Inblogmunicado
Obviously Organon is on a bit of a respite–a furlough, as we Californians are fond of having. I’ve discovered to my surprise that one thing that is harder and more time-consuming than packing and moving is to actually arrive at the destination of one’s move. Or at the destination of my move at any rate. Could be another week or two before I get back to anything resembling regular posting.
I Am a Citizen of the State of California
I now reside in the state of California. I intend to stay, indefinitely, in the state of California. Therefore, says the Supreme Court of the United States, I am a citizen of California.
That was easy. The 2500-mile drive and the late-night flat tire, on the other hand…not so much.
Long Haul
I drove 760 miles today, and my bones are vibrating as if I were still humming down the road. It’s like little internal combustion explosions are shaking my innards. Anyway, after two full days and almost 1400 miles on I-40, I am struck by this very obvious fact: the United States of America is a really big country. And it is amazing how much of it is relatively flat and basically shadeless. It’s just out there baking in the relentless, torrid sun.
The Thing about Ribs Is That They Are Not Proper Material for a Sandwich
Dear Memphis,
I would like to bring to your attention a few matters concerning the concept of a sandwich. A sandwich is a 100% edible food item consisting of two primary components: (1) two or more units of bread and (2) sandwich contents enclosed within the bread units, all of which, I stress, should be fully edible by ordinary human consumers. One should not have to worry that part of one’s sandwich will turn out to be wholly inedible, as would be the case with, say, a “sandwich” of tuna on a bun of concrete.
Like tuna on concrete, the stacks of barbecue ribs occupying the content portion of the “rib sandwiches” commonly served in your city arguably violate one of the central principles of sandwich formation. One is forced to disassemble one’s “sandwich” and eat its parts separately.
Such measures, it is true, are adequate to avoid damage to one’s teeth and internal organs as might otherwise result from the attempted eating of the “rib sandwich.” But there are several drawbacks to this approach. First, it undermines the unity of the sandwich, making it rather a meal of bread and ribs. And second, it undermines the utility of the bread buffer. You see, a core benefit of the sandwich form is that the bread shields the sandwich user from certain secondary attributes such as stickiness or greasiness or other non-gustatory properties of the sandwich contents.
A simple change of nomenclature would probably suffice to address these concerns. Perhaps a new city ordinance could achieve this goal and also require that every restaurant have at least one item on the menu that is green, preferably from a plant.
Day One: iPod Fail
Started my 2500-mile drive across the country today. For about two hours I was entertained by Brad DeLong’s American Economic History lecture course from iTunes university (which Austin Frakt turned me on to). Just as it was getting to the good, substantive content of the course, my iPod died. Cause unknown, prognosis uncertain. Hopefully the problem is just the car adapter, not the iPod itself. Otherwise my copious downloading of brain-stimulative entertainment will have been for naught. Perhaps I’ll find a good voodoo doctor in Memphis to help me out tomorrow.
Media Mail
My wife and I are bookish people, even if these days I am more likely to be reading blogs on my iPhone than anything in print. Even after a fairly massive purge of our shelves, spurred by our big move, we have an immense collection of books. We probably threw out (donated to Goodwill, that is) more books than most people, even avid readers, have in the first place.
How many books do we have? I’m not sure, but they fill 81 boxes weighing 1,707 pounds. Actually, though, that’s not even all of them–just the ones we sent by USPS media mail. The movers took several more boxes including those with some of the biggest, heaviest books of all. Because that’s what happens when a bookish person with a PhD in architectural history and a bookish person with a law degree move across the country. Not to mention our three-year-old’s collection, which is nothing to sneeze at either.
Adios, Varmints
For the past seven years, until this weekend, I have lived in “the South”—in a few different places in Alabama and Georgia. I grew up in Florida, which is also a southern state, obviously, though not always in the capital-s sense. All of my human neighbors over the years have been unfailingly pleasant and hospitable. But many of my non-human neighbors I most assuredly will not miss. Among them are, first and foremost, the American Cockroach; and second, the mosquito.
As I set out for the San Francisco Bay Area, where I spent almost four years after college, I am reminded of the blissful and near total absence of both of my two greatest insect nemeses. I know there are many positive reasons to love the Bay Area, but these negative reasons are frankly far more significant to me. I am, at bottom, much less a pleasure-seeker than a displeasure-avoider.
So, good-bye ye dark and hideous invaders of my psychological comfort zones, and good riddance ye baneful blood-gorging plagues. May you and your proboscises shrivel and desiccate in an evolutionary cul de sac of no consequence to anything.
Weekend Wordery: In Praise of Y’all
I grew up in Northwest Florida, so I am, geographically at least, a southerner. But I don’t have a southern accent—maybe just a touch here and there, but hardly anyone recognizes it. I don’t say “own” for the word on; I do not pronounce my name with two syllables (“gee-um”); and I do not use such phrases as “used to could.”
But I do sometimes stress the initial syllable of umbrella rather than the second. And I do, from time to time, employ the second-person plural pronoun y’all.
Now, English has an official second-person plural pronoun: you. But, on its own, you is not always adequate to the task of providing actionable information. In certain contexts, it must be supplemented, as in: “You two get out of here,” or “You are all invited.” Otherwise, you can’t tell from the context whether, for example, both of you should get out or just one of you; or if you and your whole group are invited, or just you alone. This ambiguity inevitably necessitates a request for clarification, usually including an explanation of the reason for confusion, followed by the requested clarification, and then an apology; obviously, much of that exchange would be optional, but is often socially expected.
No such problem exists in any of the European languages I’m familiar with, where typically both the pronoun and the verb inflection tell you whether the meaning is singular or plural. And it need not be a problem for us, either, because y’all is a perfectly serviceable candidate for a second-person plural pronoun in English—indeed, it already is one, whether “official” or not. So I guess the more relevant point to make is this: y’all isn’t stupid; on the contrary, it is a very useful addition to the language. And it’s time for y’all to embrace it.
Weekend Birdery: The Mosquito
The mosquito, according to leading organismal biologists, is not a bird. It does fly, and it is featured in this Weekend Birdery post. Yet it is not a bird. People in southern states sometimes like to quip that their state bird should be the mosquito, 
but as far as I can tell the distinction between birds and insects remains one of the areas of universally accepted scientific knowledge not actively disputed by conservative state and local officials in the South.
Anyway, I have two unresolved lines of inquiry concerning the biology of mosquitoes.
First: what is the trick to the way mosquitoes seem to vanish into thin air? Is there some set of tactical mosquito-flight maneuvers such that, if you knew them, you would know where to look for an offending mosquito after it has evaded your swat? For example, do they drop straight down, and/or zigzag backwards? Something different every time? In any case, if you haven’t lost track of the offender, it seems the most effective way to kill it is by clapping it between your hands. This reduces the chance that the air-flow disturbance caused by the swatting motion will simply push the mosquito out of harm’s way, as commonly results from the one-hand swat. A bazooka may work, too.
And second: wouldn’t it be better for mosquitoes, from an evolutionary perspective, if their proboscises didn’t cause such irritating reactions? I suppose the answer here is the fact that, even though the irritation leads to us making sporadic efforts to kill them, we don’t kill nearly enough of them to give rise to any selection effects.
Photograph by Darlyne A. Murawski.
From One Broken State to Another Really Broken Mega-State
Kevin Drum says my next home is in a state that is hopelessly bungled and broken, which is about how it seemed when I left in 2003. Georgia is screwed up in all sorts of ways, but California is systemically, inexorably, and constitutionally screwed up. I mean, the government of Georgia consistently exercises terrible judgment, but California’s government is actually programmed to do so automatically. And it does so on a truly frightening scale. California’s budget deficit of $19.1 billion is larger than the entire budget of the state of Georgia.
Programming Note
Tomorrow is moving day. I’ll be unplugged for much of the next week or two until our stuff lands at our new pad in the SF bay area. My spouse and youngun’ are going ahead in one of them big jet planes while I steer our stagecoach over hill and dale.
Chart Du Jour: Effects of Partial Repeal of the ACA
Via Igor Volsky, here’s a chart from a report by Jonathan Gruber (pdf) detailing what would be the effects of scaling back the Affordable Care Act:
If the nightmare scenario of the legal challenges to health reform came true and the Supreme Court struck down the individual mandate, we can all look back at this chart and figure out how much they took us for.
Crude, Degrading
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides this chart of where all the spilled Deepwater Horizon oil has gone:
Bradford Plumer summarizes:
About one-quarter of the oil is still bobbing on the sea surface or washed ashore. Another quarter has been dispersed into microscopic droplets, either by artificial chemicals or natural processes. And another quarter has been “dissolved.” All told, just 25 percent has been physically removed from the Gulf ecosystem. The rest is still lurking… somewhere.
It’s good to know that much of the oil has evaporated or been dispersed. The trouble is, as Kate Sheppard notes, that there are still “about nine and a half Exxon Valdez spills” out there.
Find the Flaw in this Argument
This is how the American Families Association reacted to the ruling by federal district court Judge Vaughan Walker that California’s Prop. 8 (banning same-sex marriage) violated the federal Constitution:
It’s also extremely problematic that Judge Walker is a practicing homosexual himself. He should have recused himself from this case, because his judgment is clearly compromised by his own sexual proclivity.
…whereas practicing heterosexuals have never been known to allow biases about their own sexual proclivity interfere with their tireless pursuit of equal justice for all? Hmmm.
Could any defense of the anti-gay agenda be more illustrative of its own failure to comprehend the meaning of equal protection of the law? It’s amazing that it’s even possible to be so oblivious to the fact that your own positions cannot withstand the very same criticisms you make against your opponents’.
Via Igor Volsky.
Weekend Wordery: Ghoughpteighbteau
Last week I blogged about spelling reform in response to a post Matt Yglesias wrote a while back. I mentioned “Ghoti,” the re-spelling of fish (with the gh from tough, the o from women, and the ti from nation) that illustrates the absurd possibilities of letter combinations in English. Another example is “Ghoughpteighbteau.” Try to work it out, if you’re in a sporting mood. I’ll even drop a hint or two in the comments. Otherwise, go straight to the answer here.
One more thing I wanted to comment on: Yglesias says “we lack an underlying set of rules to determine how letter-strings form phonemes.” But by and large that is not true. English spelling is mostly predictable and follows regular rules. According to Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct, about 84% of English words follow regular, predictable spelling patterns. And the words with the weirdest spellings (like people, women, done) are among the most commonly used words, which makes them relatively easy to memorize.
But the crux of Yglesias’ point still stands: it’s pretty hard for non-native speakers and even native speakers with little educational capital to reach levels of spelling attainment required to succeed in any venture where written communication is important. It is worth mentioning however that the reason isn’t just that English is so loopy. It’s that people who have attained sophisticated written language skills are generally intolerant of and biased against those who have not—even when there are plenty of complementary signals of intelligence and skill available. It would be interesting to explore those biases and find out how deep they run. Pretty deep, I’d guess.
About Me
- I write this blog.
-
My twitter feed:
