"White Innocence" is a New Term of Art

draft

 

I learned a new term the other day: white innocence.  It refers to those white people who are so dumb as to be constantly surprised in the right wing dictatorship their naivete has helped to bring about.  Roe v Wade gone, oh!  No more voting rights?  Oh!  Citizens United?  Oh!  Maybe Kavanaugh wont vote to destroy abortion rights!  

 

White people, dumb as a rock.

 

 Mitch laughs at you, you know.

Words Stolen from the English Language

First Uber, then Jaunt, two of my favorite words, now gone forever. Or at least as long as I live.

It used to be that I could show some multilingual sophistication by creating Germanic compound words, using Uber, such as uberdog, uberschmuck, and uberswine, just to name three. But now with Uber, the taxi service which is worth billions because it is able to find a way to employ the masses of unemployed that the US has created with globalization and with failing to provide any alternative for them, Uber is forever associated, in this country at least, with that quasi-taxi scam.

In other words, a favorite word has been stolen from me, and I dont like it.

Another such word is Jaunt. You may not be aware that “jaunt” a rather rare but normal part of the English language also has a secret meaning and a secret history. One of the most important early science fiction novels is/was The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester in which teleportation is called “jaunting”, or “to jaunt”. Now it will probably lose that meaning because everyone will assume you mean the new, very well financed, VR game company.

You want to steal a word from me, fine. Love you too.

An early use of the concept of synesthesia

The Stars My Destination on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stars_My_Destination

The Stars My Destination on Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/The-Stars-Destination-Alfred-Bester/dp/1876963468

Underbidding in Visual Effects: Conclusions and Recommendations

In three previous posts we discussed the practice and mythology of underbidding a project in visual effects, something that is alleged to happen quite often and is commonly believed to be a major cause of instability in the visual effects industry.   You can read these posts here, here and here, or you can just read the next paragraph.

In these posts I argue that (a) there are some legitimate reasons for underbidding,  (b) it rarely happens by mistake except in the case of a new production company,  that (c) sometimes when a project is underbid it was done so because of politics or because a grave misunderstanding or breach of trust between the client and the visual effects facility occurred, and finally (d) when we hear retroactively that a project was underbid, it is often just spin on the part of the client to pin the blame for whatever occurred on the visual effects company and cover their own ass.

In fact, very few people realize that the origins of the word "underbid" contains this meaning of "under appreciated".  "To underbid" comes from the German compound verb unterbitte: unter meaning under- or sub- and bitte meaning "please".  Thus "under please" which we might say in English as "under appreciated" or "no good deed goes unpunished".   

If a production company were to stupidly give a client a deal and got screwed for it, then we might say that they have unterbitte the project.

If you are a potential worker, artist, supervisor, or facility owner in visual effects, I think you should keep the following in mind:

1. Do not throw your pearls before swine.

2. Be sure to charge a lot of money.   In Hollywood, getting paid is the most important sign of respect.  If they pay you a lot of money, they respect you.    Its the only way you can tell what they think.   So charge the studios a lot of money and at the end of the day, you will probably say to yourself that you still did not charge enough for the work given what your time is really worth and how stupid the project really is and unpleasant the people really are.

Otherwise you may become the next victim of the unterbitte.

Great Moments in Ukrainian Diplomacy: The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks

Ukraine!   Ancient land of peace and harmony, how fondly we remember you!  There are whole chunks of the American population who are descended from people who ran screaming from that part of the world.

Political Scientists the world over are gleefully sharpening their knives about events in recent, what we might call, Ukraine. Experienced yet stupid American and European diplomats are reeling in astonishment at what is apparently their first introduction to the history of the region. Could it be that even today not everyone in that part of the world loves each other?

Of course, where there is war, there is diplomacy, or the lack thereof. Diplomacy is sometimes defined as that activity between nations or other groups which attempts to negotiate and resolve conflict. It has its own specialized language (which of course varies by time period) and conventions whose intent is to, among other things, see to it that nations are not accidentally misunderstood. Obviously the potential of misunderstanding is rife when we have very different cultures, languages and factions attempting to work with each other or kill each other or both.

I have recently come across a beautiful example of diplomacy which is worthy on its own merits but has extra value since it also took place in what we are today calling Ukraine.  I am going to present the following anecdote as if it were a colorful incident of history, when in fact if I were being more serious I would really want to dig in and find out just how likely it is that the following diplomatic exchange actually happened.  Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, I always say. 

In 1676, the Turkish Sultan Zehmed IV sent a letter to the Zaporozhian Cossacks stating who he was and that they should surrender to him at once.

The demand from the Sultan was:

As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God Himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians -- I command you, the Zaporogian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.

The reply from the Zaporozhian Cossacks (one of the many Cossack entities) was thought lost to history, but a copy of the letter was found two centuries later. I am going to freely interpret several different proposed translations of this letter but as I do so please keep in mind that by definition the best invective involves the pungent use of idiom and is very difficult to translate and still keep the same color. When for example I tell you to “kiss my ass”, I rarely mean that I literally want you to kiss my ass, although I might depending on the details, but usually the request is meant figuratively.

Detail from Repin's painting about the writing of this letter.  We should all enjoy our work as much as this Cossack

Supposedly, the reply of the Cossacks was:

From the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan! 

O Sultan, you Turkish devil, brother and assistant to Lucifer himself, what kind of knight are you who can not slay a hedgehog with your naked ass? You shit and your army eats. You will not, you son of a bitch, make subjects of the sons of Christians. We have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with you. Go fuck your mother. 

You are a Babylonian kitchen slave, a Macedonian wheelwright, a brewer of alcoholic beverages from Jerusalem, a goat fucker of Alexandria, a swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, a pig of Armenia, a thief of Podolia, a young boy who receives anal sex from Tartary, a hangman of the Kamyanets, a fool of this world and the world to come, an idiot before God, a grandson of the Serpent, and a curve in our penis. A pig's snout, a mare's ass, a dog of the slaughterhouse, an unchristened brow, you should go screw your mother. 

So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife.

You won't even be herding pigs for the Christians.

We do not know the date and we do not own a calendar, but the moon is in the sky and the year is with the Lord, and the day is the same over here as it is over there. 

You may kiss our ass. 

Sincerely,
Koshovyi Otaman Ivan Sirko and the Zaporozhian Host.

Yes, I suppose that this letter could be misunderstood.

____________________________________________

Notes

1. This is a scan of Repin's Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks which was completed in 1891 and hangs in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersberg.   Its Wikipedia page is here.  First Secretary Joseph Stalin is said to have had a reproduction of this painting hanging in his office in the Kremlin.

2. The origins of the Cossacks are much more complicated and vague than I had realized, Their Wikipedia page is  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks

3. There is a mangled paper online about some of the issues of the translations of various versions of the reply.  See http://home.uchicago.edu/~vfriedm/Articles/015Friedman78.pdf

The North Korean Style of Insult

It would seem that the art of insulting people and character assassination has gone downhill in recent years with nowhere near the elegance and power that it has had in the past.   This great art is a pale shadow of its former greatness, at least here in the West.

A repetitive use of simple slurs, repeated over and over again, has become the standard fare when insulting someone's personality, ethics and morality. The same old watered down insults generally applied in a very generic form merely demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy and shallowness of the would-be character assassin.   How many times have we heard "He's an asshole. What a shithead. Scumbag!   Moron!"   These insults have no originality, they are mere placeholders for what used to be an honored part of rhetoric.

This decline may or may not be of practical importance depending on what field you are in, as some fields make more use of the insult and verbal backstabbing than others.  The culturally important field of visual effects and animation is known throughout the world for the shallow insults members of the field shower on each other.  Only paleontology is believed to be more verbally vicious and cutthroat.

This decay of this formerly great artform is just one example of the general collapse of America which can be seen in so many areas of our culture.  Whether the area is pop music for underage girls, pulp novels, sexist imagery or drive-in movies, all of these genres have lost much of their integrity and vigor.   Still, we must do what we can to shore up what is left and try to move on.

As is often the case when we have a civilization in collapse, the collapse is fortunately uneven and there continue to be regions that have maintained the art and sciences of the past with great integrity. Although the American style of insult and sarcasm have not been preserved to the best of my knowledge, other cultures have preserved their own traditions in this area.   If we are willing to let go of some of our pride we can learn from some of our neighbors to our benefit.

One esteemed style of insult, one of the greatest in history, was created during the Cold War by the various Communist governments. Although almost all the former practitioners of this style have abandoned their own traditions in their haste to embrace capitalism, one country has stood firm and maintained its traditions.  And that country is none other than the proud but misunderstood nation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as led by their Dear Leader Kim Sung-un.

Just recently I came across a fine example of this art when I read about the purge of Kim Sung-un's uncle, Jang Song-thaek, formerly the second most powerful person in the DPRK.   Tears came to my eyes as I read the announcement of Jang's execution so struck was I by the sincerity and venom of the text.

Despicable Human Scum

Here are some excerpts: 

Every sentence of the decision served as sledge-hammer blow brought down by our angry service personnel and people on the head of Jang, an anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional element and despicable political careerist and trickster.

However, despicable human scum Jang, who was worse than a dog, perpetrated thrice-cursed acts of treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the party and the leader for him.

Jang encouraged money-making under various pretexts to secure funds necessary for gratifying his political greed and was engrossed in irregularities and corruption. He thus took the lead in spreading indolent, careless and undisciplined virus in our society.

He let the decadent capitalist lifestyle find its way to our society by distributing all sorts of pornographic pictures among his confidants since 2009. He led a dissolute, depraved life, squandering money wherever he went. 

The era and history will eternally record and never forget the shuddering crimes committed by Jang Song Thaek, the enemy of the party, revolution and people and heinous traitor to the nation.

You can read the full text of the announcement on the execution of Jang here.

I think this is truly a magnificent example of a classic Cold War style of character assassination in all its glory and it is certainly much more eloquent and impressive that merely calling Jang a scumbag or a shithead. I hope that our own nation can rise to this example. I particular hope that my field of visual effects and computer animation that puts so much store on attacking other people's character, yet does so in such a boring and stupid way, can also learn to do a better job.  (1)

Thank you, Dear Leader Kim Song-un for showing us the way.

Dear Leader

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea
http://www.korea-dpr.com/

______________________________________________________

1. But keep in mind, if attempting to apply these techniques of rhetoric to the field of visual effects, that many of the practioners in the field do not know the meaning of most words over two syllables or at least pretend to be that ignorant.  So keep it simple for them, pithy and filled with color, but only simple words.

The NSA and the Mystery of Tito and Eliza Doolittle

As everyone knows, the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.   Poor Eliza Doolittle had to repeat that phrase over and over again, under the tutelage of her cruel taskmaster, the domineering patriarch Henry Higgins in order to achieve the goals not just for herself but for her language teachers.  She wanted a chance to elevate herself from desperate poverty, but her masters wanted to put one over on British society, to fool English society into believing that this poverty-stricken seller of flowers, Eliza Doolittle, was in fact of the upper classes.   Technically speaking this was a conspiracy.

In a similar manner,  we have a story from the Cold War, a mystery if you will, about someone who did not learn to pronounce his H's properly and so was unmasked as an impostor.  Of course in his case, since he was the ruler of a Communist dictatorship, it didn't really matter.

This person was probably a plant of a Russian trained agent to lead the resistance of communist and other partisan forces in a war they expected with Nazi Germany.   The mysterious Russian, if he was Russian, whose real name we do not know, was secretly proven to not be who he said he was after WW II and during the cold war.  It was his failure to learn to pronounce his H's, figuratively speaking, that revealed him.

The organization that succeeded in revealing the truth (secretly) to our leaders was the newly formed and much maligned National Security Agency.   Yes, that poor, misunderstood guardian of freedom, the NSA.

Our story begins in the 1930s in what was the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, formed after WW I out of parts of the Austro Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Slovenia.  A former locksmith and metal worker, Josip Broz of Kumrovec, near Zagreb, took the underground cover name of Tito, and led the Communist faction of the partisans in resistance to the Germans who had occupied their country.

When the Germans were defeated, he was able to keep the Kingdom united and create a new country that included Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and five other distinct provinces and ethinic groups.   He was able to forge his own path for his newly Communist nation, separate from the Soviet Union, and create his own version of Socialism.  (1) When he died, the country split apart violently along ethnic lines. Without him, it could not hold together.

The problem is, or the mystery, is that it was not clear, it still is not clear, who Marshal Tito was.  But whoever he was, it isn't who he said he was.

Marshal Tito was supposedly born Josip Broz in 1892 in Kumrovec to a Croat Father and a Slovene mother.  His first language was Serbo-Croat.    He fought in the Austro Hungarian army, was captured and imprisoned in Russia, fought in the Russian revolution, and returned to Yugoslavia where he was involved in various activities that also got him imprisoned.  After serving time, he went underground and joined the Yugoslav Communist party.   From there he rose in prominence in the Party and led the resistance to the Germans.

But mysteriously the people of Kumrovec did not recognize him.   And when Josip aka Tito spoke his native language, he made mistakes that no native would make.   Serbo-Croat was apparently not his native language.

One job of our intelligence community is to understand what is happening in the world and what is likely to happen. Who the leaders of important countries are, and what they are likely to do, is part of their job. Its a nearly impossible job to do, but certain things can be done. But one is certainly at a disadvantage if you do not even know who the leader of a country is.

What does any of this have to do with the NSA?

The NSA is considered one of the centers of excellence in linguistics in the world. They took a speech that Tito gave and analyzed it, asking the question of whether Tito was a native speaker of Serbo Croat. I do not know when the report was originally written, but it was recently released.  Their answer was: he was not a native speaker of Serbo Croat.  He was an impostor, just like Eliza Doolittle!  But an Eliza Doolittle who did not learn her lessons!  (2) 

So whoever Marshall Tito, one of the great revolutionaries of the 20th Century and a national hero of the former country of Yugoslavia, was he wasn't who he said he was. Most people who know about the issue speculate that Tito was a Russian who was put in place of Josip Broz sometime in the 1930s, well before WW II. But it is speculation.

For a good discussion of the Tito mystery, see this post.

Wikipedia claims this story isn't true.  Well, maybe.  As you would imagine, partisans of Tito would want to deny the story.  Finding out the truth here would be difficult, it might in fact, be impossible. (3)

I hope this little story will help to convince you of two things.  First, the importance of studying musical theatre for understanding the Cold War.  And second, to give you some idea of what the NSA does for a living.   They do not give a fuck  hoot about your pornography or your mistress, they have other fish to fry.

The original report is on the NSA web site at:

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/is_yugoslav.pdf

__________________________________________________

1. In Stalin's desk after he died was a letter from Tito. It said that they had caught another Soviet assassination squad trying to kill him (Tito) but that they had missed, and that if Stalin tried that again Tito would send his own squad after Stalin and they would not miss.

2. My Fair Lady, of course.

3. One could imagine exhuming the body of Tito, extracting DNA, and comparing that DNA with the DNA of other living members of his family, if any exist, or with people from that part of the world.  One might then have evidence that he was related to those people or not.   This is not something that I, or anyone I know, is going to cause to happen.

The Uses of Procrastination: The Origins of Pork Barrel and Lobbying

As we stare into the darkness of the inevitable failure of our lives, what could be better than to waste a little time looking up things on the Internet? The Internet is a Bold New Paradigm (tm) and provides endless opportunity to learn a little about nearly everything, as long as what you want to learn is not complete, well-presented or, in many cases, accurate. These are details that have nothing whatsoever to do with its value as a time waster however.

Today I want to enlighten you with two important words in our uniquely American political language. The origins of one of them I have known for a long time, the other I just learned on the Internet recently. So as to give you fair warning, I am going to name those two words now and ask you to think about what they might have originally meant, or what their origin might have been.

The words are "pork barrel" and "lobbyist".

In modern parlance, the term pork barrel politics refers to a congressman arranging for his district to receive some federal project that pumps money into the local economy. This would usually take the form of construction projects, such as highways, bridges, etc. It might take the form of an Army or Navy base, or it might be in the form of a military procurement that spends some of its money in that district. By this definition, the building of the 1st six frigates for the US Navy during the Geo. Washington administration was a pork barrel project, because it began the navy tradition of spreading the work out across as many states as possible to increase congressional support for the project. In the case of the six frigates, each one was built in a different seaport, each in a different state. That is six states out of thirteen, not a bad spread. An informed discussion of this term would have the first use of the term in the congressional record, but I do not have that kind of information here. This is the Internet, after all.

The pork barrel harkens back to a time in history when salt was a major means of preservation of food. In agricultural America, various farms and homesteads would have a central place that might serve as the location of a church, a post office, and a general store. At the general store one might find a variety of goods, bulk foods, hardware, etc. One of features of your general country store would have been the "pork barrel", which was a barrel of salted pork. One would go to the county seat on the weekend, perhaps, and pick up the mail, see some friends, and pick up supplies at the store to bring home to the farm. One would select some salted pork from the barrel and pay by weight, presumably. Thus the analogy of bringing something home to one's constituents from the pork barrel that was Washington. Surely we are all allowed to bring something home from the pork barrel for our families ? That is only fair.

Apparently with the origin of the term "lobbyist" we have an example of a self-reinforcing Internet myth.  Fun but not true.   The lobby in question refers to a famous old hotel in DC which is two blocks away from the White House, the Willard Hotel. It was at one time the only hotel you could stay at in DC and still easily get to the major attractions or see all the possible people you needed to see to do business in Washington. When Grant was president, being one of our more social presidents, he liked to go out for a drink and a smoke, and he usually went to the lobby and bar of the Willard hotel.

The restored lobby of the Willard Hotel presumably without the spitoons that would have been there in Grant's day

This meant that you could hang out in the lobby of the hotel and have a good chance of just running into the president many evenings of the week, and have a few informal words with him on some topic. This became known in town as "lobbying", the people who did it were called "lobbyists", the verb was "to lobby".

Its a fun story, but I am told, just not true.  The origin of the term "to lobby" comes from England and parliament and refers to the lobbies where the members of parliament would assemble before going into the chambers to debate and vote.    The process of researching this word reminds me that the Internet is NOT a substitute for solid reference material, probably in print, next to your computer terminal.

The implication is that the term "lobbyist" is not uniquely American in the least, it is a shared term of art with our brothers in crime, Great Britain.

We hope you have been enlightened and entertained by this vital information and that we have contributed to the wastage of what little time you have left in a suitably amusing manner.

The Willard Intercontinental Washington

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_InterContinental_Washington

Further Issues With Hiring More Experienced Workers (MEWs)

[updated 7/27/2013]

In a previous post (see here), we discussed issues that may become apparent when you hire a more experienced worker, or MEW as they are known in the literature, such as their tendency to fail to fall for your lies and a stupid desire to learn from experience. These are bad enough, but there are others that can be added to the list and we have some of them here.

I should first mention that not all experienced workers suffer from these character flaws, but the very possibility that they might should be enough to see that MEWs are never hired.

1. More experienced workers tend to mutter to themselves.

After all they are subjected to the most obvious and abusive ageism by your younger workers on a daily basis, they are likely to have some sort of verbal response. This is unacceptable and any MEW that mutters to themselves should immediately be fired.

2. More expereinced workers tend to exhibit diversity in opinions and ideas.

The most efficient workplace is one in which there is no dissent because the workers are cut from the same conforming cloth, everyone knows that. Unanimity should come not through discussion of the best approach, but because the worker units believe that there is only one way, their way, what they have been programmed to believe, thus they can proceed without discomfort or thought. By having more experienced workers who may know other ways or have contrary opinions based on genuine experience, you potentially open your organization to inefficient discussion and debate.

Remember, debate is weakness. Unthinking unanimity is strength!  

3. More experienced workers after being subjected to abuse might show some sign of anger at being treated like garbage.

Any who do so should be fired at once. Management should have no fear of being subjected to any penalty by government because the government supports ageism in all ways, that is obvious. Thus MEWs can be fired with impunity.

4. An MEW might be better educated than the "stupid morons" (1) companies hire as management and thus this management might suffer from insecurity which might affect their ability to be stupid.

Imagine the poor 20 or 30 something management, stupid and shallow as they are, spitting teeth in frustration if they had to deal with a MEW who might actually use a big word that our stupid management did not understand. Oh Gods! Forbid this gross unjustice !

I think we have established without doubt that our government is right in supporting ageism in all its forms and that an older and more experienced worker must never be hired.

_____________________________________

1. A "stupid moron" is an innovative personal insult and a colloquialism that is not in common usage in English, but was innovated by the author to communicate a higher degree of "moron"-icity than one might normally experience.   English is a Germanic language and it is a natural part of the language process to create new terms from existing words to extend the language.   Thus "stupid moron" is obviously a way of saying "a particularly unintelligent person of low intelligence".

Designing a Latin Motto for Your New Crime Organization

Most American's have realized by now that if they are on the outside of the vast wealth in this country, that the only way to change that situation is through the time-honored American tradition of crime.  All great fortunes in this country started with a crime or crimes, and people are not being metaphorical when they say that. (3)

But if you are going to have a criminal organization, particularly an international criminal organization, then you are going to have to have a motto to inspire your members, and that motto has to be in Latin.  There are strict rules about such things: from Annuit Coeptus to Semper Fidelis to In Hoc Signo Vinces, (1)  our mottos in the West are required to be in Latin even for criminals.

Since our educational system has for years fallen into decadence and shame and failed to teach everyone how to read and write Latin, it is permissible, under the circumstances to use certain Internet-based crutches, such as the recent Google Tranlate English->Latin and Latin->English service.

You may find this useful capability here:  http://translate.google.com/#en/la/

We all know that the United States has mottos designed by Freemasons under the control of the Illuminati, hence the mottos Annuit Coeptus and Novus Ordo Seclorum.   Its fun to have people deny that there was Freemason influence in the creation of this country and show them the Great Seal of the United States.

One interpretation of the "Eye in the Pyramid" is that the Egyptians built the Pyramids with sacred knowledge, but that knowledge came directly from Satan.   

Some of our most notable mottos / slogans are in fact fictional, including my favorite from Edgar Allen Poe's A Cask of Amontillado.  In this short story our hero, Montresor, lures his enemy into a dungeon, secures him with chains, and imprisons him up behind a wall of bricks to leave him to die of starvation.  The motto of the Montresor family is Neme Me Impune Lacessit or "none may attack me with impunity".    (2)

So now what would constitute a good Latin motto for a crime organization, whether international or local?   Presumably the motto would indicate either a lofty goal, or an act of revenge, or in some way indicate what made our criminal group a center of excellence, e.g. the very best bank robbers, the very best despoilers of virgins, the best at repressing justice hand-in-hand with the politicians, that sort of thing.   In the case of organizations rising up from oppression, one could imagine an oddly paranoid phrase as a contender, and I included one below.

To inspire complete and efficient vengeance, perhaps

     Debent Omnes Morimur  -- They Must All Die

     Occidite Eos Celeriter  --  Kill Them Quickly


To inspire discipline and accuracy among our members, we might have

    Stultus Est Errare  --  To Err is Stupid    

   
To remind us what our goals are, consider

    Pecunia et Potentia  --  Money and Power

    Carpe Pecuniam  --  Seize the Money

    Nisi Mentis Inops, Pauper Est  --  Only an Idiot is Poor

    Furantur a Divitibus  --  Steal From the Rich


Finally, my favorite, for those of us with low self-esteem

    Omnes Me Oderunt  --  They All Hate Me


Here are a few thoughts on the technicalities of using Google English / Latin / English translator. Remember that Latin is an inflected language (defined in a moment) and English has lost most of its inflections.   By inflected, linguists mean that the form of the word changes depending on its use in a sentence, and specifically, the end(ing) of the word changes.  In English, I may call someone stupid, and stupid bacially has one form.  But in Latin, it may have six forms, depending on its uses.   I am fucked, he is fucked, you are fucked, we are fucked and so forth, has one ending in English but would have six in Latin.  Why should you care?

Because in using the English to Latin translator, giving it a few words, a short phrase, is much better than giving it a single word, e.g. a verb.  "They are stupid and must die" is much better than "Stupid. Die" because of how the languages work.

I hope that this has inspired you to design a motto for your new career in crime and I look forward to reading some of your efforts in this area.

____________________________________

Notes:

1. They mean "he knows and approves", "always faithful" and "by this sign you shall conquer" respectively.

2. You can find this story here on the Internet, below.  "For the love of God, Montresor! Yes, for the love of God."

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/POE/cask.html

3. Real honest to gosh crime is meant here.   You know, guys with guns, that sort of thing.  But with good politicians and friends in high places to make it all look good and cover it up later.  You know, like the Railroads, or the Trusts or the slave labor (Chinese and Irish) use to build the railroads and so forth.

Rudyard Kipling, Language Change and the Case of "Gentlemen-Rankers"

[in progress, I just cant get this right]

This is a post about a particular poem by Rudyard Kipling which is the origin of about 14 very recognizable idioms in the English language, yet is also, on its own, somewhat incomprehensible to a modern reader.

Every once in a while I come across the source of a commonly known idiom or saying in its original form or context, and it is usually an amusing surprise. Maybe I knew it came from that (whatever that is, book, play, short story) and maybe I had just forgotten. But then all of a sudden there it is and it is all the more amusing because it is in situ, in its place.

For example, it turns out that "its Greek to me" is a throw-away line from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by Wm. Shakespeare in which a fellow conspirator tells Brutus what happened at the Senate that day. Someone was speaking from Greece. What did he say, asked Brutus. I have no idea, said the conspirator, it was Greek to me.

So in a typical Internet binge that covered the usual related topics of philosophy, optics, cosmology and the concept of echelon in military service (e.g. company, regiment, brigade, division, corps, etc), I came across a poem by Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) where about 26% of the 56 lines are immediately recognizable. Not only are they recognizable, but they are used individually, so its not just one turn of phrase out in the real world, its something like 14 of them, each standing on its own. (Note: "standing on its own" is a good example of an idiom in modern use).

Here is a stanza from the poem in question, called "Gentlemen Rankers"

               We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
                       We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
               And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
                       God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
               Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence,
                       Our pride it is to know no spur of pride,
               And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us
                      And we die, and none can tell Them where we died.

I had not realized until now that Rudyard Kipling lived in the 20th century.    He died right before the start of World War 2 in 1936. He was born in Mumbai to British parents in the year our Civil War ended (e.g. 1865). 

And yet the language of his poems seem much more archaic, or at least filled with unrecognizable idiom, then your average late 19th century essay or poem.   For example, Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven was first published in 1845, or 20 years before Kipling was even born, and yet The Raven is very readable today with very few archaic uses that are a problem.   Well, as they say, the US and England are separated by a common language, and apparently this is even more so when you use a lot of idiom and slang.

This fabulous off-center photograph of Kipling is throwing off the symmetry of my blog.  Stop that!

Here is a partial list of such phrases: run his own six horses, and faith he went, he held the ready tin, machinely crammed, sweet to, blowzy, regimental hop, out on the spree (1), cock-a-hoop, Tommy, worsted, blacks your boots, Curse of Reuben, knew the worst, and of course Gentlemen-Rankers, the very title of the poem is incomprehensible, at least to me.

A "Gentleman-Ranker" is a soldier in the British Army who is from the upper classes but finds himself an enlisted soldier (e.g. below his station in life).  This would happen because of misfortune, a mistake, or a flaw in his character.  But in any case, he has the education and manners of a member of the ruling class, but he is living the life of a common soldier.  Hence, a "gentleman" who is a "ranker".

Other idiom in this poem which are still in common use include: something less than kind, black sheep, troop, thrash, down the ladder.

Here are six lines in particular that I found very recognizable but had not realized had come from this poem: "To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned", "Its the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep", "We have done with Hope and Honor, we are lost to Love and Truth", "We're poor little lambs who've lost our way", "And we die, and none can tell Them where we died", "Damned from here to eternity".

Notice the eccentric punctuation, its not mere love and honor we are done with, no, its Love and Honor that we are talking about.

When researching this I came across the following image of Mickey, Donald and Pluto as the Three Musketeers, but some Internet wit had them labeled as "Gentlemen-Rankers", fallen from the upper classes to a mere soldier, but still showing here a certain spirit and elan.

Gentlemen-rankers of a different period?

Read the entire poem here:

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_gentlemen.htm

The poem has been adapted as a famous drinking song, and numerous other topics in popular culture. It is practically the anthem of those who are in despair about their lives and position in life.

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References

Rudyard Kipling on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling

Military Rank

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_rank

Marian Reforms of the Roman Army:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_reforms

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073341/

Gunga Din (1939) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031398/

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Notes:

1. A spree is an archaic term for cattle raid. Its more common usage is someone who is out on a drinking binge, or spree.

2. For those of you not up on the organization of the Roman Army after the Marian reforms of the 2nd century BC, the cohort was a standard unit of the Roman Legion, each legion had ten cohorts, each cohort was about 500 fighting men.

3. From Here to Eternity (1953) which of course we now realize is short for "Damned from here to eternity".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045793/

Modern Historically Correct Computer Phonetic Alphabet

v 0.1 Beta  3/10/2013

[in progress]

Tired of being told words over the phone that you can not spell correctly and have the person on the other end fail to enunciate what they mean and too lazy to use an approved phonetic alphabet for voice communication?  Then consider the following new, rationalized, technology appropriate phonetic alphabet.  The words suggested below are intended to be highly redundant and recognizable words that are unmistakable for any other word on the list, and either have some value in a computer historical sense, or allow the speaker to get out some of their frustration using good Anglo Saxon idiom.

Each comma separated phrase is as good as another, there is no particular expressed priority between the terms. In other words, Burroughs is as good as Burnout.

A -- Alpha, Alphabet, Analog, ASCII, ARPANET

B -- Burroughs, Burnout

C -- Collossus, Channel, Cantaloupe, COBOL

D -- DEC, Dogshit, Data General, Digital Equipment Corporation

E -- Echo, Enigma, EBCDIC

F -- Fuck, Fuckit, Fucking

G -- Geheimschreiber

H -- Hacker, Honeywell, Hollerith

I -- Idiot, IBM

J -- Jerk

K -- Kernel

L -- Lemonade, Lichtenstein

M -- Moron, MIT

N -- Negative, Nebula

O -- Ohbaby, Orion

P -- PDP, Penis, Process, Punched Card

Q -- Quasi, Quack

R -- Ramo, Rancid, Rogue

S -- Stupid, Spacewar

T -- Turing, Teletype, Tron

U -- Ubetcha, User

V -- von Neumann, vector

W -- Woolridge, Whirlwind, Washedup

X -- Xray, Xanadu

Y -- Yessir, Yes Maam

Z -- Zebra, Zork

Examples

Bolt := Burnout Ohbaby Lemonade Teletype
Scumbag := Stupid Cantaloupe Ubetcha Moron Burnout Alphabet Geheimschreiber

References

Category of Phonetic Alphabets on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Phonetic_alphabets

Nato Phonetic Alphabet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

Procrastination Secrets Revealed: The Decipherment of Linear B

I realize that one should not brag, but I believe that I am the best procrastinator that I have ever met or heard about by at least one order of magnitude if not more.  I feel confident that I could compete against just about anyone in the world in this area and be victorious. But it isn't just raw talent, as with anything in order to be the best, you have to work at it, you have to practice, and you have to learn technique.

In this essay I am going to discuss one of several topics I have used to waste weeks if not longer of my time, and they can be used to waste your time as well, if you choose. The specific subject matter may not work for everyone but they will work for some of you. I hope you will try them and that they will be as productive in producing non-productivity for you as they have been for me.

The trick is to find a topic or story that is sufficiently complex that it will naturally lead to other interesting topics, which will lead to other interesting topics and so forth. It helps if there is some sense of romance involved, of mystery, or of controversy. By the time you are through, six months or a year or more can be spent becoming your local expert on the otherwise useless subject.

Michael Ventris, the architect who deciphered Linear B, and an example of part of a tablet

In this post we discuss our first example of such a topic: the decipherment of Linear B.

Once upon a time, a famous archaeologist proved that the Minoan and Greek civilizations were literate long before the classical period. But no one could read what they said. There was no Rosetta stone and it was not believed that the language would turn out to be a known one. But a young architect, with a talent for languages, had heard the famous archaeologist speak when he was a teenager and determined to decipher the tablets. And after many years, he did and he did it in such a way that the scholars in the field accepted the correctness of this outsider's work even though it revealed things that proved many of their theories wrong.

I can not express to you in this brief post how unusual and how important this was.  First, it is very difficult for an outsider to participate in current academic research in a field as obscure as ancient history because to really do it well you need to spend years learning things that have no utility outside of the field. In this case, this includes such things as not only knowing Greek, but having an idea of what the field of philology thinks ancient greek might have been like.  Or know a lot about what we think we know about the economies of Greece and Crete at the time in order to help judge whether a translation might be reasonable in context.   But more than that, this is an area where some very good people in the field had tried for 50 years to find a solution and none had been found, although some progress had been made.  And it was important to know about this work, this progress, because it ultimately opened the door for Ventris's solution.   And last but not least, there is something about ancient languages that attracts the nutty people, John Chadwich at one point had three file boxes of lunatic slush from people who thought they had translated Linear A or the Phaistos Disk.

So not only did Ventris have to solve the problem where others had tried and failed, but he had to do so in a way that this very elitist and closed community of scholars could accept and pay him serious attention.   Ventris knew all this of course, and he had some good fortune.  Part of the story is how he happened to be able to present his ideas on the BBC as part of a discussion of the problem and how a scholar at Cambridge, an expert in ancient Greek languages, heard him speak.  The scholar, John Chadwick, checked into Ventris and tried his proposed solution and, to his amazement, was able to decipher about 20 or so plausible Greek words in a few days of effort that made sense in the context of the tablets.   Then as a team, Ventris and Chadwick published the paper that presented the ideas, and that worked very well for academia: a lead author who is an outsider, but a reputable and known scholar as second author.  Perhaps Ventris alone, although he found the solution mostly on his own, would not have been as strong as the two of them together.

Here is the way John Chadwick begins the story of the decipherment:

So at this point in our story, an outsider has come to the field and presented a solution to a very difficult problem.   But now you have to get people to accept the idea.   And the story just keeps getting better.   Chadwick and Ventris knew that new tablets had been found but had not seen them.   But the archaeologist whose dig had found the new tablets had a copy of an early draft of the decipherment paper and tried the system on several tablets.   But one tablet, a very famous tablet if a tablet can be said to be famous, was particularly useful.  It was an inventory of various things that looked like tripods and cups/vases with a number of handles.   And the translation  listed "tripods" for things with three legs, and vases with four handles said "four ears" (an ear was a term for handle of a vase used in Homer) and one with three handles, said "three ears", and so forth.  As the archaeologist who sent it to them said, "This is all too good to be true, is coincidence excluded"?

But here is where the procrastination comes in, the part where things start expanding into other areas that are related and also fascinating.  It turns out that these are not just any old tablets of an ancient and lost civilization.  No.  Whatever may be historical about Homer, most scholars who study Homer believe that it is an authentic transmission or memory of an early period of Greece, however much it may have been distorted or romanticised.   And these tablets are almost certainly the accounting records of the civilization that Homer wrote/talked about.   And this civilization happens to also be the one which at that period, participated in the catastrophe of about 1200 BC which archaeologists refer to in various ways, but generally as "the end of the late bronze age in the eastern mediterranean".  At this time, most of the civilizations of this area, were either destroyed or attacked, by people who have not been identified but whom the Egyptians called the "Sea Peoples".

And it turns out that we have these tablets at all because they were in cities that were burned to the ground.  These clay tablets are almost certainly the temporary records, recorded in unfired clay, which got fired by accident when the cities were destroyed, and left where they fell in the ruins, where no one was left to clean things up, and rebuild.   

How interesting could the accounting records of a lost civilization be? One of the first tablets they decoded said, and I quote:

At Pylos. Slaves of the Priestess on account of the sacred gold. 14 women.

L. Ryder Haggard would have been proud to write such a sentence.

www.ancientscripts.com has a good summary introduction to Linear B
http://www.ancientscripts.com/linearb.html

Begin researching this topic by reading the following book by John Chadwick:

http://www.amazon.com/Decipherment-Linear-B-Canto/dp/0521398304

Amazon.com will let you read about 1/4 of the book online.

A conference on the decipherment of Linear B after 60 years
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/cracking-the-code-the-decipherment-of-linear-b-60-years-on

Its Greek to me.

In later posts we will discuss other topics which have the potential of wasting a huge amount of your time.

Early 18th Century British Underworld Slang

The Thieves Cant (or language) is a work written sometime between 1690 and 1720 by one B.E. Gent in London. It purports to be a dictionary of terms of art of the various "underworld" groups of the time: thieves, gypsies, beggars and so forth.

Its full title is:

A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient & Modern of the Canting Crew, in its several tribes, gypsies, beggars, thieves, cheats, &c.

In other words, this is underworld slang from what historians call the Early Modern Period in England..

The term "canting crew" is itself completely obscure to me, but it may refer to beggars, and their "cant", or speech, or possibly their begging rap.

When looking up the meaning of "canting crew", I came across the following review in The Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/article/161410/canting-crew#

It is the case that subgroups of this type, e.g. outsiders, have always had their own "language", usually a vocabulary used by members of this group and the people they interact with. We have them all the time to this day, particularly with various groups of outcasts from polite society such as economists, philosophers, astrophysicists and so-called visual effects practitioners, who must disguise their anti-social and disagreeable beliefs behind a cloud of mysterious jargon known only to the elect.

Exactly how correctly this work describes the actual language used by these groups is not clear to me. But it is amusing in its own right whatever its historical accuracy.

Entry in online library:

http://archive.org/details/newdictionaryoft00begeuoft

Scan of The Thieves Cant in PDF form:

http://ia600504.us.archive.org/7/items/newdictionaryoft00begeuoft/newdictionaryoft00begeuoft.pdf

Text of The Thieves Cant

http://archive.org/stream/newdictionaryoft00begeuoft/newdictionaryoft00begeuoft_djvu.txt

Michel Gondry and "Come Into My World" (2002)

Dennis Muren said, the problem with special effects is that it is not special anymore.

Although true, there are a few cases in which raw talent can take an old idea and make it new again. These talented people are so annoying that they may show off more than once and do several brilliant films in a row thus making themselves all the more hated by the rest of us.

Michel Gondry is such an annoyant (1) that he has done at least three of my favorite music videos (aka music promos) of all time, and all three are among my favorite short films.  We discuss "Come Into My World" here and the other two, "Let forever be", and "Like a Rolling Stone", another day.

Four Kylies and one Gondry showing off in Come Into My World (2002).  In the terminology of Zoologists and Bird Watchers, I believe that Ms. Kylie here can be said to be "displaying".

Unusually for the genre, the first minute of this four minute piece is a complete setup and doesn't reveal what is really going on until 1:07.    The first time I saw Come Into My World (2002), I innocently watched it, wondering what was great about this, "So she is walking around in a city in Europe somewhere.  So what?"  Then boom, at 1:07 the second Kylie picks up her dry cleaning and I thought to myself:  Wait, stop that, what just happened?

Even more astonishing, this tour de force of special effects takes place without a single giant robot or exploding zombie.  How could that be?

Things to look for as you refresh your memory about this film include (a) who drops and who picks up the pink shirt and how many pink shirts are there by the end, (b) the additions each time around of colorful people in the background, e.g. how many beds are thrown out of windows, how many skateboarders, how many men in blue putting up posters, how many balancing boys in green, how many men arriving at a hotel, how many hostesses in blue leaving a note on the windshield of a car, how many people in red on ladders, etc, (c) the strategy for keeping the various Kylie's out of each other's way, (d) what the layered matte strategy must have been, and (e) do any of the Kylie's intersect, and if so, is it Kylie that intersects or the dry cleaning she is carrying? (2)

For those of you who are mathematically inclined, you may wish to contemplate how many times Kylie has to run around the block.   Poor girl, she was probably getting dizzy.

Finally, we may ask if there is some relationship between the audio layering of Kylie (other Kylie's are at various time layered on top of the main Kylie in the audio domain, e.g. she is her own chorus as well as responding to herself) and the layering of Kylies in the image domain.

At this point, the number of hostesses in blue and guys in red have multiplied to four

Students of the history of this technology will note the amazing difference in the capability between modern compositing and the original chemical blue screen process, as discussed in my previous post on Bye Bye Birdie here, in which a major point of discussion was the issue of a moving camera and the special restrictions on blonde and red hair.  Here we have a completely free camera and a lot of dirty blonde hair, and its not a problem.  Actually, a better way to put it is that here we have an avalanche of moving camera and a tsunami of flying blonde hair and it looks effortless.

Come Into My World on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsCS5gdVqkE

Then after watching the film, you may wish to watch the making of documentary, below. Its up to you, I like it just the way it is and have a pretty good idea how it was done.

Raw talent, that's how.

In this case, I recommend not watching the documentary, however, but create your own plan on how you would make the film.   How you would cue the extras, how you would keep the Kylie's out of each other way (One might put a chalk mark on the ground for the path each Kylie should take with a different color for which cycle we are on (3), for example).

Making of "Come Into My World"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw9FAxywDJ8

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1. We are proud at Global Wahrman to premiere a new word in the English Language. "Annoyant" means someone who annoys.

2. The answer is yes, I think so, maybe twice that I noticed a Kylie intersects with herself and I think there are times when the laundry will intersect, but they don't call attention to themselves and it all works fine, I think.

3. I haven't found them yet, but I am still looking.