How Sayeth?

Posted on by
4

From Barb, the headline of the week, discovered on the BBC’s website:

FAR-RIGHT EXTREMISTS CHASED THROUGH
LONDON BY WOMEN DRESSED AS BADGERS

*
If trenchant quotations were properly recognized as a public asset, Mark would be a good candidate for the cabinet post overseeing the storehouses. Recently I came across a few he had assembled when planning to launch a new web log.

From computer pioneer Edsger Dijkstra, advice to a promising researcher:

“Only do what only you can do.”

Djikstra on patience:

“Waiting is a very funny activity. You can’t wait twice as fast.”

And from Steve Mirsky, Scientific American columnist:

“I looked up ‘umpteen’ . . . the number of incorrect ball and strike calls made in a Major League Baseball game.”

*
Physicist Richard Feynman, on learning that 98% of the atoms in the human body – including the brain – are replaced each year:

“Last week’s potatoes! They now can remember what was going on in your mind a year ago.”

The average person takes in a ton and a half of matter a year, and your new atoms have to learn your childhood memories.

*
By law, any group of quotations must include some ridicule of poststructuralist literary critics such as deconstructionist Jacques Derrida. This excerpt comes from William H. Gass in the London Review of Books:

“The poet composes the poem; the critic explains it. The poet is inspired to write the lines; the critic interprets them. But suppose, as has been proposed by followers of Jacques Derrida, there is no right reading of the work, no correct sense for it. Out of a cage of calculations, suppose we are free to choose the pigeon we like best.”

If everything can be taken to mean anything, it hardly matters what words (if any) appear in the poem, or in what order. The search is on for a new literary fad, possibly incorporating the Higgs boson.

*
Then there’s Chauncey DePew, one of those familiar names of utterly unfamiliar people (He was Cornelius Vanderbilt’s attorney and a U.S. Senator from 1899 to 1911). Here is Chauncey’s take on physical fitness:

“I get all my exercise as a pall bearer for my friends who exercise.”

*
Finally, an oft-repeated gem from Henry J. Kaiser:

“When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.”

Book Rebuke Section

Posted on by
Reply

Without bad books, good ones could not shine forth by comparison. So we review bad books, but to limit the damage we limit the reviews to two lines or less and publish them nine years late – most recently Clive Cussler’s Atlantic Odyssey.

This one is about Michael Crichton’s State of Fear (2004)

*

A caricature of science is the engine driving this caricature of fiction and its cast of caricatures.

Figures of Speeches

Posted on by
3

By popular request, here is a treatise on economic statistics:

“Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”

Well, enough of that subject. I heard that quote (attributed to Mark Twain) when I was eight or ten years old, and I remember it every time Paul Ryan is interviewed by some post-turtle like Wolf Blitzer about one of his smoke-and-mirrors budgets.

So I leave you with the definitive (also borrowed) example of an economic statistic, courtesy of Stephanie Coontz in the New York Times (“When Numbers Mislead,” May 25).

She notes that in 2011 the average household income in Steubenville, Ohio was $46,341.

If Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey were to move there tomorrow, Steubenville’s average income would instantly jump to $75,263.

Then Steubenvillians would be exactly as happy as you’re going to be when Paul Ryan uncorks his next bottle of snake oil.

You now know everything there is to know about economic statistics.

Attention, Unlicensed Readers

Posted on by
2

Is your Reader’s Certification up to date?

The reason I ask, I’m an unlicensed writer. Normally, really good readers can make sense of eccentric writing, and good writers can make things clear even to poor readers. But if we’re both arrested at the same time for practicing reading and writing without a license, how are we going to bail each other out?

In the 1950s, only 5% of working Americans needed licenses or certifications to practice their specialties. Now that percentage is 30% — and still climbing.

Unlike you and me, trade associations have some influence on legislators – and can buy more of it.

Who ever heard of a Washington law firm that lobbies for freelancers? Or readers? Or shade-tree mechanics? Or tutors, or tooth-whiteners?

But an association of, say, beauty parlors can lobby the Louisiana legislature to make it illegal to beautify people without an official certificate of accreditation. Then a licensing board (made up of established beauticians, of course) is appointed to set rigorous requirements and licensure procedures.

It’s an old story. Once they get into the club, they want to raise the standards of admission. The beautician application process turns into a 10-year ordeal including required courses that only established beauticians are qualified to teach — for a fee. And then the board turns down most of the applicants despite all that, on one technicality or another.

New competition is held to a trickle, prices are free to rise, and there’s no incentive to improve services — all in the name of consumer protection.

In truth, it’s a license to print money.

Of course you need a license to drive (that’s not included in the 30%), and if you want to go around arresting people you find offensive, you’d better have a badge. If that leads to trouble, you may need a board-certified surgeon.

But in many if not most other cases, licensing is the creature of monopolistic business or professional associations who find it cheaper to hire lobbyists and bribe politicians than to do R&D, innovate, improve their product, and actually earn their customers’ loyalty.

I mentioned tooth-whiteners. That’s the latest licensing scuffle, written up in the Times last Sunday. A lady with a stunning smile invented a tooth-whitening kit called BriteWhite that proved popular at salons and spas.

Customers were smiling, too, whitening their teeth for about $100 instead of the $300 or $400 it would cost in a dentist’s office.

Then BriteWhite’s inventor – Joyce Osborn in Guntersville, Alabama — was served with a cease and desist order from the state dental board, demanding that she stop practicing dentistry without a license.

It turns out that state boards of dentistry across the country are taking similar actions, attacking the many tooth-whitening products and services that have sprung up. As the dentistry boards are keenly aware, the average dental practice makes $25,000 a year from tooth whitening. That’s real money, so don’t try this at home.

You may think you don’t have a dog in this hunt, but the presumptive authority of the dental police could also demand that you cease and desist from brushing your teeth unless you obtain certification as a dental hygienist.

As far as that goes, are you sure you can legally move your sofa? Or re-pot that geranium with a dash of Miracle-Gro?

There are certifying boards for interior design, you know, and for soil science. Also for radio operators, French wine scholars, and certified hospitality instructors.

Surely the unholy collusions of web log readers and writers can’t be allowed to continue without proper supervision.

Switchback English

Posted on by
Reply

Some passages in English reverse the field repeatedly and get you coming and going. This, for example, was a front page headline in the New York Times a few years ago:

FEDERAL JUDGE EXTENDS BAN
ON END TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Is that good or bad?

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Three lefts sometimes do. I once thought you could sort out switchback expressions by charting each positive and negative reference as a “Yes” or a “No” and then counting them up. To wit,

FEDERAL JUDGE
EXTENDS (yes)
BAN (no)
ON END (no)
TO AFFIRMATIVE (yes)
ACTION (yes)

This would give the “yes” vote a 3-2 majority, so the ruling would favor affirmative action. But if “affirmative action” is taken as a single, redundant affirmative, then the tally is even at 2-2. So much for that theory..

I yearn for a simpler time when, as James Thurber recalled it, his enigmatic friend Christabelle (who had promised her butler that she would write him into her next novel as the uncharacter of a nonbutler) would respond to someone’s assertion by saying,

“That’s not unmeaningless.”

The Mother’s Milk of Politics

Posted on by
6

This will have to be a short post because I have a lot of checks to write in support of worthy charities who work to save drowning kittens and shade-bound petunias.

These are 501(c)(4) groups, otherwise known as “social welfare” organizations, who have solemnly assured the IRS that they wouldn’t dream of subverting my eleemosynary intentions by using the money to support crooked Republican politicians or to smear honest Democrats – or, vice-versa, theoretically, but we all know where the floodtide of dark money rises.

And, no, it’s not from “big labor,” which now consists of the last 16 guys who carry both a union card and a nail-driver.

My first check will go to American Crossroads, Karl Rove’s slush fund, which I assume uses the money to plant crown vetch and ornamental grasses around the off-ramps and leave Gideon bibles at toll booths. I’m fairly sure they’re clean because last November all of Karl Rove’s favored candidates lost.

Next comes the Mother Teresa Puppy Pampering Patriots Fund, then the Seraphic Redemption Coalition, which is devoted to rehabilitating sleazy crooks by getting them good-paying jobs as clowns or congressmen. Otherwise, they’d all be in jail, and it would cost us a fortune to feed them.

So many are in desperate need:

Quid Pro Quo (must be a Catholic charity), Mother’s Milk for Maggots (Who knew they were even endangered?), Eye of Newt, Unplanned Parenthood, Saturday Night Special Olympics, Greased Palm Sunday, Healthy Food and Uzis for Cub Scouts, Far-Righteous Oligarchs for Christ.

A few others look a little fringy, and you can’t really be sure they actually deserve their special tax status. Thanks to a few bad apples who hold a majority in the House and a few bumblers and bunglers in the IRS, the 501(c)(4) groups don’t have to disclose whether their donors are schoolteachers, gospel singers, animal shelters, bailed-out bankers, polluting industrialists, foreign intelligence agencies, drug lords, gun dealers, or terrorists.

And thanks to conservatives on the Supreme Court, there’s no legal limit as to how big the bribe.

I wish I could be sure I’ve picked the right “social welfare” groups, but they’re all cloaked in secrecy. I wonder why.

Just to be on the safe side, I’ll limit my contributions to $2 apiece.

High Court Lowdown

Posted on by
Reply

UPDATE: Barb’s lawsuit reaches Supreme Court.

Should a private company be permitted to patent human genes?

The high court will soon decide. The best known case is that of Myriad Genetics, which holds patents on two DNA sequences and charges fees to doctors who need to reference these genes for diagnoses and genome research.

Barb’s case is less well known, but she’s counter-suing a company called Barb’s Fingernail Genetics, which claims to hold a patent on DNA in the fingernail of her right index finger. The company got a district court order requiring Barb to pay licensing fees if she wants to use that finger in typing U, J, and M, or in buttoning buttons or feeding her cat Andy.

Her suit points out that even if she were willing to pay the licensing fee, Barb would be unable to write a check to Barb’s Fingernail Genetics without having first paid a licensing fee to use the finger to write the check, which is an infinite regression and therefore unconstitutional.

LATEST DEVELOPMENT: Barb’s attorneys have demanded that Justice Scalia recuse himself from the case due to obvious conflicts of interest, given his unlicensed public use of fingers.

The Justice also owns stock in a company called Bushy Eyebrow Genomics.

Ethical Drugs?

Posted on by
Reply

It used to be – still is, at least in the dictionary – that ethical drugs were those that required a doctor’s prescription.

Today? The term “ethical drugs” is devolving into an oxymoron.

Three years ago, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis paid $443 million to settle charges it bribed doctors with entertainment, travel, consultancies, and speaking engagements to get them to prescribe its drugs. Novartis promised never to do it again.

Last week, the company was sued by New York state for doing all that and worse – like giving kickbacks to pharmacies — to promote an immune suppressant called Myfortic and a few other drugs.

And last year, as the New York Times reported in an editorial, GlaxoSmith-Klein paid a $3 billion fine for health fraud, and two other companies paid $1.5 billion or more.

The Times thinks stronger remedies are needed – like excluding certain drugs or their makers from selling to Medicare or Medicaid after a criminal settlement.

The rest of us are left to wonder – where is all this money coming from?

You get a prescription and buy a drug (or you don’t – it hardly matters because you’re going to pay for it anyway). What, exactly, are you financing?

First, you’re paying for the actual drug – including the costs of developing and marketing it.

That includes the millions spent on TV ads and on glorious packaging.

And the illegal bribes and other goodies for a few judas-goat prescribing doctors.

And kickbacks for a few conniving pharmacies.

And the armies of lobbyists they pay to get these crimes declared legal.

And the New York law firms the drug company hires if it gets caught.

And the huge fines they have to pay – that’s your money they’re using.

And the inflated healthcare insurance premiums the HMOs have to charge because drugs are getting so expensive.

And rising Medicare premiums – same reason.

And the higher taxes we’ll all pay to keep Medicare solvent.

That’s ten times you’ve paid for a drug you aren’t even using.

But if you get really lucky and contract the very disease this drug was designed to cure – why, just think! Naah. By that time, you won’t have any money left to pay for it.

Belated Rave Review

Posted on by
5

Thirteen years ago, Tim Weiner, then a reporter for the New York Times, wrote about the street names in Mexico City. I saved the article, e-mailed it to a few friends, and recently came across it once again – an excerpt is reprinted below.

(Weiner has since left the Times and has won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award for his writings on national security issues.)

*

Mexico City: This is not a place where people live on 88th and Third, as in Manhattan, or 35th and P, as in Washington. This is a place where people live on Heart and on Soul. They live on Forest of Light, Mirror of Water, Forest of Miracles, Garden of Memories, Tree of Fire, Forest of Secrets, Sea of Dreams.

Surreal street names can reflect hard realities:

Work is long. Love and Happiness are short. Good Luck crosses Hope, then hits a dead end.

Intersections become works of imagination: the Volga River flows into the Nile, Beethoven meets Bach, the Himalayas cross the Alps.

And Comprehension ends in Silence.

(Ed Note: That’s none other than Juan Sebastian Bach. The Times showed the street sign. There’s further background in the first comment.)

NOTES & QUOTES

Posted on by
Reply

The Envelope, Please

This is a new category for us – and probably should be a category for the Oscars:

*
Best (Worst) Subtitles from Foreign Language Films

I once arrived late for a black and white Eisenstein epic (I think it was Alexander Nevsky) in an avant garde film series – and promptly encountered a subtitle for the ages.

The scene is a wintry dusk. A fierce battle is in progress between heroic Russian defenders and invading Teutonic Knights – the ones wearing black coal scuttles on their heads – but all of that is somewhere in the background. Two men riding furiously on horseback crest a ridge, plunging toward the camera, and one of the horses slips and falls sideways, taking his rider with him into the snow.

A loud, unintelligible yell echoes through the frigid air, and a subtitle pops onto the screen:

“The Horse keeps falling down!”

I’ve long wondered if that fall was planned. Film stock was expensive, and a retake might have been out of the question anyway, due to injuries. Either way, the life of a subtitle writer is terrible hard.

*
Best News Lead
… this by Vivian Yee on the front page of last Saturday’s New York Times:

It started with the accusations of sex behind the back pond. Of late-night parties that begot stitches and adultery. Favoritism. Misspending. Bullying.

Since then, the police have been called, e-mail access has been revoked and Robert’s Rules of Order repeatedly cited. Expletives have been tossed around. Herb lovers have nearly come to blows.

A tool shed burned to the ground; the word arson was uttered.
So goes life these days at the Roosevelt Island Garden Club…

*
Best Intro to an Autobiography

It never had occurred to me to write a book … it’s an autobiography and it’s unauthorized and I’m suing myself.

…from Dick Van Dyke’s My Lucky Life

*
Worst Human Resources Robots

From a story in The Economist on software that companies are using to screen candidates for possible employment:

Algorithms and big data are powerful tools. Wisely used, they can help match the right people with the right jobs … (but in one case) the software rejected every one of many good applicants because the firm in question had specified that they must have held a particular job title – one that existed at no other company.

And from the same article:

There is no point asking jobseekers if they are honest. But surveys can measure honesty indirectly, by asking questions like “How good at computers are you?” and later, “What does control-V do on a word processing program?” A study of 20,000 workers showed that more honest people tend to perform better and stay at the job longer. For some reason, however, they make less effective salespeople.

*
Best Liked Belly-Putter

Masters winner Adam Scott is known for the kind of genial personality that makes him everybody’s favorite practice round partner, reports the Times.

At Scott’s postround news conference, journalists from all over the world greeted him with a round of applause even more enthusiastic than what followed the announcement in the press room that alcoholic beverages were available in the dining area

*
Bronze Medal for Security Chief Memorandum

We’ve retired the Gold Medal in this category. The author’s name is lost in the mists of history, but the memo emeritus reads:

“The beatings will be discontinued once morale improves.”

And we assume a permanent silver medalist belongs with some announcement heard over an airport PA system somewhere – we just haven’t heard it yet.

But the bronze medal goes to the security chief at a software company named Ingres, where Barb used to work. The gentleman had just ascended to this lofty perch when the company held its annual fire drill, and he decided to strike a positive note to earn the future respect and compliance of notoriously undisciplined information scientists, mathematicians, and software developers. Immediately after the fire drill, all hands got a message signed by the Director of Building Security:

“Thank you for your calm building egress mannerism tactics.”

*
Posthumous Citation for Patriotism.

Attributed to the late Bill Veeck, owner of the Chicago White Sox:

Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before each game. You want us to pay income taxes, too?