Category: Readings

Wayfarer’s Handbook

This small book is subtitled A Field Guide for THE INDEPENDENT TRAVELER.  Evan S. Rice is the author and he showcases much knowledge about traveling generally — without respect to any particular locale.

The irony of me reading this book is that I don’t plan to travel anywhere.  Ohio is as far south as I like to go, Chicago about as far west, and Maine is at the extreme northeastern edge of my normal journeys.  With books like this one and the National Geographic Channel, I am loathe to leave the comfort of my couch and my ready to hand supply of safe drinking water.  Not to mention air conditioning.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about another travel-type book Atlas Obscura.  My son said it was one of my best posts.  I suggested that that was because so little of the prose was original, it had largely be taken from the book.  He did not disagree, so it’s time to try that approach again.

The book defines a word I had never seen:  dromomania, which is an uncontrollable psychological urge to wander or travel.  We probably all have it to some extent.  Mine is quite local, I like to walk around.  Many people like to travel the world.  Now you know why:  you are a dromomaniac. (p. 37)

There are 1052 World Heritage sites, which are defined as “cultural or natural sites of exceptional significance, beauty, or historical relevance to humanity.”  A couple of examples in the United States are the Grand Canyon and Monticello.  Can you guess the three countries that have the most World Heritage sites? (p. 62)

Fifty-five World Heritage sites are considered endangered.  Examples include the Okapi Wildlife Preserve in Congo and the Ancient City of Bosra in Syria.  Those two countries lead the world in endangered World Heritage sites with six and five respectively.  Libya also has five endangered sites.  (p. 62)

Some countries are smaller than familiar US landmarks.  For instance, Vatican City is small than Augusta National Golf Course.  Monaco is smaller than Central Park in New York City.  Nauru is smaller than the main campus of Penn State.  Liechtenstein is smaller than Washington D.C.  (p. 101)

The oldest hotel in the world is in Yamanashi, Japan.  It has 35 rooms and has been continuously in operation since 705 AD.  (p. 169)  The oldest restaurant in the world is Sobrino de Botin (Botin Restaurant) in Madrid, Spain.  It has been continuously operated since 1725.  The signature dish is cochinillo asado (roast suckling pig), which my son describes as delicious.

The book mentions another phobia that many of us have without knowing that there is a word for it.  “Nomophobia” is the fear or anxiety associated with being without a cell phone or cell phone service.  (p. 186)

Italy has 51 World Heritage sites, China has 50, and Spain has 45.  The Sobrino de Botin is not one of them.

There are 44 landlocked countries in the world, but only two that are double-landlocked, meaning that they are landlocked and border only countries that are also landlocked. (p. 196)  Hint:  until the breakup of the Soviet Union there was only one double-landlocked country.

Another new word: asolare.  I love new words, though this one is Italian, so it probably doesn’t count.[1]  We all should asolare more often.  It means to pass time in a meaningless but delightful way.  I’m not sure whether this covers watching TV.  (p. 226)

Fun Factoids:

94% of people in the world have never flown in an airplane.

66% of people have never seen snow in person.

45% of people (aged 15 and older) have never consumed alcohol.  (p. 231)

I have highlighted the trivia that appeals to me.  I encourage you to read the book, which also contains much substance.  For example, it explains how to pack efficiently, the importance of sun protection and how it varies around the globe, how to barter and bargain, how to escape a riptide, various myths about wildlife, and how to protect yourself from dangerous wildlife.  The book also describes 27 common scams and how to avoid them and includes much more useful information.

Despite feeling better prepared, I will likely continue to do most of my traveling from my arm chair, relying on books and TV to take me to places I want to see but have no desire to visit.

 

[1] I was having dinner with some friends, including a few professors, the other night.  One of them used the word “indolent,” which another had never heard.  It amazed me that my very smart friend had no previous exposure to that word.  The word is very familiar to me because others have so often used it to describe me — or was that “insolent.”

 

Lecture by the author of “Evicted”

A while back I mentioned the book Evicted, stating “It is extremely well written and it describes a world that most middle class Americans are unfamiliar with:  a world of want, a world of existential worry, an underworld in the midst of our land of plenty.  Though nonfiction, the book reads like a novel with compelling highly flawed characters.  The book concludes with a prescription for solving the problems so eloquently conveyed by its author Matthew Desmond.  If you care about our country, you should read this book.”

I stand by what I said, but I should have said more.  And now I have the chance because I saw Desmond speak earlier this week.  He explained a few of the vignettes from the book, assisted by photos on a backscreen that also displayed him larger than life.  He spoke for 45 minutes without notes, alternating between being riveting and merely highly engaging.  One key takeaway that he repeated and accentuated is that although most people think poverty causes eviction, often it’s the other way around:  eviction causes poverty.  His research (beyond what is in the book) suggests that people who are evicted almost always end up in a worse situation.

He stated that poor people who rent spend an undue amount of their income on housing, often more than 50%.  They have few good options, especially if they have a prior eviction, which is an irreparable blot on their record.  They end up spending nearly as much as a more affluent person would (for a similar sized apartment), though inevitably for a worse apartment (often not really habitable), in a worse neighborhood.  But they have to sleep somewhere.  Those with children have even fewer options because many landlords (not unfairly) consider kids a threat to the well-being of their property.

Desmond argued that a home, whether house or apartment, is a basic human need that effects many other fundamental needs.  He proposes a governmental subsidy that would ensure that poor people would pay no more than 30% of their income for housing.  He estimates that the cost would be approximately $22 billion per year.  That’s a lot of money and some might suggest that the poor don’t deserve such largesse.  If you are one of those people, Desmond considers you incredibly short-sighted.  His research indicates that people without stable housing are:

  • less likely to find or hold on to a job,
  • less likely to attend school, let alone excel,
  • likely to spend so much on housing that they can’t afford food, clothing, or health care, and
  • more likely to commit crimes.

Desmond concluded by suggesting that those who complain that $22 billion for a housing subsidy for the chronically poor is too much money are obviously unaware that the mortgage interest deduction subsidizes homeowners by approximately $170 billion annually.  Yes, as a country, we consider it worth $170 billion a year to subsidize the housing of people with enough income to borrow money to purchase a house.  But we currently don’t think it is worth $22 billion to help the chronically poor secure stable housing – even though not doing so causes even more problems whose cost is inexorably borne by society.  It’s a modern version of let them eat cake.[1]

 

 

 

[1] “Let them eat cake” is commonly attributed to Marie-Antoinette, in response to being told that the poor people of France did not have enough bread to eat.  Modern sources concur that there is no evidence that she ever uttered the words or anything like them.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau included the quote, attributed to “a great princess,” in Confessions, which was written around 1767, approximately three years before a 15-year old Marie-Antoinette left her native Austria to marry the King of France. https://www.britannica.com/demystified/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake  The modern equivalent would be for a famous real estate baron (no names please) to say “they should buy a house,” upon being told that poor people can’t afford rent.

First Do No Harm

Dream Land – The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones is an outstanding book.  It should be required reading for every politician, doctor, and government bureaucrat in the country.  It tells a sad maddening tale of a drug crisis that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, a crisis that didn’t have to happen.

The topic is engaging, the writing direct and compelling, and the lessons to be drawn significant and applicable to fields far beyond drug abuse.  The story flits between Mexico and the United States, between drug runners and medical doctors, from California to Ohio and places in between.  The book is exceptional.  Read it.

Humans are inherently selfish and, in moderation, that’s not a bad thing.  Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” guides economic activity as people (and countries) gravitate toward their competitive advantage.  But the invisible hand also applies to illegal markets.  In a small province in Mexico, that competitive advantage is a surplus of opium and labor.  It turns out that among the competitive advantages of the United States is an abundance of money and greed.  (Who knew?)  A basic theme of the book is that our doctors and pharmaceutical companies primed the pump, creating many addicts who were ripe for a cheap fix, providing perfect entre for the Xalisco Boys.

The tale begins, almost fictionally, with a short letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, published on January 10, 1980.  Graduate student Jane Porter and Doctor Hershel Jick submitted a one-paragraph letter which concluded “despite widespread use of narcotic drugs in hospitals, the development of addiction is rare in medical patients with no history of addiction.”  And then the law of unintended consequences took over.

The letter was referenced again and again – over 900 times in scholarly papers.   http://www.businessinsider.com/porter-and-jick-letter-launched-the-opioid-epidemic-2016-5 It became de rigueur for doctors, pharmacists, and nurses, although there is no evidence that any of them ever read it.  To wit, it was referred to as “an extensive study,” “a landmark study,” and “a landmark report.”  It never purported to be any of those things and it wasn’t.  It was a simple letter based on observations in a controlled setting.  Still the letter helped spawn an entire industry: pain.

Doctors began treating pain, the so-called fifth vital sign, aggressively, and increasingly with opiates, despite residual reservations (held over from medical school) about the addictive power of opium-based products.  Even the best and most cautious doctors were worn down by colleagues and pharmaceutical companies who continually touted the Jink letter.  Despite strong reasons to believe otherwise, the gospel that “opiates are not addictive” spread throughout the medical community.

And the law of unintended consequences kicked in again.  Lesser doctors, unscrupulous even, opened pain centers, liberally dispensing OxyContin and similar drugs.  These doctors regularly failed to conduct true medical evaluations.  Among the worst of the breed, one doctor routinely saw patients for as little as 90 seconds, once prescribing 46,000 controlled substance prescriptions in nine months.  It boggles the mind, as does the money generated.  Most of the prescriptions required a doctor’s visit at $250, cash only please.  Often the drugs were then dispensed at the doctor’s office for $200 or so, again cash only.

The ready availability of the prescription drugs, primarily OxyContin, attracted drug addicts, not just those in pain.  Pain can be properly and appropriately treated with opiates, but the pill mill doctors were anything but proper and appropriate.  And addicts never are.  Because they could get more pills prescribed than they needed for their fix, they began using the pills as currency.  The street value was roughly $1 per milligram.  A single 80 milligram pill of OxyContin had street value of $80, making the prescription’s costs seem reasonable.

People drove addicts to and from doctor’s appointments, fronting the money for the visit and the drugs in return for half of the pills.  That was a good economic investment, if a moral catastrophe.  $450 invested per visit (see above) garnered $1,200 worth of pills (15 pills times $80 each).  And the drivers were not limiting themselves to one prescription run per day.  People able to procure a medicaid card received a bonus windfall as the cost of the drugs dropped to $3 for the co-pay.  With profit margins like that, it’s not surprising that many poor and desperate people succumbed to temptation — or that given the abundance of Oxy available, more people began using.

People also began dying from Oxy overdoses, enough deaths to attract the attention of police and others.  As pressure was brought to bear, Oxy prescriptions started to decline and become harder to get.  This chagrined Purdue Pharma, which continued to espouse the non-addictive nature of OxyContin right up until they paid a fine in excess of $600 million for misbranding.  And then, amazingly, things got even worse.

With so many long-time heroin addicts and newly-minted Oxy addicts searching for a fix, the path had been paved for the Xalisco Boys.  They sold black tar heroin.  They sold cheap, under $15 a fix; they sold conveniently, basically by delivering it to the addict; they sold without violence, none of them carried weapons; they sold honestly, all of them were on salary and subject to be returned to Mexico for any insubordination; they sold pure unadulterated heroin, which was much more potent and deadly than the powder more conventionally available.  And overdose deaths skyrocketed.  Approximately 47,000 people died in the United States from drug overdoses in 2014.  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/07/us/drug-overdose-deaths-in-the-us.html?_r=0

The trajectory from a one-paragraph letter to 47,000 annual deaths is a true trail of tears, one that I hope we never repeat.  As I read the book, I was screaming (on the inside) “read the letter, don’t just refer to it.”  We (all humans) have a tendency to accept what we hear or read from an expert at face value.  We shouldn’t, unless they have proven reliable in the past.  Just because somebody, however expert, once said something, doesn’t mean it was true then.  And it most certainly doesn’t mean it is true now given how rapidly circumstances change.

I can’t help wondering what other solitary paragraphs are out there lurking as virtual time bombs waiting to cause another explosive crisis.  Who knows?  But we must all be more skeptical of everything we read – not just when the other (political) team is doing the writing.

It dismays me that so many doctors were not careful enough to double check what they were being told.  It infuriates me that some doctors went out of their way to “create a narrative so [primary care doctors] would feel more comfort about opioids in a way they hadn’t before.”  Dr. Russell Portenoy, Dream Land, p. 309.  Portenoy had financial ties to several drug companies at the time he was encouraging the use of more opiates.  He has conditionally recanted, stating that based on current standards, he had provided misinformation.  https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2012/12/doctor-who-encouraged-wider-use-opioid-painkillers-having-second-thoughts   Based on what I read in the book, Portenoy provided misinformation according to any standard you might choose to impose.

Why didn’t more doctors question the extensive use of opioids sooner?  We might never know.  I hope they are more distrustful the next time a time-honored and proven precept is so egregiously flouted.  I hope we all are.

One final reminder – read Dream Land.  It’s well worth the money and the time.

Atlas Obscura

I recently ordered a book from my local library:  Atlas Obscura, by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton.  I like atlases, I like obscure things, why wouldn’t I read the book.  Still, I didn’t really know what I was in for because I knew nothing about the book other than its title.

The first sentence of the book cover convinced me that I was on the right track.  It states “Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 600 of the most curious and unusual destinations around the globe.”  Thus began a 450 page walk about the world, basically for free (except for my share of the infrastructure [library, road], assets [car, computer], and expenses [fuel, electricity] associated with driving to the library were I picked up the book I had ordered over the internet).

There are many wonderful pictures and vignettes throughout the book, though surprisingly few maps for an atlas.  I’m going to highlight some of my favorites.  Trust me there are many more, enough to justify finding a copy of the book for yourself.

The Natural History Museum in London has a preserved giant squid.  It is 28 feet long, approximately as long as a full-size school bus.  Te Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand has a colossal squid.  Though much shorter (not quite 14 feet long) than giant squid, colossal squid are heavier.  The one in N.Z. tips the scales at 1000 pounds.

Overtoun Bridge in Dumbarton, Scotland has an unusual nickname:  Dog Suicide Bridge.  The locals say that approximately 50 dogs have jumped off the bridge to their death since the 1960s.

Micro-nations abound.  None of them have ever been recognized, but several of them continue to assert nationhood, including:  the Republic of Kugelmugel in Vienna, which consists entirely of a single spherical house.  Ladonia in Sweden, the Principality of Sealand in England, the Principality of Hutt River in Australia, the Conch Republic, and the Republic of Minerva, all have their own stories.

I was pleased to see an entry about the monastery at Mount Athos in Greece.  It has long been a favorite of mine because it has never stopped flying the Byzantine flag since the days of its founding.  I have read that the monastery never surrendered, meaning that the Eastern Roman Empire still has legs of a sort.  Over 1500 monks live in the monastery, which only allows male visitors.

The Root Bridges of Cherrapunji in India have intrigued me since I saw them in a National Geographic magazine years ago.  The locals groom tree roots to span a river, taking as much as 20 years to build.  Once established, a bridge can last up to 500 years.  That’s the kind of infrastructure we should build in this country.

Do you like hard-boiled eggs?  Vendors in Dongyang, China, have been selling a particular kind of hard-boiled egg for hundreds of years.  The unusual part:  the eggs are boiled in the urine of young boys, which is collected in buckets at schools in the area.  I’m pretty sure this approach to eggs will not supplant any of our Easter traditions.

Have you run a marathon or a half-marathon?  Do you feel pretty good about the accomplishment?  Well, you haven’t met a marathon monk.  They are Buddhist, based in Japan, and a significant part of their training is physical.  In each of the first three years of their training regimen, the monks must walk 25 miles a day for 100 consecutive days.  Years four and five require for two separate 100 consecutive day periods of 25-mile walks.  Morever, each 25-mile walk is punctuated with 300 designated stops for chanting and prayer.  In year six, the monks must complete 100 consecutive daily walks of 37.5 miles.  In year seven, the walks increase to 52 miles.  It may not surprise you to learn that only 50 (or so) monks have completed this training since 1885.

Though also Buddhist, the next group of monks is more my speed.  At any rate, I could be useful to them.  They have built their temple and associated buildings entirely out of empty beer bottles.  They are not allowed to drink alcohol, but they continue to build using bottles that are donated.

For decades the last tree of Tènèrè, estimated to be the only tree for 250 miles in any direction, lived alone in Niger.  It was something right out of Dr. Seuss until a drunk driver ran into it and snapped its trunk.

The quietest room in the world is in Minneapolis.  It absorbs 99.99% of all sound.  The room is so quiet that people can hear their own hearts beating.

The third-highest waterfall in the world is Gocta Falls in Peru, which descends over 2,500 feet.  It’s beautiful, of course, but what interests me most is that the waterfall was unknown to humans, except for the indigenous people who live under it, until 2005.

Who knows what else is out there awaiting “discovery?”  I hope it’s another waterfall or massive squid and I hope it’s not more urine-infused food.

More on Reading

I recently scanned a book entitled “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die,” edited by Peter Boxall.  At 25 books a year, it would take over 40 years to read 1001 books.  All of the books in the book are fiction.  Few of us are going to read 1001 books of any kind between now and the time we die.  Even if we plan to, this book would not help us prioritize our reading because it lists the books in chronological order based on the date of publication.

I kept track of the country of origin and the date published of each book in the book.  Of the 1001 books that must be read, 547 were published after January 1, 1950.  Of those, 54% were written by a European author.  That is much less Eurocentric than the pre-1950 list, which is 80% European.

Books written Before 1950 1950 and after Total
North America 61 143 156
  % of total 13.4% 26.1% 22.4%
Europe 363 297 429
  % of total 80.0% 54.3% 61.5%
Asia 16 46 46
  % of total 3.5% 8.4% 6.6%
South America 6 27 32
  % of total 1.3% 4.9% 4.6%
 
Africa 6 25 25
  % of total 1.3% 4.6% 3.6%
Australia 2 9 9
  % of total 0.4% 1.6% 1.3%
Total 454 547 697
  % of total 45.4% 54.6% 100.0%

I have read 21% of the pre-1950 books, but only 8% of the 1950 and after books.   Sadly, of some of the books that I have read, I can remember nothing other than that I read the book.  (See “V” by Thomas Pynchon.)

This compilation overlapped with another book I am reading “Head in the Cloud,” by William Poundstone.  The subtitle is “Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy to Look Up.”   The author concludes (among many and varied findings) that general knowledge correlates with higher income.  Trivia matters!

He has a relatively easy (according to him) ten-question trivia test (the questions are undisclosed).  After surveying a statistically significant group, he concluded that the people who answered all ten questions correctly had an average income of over $90,000 per year and that those unable to answer a single question averaged approximately $40,000.  He adjusted for education, age, and other factors that might affect earnings.  He concluded that the connection between better knowledge and income was real and linear – more right answers equals higher income.

The connection between this book and the previous one is that the author surveyed people to determine how many could name a creative person from South America (31%), from Asia (13%), and from Africa (10%).  Can you name an artist, novelist, poet, playwright, architect, or filmmaker from those continents?  If so, you likely earn more money than someone who can’t.

In preparing for the book, the author conducted many surveys, including these five questions, which were asked of Colorado State and Kent State undergraduates:

  1. Who wrote the Brothers Karamazov?
  2. What is the last name of the captain of the ship The Bounty, whose crew mutinied?
  3. What mountain range separates Europe from Asia?
  4. What was John Kenneth Galbraith’s profession?
  5. What leader did Fidel Castro overthrow in assuming control of Cuba?

If you answered any one of these questions correctly, then you did better than all 681 students.  They combined to get exactly zero correct answers.  The author’s point isn’t that the students are stupid, but that their generation isn’t expected to learn facts the way that previous generations were.

I also recently read a book that is on Boxall’s list and also on most lists of the 100 best novels of all time:  “Of Human Bondage,” by W. Somerset Maugham.  I’m glad I did, even though the protagonist is among the most frustrating main characters I have ever encountered.  (The book is over 100 years old, so I’m not too worried about spoiling anything.)

Philip Carey, the main character, makes so many bad decisions in his quest to find his place in the world that it is hard to keep track of them.  Most of them are based in large part on his conception of his duty as a gentleman or his belief in (what approximates) heraldic love.  It is quaint, it is loathsome to a pragmatist.  For example, Phillip inherited enough money to get him through medical school, but then he spends roughly half of it in one year, ultimately leading to penury and an inability to continue his education.

I started the book on my phone, switched to a paperback for 200 pages or so, and then finished on my phone.  Reading on my phone is incredibly convenient.  It’s always available, books aren’t.  It provides its own light, convenient at night, whether watching TV or in bed.  Turning pages is silent, useful if your sleeping companion is a light sleeper or easily annoyed.  But phone reading is also annoying because the page and font are relatively small and because it is difficult to retrace steps to check on this or that name or event.  I like the convenience of reading on a phone or tablet, but I won’t be abandoning books anytime soon.

However you read, read more — because the more you read, the more you know.  The more you know, the more money you make.  This information is less likely to help those of you who are my age (50 plus), but those of you with a lot of earning years ahead should pay heed.

(Answers:  Dostoevsky, Bligh, Ural Mountains, economist or professor, Batista)

It all started with a walk

I like to walk around my neighborhood and the local park at night.  I invariably carry my walking stick, which I purchased at Acadia National Park.  It has a certain Maine feel.

Walking sticks provide many benefits including, balance, less strain on joints, and safety.  Through the years I have run into the occasional raccoon or opossum and feel more at ease with a stick to keep them at bay, especially if they should appear rabid.  My stick is no help at all against the most dangerous animal in the world:  the mosquito.

According to multiple sources, mosquitoes are responsible for the death of over 700,000 humans each year.  Mosquitoes are not intrinsically dangerous to humans.  For instance, there have been no reported deaths from blood loss caused by excessive mosquito bites.  Compare this with dogs, which cause death mainly by transmitting rabies, but which are capable of killing a human by biting and mauling it.

Mosquitoes are dangerous because they transmit diseases.  According to the June 2016 issue of Smithsonian magazine, of the more than 3,500 species of mosquitoes, only 100 or so spread disease to humans.  Three genera are especially dangerous to humans:  anophelese (which spreads malaria), aedes (which spreads yellow fever, dengue, and the Zika virus), and culex (which spreads West Nile virus among other diseases).

The real killers are the various viruses and parasites for which mosquitoes are a vector.  Many mosquito-borne viruses and parasites are so resilient and so mutative that in many instances we have given up trying to eliminate them – it only makes them stronger.  Instead, scientists are currently considering attempting to extirpate the worst mosquito vectors.  For example, malaria can only be contracted from an anophelese mosquito.  Eliminate the anophelese and we just might eliminate malaria.  That sounds like a great idea, though there are likely many unknown, indeed unknowable, unintended consequences waiting to bite us.  (Pun, sadly, intended.)

Eliminating all mosquitoes is likely as impossible as it is undesirable.  After all, mosquitoes are a significant part of the food chain.  But we don’t need to eliminate all mosquitoes, just the worst few dozen species.  The most promising theory at this time is to alter the genetic code of males so they produce only sterile offspring.  This process won’t work quickly, but could in time eradicate an entire species.

Even the world’s greatest champion of biodiversity, E.O. Wilson thinks we should consider eliminating anophelese mosquitoes.  http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-04-04/why-famous-biologist-wants-eradicate-killer-mosquitoes  If we can find the right switch, he is willing to be the executioner.

In an attempt to atone for not taking Wilson’s class when I was in college, I have read several of his books through the years.  I especially recommend:  The Future of Life, Letters to a Young Scientist, Consilience, and Half-Earth.  His wit and wisdom are manifest throughout.  Here are a couple of highlights from The Future of Life:  1.  Losing 90% of an environment means losing 50% of the species contained therein, losing the last 10% eliminates the last 50% of species, and 2.  If a small animal in the wild is especially beautiful, it is likely poisonous, if it is also easy to catch, it is likely deadly.

This post has meandered from walking sticks to dangerous animals to species cleansing to E.O. Wilson.  I wish my nocturnal peregrinations were as wide-ranging.

Reader’s Digest

I recently received a copy of Reader’s Digest in the mail.  It was from the publisher, attempting to convince me to order a subscription.  I have received sample copies of other periodicals as an inducement to subscribe, but usually those are fake issues, essentially one giant advertisement.  This was a full version of the current issue of Reader’s Digest.

Perusing it was visiting with an old friend.  I read the magazine regularly as a child.  I can’t remember whether we subscribed, only that I read it often.  It is amazing how many of the features are unchanged, even though I haven’t read the magazine in decades.

The articles remain short, punchy.  Many have a positive message.  It is obvious that this is not a news magazine.  The first article was Everyday Heroes, about a WWII veteran who paints portraits of fallen soldiers that he sends to their families for free.  Another described a boy’s triumph over Kleefstra syndrome, a genetic disorder that fewer than 100 people in the world are diagnosed with.

There are many regular features that allow readers to send in stories to be published – Your True Stories, Life in These United States, All in a Day’s Work, Laughter is the Best Medicine, and Humor in Uniform.  If the story is printed, the writer receives $100.  I remember sending in a couple as a child.  The going rate then, which I never received, was $25.

Points to Ponder was familiar, it consists of excerpts published elsewhere that engender thought.  Here’s one from Christian Tetzlaff, a violinist:  “Music is humans’ most advanced achievement.  Trying to turn lead into gold is nothing compared to taking something mechanical like an instrument—a string and a bow—and using it to evoke a human soul.”

It’s an interesting sentiment, but the last time I checked, nobody has been able to turn lead or anything else into gold.  Meanwhile, quite a few songs have been written.  In 2006, Google Answers estimated that 16 million songs have been written in the U.S. and 30 million more have been written in the rest of the world.  http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=720948  More recently (2011), some dude on Quora estimated the number of songs at over 623 million, with a new song written every two minutes.  https://www.quora.com/How-many-songs-in-total-have-humans-created-that-we-can-listen-to  I’m guessing the real answer is somewhere in between.  Though not all songs “evoke a human soul,” certainly more do than there have been successful attempts to create gold.

There was a fun feature on which thing is germier: for example, food that has fallen on the floor or food that has fallen into a sink.  Or having a cockroach on your food or a fly.  Another article highlighted health hacks that work, for instance, some researchers in the Netherlands determined that wearing socks during sex improves it.  There were a couple of medical features.  There were random comments and advice.  Did you know that 16 pennies laid end to end measures exactly a foot?  Sink and fly are germier.

Naturally, there was the oldest and most faithful of all the old friends:  Word Power.  My memory suggests that this feature has not aged a day, still 15 words to define from among three multiple choice answers.  I remember yearning for and never achieving a perfect score.  Finally 40 years later, I went 15 for 15.  And none of them were that hard.  I’m no smarter, but I sure have absorbed a lot of words on my journey.

The biggest feature, and the longest title, in this issue was The Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Witticisms Quips Retorts Rejoinders and Pithy Replies for Every Occasion.  I have chosen three quotes from among many gems.  British actor Shane Richie said, “I don’t believe in reincarnation, and I didn’t believe in it when I was a hamster.”  The absurdly great Oscar Wilde said, “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”   The famous if seldom read Samuel Johnson said, “He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.”

The 144 page issue was chockerblock with articles and features.  It was a fun read and I’m glad I went through the entire issue.  I’m unlikely to subscribe because I usually look for slightly meatier stuff to read, but it sure was enjoyable taking a nostalgic tour through the pages of an icon.  If you see a copy in your travels, flip through it and see what old friends you can find.

“Back to Blood”

Some authors are able to rise to the occasion again and again, churning out novels for decades that are more or less the same quality.  This seems especially likely to happen in the realm of detectives – Agatha Christie and Robert B. Parker come to mind.  Some authors reach such a terrific peak that they are never able to approach it again, think Joseph Heller and John Irving.  I’m not sure where to place Tom Wolfe in this model, but I know where his book “Back to Blood” fits.

I enjoyed “Bonfire of the Vanities” when I was young and vain and I enjoyed “A Man in Full” (a little less) when I was older and a bit more rounded.  So I was looking forward to reading “Back to Blood.”  It was a mistake, not a peak.  I kept telling myself to keep reading, convinced that the plot would come together.  I did, but it didn’t.

Unless you are a Cuban American or enamored of Miami, the book is unlikely to appeal to you.  And even then it might not because I’m not sure how accurately Wolfe has captured the mood and ethos of Cuban Americans or the city where many of them live.

Too many characters were either introduced but not fully developed or developed but not engaged.  The plot was convoluted to no apparent end and included days of intensive micromanagement and months in which nothing was described, though issues remained hanging.  There were various forays involving sex and pornography that did little to advance the plot and appeared designed to showcase the author’s knowledge of, for example, public pornography.  The denouement was an open door, revolving rather than resolving the various strands of the plot.

For over 700 pages, the author relentlessly relentlessly relentlessly beat his linguistic tic of repetition into my skull skull skull.  That theme came through loud and clear — sometimes to emphasize a word, sometimes to provide atmosphere (think background noises) — and always annoyingly annoyingly annoyingly.  If more books were written like this, less reading would take place.

Nobody would ever say or write “fewer reading would take place,” however “less” is often used when “fewer” would be more appropriate.   People say that they want “less French fries,” and though I don’t believe them, neither do I misunderstand them.  Still, it’s not as precise (or mellifluous) as saying they want “fewer French fries.”

“Fewer” should be used with quantifiable things, like French fries or blood cells.  “Less” should be used with things that aren’t easily quantified, like mashed potatoes or blood.  “More” always works, whether you want more French fries, more mashed potatoes, more platelets, or more plasma.

Something I don’t want more of:  Tom Wolfe novels.

Reading is good

I read a lot as a child and I read a lot as an adult.  Reading feels industrious, though it produces nothing.  While reading, I am learning or being entertained.  In a minimum, I appear to be doing something, even if I am sitting in a chair barely moving.

When I graduated from college, the President of our university gave a speech at commencement.  He welcomed us “to the fellowship of educated men and women.”  I have never forgotten that phrase.  It sounded terrific then and it sounds terrific now.  What a wonderful thing to be a part of – the fellowship of educated men and women.  The welcome came with a suggestion: that each of us read a book every month.

Since then, I have kept track of every book I have read.  I don’t count magazines or comic books, though I count graphic novels (the Watchmen series is especially good).  I count volumes of poetry, which might be fewer than 100 pages (for instance “Green Squall” by Jay Hopler) equally with massive novels (like “War and Peace”).  I count all of the many baseball books I read, though none of the countless articles and blog posts.  I count all of the nonfiction I read, which comprises most of what I read.

I have a spreadsheet that lists every book I have read since June 1984.  In that time,  I have read an average of 35 books a year, as many as 59 books when I was single and unencumbered and as few as 21 when my children were young.  So far this year, the first year in 20 without children living in our house, I have read 25 books.

I can definitively state that I have read at least one book a month for the past 32 or so years.  This level of reading appears to be more than most of my friends, though much less than many avid readers and scholars.  Each year, some 2,000,000 books are published, roughly 500,000 of them in English.  At 35 books per year, I am rapidly losing ground.

It was been said of certain people that they had read every book written.  This was almost certainly never true because of how little interaction there was between east and west until after the Renaissance.  And it cannot possibly have been true since the creation of the printing press.  Still, there was a time, before the creation of the novel, when a European could have read virtually all of the consequential books hitherto written, basically the classics of Latin and Greek.

That is no longer possible, it isn’t even possible to read every book written on a topic.  My library system has 1452 books with the word “baseball” in the title.  It has 22,126 books with the word “history” in the title.  We are buried in books that have already been written and many more are on the way.

Separating the wheat from the chaff is difficult.  Book reviews help.  Friends and family try to help, with recommendations or purchases.  Usually that distracts from what I want to read, sometimes it is downright annoying.  One year, my son gave me “The French Revolution: A History” by Thomas Carlyle.  He was young enough to pay attention to whether I read the book, so I read it.  It was excruciating.  I defy you to pick up the book, open to a random page, and find two sentences in a row that are comprehensible.  Though I am no fan of recommendations from others, I continually recommend books to others.

I have recently been pushing the book “Evicted.”  It is extremely well written and it describes a world that most middle class Americans are unfamiliar with:  a world of want, a world of existential worry, an underworld in the midst of our land of plenty.  Though nonfiction, the book reads like a novel with compelling highly flawed characters.  The book concludes with a prescription for solving the problems so eloquently conveyed by its author Matthew Desmond.  If you care about our country, you should read this book.  The experience will be enlightening, not excruciating.

I just finished the fascinating and elegant “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” by Carlo Rovelli.  It is only 81 pages and it will expand your understanding of the way the world works.

Two brief snippets to whet your appetite:

  1. Rovelli describes with fluid prose the nuance and ramifications of Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity. The ultimate conclusion being drawn from these theories at this time is that space is not empty but full of gravitational waves.  Gravity, by the way, remains inscrutable.  We know how to account for it, but we don’t know why it works.  Gravity is a theory, one that is utterly reliable.
  2. Einstein is quoted as having written that people “who believe in physics, know that the distinction made between past, present and future is nothing more than a persistent, stubborn illusion.” In essence, one chapter of the book talks about the flow of time and how it is different than our common place perception of it, essentially, that time does not exist.

It’s pretty heady stuff and worth the investment of a couple of hours, whether you are well versed in science or more in the nature of an English major.  I am the latter.

On page 43, Rovelli discusses loop quantum gravity and states that space is comprised of grains that are “a billion billion times smaller than the smallest atomic nuclei.”  This particular construct has always bothered me, even though I know perfectly well what is being stated.

I understand “two times bigger” or a “billion times bigger.”  In those cases, the things compared can be envisioned.  A basketball is bigger than a baseball, whether six or eight or 12 times bigger I don’t know.  But you can see each of them in your mind, you can envision eight baseballs and think, yea, a basketball is bigger than that.

But “two times smaller” is an impossibility.  You can envision a basketball, but what is two times smaller than a basketball.  If a basketball is the unit of measure, how can it also be the divisor of itself.  (No one would ever state that something weighs two times less than a pound.)  What is being conveyed, of course, is that the other thing is half as big as a basketball.  Then why not say that.  It is simpler, more direct, and less susceptible to quibbles from the likes of me.

That is the only complaint I have about the book.  It is otherwise exquisite.  Whether or not you read that particular book, read something.

The Violent Femmes sing in Lack of Knowledge, “Read read read read read read read everything you can read, learn learn learn learn learn learn learn everything you can learn.”  I like their music, I like their sentiment.  When you read, you learn.  Whether you read a book a month or a book a year, read something.

Language Myths — a (limited) book review

I just read Language Myths, edited by Lauri Bauer and Peter Trudgill, published in 1998.  Twenty-one different authors each tackle a language myth and debunk it.

Below are the myths, each of which gets its own chapter.

–The meaning of words should not be allowed to vary or change.

–Some languages are just not good enough.

–The media are ruining English.

–French is a logical language.

–English spelling is kattostroffik.

–Women talk too much.

–Some languages are harder than others.

–Children can’t speak or write properly any more.

–In the Appalachians, they speak like Shakespeare.

–Some languages have no grammar.

–Italian is beautiful, German is ugly.

–Bad grammar is slovenly.

–Black Children are verbally deprived.

–Double negatives are illogical.

–TV makes people sound the same.

–You shouldn’t say “it is me” because ‘me’ is accusative.

–They speak really bad English down south and in New York City.

–Some languages are spoken more quickly than others.

–Aborigines speak a primitive language.

–Everyone has an accent except me.

–America is ruining the English language.

The various authors make compelling cases for concluding that the truth is contrary to every single myth posited.  I’ll mention one argument to give you an idea.

The myth is that double negatives are illogical, but according to the author, they aren’t.  The myth derives from math.  Two minus negative two is four, the two negatives equal a positive.  That’s how math works, that’s not how languages work.  When someone says “I didn’t talk to nobody,” no sentient person really thinks, hmmn, if he didn’t take to nobody, then he must have talked to somebody.  Only pedants think like that and they do it purposely to showcase how smart they are.  Everybody, including the pedant, knows that the speaker didn’t talk to a human.  Furthermore, double negatives are an integral part of many languages.  In French, “I don’t want anything” is “je ne veux rien,” where “ne” and “rien” both indicate a negative.

The other myths are similarly discredited — though in truth, some of the “myths” have the appearance of strawmen.  Memorize the opposite of the myth and you will have a much better understanding of linguistics.  Or read the book and you will understand why the myth isn’t true.

The overwhelming takeaway from this book and other books I have read about language and linguistics is that languages are in a constant state of change.  Words are created regularly (think about anything pertaining to text messages), fall into disfavor (dungarees), and change meanings (“nice” originally meant “silly”).  The only thing constant about language is flux.

Books and writing have tended to slow the rate of change by locking in meanings and usage.  But even so, words continue to morph.

Like many English words, “while” has multiple meanings, and most of them have a temporal element.  Unfortunately, “while” has also become a synonym for “although.”  It shouldn’t.  The better practice is to retain the temporal element, as in “I read the book while riding the bus.”  Use “although” when contrasting two related concepts, as in “although the sun was shining, it wasn’t that warm.”  The oft-used “while” just doesn’t convey the same meaning. “While the sun was shining, it wasn’t that warm” almost seems illogical, as if it were warmer when the sun wasn’t shining.

Similarly “since” should be used to convey that time has passed, “I haven’t been outside since 10 o’clock this morning.”  It is frequently used as a synonym for “because,” again without enhancing clarity, “since he went outside, he put on a jacket.”  The reader isn’t certain when or why the jacket was put on.

The synonymic usages are here to stay, but I don’t like them because they add a level of ambiguity.  Retaining the temporal element is clearer, less difficult to understand, and more difficult to misunderstand.

What we are really looking for, especially in conversation, is comprehension.  So the next time you are having a conversation with someone and they don’t use “bring” or “come” exactly the way you would, take a deep breath and consider that, because you understand what is being conveyed, there is no reason to correct the mythical mistake that is likely on its way to becoming common usage.