notesfromnokomis

March Madness = Gambling

In college, I had a friend who infuriated me by insisting that all words be conclusively defined. I considered constantly defining words obstructive; it certainly slowed down a discussion. After law school and twenty plus years as a lawyer, I am now fully in Roger’s camp. Words must be defined in order to have a constructive discussion.

Today’s, this week’s, this month’s word is “gambling.” The standard dictionary definition of “gambling” is to play a game of chance for money. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gambling It’s pretty straight forward. No need to define any of the words in the definition, they are common words used according to our common understanding of them.

In case you aren’t a basketball fan, the reason “gambling” is the word of the day and the week and the month is because of the (men’s) NCAA Basketball Tournament. It starts Thursday, despite the NCAA’s insipid insistence on scheduling play-in games on Tuesday and Wednesday, and it has become a national event.[1] Some of you may recall that the NCAA tournament used to play second fiddle to the NIT (National Invitational Tournament), which the NCAA supplanted and then purchased.

Last year, approximately $9 billion was gambled on the tournament. For comparison purposes, consider that roughly $4.2 billion was bet on the 2016 Super Bowl. http://www.bettingsports.com/biggest-events-to-bet-on According to The Sporting News, The American Gaming Association estimates that approximately $10.4 billion will be on the line during this year’s tournament. http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-basketball/news/ncaa-tournament-2017-record-amount-illegal-betting-office-pools/1an4gu7kt7gkt179p9ivcaszlv

There are many different games of chance associated with the tournament. I have a friend who runs a survivor pool. You pick a team to win on day one. If they win, you advance, and select another team on day two. You cannot select a team more than once. I selected West Virginia to win on day one.

Another friend runs a traditional bracket pool. You predict the winner of all 63 games in the tournament,[2] from day one through the championship. You accrue points based on the round. A typical format allots one point for a correct first round prediction and doubles the per-game allotment for each round. That means that each round is worth the same amount of points – because the points double, but the games halve. There are 32 games in the first round worth one point each; there are two semifinal games, each worth 16 points. It’s hard to win if you don’t get the 32 points from selecting the champion. I’m counting on Kansas to run the table.

Another friend used to run a variant of the traditional bracket pool. That pool awarded points based on the seed of the team and the round. If a 1-seed won its first-round game (and no 1-seed has every lost its first-round game), it earned one point – 1 times 1, the seed times the round. If an 11-seed won a first round game it was worth 11 points – 1 times 11, the seed times the round. An 11-seed winning a third round game was a bonanza: 33 points. Unfortunately that pool no longer exists, but it was fun while it lasted.

I have a friend who usually joins an auction pool. Each team in the tournament is “purchased” in an auction. Points are accrued, not unlike a traditional bracket pool. A first round victory is worth 1/32nd (because there are 32 games) of 1/6 (because there are six rounds) of the total pool. A second round win is worth 1/16 of 1/6 of the total pool. Dominant teams have gone for several hundred dollars. That probably won’t happen this year because there is no consensus powerhouse.

There are also pools based on points scored by players. In one version, players are acquired in a draft. Eight participants each draft eight players for a total of 64 players, providing nice symmetry with the tournament. Another version allows each participant to select 10 players (total) from ten different seeds, meaning only one player from among the four 1-seeds, one from among the four 2-seeds, etc.

There are many other ways to gamble on the games, including betting on the winner at a sports book. By far the most common way to bet on the tournament is to fill out a bracket, which the American Gambling Association estimates 40 million of us will do. The AGA also estimates that 97% of the $10 billion or so that will be bet this year, will be wagered illegally. We are a nation of scofflaws.[3] Enjoy the games and the games

[1] Would it be crazy to propose that the Thursday and Friday afternoons of the tournament be combined to form a national holiday? So much productivity is lost anyway that we might as well make it official.

[2] The formula to determine the number of games in any single elimination tournament is N – 1. Thus, a 64-team tournament will have 63 games. Because of the play-in games, there are officially 68 teams in the tournament, meaning that 67 games will be played.

[3] To close the circle (sort of), a “scofflaw” is a person who flouts the law, especially a law that is difficult to enforce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scofflaw Arresting all of us for betting in a brackets pool might be slightly easier than arresting every driver who exceeds the speed limit. After all, the tournament only happens once a year.

Baseball has begun

If you’re not a baseball fan, you might not have noticed that pitchers and catchers have reported. In fact, entire teams have now reported and are already playing games. It’s awesome. I listened to part of a game on the radio last Friday. Even though the games don’t count, the rhythm of well-announced baseball is exquisitely soothing.

Moreover, spring has sprung early in Ohio. I attended a baseball game[1] between ODU (Ohio Dominican University) and OWU last Saturday.[2] The weather was beautiful, the players were not wearing turtlenecks, etc. It was the earliest I have ever seen a baseball game live north of Florida. It was so much fun, with such warm and baseball-friendly weather, that the coaches decided to play another 18-inning game on Sunday. I went to that too.

Over the winter I collected a few trivia questions (and answers). I don’t like true trivia, as in trivial details. I like bigger questions, questions you can think about, instead of either knowing or not knowing. An example of the latter is: who is the last player to steal home twice in a single game. It’s an absurd question. Who could possibly know that it was Vic Power, a first baseman not exactly notorious for his speed. He totaled 45 steals in a 12-year, 1627-game career.

A better question, to my way of thinking, is: name the players who had 10 or more seasons with the same team in which they hit at least 30 home runs and had at least 100 RBIs.[3] This is a question that can be played with even if you don’t know the answer. You would think about great hitters, hitters that played for the same team for a long time, hitters who likely are among the best the game has ever seen. If you tried, you might come up with: Babe Ruth (12 seasons), Lou Gehrig, Henry Aaron, Albert Pujols, and David Ortiz (all with 10). That’s a pretty impressive list, spanning three generations of baseball greats.

More trivial trivia: did you know that four players have hit for the cycle three times in their careers. First, a player hits for the “cycle” when he has a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game. It has happened almost 300 times, roughly twice a year since professional baseball began in 1870s. John Reilly (in the 1880s), Bob Meusel (in the 1920s), Babe Herman (in the 1930s), and Adrian Beltre, who is still active, are the only players to hit for the cycle three times.

I’ll end with one last question: name the three pitchers who have 100 wins, 100 saves, and 50 complete games. Two of them are in the Hall of Fame and are well known for converting from starting pitchers to relief pitching. You could figure them out, given a little time. The third is impossible to guess and you might not have heard of him, though his last season pitching was relatively recent, 1984. The first two are Dennis Eckersley and John Smoltz. The third pitcher is somewhat similar, in that he began starter before moving to the bullpen. But he hadn’t nearly the star power and he wasn’t nearly as good.

Eck and Smoltzie cleared most of the hurdles rather easily, our third pitcher eked his way over. Eck has 197 wins, Smoltz had 213, RR had 146. Eck has 390 saves, Smolt had 154 (all in just four seasons), RR had 103. Eck had 100 complete games, Smolt had 53, and RR had 55. The cut-offs make it appear that RR is in the same league with Eckersley and Smoltz. And he was (literally), they all played in both the American and National Leagues. But figuratively, there is a large gap between the two hall of famers and Ron Reed.

Similarly, there is a very large gap between an ODU vs. OWU baseball game and the major league baseball games that I will be watching all summer. But baseball is baseball and this time of year, you take what you can get. Expect me to write much more about baseball in the months to come.

[1] The game was 18 innings long, that way it only counts as one game for each team. Division II baseball teams can play a limited number of scrimmages. By the way, the teams did not keep score, making it a little bit like a tee ball game.

[2] The Dominicans are Catholic and the Wesleyans are Protestants, continuing a religious rivalry that goes back centuries.

[3] Please never say “RsBI.” It’s stupid. It’s beyond stupid. It’s way over the outfield fence on stupid. One of the talking heads on ESPN started doing it years ago because he figured out that it’s “runs batted in,” apparently assuming he was the first person to make that wondrous discovery. “RBI” is an initialism, which is pluralized by adding an “s.” The same applies to POWs. Nobody would ever say “PsOW,” even though we all know that when there is more than one, the term is “prisoners of war,” not “prisoner of wars” (which would be exceedingly unfortunate). Initialisms are words and they are pronounced by stating each letter, making them quite distinct from acronymns (think FBI vs. NATO).

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.

On Naming Public Buildings

The renaming Calhoun College incident got me thinking about something that has troubled me for years: naming things for politicians. The thing might be a building, it might be an airport, it might be a bridge or a highway or an intersection, or really just about anything.

In the private sector, things are named for a substantial donor. Colleges are especially prone to sell naming rights and it can get a little goofy. For instance, naming a room within a named wing of a named building, which is part of a named complex. And then of course, the piano or books in the room might have been donated and have a commemorative label. Enough already. (Disclaimer: I have never donated enough to have a room or building named after me, but there are a couple of bricks somewhere indicating that my family donated to this or that project.)

I understand the business of naming rights. It is at its core a bargained-for transaction. I may not always agree about the economics,[1] but fundamentally it is a commercial transaction. Even so, everything we name for a person, family, or company should have a sunset provision. The naming rights should lapse. Professional sports teams figured this out with naming rights to their stadiums. It’s time for the public sector to get on board. Naming rights should be an ongoing income stream, not a one-time windfall.

The Lincoln Center has also figured this out. They received a substantial donation ($57 million in today’s dollars) and renamed the former Philharmonic Hall the Avery Fisher Hall. Years later the center considered changing the name of Avery Fisher Hall to accommodate a new donor, but didn’t make a change after the Fisher family threatened to sue. The need for money, however, did not diminish. The hall is now named David Geffen Hall, after he donated $100 million,[2] $15 million of which went to the Fisher family in appreciation for their connivance in the name change. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/arts/music/lincoln-center-to-rename-avery-fisher-hall.html?_r=0

Money talks. So does history. There is nothing inappropriate about honoring in perpetuity a person like George Washington, who was our first president and the General of the Army that won the American Revolutionary War. At the same time, there is no reason to honor in perpetuity a person who might already be little remembered. I’m thinking here of various state buildings in Ohio, named for James Rhodes, Vern Riffe, and Thomas Moyer. I do not question whether they are due some honor, only whether we should confer it forever. Worse yet, we sometimes name buildings for people who subsequently prove themselves unworthy of the honor. This happened at Ohio State, where a hotel is named for Roger Blackwell, who was jailed for insider trading infractions. (To be clear, The Blackwell was named in large part based on a sizable donation.)

Significant public buildings should be named for the institution they house, not an elected official who worked there (or somewhere else) temporarily. Among the four largest public buildings in downtown Columbus are the Vern Riffe State Office Tower, the Franklin County Court House, the Rhodes Office Tower, and the Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center. Only one of these buildings is appropriately named. Hint: it’s the one not named for a person. Public buildings should be named for their historical or current use, not for some elected official.

If political friends insist on naming a building after a politician, which they will, we should require the name to lapse. After ten years or twenty or fifty, the name should void and the proper authorities can rename it. Perhaps they will honor a different worthy person, perhaps they will reward the highest bidder. Perhaps in fifty years the people of Ohio will still consider Riffe or Rhodes or Moyer worth honoring with a named building. But I doubt it. By then there will be someone else worthy of the honor, not necessarily more worthy, but more immediate.

Let’s be fair, even now, when Ohio is full of people who knew them, it might be difficult to find someone who could tell you why any of these three men has a building named for him. Doing something extraordinary, like winning the Revolutionary War or writing the Declaration of Independence, is worthy of forever, being the longest-serving speaker in the history of the Ohio House of Representatives is worthy of something, but not forever. Wasn’t he just doing the job we elected him to do? Didn’t we pay him for his public service?

Obviously, I don’t think a person must have written the Declaration of Independence to have a building named after him or her. Cities and towns should appropriately honor their favorite sons and daughters. But significant public buildings, for instance the one housing the Supreme Court of Ohio, should never have a name attached. They stand on their own as the home of a grand institution.

Naming rights should be to honor a substantial donor or achievement. Significant public buildings should have their own name and should never be named after an individual. And all naming rights should have sunset provisions unless the name becomes part of the vernacular and a change would cause undue confusion.

[1] The $100 million that Lesley Wexner donated to Ohio State for the naming rights to its medical center is without a doubt a considerable sum. But it seems like a relative bargain given the exposure the name receives.

[2] For comparison purposes, Geffen’s donation was the same as Wexner’s. Geffen’s received naming rights to a hall within a center, not an entire medical center. The annual revenues of the Lincoln center are something around $125 million, about 4% of the Wexner Medical Center’s revenues. I’m using revenues as a proxy for exposure. Not that we rate such things, but this is a clear win for Wexner vis-à-vis Geffen. Alternatively, it is a clear win for the Lincoln Center vis-à-vis OSU.

The Residential Building Formerly Known As Calhoun College

John C. Calhoun was a Yale graduate and the seventh Vice-President of the United States (elected twice). He served as Secretary of War of the United States, as Secretary of State of the United States, and as a two-term Senator of the United States. He was also an ardent supporter of slavery in the decades before our Civil War.

Calhoun died in 1850. Eighty-two years later, when Calhoun College was named for him, there was no controversy. Calhoun was, after all, an eminent politician, an alumnus of Yale, and long since dead. But opinions changed in the subsequent 85 years, enough that Yale recently decided to rename Calhoun College. (“College” is deceiving. It does not denote a college within Yale University, it is roughly synonymous with “dormitory,” though it connotes a bit more.)

I have never been particularly fond of Calhoun (because of his pro-slavery politics), but neither am I fond of the capriciousness of public sentiment. I think Calhoun has a distinctly different argument to continue to be honored than, say, Jefferson Davis, who waged war on the United States. Calhoun died ten years before the Civil War started and he had worked hard (and successfully) to preserve the union of the states.

Davis was honorable man for his time and place, despite being deplorably wrong about slavery. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, a U.S. Senator, and Secretary of War of the United States, before he joined the Confederacy. Fortunately, he lost the war and, along with it, the ability to preserve slavery.

Winston Churchill, himself both a victor and a writer, noted that history is written by the victors. But it is also written by many other people and often many years later. Those people, perhaps understandably, sometimes impose their own moral standards on people who lived generations or even centuries earlier. We now write the histories about him and Calhoun and many others, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Both of those former Presidents owned slaves. They did not defend the institution of slavery quite so vociferously as Calhoun, but they benefitted from the labor of slaves until the day they died.

When Washington and Jefferson owned slaves and when Calhoun supported slavery, slavery was legal. It was abominable, of course, but it was legal. (Many people think the same today about abortion and death sentences: abominable, but legal.) That our Constitution allowed slavery to continue is an important reason that all 50 current U.S. states belong to just one country. Without the oblique references to slavery, it is unlikely the southern states would have ratified our Constitution and our bold experiment could have fractured at the outset.

Times change and the way we view former Presidents and Vice Presidents changes, even if their actions were within the range of normalcy for their time. As a proxy for normalcy, consider that the following countries, among many others, did not abolish slavery or serfdom until after Calhoun died: Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Russia, United States, Cuba, Poland, Netherlands (colonies), Portugal (colonies), Egypt, Bulgaria, Ottoman Empire (Turkey), Cambodia, Cuba, Brazil, Korea, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Siam (Thailand), Ethiopia, Morocco, and Afghanistan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline#1850.E2.80.931899.)

I hope that I am never judged by the standards of the future, it is tough enough being held to contemporaneous standards. But surely it wouldn’t be fair to judge my current morality and actions, which are steeped in 21st century America, by the mores of another time. One hundred sixty seven years after he died, that’s what we are doing to John C. Calhoun. I wonder who is next.

What is a sport?

The question of “What is a sport?” has sporadically engaged my mind for years. There are many opinions, each of which is almost guaranteed to generate argument. But let’s start with Merriam-Webster.[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sport

The first definition of “sport” is virtually useless: “a source of diversion,” which means that defining what a sport is is a sport – because it is diverting. The second definition is extremely interesting: “sexual play,” but we’ll ignore it for now, likely forever. The third definition is the most relevant: physical activity engaged in for pleasure. We will also ignore the interplay between the second definition and the third.

The third definition gets to the core issue of what a sport is. Most people think of a sport as any of the athletic activities that people engage in to have fun or help stay in shape: running, soccer, basketball, tennis, softball, etc. Think of an activity, somebody out there thinks it is a sport. For instance, some have argued (absurdly I might add) that bridge and chess are sports.

My definition of a sport is more discriminating, but devoid of value judgment. I don’t think a sport is better than a physically demanding activity that isn’t a sport. I just think that they are different and that it is useful to differentiate between sports and other physical activities.

George Carlin said “there are really only three sports: baseball, basketball, and football. Everything else is either a game or an activity.” I agree that those three are sports, but my definition is more inclusive. See http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2008-06-24/sports/whitley24_1_carlin-sport-illustrated for many amusing comments from Carlin about sports.

Another comedian, Patrice O’Neal stated that something “is not allowed to be a sport, unless there’s defense.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlD-5ctsbaY He was right, but not comprehensive enough.

Charles Barkley, a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, said that anything Ernie Johnson (his frequent broadcast partner) was better at than Barkley, couldn’t possibly be a sport. That’s funny and it might be true, but it is too subjective to be helpful. (I can’t find a source.)

Here is my definition:

A sport is: an athletic activity with a ball (or ball equivalent) and active defense. That’s three requirements: athleticism matters, a ball, and defense.

Upon hearing my definition, many people immediately start defending their favorite activity, for example, wrestling, swimming, or auto racing, that doesn’t meet the requirements. They get offended that their favorite activity doesn’t fit my definition. Again, I’m not judging the non-sport, I’m simply suggesting that archery is distinctly different from soccer, that skiing is markedly different from rugby. Not easier, not inferior, not less athletic, fundamentally different.

Golf (which I heartily enjoy) is not a sport, racquetball is. The latter has an active defense, a way to stop other players; golf does not. Swimming, cycling, and running are incredibly difficult to excel at, so is the triathlon that they comprise. They all require intense physical training, strong will, and great athleticism at the highest level, but they don’t have a ball and they don’t allow competitors to stop their opponent(s). They aren’t sports. That doesn’t mean that I think less of them or that anyone else should.

Carlin’s “baseball, basketball, and football” fulfill all the requirements of my definition, and they are the three sports that I most enjoy watching. Lacrosse and soccer, which I do not enjoy watching, also fit all three requirements. I’m not playing favorites; I’m distinguishing between activities, however highly skilled, and sports. They are different.

Whenever I have discussed this topic with friends and acquaintances, they accuse me of being judgmental. You probably think I’m judging; I’m not. Hockey is a sport, hiking is not. I like them both. Water polo is a sport, boxing is not. I’m not particularly fond of either. My preferences are not relevant.

There’s something about an activity where you can actively stop the other side that makes it fundamentally different from activities where you can’t — cricket vs. gymnastics. There is something fundamentally different about an activity with a ball and one without — volleyball vs. ice skating. There is something fundamentally different about activities where athleticism matters and those where it doesn’t — field hockey vs. croquet.

Sports are fun, demanding, and good for your physical and mental health. So are many other athletic activities. It’s just that athletic activities that don’t have a ball and defense aren’t sports.

[1] The Merriam-Webster Dictionary is the only direct descendent of Noah Webster’s original creation. For close to two centuries, “Webster” has been available to any publisher and has been used by many to help market their dictionaries. See Saalfield Pub. Co. et al. v. G. & C. Merriam Co., 238 Fed. 1 (C.C.A. 6th 1917) (“the copyright upon the original ‘Webster’s Dictionary’ expired in 1834, and ever since that date any one has had the right to publish that book, or his own revision of it, and call his publication ‘Webster’s Dictionary’ ” ).

Neologism

A “neologism” is a newly coined word or expression. My last post addressed my desire for a couple of new words. I received surprisingly few recommendations from you. Perhaps you’re still thinking. It isn’t easy to coin a new word.

But it’s not so hard to change one letter of a existing word. The example I often use to illustrate the concept is “sarchasm,” which is defined as the gulf between the speaker of sarcastic wit and the listener who doesn’t get it. The term appeals to me in part because of how often my own comments get lost in that figurative ravine. I tend to believe it’s the listener’s fault, my wife assures me that the fault lies in the speaker.

Through the years, I have mentioned this concept to many people, each time describing it as an annual competition run by the Washington Post. Alas, my memory was roughly half right. The Post actually runs a weekly contest, called the Style Invitational. The contest is not limited to neologisms. For instance, the very first Style Invitational, in March 1993, challenged readers to select a less offensive name for Washington’s football team. The winner chose “the Baltimore Redskins,” suggesting that the simplest way to address the issue was to make it someone else’s problem. Cleveland tried that once with the Browns – and then went out of its way to resurrect the problem.

The Style invitational has taken on a life of its own. According to Wikipedia, a group of devotees holds an annual awards dinner. One devotee won the contest so often that he inspired a contest to decide what to do about him. It did not have the desired result, he won that contest as well.

Winning the contest or merely having your entry mentioned is called getting ink. Several people have exceeded 1,000 inks. I have none. I like to think this is largely because I haven’t submitted any entries, that I could have ink if I tried.

“Sarchasm” by Tom Witte won Style Invitational Week 278 in 1998. I saw the non-word on the internet, where it was part of a list of other witty neologisms. The Post is credited with that list, but disclaims it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/the-style-invitational-goes-viral/2013/02/28/74a76fac-77a3-11e2-95e4-6148e45d7adb_story.html?utm_term=.6c2b59df307b

The son of my college roommate embraced the concept upon hearing about it. Here are two of his ideas:

Carcolepsy – condition of a person in the passenger seat who falls asleep as soon as the car begins moving, and

Celfish – adjective to describe people who focus too much on their cell phones.

Here are a few other examples of Style Invitational contests gleaned from the Post, along with a representative example:

Bad analogies (week 120): The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.

Change a movie title without changing any letters (1195): La-la-land, a man overcomes his insecurities stemming from a stutter to become an air traffic controller. (by Brian Cohen, Winston-Salem, N.C.)

Sometime in 1998, new meaning for an existing word: Coffee: a person who is coughed upon. (David Hoffman)

This is an endless rabbit hole as the Post crests Week 1200 — too many weeks, too many contests, too many funny lines. So I’ll close with two winning neologisms from the 2014 WPM (word play masters) Invitational:

Meanderthal – a lazy ancestor known for wandering around doing nothing while others hunted and gathered, and

Luxurinate – using a really nice restroom

http://www.washingtonpostsmensainvitational.com/2014-submissions/

I welcome any submissions you might have. If you want to win a prize, often described as “a strange, weird thing that few people would want,” you should submit to the Washington Post.

Language Gaps

Languages are in a constant state of flux, both within and without.

Of the 7,000 languages in the world, many are in serious danger. A language becomes endangered as the number of native speakers being born drops. It will survive (roughly) only as long as the last few native born speakers live. It may endure as a remnant language, perhaps with a dictionary and some academic speakers, but for all intents and purposes, it has ceased to exist.

Ethnologue, a web-based publication tracks the world’s languages. Its list indicates that there are 7,097 living languages and 360 extinct languages. It believes that approximately 470 languages are nearly extinct, meaning that “only a few elderly speakers are still living.” Ethnologue is Christian-based and is seeking to translate the Bible into as many languages as possible. The current count is over 2,500.

Question: Of the 470 or so nearly extinct languages, how many are based in the United States?

Languages and animals have similar ranking systems. The World Wildlife Fund ranks animals that are not safe from extinction on this continuum: least concern (brown bear), near threatened (beluga), vulnerable (giant panda), endangered (chimpanzee), critically endangered (black rhino). UNESCO ranks languages as safe (English), vulnerable (Sicilian), definitely endangered (Yiddish), severely endangered (Breton), critically endangered (Hawaiian), and extinct (Old Prussian). A language can also be dead, meaning that it is no longer spoken as a primary language but continues to be used in legal, scientific, or religious fields. Latin is the best example of a dead language.

Sicilian is listed as vulnerable despite having roughly 5,000,000 current speakers. Obokuitai (Indonesia), with 120 current speakers, is also listed as “merely” vulnerable. Both Northern Tutchone (Canada), with 115 speakers, and Lombard, with 3,500,000 speakers, are considered definitely endangered. These wide ranges are possible because the rankings are based on the likelihood that children will learn the language as their native tongue.

All of this is prelude (or superfluous). It distracted me from my initial focus: the English language. Even though English has the most words of any language, something like 250,000, there are some frustrating gaps. For instance, there is no gender-neutral third person singular pronoun. “He” and “she” are perfectly valid and useful, but they don’t adequately work when referring to a generic person.

A constant “he” is too paternalistic (for some) and a constant “she” is too feminist (for some). Through the years, I have thought that “s/he” might work, but have never used it, and usually I fall back on “he or she.” For example, you can often determine whether a person is from England, the first time he or she speaks. This works fine once, but it is awkward to continually repeat it in the same sentence or paragraph.

Another gap that confounds me is another continuum: friendship. I think of someone as a friend if we are reciprocally comfortable calling each other to chat or do something together. I know many people that I like but with whom I am not that familiar, they are not quite friends. I’m friendly with them, but they aren’t friends. Colleague or associate works, if we work(ed) together, neighbor works if we live near each other, roommate works, if we live(d) together. There a plenty of useful words that skirt the issue without closing the gap. I want a specific word for a person who is more than an acquaintance but less than a friend. Any suggestions?

I just did a Word synonym check on “friend” and found these: acquaintance, contact, colleague, associate, comrade, workmate, pal, buddy, companion, chum, and mate. None of these adequately narrow the gap between acquaintance and friend.

What gaps in the English language would you like to see filled?

p.s. Answer: Over 150 languages in the United States are nearly extinct. I’m guessing that none of you aimed that high. Our Native American neighbors are so separate from the rest of us that we don’t often consider them when we think about the United States. Or maybe you do, I know that I don’t.

(College Football) Royalty

Five teams have been ranked in every single poll issued by the college football playoff committee. Name these members of (current) college football royalty. Recall that this is only the third year of the committee. Two royal members are obvious, two more will surprise few. The fifth is tough. But that’s just here and now. What about long-term college football royalty? Which five teams have won the most games all time? The answers are below.

Depending on the source, there are 193 countries in the world — at least that’s how many member states belong to the United Nations. Three others have certain attributes of nation-states: the Holy See (not Vatican City), Palestine, and Taiwan. Let’s go with 193, it’s (not) a nice round number. Again, depending on the source, 44 countries have a monarch, 16 of which are subjects of the British monarchy. That means that 22.8% of the countries in the world have a monarch. Who knew?

Only a few of the monarchs exercise complete control, including those of Brunei, Swaziland, Saudi Arabia, Vatican City, and Oman. A few others have predominate control, such as those of Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bhutan. Most are in the British mold – constitutional monarchies, where the monarch has a limited role. Even so, some have considerable power. For instance, though the King of Jordan isn’t the head of government, he can veto laws.

Some kings are incredibly rich. The King of Thailand is worth $30 billion. Although many Thai citizens have sought to delegitimize the king, the junta that controls the Thai government recently increased spending to uphold and preserve the monarchy to over $500 million a year.

The Sultan of Brunei is worth $20 billion. He has been the absolute ruler of his country since it gained independence from the British in 1984. The Brits have a thing for monarchs, they love their own and they have an obsession with putting others in place. The Sultan is but latest in a series.

The king of Saudi Arabia is worth $18 billion and is another creature of the Brits. The Saud family has deeper royal roots, but they date their modern claim to the crown only to the post-WWI era. At that time, most of the land that comprises modern Saudi Arabia was a British protectorate. The king isn’t even the richest member of the Saudi royal family, which is 15,000 strong. One of the princes has invested well and is worth around $30 billion.

There are many ways to think about monarchs – power and wealth, but also length of rule. The royal dynasty in Thailand has reigned since 1782. The royal dynasty in Bahrain has reigned since 1793. The two of them effectively sandwich the ratification of our constitution.

In declaring our independence, we had a few unkind things to say about the British king. Not surprisingly, we didn’t embrace the concept of kingship, though George Washington was offered a crown. Thankfully, he declined. To protect us from ourselves (something we are not always good at), our imperfect founding fathers decided to take nobility and royalty and kings off the table. They were so concerned about the issue that they addressed it twice in the Constitution of the United States.

Article 1, Section 9, states that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.”

Article 1, Section 10, states that “No State shall * * * grant any Title of Nobility.”

Without these clauses, the Adams family (two presidents), the Rockefeller family (massive wealth, though relatively less now, a VP candidate, a senator), the Roosevelt family (two presidents), the Kennedy family (a president, some senators, and others), the Bush family (a senator and two presidents, among others) and many others would likely have been granted noble titles. The members of these families have enjoyed many of the perquisites of nobility – wealth, fame, power – but they have had (at some level) to earn it, not had it conferred by birth. The prescience of our founding fathers was strong in this arena.

Our college football royalty also has to earn it. The long-time powers certainly have advantages over the football equivalent of nouveau riche, but they have to produce year after year. Nobody gives them wins just because they won a lot of games in the 1960s, unlike, say, the Kennedys who seem to win elections based on their success in the 1960s.

Answers:

Five teams have been in every college football playoff committee ranking, in no particular order: Alabama & Ohio State (obvious), Clemson & Florida State (same conference, but still, not surprising), and Utah (tough).

Michigan (934), Yale (890), Nebraska (889), Ohio State (888), and Texas (879) have the most football wins in NCAA history. If Nebraska wins its bowl game and Ohio State wins the national championship, there will be a three-way tie for second place. Michigan’s spot on top seems secure for several (likely many) years.

Books written	Before 1950	1950 and after	Total
Books written	Before 1950	1950 and after

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%