Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Ice Cube Collection

A very early Bert and Ernie episode, one of the very few I remember. I was inspired by James's recent post.


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Gun Rights

It's not my issue, so my insight may be unreliable. But I think the gun rights people dislike a lot of proposed control legislation because they prefer searching for your keys where you lost them, not under the streetlamp where the light is better.

Where Might English Go?


The oral forms are getting farther and farther from the written.We are used to words not appearing as they sound, knight, through, neighbor.Many others exist which we do not yet notice: tsgo or even sko for “let’s go;” I don’t know if there is an upper limit to that.Do we just float down that stream indefinitely, more slowly in a language such as English which has a powerful written form, but always in that one direction, until it becomes like Sanskrit or Classical Arabic and disconnected from spoken forms?

Despite our strong sense that dialects should of course be disappearing under the influence of mass media, they are not.Some socially disfavored terms and pronunciations, even whole dialects are disappearing, but new ones arise.Yet when children are a bit disdainful of the way their parents and grandparents speak, they do not adopt some national accent, but the regional one. If they notice at all, that is. Accent is not usually very conscious.

Another path is possible: with the distributed power of a population armed with technical marvels, people may simply insist that the written forms match their oral expression and move in that direction.Who will stop them?Dropping silent letters and other spelling reforms have been proposed for years without much action, but this may be because power was concentrated in the hands of a few – newspapers and publishers.A younger tech generation spells as it pleases in social media, and the day is not far off when they could have that “translated” into whatever type of English they liked with the press of a few buttons.The formal written standard might remain, used mainly for legal and ceremonial purposes.In a hundred years, people might speak one dialect at home or in other face-to-face contacts but reserve standard written English for important occasions and documents.

That’s what we did with Latin. The oral forms went far enough away that they had to be recorded as French or Catalan a thousand years down the pike. The previous form became a specialists tongue. That is what has in fact happened to most previous written languages.

The written standard does change, but far more slowly. These Jane Austen quotes are 200 years old. The word-order is slightly different; the words slightly different in meaning - though we might more accurately say that the word choice is slightly different - but it is all quite understandable

Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.

An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done. (Thanks brainyquote)


Such would not be the case with the spoken word, even in the regional accent our own is descended from. We would converse only with difficulty, forcing the speaker to slow down and repronounce.

PBS had an interesting series on language change. Two examples here and here

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Preaching To The Other Choir


Sometimes the choir is actually the toughest crowd to preach to.John McWhorter, as all actual linguists do, argues persuasively that much of what we call proper grammar is artificial, pettifogging nonsense.He also makes the case, which I have heard made before, that Black English is a dialect, like any other dialect of English, and is not substandard any more than Middle English was a substandard version of Old English. There are situations in which one would not use it, especially in writing.But that is true of all oral dialects of English, all of which are different from written forms, especially in formal situations.

I will run through bits of those arguments later, though others can do it better. At the moment, I am only noticing the irony, the curiosity, that a great deal of McWhorter’s prospective audience are those most likely to be reluctant to agree with him.Who reads about language, and usage?People who learned and mastered the rules in school and have continued to be attentive to the speech and writing of others.The people who are attuned to noticing a split infinitve are those most likely to be reading a book telling them that avoiding same is a ridiculous rule.It is those of us who take care to pronounce letters that others “sloppily” omit who would be most likely to pick up something by McWhorter, who confronts us with the fact that the written version of a language is not the “real” one and the oral forms degenerate – though that sentiment is common in all places where there is a written form.It is precisely those people, African-American or not, who would never say “aks” or “She my sister” even in casual speech, who are being given very solid reasoning that these forms are not any worse than dialect forms that are regional.

They are after all readers, most prone to regarding the written form as the standard. They might also resent being told that a skill they have put some effort into is less important than they were told.

A linguist’s audience on these matters is the set of readers most likely to disagree with him.That’s a tough choir.I was long part of it.When I first read about transformational grammar and Noam Chomsky in college, I can still recall the feeling that this was all a mere dodge, an elaborate attempt to avoid having to learn the rules.They just couldn’t hack it – weren’t smart enough or hadn’t been properly trained or had grown up in the wrong part of the country. Ebonics? Pah! Patronising nonsense.

But there just isn’t any way to logically sustain those points of view.The changes that have happened in languages around the world, throughout history, are the same sort of change that brought us Black English.The same forces that freeze written forms, sometimes for centuries until they are not recognisable without special training, or grant prestige to certain dialects, are the same sort of forces that caused us to impose the rules of Latin – a Real language, doncha know – on English for no good reason whatsoever*.

The written form is not the Real Language.And those of us who speak and write English, with its horrendous spelling, should be more aware of that than others.We dislike seeing oral English written on the page as it is spoken.It just looks wrong.But that is evidence that writing is the artificial form, not that the oral forms are wrong.

Rule of thumb: if you are a reasonably intelligent native speaker of English and are puzzled about a usage rule, it’s artificial.You may want to put in the effort to remember (or find) the rule, just as one monitors all communication for clarity, expressiveness, and beauty. “William and me went to the store” is correct in French, and there is no reason English might not increasingly move toward that in the future.Yet at present, it will jar many of your readers or hearers, interfering with your credibility and temporarily interrupting their ability to follow you.Use the rule, but know that its days are numbered.The supposed rules of agreement are already inconsistent in English, so we can’t fall back on certain forms being “more logical.” No language is logical, and it is even less so to apply rules of Sanskrit to Hindi, or Classical Arabic to Moroccan Arabic.

I would have preferred to tell you something else.I would have preferred to tell you that it’s all about declining standards, laziness, and the world going to hell in a handbasket. But it just ain’t so.

Next, we will speculate on where English, written and oral, might be going.

*Quai substantivo et adjectivum concordat in generi, numerum et casus.

Looks Like

A woman at work today was all excited to show me a Rolling Stone cover, because I look "just like" Louis CK. Well, sorta.

It's not just false modesty to note that he does look better, whatever similarity we have. What is more pertinent is why people usually say that based mostly on fairly accidental traits, such as hair style, glasses, facial hair, and the like. He is balding, and our hair, such as it is, is similarly cut. We have similar goatees. Our general features are compressed, eyes a bit closer together than average, though mine are tighter (worse) than his on that. Mouth not visible (goatee), eyebrows different. Noses unremarkable.

My face is animated when I speak, so I may give off something of the same vibe. But I'm not seeing it. I like him, though. There are worse people to look like.

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Monday, May 06, 2013

Employee Wellness

I'm shocked to learn that intrusive employee wellness programs cost lots of money without measurable benefit. Can you imagine what these &%#*&'s will do with your genetic testing? And how great that will be when the government gets involved to "provide incentives?" (Which means "impose sanctions.")

Sunday, May 05, 2013

Simple-Minded

Commenter Kurt has an update on his social liberalism series over at Gay Patriot. The first paragraph also links to the others in that series. I think this one is the fifth, the last coming almost two months ago. The comments sections tend to be long, so hurry over if you want to get in early on this one, concerning the simple-mindedness and use of heavy irony in social media politics.

They continue on themes I wrote about a few years ago but usually mention only in passing now. There are no grand reasons for that, neither personal nor societal, though I could make up some persuasive ones if I put my mind to it.

Saturday, May 04, 2013

Middle-Aged Suicide Rate Increases

Retriever sent along a surprising blurb from Zero Hedge, reporting that the suicide rate for middle-aged Americans is way up over the last decade, and all of that is driven by Caucasians. I hadn't realised the Caucasian rate was so much higher to begin with, nor that it was increasing.

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Is Confidence Better Than Correctness?

I wish I could locate a discussion a few years ago - it may have been at Volokh Conspiracy, but I'm not finding it - asserting that confidence won out over correctness in many leadership situations, and wondering if there were an ev psych component to this. It's entertaining to draw up leadership scenarios in the imagination and game out the results. How do we get to where the food/trading spot/home fires are? Being correct would seem to weigh heavily there. Yet uncertainty might keep the tribe from acting at all, or at least, quickly enough; thus correctness would not enjoy a 100-0 advantage. Just getting everyone started in some approximately accurate manner might be more valuable. What is our strategy for this hunt/raid/battle? Same thing, and certainty might be even more important. How shall this dispute among tribesmen be resolved? Folktales of many lands to the contrary, there isn't that much incentive to get this right, rather than just resolved. Sounding like one is right might be more important than actually being right.

That of course is only about the tribe's survival, a necessary but not sufficient condition of the survival of one's own genes. Yet similar risks and rewards occur within the tribe in competition for resources. In those cases as well, being persuasive rather than correct might be the better strategy. Persuasive, in this discussion, would include undermining or intimidating competitors, as well as inspiring confidence in the rest of the team.

BTW, the game board is different for women, and there is enormous variety, but I think the same correctness-confidence tradeoffs apply.

The equations may change a bit in the move to pastoral, then agricultural, then trade-and-industrial societies, but the uncomfortable reality remains. It may be a better strategy to be convincing than to be wise. In fact, that may be exactly what plays out in electoral politics. We put our trust in a particular place - a party, a few news sources, a general ideology (Keynes' long-dead-economist), a half-dozen friends - and get along with our day from there.

With all that as introduction, James has interesting thoughts on our news sources.

Postscript: yes, I think it applies to academic and political debate as well.


Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Singing In The Choir

Apparently, it's good for you to sing in choirs. It reduces anxiety. I have sung in choirs. I have enjoyed it, sometimes loved it, despite some really significant screw-ups in my day. I used to have a nice voice, acceptable for both solo or choral work. It is getting better again, now that I am not smoking, and not forcing my voice because of the necessities of a small congregation and leading worship in whatever range is on the page.

I find the mere act of singing in the congregation a joy now. I don't have to pick the music, "perform" it, and endure the criticisms, however oblique. Thus I am a great audience for whoever is worship leader. I pretty much like everything, so long as the tempo isn't deadly for hymns, or the lyrics unusually banal for contemporary. Really. The idiosyncrasies of each style which drive non-fans nuts don't bother me much. I don't notice. I like singing, and drumming on the pew in front of me.

Choir, though, still seems to be just one more thing to squeeze in. I'm not going back to that.

The study corrects some for whether the correlation is more in the type of person who sings in groups than in the singing itself; a lot of the linked research on the topic, however, does not make that distinction.

Space Apes

Now that the aquatic ape theory is back on again, with the usual speculation in the British tabloids "Hey! That must be where mermaids come from!" archaeologist Brenna Walks has proposed a competitor theory: Space Apes. It explains everything: sinuses, big eyes, lack of hair.

Yes, she's kidding. But the truth is out there, isn't it?

A Different Band

They had a few of these songs, and did them well. I wonder why their other style became dominant? Drugs? Titillation? Or was "Black Sugar" always their real selves?

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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Jason Collins: "I'm A Basketball Player"

Seven-footer Jason Collins announced today what many have suspected for decades: he's a basketball player.

Younger players were shocked, seeing Collins as "just some guy who liked to hang around NBA guys and wear uniforms," as one anonymous fourth-year player thought. But older players were less surprised, remembering a time ten years ago when the debate over whether Collins was an actual NBA player or not was more common.

"I had some friends who were on the Nets in the early 2000's who were 75-80% sure he was a basketball player then," nodded a now-retired member of the Atlanta Hawks. "I didn't notice anything myself when he was here, but those were guys who were in a position to know. They used to tell me that despite appearances, Jason would do stuff from time-to-time that only someone who was a basketball player would do." Video footage from the era is inconclusive.

Monday, April 29, 2013

Teaching The Opposite Lesson

Sometimes an event will just sit in the back of my mind forever, irritating me whenever I recall it. Such things can't be good for the disposition. That I can do nothing to fix it must be some of the hold it has on me, but that can't be all of it. There are a thousand other regrets I also can't do over.

A woman came to speak about values at Grand Rounds about ten years ago. Her general point was that the poor have different values because they have to, and we upper-middle-class people are being unfair and insensitive to them when we expect them to conform to our norms. One example she gave was the frequency of physical fighting to solve problems among the poor. "Nicer" neighborhoods weren't really nicer, they just had people who could manipulate systems better and didn't have to resort to shoving and smacking. That bothered me a fair bit, but I can at least find some truth buried in it.

I lived in both kinds of neighborhood as a child, so I believe I have some grounds for an opinion. If her point had simply been that norms vary, and people might conform temporarily to the values of their environment because they hadn't really thought about it much, and we shouldn't be quick to judge permanent character on that basis, I think I would generally agree. But that wasn't where she was going.

Her other example was from her own life. When she was a single mother with little money, she would bring her children to the shoe store, have them try on sneakers, and walk out wearing them. She was completely unapologetic about this. She insisted it was not only a necessity, it was a positive good, because it showed how people were more important than possessions.

I wasn't there, but was sorry I missed it, because the idea deserved pushback. She actually taught that possessions, such as nice new sneakers, were really important - more important than character. It wasn't food or medicine, it was style.

First, I should give what credit I can. She was willing to risk embarrassment, and even legal trouble for her children's sake, and that does have a sort of generosity to it. Actually, it doesn't, for three or four reasons, but I'm trying to see as far down that road as I can. I get it that when people are poor they might break rules in desperation, and those of us who don't have those temptations should be grateful to be spared the trial, and humble about our own probable actions. When I was six, my mother tried to rehearse me to say I was five so I could ride the Mount Washington for free. Same thing. The difference, I suspect, is that my mother did not, after years of reflection, get paid to give talks to professional audiences applauding herself for that.

One person reportedly pressed the speaker on the approval of theft - pretty mildly, from what I was told, but it was at least something. The woman giving the lecture was put out by that, but rather than argue was airily dismissive of the criticism with the line "Well, I think the whole system should be changed." Yes, I imagine you do. I think we can predict on what lines you would change the system, too. Invisible owners of shoe stores are unlikely to come out well in the new order.

She was still in business as of three years ago, as I heard a department member mention having heard the talk at another facility. Why I should be unable to shake this eludes me. But she taught the opposite of her stated value.

World's Largest

The drive to have the World's Largest Something-or-Other seems strongest in the Midwest, especially upper midwest. The world's largest Muskellunge is in Wisconsin.



Ohio has the World's Largest Basket at Longaberger headquarters.



You don't see New England represented much, though we don't seem entirely averse to roadside architecture in general, such as this one in Raynham, MA.




We did have one here in Manchester, the Moxie Bottle House. I still remember it, though it was in terrible disrepair by the 1970's.


Likely for cultural reasons, though I can't put my finger on it, quite, the other major areas represented on the list are the Canadian provinces across the border from those American states, New South Wales in Australia, and New Zealand.

Related:
Tacky Tourist Photos.
Strange and Unusual Buildings.
and the Wikipedia article on Novelty Architecture.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

The Paperless Future

I am probably on the other side of this argument. But, y'know, this is important.[フレーム]

Worth Listening To, But...

There are people worth listening to, but not worth arguing with. You know the type: the least disagreement provokes a response that the other person cannot admit a 1% chance they are 1% wrong; they cannot accept that you have any reasonable point or decent motivation; they resort quickly to childish insult. If challenged on this last, they usually double down and become even more sophomoric. I suspect they think this is actually a virtue - that they don't suffer fools gladly, that they can dispatch others quickly, that they have biting wit. (Well, biting, anyway.) Evidence of their great intelligence.

I have some tendency to this myself, I suppose, being more worth listening to than arguing with. I hope not to the extreme I am thinking of in another, though.

Our preferred narrative is that it is those who can listen, be civil, and fight fair are the smarter ones. They are the ones who are really knowledgeable, we tell ourselves. But is that actually so? In theory we say it should be, but is there actually a correlation? Of the five psychiatrists I have learned the most from, three were very able to listen and charming in their replies, one was intermittently good at it, but had a fairly narrow range of people he respected, and the last was frankly horrible to deal with. He was forever condescending and snide and cutting others off when he believed he understood their point (though he hadn't always). Yet he was worth listening to for all that.

Of those I read or hear, those I meet in a dozen live venues where brilliance might be shown, or those I knew in Prometheus, I can find examples of both types in all groups.

I would be interested what your personal experiences are with this.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Outside The Box


I would be regarded as a general challenger of received wisdom, well up (or down) the bell curve for such things.Bible discussion or other adult study often has a Mythbusters flavor: Is that really Christian doctrine, or is that just something American Baptists have been saying for the last 200 years? Is that what Jesus meant?Are those God’s directions for reading scripture, or is that C I Scofield/Thomas Aquinas/Oswald Chambers talking?

It sounds more elevated and intellectual in theory than it is in practice.Those of you who know such folks are aware that hurt feelings are as likely an outcome as increased knowledge.I have taken to saying these last two decades that thinking outside-the-box, which I do quite well, is an overrated skill.Yet it is also remarkable how seldom even I question what comes down the pike.There is a received wisdom, and I just parrot it back for years until someone puts up a question mark. From this I conclude that we all mostly just believe stuff, like the Electric Monk; even the doubters and great skeptics are mostly just reflexive believers in some opposite to the prevailing view.(And even then, they accept 90%+ of common belief anyway.)

This comes up because of the McWhorter book I got for my birthday, nailing down an idea that had only come up as a challenge a few years ago.The prevailing idea has long been that the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and a few other related tribes invaded Celtic Britain in waves in the south, while the Vikings came in the north, pushing most of the inhabitants westward, so that roughly, the English people are a Germanic folk and everyone else – Scots, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Manx – largely Celtic.In even recent eras where small racial differences loomed larger, large swaths of personality and culture were attributed to this supposed racial divide.

As a person who has only reluctantly over a period of decades abandoned the ideology that it is training and environment, not genes that determine character and culture, I rejected the stereotype of the sentimental, pugnacious, drunken, mystical Gael for entirely different reasons.I believed those things were exaggerations, and any truth in them derived from circumstances, not innate qualities. (Though even at the height of my blank slatism I think I allowed for some minor ethnic differences.)I never thought to reject the idea because most of England was still Celtic anyway.

The recent DNA evidence is that not much of the ancestry of Great Britain is Germanic.Even in the Danelaw and areas of especial concentration of Saxon influence, it’s less than 20%.Given generations of Saxons and Danes getting the best land, food, and wives (before the Normans came in, anyway), one has to conclude it was even less back in Alfred’s day.And that’s just the men.For mtDNA, the daughter-to-mother-to-mother line, it’s virtually all Britons. I was intrigued at this lack-of-Jutishness when I read Bryan Sykes’s Saxons, Vikings, and Celts. I filed away the knowledge that the early invasions were much like the Norman one – a ruling class over a large subject population, not an exterminated one.

McWhorter brings this in to make a case that Celtic languages influenced the grammar of English far more than has been previously believed.He makes the case well, BTW.There are numerous elements, a few significant, of English grammar that are different from all other Germanic languages.In fact, those elements are different from almost all the world’s 6000 languages – except for Welsh and Cornish. It has been largely believed by historical linguists that those elements just sorta grew there in the odd, unexplainable way languages have.That these elements could have come from Celtic speakers having English imposed on them while still greatly outnumbering the conquerors was impossible because – well, because they weren’t there.They were all killed or pushed over the mountains into Wales or Scotland or wherever.

But once you hold more loosely the idea that the Celts were largely exterminated by the Angles and such, the idea of Welsh influence seems quite reasonable.Actually, once one holds the extermination idea loosely, it gets ripped from the grasp immediately.How the hell did we ever believe such an idea?The invaders mostly came as raiders who stayed, not wedded couples.So there’s 50% of your Brythonic population right there. They were also less numerous than the original Brits, even taking all the waves together.Therefore, they didn’t get all the wives.

It’s one of those things that is obvious once you look at it, but just goes on forever until someone kicks the door in.

Note: The lack of Celtic vocabulary other than toponyms (especially hydronyms, which usually hang toughest when a new population comes in) is not a counterargument.It is vocab, more than any other feature, that conquerors insist on from their subjects, and subjects attempt to imitate anyway. Odd habits of expression and structure are harder to suppress – especially when you are outnumbered 10-1.
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