I learned a Shakespearean word twenty years ago or so, one that’s stuck with me. I was watching The MacNeill/Lehrer News Hour and Jim Lehrer introduced a gray-haired academic who had gingerly produced a slightly modernized version of Shakespeare. He had switched out some words that we just don’t use anymore with words that one might find familiar. Naturally this sacrilege called up storms of protest. In general I’m not a one for the bowdlerized or condensed or abridged version. Give me what the author wrote. I trust the author. So I was suspicious of the academic. On the other hand, I was no fan of Shakespeare at the time and the fardel of forcing myself down the Shake’s page was not one I looked forward to bearing. Which is maybe the reason that’s the word I remember: fardel. It means burden or trouble. The academic had switched out fardels for troubles, and that, it seemed to me, was not a bad deal. Still, once in awhile, just to be cheeky, when it comes time to say troubles, I use fardels instead.
I found a translation on the web of the famous bit in MacBeth where the old boy imagines a bloody dagger. Here is the original, authentic, uncorrupted, pure Shake:
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
Got that? Now here is Kent Richmond’s version:
Is this a dagger that I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Here, let me clutch you.
I do not have you, yet I see you still.
Are you not, fatal vision, evident
To touch as well as sight? Or are you but
A dagger in my mind, a false illusion,
Emerging from an overheated brain?
And yet this form looks just as tangible
this one I now draw. [draws his dagger]
You guide me down the path that I was going
And are the instrument I was to use.
My eyes are either fools or worth more than
My other senses. I can see you still,
And on the blade and hilt are clots of blood,
Which were not there before.—There’s no such thing.
It is this bloody business which has done
This to my eyes. Across the world’s dark half,
Nature seems dead, encased in sleep, deceived
By wicked dreams. The sorcerer’s goddess Hecate
Receives the witches’ offering, and gaunt Murder,
Alerted by his sentinel, the wolf,
Its howl his timepiece, at a stealthy pace,
Moves ghostlike, with a rapist’s wary stride,
In on his prey. O, firm and stable earth,
Don’t hear my steps, or how they walk, for fear
These stones of yours will leak my whereabouts
And break the ghastly silence of this hour,
Which suits this deed. While I make threats, he lives.
Cold wind to cool hot deeds is all talk gives.
I don’t know about you but that middle bit in the superShake original where he goes on about “halfworld” and “Pale Hecate” and “wither’d murder” and “whose howl’s his watch” was a pretty puzzle that I’d as soon leave asparkle on someone else’s wrist. Richmond’s version gets some suspense going, moves the story forward. And, much as I like me a difficult poem, I don’t have to like it.
Frankly, whenever I hear how it is that Modern Poetry has forsaken its audience to toddle off into obscurity, how accessibility is so important if we’re going to bring the masses back to the poem (or, you know, sell a book or two), I’m put in mind of the difficulty of Shakespeare. Shakespeare the Divine. I can grok Modern Poetry but not turn of 17th Century English? Maybe so. (‘Course, I’m baffled, too, by the utterly conventional, stick-in-the-muds who proudly list Emily Dickinson among their favorites – Dickinson, one of the most mystifying of American poets.)
I read a lot of poetry in translation and I like the opportunity to read more than one translator’s take on the same poem. (One can read Sappho’s oeuvre via three or four different translators in just an evening.) It wouldn’t hurt to have three or four Shakespeares in contemporary translation. But maybe there are already. It’s not like I’ve been paying attention.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
I don’t like Shakespeare because he doesn’t write in English?
William Shakespeare was writing in “the late 1500s” – closer in time to the age of Beowulf than to us. Beowulf is written “in Old English [which] is a different language to us.” It may be a version of English but the English of Beowulf is not our language. Language change has continued apace, slowed by literacy, it’s likely, but refusing to remain static or “pure”. Says linguist John McWhorter, “At what point do we concede that substantial comprehension across the centuries has become too much of a challenge to expect of anyone but specialists? … The common feeling that Shakespeare is simply a matter of ‘adjustment’ is understandable – so much closer to us in time than Beowulf, with so many of the same words and sentence structures, much of the foreignness of the language is subtle but profound, rather like the differences between standard English and Jamaican patois.”
McWhorter gives examples: wherefore used to mean why, thus Juliet’s famous “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” meant “Why are you Romeo?”, not “Where are you, Romeo?” Or, rather, “Why did I have to fall in love with one of my family’s sworn enemies, dammit! Why couldn’t it have been some nice Jew, say, or a dyke from Zanzibar?” Context does help with the wherefore, but line by line word after word appears that just isn’t used anymore the way Shakespeare had it. We are required to translate constantly, but often don’t know it because the word Shakespeare uses is one still in use – only now we use that word to mean something a bit different. Wit, for instance, didn’t mean humorousness in Shakie’s day, it meant smarts – knowledge or intelligence.
“Yes, some might say, but the ‘knowledge’ meaning of wit isn’t completely lost to us today. Not only does it survive in the frozen expression to wit, but also in the old expression mother wit, which refers to innate common sense … Even dictionaries still include the ‘knowledge’ meaning. But today, this is clearly a peripheral meaning …”
McWhorter gives a bunch of examples. I’m not going to copy them out. But I get his point. Maybe it’s not that Shakespeare isn’t the great writer that everybody says. Maybe it’s not that he’s howlingly overrated. Maybe it’s that I’ve been led to believe he’s writing in English – and he just ain’t. And maybe that’s what messes with me. I don’t get him cuz I need a translation.
source: Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ standard English by John McWhorter
McWhorter gives examples: wherefore used to mean why, thus Juliet’s famous “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” meant “Why are you Romeo?”, not “Where are you, Romeo?” Or, rather, “Why did I have to fall in love with one of my family’s sworn enemies, dammit! Why couldn’t it have been some nice Jew, say, or a dyke from Zanzibar?” Context does help with the wherefore, but line by line word after word appears that just isn’t used anymore the way Shakespeare had it. We are required to translate constantly, but often don’t know it because the word Shakespeare uses is one still in use – only now we use that word to mean something a bit different. Wit, for instance, didn’t mean humorousness in Shakie’s day, it meant smarts – knowledge or intelligence.
“Yes, some might say, but the ‘knowledge’ meaning of wit isn’t completely lost to us today. Not only does it survive in the frozen expression to wit, but also in the old expression mother wit, which refers to innate common sense … Even dictionaries still include the ‘knowledge’ meaning. But today, this is clearly a peripheral meaning …”
McWhorter gives a bunch of examples. I’m not going to copy them out. But I get his point. Maybe it’s not that Shakespeare isn’t the great writer that everybody says. Maybe it’s not that he’s howlingly overrated. Maybe it’s that I’ve been led to believe he’s writing in English – and he just ain’t. And maybe that’s what messes with me. I don’t get him cuz I need a translation.
source: Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ standard English by John McWhorter
Monday, December 01, 2008
I don’t like Shakespeare
I’ve never been a Shakie fan. How can one help but feel defensive saying that when we all know Shakespeare is the reason we are lucky to speak English? The language in which Shakespeare wrote! Shakespeare, the bard, the literary giant more looked up to than Jesus. (OK, Jesus got out some tart parables but he’s pretty much left out of lit class.) “We all esteem Shakespeare,” says linguist John McWhorter. Anything less and “one’s refinement [is] put … into question. … [A]s an avid theater fan [I] can say that while I have enjoyed the occasional Shakespeare performance and film, most of them have been among the dreariest, most exhausting evenings of my life …”
So what’s with me and McWhorter? Are we philistines? Merely honest? Iconoclasts? Insufficiently educated?
“Shakespeare’s comedies are in general somewhat less of a chore than the tragedies,” McWhorter continues. “This, however, is in spite of the language, not because of it. Because comedy lends itself to boffo physical pratfalls, outrageous costumes, funny voices and stock situations, an evening of Twelfth Night or The Comedy of Errors is usually easier on the derriere than one at Julius Ceasar or Henry V. However, … even the comedies would be infinitely richer experiences if we had more than a vague understanding of what the characters were actually saying …”
Though Shakespeare’s plays were often performed in early America it wasn’t until “the late 1800s [that] the development of a ‘high culture’ intended for the ‘refined’ segment of society rather than the ‘masses,’ [required] the ‘sacralization’ of Shakespeare.” Up to then Shakespeare’s texts were considered suggestions or treasure chests to be looted for the shiniest bits – the language that had since Shakie’s time become incomprehensible was ignored (as were the unhappy endings). But for culture’s sake Shakespeare had to be unfunned – had to be pure, original, authentic, educational. “Shakespeare presents us with the extra processing load of unfamiliar vocabulary and sentence structure.” Isn’t that good for us? Makes the brain work, don’t it?
“No, the problem with Shakespeare for modern audiences is not that the language is simply highbrow. … English since Shakespeare’s time has changed not only in terms of a few exotic vocabulary items, but also in the very meaning of thousands of basic words and in scores of fundamental sentence structures. For this reason, we are faced with a language that, while clearly recognizable as the English we speak, is different to an extent that makes partial comprehension a challenge, and anything approaching full comprehension utterly impossible even for the educated theatergoer who doesn’t happen to be a trained expert in Shakespearean language.”
source: Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ standard English by John McWhorter
So what’s with me and McWhorter? Are we philistines? Merely honest? Iconoclasts? Insufficiently educated?
“Shakespeare’s comedies are in general somewhat less of a chore than the tragedies,” McWhorter continues. “This, however, is in spite of the language, not because of it. Because comedy lends itself to boffo physical pratfalls, outrageous costumes, funny voices and stock situations, an evening of Twelfth Night or The Comedy of Errors is usually easier on the derriere than one at Julius Ceasar or Henry V. However, … even the comedies would be infinitely richer experiences if we had more than a vague understanding of what the characters were actually saying …”
Though Shakespeare’s plays were often performed in early America it wasn’t until “the late 1800s [that] the development of a ‘high culture’ intended for the ‘refined’ segment of society rather than the ‘masses,’ [required] the ‘sacralization’ of Shakespeare.” Up to then Shakespeare’s texts were considered suggestions or treasure chests to be looted for the shiniest bits – the language that had since Shakie’s time become incomprehensible was ignored (as were the unhappy endings). But for culture’s sake Shakespeare had to be unfunned – had to be pure, original, authentic, educational. “Shakespeare presents us with the extra processing load of unfamiliar vocabulary and sentence structure.” Isn’t that good for us? Makes the brain work, don’t it?
“No, the problem with Shakespeare for modern audiences is not that the language is simply highbrow. … English since Shakespeare’s time has changed not only in terms of a few exotic vocabulary items, but also in the very meaning of thousands of basic words and in scores of fundamental sentence structures. For this reason, we are faced with a language that, while clearly recognizable as the English we speak, is different to an extent that makes partial comprehension a challenge, and anything approaching full comprehension utterly impossible even for the educated theatergoer who doesn’t happen to be a trained expert in Shakespearean language.”
source: Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ standard English by John McWhorter
Saturday, November 29, 2008
make like a banana and split!
Yesterday I got us started on laying the blame for our linguistic insecurity. It was those 18th century grammarians, Robert Lowth and Lindley Murray! They worshipped Greek and Latin and figured the best language would be the language most like those great old Classics. Thus they twisted standard English around the make it seem more Classic. No wonder we make so many grammatical mistakes – our English isn’t sufficiently twisted!
Linguist John McWhorter takes a look at “the odd little idea that we are not supposed to place words between to and a verb, the famous ‘split infinitive.’ This renders sentences like I wanted to carefully explain to her why the decision was made ‘less desirable’ than I wanted to explain to her carefully why the decision was made.” In some constructions prying the adverb from within that ‘infinitive’ leaves the adverb without an unambiguous office in the sentence. “In Latin, infinitives were never split for the simple reason that they were one word, as in most languages.”
How did English’s infinitive come to be two words anyway? “In Old English … an infinitive verb was simply one word, with an ending -an: He began to sing was He ongon singan. To only came to be used with infinitives in Middle English, as endings like -an were shed.” If there’s an explanation for how the word to came to take the place of a word ending, McWhorter doesn’t give it. In fact he seems rather puzzled by the transformation.
source: Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ standard English by John McWhorter
Linguist John McWhorter takes a look at “the odd little idea that we are not supposed to place words between to and a verb, the famous ‘split infinitive.’ This renders sentences like I wanted to carefully explain to her why the decision was made ‘less desirable’ than I wanted to explain to her carefully why the decision was made.” In some constructions prying the adverb from within that ‘infinitive’ leaves the adverb without an unambiguous office in the sentence. “In Latin, infinitives were never split for the simple reason that they were one word, as in most languages.”
How did English’s infinitive come to be two words anyway? “In Old English … an infinitive verb was simply one word, with an ending -an: He began to sing was He ongon singan. To only came to be used with infinitives in Middle English, as endings like -an were shed.” If there’s an explanation for how the word to came to take the place of a word ending, McWhorter doesn’t give it. In fact he seems rather puzzled by the transformation.
source: Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ standard English by John McWhorter
Friday, November 28, 2008
where to put the preposition
Linguist John McWhorter has noticed that English-speakers are insecure about the correctness of their English. Speakers of other languages, he says, aren’t so self-conscious. Why do English-speakers have the sense that what they say “is somehow full of errors”?
McWhorter traces the source of our insecurity to 18th century grammarians, particularly Robert Lowth and Lindley Murray. McWhorter calls Murray’s “more influential” prescriptive grammar a “knock-off of Lowth’s.”
“[N]either of these men were exactly experts in language … at the time nobody was. Linguistics science as we know it did not exist. … Lowth and Murray labored under the common illusions that a language ought to be a static, unchanging system; that language change can only be decay …” These basic misunderstandings about language make the Lowth and Murray grammars “historical curio[s], rather like an ancient map with blobby, approximate renderings of the continents and sea serpents bobbing in the oceans. …”
“Lowth’s and Murray’s books were founded on the idea that Latin and Ancient Greek had been inherently ideal languages, that the ‘best’ English should follow their grammar, and that to the extent that it did not, it was ‘straying’ from a somehow divinely anointed template. …”
“The problem here is that English is not Latin and did not even develop from Latin; as a Germanic language, its ancestor was a now-lost language similar to Gothic.” Lowth & Murray “are the source of two of the most famous grammar ‘rules.’ The first is that we should not end sentences with a preposition, i.e., that I don’t know what to do it with is linguistic slumming, and that the ‘real, ‘best’ way of putting it would be I don’t know with what to do it.”
McWhorter’s example is a little difficult to parse. I don’t know what to do it with?
I’d like you to sweep the porch, Mother says to Child.
There are a broom, a mop, and a shovel leaning against the wall.
I don’t know what to do it with, says the perplexed Child.
OK. I guess that works.
Anway, to get back to McWhorter: “Latin did not place prepositions at the end of its sentences. … In a supreme irony, Lowth himself breaks the rule in explaining it, complaining, ‘This is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to’! The fact that English-speakers are so ‘inclined to’ putting prepositions at the end of a sentence is because, quite simply, it is an English rule. … The very naming of little words of position and relationship prepositions is based on Latin structure.”
Tomorrow, the second “of the most famous grammar ‘rules’”: the split infinitive!
source: Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ standard English by John McWhorter
McWhorter traces the source of our insecurity to 18th century grammarians, particularly Robert Lowth and Lindley Murray. McWhorter calls Murray’s “more influential” prescriptive grammar a “knock-off of Lowth’s.”
“[N]either of these men were exactly experts in language … at the time nobody was. Linguistics science as we know it did not exist. … Lowth and Murray labored under the common illusions that a language ought to be a static, unchanging system; that language change can only be decay …” These basic misunderstandings about language make the Lowth and Murray grammars “historical curio[s], rather like an ancient map with blobby, approximate renderings of the continents and sea serpents bobbing in the oceans. …”
“Lowth’s and Murray’s books were founded on the idea that Latin and Ancient Greek had been inherently ideal languages, that the ‘best’ English should follow their grammar, and that to the extent that it did not, it was ‘straying’ from a somehow divinely anointed template. …”
“The problem here is that English is not Latin and did not even develop from Latin; as a Germanic language, its ancestor was a now-lost language similar to Gothic.” Lowth & Murray “are the source of two of the most famous grammar ‘rules.’ The first is that we should not end sentences with a preposition, i.e., that I don’t know what to do it with is linguistic slumming, and that the ‘real, ‘best’ way of putting it would be I don’t know with what to do it.”
McWhorter’s example is a little difficult to parse. I don’t know what to do it with?
I’d like you to sweep the porch, Mother says to Child.
There are a broom, a mop, and a shovel leaning against the wall.
I don’t know what to do it with, says the perplexed Child.
OK. I guess that works.
Anway, to get back to McWhorter: “Latin did not place prepositions at the end of its sentences. … In a supreme irony, Lowth himself breaks the rule in explaining it, complaining, ‘This is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to’! The fact that English-speakers are so ‘inclined to’ putting prepositions at the end of a sentence is because, quite simply, it is an English rule. … The very naming of little words of position and relationship prepositions is based on Latin structure.”
Tomorrow, the second “of the most famous grammar ‘rules’”: the split infinitive!
source: Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ standard English by John McWhorter
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
word of the day: fractionation
context: In a description of the towers at an oil refinery, the author says, “[Some] are fractionating towers, in which crude oil is heated from the bottom to distill it. The various hydrocarbons in crude, ranging from tar to gasoline to natural gas, have different boiling points; as they’re heated, they separate, arranging themselves in the column with the lightest ones on top. … Looming overhead are 20 fractionation towers and 20 more exhaust stacks.”
source: The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman
source: The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman
Friday, October 10, 2008
ground ground nuts
In her book 84, Charing Cross Road Helene Hanff responds to a friend who is visiting England:
“I fail to see why you did not understand the groceryman, he did not call it ‘ground ground nuts,’ he called it ‘ground ground-nuts’ which is the only really SENSible thing to call it. Peanuts grow in the GROUND and are therefore GROUNDnuts, and after you take them out of the ground you grind them up and you have ground ground-nuts, which is a much more accurate name than peanut butter, you just don’t understand English.”
84, Charing Cross Road is a surprisingly affecting collection of correspondence between Hanff and an English bookseller, Frank Doel, and a few others. The correspondence got its start in 1949 when the British government was still imposing rationing, a legacy of the war. Besides sending a little money to buy books, Helene makes friends by shipping tinned goods, like ham and tongue. The back and forth between the effusive New Yorker and the reserved Londoner provides contrast yet Doel seems to get Hanff’s sometimes sarcastic wit.
The paragraph I quote above is outside the main thread of the book but fun anyway.
“I fail to see why you did not understand the groceryman, he did not call it ‘ground ground nuts,’ he called it ‘ground ground-nuts’ which is the only really SENSible thing to call it. Peanuts grow in the GROUND and are therefore GROUNDnuts, and after you take them out of the ground you grind them up and you have ground ground-nuts, which is a much more accurate name than peanut butter, you just don’t understand English.”
84, Charing Cross Road is a surprisingly affecting collection of correspondence between Hanff and an English bookseller, Frank Doel, and a few others. The correspondence got its start in 1949 when the British government was still imposing rationing, a legacy of the war. Besides sending a little money to buy books, Helene makes friends by shipping tinned goods, like ham and tongue. The back and forth between the effusive New Yorker and the reserved Londoner provides contrast yet Doel seems to get Hanff’s sometimes sarcastic wit.
The paragraph I quote above is outside the main thread of the book but fun anyway.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
the relative powers of elegance and aesthetics
“In refusing to run to catch trains, I have felt the true value of elegance and aesthetics in behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it!”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I don’t run to catch trains.
Except in those instances when not running to catch a train upsets the person with whom I am traveling. Elegance and aesthetics get wiped away pretty quick when you’re sitting next to somebody seething.
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I don’t run to catch trains.
Except in those instances when not running to catch a train upsets the person with whom I am traveling. Elegance and aesthetics get wiped away pretty quick when you’re sitting next to somebody seething.
Monday, October 06, 2008
don’t fear contradicting yourself
“If you know that the stock market can crash, as it did in 1987, then such an event is not a Black Swan.”
This contradicts other things Taleb has said. But Taleb doesn’t seem to fear contradicting himself.
A Black Swan in Taleb’s metaphor is an event (or thing) that cannot be predicted from the existing data set. It is an “unknown unknown” (apparently former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld isn’t the only one who likes this phrase). Europeans had only ever seen white swans. “White” was one of the definitions of “swan.” Then black swans turned up in Australia. Nobody could have predicted!
An unanticipated market crash then would be more a “gray swan”? “A gray swan concerns modelable extreme events.” You don’t know when it’s going to happen but, as it’s happened in the past, it’s within the realm of possibility and you can take steps to protect yourself (or take advantage).
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This contradicts other things Taleb has said. But Taleb doesn’t seem to fear contradicting himself.
A Black Swan in Taleb’s metaphor is an event (or thing) that cannot be predicted from the existing data set. It is an “unknown unknown” (apparently former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld isn’t the only one who likes this phrase). Europeans had only ever seen white swans. “White” was one of the definitions of “swan.” Then black swans turned up in Australia. Nobody could have predicted!
An unanticipated market crash then would be more a “gray swan”? “A gray swan concerns modelable extreme events.” You don’t know when it’s going to happen but, as it’s happened in the past, it’s within the realm of possibility and you can take steps to protect yourself (or take advantage).
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Sunday, October 05, 2008
dwarf the Himalayas
“Our planet looks smooth to an observer from space, but this is because it is too small. If it were a bigger planet, then it would have mountains that would dwarf the Himalayas, and it would require observation from a greater distance to look smooth.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb makes this observation in a discussion of fractals. He follows to its logical conclusion the idea that organization is the same from the tiny to the gigantic. The rock is the mountain, more or less. But in following his logic Taleb makes one of those mistakes he often warns about – reality is not a logic game. Presumably a mountain on a Jupiter-sized planet would dwarf the largest mountain on earth the way Jupiter dwarfs earth, if not for gravity. Gravity is pulling at the Himalayas themselves.
Is a Jupiter-sized rocky planet even possible? If it did exist it would probably be quite smooth, as the planet’s gravity would be so great that the smallest nub would be squeezed down to nothingness.
The largest mountains are not on the largest planets. Olympus Mons is supposed to be the tallest mountain in the solar system (three times the height or Everest?), and it grew up on Mars, a planet much smaller than Earth. Venus, which has 90% of Earth’s gravity, also boasts mountains taller than any on Earth.
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb makes this observation in a discussion of fractals. He follows to its logical conclusion the idea that organization is the same from the tiny to the gigantic. The rock is the mountain, more or less. But in following his logic Taleb makes one of those mistakes he often warns about – reality is not a logic game. Presumably a mountain on a Jupiter-sized planet would dwarf the largest mountain on earth the way Jupiter dwarfs earth, if not for gravity. Gravity is pulling at the Himalayas themselves.
Is a Jupiter-sized rocky planet even possible? If it did exist it would probably be quite smooth, as the planet’s gravity would be so great that the smallest nub would be squeezed down to nothingness.
The largest mountains are not on the largest planets. Olympus Mons is supposed to be the tallest mountain in the solar system (three times the height or Everest?), and it grew up on Mars, a planet much smaller than Earth. Venus, which has 90% of Earth’s gravity, also boasts mountains taller than any on Earth.
Friday, October 03, 2008
a poetry book that sold 7,000 copies would be a Black Swan
“If I told you that two authors sold a total of a million copies of their books, the most likely combination is 993,000 copies sold for one and 7,000 for the other. This is far more likely than that the books each sold 500,000 copies.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The quote is from a discussion of averaging. Few books sell well, let alone in the seven figures (or the six or even the five). The bestselling authors are easy to see and easy to name. Their great shadows hide the many thousands who’ve written perfectly decent books who struggle to get a book published and out to their relative handful of fans. The bestseller is a Black Swan. By looking at the mass of evidence it could not be predicted. We know the occasional outlandish success will appear because we have seen it before. But predictors, Taleb asserts, are usually wrong about where that success will come.
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The quote is from a discussion of averaging. Few books sell well, let alone in the seven figures (or the six or even the five). The bestselling authors are easy to see and easy to name. Their great shadows hide the many thousands who’ve written perfectly decent books who struggle to get a book published and out to their relative handful of fans. The bestseller is a Black Swan. By looking at the mass of evidence it could not be predicted. We know the occasional outlandish success will appear because we have seen it before. But predictors, Taleb asserts, are usually wrong about where that success will come.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
it’s lonely being right
“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Curious, that. If the “wrong direction” is “more profitable”, what makes “the right one” right?
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Curious, that. If the “wrong direction” is “more profitable”, what makes “the right one” right?
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Christmas dinner
“The same past data can confirm a theory and also its exact opposite[.] If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) you are closer to death.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb notes the quite-reasonable assumptions of a turkey being fattened for Christmas dinner. Every day presents another tasty handout. Things are going great. Turkey’s got shelter from predators, plenty of food, company of other turkeys - what a deal! The optimist would say tomorrow will be just like today, just as yesterday was and the day before that. Let’s say the pessimistic turkey has a rather darker view of tomorrow. What should his strategy be? Escape to hunger and the chase?
Be that as it may, who knows whose future includes Christmas dinner?
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb notes the quite-reasonable assumptions of a turkey being fattened for Christmas dinner. Every day presents another tasty handout. Things are going great. Turkey’s got shelter from predators, plenty of food, company of other turkeys - what a deal! The optimist would say tomorrow will be just like today, just as yesterday was and the day before that. Let’s say the pessimistic turkey has a rather darker view of tomorrow. What should his strategy be? Escape to hunger and the chase?
Be that as it may, who knows whose future includes Christmas dinner?
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Anchoring
“[A]nchoring … lower[s] your anxiety about uncertainty by producing a number, then you ‘anchor’ on it, like an object to hold on to in the middle of a vacuum [or a storm]. [An] anchoring mechanism was discovered by the fathers of the psychology of uncertainty, Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky … [They] had [test] subjects spin a wheel of fortune. The subjects first looked at the number on the wheel, which they knew was random, then they were asked to estimate the number of African countries in the United Nations [the true quantity being one of which they were completely ignorant, presumably]. Those who had a low number on the wheel estimated a low number of African nations; those with a high number produced a higher estimate.”
If you want a bargain start with a ridiculously low number? This “reference point in [the] head [will] start building beliefs around [it]. … The discussion will be determined by that initial level.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It rings true to me that the mind in a state of uncertainty is happy to cling to an idea, or gasp with relief at a suggestion, or huddle in the inadequate shade of the merest of hints, whether or not idea, suggestion or hint has a real world source. These mental landmarks feel real, thus provide comfort before the threatening panic of being lost and helpless.
If you want a bargain start with a ridiculously low number? This “reference point in [the] head [will] start building beliefs around [it]. … The discussion will be determined by that initial level.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It rings true to me that the mind in a state of uncertainty is happy to cling to an idea, or gasp with relief at a suggestion, or huddle in the inadequate shade of the merest of hints, whether or not idea, suggestion or hint has a real world source. These mental landmarks feel real, thus provide comfort before the threatening panic of being lost and helpless.
Friday, September 26, 2008
How comics are like Hitler
In his Ten-Cent Plague David Hajdu reviews various campaigns against comic books. In 1944 (while we were actively at war with Germany) a Catholic group decried comics for their “vigilante spirit … Fictitious ‘junior commando’ groups bear a strong resemblance to the bands of child militarists in Nazi Germany.”
About ten years later in a new campaign against comics the psychologist Fredric Wertham testified before Congress. “’I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry. … They get the children much younger. They teach them race hatred at the age of four, before they can read.’”
So comics, like Hitler, foment race hatred. And comics, like fascists, suggest children band together to enforce … something … community standards, maybe? Naturally Hadju’s book is rife with book burnings and community groups banding together to drive out the Other, with comics representing the Other.
But we know comics are bad because, you know, they are like Hitler. No need to say more, really.
About ten years later in a new campaign against comics the psychologist Fredric Wertham testified before Congress. “’I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry. … They get the children much younger. They teach them race hatred at the age of four, before they can read.’”
So comics, like Hitler, foment race hatred. And comics, like fascists, suggest children band together to enforce … something … community standards, maybe? Naturally Hadju’s book is rife with book burnings and community groups banding together to drive out the Other, with comics representing the Other.
But we know comics are bad because, you know, they are like Hitler. No need to say more, really.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
a perishable brand
“The Phoenician invention of the alphabet [supposedly] served the purpose of commercial record keeping rather than the more noble purpose of literary production. (I remember finding on the shelves of a country house I once rented a mildewed history book by Will and Ariel Durant describing the Phoenicians as the ‘merchant race.’ I was tempted to throw it in the fireplace.) Well, it now seems that the Phoenicians wrote [literature], but using a perishable brand of papyrus that did not stand the biodegradative assaults of time.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb uses the example to argue that we can’t use lack of evidence for something as evidence that it didn’t exist. We don’t find Phoenician poems? They must not have had them! Or maybe they wrote their poems on scrolls that were handier to carry around, relegating financial records to clay tablets because nobody needed to whisper that sort of thing by moonlight beside a bower while the brook tinkled over stones?
I’m amused by the dig at the Durants. They are responsible for The Story of Civilization, a Euro-centric series of hefty histories that purport to survey human time. The tatty volumes on the shelf at Claremont were deleted last week. Some volumes hadn’t been checked out in more than ten years. We didn’t have them all anyway. (The Central branch still has copies!) The anonymous author at Wikipedia is more forgiving than Taleb: “Given the massive undertaking in creating these 11 volumes over 50 years, errors and incompleteness have occurred; yet for an attempt as large in breadth of time and scope as this, there are no similar works to compare.” The series weighs in at more than two million words and nearly 10,000 pages.
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb uses the example to argue that we can’t use lack of evidence for something as evidence that it didn’t exist. We don’t find Phoenician poems? They must not have had them! Or maybe they wrote their poems on scrolls that were handier to carry around, relegating financial records to clay tablets because nobody needed to whisper that sort of thing by moonlight beside a bower while the brook tinkled over stones?
I’m amused by the dig at the Durants. They are responsible for The Story of Civilization, a Euro-centric series of hefty histories that purport to survey human time. The tatty volumes on the shelf at Claremont were deleted last week. Some volumes hadn’t been checked out in more than ten years. We didn’t have them all anyway. (The Central branch still has copies!) The anonymous author at Wikipedia is more forgiving than Taleb: “Given the massive undertaking in creating these 11 volumes over 50 years, errors and incompleteness have occurred; yet for an attempt as large in breadth of time and scope as this, there are no similar works to compare.” The series weighs in at more than two million words and nearly 10,000 pages.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Duh?
“People do not fall in love with works of art only for their own sake, but also in order to feel that they belong to a community.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This is one of those insights so profound as to be banal.
And the sun rises in the East?
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This is one of those insights so profound as to be banal.
And the sun rises in the East?
Sunday, September 21, 2008
considering the fuzziness
“Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This is why racism (or sexism or heterosexism …) becomes a problem. It’s not that sorting people into broad categories according to obvious characteristics is inherently bad, it’s the clinging to the category as though the general were more important than the specific even when you are dealing directly with the specific. When you are speaking about people you can broadly generalize and be right, frequently right. Individuals, however, will surprise you. The racist denies the reality of the individual, refusing to see a difference between the general and the specific, using, in fact, the general as a weapon against the specific. (Oddly, people seem to be able to see the specific and be blind to its implications – “You’re one of the good ones.”)
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This is why racism (or sexism or heterosexism …) becomes a problem. It’s not that sorting people into broad categories according to obvious characteristics is inherently bad, it’s the clinging to the category as though the general were more important than the specific even when you are dealing directly with the specific. When you are speaking about people you can broadly generalize and be right, frequently right. Individuals, however, will surprise you. The racist denies the reality of the individual, refusing to see a difference between the general and the specific, using, in fact, the general as a weapon against the specific. (Oddly, people seem to be able to see the specific and be blind to its implications – “You’re one of the good ones.”)
Saturday, September 20, 2008
anti-resume
“People don’t walk around with anti-resumes telling you what they have not studied or experienced.”
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The problem comes in when you are presented with the resume showing what the person has studied and experienced.
One of the contestants on America’s Next Top Model, for instance, said she’d majored in American Lit at Harvard, but when show host Tyra Banks fired a series of famous American authors at her the contestant looked bewildered, as though she had never read any Jack London or Herman Melville, had barely even heard of them. It could just have been stage fright, of course. But it could have been something else. What did “American Lit” consist of for her?
source: The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The problem comes in when you are presented with the resume showing what the person has studied and experienced.
One of the contestants on America’s Next Top Model, for instance, said she’d majored in American Lit at Harvard, but when show host Tyra Banks fired a series of famous American authors at her the contestant looked bewildered, as though she had never read any Jack London or Herman Melville, had barely even heard of them. It could just have been stage fright, of course. But it could have been something else. What did “American Lit” consist of for her?
Monday, September 15, 2008
Zombie Language, part 4
Can a dying language be revived? John McWhorter mentions “Hebrew, which by the late 1800s had essentially been used only in writing and for liturgical purposes for more than two thousand years … The movement to make it the official language of Israel was so successful that today it is spoken natively by a nation of six million people.” That happy story of reviving the undead has given heart to speakers (& wannabe speakers) of many other dwindling languages. There are serious efforts to bring back to dinner table chitchat such languages as Irish Gaelic, Breton, Occitan, Maori, Hawaiian, and (noted previously) Pomo.
When you’re talking about “a language”, however, you are actually talking about a cluster of dialects, more and less intelligible to each other. When there are so few speakers that this diversity is no longer sustainable the language that is being revived is a language that never really existed. What is taught as the language is a compromise among dialects, an invented standard. Invented languages don’t feel real. You can produce the words for school but when relaxing around the dinnertable they don’t just pop out. Is a language you don’t live in truly alive even if it retains a decipherable existence?
“Because it is harder for adults to learn new languages well than it is for children,” McWhorter continues, “when adults are forced to learn a new language quickly, the result is often various forms of pidginization, utilizing just the bare bones of a language. This becomes a problem in revival efforts because, even when adults of a given nationality desire strongly to have their ethnic language restored to them, the mundane realities of a busy life can make it difficult to get beyond pidgin-level competence in the language.”
Minority languages are some of the most complex on the planet. English is relatively simple. You can say English is in a constant state of pidginization - because learning it is important to non-native speakers English does not have opportunity to become isolated (and thus gather what McWhorter calls “baubles”). “[L]iving languages are developed far beyond the the strict necessities of communication and … incomplete learning guarantees that some of these baubles will be stripped away.” Even children, if the language learning is school-based, “typically speak a rather simplified variety”, particularly if it is a minority language and the language most used outside class is entirely other. Elder native speakers may disdain the improper language of the young, “sometimes putting a damper on enthusiasm for the revival itself.”
source: The Power of Babel: a natural history of language, by John McWhorter
see also Zombie Language part I, part II, and part III.
When you’re talking about “a language”, however, you are actually talking about a cluster of dialects, more and less intelligible to each other. When there are so few speakers that this diversity is no longer sustainable the language that is being revived is a language that never really existed. What is taught as the language is a compromise among dialects, an invented standard. Invented languages don’t feel real. You can produce the words for school but when relaxing around the dinnertable they don’t just pop out. Is a language you don’t live in truly alive even if it retains a decipherable existence?
“Because it is harder for adults to learn new languages well than it is for children,” McWhorter continues, “when adults are forced to learn a new language quickly, the result is often various forms of pidginization, utilizing just the bare bones of a language. This becomes a problem in revival efforts because, even when adults of a given nationality desire strongly to have their ethnic language restored to them, the mundane realities of a busy life can make it difficult to get beyond pidgin-level competence in the language.”
Minority languages are some of the most complex on the planet. English is relatively simple. You can say English is in a constant state of pidginization - because learning it is important to non-native speakers English does not have opportunity to become isolated (and thus gather what McWhorter calls “baubles”). “[L]iving languages are developed far beyond the the strict necessities of communication and … incomplete learning guarantees that some of these baubles will be stripped away.” Even children, if the language learning is school-based, “typically speak a rather simplified variety”, particularly if it is a minority language and the language most used outside class is entirely other. Elder native speakers may disdain the improper language of the young, “sometimes putting a damper on enthusiasm for the revival itself.”
source: The Power of Babel: a natural history of language, by John McWhorter
see also Zombie Language part I, part II, and part III.
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