Sam (Spade) for s-

I tried to pick these to be as visually distinctive as possible. I put the last names in parentheses because I recommend you get on a first-name basis with your personages. You'll be spending a lot of time with them. Notice everyone on the list is male; also I left out j-, q-, and x-. The reasons for this will become apparent in due time. The names are a clue to the associated sound: Babe for b-, Groucho for g-, and so on. This "clue" will actually be important only in the early stages of use—eventually (pretty soon, really) you will learn the correspondences by heart anyway.

We also need to introduce a new "null" initial symbol, which I will denote Ø-. So, for example (b- + -ao) gives you bao but (Ø- + -ao) gives you plain ao. This null symbol also gets an associated individual:

Ø- Albert (Einstein)

We might as well go ahead and introduce the "null" final symbol, denoted -Ø. So (s- + -ao) gives you sao but (s- + -Ø) gives you plain s (which is, however, written "si" in Pinyin).

(Now I have to interrupt myself to emphasize an important point: the "i" in Pinyin "si" is nothing like the "i" in "yi" or "ji". "Si" is pronounced more like "sz" than English "sea". Same for "zhi", "chi", "shi", "ri", "ci", "zi". If you don't understand this point then go back and ask your Chinese teacher about it, because it will wreak havoc with your Chinese pronunciation. The Pinyin symbol "si" is written with just the "s-" symbol in Bopomofo. To help keep this point in mind, I'm going to use parentheses to write it like this: "s(i)", "zh(i)", etc.)

Now the do-it-yourself part: for each of the twelve final symbols -a, -o, -e, -ai, -ei, -ao, -ou, -an, -(e)n, -ang, -(e)ng, and -Ø, choose a familiar place—a house, a restaurant, or a hotel. You will have to exert the modest effort to remember which places go with which symbols. I can't do this part for you because they need to be places familiar to you. (This is a point about the "memory palace" that many people seem to miss.) But for the sake of explanation we're going to pretend with a few examples:

-Ø your own house
-a the Plaza hotel in New York City
-e Maxim's restaurant in Paris
and so on....

(We lump -e and -ê together because these just happen never to appear in the same situation.) Now each syllable can be visualized as an image of a particular personage in a particular place. For example:

ba = b- + -a = Babe Ruth at the Plaza Hotel.
zha = zh- + -a = George Washington at the Plaza Hotel.
zh(i) = zh- + -Ø = George Washington at your house.
zhe = zh- + -e = George Washington at Maxim's.
ta = t- + -a = Tarzan at the Plaza Hotel.
a = -Ø + a = Albert Einstein at your house.

We can summarize all the combinations (so far) of initials and finals in a table:

-Ø

-a

-o

-e

-ai

-ei

-ao

-ou

-an

-(e)n

-ang

-(e)ng

Albert

Ø-

ang

eng

Babe

bai

bei

bao

ban

ben

bang

beng

Peter

pai

pei

pao

pou

pan

pen

pang

peng

Mark

mai

mei

mao

mou

man

men

mang

meng

Frazier

fei

fou

fan

fen

fang

feng

Darth

dai

dei

dao

dou

dan

den

dang

deng

Tarzan

tai

tei

tao

tou

tan

tang

teng

Noriyuki

nai

nei

nao

nou

nan

nen

nang

neng

Leonardo

lai

lei

lao

lou

lan

lang

leng

Groucho

gai

gei

gao

gou

gan

gen

gang

geng

Karl

kai

kao

kou

kan

ken

kang

keng

Herman

hai

hei

hao

hou

han

hen

hang

heng

George

zh-

zhi

zha

zhe

zhai

zhei

zhao

zhou

zhan

zhen

zhang

zheng

Charlie

ch-

chi

cha

che

chai

chao

chou

chan

chen

chang

cheng

Sherlock

sh-

shi

sha

she

shai

shei

shao

shou

shan

shen

shang

sheng

Ringo

rao

rou

ran

ren

rang

reng

Zach

zai

zei

zao

zou

zan

zen

zang

zeng

Columbus

cai

cao

cou

can

cen

cang

ceng

Sam

sai

sao

sou

san

sen

sang

seng

Notice that certain of the possible combinations, for example *be, just don't occur. This would mean, for example that Babe Ruth will never visit Maxim's. Notice also that we have handled the oddball syllable er by arbitrarily representing it as (Ø- + -Ø), or Albert Einstein at your house. This saves us from having to create an entire new column of the table just to handle this one case.

This is the basic idea of the system. We still have some unanswered questions, though:

(1) What about those pesky tones?
(2) What about the intermediate symbols -i-, -u-, and -ü-?
(3) What about the initials j-, q-, x-?

All to be answered in the fullness of time.

Handling Tones

First, question (1): we're going to expand the image to include the tone for the syllable by refining the location:

1st tone: In front,
2nd tone: Just inside the entrance,
3rd tone: Any other location inside,
4th tone: In the bathroom.

So, for example George Washington at the reception desk of Maxim's is zhe (2nd tone) whereas George Washington sitting at a table in Maxim's is zhe (3rd tone).

More Enhancements

Now, question (2), but first we focus just on the intermediate -i-. Standard Bopomofo practice would be to represent the syllable liao, for example, as l- + -i- + -ao. But we don't want to juggle three parts for the syllable, so our approach is to merge l- and -i- into a new initial li-. And since we need to distinguish li- from l-, we introduce a new personage Lauren (Bacall) to represent li- as opposed to Leonardo (l-). Similarly, we introduce:

Indira (Gandhi) for y-
Brigitte (Bardot) for bi-
Paris (Hilton) for pi-
Marilyn (Monroe) for mi-
Dorothy (Gale) for di-
(Mother) Teresa for ti-
Nancy (Pelosi) for ni-
Lauren (Bacall) for li-

Some points worth noticing: (i) This list is much shorter than the first, because f-, for example, never appears before -i-; (ii) These personages are all female, which will help you keep track of which initials have -i- and which don't.

And now we can introduce the remaining initials:

Gidget for ji-
Katherine (Hepburn) for qi-
Hattie (McDaniel) for xi-

There was no point in introducing these earlier because (just as f- never appears before -i-) j-, q-, and x- never appear except before -i- (or -ü-).

You may wonder why I chose Gidget to represent ji- instead of someone whose name begins with "J". This is to avoid confusion between zh- and j-, which are quite distinct in Chinese, although both come close to "j" than any other English sound. Confusing j- with g- is not really an issue because g- never appears before -i- or -ü-, exactly the opposite of j-.

(Representing j- by "G", q- by "K", etc. also has a solid historical basis, because Mandarin used to have a *gi syllable, but the g- took on a softer sound before -i [thus becoming ji], just as the English "g" in "giraffe" did, or the Italian "c" in "ciao". Likewise for *ki and *hi. Why do you think "Beijing" used to be spelled "Peking"? But once you learn the system by heart it won't matter anyway.)

So we can update our table with the new syllables (we're not finished yet, though):

-Ø

-a

-o

-e

-ai

-ao

-ou

-an

-(e)n

-ang

-(e)ng

Indira

yai

yao

you

yan

yin

yang

ying

Brigitte

bi-

bie

biao

bian

bin

bing

Paris

pi-

pie

piao

pian

ping

Marilyn

mi-

mie

miao

miu

mian

min

ming

Dorothy

di-

dia

die

diao

diu

dian

ding

Teresa

ti-

tie

tiao

tian

ting

Nancy

ni-

nie

niao

niu

nian

nin

niang

ning

Lauren

li-

lia

lie

liao

liu

lian

lin

liang

ling

Gidget

ji-

jia

jie

jiao

jiu

jian

jin

jiang

jing

Katherine

qi-

qia

qie

qiao

qiu

qian

qin

qiang

qing

Hattie

xi-

xia

xie

xiao

xiu

xian

xin

xiang

xing

The columns of the table are represented with the same places you already identified (all though you won't need all of them for this table).

Final Pieces of the Puzzle

Next step is to handle -u-. Just as with -i-, we fold this into the various initial sounds to make a new series of initials bu-, pu-, mu-, etc. And just as before, we assign personages for each of the new initial symbols:

Wonder (Woman) for w-
Bugs (Bunny) for bu-
Popeye for pu-
Mickey (Mouse) for mu-
Fred (Flintstone) for fu-
Dick (Tracy) for du-
Totoro for tu-
Ninja (Turtles) for nu-
Lisa (Simpson) for lu-
Garfield for gu-
Kang (& Kotos) for ku-
Huey (Donald Duck's nephew) for hu-
the Joker for zhu-
Charlie (Brown) for chu-
Shrek for shu-
Richie (Rich) for ru-
Ziggy for zu-
Casper (the ghost) for cu-
Superman for su-

This time I used characters from either comics or cartoons, to help keep this group distinct from the others. And here is the corresponding part of the table:

		-Ø	-a	-o	-ai	-ei	-an	-(e)n	-ang	-(e)ng
Wonder	w-	wu	wa	wo	wai	wei	wan	wen	wang	weng
Bugs	bu-	bu
Popeye	pu-	pu
Mickey	mu-	mu
Fred	fu-	fu
Darth	du-	du		duo		dui	duan	dun		dong
Totoro	tu-	tu		tuo		tui	tuan	tun		tong
Ninja	nu-	nu		nuo			nuan			nong
Lisa	lu-	lu		luo			luan	lun		long
Garfield	gu-	gu	gua	guo	guai	gui	guan	gun	guang	gong
Kang	ku-	ku	kua	kuo	kuai	kui	kuan	kun	kuang	kong
Huey	hu-	hu	hua	huo	huai	hui	huan	hun	huang	hong
Joker	zhu-	zhu	zhua	zhuo	zhuai	zhui	zhuan	zhun	zhuang	zhong
Charlie (Brown)	chu-	chu	chua	chuo	chuai	chui	chuan	chun	chuang	chong
Shrek	shu-	shu	shua	shuo	shuai	shui	shuan	shun	shuang
Richie	ru-	ru	rua	ruo		rui	ruan	run		rong
Ziggy	zu-	zu		zuo		zui	zuan	zun		zong
Casper	cu-	cu		cuo		cui	cuan	cun		cong
Superman	su-	su		suo		sui	suan	sun		song

You will need to keep Charlie Brown distinct from Charlie Chaplin, but if you think this is going to be a problem for you, you can always change one name or the other. You will notice some spelling oddities: for example, zhu- + (e)ng becomes zhong instead of *zhung, but these merely reflect the way Pinyin works.

And then, finally, we create a series of initials with -ü- and their associated representatives:

Aphrodite for yu-
Neptune for nü-
Luna for lü-
Geryon for ju-
Cupid for qu-
Hermes for xu-

This time we use names from Greco-Roman mythology, to distinguish this series from the preceding three. You will notice that the Pinyin system drops the little dots over the -ü- in most cases. Once again, this is done only when there is no possibility of confusion. We keep the dots in nü-, because n- can precede both -u- and -ü-. We drop the dots in ju-, because j- can precede -ü- but not -u- (so you know the dots should be there even when not written). And Pinyin uses yu- to represent initial -ü- by itself.

Here is the final part of the syllable table:

		-Ø	-e	-an	-(e)n	-(e)ng
Aphrodite	yu-	yu	yue	yuan	yun	yong
Neptune	nü-	nü	nüe
Luna	lü-	lü	lüe
Geryon	ju-	ju	jue	juan	jun	jiong
Cupid	qu-	qu	que	quan	qun	qiong
Hermes	xu-	xu	xue	xuan	xun	xiong

The final column of this table (yong, jiong, qiong, xiong) springs one last gimmick. The combination (ju- + -(e)ng) does not represent *jung (that doesn't exist) but rather jiong. Strictly speaking, jiong would be composed of (j- + -i- + -u- + -(e)ng). For our purposes, this gimmick saves us from having to come up with another four personages to represent, for example, (j- + -i- + -u-). I wish I could take credit (or blame) for this idea, but it comes from the Bopomofo system. My guess is the creators of Bopomofo did not want to deal with sequences as long as four symbols.

Putting it all together

Let's close with an example. I'm going to take the case of this character:

苗

Heisig and Richardson assign this character the keyword "seedling". It is composed of two simpler characters: 艹 ("flower") and 田 ("rice field"). To memorize the writing of the character, the normal approach would be to make up a little story combining the elements of "seedling", "flower", and "rice field". But we're going to go one better, by working the pronunciation of the character into the same story. This is pronounced miao with a 2nd tone. (Note 艹 is pronounced hua and 田 is pronounced tian, so there's no help there.) We break miao up into mi- and -ao. The personage for mi- is Marilyn (Monroe) and my location for -ao is the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku (you would of course pick your own location). So we could imagine something like this:

The lobby (2nd tone) of the Keio Plaza hotel (-ao) has inexplicably been converted into a rice field (田). Strange seedlings sprout and rapidly grow to a great height, developing large flowers (艹). Each flower blooms to reveal a figure of Marilyn Monroe (mi-). It's important to visualize this, like a movie, rather than just read to words. This image will stick with you, and it contains all the basic facts about 苗.

The Dark Knight's Tax Bracket Rises

2011-12-19T18:23:00.002-05:00

Photo by themichaelminer

So here I reveal an important theme of the forthcoming Batman movie. Not that I have any inside information—it's just a hunch. Read on.

But first go back to the previous film The Dark Knight. This was a really good movie. One thing that makes it stand out from the typical run of comic book movies are the extra layers to the story. Er, I suppose that's two things. You get Bruce Wayne's personal sacrifice and his struggle to find the right path. (This is what makes a real hero.) And you get the social commentary. Batman's fight is against terrorism in the person of the Joker. And it is a highly nontrivial issue just how far one is justified in going to fight terrorism. This is clearly an important issue in the movie; various characters spend no little time discussing it amongst themselves. I think it is no coincidence that this theme appeared in The Dark Knight just at the time it was being discussed in society at large. Or, to be more exact, at a time when it should have been discussed but was generally ignored.

Which brings me back to the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. I just saw the new trailer—the one that opens with the boy singing the Star Spangled Banner. And these words, spoken by Selina Kyle, were of particular interest.

You think this can last. There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches 'cause when it hits you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.

Doesn't this resonate with another issue that's been in the news lately—that of rising income inequality? I bet you this will be a theme of the new movie. Remember, you heard it here first.

And it also points up the big messaging issue the Democrats have. I imagine they would get much more traction on the issues if they got Anne Hathaway to whisper their message into John Boehner's ear.

Today's Exercise in Heresy: In Defense of the Traditional Language Course

2011-11-18T08:01:00.001-05:00

Hey, check out my guest post on the aforementioned topic over at Street-Smart Language Learning.

Product Review: Remembering Traditional Hanzi, by James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson

2011-10-23T15:08:00.030-04:00

Hanzi is the Chinese term for Chinese ideographs. Reading the Chinese language entails being able to recognize three to four thousand of these. There is a far greater number than this (to paraphrase Clinton, depending on what the meaning of "is" is). At least one Chinese dictionary listed 100,000 characters. But Zipf's law indicates that the vast majority of these would never be encountered in a typical human lifetime. I like to imagine some mischievous Chinese scribes living a thousand years or so ago playing a little joke, only to get their inventions immortalized in the dictionary.

So don't feel bad about your measly three or four thousand. Of course, learning even three thousand characters is no picnic. Thus the demand for anything which can smooth the process. Heisig and Richardson's Remembering Traditional Hanzi is one of several competing books promising to ease the memorization process. I like this one the best, for reasons given herein.

This particular volume appears to be adapted from Heisig's Remembering the Kanji ("kanji" being the Japanese equivalent of "hanzi"). Although the Japanese borrowed the idea of writing, and almost all their ideographs, from China, they simplified some of them and pronounce all of them differently. And the Chinese later went through their own round of simplification—although (as I have discussed elsewhere) not all Chinese use the simplified versions, and of course the earlier documents printed in "traditional" hanzi did not disappear. So one with ambitions to read both Japanese and Chinese may need to cope with as many as three versions of a single character, such as:

Versions of this book exist for all three forms. I chose the traditional hanzi because I think it provides the best basis for learning all three.

Learning several thousand characters would scarcely be possible did not most of them consist of combinations of simpler components (there are still more than enough "simpler components" to keep the student occupied for a long time). In some cases the meaning of the character can be explained by the meanings of the component parts. For example, a "man" standing by his "word" represents "trust." I have no idea whether this etymology is historically accurate—for this purpose history is beside the point.

There are several books out there which use the etymology approach to help the reader remember the characters. Heisig and Richardson's version adds a couple of unique wrinkles which I find extremely helpful. Here is a sample entry from the book:

As you see, the character is assigned a keyword send out. (A keyword is usually, but not always a single word, but is always a single concept.) This particular character is explained in terms of the keywords of the parts appearing within: missile, bow, and teepee. A little story explains how the meaning of the whole is derived from the meanings of the parts. I think it safe to say this particular etymology is not historically accurate.

One of the particular characteristics distinguishing Heisig and Richardson's book is the use of the single keyword. Many or most Chinese characters have meanings which cannot be captured in an English word. This one for example, has a meaning similar to "send out" but appears as part of words with meanings as diverse as "explode", "discover", "departure", "vivacity", "put [a product] on the market", or "run [a fever]." The typical dictionary will run a long list of words with alternate meanings. Sticking to a single keyword means all the nuances of meaning cannot be captured, but I find this is more than outweighed by the cognitive advantage of having a single clear-cut label—to look at this character, either alone or as part of a still more complex character, and say "Oh yeah, that's send out." And moreover the expression send out refers to one and only one Chinese character. The nuances of meaning will sink in over time as one learns various compounds and expressions containing the character.

A second distinguishing characteristic of the book is the order chosen for the characters. They are organized not alphabetically, nor according to the order in which they are taught in Chinese schools, nor according to frequency of usage, but according to the method. So immediately after a given character appears you might see several others which use that character as a component. Frequency of usage might be better if you planned on quitting the book part-way through—so don't.

A final advantage is that Heisig and Richardson also define keywords for several elements which do not constitute characters in their own right, but do appear as elements of several characters. The keyword—a mental peg on which to hang the image of the component—is tremendously helpful.

For example, the keyword study is given to this important character:

This is part of the Chinese words for school, university, institute, and so on. The bottom part of this character:

is a character in its own right, and gets the appropriate keyword child. The top part:

is not an independent character, but gets its own keyword anyway. Since this component always appears at the top of a character, like others variously labeled roof, hat, teepee, etc., but is far more elaborate, it gets the apt (but probably historically inaccurate) name Carmen Miranda hat.

And now for some criticisms. My biggest problem with this book is the failure to include the Chinese pronunciation of each character in the entry for that character. This practice is probably carried over from the Japanese version of the book, where it makes more sense—since in Japanese a single character usually has at least two, and sometimes as many as seven or eight different pronunciations. But in Chinese almost all characters have one and only one pronunciation. Moreover, in many many cases, part of the character is an indicator of the sound. So, if the pronunciation were known, rather than concoct an elaborate story for why a particular component appears in the character, one could simply note that it has the same or similar pronunciation. But the book includes a simple numbered index of all the characters with their Chinese pronunciations, so this oversight is easily remedied with a ball-point pen.

My other complaint is that this is Volume I, and only contains 1500 characters. I would cheerfully buy Volume II and any that come after, but they don't exist.

In summary, I would definitely use this book as one of my tools if I were studying Chinese. To be more accurate, I am studying Chinese, and I am using this book.

Alvy Singer Wants to Stop Your Kids from Killing Aliens

2011-09-07T08:15:00.005-04:00

A recent Wired Science article compared two bodies of research on the possibility of a link between violent video games and violent behavior. Quick summary of the story: A recent California court case examined the constitutionality of a law outlawing the sale and rental of violent video games to minors. Group X of scientists submitted a brief claiming that such games lead to aggressive behavior. Another Group Y submitted a brief disputing the claim to a link between game play and aggressive behavior. (Note: I myself am agnostic as to whether such a link exists.)

The court ruled the law unconstitutional. One could say that Group Y won and Group X lost, although it's not clear from the story what role the briefs played in the decision. I don't know what other evidence was presented; I don't even know necessarily that the judges even read the briefs.

But here's the other part of the story. The Northwestern Law Review later published an article suggesting that the court should pay more attention to the claims of Group X than Group Y because Group X had published more articles and had published more in "top-tier" journals.

There is a venerable term for this type of argument: ad hominem.

The article doesn't claim to have found an error in the analysis in Group Y's brief, or pick bones with the way Group Y collected their data. No, the argument presented is we're bigger big shots than the big shots on the other side, so the court should have believed us instead of them. This is by definition an ad hominem argument because the identity of the disputants is made an issue rather than the content of the argument.

The Northwestern article includes this amusing footnote: "In the interest of full disclosure, note that we disagree with much of the information contained in the Millett [i.e., Group Y's] Brief." This is amusing because a full disclosure would have mentioned that not only do the three article authors "disagree" with the Millett Brief, but two of them were actually members of Group X that authored the opposing brief. Instead they present themselves as merely concerned bystanders.

With this in mind, I can't help but be reminded of the ending of the movie Annie Hall, wherein Woody Allen's Alvy Singer rewrites his real-life break-up with his girlfriend Annie as a play, only changing the ending so that Annie comes back to him. To be fair, the authors might be less concerned with stewing over past losses than influencing the upcoming Supreme Court review of the case. I still think their time would be better spent in coming up with more persuasive data and analysis than attacking the reputations of their opponents.

Starved for Irony

2011-07-12T20:21:00.018-04:00

Picture shows a notice posted in a college restroom in Japan. Translation runs as follows:

USE OF THE TOILET

Thanks to you, the toilet is always maintained in a clean condition.
Let's continue to use the toilet in such a way that the next person can feel good about using it.
Let's avoid wasting toilet paper and water.
Smoking is prohibited in the toilet.

We request everyone's cooperation.

[In the lower-left corner, next to the drawing of the toilet, surrounded by little stars, is one of those peculiarly Japanese expressions which serves as a sound effect for something that doesn't really have a sound: pika-pika, or in other words, "sparkle sparkle."]

The only thing that could make this any more Japanese would be a cute cartoon animal pointing to the text.

Now consider hypothetically a similar notice (but in English, of course) posted in a restroom on an American college campus. What would be the effect? For the assorted reading audience, standing at the urinal, surely reactions ranging from befuddlement to raucous laughter. Is this for real? Within a matter of hours, defacement by some sort of crude graffiti. Within a matter of days, the notice is flung to the ground and trampled upon, and most likely soiled with a selection of bodily fluids.

So here we see an interesting aspect of Japanese society (or perhaps it is an interesting aspect of non-American society): the incredible sincerity. Japan is a place where you can actually say things like "It's a shame that a few bad apples have to spoil a good time for everyone by breaking the rules" and no one will snicker.

As an American of the sarcasm-prone variety, I am acutely conscious when in Japan of the need to watch what I say. Sarcasm is still possible, but must be carefully calibrated. Otherwise leads to befuddlement on the part of others, or in the worst cases, offense.

The advantages of the sincere society are pretty much what you would expect. The restrooms are in fact remarkably clean. As are the streets—all the more remarkable when you consider there is hardly a trash can to be found. Properly disposing of a plastic soda bottle entails separating it into three components—the bottle, the cap, and the label—and putting them in three separate locations.

I can't help but feel, however, that sarcasm and cynicism have their advantages as well. Life in Japan has provoked a lot of introspection. Why do I feel a frequent urge (by no means always indulged in) to play the devil's advocate, particularly if I can flavor my cynicism with a little humor? There are two obvious justifications:

1: I get to show off my sparkling wit.

2: I get to brighten the day of those around me.

But I think the real basis for American cynicism is something more philosophical. We recognize that no one is perfect, that even the most virtuous among us have a guilty secret or too. And therefore, when we hear someone or something praised extravagantly our automatic reaction is oh yeah? Well, what about....

Japanese people, if pressed, will admit that everything has its dark side. But they don't share our compulsion to point it out constantly.

Lest anyone misunderstand, my intent here is not to claim that America is better than Japan, or vice-versa. I think of different societies as representing different strategies for social organization, and am rather fascinated by the many different possible approaches to solving the same problems. Somewhat in the spirit of Arrow's Theorem, I rather think every approach is going to have serious drawbacks some of the time.

Hello, Kitty!

2011-07-07T21:15:00.000-04:00

I got off of writing for awhile...been on the road—still on the road, actually—in Japan, that is. It's been seven years since I was here last The place has changed a lot, and I myself have changed even more. I find myself little interested in going to the "Japanese" places that I used to put on my list and am far more interested in seeking out the little Japanese things (without the quote marks) that open at least a small window into what is going on.

I was rather stunned to see the obvious difference in atmosphere between Tokyo and Osaka, and marvel at my own obtuseness in not noticing it on earlier visits. In Tokyo, a goodly proportion of the women seem to have taken the inspiration for their dress from the pages of a manga book (quite enjoyable for the onlooker) and everyone walks extremely fast—though I've heard there is a strong correlation between city population and walking speed. Tokyo is at the extreme end of the spectrum by both measures.

There is also something of a fad for wearing surgical masks. So you get the incongruous sight of a young woman dressed to the nines in a frilly microskirt and seven-inch heels, elaborately applied make-up and hair ribbons, and then gilding the lily with a surgical mask. I myself would die a premature death rather than wear one of those things.

In Osaka, on the other hand, about half the people on the street dress like refugees from a homeless shelter. The difference was obvious the instant I hit the sidewalk. And the taxi, was by no means meticulously clean like those in Tokyo. The trunk was half filled with the driver's own weird crap.

There was a thought-provoking scene in Osaka. A girl, obviously profoundly hard of hearing, was trying to get service in a shop and the guy behind the counter was wearing one of those damn masks. You're really screwed in this country if you rely on reading lips to get around.

The lights are out in the big cities—at least the big neon advertising signs—reflecting the ongoing power crisis in Fukushima. But the cities are still far sparklier than any place I ever lived.

Practical Joke #10

2011-05-21T14:45:00.001-04:00

1. Get a friend and drive down the road together.

2. Keep driving around until you see someone standing by the side holding a sign that says "Honk 4 Jesus."

3. Drive a further 50 yards.

4. Park the car and stand by the side of the road holding a sign that says "You should have honked."

5. Your friend stands yet 50 yards further down with a sign saying "Now you're going to hell." Make sure both signs are lettered in bright colors.

6. Remember to smile and wave at all the cars!

Language Learning Tip: Avoiding the Embarrassment of Gender Confusion

2011-04-21T15:36:00.003-04:00

Photo by garryknight

Not your problem, you say? I don't mean the problem of wandering into the wrong restroom. Wait until you undertake to study one of the world's many languages which arbitrarily assign genders to inanimate objects. This includes most European languages (English being the most prominent exception) and others besides—Arabic, for example. Swahili has "noun classes" which work like a multivalent version of gender.

I have heard that French schoolchildren, for example, can predict with uncanny accuracy the genders of objects they have never seen before. This seems hard to believe (what about the case where two different words denote the same object but have opposite gender?). And by what possible logic is a spoon masculine, a fork feminine, and a knife neuter (as is the case in German)? Another argument against the inherent character of grammatical gender is the lack of consistency across languages: for example, "the moon" is la lune (feminine) in French but der Mond (masculine) in German.

Some languages, like Russian, or Arabic, make it fairly easy to predict the gender of a word, not by the nature of the object but by the form of the word (does it end with a?). Others, like German, have essentially no connection between the form of a word and its gender. In such cases we have no alternative but to remember the gender of each word.

This is a perfect situation in which to apply the techniques of memory training, as I have previously described. The key is to use vivid mental images to impress the gender of an object on the mind.

For a language like French, or Italian, with (only) male and female genders, an obvious approach suggests itself: visualize the object with a sex characteristic: a phallus for masculine objects, a large pair of breasts for feminine objects. (To forestall an avalanche of hostile comments, let me declare that I have nothing against small-breasted women—this merely reflects the principle that vivid, exaggerated, sexual, and even scatological images stick better in the mind).

Once you get into more than one language, you need a distinct set of visual tags for each to avoid confusion. For that matter, some languages have more than two genders: German, Russian, or Sanskrit have three, and Swahili has sixteen (though sadly, these do not reflect sixteen distinct varieties of human sexuality—that would be fun).

Let's take German as an example, which has three genders. How about the tags chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry to represent the three? Chocolate is feminine and vanilla masculine, of course (because that's yin and yang), which leaves strawberry to be neuter. Eventually, you'll need to remember these three on your own.

So let's take lists of nouns of various genders:

Masculine: Mond (moon), Hut (hat), Brief (letter)

Feminine: Sonne (sun), Jacke (jacket), Wand (wall), Maus (mouse)

Neuter: Haus (house), Hotel (hotel)

We could certainly go with longer lists, but this post is getting long enough as it is. The conclusive step is to form a vivid mental image linking each object with the appropriate flavor.

Start with moon and vanilla (masculine). Picture yourself eating a vanilla ice-cream cone, only the scoop of ice cream is actually a miniature moon. There's even a tiny spacecraft landed on it with astronauts waving a tiny flag, while the tiny command module buzzes around your head like a fly.

Now hat and vanilla: You are wearing a hat made of vanilla beans. Make sure to see it in your mind's eye.

Letter and vanilla: You receive a letter printed on vanilla ice cream. You struggle to read it before it melts.

Sun and chocolate (feminine): The sun in the sky is a huge ball of chocolate. The rays are covering you with a brown, sticky coating.

Jacket and chocolate: You are wearing a jacket made of chocolate bars—a little gooey, but oh so stylish.

Wall and chocolate: The wall of your room is an enormous chocolate bar, still in the wrapper.

By now you see, I hope, that it takes no special creativity to come up with these images. There are a few standard tricks.

Mouse and chocolate: You open a chocolate bar wrapper, and a mouse scampers out.

Now house and strawberry: Imagine returning home one day and finding your house has transformed into a giant strawberry, still with doors and windows.

Finally, hotel and strawberry: You are waiting in line to check in at a hotel and you notice all the other guests are giant ambulatory strawberries, each holding his or her suitcase.

Now it's quiz time. Keeping in mind the code (chocolate=feminine, vanilla=masculine, strawberry=neuter), what is the German gender of each of these words?

Brief (letter)

Haus (house)

Hotel (hotel)

Hut (hat)

Jacke (jacket)

Maus (mouse)

Mond (moon)

Sonne (sun)

Wand (wall)

With practice, you will find this works as well for a hundred words, or five hundred, as with the nine given here.

An alternative way to select a symbol to represent a particular gender (or other grammatical categories) is to pick one example word from the class—let moon represent masculine and sun represent feminine, for example

Memory Training Crash Course, Part II

2011-03-24T10:32:00.001-04:00

Okay, so it's been two years since Part I. Super-quick review: images are easier to remember than symbols or words, and you can help yourself recall images—by making them absurd, outrageous, or offensive. I'm still weaker than I want to be at remembering people's names (notwithstanding theoretically having learned the secret years ago), but I have noticed it works better if I allow my brain to indulge in childish impulses that I had left behind. As George Carlin says, "I always felt sorry for guys whose names were Dick and Peter." Next time you meet a Dick or Peter, recall this comment and allow yourself a (secret) mental snigger at the image it brings to mind. See if the name doesn't stick in your mind.

For abstract information such as numbers or playing cards, more sophisticated tools must be brought into play as well. The Major system is a simple but powerful tool for translating numbers into words—and hence into concrete images—that can then be memorized by other means.

It is simplest to explain by starting at the reverse end—translating words into numbers. One must invest the time to memorize the following phonetic code:

s, z become 0

t, d, th become 1

n becomes 2

m becomes 3

r becomes 4

l becomes 5

ch, sh, j become 6

k, (hard) g become 7

f,v become 8

p,b become 9

Anything not on this list—w, h, y and any vowel sounds—is ignored. Any word or phrase can be translated into a unique sequence of digits using the code. Take the word "fan", for example. F becomes 8, a is ignored, and n becomes 2, so "fan" becomes the number 82. Keep in mind these are sounds, not letters—so "phone" also becomes 82. This example also shows that a single number can correspond to more than one word (or phrases). On the other hand, (a crucial point) two different numbers will never correspond to the same word.

The game gets more interesting when you play it the other way around: find a word or phrase to correspond to a sequence of digits:

0 becomes s, z
1 becomes t, d, th
2 becomes n
3 becomes m
4 becomes r
5 becomes l
6 becomes ch, sh, j
7 becomes k, (hard) g
8 becomes f,v
9 becomes p,b

This can test your vocabulary. Consider for example the number 102. This translates into dsn or dzn or tzn or tsn. We could use the single word "dozen", but this has the drawback of being difficult to visualize (as well as inviting confusion with the number twelve). I prefer "hoatzin". I just happen to know what this is (an atavistic species of bird with claws on its wings) thanks to my abnormal predilections in childhood reading. Every two-digit number can be expressed as a single word (usually in several ways); most three digit numbers have single-word equivalents; with four digits or more it's hit-and-miss. I have, by the way, found the 2Know freeware program to be an extremely useful tool—it allows you to enter any sequence of digits and searches a rather deep dictionary for equivalents or partial equivalents.

So, for example, if you want to memorize the first several digits of Pi:

3.1415926535897932384

you can convert it to the phrase:

moderately paunchy, lamely phobic bahamian amphora.

Of course, this is nonsensical, but as explained in Part I, that hardly interferes with committing it to memory.

By the way, I see that this code was devised in almost the same form by Gregor von Feinagle in 1808. I would have thought it was some person named Major, but there you go. This leaves the name of the system as something of a mystery.

Most who make frequent use of this system use a set of "peg words": standard terms representing the numbers up to 100. This spares even a moment's hunting for a suitable word in the easy cases, and also allows one to associate particular items with each of the numbers up to 100 and reliably recall them later. For example, for me, the number 56 is always "leech" (unless I have a specific reason to choose something different). I can associate anything with the number 56 by mentally connecting it to the concept of "leech." That wouldn't help if the next time I think of 56 I convert it to "eyelash"—but I won't, because by now when I think 56 I instantly think "leech." In a future post, I'll give my own list of peg words for numbers from 00 to 100.

Of all the various self-help gimmicks I've tried over the years, I think memory training must be the best in terms of cost-benefit ratio. I routinely use this to remember phone numbers, account numbers, and so on.

And This is How Brain Cells Get Used Up

2011-03-17T11:36:00.001-04:00

Photo by Max East

Check out this nifty video that shows a whole hike along the more than 2000 miles of the Appalachian trail, compressed into five minutes. One particular instant (literally) that caught my eye was the appearance of a stile.

In case you don't know what a stile is, it is a set of steps used to cross over a fence. I presume that animals don't care to climb up and over the steps.

And in case you do know what a stile is, then I have one question for you:

Why?

This was the question I was asking myself after watching the video. Why do I know the name of this thing? I can specifically recall in distant childhood my parents explaining it to me. Out of all the words they could have chosen to explain to me—"diabetes", "micromanagement", "bagels", etc.—they chose the word "stile." I can only assume that they expected my adult life to be filled with various and sundry stile-related activities, but in this as in so many other respects, events did not develop as expected.

So, as it turns out, I have some number of brain cells devoted to remembering this word, describing an object which I have encountered maybe once in my life, and which could just as well be described by a phrase "a set of steps used to cross over a fence," and which in fact lies dormant for years (except for occasional Julia Stiles-related thoughts). How do I get those brain cells back?

Scurvy of the Soul

2011-03-02T13:19:00.027-05:00

In this scene from the 1960 Spartacus, the leader of the slave revolt meets several new volunteers, escaped slaves, including the house slave Antoninus whose talents include singing songs and also juggling. Spartacus's skepticism is apparent. Later on, Spartacus comes to embrace the singing of songs as a necessity undergoes a change of heart and embraces the singing of songs as a necessity even for a rebel army.

This little bit of byplay came to mind when I saw the recent heartwarming (aww...) story about the chorus from a New York city working-class elementary school that was invited to perform at the Oscar ceremony, and also while reading Kelly Tyler-Lewis's book The Lost Men, about Shackleton's Ross Sea party. Many have heard of Shackleton's failed attempt to cross the Antarctic continent, and the various heroic efforts by which he managed to bring back the entire crew alive.

Well, not quite the entire crew, it turns out—if you take into account the second of Shackleton's parties, who sailed to the opposite side of the continent in order to lay down caches of supplies for Shackleton, whom they expected to be trekking across. Three of that party did not make it back.

Scurvy was one of a thousand problems Shackleton's Ross Sea party had to deal with—even though by that time it was well known that scurvy could be prevented by drinking lime juice, or even (I didn't know this) by eating seal meat. The problem was the expedition cut corners and didn't drink nearly enough juice, or some just refused to eat seal meat because they didn't like it. I like to think I myself would just eat the damn meat and deal with it (especially since food overall was fairly scant), but then again, I've never tasted seal, so who am I to judge?

Scurvy provides a useful metaphor for a more widespread paradox worth keeping in mind: Cut back to the bare essentials, and you will find something essential missing.

This is the problem with the current mania for schools to cut out art and music programs, or physical education, or even recess. Bean counters may have a difficult time distinguishing such "non-academic" pursuits from mere amusement. But an academic program stripped down to the absolute essentials is like a diet stripped down to essential bulk foods—the brain is doomed to suffer a slow, wasting death, particularly when it comes to curiosity about the larger world.

Take another look at those kids from New York P.S. 22? How easy it to get any bunch of 6-to-12-year olds to buy into a program which demands discipline, and teamwork? And how many such programs can demonstrate clearly that discipline and hard work pay off?

Zen in the Art of Hypocrisy

2011-02-23T11:30:00.000-05:00

(Warning: major spoilers about the plot of Atlas Shrugged follow. This is in addition to the usual spoilers about the meaning of life and stuff.)

This little video snippet shows my namesake explaining his path to Zen enlightenment—the buttering of French bread. Robert Pirsig's picked a killer title for his 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but the reader who looks for much of anything about Zen is going to be disappointed (as is the reader who looks to learn anything about motorcycle maintenance). My bookshelf holds another book Zen of Code Optimization, which I suspect to be almost the exact opposite of Zen, in that it relies on meticulous analysis. Leo Babuta's Zen to Done productivity system is Zen-like in spirit inasmuch as it tries to simplify as much as possible, but as far as I can tell has no real connection with Zen philosophy.

Don't get me wrong. All the foregoing are worthy products, and it doesn't bother me that the "Zen" buzzword has become something of a marketing gimmick—although a Zen priest might take a different view. It seems a harmless and possibly amusing superficiality, like the legendary Japanese department store that used a crucified Santa Claus as a Christmas decoration.

Then again, the word Zen has passed into common usage as an everyday adjective, difficult to define precisely (which is what makes it useful), but generally referring to that which is holistic, surprisingly indirect or even seemingly paradoxical, as when Mr. Miyagi teaches karate through car-waxing. Come to think of it, this doesn't bother me either.

What will make me snort and spit out my coffee is when someone claims with a straight face to be a Zen adherent when all they have done is read a book or two, or perhaps not even that. It's as if watching every episodes of "Hogan's Heroes" qualifies one to march in the Veteran's Day parade.

This came to mind again recently when I saw the trailer for the new Atlas Shrugged movie coming out on April 15. From the trailer I can't tell whether the version of Objectivism presented is the genuine, Ayn-Rand version, or the superficial version that's been going around for the past few years, which we might call the Glenn Beck version.

Among Atlas Shrugged discussion group I discovered that two people might agree on a certain tenet of the book but disagree diametrically on how to map that point into the real world. Is Bill Gates a John Galt or a Wesley Mouch?

In the aftermath of the stock-market crash a couple of years ago, we were presented with the spectacle of incompetent investment bankers, who got tired of reading bad stuff about themselves in the newspapers, threatening to "Go Galt"—that is, renounce their chosen profession and leave the rest of us to struggle along without them—to which my unforced reaction was always Yes, please! Put that in writing and we'll sign it.

Will Wilkinson put it neatly: The point is that you are not John Galt. The point is that you are, at your best, Eddie Willers. Zen and Objectivism, though very different philosophies, seem to share a common misfortune of attracting dilletantes who like the charisma factor but reject (or more likely are ignorant of) the discipline demanded of real adherents.

One of my friends who is a genuine Objectivist remarks with amusement on the many politicians and pundits these days who claim to be both serious Objectivists and devout Christians. I mean, have you read Atlas Shrugged, people? (In all seriousness, I suspect probably not.) It would be difficult to find a more implacably contradictory pair of philosophies.

But then again, such people seem to flunk the Christianity test as well as the Objectivist test—that inconvenient business about selling all you have and giving to the poor, or refraining from casting the first stone. One benefit of embracing two contradictory creeds is that one can piously cite a justification for whatever shallow, self-indulgent whim possesses one at the moment. I guess that's the point.

The Dark Side of Positive Thinking

2011-02-19T10:11:00.002-05:00

As a long-time cynic, I found this little ten-minute lecture (from the RSA series) most rewarding. Take a look.

Lip Reading Concluded

2011-02-15T11:45:00.000-05:00

Photo by kavehkhkh

So I'm here to report I finished the Read My Lips! DVD series. I have little to add to my earlier observations. I think the series is effective to a certain extent. I feel decidedly more proficient than when I started--but, just as language classes in school seldom bring you to fluency, I am not ready to go out and be a spy just yet.

I intend to go back to the DVD's occasionally to maintain what proficiency I have. I haven't decided on whether to attempt some further formal training. There isn't much out there, beyond some YouTube videos.

I'm pretty sure I could create a lip-reading course that would take it to the next level--if only I didn't have too many other things to do that sound more interesting.

To wrap it up, here are a few of the more memorable quotes from the "Read My Lips!" series. I am not making these up:

You've had too much to drink.

That rhinoceros reminds me of your mother.

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.

I took a butcher knife from the kitchen and went down into the basement.

The Secret Alien Agenda Behind Feminism

2011-02-11T09:22:00.003-05:00

Between 1966 and 2001, the number of bachelor's degrees earned by women in science and engineering fields roughly quadrupled. Even so, the number is less than half the number of similar degrees awarded to men. Lots more data is available here.

A lot of discussion goes on about the reason for the disparity—whether it's discrimination, some inherent gender distinction, or something else. One phenomenon that probably plays a role is a misguided belief that for women, professionalism in math, science, and engineering demands sacrificing one's femininity. This idea strikes me as rather ludicrously old-fashioned, and I would be disinclined to believe that anyone buys into it any more—if I had not witnessed some tension over exactly this issue among some of my own acquaintances who happen to be both female and scientists. The Nerd Girls movement is explicitly dedicated to helping women choose careers in science and engineering and stay girly at the same time. See Erin Cech's interesting discussion here.

There is a place, however, where women are entirely free to become scientists and engineers and celebrate their femininity at the same time. It's the world of the 1950's science-fiction B-movie. We don't think twice about Dr. Ellie Satler in Jurassic Park (1993)—although she explicitly mentions sexism—but it's interesting to see paleontologist Lee Hunter appear in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms during an era (1953) in which women in real life were expected to stay home, wash windows, and change diapers—and none of the characters finds her gender at all incongruous.

And these are not the girls who stayed home and studied because they couldn't get a date on Saturday night, either. They wear skirts and heels, their hair is nicely done, their nails, too—in fact, any of them could take up a second career as a lingerie model if that whole science-engineering thing failed to work out. I wonder what effect these figures on the screen had on young girls sitting in the audience?

That question will likely never be answered. But if the movies teach us anything it is this: integration of women into the ranks of scientists and engineers is a prelude to alien invasion. You have been warned.

(Above: Nuclear physicist Dr. Ruth Adams from This Island Earth pursues some extracurricular activities.)

(Update 15 February) Some late-breaking [I hate that word] news on the issue.

Life Lessons from Danny Ocean

2011-01-30T18:19:00.001-05:00

The inaptly named Ocean's Eleven series (better to call it Ocean's X?) is a superior example of the caper movie. I'm referring to the recent version and not to the original Frank Sinatra film, which I regret to say I could not get into. The plots of the original and remake are quite a bit different, anyway.

It's not clear how one would number all eleven of the Eleven, but it is clear that #1 is Danny Ocean (George Clooney), #2 is Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt), and #3 is Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon). It fascinating to consider how the three characters manifest the three components of the Freudian psyche... aah, who am I kidding? What's great about these movies is the cool.

Danny Ocean perfectly exemplifies Paul Kyriazi's Rule #5: "Always dress up, even at home alone." The guy always has a dress shirt and jacket (even when being released from prison), is never underdressed, and yet always looks comfortable.

Ocean's Apophthegm is also worth remembering (as heard in Ocean's Thirteen):

Always play the game as if you have nothing to lose.

But my favorite principle out of the Ocean's X series is this (not stated explicitly, but demonstrated): When you're cool enough, everything you do becomes cool.

For example, as a rule TV and movie characters set their cell phones to vibrate—or else use a neutral "phone ringing" sound. This is to avoid distracting the viewer with contemplating the character's choice of ringtone. Rusty Ryan is a noteworthy exception, as we get to hear a cheesy bubblegum-pop tune whenever his phone rings. He is secure enough not to worry what we think of his ring tone.

Danny Ocean also well illustrates a corollary that certain irritating people I know fail to grasp: The cool need not always be the smartest guy in the room. Consider this discussion from Ocean's Thirteen about the Greco security system, among tech guru Roman Nagel, Danny Ocean, and right-hand man Rusty Ryan:

Roman: The data is analyzed in real time in a field of exabytes.

Danny: Exabytes?

Roman: You know what a terabyte is?

Danny: Yeah, it's a....

Rusty (sotto voce): An exabyte is a million terabytes.

Danny: Right.

Roman: The Greco is housed in an impregnable room. Shock-mounted, temparature-controlled, and it locks down if it even senses it's under attack, If it locks down, they wouldn't even be able to get out of the room.

Danny: Couldn't we just shut it off? You know, cut the wires?

Roman: That could work. Better still, kick the plug out of the socket.

Rusty: Seriously.

Roman: Short of walking into the room with a bloody magnetron around your neck... You know what a magnetron is?

Danny: Something that screws up the Greco?

There is also an amusing bit of byplay later on where Danny is watching Oprah on TV and drinking wine, which in my book is just about the least cool thing a person can do. Most likely the writers wanted to underscore the point with the most extreme example they could think of.

Rough Waters for Huck and Jim

2011-01-23T16:21:00.001-05:00

Photo by shimgray

Some friends have asked me what I thought of the latest attempt by Auburn Professor Alan Gribben to sanitize Huckleberry Finn by removing all instances of the N-epithet. (By the way, if you tuned in here hoping to hear me use the the term, you're out of luck. Go buy your own copy of the book, big spender.)

In one sense, there's nothing new to this story, and nothing controversial either. As Jon Stewart points out, previous editors have gone so far as to eliminate the character of Jim altogether. And the book is long since in the public domain. Gribben is legally entitled to recast Jim as a space alien, a hot cheerleader, or anything else that tickles his fancy.

But is it a good idea? Of course not, at least not if one is concerned with preserving the essence of the book. But it is an understandable idea. The conceptual error at heart is to think of Huckleberry Finn as a children's book, which it definitely is not. Even with the language scrubbed, you still have a protagonist abandoned (except for occasional beatings) by his alcoholic father, who turns up a ways into the story as a very unattractive corpse. The confusion arises because Huckleberry Finn is technically a sequel to Tom Sawyer, which is quite accessible to children. A comparative glance at a random page from each makes the difference obvious.

One could speculate what the author himself would think of this. To that end, one may consider the following letter written by Twain to an acquaintance who had taken on the burden of editing a piece that Twain had written:

The time-honored etiquette of the situation—new to you by reason of inexperience—is this: an author's MS. is not open to any editor's uninvited emendations. It must be accepted as it stands, or it must be declined; there is no middle course. Any alteration of it—even to a word—closes the incident, & that author & that editor can have no further literary dealings with each other. It was your right to say that the Introduction was not satisfactory to you, but it was not within your rights to contribute your pencil's assistance toward making it satisfactory. Therefore, even if you now wished to use my MS. in its original form, untouched, I could not permit it. Nor in any form, of course. I shall be glad to have the original when convenient, but there is no hurry. When you return will answer quite well. If you have any copies of it—either amended or un-amended—please destroy them, lest they fall into careless hands & get into print. Indeed I would not have that happen for anything in the world.

Mark Twain and I, at least, have an understanding. Neither of us is going to edit the other's work.

Practical Joke #9

2011-01-18T09:38:00.000-05:00

1. Start with a memo you receive from your boss or a colleague.

2. Edit the memo. Replace any verb starting with the letter "f" (like "finalize") by "f___". Replace any thing starting with the letter "s" (like "status") by "s___". Replace any descriptive term referring to an individual who happens to be female that starts with the letter "b" by "b____". Make sure the original author's name stays on the memo.

3. Show the memo around the office and ask your colleagues what they think. With a subtle hint of indignation, explain that you edited out terms you find offensive.

Example:

Original memo:

I got a call from Mary late last night. She seems satisfied with the schedule we sent her. Since she is our busiest consultant, my guess at this point is that our project is totally finished.

Jim

Edited version:

I got a call from Mary late last night. She seems satisfied with the s___ we sent her. Since she is our b____iest consultant, my guess at this point is that our project is totally f___ed.

Jim

Product Review: Paul Kyriazi's James Bond Lifestyle Seminar

2011-01-10T18:50:00.009-05:00

Parents of boys could do worse than point them towards James Bond as a role model. Those who think of Bond as a self-indulgent alcoholic womanizer will react with shock. Others merely smirk. This dismissive attitude is based on the compound error of focusing on minor aspects of the Bond character and then misunderstanding those aspects anyway.

To shift gears for a moment, let me point out that we are facing (and any tone of alarm here is entirely intentional) a looming crisis in masculinity, due to factors both physiological and sociological. Consider some of the trends: (1) American men have been showing a significant decline in both testosterone and sperm count for some decades; (2) while more and more women are going to college (and good for them), the number of male college students is on the decline; (3) according to psychologist Terri Apter, the percentage of young adults living with their parents went from 11% to 20% between 1970 and 2005. I suspect that after decades spent fretting over the (admittedly genuine) problems arising out of male aggressiveness, we are going to find that male passivity doesn't yield the hoped-for utopian outcome either.

Let's take a minute to think of some of the many things James Bond would never do. You would never find him living on his mother's couch and spending his days playing video games. He never spends an entire Saturday watching football on TV. He doesn't go to the supermarket in sweat pants. He doesn't let his weight get out of control. If he has a problem, he doesn't bemoan his fate but takes corrective action. He doesn't wait for opportunity to come to him. He drinks, but in moderation. He demands the best from those around him and from himself. Time and again he saves the world, but savors life while doing so.

So choosing James Bond as a role model isn't crazy. Since Paul Kyriazi first coined the "James Bond Lifestyle" idea it has burgeoned into a bit of a movement.

Now to the product: Kyriazi has produced successively expanded versions of the seminar. The version I used comes on 8 CD's, which consist mostly of narration by Kyriazi himself, with an introduction by two-time Felix Leiter actor David Hedison, and punctuated occasionally with music and interpolations by Hedison and other voice actors (Kyriazi has considerable experience producing audiobooks).

The topics covered range from large to small--but one must understand that the large is the small. To take one example, consider the discourse on the seemingly trivial matter of valet parking, which was an eye-opener for me personally (and includes a most entertaining little audio-play). First of all, there is no question that James Bond always uses valet parking--we see it several times in the movies. Kyriazi points out valet parking's many practical advantages, especially when considered against the cost (usually only a few dollars tip). But there's a philosophical point to be made as well. When you force the woman you're with to walk through the rain or cold in order to save a few bucks on tipping the valet, what message are you sending about the value you place on her? What message are you sending to yourself, for that matter?

Some of the other topics covered in the seminar: Health and fitness, some philosophy about the relationship between one's inner state and the outer world (this reminded me much of Buddhism, but Paul Kyriazi told me there was no overt connection), maintaining your home and car, the importance of planning and taking action (a core principle), how to play craps--both the game and the social customs around the game, much more about tipping, how to check into a hotel properly (yeah, you think you already know, but Kyriazi takes it to the next level, including tips such as how to get a room in a booked-up hotel), what clothes to wear, how to walk, what you should be wearing.

One more topic deserves special mention and that's the Bond girl. For Kyriazi your Bond girl is your wife, your girlfriend, your date, or whatever woman is making up a couple together with yourself at the moment. The phrase "Bond girl" is among the most widely misunderstood. A recurring amusement for anyone who follows the Bond movies is hearing the actress signed for the upcoming Bond film discuss her character: "Oh, she's not the typical Bond girl, she's strong, she's smart, she's self-sufficient, etc., etc."--missing the point that the Bond films have a tradition of strong, smart, self-sufficient women going back to Honeychile Ryder with a knife on her hip.

And though Bond has been labeled a misogynist (and admittedly the early films have a few cringe-worthy moments--I'm thinking of a young lady who gets patted on the buttocks early on in Goldfinger) he actually follows a code of conduct considerably more chivalrous than some guys I know. His vocabulary does not include terms such as "bitch" or "slut", nor by word or deed does he suggest that any woman is unattractive, unintelligent, or not worth spending time with. (Okay, he does occasionally twist arms or even shoot people, but only for the purpose of saving the free world and stuff like that.)

More to the point, I can't imagine any woman being unhappy if the guy she's with follows the guidelines laid out in Kyriazi's seminar, which are based not only on treating any lady with respect, but going the extra mile to be a worthy companion.

In summary, though I originally bought the seminar with an attitude of curiosity, it turned out to be one of the most useful, practical and inspirational pieces of self-help I have come across. You can find it on Kyriazi's James Bond lifestyle at http://www.bondlife.com/.

Presence

2010-12-29T11:23:00.004-05:00

Photo by Piotr Zurek

Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico is legendary among Boy Scouts and those who work with them--214 square miles of desert, forest and mountains in New Mexico. A Philmont trek is the highest ambition of many a scout troop. A Philmont "crew" carries their food and shelter on their backs for 50 miles or more over varied train. They sleep in a different place each night, some of which offer activities such as rock climbing or horseback riding, others being nothing more than an X on the map and great scenery.

I don't know who coined the precept Be present, but I heard it first from Leo Babuta. I find it particularly appropriate to the Age of Distraction that we live in. I doubt that medieval peasants needed reminding to "be present"; what else did they have to think about? For me personally, this precept is best embodied in an experience I had at Philmont.

To set the stage both geographically and spiritually, this story takes place on the last day of a six-day trek that I undertook with my sons, both scouts. Most treks are ten days, but our troop favored the short treks that come at the end of the season. Certainly after five days I felt satisfied with the amount of sleeping in the dirt I had done. A shorter trek is not necessarily less strenuous, because one may cover much the same distance in a shorter time period.

The Philmont experience begins at base camp--a huge city of semipermanent tents. I imagine this is how refugees must live. In contrast to most Boy Scout camps, which offer a varied program of sports and naturecraft and sing-alongs and ceremonies, the Philmont program is all about the trek--either preparing for it, or undertaking it, or cleaning up afterward. The first day is spent with an instructor/guide (called a "ranger") who helpfully describes the many ways one is likely to die out there.

Base camp is literally at lower altitude than most of the reservation. A rugged spine of peaks stabs toward base camp and barely misses it. (You can see this on the map below--click for a larger version) The highest peak on this ridge, the Tooth of Time, is suitably imposing (though by no means the highest point in Philmont). Hiking along the Tooth of Time ridge and down into base camp is a popular finale to one's trek.

Water is the critical variable at Philmont. Sources of drinkable water are fairly scarce and far between. Human beings need lots of water, and water is heavy, so carrying more than half a day's supply is not easy. Thus each day's trek is organized around the water sources to be found along the way.

Our crew's itinerary called for us to set out on the next-to-last day from the Clark's Fork camp, climb up to the Tooth of Time ridge, hike along the ridge to the Tooth Ridge camp and spend the night there, and then make the hike down into base camp the next morning. This was a great finale to our trek, but it also meant having to carry all our water for the last two days. There are no springs atop the ridge--consider that water runs downhill below ground as well as above and you'll see why.

So for the final two days even foregoing all cooking and no washing, we would still have extra water weight to carry. We coped with this (as other crews do) by eating up our cookable food on the previous day and planning to subsist on crackers and trail mix, etc. for the final day and a half.

The next-to-last-day's hike up to the Tooth of Time Ridge was naturally strenuous but enjoyable. After five days on the trail you start hurting in places you never noticed before. I had it easier than one of the other adults in our group, who was doggedly marching along on a trick ankle that had locked up, but I was feeling decidely sore all along the soles of my feet. But once atop the ridge we could look out over the landscape for miles in both directions. We tried to triangulate the visible landmarks to fix our location on the map (a pastime of diminishing utility in the age of GPS).

We hit the Tooth of Time peak about half an hour before reaching Tooth Ridge camp where we were to spend the night, making it just in time to seek shelter from one of the common sudden brief torrential storms--half of us under a hastily-erected sheet of plastic, the other half hiding in holes in the gnarly rock formations that dot the camp.

You can imagine the mixture of satisfaction and anticipation we felt as we got up for the last time on the trail. A few more hours of hiking--all downhill--and we would be tasting all the comforts of civilization. Chairs to sit in! All the water you can drink! Toilets that flush!

It was a beautiful clear morning. All we had to do was pack up our gear, wolf down our last few bags of crackers and trail mix, and hit the trail.

And this was the morning I learned that crackers and trail mix can be the best meal of your life, if you pay attention to your surroundings.

All it took was an extra fifteen minutes. Our crew decided to make an event of our crude breakfast by having it atop one of the large rock formations around. The view was unexpected. Looking out over the valley, we found that the sky was clear only from our vantage point--the valley was hidden under a carpet of clouds. As we ate, the sun came up from the other edge of the carpet and illuminated it.

Since then, I try to remember in throwaway moments--standing in line, waiting for a movie to start--to stop and look around. You never know what's there to be seen.

Another Good Reason to Study Languages

2010-12-24T11:06:00.004-05:00

Because it helps keep you from going senile. Barking up the Wrong Tree points to a study showing that multilingual persons maintain better mental function in late old age. This effect is seen even after controlling for correlated but distinct variables such as general level of education.

Shorthand

2010-12-14T09:31:00.003-05:00

One of the most regrettable decisions of my misspent youth was not taking the typing course offered by my high school. Others may have foreseen the huge amount of time I was destined to spend in front of a keyboard, but not I. At the time, typing was something that secretaries did, or maybe college students, but not most people.

Another skill I wish I had developed better is that of shorthand. Although my high school had no such classes, we did have quite an old shorthand textbook at home. I learned the rudiments and used it to take notes in college, but I never became a real expert.

Shorthand still appeals to me. Not for practical reasons--I almost never write anything out in longhand any more (except mathematics, where shorthand is little help). But then I frequently undertake to learn things for impractical reasons. I like shorthand as a prime example of lucid thinking and brutal efficiency.

Several shorthand systems have been devised. I studied the Gregg system. Based on a superficial glance at the others, I still like Gregg the best--it seems the most fluid and natural.

The example above shows the Lord's Prayer. The first mark, that looks like a smile, is the letter r, which also represents the word "our". The last mark in the first line consists of the shorthand letters k-m representing the word "come". The last squiggle in the second line shows the shorthand letters b-r-e-d (see the smile in the middle of the squiggle?), or the word "bread" (Gregg shorthand works phonetically). Generally one squiggle corresponds to one word, but sometimes a phrase of short words is also written as a single squiggle. For example, the second squiggle in the second line consists of the letters l-b-d-n, representing the phrase "will be done".

Every communication channel has a certain (greater or lesser) level of redundancy. For shorthand, the level of redundancy is sacrificed as much as possible for the sake of brevity. A shorthand message carries more potential for misunderstanding than an ordinary handwritten message, but the system is designed to be error-tolerant. For example, the inverted smile is the k sound (as in the word "come" above). Lengthen the inverted smile (maybe by accident), and it becomes a hard g, so "come" becomes "gum". But the two words are similar enough in sound that a reader is likely to understand that "come" was intended.

By contrast, suppose you write in a letter to your Aunt Sadie that you "reamed the clog out with a plumber's snake." But you have sloppy handwriting, so "clog" comes out looking like "dog." Suddenly your Christmas checks from Aunt Sadie are a lot smaller and you have no idea why. This would never happen with shorthand. "Clog" might come out looking like "glog" or "clock" or "croc", but never "dog."

Shorthand is almost a lost art, destroyed by recording machines and the now universal necessity for everyone to use a keyboard. Shorthand could be extremely useful in the coming era of touchscreens. It would be the ideal interface for entering text into an iPhone, for example. I predict, however, that it would never catch on--because in our day anything demanding effort without immediate gratification has gone out of style.

A Drunkard Walks Through His To-Do List

2010-12-04T10:14:00.002-05:00

Photo by St Stev

Sometime in my adult life I acquired a fascination with time management. (This marked part of my transition from slacker status.) The most basic stage of time management is making a to-do list. Over the years I've noticed an interesting phenomenon with this list. I've talked to friends who maintain similar lists and found that their lists show the same behavior, although they never notice it until I point it out and don't necessarily understand it even after I explain it.

This phenomenon is related to what mathematicians (and probabilists) call a drunkard's walk. The name comes from the idea of a drunk attempting to walk home starting from a lamppost. This is not your ordinary everyday drunk, but a mathematically idealized drunk, so that each step he--he because the concept of the drunkard's walk dates back to the dark ages before women were expected to engage in public drunkenness--each step he takes has a completely random direction unrelated to the steps before or after. It turns out you can analyze the drunk's motion in considerable detail, and although it is of course impossible to predict the drunk's exact location at any time (except at the very start), you can make a lot of other predictions, such as that the drunk will return to the lamppost with probabilistic certainty (meaning it is theoretically possible that this would happen, but the probability is zero).

You can model a simple version of the drunkard's walk using coin flips. Suppose he can only choose to go north or south along the street. Start flipping the coin. Every time it comes up heads, move him one step to the north. Every time it comes up tails, move him one step to the south. Probability theory tells us several things about his path, even though his exact position is impossible to predict. Some of these may seem paradoxical:

1. The drunkard's average distance from the starting point (more precisely, the standard deviation) equals the square root of the number of steps taken. For example, after nine steps , the drunkard may be anywhere from zero to nine steps away from the lamppost, but if you take a large number of drunkards each staggering away from his own lamppost, their average distance from the lamppost after nine steps will be very close to three steps. After a hundred total steps the average distance from the lamppost is ten steps, and so on.

2. With probabilistic certainty, the drunkard returns to the lamppost, not once, but infinitely many times.

This is assuming the coin is perfectly fair; that is, the odds of getting heads or tails are exactly the same. If there is even the slightest imbalance--say heads comes up slightly more often than tails, then something quite different happens. The drunkard, although still taking both northward and southward steps, slowly drifts to the north. Pick any spot on the street north of the starting point. The drunkard is likely to cross this position several times, traveling northward the first time, southward the second, and so on, but eventually he crosses the point in the northward direction for the last time, and never comes south of that point again. Given enough time, he travels northward a mile--or a thousand.

Here's what does not happen--in any scenario: the drunkard wanders back and forth within a certain section of street, without going outside it. Even a thousand-mile section of street is not enough room--the drunkard eventually will exit from one end or the other (although he might later go back, depending on the scenario).

Now back to my to-do list. For a long time I assumed that items got added to the list at random. Stuff happens--your car headlight burns out, a raccoon crawls under the porch and dies--and you have to deal with it. And items get subtracted from the list essentially at random, because different tasks require different amounts of time to dispose of. And in the decades that I have been keeping a list, the number of items has always fluctuated between 15 and 50, usually averaging around 30. In particular, I have never completely cleared out the list.

But this doesn't add up, because if the addition and subtraction of list items is random, the length of the list is essentially a drunkard's walk. The drunkard takes a northward step--add an item to the list. The drunkard takes a southward step--subtract an item from the list. The one big difference is that once the list reaches zero, you can't subtract anything else. It's as if there is a wall at the lamppost which keeps the drunkard from traveling further south.

So, two possible scenarios: First is that on average I am able to clear things off the list as quickly as they come in. Because it's random, the list would grow and shrink randomly, but the analysis of the drunkard's walk shows that the drunk would occasionally come back to the lamppost again and again--i.e., the list would shrink to zero sometimes. But my list has never been at zero since I started keeping it.

So the second scenario: Maybe I can't clear items off the list as quickly as they come in. In this case, the analysis shows that the drunkard drifts to the north without limit. In other words, my list would still grow and shrink randomly, but over the long term get longer... and longer... and longer. But that doesn't happen either.

Conclusion? The list is not random. Someone (face it--probably me) is controlling the length of the list. And if I'm not happy with the average length of the list (which I'm not--it's a little long for my taste, although I've decided that zero is not the optimum length) it is within my power to change it.

I've asked friends about their to-do lists, and everyone has the same story. The list fluctuates around some average number of items but never gets too long or too short. Everyone feels controlled by the list but generally doesn't recognize that they must be controlling it.

(BTW the analysis of the drunkard's walk is very robust--pretty much all you need is some randomness either on the addition of items to the list or the subtraction therefrom, and you can draw these same conclusions.)

America's Secular Religion

2010-11-27T10:55:00.002-05:00

Everybody knows somebody who claims to be religious but adheres to his or her professed religion only inconsistently, or maybe hardly at all. Less widely noticed is the phenomenon of the person who claims to be irreligious but is actually driven by blind faith. Some of the most popular religious creeds fly under the radar thanks to shrewd marketing by their adherents (although thereby missing out on the tax exemption). So it's important to keep in mind what "religion" is exactly. Well, it's a lot of things, among which:

1. Religion provides a moral code, a method for distinguishing right from wrong;
2. Religious truth flows from the top down (frequently originating with God at the very top);
3. The religious are loyal to their creeds. The creed becomes the prism through which they interpret the facts of the world around them.

Science, by comparison, has no concern with moral questions of right and wrong—its job is to tell merely what is or is not, not to make judgments of good or bad. Science does not demand belief on the basis of authority; any scientific theory should be verifiable (or falsifiable) by anyone willing to replicate the necessary experiments. It's the ultimate democracy (in theory): the truth is equally accessible to everyone.

(If at this point you object that real scientists don't always--or even usually--just bear with me until reading the rest of this post.)

People think of the old Soviet Union as devoid of religion, but in fact there dominant religion was called Communism. Communism was a religion by every one of the criteria above: it provided their moral compass; the creed was defined and promulgated by the central authority of the State; and true believers shaped their entire world-view around the logical demands of Communism.

A recent report by the Pew Forum finds an increasing percentage of Americans profess adherence to no religious creed. I'm not so sure this would hold if we included some of the new "non-religious" religions. In particular, while communism never caught on big in the U.S., the younger creed of psychiatrology, as I call it. has a definite grip on a large segment of the population.

So many people how are skeptical of what they read in the newspaper or even in the Bible are suddenly credulous when it comes to a book written by a self-help guru, especially one with "Dr." in front of his or her name (which always strikes me as a sign of insecurity--like the Seinfeld character who insisted on being called "Maestro.") If you want to just make stuff up, and then have it become widespread conventional wisdom, then psychology is the field for you (although politics gives it a run for the money).

So we end up with such "everyone knows" phenomena as the five stages of grieving, or the mid-life crisis. (Here's a fun thing to do. If you know a guy over the age of 35, start commenting on every change in his lifestyle--for example, if he decides to go to the gym, or seek a promotion at work, or maybe grow a beard: "You must be having a mid-life crisis." He'll love it.) The problem with these ideas is that if you look for actual research supporting them, it isn't there, or you might find a single study with marginal results, not supported by follow-up work.

Pure science doesn't touch on questions of right and wrong, but psychology, especially pop psychology, is not reticent about telling people what they should or should not do. The terms "right" and "wrong" are not used, but terms such as "healthy", "deviant", "syndrome" are used with the same force. Consider, for example, the phenomenon of homosexuality. Up until 1973, the "Bible" of psychology, that is to say the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (let's call it the Psychobible for short), listed homosexuality as a mental disorder, and in 1973 it was removed. Now I claim the word "disorder" carries a value judgment attached, in that it implies here is a condition which demands to be corrected, or is at least regrettable. And as such when we use a word like "disorder" we are now outside the realm of science.

Was there some kind of scientific breakthrough in 1973 that suddenly revealed homosexuality to lie within the normal spectrum of human behavior instead of outside? Of course not, just as there was no scientific basis for the original classification. The change simply reflected a change in psychiatrists feelings about homosexuality.

The religion of psychiatrology is distinct from the legitimate science of psychology, which includes plenty of solid, fascinating research. Unfortunately the dividing line is not a sharp one. Even professionals in the field sometimes draw conclusions based on faith rather than facts. In 1973 David Rosenhan experimented with admitting perfectly sane people to psychiatric hospitals with a single report of hearing voices. Perfectly healthy test subjects were thereafter judged as insane and kept confined for up to several months.

Currently one of the most damaging tenets of psychiatrology is the concept of so-called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This initial appeared in the 1980 version of the Psychobible as Attention Deficit Disorder, which was replaced by "ADHD" in 1987. The rate of diagnosis has exploded from 0 in 1979 to include about 10% of schoolchildren today (and 13% of boys). But only in America (and lately in Great Britain as well, it seems)--this concept essentially doesn't exist in Japan, Russia, or other countries that routinely outperform us in education. The U.S. accounts for something like 90% of the world's consumption of Ritalin.

I hope the absurdity of labeling 13% of boys with a "disorder" is self-evident. If not, then consider: is a condition affecting 20% of the population a "disorder"? How about 50% ? 90% ? In this country, only 2% of the population is redheaded, but we don't label them as having some "disorder" of the hair. If 13% of children are unable to meet the schools' expectations for sitting in a chair and listening passively, does the fault like with the children, or with the schools?

In Defense of Grammar

2010-11-10T17:36:00.002-05:00

Here are some other language blogs worth checking out:

Steve Kaufmann at The Linguist

Benny at Fluent in 3 months (not sure about Benny's last name, although I have a theory that "Benny" is his last name and "Irrepressible" his first).

If you read both of these regularly (as I do) you will find some fundamental disagreements between them on the best ways to learn languages; on the other hand, they seem to agree on other points, specifically:

(1) Traditional language classes are a waste of time; and

(2) Studying grammar is a waste of time.

Today I'm out to refute hypothesis (2). I'll leave hypothesis (1) for the future.

As I understand it, the main arguments against grammar study run as follow:

1. Grammar is scary and frustrating. The terminology is unfamiliar and confusing.

2. Real fluency in a language demands speaking intuitively, without stopping to analyze what one is saying.

3. Listening and repeating (the way babies learn) is more "natural" and preferable to the "artifical" approach of learning rules and memorizing vocabulary.

Overall, I think the attitude of wanting to study a language but not wanting the study the grammar is misguided. It's like wanting to learn ones way around a foreign city but not wanting to use a map, because maps are covered with intimidating symbols, and someone who really knows the city wouldn't need a map, and babies don't use maps anyway. However, to address these arguments point-by-point:

1. Grammar is scary and frustrating. This sounds to me like the real issue is grammar doesn't yield immediate gratification. Someone looking to learn a new language ought to be the last to object to having to learn new words. And of course the terminology is unfamiliar, because the concepts are unfamiliar. This is an important part of what you get with a new language anyway--a new way of looking at the world. And this particular new way of thinking ultimately streamlines language learning.

I experienced this myself just recently, in Arabic class, when it comes to understanding why nouns end with the vowel a in some situations, u in others, and i in yet others. Having previously encountered noun cases in Russian and Sanskrit, or even Latin (after which Arabic noun cases are a day at the beach), the explanation made immediate sense. My younger, nimbler, but naive classmates, unfamiliar with the concepts of "nominative", "accusative", "genitive", had a vastly more difficult time understanding what's going on.

2. Real fluency demands speaking intuitively. It's true that a fluent speaker can't be stopping to think about "rules" in the course of formulating a sentence. But the ability to step back occasionally and consciously analyze a sentence is also exceedingly useful, and makes one a better communicator. Drivers instinctively keep to the right side of the road and stop at red lights, but when asked, all drivers can explain the rules underlying their behavior. This makes them better drivers, not worse.

For Sanskrit or Arabic, for example, the development of a formal grammar was an important cultural milestone, and indeed a major achievement of civilization--the realization that this "thing" (language) that everyone uses instinctively could be analyzed and codified. In the age of computers and software, the idea of "grammar" has become an essential ingredient of our technological civilization. Why take pride in one's ignorance of it?

3. Grammar study is "artificial." As pointed out by Khatzumoto (although perhaps in gentler terms) babies are actually lousy language learners. Who else can spend an entire year in a completely immersive environment and acquire only a handful of words and be unable to form even a simple sentence? Children do have a talent for mimickry and the ability to soak up large amounts of vocabulary, but adults can more than make up the difference with rational, analytical thinking.

What's more, what you hear in any language is only the surface layer of something that runs far deeper. Consider the English word "resign". The "g" is silent, so why not write the word as "resin"? Because the "g" still exists below the surface, as you see when you pronounce "resignation."

When I first started Romanian, I used the "child" method--just listening and repeating phrases. Meanwhile I tried to analyze what I was hearing (probably part of my personality, but it's a good idea for anyone). I noticed early on that nouns came in masculine and feminine, but a particular puzzle was that a particular thing could be masculine in one sentence and feminine in another. It was cleared up only when I started reading about grammar and learned that Romanian nouns also have a third gender, which is masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural. Instant clarity.

Could I have figured this out on my own? Maybe, but only by piecing together clues from many different sentences and gradually figuring out the pattern of masculine versus feminine. Why not take advantage of the pioneers who did the analysis before you got there?

A final argument, which may not apply to everyone: I like grammar. It's the same pleasure I get from watching a seagull soar or a dolphin swim--a naturally designed structure, beautifully adapted for the task at hand. The only difference is that seagulls and dolphins exist in physical reality, whereas grammar exists in abstract ideas. But then I'm a mathematician--I like abstract ideas.

(Image above from Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar.)

Practical Joke #8

2010-11-06T09:23:00.000-04:00

Photo by TheLichfieldBlog

1. Go to the thrift store. Buy a used baby car seat and a life-sized baby doll.

2. Epoxy the seat to the roof of your car and strap the doll into the seat.

3. Drive around town. Even better in the rain and/or snow.

A Face Language

2010-11-02T08:21:00.000-04:00

You know that strange nagging feeling you get sometimes when you meet someone new--that you've seen this person somewhere before? Eventually you might figure it out--the person has a resemblance to someone else you know, either a celebrity or a personal acquaintance. I had just this nagging feeling about one of my students last year. Eventually, to my great relief, I figured it out--he looked just like Dwayne Johnson's (hypothetical) younger, slimmer brother.

When you "get" the resemblance, you might be a little surprised--it may span different races, different ages, even different genders. My advisor said it once: "there are fewer possible faces than there are people walking around."

I thought of a game one could play to test his theory. Take a collection of passport photos. Process them to eliminate differences in skin tone, hair style, or size. Cut each into a top half and a bottom half. The goal is to match up the top and bottom halves. Who wants to bet that you could do much better than random matching?

Another variation on this game: make two sets of photos and have two players (or teams of two players). The game this time is that one member of the team picks a photo at random and describes the face, and the other member of the team needs to find the matching photo based solely on the description.

I suspect that the best strategy in this game is not to describe someone as "eyes close together, nose 35% larger than normal, etc." but rather as "Dwayne Johnson's slender younger brother," or "the missing love child of Walter Cronkite and Britney Spears," or so on.

Since one of the things I'm not very good at is remembering names and faces, I've often wished for a concise, yet precise way of verbally describing a face--again, not in terms of dimensions but in terms of the impression on the viewer: a face language, so to speak. Think of what a boon such a language would be, for example, to describe bank robbers.

I have no good idea how such a language could be constructed, but the proof that it should exist lies in the art of the caricature. A good caricaturist (for example, Mort Drucker's work above) can draw a face recognizable as a unique individual with a few deft strokes. Hirschfeld's work was positively cartoonlike and yet instantly recognizable. And maybe one way to identify such a language is to set a pair of caricaturists to play the face matching game and analyze what they say to each other.

A New Low

2010-08-17T12:15:00.007-04:00

Photo by an0nym0n0us

So I sold my old car this weekend (not the one you see at the top of this post). With 185,000 miles, it was still in fairly good shape, but it had developed several small problems... the windshield wipers waved erratically, some of the dashboard lights were out, and so on. I had had the feeling for some time that any time when I was driving down the road all four wheels might pop off simultaneously like you see in the movies.

Among these problems was a slipping belt. This is not hard or expensive to fix--15 minutes with a wrench--but it makes the most awful noise, like the engine is about to tear itself apart. I didn't take the time to fix it because I knew I would be selling the car anyway. Friends who rode with my would hide their faces out of shame when the screeching started up.

Last week, I reached a new low. I was driving down a suburban street, when the screeching started up. No one was around, except a solitary dog trotting down the sidewalk. And even the dog stopped short and stared, clearly thinking "What is wrong with that car?"

Why learn languages?

2010-08-03T09:53:00.004-04:00

Interesting perspective from Kató Lomb, Hungarian polyglot 1909-2003. Her book Polyglot: How I learn languages includes interesting anecdotes such as surreptiously studying Russian in WWII bomb shelter and running a tourist hospitality office that was mistaken for a bordello:

We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.

If someone knows how to play the violin only a little, he will find that the painful minutes he causes are not in proportion to the possible joy he gains from his playing. The amateur chemist spares himself ridicule only as long as he doesn’t aspire for professional laurels. The man somewhat skilled in medicine will not go far, and if he tries to trade on his knowledge without certification, he will be locked up as a quack doctor.

Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people. Asking in broken Italian which train we are supposed to board at the Venice railway station is far from useless. Indeed, it is better to do that than to remain uncertain and silent and end up back in Budapest rather than in Milan.

Launching Persian

2010-07-10T10:51:00.016-04:00

Photo by alazaat

So I've embarked on the study of a new language: Persian, a.k.a. Farsi. I intend henceforth to report on my progress at intervals.

In once sense, I am starting from zero, since I know not a single word of Persian. In other senses, not quite. Having studied Arabic, I am already familiar with the alphabet (although Persian adds a few letters). Although Persian is fundamentally more closely related to English than Arabic, I would not be surprised to see some Arabic loanwords appear.

The language most closely related to Persian that I have previously studied is Sanskrit. I don't know how much to expect in the way of similarity.

To get the ball rolling, I am starting with the Pimsleur Persian program. If you are interested in studying a language, you owe it to yourself to try out a Pimsleur program, if one is available for your particular language. Even if I had a class to take, I would try to supplement it with Pimsleur.

With the Pimsleur method, you just listen to the recording and just follow the instructions. An example might go like this:

Tell her your son is a high-school student.

[You respond.]

How would she say her daughter is a college student?

[You respond.]

Ask her where the college is located.

[And so on...]

All the vocabulary, etc. is introduced gradually, in context. There are no explanations of grammar as such (not that I don't like grammar).

A "complete" course consists of 30 half-hour lessons. The most popular languages (French, Mandarin, etc.) have volumes I, II, III--90 lessons in all. You'd be amazed how much you can pick up in those 45 hours. Less popular languages (like Persian) only have Volume I (so far, that is). They are still working on new courses.

Advantages of the Pimsleur program:

(1) You get a lot of speaking practice. In a classroom, you spend most of your time listening, maybe reading and writing, and you speak only when it's your turn. With Pimsleur, it's all you. And dealing with an inanimate object frees you from self-consciousness (although this is not an issue for everyone). The extensive practice really lets you wrap your mouth around the language. Speaking a language is a physical activity, just like dancing or skiing, and just so, practice helps you avoid stumbling.

(2) If you spend a fair amount of time driving alone, as I do, it lets you make good use of otherwise dead time.

(3) You don't have to plan, or make many decisions. Just follow the program.

(4) The program is designed to reintroduce previous terms at a rate to keep you from forgetting them. Paul Pimsleur actually authored several articles on this approach, referring to research on the rate at which new terms are forgotten.

Disadvantages of the Pimsleur approach:

(1) Since it's strictly audio, you don't learn to read and write. (However, many courses include perfunctory "reading lessons." Since these can't be done while driving, I usually don't get around to them.

(2) Your accent may be so good that people will expect you to understand better than you actually do. I'm not kidding. I've heard several people report this.

(3) They don't come cheap. A full course runs more than $300. You can find abbreviated courses of 8 or 10 lessons cheaper, if you just want to try it out. You can also find the full courses cheaper if you search the Web, or rent them, or (best of all) maybe borrow them for free from a library.

Some people that I have introduced to the Pimsleur method are so enthusiastic after completing the first lesson that they immediately go on to the second lesson. This is a bad idea. It's like a second piece of cheesecake--just too much. As a matter of policy I won't go faster than one lesson per day. If I have extra driving time, I use it to go over the same lesson a second time.

Within somewhere between one and two months, I should have finished the Pimsleur Persian course--at which point I'll need to find something else to make progress with. Reports to follow.

Scenes from the Cold War at P.F. Chang's

2010-04-20T18:30:00.015-04:00

So I'm waiting for a table at P.F. Chang's. At one end of the hostess station is a stack of paper menus--at the other end is a sample gift card in a little gift bag. I'm sure I've seen both items many times before, but now, seeing them juxtaposed, I notice something interesting.

I go over and ask the blond teenager snapping her gum behind the desk, "Do you have any extra bags like this?" She goes off and returns with a bag and hands it to me. I take one of the menus and show it to her.

"Did you ever notice that the characters over here are different from those over here?"

"Yeah, they're different."

"See these over here [on the left above] are traditional characters that have been used for thousands of years. And these [on the right] are simplified versions instituted by the Communist government in 1956."

At that, her eyes took on an icy blue cast that raised the hair on the back of my neck. "So--you have discovered our little secret! For too long have your firecracker-shrimp-fattened feet trod on the necks of the honest, hard-working peasantry. Soon our network of bistro installations will be complete, and your pitiful, trusting country will fall into our hands like an overripe lychee fruit!"

Okay, that last paragraph was made up, but the rest of this story is true. In a sense the characters on both right and left of the image above are the same, in the same way that "theater" and "theatre" are the same. It probably says something about how the mind works that the difference is easy to overlook unless you see them side-by-side. (BTW the first character [in either version] is pronounced hua with a high level tone. It means "flower" and in this case "China." The second is pronounced guan with a falling-rising tone and means "building" in the sense of a restaurant, for example.)

As noted, the Chinese government instituted the first round of simplification in 1956. I wish they had asked me about it ahead of time--I could have told them it was a bad idea. The simplified forms have just one advantage (less and less relevant in the age of the word processor): they can be written more quickly. They are not particularly easier to learn--the old forms, although more complex, are more pictorial in nature.

Most especially, the simplified characters violate Serge's Second Principle of Engineering: A single bad standard is better than two good standards. All students of the Chinese language, both native and foreign, must learn two versions of most characters. Not withstanding the fact that Taiwan continues to use the traditional forms, even on the mainland books printed prior to 1956 did not suddenly vanish when the simplified forms were introduced.

Some of the simplified forms are naturally easy to recognize. This character, pronounced jian with a falling tone, means 'see':
Others are more like WTF? This one, pronounced wu with a rising tone, means "nonexistent":
Wikipedia has a nice summary of the many different ways in which particular characters were simplified.

Finally, the increasing numbers of people who elect to study both Japanese and Chinese now sometimes need to learn three different version of the same character, as the Japanese government also simplified some characters (though not as many, nor generally as drastically); but often the Japanese and Chinese simplications differ:
(BTW this character, pronounced fa with a high level tone [or hatsu in Japanese], has a meaning difficult to sum up in a single English word. It appears in words with meanings such as "discover", "explode", "speak out", "put on the market", and it carries a sense of something suddenly appearing or opening or becoming prominent.)

All this rather makes me appreciative that the English language is out of anyone's control. Can you imagine the government trying to dictate that henceforth "night" will be spelled "nite"?

Language Blogging

2010-04-17T16:39:00.005-04:00

You can't be Jason Bourne without mastering a bunch of languages. During the course of the series we get to see him speak French, Swiss German, Dutch, Russian, and Spanish, all with exceeding fluency (except he seems slightly less comfortable in Russian). This scene shows him speaking French and Dutch at a less frenetic moment, when he still knows nothing of his identity. The point is: Jason Bourne has learned so well that he's not even sure what his native language is.

…whereby this blog introduces a new feature. As a rule I don’t use this blog to imitate what I see others doing elsewhere. This is why, for example, I rarely blog about politics.

Lately I’ve been reading several language blogs (that is, blogs about foreign-language study). I particularly like Steve Kaufmann’s Linguist blog, Benny the Irish Polyglot, and Tim Ferriss’s occasional posts on language. I’ve noticed two things: (1) There is a lot of valuable information to be had out there; however (2) In line with the theme of this blog, there are also blind sports that most everyone seems to be overlooking, Henceforth I’ll be working to fill in some of the gaps (starting with a small tidbit at the bottom of this post).

Time-honored language-blogging tradition now demands that I display a few foreign-language credentials, and henceforth periodically report on ongoing progress.

Rule of thumb: Never ask a polyglot how many languages he or she speaks. The problem is that if the answer is large enough to be interesting the only honest answer is It's complicated. Such as: Well, I read this one fairly well but can’t speak much. Or: I can ask for directions and get the price of a train ticket but I got in big trouble the last time I tried to pick up a girl in a bar.

So with this caveat, here is my current list. These are arranged in roughly descending order of proficiency, ranging from serious fluency at the top of the list to the ability to ask directions and order dinner at the end. Future posts will flesh out some of these descriptions.

Languages so far:
English (my mother tongue)
Japanese
French
Italian
Mandarin Chinese
German
Romanian
Russian
Esperanto
Portuguese
Spanish
Korean
Cantonese
Thai
*Sanskrit
*Egyptian
*Sumerian

The three starred items at the bottom are dead languages (which most language bloggers apparently won’t touch). These are difficult to compare with the others on an apples-to-apples basis—the concept of “conversation,” for example, has little meaning in a dead language.

Languages in progress: The list above also doesn’t include the languages I am actively studying at present: Arabic and (modern) Tibetan, both to be the subject of future progress reports in future posts.

And some for the future: I haven’t started these yet, but I hope to someday. This list is extremely fluid--I just added one today. In no particular order: *Latin, Hebrew, Czech, Mongolian, Modern and *Ancient Greek, *Akkadian, *Avestan, Indonesian, Swahili, Farsi, Nepali, Norwegian, *Mayan, *Old English, Vietnamese, *Hittite.

Chinese-English wordplay: To close out this post, here’s the exclusive tidbit I promised: a bilingual pun. It makes a good icebreaker when you meet someone from China—provided he or she speaks English fairly well.

First, write the following Chinese character:

(It helps if you can write it with the proper stroke order, but that’s a subject for another post.) Ask them what it means. (In fact, this is pronounced “yan” with a falling tone and It means “to swallow.”)

Next, write the following character:

…and ask them now what does this mean? Notice it looks almost exactly like the first one except the little square on the left is missing.

Generally at this point your Chinese acquaintance will display momentary bemusement followed by amusement. See, this second character is also pronounced “yan” with a falling tone, and it also means “swallow”, but it’s the name of the bird.

(Linguistic note, for those who like to know what’s going on: The fact that the two words sound the same in both Chinese in English is total coincidence, but the fact that the characters look similar is not. These two characters illustrate two out of several methods of forming Chinese character.

The bird character is a pictograph, a picture of a swallow, although so highly evolved and stylized that it no longer looks like a bird. The four dots on the bottom were originally tail feathers.

The other character is formed by adjoining the Chinese character for “mouth” (the little square). The bird is there to show the pronunciation. In other words: “Something to do with the mouth, that sounds like “swallow.”)

Lip-Reading Update

2010-04-07T16:24:00.003-04:00

It was some five months ago that I announced in this forum the inception of my formal lip-reading training, namely using the Read My Lips! DVD series. Halfway through the series now, I'm back for a progress report.

First, I have been successful in at least one respect: I have managed to consistently work at it a bit each day. This counts as at least a partial victory for any kind of resolution. In comparison to other self-improvement projects (such as going to the gym), this one does not require a lot of energy--so it's not that hard to sit at the end of the day and watch people's lips move for twenty minutes or so.

Here's a sample of what the series is like. This is in fact the very first few seconds of the first video, complete with what I have come to think of as the lip-reading national anthem:

It definitely gets harder as you go along. Some of the sentences are hard to understand because they are things you never hear in real life. For example, "June is busting out all over." Honestly--who says that? On the other hand, a later lesson has "That rhinoceros reminds me of your mother" (I am not kidding). Oddly enough, I frequently hear this in real life.

The series works pretty well, but I have thought of improvements. For example, it is surprisingly difficult to distinguish "eight" and "nine". How about a series of snippets with people saying one or the other at random--or other difficult-to-distinguish phrases. I have noticed that women are distinctly easier to understand then men. I read also that women tend to make better lip-readers. Oh well.

I find some sentences are impenetrable at first try, and others surprisingly clear. When the lip-reading succeeds, its almost as if one can hear the voice (although the DVD's never let you hear anyone's voice at any time). Just like a foreign-language class in school, I don't expect the finish the last DVD and be ready for the real world. I have some thoughts about how to continue from that point, but that problem is still a few months away.

Finally, for your viewing pleasure, here is Ethan Hunt's lip-reading scene from MI-III:

MI-III is fantasy, of course. If you want a real-life equivalent to Ethan Hunt, you might consider Sue Thomas. A highly proficient lip-reader, she worked for the FBI reading what people say in surveillance videos, etc. This is good to know, because in watching my DVDs I sometimes am tempted to think "Nobody could possibly do this." It's good to know others can really succeed at this. What one person can learn, so can another.

I just started reading Thomas's book. Maybe I'll be able to pick up a few pointers. Thomas is Ethan Hunt in real life, minus the explosions and jumping off of buildings. Or maybe those are included--ask me again after I finish the book.

Practical Joke #7(Special Lower Merion Edition)

2010-02-24T18:38:00.003-05:00

(Inspired by this recent story reporting allegations that a Pennsylvania school district used laptop webcams to spy on students at home. The school claims they only turned the webcams on if the laptop was reported lost or stolen, but some of the facts reported cast this into doubt.)

1. Be a student in the Lower Merion school district. Get your school-issued laptop. Take it home.

2. Find a photo of a guy in a hot tub with two hookers.

3. Photoshop your school principal's head over either the guy's head, or one of the hookers' (depending on gender). School vice-principal is also a good option.

3. Print the photo out and set it up in front of the laptop.

4. Call the school up and report your laptop stolen.

Some fortunes for Chinese New Year.

2010-01-31T16:04:00.004-05:00

Photo by tim ellis.

Are you, like me, disgusted with the increasing blandness of fortune cookie fortunes? Remember the good old days when you used to see fortunes like this?

1. I saw what you did. Pervert.

2. WARNING: Toxic lubricant leak detected in fortune cookie machine. Recalibrate according to section 6 of the Manual.

3. You don't know me, but we were meant to be together. Meet me behind the moo goo gai pan.

See This

2010-01-22T10:37:00.001-05:00

Garry Kasparov's thoughts on computers, chess, and the human mind. A lot of non-obvious stuff.

The Best of the Bond Women

2010-01-18T11:18:00.004-05:00

Photo by Rob Beyer

There never has been, and never will be, a Bond film without women. Women are an essential ingredient of the formula--although the best of the Bond movies don't stick too closely to the formula. I came across a rather depressing interview with Roald Dahl in which he describes the formula the producers gave him when he was writing the screenplay for You Only Live Twice. There had to be three women--no more, no less. The first woman had to do this, and the second had to do that, and the third had to do the other thing... it's little wonder that Dahl's story seems perfunctory.

The worst of the Bond women are pretty faces with no personality and nothing interesting to do. I'm thinking of you, Lupe Lamora, and you too, Manuela. Sorry you had to hear it from me. Another common device is to introduce an educated female character with some specialized knowledge that Bond needs. Holly Goodhead knows space travel; Natalya Simonova knows space-based weapons; Christmas Jones knows nuclear weapons. But these characters end up just tagging along with Bond, offering technical advice and falling into bed at the appropriate time--ultimately, not very interesting.

The best of the Bond women has these characterics:

1. She is her own boss;

2. She takes a hand in shaping events;

3. She is clever;

4. She is fun to be around.

Before I reveal her identity, I'll discuss some of those who don't qualify (trying to avoid detailed spoilers).

Pussy Galore from Goldfinger: She is clearly thinks of herself as a strong, independent woman. But in fact she merely goes from taking orders from one man at the start of the story to taking orders from a different man at the end of the story. She does nothing on her own initiative. (And moreover, she seems rather crabby and generally unpleasant to be around.)

Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale: Clearly intelligent--her sharp tongue is part of her appeal--but not clever. She never does anything that makes you think Huh! Look what she did.

Ruby Barlett from On Her Majesty's Secret Service: Perhaps the most fun of all the Bond women, and clever as well. But really no more than pawn in the big game.

Tracy Di Vicenzo, also from On Her Majesty's Secret Service: I'm sure I'll get flack from this, because Tracy is supposed to be the one. But I could never take a woman seriously who calls her father Papa, with the accent on the second syllable. And consider how she attempts to flirt with Blofeld:

Tracy: I want to see the dawn.

Blofeld: So poetic a pleasure!

Does anyone talk this way? Gag.

Okay, so the winner revealed is... Tiffany Case from Diamonds Are Forever. Technically she's working for the bad guy, but she is much more concerned with her own plans. Even at the end, on the boat with Bond (and that's not a spoiler--practically every Bond movie ends with Bond on a boat with a lady) she is still pursuing her own agenda. And clever? At one point she outwits twenty government agents and disappears with an important item, which she wants for her own purposes. None of this stops her from being fun to be around.

(P.S. Barbara Broccoli, if you're reading this, you seriously need to employ Goldfrapp to write the next Bond theme song.)

Practical Joke #6

2009-12-30T14:23:00.004-05:00

Photo by Greg W.

(Inspired by the little blizzard that blew through here a couple of weeks ago.)

1. Acquire an arm from a department-store mannequin.

2. Wait for a fairly big snowstorm.

3. While shoveling snow, place the arm in an upward-directed position and then pile snow around and on top of it.

4. Wait several weeks or months until the outstretched hand emerges from the melting now.

Dressing the arm in a coat sleeve and mitten is optional.

A Mind-Control Conundrum

2009-12-18T09:36:00.014-05:00

"Mind control" as in advertising, that is. This and similar TV commercials have me bewildered:

Ostensibly the idea is that a man is supposed to go out and buy some expensive jewelry for the woman in his life (and hey, I'm all in favor of that). So why then is this ad designed to be so uninteresting to men? Trust me, ladies, on this one. Learning sign language would be interesting but in every other respect this insipid, charisma-deficient man-child is the opposite of what every man aspires to be. It's easy to predict the eventual fate of this couple: to be accosted by a gang of motorcycle toughs while walking a city street one night. The man winds up flat on his back from a punch in the nose while the woman rides off on the back of a motorcycle—still wearing her new jeweled wristwatch.

And it's not just this one. In other jewelry commercials the excited girlfriend shows off her new diamond to her envious friends. Apparently this is more rewarding than actually spending time with her pathetic loser boyfriend (nowhere to be seen), whose sole important contribution to the relationship now sits on the girlfriend's finger.

So what's the story here? Is it mass incompetence in the advertising industry or rather some subtle psychological master-stroke way too clever for me to recognize? Has the jewelry industry decided appealing directly to men is a waste of time and chosen instead to encourage women to nag their men into buying something? Or maybe buy things for themselves and then pretend to have received them from an admirer?

Not being a woman, I hesitate to judge the appeal of messages such as this to women. On the other hand I see perfume commercials, which I assume are targeted to women, and those (unlike jewelry commercials) are usually charged with some real sexual energy.

If you want to sell men on doing something nice for women, here's the right way to do it:

I don't drink vodka, but I like the message here. Gallantry is cool.

Ramshackle

2009-12-01T11:23:00.006-05:00

Photo by katiew.

My train of thought while showering this morning...

...was provoked by Gershwin's "Concerto in F", to which I was listening at the time. Gershwin reminded me of "Porgy and Bess." I listen to this occasionally, but I haven't seen it since watching the film version on TV as a young impressionable child. My visual impressions of the story are therefore hazy, selective, and imperfect. These conflict with my listening knowledge of the opera, which carries a pretty grim plotline. My distant childhood impression, on the other hand, is of something altogether more playful and frivolous. Hmmm... whence the discrepancy?

Then again, some years back, I was on a hike with the Boy Scouts, along a trail which went through the wilderness in stretches, and along a highway in others. Crossing a bridge, we saw riverfront homes. One such was particularly interesting to see, having fallen victim to the encroaching river, radically slumped over, roof caving in, one wall missing. On seeing this, my main emotional reaction was not I'd hate for that to be my house, but more: Gee, that looks like a fun place. Seems an odd reaction, right?

And then I had it--one small piece in the puzzle of the human mind. Maybe it's not such an odd reaction. The characters in Porgy and Bess live in a rather seedy world (as I recall) of houses with sagging roofs and leaning walls. What previous experience would a child have had in such an environment? The closest would have been the world of Lil' Abner (this is an old-timey comic strip about hillbillies, for you young punks out there), or maybe Pogo (another classic old comic strip)--which were fun places. Only slightly farther removed would be the world of Popeye. And a bit further down the road is the world of Dr. Seuss.

In comics, cartoons, and children's books, houses show curves and bulges. Dr. Seuss's architecture never makes use of a straight line. In the real world, on the other hand, houses are rigid, straight, and angular. Except on the rare occasions when you come across a deliciously ramshackle old ruin--and then you never know--Popeye or Daisy Mae might come strolling out.

I ought to watch Porgy and Bess again. Although I rather hate to lose the child's wacky fun version....

No Fun, No Gain

2009-11-22T17:22:00.006-05:00

As a regular gym-goer, I can report (just in case any of you were wondering) that the experience of working out is not all that interesting. Why else do so many have such a hard time making exercise into a regular habit? Any sensible program necessarily entails a lot of repetition.

Imagine, on the other hand, if your gym experience went like this: maybe you're hanging from a pull-up bar, going for your nth rep. The walls around you carry a projected image of a craggy landscape, while beneath is a yawning chasm. In front of you is a cliff face. You hear the howl and feel the bite of a chill breeze. With each rep, the images show you climbing a little higher up the cliff face. Wouldn't this make work-outs a little more diverting?

Here you have this week's million-dollar idea, something I call the fantasy gym. How about working out on the Stair-Master and seeing yourself approach the summit of Everest? The summit is attained only by reaching your goal. The actual level of difficulty is up to you. Oxygen deprivation is optional.

Swim in a pool with sharks. Run around a track with CIA assassins chasing you. Build a pyramid by lifting stone blocks into place. The possibilities are endless.

There are plenty of gaming arcades out there, and plenty of health clubs, but so far as I know no one has attempted to combine the two. I find this a little hard to believe.

On the other hand, perhaps this idea fails from a business standpoint. Perhaps gyms would rather have you sign up for a monthly membership and then not show up--it let's them collect more money with limited facilities.

Huh! For Real?

2009-11-21T09:35:00.002-05:00

Sleep teaching is a popular culture meme. I'm not sure where I first encountered the concept but it must have been some TV show wherein a character goes to sleep wearing headphones and wakes up speaking fluent Spanish or something. Were I a more pretentious person, I would claim to have first encountered the concept from Huxley's Brave New World, in which sleep teaching is used to render the various castes content with their place in society: "I'm so glad I'm a Beta." I rather suspect that Brave New World may be the well-spring of the popular meme.

According to Wikipedia, a study in 1956 concluded that sleep-teaching is hogwash, which has been the scientific consensus since that time. Now guess what--a new study finds evidence that sleep teaching actually does have an effect.

The new study was undertaken by Ph.D. student John Rudoy and colleagues and Northwestern University. It differs perhaps from earlier studies in combining awake learning with sleeping review. The subjects of the study learned (while awake) the randomly assigned positions on a diagram of 50 objects such as teakettles and wineglasses. Each object was accompanied by a relevant sound such as the whistle of a kettle or the sound of breaking glass. Then the subjects took a short nap, during which the associated sounds for 25 of the 50 objects were played--at a level too low for conscious awareness. Afterwards, the subjects were tested on recalling the locations of all 50 objects. Recall was 15% better for those objects whose sounds had been played during sleeping.

Note that the sounds played have no direct connection to the locations of the objects--the sleep-teaching apparently only functioned as a stimulus to the subjects to rehearse what they already knew.

15% is a significant margin. I could wish for a larger sample than the twelve subjects that were actually used, but certainly this is intriguing. How can we make use of this effect? Well, one easy approach which comes to mind is to study a language during the daytime and then use audio to review vocabulary or other while sleeping. Perhaps, if I find the time and inclination, I may pursue my own little one-person experiment.

Product Review: Read My Lips! DVD series

2009-11-08T12:04:00.008-05:00

One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to learn to read lips. This was provoked by a visit to a nightclub where the music is far too loud for conversation (a kind of place I don't visit often - otherwise I would have thought of this years ago). My friends and I were attempting conversation by screaming into each others' ears. My first thought was: this is why everyone needs to learn sign language. But then lip-reading appeared a more practical choice - sign language only works with a proficient counterpart, whereas you can read others' lips with no special skill or effort on their part.

And then lip-reading can be useful for other purposes besides, as you know if you watched Tom Cruise in MI-III. Or as Jerry Seinfeld says: "It's like a super-power."

So now most of the year is gone, and I haven't realized this resolution as yet. I did make some attempts. My first idea was to gradually turn the volume down on the TV so I would need to rely more and more on the visual. The problem I found with this approach is that in almost all TV programming, for a large proportion of time the person speaking is not actually on screen - the possible exception being talking-heads shows. I then tried the same thing with carefully selected Web videos, but still found it difficult to make progress.

So I decided to take the plunge and buy the Read My Lips! DVD series from Amazon. This is an early review, based on initial experience. The real proof is in the learning; I'll post a follow-up report when I'm done with the series.

The series is produced by Speechreading Laboratory, Inc. It is a remastered version of a videocassette series. The six DVD's are spartan compared to the typical Hollywood production (which is just fine with me), and the actors and settings are very 80's (also just fine with me). The approach is simple, but looks promising. An actor says something. You can't hear the voice. (Instead there is an 80's musical soundtrack - I suspect I'm going to subconsciously associate lip-reading with light jazz from here on.) After a pause a subtitle reveals what was just said.

The level of difficulty gradually increases. The first lesson, for example, consists of single words for months and days of the week. The actors speak normally, but the restricted area of discourse makes the task just difficult enough. I skipped ahead to the sixth disk and found a rather entertaining discussion between a mother and daughter about the daughter planning to marry a much older man who has been married three times already. And, more important - quite beyond my present lip-reading capability. So if I reach Disk Six and am able to understand it, I will know I will have learned something nontrivial.

The set includes a small booklet with some analytical tips for lip-reading. I've noticed already that the "th" sound is one of the easiest to recognize. And I know a few tricks that aren't in the booklet. The booklet points out that "mom" and "pop" rely on the same mouth motions and are almost impossible to distinguish visually. This would be true, except for the timing. "Mom" takes about twice as long to say as "pop." Try it. They recommend 15 to 20 minutes of practice per day, which seems quite doable. Especially as lip-reading is inherently a passive activity, I suspect it won't require as much energy as, say, going to the gym.

So, preliminary impression: I'm pleased. The system seems well-designed. I think this is going to work. I'll let you know in a few months.

Lost Continent Discovered

2009-10-30T09:13:00.014-04:00

In our jaded age, an increasingly rare pleasure is the thrill of discovering something new - like maybe a nifty restaurant in your own neighborhood that you had overlooked for years, or a piece of classical music that stirs you.

I sometimes wish I were living 100 years ago, when the world was a much bigger place, with many more exotic and hard-to-reach corners. Good old pulpy stories like Allen Quatermain, Lost Horizon, or Terry and the Pirates can't take place in the modern world; everything is too familiar and too interconnected. In those days you could almost believe there might be an uncharted island somewhere inhabited by dinosaurs and an enormous gorilla.

In the mid 1930's the pulp writer William L. Chester published a series of wilderness adventure stories about the hero Kioga, sort of a pseudo-Tarzan, who inhabited an uncharted land called Nato-wa, north of the Arctic Circle. Imagine my surprise to learn (just yesterday!) that there is in fact an inhabited landmass close to the North Pole, called Svalbard. When I found it on the globe, I went whoa. It is the farthest-north permanently inhabited location on Earth. This instantly made it onto my list of "must-see" places.

This is the lost continent. Okay, okay, both "lost" and "continent" are exaggerations. But - although officially discovered in 1589, it's new to me. And it's big enough to keep me busy for the all the time I might be able to spend there.

What does Svalbard have to offer? Well, for one thing, it gives you a chance to combine adventure with relative comfort. It's practically the North Pole, and offers plenty of arctic-type scenery such polar bears, walruses, and glaciers. Check out this bit of local color (courtesy of Wikipedia): Since polar bears are common on Svalbard and hunt humans on occasion, people need to take precautions when outside the settlements: this includes carrying a rifle. Nevertheless, the law protects polar bears, forbidding anyone to harm or disturb them unless it is necessary to avert personal injury. At the same time, they have a tourist bureau. They have commercial air service. They have hotels. They even have ATM's.

One slightly spooky but interesting landmark: Svalbard is home to an underground doomsday vault holding samples of all kinds of crop seeds in case the crops are wiped out by some kind of plague.

The "Mexican Sushi" Phenomenon

2009-10-22T14:32:00.004-04:00

I just coined the term "Mexican sushi" to describe a phenomenon that I witness around me more and more frequently. I doubt that it is really happening more frequently, but I am probably becoming more attuned to noticing it. It's based on the following little parable:

Suppose you own a restaurant--a Mexican restaurant, with an excellent native-born Mexican chef, but business has been falling off. You do some research and discover that nobody eats Mexican food any more. Sushi is all the rage. So you decide to switch over to sushi. You gather the restaurant's staff together to discuss it and they all show 100% enthusiasm--especially the chef: "I've never had sushi but I'm ready for a new direction in life." So you fax her the recipe and she goes out to buy the ingredients and puts her first order of sushi together according to the directions.

How much do you want to bet that somehow the sushi will not be what you are expecting. There are just too many unconscious assumptions made while cooking. Maybe the rice will have cumin in it, or the chef won't have wasabi on hand but figure jalapenos to be a good-enough substitute.

Can a native-born Mexican learn to make authentic sushi? Of course, but it's going to take more than just a recipe. Maybe someone needs to be looking over her shoulder on the first attempt. Maybe you need several cycles of try-taste-feedback-try.

[End of parable.]

Then again--a real-life story--about ten years ago I was at scout camp with my son. He was working on a Scouting requirement, something about constructing a useful device by lashing together sticks. Some of you may not know that in order to lash two sticks together "correctly" you don't just wrap a rope around until it looks "pretty good." Rather you make each joint according to one of several precise recipes depending on the type of joint desired. For example, a "square lashing" (see video above) is designed to connect two sticks at right angles and is constructed according to the formula: clove hitch--three wraps--three fraps--clove hitch.

I sent my son off to practice constructing something and after a while he brought back his creation. Sure enough, the lashings were made according to the "wrap a rope around until it looks pretty good" method. Thereupon followed the following exchange:

"What is this here? How many times did you wrap this?"

"I don't know. It doesn't matter, does it?"

This illustrates one contributing factor to the "Mexican sushi" phenomenon--a human penchant for interpreting a requirement in a set of instructions as a mere "guideline." Conversely a statement intended as a guideline may be interpreted as a strict requirement. Or the instructions may be incomplete and the listener interprets the ambiguity in an unexpected way. Surely you have had experiences such as this when giving directions to the driver of a car: "Take the next right... no, not that one! That's just a parking lot!"

As a rule, getting and giving advice or instructions is a much subtler art than is usually appreciated. I am particularly interested in the Mexican sushi phenomenon as it applies to learning how to make major life changes--weight loss, confronting phobias, financial planning. It's probably both more common and more destructive in such contexts because fundamental attitudes come into play.

It's Moments Like These You Cherish

2009-09-10T18:50:00.003-04:00

(This isn't really about politics....)

I just love this picture from Obama's health-care speech last night. What were these guys talking about?

I like to think that Al Franken just made a really obscene joke about Harry Reid's wife. It's the romantic in me, I suppose.

Obama's Big School Speech

2009-09-09T11:13:00.004-04:00

You know - the speech that enraged right-thinking parents around the country with the prospect of a socialist outlook being foisted by the President on their helpless children.

Well, doesn't fairness demand that the Republicans be allowed to broadcast a rebuttal?

Obama: "Every single one of you has something to offer."

Republican response: "Every single one of you has something to offer. Except you, Billy. You got nuthin'."

Obama: "And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it."

Republican response: "Education is for suckers. Look where I am - and I didn't need no stinkin' education."

Obama: "Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez."

Republican response: "Jazmin Perez is not from Roma, Texas. I have here a copy of her actual Kenyan birth certificate."

Now that's a speech I would enjoy listening to.

Always Look for a Better Way

2009-08-18T17:34:00.017-04:00

Leonard Pickel was my college roommate a long time ago, and a childhood friend before that. I'm pretty sure he would win a contest for the person I know with the most interesting job.

There are two morals to this story--a small one and a large one. The small one is: When you go off to college, live in the oldest and shabbiest dorm available. Leonard and I did this, unwillingly to begin with but by choice in successive years. The oldest dorms had the largest rooms (with wonderful high ceilings). Sure, we had to go down the hall to use the shower, but that also meant others were paid to clean it. And since the dorm we lived in was always on the verge of being condemned, we had a lot of license to paint our rooms any color we wanted and generally abuse the premises. (That's a photo of our dorm below.)

At Halloween, we made use of this freedom to put on a little haunted house. At 50 cents a head, we made enough to have a nice little pizza party. This being the late seventies, we furnished our haunted house with items such as a Star Wars cantina. The creep down the hall who was into martial arts put on his leather suit and a gorilla mask. While he stood perfectly still everyone was sure he was a mannequin, until--Hah! Got you! And one of Leonard's inspirations was a corridor with multiple doors that characters could run in and out of (ideal for a dormitory setting, and in retrospect probably inspired by Yellow Submarine).

After graduation, Leonard and I went our separate ways. Leonard, with an architecture degree, went to work for an architectural firm doing, you know, architecture stuff. But he still put on a haunted house now and again on Halloween. And then, after some years, he decided to chuck it all and do haunted houses full-time. As his dad said, his working capital was a trailer full of 2x4's.

Now here comes the second large moral. Leonard didn't just put on haunted houses; he thought about what he was doing. He kept looking for a better way. How do you keep people from bunching up so you can maximize the number of customers you can put through in an hour? How do you protect your actors from the obnoxious lout looking for an excuse to punch someone in the nose?

Now Leonard is not just a haunted-house guy--he's a leading authority in the independent haunted-attraction business. People in the field talk about the "Pickel theory" of haunted-house design, which encompasses both practical considerations and an aesthetic philosophy: Leonard cares little for blood and guts, preferring instead to rely on good old-fashioned startles.

Thanks to Leonard I have a window onto a fascinating little industry I would otherwise know nothing about. Some years ago my family and I visited the attraction Leonard was operating in Myrtle Beach and got a behind-the-scenes tour. We were also Leonard's guests at a haunted-attraction convention where I was fascinated by the seminar he gave.

Leonard's website: www.leonardpickel.com. Here's one of his designs:

P.S. Leonard, I always thought "Pepper's Ghost" would make a good title for a short story with some kind of ironic twist at the end.

Comforting Lie of the Day

2009-08-10T11:52:00.004-04:00

Photo by Faeryan

From TIME magazine:

"Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin."

Ah, yes. We'd all like to believe this, wouldn't we? So Michael Phelps ingests 12,000 calories a day and yet doesn't get fat because of--just dumb luck? Some obvious issues with the article:

1. "Weight" is probably not the metric that most people are really interested in. Dropping fat and adding muscle in some cases leads to an increase in body weight while the individual slims down. Body measurements or percentage of body fat might be more meaningful.

2. Even the most strenuous exercise group in the study worked out for less than 30 minutes a day. Puh-leeze. It takes me longer than that just to drive to the gym.

My own theory is that a major factor in the success (or lack thereof) of an exercise program is mindset. If you're going to spend 20 minutes on the Stairmaster while flipping through a magazine and then whine about how much willpower you've used up, it's probably not going to happen for you. (Willpower is required for this type of exercise program, because it's just so damn boring.) On the other hand, if you're really interested in finding out what your body is capable of, and pursue the goal intelligently, it will be far more enjoyable and effective at the same time.

Quote for the Day

2009-07-31T12:25:00.003-04:00

(More useful than the last one.)

The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

Frederick Douglass

Interesting Quote of the Day

2009-07-27T07:57:00.003-04:00

From Sarah Palin, at her farewell party (thanks to Politico):

"By the way, Hollywood needs to know: We eat therefore we hunt.”

Really? She eats wolves?

Apollo 11

2009-07-20T16:15:00.005-04:00

Thoughts on the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing...

I am so glad this happened.

I like the Moon. I like spaceships--but the Apollo program means something more philosophical to me. When Kennedy set the goal of sending a man to the moon and back within ten years, we (the Americans) were trying--and failing--to send a man merely to the edge of space. Now that's boldness.

The proper way to think about the moon landing was summed up by James Lovell (as quoted in the move Apollo 13) :

"It's not a miracle. We just decided to go and we did it."

The lesson of Apollo is this: Set a dream, an ambitious dream, and pursue it: with boldness and tenasciousness and with intelligence--think about what you're doing, what's working, what isn't. what you could be doing differently. You'll be amazed at what you can achieve.

What came after Apollo? The Seventies--the decade of our national malaise? I frequently reach back to memories of Apollo for inspiration. What has happened since then as inspiring?

Suggested viewing/reading

Apollo 13

From the Earth to the Moon (HUGE bargain!)

Apollo

(Note 1: Then again this new Obama guy seems to have a bit of the spirit about him. Perhaps the next few years will yield something exciting and inspiring.)

(Note 2: On the other hand, history also provides examples of what happens when you set an ambitious dream and pursue it blindly. I'm thinking Great Leap Forward, Iraq War....)

Biker Season

2009-07-20T15:24:00.000-04:00

Photo by Stuck in Customs

In summer the bikers frequently turn up downtown en masse. I'm not one of them (so far) but I enjoy their presence. I'm always struck by a contrast--I'm tempted to call it a paradox, but perhaps that says more about my own prejudices than about reality.

If you look at the bikers themselves, many of them exhibit what could charitably be called an easygoing attitude towards their personal appearance. I can't imagine they invest much time nor effort into it. And yet the bikes--they're spotless, meticulously polished--really beautiful. There's nothing in my own life that I put so much effort into maintaining in peak condition. I'm tempted to say it proves everyone has a sense of beauty.

(A second observation: I'm grateful to motorcycles for preserving a gleaming, chrome-heavy esthetic that went out of style with cars 40 years ago. )

Thoughts on "Affirmative Action"

2009-07-17T19:09:00.005-04:00

(Stimulated by a discussion of Sonia Sotomayor...)

I suggest that we retire the term "affirmative action" due to its extreme amorphousness. Does "affirmative action" mean a strict quota system for Supreme Court justices, or hiring preferences for members of historically disadvantaged groups, or aggressive recruiting by law schools at historically black colleges? I guarantee that each of these (among others) is the meaning of "affirmative action" to at least some. A favorite tactic of dishonest argument is to let the meaning slide back and forth in the course of a single discussion.

The test scores and certificates that proponents of strict meritocracy would have us base decisions on give an illusion of precise measurement. Does anyone seriously think we should choose Supreme Court justices based on the highest SAT score? SAT scores are a crude predictor for some things but an exact predictor of nothing, not even an individual's performance on the next SAT.

My personal view on the issue: All the measurements and data in the world provide only a rough estimate of an individual's likely performance in any job or academic program. In reality there is no "best candidate", only a pool of candidates who are all the "best qualified" given the imperfect state of our knowledge. History shows that predictions of future performance for Supreme Court justices are especially imprecise. Acknowledging the level of our ignorance in such matters yields freedom. Given that there is no uniquely determined "best candidate" why should we not choose from among the best with some secondary goal (such as diversity) in mind? This does not unfairly disadvantage anyone, and I think an honest assessment of our level of ignorance leaves lots of room for encouraging diversity and remedying past injustice. If this is what is meant by "affirmative action", then I'm all in favor.

Movie Review: "Pinocchio in Outer Space"

2009-07-16T13:24:00.002-04:00

I couldn't resist. I like quirky things. Besides I remembered watching this when I was a kid (funny how the memory and the reality can be so different).

Forthwith the review I posted to Amazon:

If you have always had the urge to see Pinocchio incinerated by an atomic mushroom cloud, then this is the movie for you. It starts out as a rather lame remake of the Disney story, complete with second-rate songs (Geppetto in particular looks suspiciously similar to the Disney version) except that Pinocchio is for some reason now living in contemporary New Jersey. Once Pinocchio makes it to outer space, though, they junk the musical stuff and the story turns into a fairly decent kid-level space opera. The underground scenes seem inspired by Forbidden Planet with some overtones of The Jetsons. Although the story is a fantasy, various serious science facts are scattered throughout. It's the kind of movie with dialog such as, "They've been feeding the animals radioactive food to stimulate mutations!" followed by an explanation of what mutations are. According to the producer's commentary it seems the outer-space part came first, and it was later decided to make Pinocchio the main character because he is the one fairy-tale character who ponders moral issues. You have to admire the audacity of the concept. The ending seems to promise a sequel, but so far as I know this was never made. What would have come next? Pinocchio versus Frankenstein? Beverly Hills Pinocchio?

Practical Joke #5

2009-07-06T09:44:00.000-04:00

Photo by digitaura.

This is fun when you are interviewing job candidates, preferably for something in the coporate universe:

Greet the candidate warmly and guide him or her to a small office. The office door should have a small peephole suitable for observation--the more obvious the better. Invite the candidate to have a seat while you make some preparations. Close the door of the room, leaving the candidate to sit by himself/herself.

Slide a ceiling tile to the side and lower a banana on a string--just out of reach. Then go to the peephole and watch the candidate's reaction.

Here's a deep thought

2009-07-02T11:29:00.002-04:00

Isn't it interesting that a lot of the same politicians who find it impossible to believe order can arise from chaos in the context of evolution have an unshakable faith in the ability of uncontrolled markets to solve any economic problem?

The TV Commercial I Want to See

2009-06-21T10:16:00.010-04:00

Photo by Michele Catania

Fantasized about while watching ads on the TV news...

Patient in eye doctor's office: Gee, Doc, I don't know what to do. My eyes are itchy and irritated all the time because they don't make enough natural tears.

Doctor [who manages simultaneously to exude reassurance and competence while being extremely good looking]: Your problem is not unusual. Fortunately medical science has discovered a simple treatment.

The doctor forms the index and middle fingers of his/her right hand into a V and pokes the patient in both eyes. BOINK!

Fade out as the doctor runs circles around the examining chair.

Doctor: Nyuknyuknyuknyuk...

Photo by NYCArthur

Mental Maps of the Abstract

2009-06-03T15:40:00.000-04:00

Polymath and Renaissance guy Sir Francis Galton published an article in the journal Nature by the title of "Visualized Numerals."

The year in which he did so was 1880.

Now, hold it right there. When you read that last sentence, what image formed in your mind to represent that piece of information? "The year in which he did so was 1880." I suppose one could visualize a copy of the journal with the article in it and at the same time a calendar on the wall that says "1880." That would be quite logical, but it's not how I see it. I see rather a sort of chart of the centuries laid out, and in a certain spot late in the 1800's is a little image of Sir Francis Galton writing his article.

(If you need to know what he looks like in order to form such an image, there is a very nice picture of him at http://www.galton.org/, but take my word for it--he looks exactly like someone named "Sir Francis Galton" ought to look.)

Here's my point: you might expect that my mental chart of the centuries simply consists of one after the other, but it isn't quite like that. It has a few peculiarities. All the centuries from antiquity to the 20th century are laid out in a series running from right to left. Each is a rectangle something like a page of a book. Within each century, the years run from bottom to top (with a few zigs and zags of their own). But, for no particular reason that I can tell, the 21st century sits on top of the 20th century rather than to the right, and the 22nd and successive centuries are then laid out to the left of the 21st. So, for example, when I read the end of The Time Machine, when the Earth in the far future is inhabited by giant crabs, I picture this happening way out to the left of the diagram.

In the distant past, somewhere beyond the beginning of history, the pages blur into a time line. Somewhere around the emergence of Homo Sapiens, the line makes a bend so that one is heading upwards in order to go back in time. The line is populated with images of the animals that existed in any given era. During the Age of Dinosaurs, the primitive mammals are running along a smaller timeline to the left of the main time line.

The line extends up until about 4 billion years ago and then takes another bend so that again one is heading rightwards in order to go back in time. This part of the line is populated with vague images of galaxies and nebulae until it runs up against a hemispherical cul-de-sac, which is my mental image of the Big Bang (the universe closing down [as time runs backwards] to a point).

This image has been my mental map for the flow of time since a very young age. I'm quite sure no one else's is quite the same. But does everybody else even have a map? From time to time I have tried asking others how they visualize the flow of time, but usually can't get much of an answer. I've never been sure whether this is because they have some fundamentally different mental mechanism at work, or they are just not good enough at introspective thinking.

That's why I was so fascinated to find this article. It concerns the visualization of numbers rather than the flow of time (I use a different mental map for numbers, still another for the months of the year), but the essential concept is the same. The article includes several interesting diagrams of the mental number maps of various individuals. One is above. Here are a couple more:

This has the same fascination as those idle thoughts you have: "I wonder if everyone else sees the same color red as I do?" Well, maybe not you--I find that certain people never think about such things. Here is a similar issue, except in this case you can find that what different people "see" is very different.

These diagrams are called "number forms." For some reason they are often discussed in connection with synaesthesia, which is a cross-linkage between different senses--experiencing colors as sounds, for example. (See, for example, the Wikipedia article on "Number forms.") I have no such tendencies that I am aware of.

Galton pursued an introspective, subjective type of psychology that seems to have gone out of style. His interests extended far beyond this: "geographer, meteorologist, tropical explorer, founder of differential psychology, inventor of fingerprint identification, pioneer of statistical correlation and regression, convinced hereditarian, eugenicist, proto-geneticist, half-cousin of Charles Darwin and best-selling author", according to http://www.galton.org/. I recommend perusing their publication list.

The Ultimate Test of a Woman's Character...

2009-05-26T14:00:00.001-04:00

Photo by sparktography.

...is planning her wedding.

I view large, elaborate weddings with a touch of amusement. It's gone too far (as it usually seems to do) when the bride spends the weeks before the wedding stressed out over dresses and menus, rather than in pleasant anticipation and having fun with her fiance. And it's interesting how the groom plays merely a (minor) supporting role in the wedding planning.

It's been some years since the term "Bridezilla" entered the language. Thing is, the bride is encouraged by everyone around her to think of the wedding as her day (again, the groom is an afterthought). Everyone else steps back and the bride is bound by nothing but her own self-restraint. Surely this is revealing, to see where she goes when driven purely by her own impulses. See this article which mentions a bride who expected her bridesmaids to have breast-enhancement surgery. Not every bride does this--that's the point. It's a test.

One could imagine a whole new branch of psychoanalysis, which analyzes women's psyches by their wedding arrangements.

And, of course, there is a corresponding occasion for men, which reveals the core of their character. I just haven't figured out what it is yet.

Practical Joke #4

2009-05-08T10:35:00.004-04:00

Photo by marie b.

1. Go to a car dealer and tell them you're shopping for a new car. Tell them you want to take a test drive. The smaller and lighter the model of car, the better.

2. Once in the car, out on the open road, with the salesman seated next to you, start making some idle chit-chat.

3. Segue into the Christopher Walken speech from Annie Hall. If you don't recall, it goes something (very loosely) like this: "Sometimes when I see a big truck coming I get this sudden urge to swerve into its path. I imagine the purifying flames coursing through my body...." It helps if you let your eyes glaze over and speak in trancelike tones.

4. For bonus points, wait until you see a truck coming and make the slightest of feints toward the left with the steering wheel.

The World's First Nerds?

2009-04-15T14:25:00.007-04:00

Photo by mrtwism.

One of the stories I was forced to read in middle school has stuck with me: "Bargain" by A. B. Guthrie. A recent train of thought motivated me to track the story down and buy a used edition of the Guthrie anthology containing it. (Warning: spoilers ahead--my search started with just the clues "wood alcohol" and "story" on Google.) The story takes place in a small town in the old West. The two main characters are a somewhat bookish shopkeeper and a big, drunken, illiterate (both important plot points) town bully who, among other obnoxious behaviors, refuses to pay his bills. Over such a dispute the bully crushes the shopkeeper's hand beneath his boot. Thereafter, the shopkeeper gives up on collecting his bill and even gives the bully a job as a deliveryman. At the end of the story the bully is found out in the winter wilderness, dead, along with some barrels of wood alcohol (clearly labeled "POISON", but... aha! you see?) which he had been transporting for the shopkeeper.

Perhaps no masterpiece, but it is a nicely plotted little story, and I think it relates to an underappreciated theme, which is the unending struggle between two elements of humanity which we currently call the jocks and the nerds. Although both these terms are of relatively recent coinage, I suspect the distinction is psychologically innate--at least for men--I'm not sure about women. The jock-versus-nerd struggle provides a subtext for a lot of other things going on, like certain disagreements I witness at the office, or Republicans versus Democrats (surely you can see which is which), or the relationship (if one may call it that) between the Sam and Norman characters in Psycho.

And then there is this... consider the relationship between the Greeks and Romans during the Roman empire. The Romans kept Greeks as slaves. Greek slaves made excellent tutors for one's children. Greek academic achievements were highly respected, to the point where they were practically regarded as the source of all higher knowledge. Nonetheless they were slaves; they can't have been completely respected.

(By the way, there is a remarkable contrast, which I don't fully understand, between the Roman and American attitudes toward slavery. Romans were happy to educate some slaves and arm others [the gladiators]. American slaveowners considered that their survival depended on keeping their slaves ignorant and unarmed.)

My layman's reading of the situation: the Romans respected the Greeks for their knowledge and at the same time looked down on them for having been conquered by force of arms (although the Greeks had been empire builders in their own day). I therefore view Greeks as the original nerds, Romans as the original jocks.

Depression-Era Hobbies

2009-04-05T11:18:00.013-04:00

Here's a short list of hobbies--activities that are fun, interesting, and potentially challenging with the potential for personal development--which require little or nothing in the way of resources and money. DISCLAIMER: Some of the activities described herein carry risk of harm, ranging from a cut finger to paralysis and death. All are reasonably safe if practiced with prudent caution. Become informed, and take responsibility for your actions. If your head gets cut off don't come crying to me!

1. Budget backpacking. The secret appeal of backpacking is that once you've mastered it, theoretically you can go anywhere on Planet Earth--roads no longer necessary. As a hobby, it can eat up as much money as you want to pour into it, but it doesn't have to. Every Appalachian trail hiker knows the story of Grandma Gatewood, who hiked all 2,168 miles of the trail three times, at ages ranging from 67 to 75, equipped with little more than sneakers, an old Army blanket, and an old shower curtain.

You can spend hundreds of dollars on a backpacking tent, or you can sleep under a sheet of plastic costing at most a few dollars (that's mine pictured above). The latter will give you more space, and--if you know what you're doing--may well keep you drier. You can make your own backpack out of a mesh laundry bag and a old book bag for another handful of dollars (check out the "Sgt. Rock Rucksack". You can make your own alcohol stove out of three empty soda cans, eat cup noodles, carry (and refill) a store-bought liter of water rather than a canteen, and so on. At online forums, others are more than happy to help you get started.

2. Paper modeling. Also known as card modeling, or papercraft. Cut paper, glue it together, you get a ship, an airplane, a funny animal, or whatever your passion is. See some examples at the Currell.net Gallery. Basic resources needed: a computer and printer, some heavyweight paper, a hobby knife, some white glue. Difficulty ranges from slightly glorified paper airplanes to complicated patterns with hundreds of parts. Thousands of patterns are available on-line for free, others for sale. You can buy books with preprinted patterns.

Or go hard-core: just you, armed with a knife and glue, versus a blank stack of paper. If you want to go a little deeper you can design your own patterns (and perhaps share them on-line).

Here's some places to start looking, just a few out of a large universe: Currell.net, Lower Hudson Valley Gift Shop (despite the name, everything is free, although they do accept donations), Papercraft Paradise.

3. Parkour. Also known as free-running. If you've never seen this, it is difficult to explain. It's a sport with no rules, a game with no winners or losers. The objective is to get from point A to point B as gracefully and athletically as possible. You can find some in the movies--the big chase seen at the beginning of Casino Royale features parkour practitioner Sébastien Foucan as the bomb-maker. Or check out the following video:

Obviously parkour can be extremely athletic (I've never tried it--as yet), but even these guys had to start small.

4. Chess. Sixty-four squares, sixteen pieces, and after several hundred years the possibilities are still endless. You can score a set for a few dollars (I've picked up some at the dollar store), and there are plenty of resources on-line to teach you how to play and how to play better. If you have no friends, you can download free software to play against (and you may not need a board). You can find an adversary on-line at any time.

5. Dancing. In my misspent youth, I did the standard backpacking trip to Europe, during which a friend and I made a side trip to Morocco. During this time we stayed for three days with a family in Casablanca. This says something about variations in standards of hospitality around the world. We had never met them before but they insisted, notwithstanding there were seven of them living in a (clean and dignified) three-room apartment (and even though, as we later discovered, they had other house guests arriving in the middle of the night).

I mention the size of the apartment to emphasize that these were not people who had extra money to waste on frivolities. One of the neighborhood kids did have a hand-held cassette player, along with two cassettes--I recall one was Simon and Garfunkel and the other was the soundtrack to Grease. Dancing was an everyday activity, taken up at the spur of the moment. They danced with a natural grace that comes with a lot of practice. And they had fun.

Practical Joke #3

2009-04-01T16:53:00.002-04:00

1. Go to the card shop and buy one of those newfangled cards that plays music--something cheery or energetic might work best.

2. Buy a second, condolence card.

3. Cut the music thingie out of the first card and paste it into the second.

4. Replace the card on the store shelf.

"Quantum of Solace": Random Thoughts (and Spoilers)

2009-03-28T13:30:00.002-04:00

Photo by xtylerclub

Watched "Quantum of Solace" on video this week (after seeing it in the theater, of course). Herewith some random musings:

1. The Bourne movies (particularly the second and third, directed by Paul Greengrass) pushed a style characterized by lots of hand-held cameras and quick cuts. "Quantum" uses a a lot of quick cuts in action sequences, but the intent struck me as different--sort of a cubist ideal of simultaneous representation of all viewpoints of the scene. It seems if you concentrate you can actually get a more concrete view of the action than a static camera would reveal. A nice gimmick was the occasional use of a blur of motion or a spray of foam to smooth over a quick cut.

2. One defining feature of the Bond movies has been the most elaborate and impressive stunt work. Often these have appeared in the pre-title teaser (more often than not involving jumps into empty space, out of airplanes, into airplanes, etc.). In "Quantum" we see, for example, Bond jumping a motorcycle off a pier onto a boat, but it is a throwaway moment, and the action moves on to the next thing without stopping. That's much cooler--the "no big deal" attitude.

3. The variety of style and font in the location title cards was fun. Similarly the different-colored subtitles for Mathis and the Spanish-speaking cab driver (talking simultaneously) were a nice touch.

4. I love how the first time we see the villain, he is not actively working at anything evil, but aimlessly screwing around with an ink pad and stamp.

5. The airline clerk in Bregenz was pretty, but didn't look as if she had popped off the page of a lingerie catalog. Nice touch of realism, that.

6. One of my favorite scenes--a quiet one--is Bond and Mathis on the plane. The sound design contributed a lot to this scene, mostly subliminally.

7. Gemma Arterton, the actress who plays Fields, is certainly attractive and competent enough to suit me--but just too young for the role. This necessitated the most arduous suspension of disbelief since Denise Richards was presented as a nuclear physicist.

8. Camille's reintroduction into the story at Greene's party comes via a very blurry view of her back--but she is still instantly recognizable by the burn scars.

9. Of course the scene where Fields lies on the bed covered in crude oil is an allusion to Goldfinger, but there were others. The scene where Bond and Camille come walking out of the desert in evening dress echoes one in The Spy Who Loved Me. The threats made by Greene to Medrano also reminded me of License to Kill: "You're only President for life."

10. Nice contemporary cynical touch: the world's governments are not blackmailed by the villain but rather eagerly cooperative.

11. The climax with two parallel fistfights--now that was a little contrived.

12. Interesting how crashing a van into the wall of the hotel's garage starts a chain reaction whereby ultimately the whole hotel explodes. Seems like poor design....

13. Some reviewers called this movie all action and no story. They seem to have missed the point. The deeper story is the relationship between Bond and M. The turning point comes when she moves from arresting him to deciding to trust him inside the space of a minute.

14. No gadgets whatsoever, beyond some fancy computer displays.

15. Finally Judi Dench as "M" gets to play "anxious", "shaken"--some emotional note beyond merely "stern." The stories hitherto have not made anywhere near full use of her talent.

16. Similarly, it's nice to see Felix Leiter's job consist of more than just waiting in the car while Bond gets the job done. This hasn't happened since Dr. No.

17. This is the second film in a row which does not end with Bond with a girl in a boat. I hope they retire that ending for good. The new type of ending emphasizes Bond's loner status.

18. A thought for next time: If you want to freshen up the plot, how about a three-way struggle? That hasn't been done since From Russia With Love.

19. I very much like the casting of Daniel Craig as Bond. This gives hope to all homely people everywhere.

Precept: Question Your Assumptions--Especially Those You Don't Realize You're Making

2009-03-24T13:01:00.000-04:00

Photo by mikep

Although easier said than done, perhaps nothing will take your existence to a new level quite so effectively as jettisoning a unwarranted assumption you didn't even realize you were making. This is also widely known as "thinking outside the box"; Hofstadter calls it "jumping outside the system."

My preferred term is paradigm busting. Herewith some examples (all proposed for purposes of reflection rather than uncritical adulation):

1. Ray Jardine. The first time I did an overnight backpacking trip was as part of the Boy Scouts' Woodbadge training. The distance we hiked could not have been more than a mile, and I'm in pretty good shape; nonetheless the only thing I could think of was how heavy that pack was. The standard paradigm is that one's packweight should not exceed 25% of one's body weight. This is just nuts. I weigh about 200 pounds; that translates into a 50-pound pack. Nobody has fun while carrying 50 pounds around.

Jardine is a bona-fide rocket scientist who applied the same principles of minimizing weight to the problem of backpacking. His book Beyond Backpacking totally changed my backpacking life. Subsequently I did a trek at Goshen and two 50-mile treks at Philmont and practically breezed along with a pack that weighed about 25 pounds.

Jardine qualifies as a genuine paradigm buster because his approach not only makes drastically easier, but does so by contradicting all kinds of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom says one simply must wear heavy hiking boots and heavy woolen socks to avoid blisters; I hiked in basketball shoes and thin nylon socks. Conventional wisdom says one's pack simply must have a hip belt to carry most of the weight; my pack (home-made, modeled on Jardine's) has no hip belt and no frame, being essentially a big sack with shoulder straps. Conventional wisdom says that one needs a tent with a bathtub floor to stay dry when it rains; at Goshen it rained heavily every day and my son and I stayed dry by sleeping under tarps with no floor and no walls.

Jardine and his wife do long-distance hikes with packs having base weight (not including food and water) under ten pounds each. A person hiking alone has to carry more gear, but my own pack's base weight is about fifteen pounds, which is light enough that I can forget it's on my back.

2. Walt Disney. The problem with paradigm busters is that when seen in present or future time they can be difficult to distinguish from run-of-the-mill crackpots, while in past time the busted paradigm tends to be forgotten, so that the paradigm buster's radical insight becomes merely common sense. Walt Disney today tends to be thought of as the patron saint of safe, bland family entertainment, but in the right context his ideas are properly seen as dangerously radical.

Consider Snow White, which smashed both the business and artistic preconceptions of what animation was capable of. (Snow White, Pinocchio, and Fantasia were probably as dark and edgy as anything moviegoers were used to seeing in the late 1930's.) And then there is Disneyland, which has spawned hundreds of imitations around the world, but was originally a bizarre, alien concept--so much so that Disney, unable to raise sufficient capital from normal investors, was forced to venture into the strange new medium of television, in the process pioneering the use of this medium for cross-marketing.

With a science and engineering background, I find Disneyland to be particularly fascinating not only for the artistic innovations (who, before Disney, thought to make waiting time part of the experience?) but also from the standpoint of the creative solutions devised for the prosaic problems of moving people, garbage, food, etc. around. In fact, Disney was hailed as a leading urban planner.

Disney had acquired his vast Florida tract with the goal of developing a new planned technologically advanced city. This was the original concept for EPCOT (not the amusement park which is there now). You can find Disney's presentation of this concept here. Sadly, his death from lung cancer deprived us the chance to see whether he could pull this one off as well. It goes to show you--you wouldn't expect a talent for drawing anthropomorphized mice to provide much leverage for changing the world.

3. Tim Ferriss. Although his ultimate impact on the world remains to be seen, I particularly enjoy reading his blog. With topics ranging from business negotiations to swimming to foreign-language learning, it makes excellent reading for the student of arete. It is clear that Ferriss shares a fascination with paradigm busting: many of his blog postings could easily carry the paradigm-busters motto as a subtitle: This changes everything.

The title of his best seller The Four-Hour Workweek is in the true paradigm-busting tradition. Not the thirty-hour workweek, nor the twenty-hour but four hours. Ferriss aims to totally change our concept of the possible. I consider the title something of a misnomer, though: I suspect for many nowadays the big issue is not forty hours a week spent at work but a hundred other complications and responsibilities that sap our time and energy--and further, that this is just the tip of the iceberg, a problem of increasing social complexity that is going to get worse until it threatens to overwhelm is. There are a sensible hundred books out there that will teach you to micromanage your time, slicing and dicing to cover more and more responsibilities. Ferriss's book is in the "just might be crazy enough to work" category, proposing radical ideas such as outsourcing your personal life to India. It's worth thinking about, at least.

One frontier that Ferriss has yet to tackle: marriage and children. I'll be interested to see how he outsources that.

4. Robert Zubrin. In 1989, under direction from the first President Bush, NASA made a study of the the problem of sending humans to Mars, producing a proposal known as the "90-day Report." They concluded that a manned Mars mission could be done for a cost of $500 billion--this at a time when the total annual NASA budget was $11 billion.

Robert Zubrin was at that time an aerospace engineer employed at Martin Marietta. He came up with an alternate plan which he calls Mars Direct, which would send humans to Mars at a cost of roughly one-tenth the cost of the NASA proposal ($5 billion per year, over a span of ten years), while at the same time drastically increasing the time available for exploration on the Martian surface, and (in my layman's opinion) accomplishing this inevitably hazardous venture with the greatest practical safety margin. For example, in the Mars Direct plan, the astronauts on any given expedition have a triple redundancy in the Earth-return vehicle (that is, three entirely separate vehicles to choose from).

Zubrin's approach differed in many ways from the 90-day Report, but the most startling was his discardal of the assumption that the astronauts would need to bring the fuel for their return trip along with them from Earth. Rather, Mars Direct uses 19th-century technology to extract the necessary fuel from the Martian atmosphere. A crackpot idea--except that it has now become the conventional wisdom for NASA's new Mars program.

I highly recommend Zubrin's book on Mars Direct, not only for those interested in Mars, but also for those wanting to spend some time in an oasis of bold but clear thinking. The Mars Direct video (unfortunately out of print) is also fascinating--even though most of it consists of nothing more than Zubrin's talking head.

5. Adam Smith. According to Wikipedia, often cited as the father of modern economics. His concept of the "invisible hand" that directs artisans, laborers, builders, merchants, and every one else to provide goods and services at the appropriate levels even with (especially with) no central authority to direct them was a radical new insight. (I heard a story--maybe bogus--that economic planners in the old Soviet Union were convinced that the U.S. economy must be operating under the guidance of some secret group of planners.)

The Wealth of Nations is more lucidly written and more interesting than many a modern book on economics. I read it years ago but I still recall Smith's introduction by way of the specialization of labor in the manufacture of sewing pins. Consider how cheap a pin is in comparison to how long it would take you to make just one if you had to.

(Another worthy candidate for this list is Charles Darwin, who likewise showed how a self-organizing principle obviates the need for a guiding intelligence. It is interesting how many of the same people who find it inconceivable that complicated living organisms could develop "by chance"--i.e., without a guiding intelligence--have no problem believing that complicated markets organize themselves just fine.)

(A final note: It has not escaped my notice that all five examples on my list are male. Not that female examples are impossible to find--Ayn Rand comes to mind, along with some in my personal circle of acquaintance. But male examples seem easier to come by--for me, at least. Does this reflect an inherent difference between men and women?)

The Loch Ness Monster in Egypt

2009-03-18T10:26:00.000-04:00

For the Loch Ness monster fans out there: I found the following thought-provoking hieroglyph in Budge's Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary from 1920:

Reflecting the less romantic times we live in, I suppose, my more recent reference books gloss this symbol as merely a "roast goose." It still looks more like the Loch Ness monster to me.

The Ultimate Makeover Show

2009-03-12T18:48:00.007-04:00

Photo by Michael Heilemann

I like the Bourne movies.

A popular fanboy question is: who would win in a fight between Jason Bourne and James Bond? Those of us who find such discussions silly must nonetheless acknowledge that Bourne and Bond are competitors at least in the commercial sense. Though the Matt Damon Bourne movies have not been around nearly so long as the Bond films, I give them credit for carving out a distinct niche in the espionage thriller genre. Aside from the interesting political overtones, consider the differences between Bourne and Bond the characters: Bond is having fun. He gets to seduce women, visit casinos, drink expensive wine, and stay in luxury resort hotels. Bourne is not having fun. His fondest wish is to be left alone. He spends most of his time alone and probably never spends two nights in the same place. Bond is a master of the witty one-liner. Bourne never cracks a joke or even smiles (although there is humor in the Bourne movies).

Although I like Bond plenty, I find something especially appealing about Bourne. It's both the destination and path that he represents. Bourne embodies the pinnacle of versatile competence--fluent in a dozen languages, in peak physical condition, the baddest driver (interesting how "baddest" is the opposite of "worst"), and able to improvise a counter-response to any situation. Spiritually, he manifests a Zenlike lack of concern for nonessential frippery and responds to a crisis by becoming even calmer than usual. And he wasn't born thus--it comes as the result of long and intense training.

One of life's phenomena that I find most fascinating is the human being's ability to deliberately reshape himself or herself in a new image. Jason Bourne's training literally made him into a new person with a new name. A little bit of education (in the broader sense: mental, physical, or spiritual) gives you a little new knowledge. A lot of education transforms you into a new person. That's why the Bourne movies are the ultimate makeover story.

I'd like to resurrect the Greek word arete (defined by Wikipedia as "the act of living up to one's full potential") to describe the common thread running through the following:

Body for Life (physical training), Getting Things Done (personal organization), How to Develop a Super-Power Memory, Zen in the Art of Archery (philosophy), The Biggest Loser, Breaking Free (psychology/self-help), How to Learn Any Language, Thought and Choice in Chess (cognitive science), What Not to Wear, Clutter's Last Stand.

I'm interested in all these--so are a lot of people. Any of them has transformative potential. You could find plenty of things to add to the list, depending on where your interests lie, but to me they're all just parts of the big puzzle: arete.

The Global Era Has Officially Arrived

2009-03-10T17:56:00.007-04:00

Photo by drp

So I was on the road last night, out in the middle of nowhere, and stopped by the convenience store to get gas. There, next to the Chee-tohs and Twinkies, was sushi. And I'm old enough to remember when the predilection of the Japanese for eating raw fish was the ultimate of bizarre foreign customs.

The Deadest Language

2009-03-05T13:06:00.021-05:00

Photo by the Outback Traveler

Foreign tongues are a fascination of mine. When I was in high school I embarked upon teaching myself Japanese, an effort which continues to this day (and this was at a time when appropriate books were hard to find--you punks don't know how good you have it these days). I remember being struck by the assumption in one of my books that one must be planning a trip to Japan in order to be studying Japanese. At the time I had no such prospects. Growing up where and when I did, I had never even seen a real Japanese person.

Why study, then? It is logical to study in preparation for travel--but in my case it was more as a substitute for travel. By studying the language of a foreign country, you immediately get inside the heads of the people there. In some ways, you are already more intimately acquainted with the place than someone who goes there physically but has no understanding of the language. For this reason it has always been difficult for me to resist the call of a mysterious new language. I have a particular weakness for those written in exotic, alien scripts.

A special category consists of the dead languages, for these carry you back in time as well as across space. Study Latin and visit Imperial Rome, for example. Languages such as Latin and Sanskrit never died out completely (and were widely used even after all the "native speakers" had disappeared), but for several ancient scripts--Egyptian hieroglyphs, Linear B, etc.--the knowledge of how to read was lost altogether.

In several cases tiny clues have been leveraged with great insight to recover the ability to read the script. In cases such as Mayan this has opened up whole tomes of forgotten history. Such a decipherment has never been accomplished without some kind of clue--a bilingual inscription such as the Rosetta Stone for Egyptian, or a resemblance to a known language, such as Greek for Linear B.

If you want to try your mind against a dead language, I suggest you try Sumerian (pic above), which once was spoken in parts of what is today Iraq. It's the ultimate dead language. Here's why.

Cuneiform has been used across Asia Minor to what is now Iraq and Iran. Cuneiform is not a language, nor even a single script, but a method of writing with a wedge-shaped stylus on tablets of clay (or occasionally more permanent media such as stone or metal). You can imagine how unwieldy a clay tablet is compared to a sheet of paper, but for us it works out better because clay is so much more durable. In fact, a most fortunate event from our standpoint was for the library to burn down, because the clay tablets would be baked to a permanent hardness.

Among the peoples who used cuneiform, the Assyrians (a.k.a. Babylonians) were major players. They spoke a language related to Arabic and Hebrew. This was one of those languages whose knowledge had died out, but it was deciphered in the 1850's. The connection with Arabic and Hebrew was key. And then....

Among the various Assyrian tablets deciphered were found word lists--dictionaries, in other words--and instruction books used by the Assyrians to study yet another language, which to them was an ancient language, whose very existence had been forgotten by the 1800's. This was Sumerian. And working at two levels removed, the millenia-old word lists compiled by the Assyrians were the key to deciphering Sumerian, which seems to be unrelated to Assyrian or to any other known language, ancient or modern.

Sumerian is the dead language's dead language. You must admit, that's pretty cool.

(P.S. If you want to learn Sumerian, I recommend John Hayes' Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts. )

(P.P.S. Some say our word abyss comes from the Sumerian abzu [water basin] by way of the Greeks.)

Life Hack: How to Get the Last Little Drops of Liquid Laundry Detergent out of the Cup Most Easily

2009-03-03T10:51:00.003-05:00

Just throw the entire cup into the washer. Just make sure to tip it so that it doesn't end up floating around like a little boat. Retrieve the cup when emptying the washer.

Memory Training Crash Course, Part I

2009-02-27T17:08:00.018-05:00

A book I picked up on a whim, way back in high school, was Harry Lorayne's How to Develop a Superpower Memory. As you can see, I still own my original battered, faded, shriveled copy. Harry Lorayne is a stage performer who performs feats of memory--for example, a standard trick is to introduce himself to every member of an audience before a show and then be able to call each of them by name. Lorayne's book promises to vastly expand your ability to memorize names, dates, numbers, etc. This is one case where the extravagant claims are made good on. I have used these methods for decades--routinely now when I need to memorize a phone number or a shopping list (although, to be honest, I'm still a little weak on learning people's names).

The caveat is that you need to do some groundwork and practice, practice, practice, although you will see improvements from the very beginning. Here I want to show you just enough to whet your appetite. If you want to learn it for real, you should get the book and read it for yourself (although this particular book is out of print, Lorayne and Lucas's The Memory Book is still available).

In this post I will introduce the method of mental linking. This method will help you remember a list of items in forward or reverse order. It is easy to learn, and is also the foundation for some more sophisticated methods.

The method of mental linking is quite simple, but sometimes mildly undignified in practice. Fortunately the loss of dignity is all internal to your own mind. Get over it.

For demonstration purposes, we will memorize the following list of items:

paper, pencil, helicopter, shaving cream, screwdriver

The first two items on the list are "paper" and "pencil". We want to link these mentally by visualizing an illogical, absurd image combining both elements. You must resist the tendency to look for logical connection--it won't work for this purpose. For example, you could imagine yourself writing on paper with a pencil--this is far too prosaic to be useful.

Instead, visualize yourself trying to write with an oversized pencil that is made of cut and pasted paper. Perhaps it crumples in your hand as you try to write.

Visualize it. See it. The more vivid the image, the better. You have just linked "paper" and "pencil" together.

Next is "helicopter." Visualize an enormous pencil hovering overhead with rotors like a helicopter. See it vividly. Hear the sound effect: thwopthwopthwopthwop.... This links together "pencil" and "helicopter."

Next is "shaving cream." Visualize a helicopter with shaving cream spread over it as if it is prepared to be shaved. A giant razor approaches.... You may hesitate to imagine anything quite so ridiculous. This is where willingness to sacrifice your dignity is key.

This links together "helicopter" and "shaving cream."

Finally is "screwdriver." Imagine yourself attempting to drive a large screw, but using a can of shaving cream instead of a screwdriver. It is not going well--shaving cream keeps squirting out over your hands.

And there we have it. You have created a mental chain of links from each item on the list. Can you recall the list? Try it, starting with "paper."

Try it backwards, starting with "screwdriver."

To keep this post short, I limited the list to five items, but I hope you are convinced that you can now remember ten or fifty items in sequence if you want to. With practice, you can compose a suitable ridiculous mental image in less than a second. It helps that you don't need a logical connection.

To further impress yourself, try recalling the list again an hour from now, and then again tomorrow.

I use this method, for example, to memorize shopping lists. I remember the first item on the list by linking it to the front door of the supermarket.

Drawback to the mental linking method: it only works with things you can visualize concretely. In a future post, I will describe how to handle abstract objects--in particular, numbers and numerical sequences.

(N.B. While I learned this and other techniques from Lorayne's book, he did not invent all of them. See, for example, Wikipedia on the Method of loci.)

Stacy and Clinton versus Descartes

2009-02-20T16:06:00.003-05:00

Used to be, one of my guilty pleasures was the TV show
What Not to Wear. In case you haven't seen the show, it features "fashion consultants" Stacy London and Clinton Kelly. They ambush some unsuspecting sloppy-dressing person (almost always female), who has been nominated by her so-called friends, who love her but just can't bear to look at her shabby clothes any more. After persuading the victim/guest of honor to sign on to the What Not to Wear program, they then go through her wardrobe item-by-item and throw everything into the trash. They crush her self-esteem (or at least her pride in her wardrobe), and then pay for an all-new wardrobe, which the victim buys in accordance with principles learned from Stacy and Clinton. Further, the guest gets a new hairdo from stylist Nick Arroyo, and make-up lessons from make-up artist Carmindy. (Fortunately, the make-over always requires shorter hair, not longer.) At the end of the show, the victim returns in triumph to her friends and family to reveal her new, stylish figure.

I say this "used to be" a guilty pleasure, not because I no longer take pleasure in it, but because I quit feeling guilty about it. I've decided Stacy and Clinton, while their fashion recommendations are a little too "safe" for my taste, are waging a battle over a deep philosophical principle (and, better yet, on the side of goodness and light, which is to say the same side as me). What is striking about What Not to Wear is how many of the guests, having undergone the process, say not, "Hey, look--I got some neat clothes," but rather, "I feel like a totally different person." This raises the question: what connection is there between the clothes a person wears and the state of his or her soul?

The philosophical position of mind-body dualism asserts that the mind and body are two distinct and separable entities. If you've ever seen a cartoon in which the mad scientists causes a cat and a mouse to switch personalities, an assumption underlying the story is that the personality can be separated from the body. It also is an important factor in theories of reincarnation and resurrection (although not necessarily--some who believe in resurrection insist that the body is resurrected along with the soul). One of the foremost proponents of mind-body dualism was Descartes.

There is some reason to think that mind-body dualism is an inborn belief. Think of the forementioned cartoon--very young children watch such stories and have no difficulty understanding what's going on. Moreover, if one thinks of the brain as a computer, then the personality would be like software, which can easily be transferred from one computer to another. But inborn beliefs often turn out to be false--consider how nonintuitive are the concepts of curved space-time, Schrodinger's cat, or even the motion of the Earth.

I personally don't hold with dualism; I believe the person is an integrated whole, and that one cannot make one part of the person stronger by making another part weaker. If you want the best for yourself, then demand the best of yourself in all aspects: mental, physical, moral--and yes, your clothes as well. Dressing well does not necessarily mean dressing formally; a T-shirt and jeans, depending on various subtle details, can either make you a slob, or project elegant, timeless simplicity.

Occasionally Stacy and Clinton get a guest who resists on the basis that clothes are merely superficiality, and people should be focusing on their inner beauty instead. I hope one day to hear them retort: "So you claim to be a philophical dualist, do you?"

Practical Joke #2

2009-02-15T18:10:00.005-05:00

Photo by elasticcamel

Step 1: Go into the woods and shoot a moose. Step 2: Take the carcass to a taxidermist and hire him or her to mount the head for wall display. Step 3: Pay the taxidermist an extra $20 to rig the eyes so that they blink once every five minutes. Step 4; Mount the head on the wall above your dining table. Step 5: Host an elegant dinner party and watch to see which guest will first notice the blinking.

The Strange Lure of the Ugly

2007-08-09T14:04:00.002-04:00

It is interesting to note how the value placed on beauty varies from person to person, from region to region, and from time to time. If you were around during the late 60's and 70's, you might remember a distinct trend towards making things uglier. I can point out two independent areas where this is visible.

The first is architecture. Many office buildings erected during the period had the shape of plain cubical boxes, covered in mirrored glass, and with no ornament whatsoever. (As Ayn Rand has pointed out, progess in architecture demands that the ornament of a building should be appropriate to its purpose, not that the ornament should be missing entirely.) Does this "style" of architecture even have a name? Contrast this with the exuberance of the Googie style of the 50's and 60's.

The second, independent trend was in film studio logos. Look, for example, what happened to the MGM lion in 1966:Similarly, Columbia, Warner Brothers, and Paramount all modified their logos to a sketchy joyless cartoon version.

The confluence of similar trends in such diverse areas makes me think these were a reflection of some broader spirit of pessimism in society.

This line of thought was provoked by a recent experience of putting some paper money in my wallet and being struck by the extreme ugliness of the new designs. The currency redesign was motivated by a desire to make our cash harder to counterfeit, which is sensible, but I see no reason why it can't be attractive and harder to counterfeit at the same time. Virtually every element of the design has been uglified: the old lovely ornate borders, which were unique to each denomination, have been replaced by austere boilerplate, the atmospheric perspective engravings of buildings on the back have been replaced by almost two-dimensional elevations, and that is not to mention the tiny little numerals scattered around by smallpox lesions.

Compare all this with a five-dollar bill from 1896:

Whatever else you might think about this note, it is clear that the designer wanted it to be pretty.

My point is not that our currency today ought to look like this. But there must be something appropriate to our era that could be pleasing or even inspiring to the eye.