A Linguistic Idyll III

A Sub-prime Lexicon

Money: debt.
Wealth: debt.
Credit: debt.
Treasury Bill: debt.
Bond: debt.
Asset: debt.
Leverage: debt.
Commercial Paper: debt.
Investment: debt.

Bull market: market with debt.
Bear market: market without debt.
Inflation: too much debt.
Deflation: too little debt.
Federal Reserve: official debt printing machine.
Cash injection: debt injection.
Liquidity: availability of debt.
Illiquidity: shortage of debt.
Home ownership: lifelong debt.
Mortgage: debt you cannot afford.
Housing bubble: debt bubble
Ownership society: debt society.
Market index: debt index
Hedge fund: gambling-with-debt fund.
Private Equity: short-term profit long-term debt.
Leverage buy out: buying with debt.
Interest rate: price of debt.
GDP rate increase: increase in debt.
Economists: debt-mongers.
Banks: debt-pushers.

Growth: more debt.
Recession: no more debt.
Depression: debt is due.
Economic Crash: debt is repaid.

The Butterfly in a Graph

The so-called ‘butterfly effect’ is a very important scientific concept that the general public should be aware of, unfortunately it has been popularised using the obligatory oversimplified mental image of a butterfly causing a storm, etc.

Those kinds of oversimplifications-that has been popular since Sputnik made the headlines-are favoured by the journalists who copy them from Wikipedia without really understanding them and paste them into their articles to add some padding and give the appearance of understanding where there is none. If one does not understand the concept beforehand he will not be helped by these mental images that simplify too much and inform too little.

But the concept remains important and has to be convoyed to those who wouldn’t understand the mathematical definition, so what is the alternative to the oversimplified mental image? How about a simple image?

Weekly Lesson (3)

“No community embarks on a great enterprise without fortifying itself with the belief that from some points of view its motives are lofty and disinterested…Fanaticism is not a cause of war. It is the means which helps savage peoples to fight. It is the spirit which enables them to combine—the great common object before which all personal or tribal disputes become insignificant.”

–Winston S. Churchill, The River War, chapter 1.

Scale Appreciation in Modern Science

The worst thing that happened to science in the last fifty years is the invention of the super-computer, while the great computational power of these machines made it possible to solve some problems using the latest scientific theory it has also been a barrier to the development of newer and more efficient theories.

Almost all resources have been put towards developing better computational implementations and bigger computational capacity; while very little has been devoted to developing theories that need less computation.

A Linguistic Idyll II

Speaking ‘Literally’

“People got killed last week, literally killed”
                                              - A financial analyst, August 2007.

At first look it seems that the word ‘literally’ was misused in this sentence, but further consideration will show that it was used correctly and that the resulting confusion is due to a fundamental weakness in the English language.

To get ‘killed’ in the financial sphere is to loose all financial stake and cease to be an active actor, mirroring the finality of death in the biological sphere. This figurative use is then extended by exaggeration to all large loses. So the word ‘literally’ refers to the literal sense in the financial sphere and not the literal sense of the word itself.

Despite the above example the word ‘literally’ is a word regularly misused, thus joining the majority words in the English language; to be more correct the language spoken in England, with roots in Saxon, Danish, German, Greek, Latin (medieval, late, etc.) and all Latin-based languages, this mangled core is then extended with words from all over the world (Arabic, Hindu, etc.).

To add to the confusion most words are not used in their original sense or in a modified sense, or are used in a figurative sense, or adopted from special usage (Maritime, etc.) or used (and misused) differently by different generations. The result of all this is that most people don’t say what they mean or actually mean what they say.

The least suitable language has become the world’s lingua franca; the confusion of life is reflected and multiplied in the language.

Kitano in America

Brother, directed by Takeshi Kitano, starring Takeshi Kitano and Omar Epps.

Takeshi Kitano is a Japanese filmmaker, actor, TV personality and comedian; outside of Japan he is known only through his films, his most known is HANA-BI, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1997.

There is a long tradition in Hollywood of importing talent from other countries, at one time or another directors were imported from Germany, Italy, England and The Three China’s (Mainland, Taiwan & Hong Kong); after HANA-BI’s success they wanted Japan’s latest international director, Takeshi Kitano.

Weekly Lesson (2)

“We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and   if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it   we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.”

-Hegel’s Philosophy of History, §26

Redreaming the dream

Iain Pears’s The Dream of Scipio, 2002, about hundred and sixty-five thousands words in three parts spanning 392 pages.

Three characters separated by time but connected by a single text. The first character writes the text, but only the second character is able to demonstrate the courage expressed in that text, while both the first and third fail. The narrative jumps from one story to the other with the connection only ‘understood’ at the end of the narrative.

You would be forgiven if you thought the above is about the film The Hours (2002, directed by Stephen Daldry) but actually it is about the novel The Dream of Scipio.

Re-Examining Bigger, Faster and More Part 2

[Note: this piece was written some time ago and the numbers are those of 2006]

Some people blame the high oil prices on China and India, how true is that accusation?
First let’s take a look at the size of the three biggest countries in the world:

A Linguistic Idyll I

Badly Adverbed

“This war was very badly mismanaged”
                                           - John McCain, 2007.

I know what it is to ‘badly manage’ an enterprise, it is to manage it in a wrong or deficient way and thus fail to achieve the desired outcome or achieve it outside the set parameters. I, also, know what it is to ‘mismanage’ an enterprise; it is to manage it in the wrong or not the best direction and either fail to achieve the desired result or achieve it outside the set parameters.

‘Badly mismanaged’ is a double negative, which used to be almost prohibited; to understand why we must look at the ‘actual sense’ of what is being said: If we understand ‘to mismanage’ as to manage in the wrong direction then to do it badly is to fail to take the wrong direction and thus in ‘actual sense’ take the right direction!

Because ‘mismanaged’ is negative we must use a positive adverb in qualifying it, for example we could say ‘brilliantly mismanaged’ or ‘amazingly mismanaged’. To further illustrate the point, a synonym of ‘mismanage’ is ‘manage badly’, thus the adverb ‘badly’ is already contained in the sense of the word and there is no need to add it to the sentence.

In the last decades the prohibition of a double negative has fallen to the way side and people seem unable to grasp the inter-relationship of words in a single sentence. So that when the sentence is negative all words, adverbs and adjectives must be negative; the conformity of life imposes itself on the language.

Gertrude & Claudius

John Updike’s Gertrude & Claudius, 2000, about sixty-five thousands words in three parts spanning 210 pages.

Here is a short review I shared with a couple of friends some years ago:

Weekly Lesson (1)

“Experimental physics will present the rational science of Nature - as history will present the science of human affairs and actions - in an external picture, which mirrors the philosophic notion.”

-Hegel’s Shorter Logic, §16 [my emphasis]

Re-Examining Bigger, Faster and More Part 1

[Note: this piece was written some time ago and the numbers are those of 2006]

Some people claim that China is the second biggest economy of the world, they give this list as a proof:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29
so: USA=$12,277,583M  & China=$9,412,361M
    USA= number 1     & China= number 2

But this list is not real numbers, it’s made with statistical mumbo-jumbo which very few people in the world understand (always a bad sign); you can try for yourself at this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

The real numbers come from this list

Barry Unsworth

Born in 1930, his books include:

* Pascali’s Island, short-listed for the 1980 Booker Prize.
* Stone Virgin (1985).
* Sacred Hunger, joint winner of the 1992 Booker Prize.
* Morality Play, short-listed for the 1995 Booker Prize.
* Losing Nelson (1999).
* The Songs of the Kings (2002).
* The Ruby in Her Navel (2006).

The three novels I read were all historical set in different areas and eras and written in different style. Below is a short review of each one:

The Illusionist vs. The Prestige

The Illusionist, 2006, directed by Neil Burger, starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell.
The Prestige, 2006, directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine and David Bowie.

Here is something I posted on an Internet forum about The Illusionist a few months ago: