HOW MANY KISSES ARE POLITE? I remember how back in the sixties how much comment there was back home in the Midwest because Lady Bird Johnson frequently kissed people on the cheek. I remember a few years later being advised by a French girl: “deux bisses” (One on each cheek. I once mistakenly used the word baiser and was corrected.) The Economist article gives some guidelines: “Kissing is all over the place, twice in Paris, thrice in Polish, four times in the south of France.”
HOW MANY KISSES ARE POLITE?
February 8th, 2010TU AND VOUS REVISITED—POLITENESS STUDIES.
February 7th, 2010TU AND VOUS REVISITED—POLITENESS STUDIES. I have posted several times on the complexities of the use of tu and vous in French, as the Search feature in the upper right corner shows. This article on politeness in the Economist (December 19) says that in “politeness studies”, the use of tu and vous and their counterparts in other languages is known as “the T-V divide” (as in Tu-Vous”). (The article says that: “Politeness studies is a growing academic discipline.” There is a “Journal of Politeness Research.”) The article shows that tracing the “T-V divide” is still complicated. Much of the change from “vous” seems to have taken place around 1970, right around the time that my French friend was using “tu” to her friends she had met at work, but unable to bring herself to use “tu” to her childhood friend. The article identifies 1969— when Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, asked reporters to use the familiar “du” to him—as an important date. Yet, forty years later, the article says that in “posh” French families children are still supposed to use “vous” to their parents. And, of course, there are our happily married friends who only use “vous” to each other.
THE MYSTERY OF THE DOUBLE-YOLKED EGGS.
February 6th, 2010THE MYSTERY OF THE DOUBLE-YOLKED EGGS. Tim Harford (The Underground Economist) had an article in the February 5 Financial Times based on a report in the Daily Mail that a woman had opened a carton of six eggs and found that all six eggs had double yolks. The BBC and the Daily Mail debated the probability of the woman’s experience. The Mail argued that since the chance of a single egg with a double yolk is one in a thousand that this was a one in a trillion event (in British terms) or one in quintillion (using the American definitions). The problem: this would surely be the first time this had occurred in recorded history, but several callers had reported the same experience. Harford notes that this event is like the claim by Goldman Sachs at the beginning of the financial crisis which I posted on here back on August 18, 2007. I said then that: “Goldman’s Chief Financial Officer called the events of the last few days “25-standard deviation events”, which would make them the kind of thing that occurs once every 100,000 years. It is always tempting for model builders to blame the world rather than the model when the model doesn’t fit the world.” That is what happened here. The solution to the mystery: Workers in egg-packing plants sort out twin-yolk eggs for themselves. If there are extras they put them into cartons. In other words, the eggs are not distributed randomly. The model doesn’t fit.
VINDICATION FOR MY FATHER.
February 5th, 2010VINDICATION FOR MY FATHER. As I recently posted here, I wrote a protest letter to the Times Literary Supplement in defense of Kingsley Amis and my father. I checked the January 29 TLS when it arrived, and the TLS has made a correction. Kingsley Amis had disputed with a journalist the meaning of the word “curmudgeon.” The journalist maintained that the word meant a “miser” or “skinflint”; Amis disagreed. The TLS had sided with the journalist. The January 29 TLS says that: “Correspondence with the subject sides with Amis.” (I imagine there were many protest letters.) It quotes an authority who says that if the journalist had used the NEW OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH (1998), “she would have had to cede the palm to Amis, a straightforwardly ‘bad-tempered or surly person’” So Amis is vindicated as a straightforwardly bad-tempered or surly person. My father always smiled when he called himself a curmudgeon, but he was a generous man and never have joked about being a skinflint. This was my first letter to a newspaper, and I am pleased with how it turned out.
HOW INTELLIGENT IS AN OCTOPUS?
February 4th, 2010HOW INTELLIGENT IS AN OCTOPUS? I see from the search feature that I have posted five times before about octopuses, including this post on the personality of the octopus—which can be analyzed in terms of extraversion (versus shyness); neuroticism (anxiety); agreeableness; and openness to experience. I recently posted here about a video of an octopus using a coconut shell as a tool. This article addresses the question of how intelligent an octopus is. The answer: “Turns out, on a scale of one to chimpanzee, octopuses are probably somewhere close to matching wits with a dog.” The article gives an evolutionary reason for octopus intelligence. Octopuses don’t have shells and are fair game for predators so dumb octopuses have less chance of surviving. As for the use of the coconut shell, there is a difference of opinion as to whether that constitutes the use of a tool. Octopuses have been known to pile up rocks as a protective fence outside an opening to a shelter, but, again, whether that is the use of a tool depends on the definition. But octopuses do play, a sign of intelligence. I have to say that, although octopuses are smarter than I had thought, I’d bet on the dog in a battle of wits.
SOME ANSWERS TO THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT ORDEALS.
February 3rd, 2010SOME ANSWERS TO THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT ORDEALS. Professor Leeson argues that trial by ordeal cost a lot less than other ways of determining guilt or innocence. He takes up a question that you may have asked yourself: if God were going to intervene, why go to the trouble of staging the ordeal? Why not just flip a coin? It would be an even less expensive way to permit God to intervene. Leeson’s answer is that there was some scriptural basis for the importance of fire and water (and of course there was none for flipping a coin). Leeson also addresses a problem raised by his claim that only the innocent would chance an ordeal and that, knowing that, the clerics would rig the trial. The problem is that a 100% acquittal rate would raise suspicions. Leeson constructs a formula for minimizing the number of innocents to preserve the credibility of the ordeal process. ( In other words, as I posted here, “In this wicked world, we do the best we can.”) ) Finally, you will have noticed that Leeson’s model assumes that the populace have complete faith in the ordeal process and the priests are completely skeptical, choosing to free the innocent rather than wait for God’s judgment. One answer to the seeming contradiction comes from history. The Church (and presumably many priests) never liked ordeals, and in 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council banned priests from participating in ordeals. There was a theological reason. As Professor Leeson puts it, “Judicial ordeals required priests to command God to perform miracles at their whim, which the Bible forbids.”
HOW DID DEFENDANTS DO IN ORDEALS?
February 2nd, 2010HOW DID DEFENDANTS DO IN ORDEALS? How did the defendant do in trials by ordeal? I would have bet that in a fair ordeal, without divine intervention, the defendant would always lose. Professor Leeson’s article is based on his earlier scholarly paper, which tells a lot more about trials by ordeal. In the paper, he quotes Maitland, the great authority on English legal history that “success at the ordeal” was “far commoner than failure”; and Pollock and Maitland say that the “evidence …we have seems to show that ordeal of hot iron was so arranged as to give the accused considerable chance of escape.”–which provides some support that the ordeals were rigged. There are some statistics. Records of 208 ordeals from Hungary in the early 1200’s show that the defendant lost 37.5% of the time and in three reported cases from England, all three defendants prevailed —much better than I would have expected, but on the whole not very comforting for the innocent defendant facing an ordeal.
PRAISE FOR TRIAL BY ORDEAL.
February 1st, 2010PRAISE FOR TRIAL BY ORDEAL. Professor Peter Leeson has an article in the Boston Globe which praises the medieval system of trial by ordeal. He says that: “Although the system is considered to be “an icon of medieval barbarism and backwardness….The ordeal system worked surprisingly well. It accurately determined who was guilty and who was innocent.” The ordeals involved plunging a hand into boiling water or carrying red hot iron. If the hand was undamaged three days later, the defendant was innocent. A variant was a cold water ordeal where the defendant was tied up and thrown into water. If they sank, they were innocent. Leeson’s theory is based on a population that all believed that the result of the ordeal was the judgment of God; God would intervene to signal whether the defendant was innocent or guilty. Leeson theorizes that only the innocent would submit to the ordeal. The guilty knew what God would say and plead guilty, settle or get out of town. What about the innocent? Leeson argues that the priests who administered ordeals had a great deal of discretion and so: “Priests knew that only innocent defendants would be willing to plunge their hands in boiling water. So priests could simply rig trials….” For example, the water or the iron might not be hot enough to do damage. It will have occurred to you that people would have caught on if the defendant always passed the test. I’ll give you some statistics tomorrow. (link via Instapundit),
HOLDEN CAULFIELD RECONSIDERED.
January 31st, 2010HOLDEN CAULFIELD REVISITED. This obituary for J.D. Salinger says about THE CATCHER IN THE RYE: “Taken as portraying a thirst for authenticity by some, the work is seen by many young people these days as merely whiney.” We had a discussion about the book last summer on this blog (see here, here, and here). Annalisa and Nick certainly would agree that Holden Caulfield is whiney and that it spoils the book. Dick Weisfelder observed then that “Nick’s reaction is typical for his generation.” In light of that discussion, Dick called my attention to this obituary article about THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by Ian Whitwham, who would be roughly my contemporary (if he was a sixth former in 1961, he would have been between 16 and 19). Whitwham loved the book in 1961 and says he loves it now (”I’m a crusty, unsentimental old git and I like it more than ever.”) Whitwham taught the book to sixth formers for years and says there were always some students who loved it, but, I gather, a minority because he concludes: “It’s more tragic, more heartbreaking — and rather lost on tedious, insensitive modern youth.” I’m afraid that after fifty years I have joined the “tedious, insensitive modern youth” insofar as I have no desire to reread the book. I said earlier that “Characters like … Holden Caulfield are all about us now.” I don’t want to spend any more time with Holden Caulfield, but I am unfair to Salinger if I don’t acknowledge that he created a powerful character and identified an outlook on life that seems to be all about us now. Pioneering books often suffer because what was novel becomes familiar.
“SAMUEL BECKETT LOOKS AT THE STARS”—NEW YORK CITY PRODUCTION.
January 30th, 2010“SAMUEL BECKETT LOOKS AT THE STARS”—NEW YORK CITY PRODUCTION. My play “Samuel Beckett Looks at the Stars” will be performed in New York City next Saturday and Sunday (February 6 and 7). It will be part of a program of short plays which will begin at 9:00 p.m. on Saturday the 6th and at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday the 7th at
Where Eagles Dare Studios, 347 W. 36th Street
New York, NY 10018 (Between 8th and 9th Avenues).
Tickets and reservations are available at the SmartTix reservations service. Here is a link.
WARNING: The running time of the play is about three minutes. You can find an earlier version of the play through the search feature for the blog. I’ll also post the final version after the performances.
