Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Cab Thoughts

"Some people have a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. I believe that it is easier to establish an absolute and despotic government amongst a people in which the conditions of society are equal, than amongst any other; and I think that, if such a government were once established amongst such a people, it would not only oppress men, but would eventually strip each of them of several of the highest qualities of humanity. Despotism, therefore, appears to me peculiarly to be dreaded in democratic times."--deTocqueville


Employment numbers are up--but time at work is down. Although the U.S. economy added about 900,000 jobs since September, the workweek dropped from 34.5 hours to 34.2,  equivalent to losing about one million jobs during this same period. The difference between the loss of the equivalent of one million jobs and the gain of 900,000 new jobs yields a net effect of the equivalent of 100,000 lost jobs. There are all sorts of explanations--cold winter, the Affordable Care Act--but the decline is undeniable.

Only 93 of the 3,200 children's books published in 2013 were about black people.

A Gallup poll shows that about a third of Americans (36%) believe global warming poses any threat to their way of life. The subset of Americans who believe global warming will never happen has doubled to 18% since 1997. Interestingly, the poll questions are written as if global warming is real or a given.

The wealthiest U.S. neighborhood is Greenwich, Conn., ZIP code 06830.

Who was...Galina Starovoitova?

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a poet and the founder of San Francisco's City Lights bookstore, best known for his collection A Coney Island of the Mind. He was associated with the Beat movement in San Francisco and put on trial for obscenity after publishing Allen Ginsberg's landmark poem Howl. He was acquitted. Amazingly he is 94.

The Etruscans are generally believed to have spoken a non-Indo-European language.
The military has dropped rape charges against Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair against a captain in intelligence after it has been revealed    the captain might have lied under oath at a pretrial hearing in January. The girl had been the general’s lover for three years. That relationships are becoming less and less formalized raises some serious problems in law.

Westboro Baptist Church founder and engine Rev. Fred Phelps Sr. has died. This is apparently a philosophical big deal as the church claims death is the result of specific sin so how do we view the good Reverend? In an interview, a son predicted that some in the church would find a "palatable justification" to continue on with Westboro Baptist. I would bet that is true. Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/10/westboro-baptist-church-and-retirement.html

In a new two-year study published in the journal Plos One, University of Utah neuroscientists scanned the brains of more than 1,000 people, ages 7 to 29, while they were lying quietly or reading, measuring their functional lateralization – the specific mental processes taking place on each side of the brain. They broke the brain into 7,000 regions, and while they did uncover patterns for why a brain connection might be strongly left or right-lateralized, they found no evidence that the study participants had a stronger left or right-sided brain network.

Next year the Commerce Department plans to give up next year its oversight of Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, to the "global Internet community"  The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the telecom branch of the United Nations, has been demanding  rules governing the Internet be rewritten. It proposes inspection authority that would allow it to monitor and censor otherwise encrypted content on the Internet. Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the ITU, released a report in May 2013 outlining groundwork for Internet governance and regulatory topics. The Americans want to expand control to "stakeholders," as in men holding sharp stakes.

"&" is the "ampersand." The shape of the character--&--emerged  in the first century. Roman scribes wrote in cursive, so when they wrote the Latin word et, which means “and,” they linked the e and t with the swirling "&." Over time the combined letters came to signify the word “and” in English as well. The word “ampersand” came many years later when “&” was actually part of the English alphabet. In the early 1800s, school children reciting their ABCs concluded the alphabet with the "&." It would have been confusing to say “X, Y, Z, and” so the students said, “and per se and,” “Per se” meaning “by itself.” Over time, “and per se and” was slurred together into the word we use today: "ampersand."  That makes "ampersand" another great word: a "mondegreen." 

A recent article in "The Economist" states there is a 2% annual earnings bonus if one learns a second language. Some languages are worth more than others.

The "Valley of Death"--into which rode the 600 whom Tennyson commemorated in his epic poem recounting the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade--was in the Crimea. The famous order, delivered to Field Marshall Lord Lucan read:  "Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front — follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns — Troop Horse Artillery may accompany — French cavalry is on your left. R Airey. Immediate" The vagueness of the order (which guns and where) was never challenged. Lucan ordered the Earl of Cardigan to lead the 600 men of the 13th Light Dragoons, the 17th Lancers, the 11th Hussars,the 4th Light Dragoons, and the 8th Hussars into the teeth of the Russian battery two kilometers distant, with further guns flanking their advance on either side. They were, of course, cut to pieces:

The Charge of the Light Brigade

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
   Someone had blundered.
   Theirs not to make reply,
   Theirs not to reason why,
   Theirs but to do and die.
   Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
   Rode the six hundred.

IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
   All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
   Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
   Not the six hundred.

V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
   Left of six hundred.

VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
   All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
   Noble six hundred!



AAAAaaaaannnnnndddd......a graph on the relative second language "bonus":


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