Kids Say
My nephew Metaeo is three and between his parents, myself, my parents, my grandmother and others he had a enormous pile of brightly-wrapped parcels stacked under the tree and waiting for him that we had put out while he was napping (due to the timing of our celebration). Most kids would have been excited to see all those gifts. My mother reminded me that when I was a child I would have been excited by all of them even if they'd been nothing more than wrapped boxes because tearing off the paper was my favorite part. But after coaxing him to unwrap his first gift we asked him if he'd like to unwrap another one (as he had far more gifts than any of the adults of course) and he said: "No. I don't want to open any more presents!"
The Thought
I had been intending to give my brother and nephew's mother a gift I couldn't really wrap so I had the foresight to get them something I thought they'd enjoy and would allow me to give them a wrapped gift without spending a lot. I gave them their presents at the same time and my nephew's mother laughed when she opened hers and laughed harder when she saw what I'd given my brother. I was a little confused because I know that fantasy-themed coloring books are not typical gifts for adults in their twenties but they both like to color as much or more so than my nephew so I thought they'd enjoy them rather than thinking they were gag gifts. Rather than explain my nephew's mother handed me two presents addressed to me (the smaller of which said from Metaeo on the tag and the larger from herself and my brother). I opened the smaller present and discovered a set of markers. I opened the larger one and found... a coloring book. But not just any coloring book. I found a coloring book that was an identical twin of the one I'd picked out for my brother and what my nephew's mother thought was even funnier was the fact that they'd been debating between that one and the one that I had picked out for her.
Wrappings
My nephew's mother commented on my wrapping job at one point and asked if I couldn't find Christmas paper or if I had chosen to wrap them that way because it was inexpensive. I had to tell her that I actually had a whole roll of snowman paper at home that I'd bought but not bothered to use because I think that Christmas presents should be shiny (to better reflect the colored lights on the tree) and I had found thirty-seven and a half inch tinfoil rolls with which I was able to wrap every present I gave easily.
Special Delivery
When my brother saw one of the gifts I had wrapped but was sending back to my home town with my parents to be given to my soon-to-be-fourteen-year-old cousin he jokingly wondered why I was giving her a pizza box. I was guilty as charged. It was a pizza box. I told him: "So she'll wonder why I gave her a pizza box, of course. And it doesn't look like a pile of books this way." This will be the third year in a row I have given her a pile of books. And it's not because I work in a book store. Not really. It's because... let's put it this way: You shouldn't tell people who love to read that you hate it.
Estimated Time
Estimated time for Golfer's broken-down car to get looked at: Two weeks. Time until Christmas: Two days. Estimated time for Sean's car to break down after Golfer's did: Two days. Estimated delivery time for Chinese food on Christmas: One and a half hours. (Plus the hour it took me to locate a restaurant that was not only open but also willing to deliver on Christmas. In the snow. After six.)
Friday, December 30, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Bad Punchline: Easter Eggs
As I told my friend Chris yesterday: "I fulfilled some elusive unstated objective in a game I've been playing for a while and now for the first time in the game I am required to make some kind of economic decision that might have some affect on my stats for the rest of the game. What do I do? There's a 'menu' of options." To which he responded: "Okay. What is the menu?" And my reply to that: "Many investment institutions with long incomprehensible names." Which prompted him to express his confusion and wonder what game I was playing. I explained to him that I got a mysterious letter that showed up not through the mail but as if by magic informing me I now met the requirements (whatever they were) necessary to create a 401(k) though my place of employment. After a brief break so he could get lunch I told Chris that the menu options did not seem appetizing. Then I listed them off to him: "Money Market" "Bond" "Balanced" "Large Cap" "Mid/Small Cap" "International" He agreed that they weren't appetizing. After discussing each of them I concluded that "it is better to not bother because it would be like a savings account but really irritating to get money out of" and Chris concluded that I should watch the news instead of reading books about the economy. I decided to call it even and play Skyrim
instead because at least it would have better easter eggs.
instead because at least it would have better easter eggs.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Bad Punchline: Waiting in Line
I realized something the other day and had been waiting impatiently to see one of my coworkers so I could share this observation with her. "I realized something mildly creepy." I started. "You're so hot there's a waiting list to ask you out when you become single again. Two different guys I know have asked to know when you're single again if that happens." True story. Two different male friends of mine have asked to be informed if she becomes single again. Sadly for them she mentioned to me today that she's past the point in her life where she'd be willing to date a non-vegetarian.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Why I Hate Webster
I'm going to come right out and say it. Noah Webster was a hypocritical jerk. I hate him for all his efforts to improve and reform spelling and education in America. Though history extols him as the "Father of American Scholarship and Education" and describes him as being a spelling reformer who was of the belief that spelling rules for the English language were unnecessarily complex this only serves to better highlight his hypocracy. If you weren't aware Webster is also the father of the modern American dictionary (though he was not, by any means, the first to publish an American dictionary) and to this day many dictionaries bear his name (best known being the Merriam-Webster dictionary).
As any current or former American school child can tell you spelling words in 'American English' is difficult, spelling tests are a particular form of punishment teachers like to exact once per week, and 'spelling bees' are to be avoided like the plague as not only do they expect you to spell things incorrectly they expect you to do it in front of a live audience so your embarassment might provide them entertainment. Mnemonics like 'i before e except after c' and 'bears eat candy and usually spill everything' (to spell 'because') are incredibly common. And all this is after the spelling reform and standardization so successfully implemented by Webster. Aside from dropping 'u' from certain words (ex. 'color' from 'colour') I can't say that he did much to actually improve the situation in any meaningful way. I mean, standardized spelling makes sense and allows us to more easily communicate with one-another especially in the modern era of the internet, but when the standard was based on nothing but the arbitrary distinctions of one man it doesn't make a lot of sense to bother with.
In modern times we are shackled by the status quo with all our machinery that is already calibrated for the unweildy version of our language and practically dozens of people who have bothered to master the spelling of words like 'Dryaonnajaq' (a fresh water fish) but Webster had no such restrictions. In a new country lacking in dictionaries, spelling standards, teaching standards and the like he had the opportunity to really reform spelling and unshackle it from confusion. Webster failed to do this in a spectacular way if only because he himself was the one who thought that English spelling rules were too complex. He abjectly failed to make American English any less difficult than its over-seas progenitor. Despite wanting the language to be determined by and for the people the way the government in America was by and for the people he went ahead and decided the standards for spelling and pronunciation on his own and by teaching several generations of children these new rules via his 'blue-backed spellers' he effectively mired the language in silent letters, 'soft' and 'hard' consonant sounds as well as 'long' and 'short' vowels and seemingly more exceptions to the rules than unexceptional words.
The only logical way to lay out a language and standardize it is to have one letter for each possible phoneme (each distinct sound in a language) and to have written words consist soleley of the letters necessary to make the phonemes in each spoken word. Obviously we would have to add some letters to the alphabet to do this and take an average of the current pronounciation to decide how to spell certain words. After a generation or two, however, there would be no arguing about the pronounciation of certain words because children would learn that the proper way to enunciate words is by the phoneme-based letters that make them up because there would simply be no letters that made more than one sound and no two letters that made the same sound. We would also have to determine the meaning of all homophones based on context clues but we already do this every day in spoken language so I doubt it would cause any more problems in our written language than it does verbally. We would also have to learn more letters and change our keyboards to accommodate them. Those are the downsides. The upsides are equally-obvious. It would be easy if not intuitive to know how to spell even the longest and most technically complex words and upon reading a word for the first time it would be as intuitive and easy to know how it is meant to be spoken aloud. There woud be little need for spellchecker. There would also be little competition in spelling bees and no call for spelling tests. I feel like the trade-off would be pretty reasonable, actually.
Webster did not lay out a logical language. He laid out an arbitrary one that has hindered many children and discouraged them from reaching their full potential because of its difficulty. He sought a reform that did little in the way of reforming besides anchoring our language firmly in unnecessarily complex spelling rules. He did do some worthwhile things like help to make schools secular. But the thing for which he is best-known is the very thing he seriously screwed up.
As any current or former American school child can tell you spelling words in 'American English' is difficult, spelling tests are a particular form of punishment teachers like to exact once per week, and 'spelling bees' are to be avoided like the plague as not only do they expect you to spell things incorrectly they expect you to do it in front of a live audience so your embarassment might provide them entertainment. Mnemonics like 'i before e except after c' and 'bears eat candy and usually spill everything' (to spell 'because') are incredibly common. And all this is after the spelling reform and standardization so successfully implemented by Webster. Aside from dropping 'u' from certain words (ex. 'color' from 'colour') I can't say that he did much to actually improve the situation in any meaningful way. I mean, standardized spelling makes sense and allows us to more easily communicate with one-another especially in the modern era of the internet, but when the standard was based on nothing but the arbitrary distinctions of one man it doesn't make a lot of sense to bother with.
In modern times we are shackled by the status quo with all our machinery that is already calibrated for the unweildy version of our language and practically dozens of people who have bothered to master the spelling of words like 'Dryaonnajaq' (a fresh water fish) but Webster had no such restrictions. In a new country lacking in dictionaries, spelling standards, teaching standards and the like he had the opportunity to really reform spelling and unshackle it from confusion. Webster failed to do this in a spectacular way if only because he himself was the one who thought that English spelling rules were too complex. He abjectly failed to make American English any less difficult than its over-seas progenitor. Despite wanting the language to be determined by and for the people the way the government in America was by and for the people he went ahead and decided the standards for spelling and pronunciation on his own and by teaching several generations of children these new rules via his 'blue-backed spellers' he effectively mired the language in silent letters, 'soft' and 'hard' consonant sounds as well as 'long' and 'short' vowels and seemingly more exceptions to the rules than unexceptional words.
The only logical way to lay out a language and standardize it is to have one letter for each possible phoneme (each distinct sound in a language) and to have written words consist soleley of the letters necessary to make the phonemes in each spoken word. Obviously we would have to add some letters to the alphabet to do this and take an average of the current pronounciation to decide how to spell certain words. After a generation or two, however, there would be no arguing about the pronounciation of certain words because children would learn that the proper way to enunciate words is by the phoneme-based letters that make them up because there would simply be no letters that made more than one sound and no two letters that made the same sound. We would also have to determine the meaning of all homophones based on context clues but we already do this every day in spoken language so I doubt it would cause any more problems in our written language than it does verbally. We would also have to learn more letters and change our keyboards to accommodate them. Those are the downsides. The upsides are equally-obvious. It would be easy if not intuitive to know how to spell even the longest and most technically complex words and upon reading a word for the first time it would be as intuitive and easy to know how it is meant to be spoken aloud. There woud be little need for spellchecker. There would also be little competition in spelling bees and no call for spelling tests. I feel like the trade-off would be pretty reasonable, actually.
Webster did not lay out a logical language. He laid out an arbitrary one that has hindered many children and discouraged them from reaching their full potential because of its difficulty. He sought a reform that did little in the way of reforming besides anchoring our language firmly in unnecessarily complex spelling rules. He did do some worthwhile things like help to make schools secular. But the thing for which he is best-known is the very thing he seriously screwed up.
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