It’s About Time

http://lssacademy.com/2008/06/30/ban-the-stop-watch/

Part of an advertisement for a fancy thermostat: “Instant readings are available within 10 seconds.”

My immediate reaction was how can it be both?  It is either instant or it is within ten seconds.

Of course, there’s “instant” and then there’s “real quick.”  When I was a kid, we used to play outside (those were different times) and, come suppertime or bedtime my mother would say, “Come inside this instant!”  “We’re coming!” we’d reply…but we weren’t doing any such thing.  We were still playing.  We were going to squeeze every bit possible out of the interval between her expectation and our compliance.  She wanted instant action; we wanted to delay her desire in favor of ours for as long as we could.  It was a delicate balance between what she wanted and what we thought we could get away with.

When my wife (who, incidentally, is a gourmet cook whose culinary creations are not to be missed) tells me “Dinner is ready,” I know she means that I should stop studying, writing, carving or gardening, and wash my hands, a process taking up to five minutes or so.  It really means, “Dinner will be ready about the time you have finished getting ready to come to the table.”  We have that understanding developed in our nearly fifty years of marriage.

So, I’ll give you all of that but I still don’t understand how something can be “instant” with the possibility of a ten-second delay.  Sorry, advertising agency, I can’t let you get away with such a contradictory claim.  You might call it nitpicking.  You can feel free to express that in the comment section and I will instantly give you my reply sometime.

Blasé to a Fault

I just watched another of those “Flash Mob” videos…truly amazing.  I have never been in one of those favored locations but I have watched a half-dozen or so on my computer screen.  What a kick to be in the midst of an unexpected performance by a dance group, choir or band!  I hope it happens to me sometime.

What has impressed me each time is that some of the shoppers continue shopping as if nothing were happening.  It almost seems as though they are stubbornly resisting being impressed or even interested.  They just go right on looking for an item of clothing or examining the eggs or pricing the butter.  What’s wrong with these people!?  What will it take to impress them?

Bandwagons

I’m not referring to actual wagons hauling actual band members. I’m talking about groups of people who have decided to think the same way without due consideration of all the information. Humans have a natural tendency to conform (fashions, fads, etc.) The few real non-conformists get the label “eccentric,” and summarily dismissed. That label applied to my father who always thought for himself. He was a curmudgeon with few friends, but he called it as he saw it (even if the way he saw it was screwed up). His main fault was making up his mind so solidly that it took a charge of dynamite to loosen him up to alternative thinking.

I especially notice the bandwagon effect expressed in blogs. For example, there are blogs where independent thinkers can express their independent thinking to other independent thinkers (bandwagons) and, in the process, lose their independence. Members of Political parties often confine themselves to party lines (bandwagons) instead of opening themselves up to other points of view. Members of certain religious groups are very often willing victims of “groupthink” (bandwagons) with their own special jargon. Atheists tend to stick together and parrot the current atheistic cant (bandwagons).

Bandwagons, I am thinking, come into being because people want to believe certain things and behave in particular ways rather than basing their personal philosophies and resulting actions on something substantial. Or, in the absence of substance, reserving their conclusions until they find it (it is, after all, okay not to have an opinion on everything).

While reading in the blogosphere, I notice that people who believe a certain way tend to read the blogs of others who believe the same way and merely applaud, cheer and conform to the thinking of the group. For them, “hopping on the bandwagon” becomes a convenient way to avoid thinking for themselves. Hats off to those brave and hardy souls who dare to disagree, challenge and debate those with whom they differ. We need to jump off our bandwagons and consider what others are saying. We might agree, disagree, challenge, debate, correct, suggest, applaud or, most important of all…learn.

My blogs:
Whitticisms: dwhitsett.wordpress.com
In the Charamon Garden: charamongarden.wordpress.com
Whitsett Carving: whitcarv.wordpress.com
Mission South Pacific: missionsouthpacific.wordpress.com

Embracing the Pun, and Promoting It

I grew up making puns.  It was a family affair.  Mealtimes became a contest to see who could make the last or best pun. It was often about food: “Lettuce not carrot any further.” “This chicken tastes fowl.” “This is souper!” and so on.

I recently became a subscriber to Visual Thesaurus and, if you love words, I can recommend it.  A couple of weeks ago, they published an article on puns by Bob Greenman.  If you have been critical of puns and those who make them…or…if you have been disparaged for your efforts to inject humor into conversations, this article should salve your wounds.  And so, fellow punners, this is one for our side.  It is nice to be exonerated instead of ex-honorated.

February 22, 2011

By Bob Greenman

As the M60 bus trundled east on 125th Street in Harlem, slow enough for me to read all the store names on a street I was unfamiliar with, one stood out, a florist named Pollen Nation. Cute, but more than cute. Memorable. Distinctive. And clever. It stuck with me, obviously, as no other Harlem store’s name did. Had Pollen Nation been named S&L Flowers, would I have taken note?

How many times have we read or heard that puns are the lowest form of humor? I trust you haven’t fallen for that groundless, malicious canard. Bad puns abound, but I think of them as cheap, rather than bad; puns too easily made, like the tasteless headline that appeared over a newspaper’s photo of a camera shop that had burned down. “Out of Film,”it said. Or the tedious puns that arrive repeatedly in e-mailed lists, like “To write with a broken pencil is pointless.”

No, I say. Puns — quality puns, at least — are not the lowest form of humor, but among the highest, involving imagination, creativity and wit. Punning is a natural act of people who like to play with words and who have the verbal dexterity to make unusual word associations. Their minds work like one-armed bandits in gambling casinos, with plums and cherries and oranges spinning madly upon someone’s utterance, searching for the right combination to connect on a pun. Speaking more scientifically, imagine a brain scan of a pun in the making, all those activated and excited synapses and neurons.

Knowing I was writing this column, with the intention of encouraging teachers to promote punning among their students, a friend asked me, “Doesn’t punning have to come naturally? Can you actually teach children to pun?” Yes, I said, by exposing them to puns, analyzing good and bad ones with them, having them keep on the lookout for them, and encouraging them to pun themselves, aloud and in their writing. Puns are a wonderful aspect of language to promote, and I promise my readers who teach that by exposing your students to good puns, they will learn to pun with class. And in class.

A brief definition, so we’re all on the same track: A pun is the deliberate confusion of similar words, phrases or sounds for humorous — and sometimes serious — effect. Another word for pun is paronomasia, deriving from an ancient Greek word that means “to alter slightly in naming.” It’s rarely used except to say that it’s another word for a pun.

Sometimes a pun is on a different sense of the same word, as when in Romeo and Juliet the dying Mercutio (who can’t resist a pun even in his last moments) says, “Look for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man.” Or when Hamlet says, “Call me what instrument you wish, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.”

Sometimes the play is on the twist of an expected word, or part of one, as when a traffic reporter for a New York City radio station described an expressway notorious for its traffic jams as the Long Island Distressway.

Sometimes it’s playing with a word or phrase from literature, as when New York Times reporter Michael T. Kaufman echoed the opening line of Moby Dick, beginning the account of his whale-watching cruise off Montauk Point, Long Island, with “Call me a schlemiel.”

In those examples we see some of the crucial elements in pun-making — a rich vocabulary, including a familiarity with proverbs, expressions, clichés and other language elements that can be distorted to make a pun; and a reading background ranging from nursery rhymes, fairy tales and mythology to classic novels, plays and poetry. The more literate one is, the greater the opportunity to pun.

Unlike other kinds of humor, which may take time to devise and can be retold, a true pun is spontaneous, made for the moment, suiting only the present occasion and rarely recycled, although some puns become classics, like this one. Late in her career, the operatic singer Helen Traubel and the comedian Jimmy Durante traveled the country as a comedy and song team. On one occasion, Durante entered Ms. Traubel’s dressing room unaware that she was half dressed. He left quickly and later remarked, “Nobody knows the Traubel I’ve seen,” punning on the Negro spiritual, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”

Puns go back at least as far as the Odyssey, composed about 800 B.C. A sea goddess, seeing the shipwrecked Odysseus adrift on a raft, puns on the name of the epic (in Homeric Greek, but translatable into English as the same pun), “Poor Odysseus! You’re odd I see, true to your name.”

Even Jesus punned. In the New Testament (Matthew 16:18), Jesus changes Simon’s name to Peter, punning on petros, the Greek word for “rock,” when he says, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” A pun not intended for levity but to make a point.

Then there’s the brief lament in verse in which the poet John Donne (1572-1631) puns on his own name, summing up what he endured after his political career was ruined following his elopement with the daughter of an influential man:

John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone

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The classroom is the perfect place to acquaint students, from elementary through high school, with puns like those in this column and found every day in their daily newspaper. Actually, though, most elementary school children have already seen puns in the paperback joke and riddle books found in their school and classroom libraries — puns that for adults are lame but for kids often hilarious, like:

• What did the farmer call the cow that had no milk? An udder failure.
• Why are teddy bears never hungry? They are always stuffed!
• Why are fish so smart? Because they live in schools.

Herewith, a selection of puns to share with your students, beginning with paronomasia from The New York Times, my local paper, although puns and punning headlines are available in every newspaper and magazine.

• A Times article about people whose gardens feature rare palm trees was headlined, “With Fronds Like These, Who Needs Anemones.”
• The United States Postal Service designed two possible Elvis Presley stamps, one showing him as a young performer, the other in his later years, then asked the public to vote for the one they’d prefer to see issued. They picked the younger Elvis for the 1993 stamp. The Times’s caption under a photo of the winner? “Love Me Slender.”
• When precious or semi-precious stones are set closely together on a piece of jewelry, pavement-like, so as not to show any metal underneath, they are said to be pavéd (pah VAYD), a French jewelry-making word. A New York Times advertisement for a piece of jewelry designed like this was headlined, “Pavéd With Good Intentions.”
• Recently, Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported that at a meeting on the last day of his job as President Obama’s senior adviser, the “avid punster” David Axelrod “offered a parting pun, urging everyone to ‘plow forward’ on a plan for genetically produced alfalfa.”

Times writers not only quote puns, they also make them:

• “Balloons have become a high-flying business and sell at inflated prices.”
• “Even those who prefer smooth peanut butter are now faced with a crunch.”
• “What Has 132 Rooms and Flies?” was the punning headline over a Times story about a housefly infestation in the White House. Among the reporter’s puns: “The White House is bugged!” and “It’s not clear why there has been so much buzz in the Obama White House.”

And while you’re promoting punning in the classroom, you can also show students how not to be corny, distasteful or to go for the easy pun. The New York Times’s Manual of Style and Usage even has pun guidelines for writers and editors. “Puns have a place in the newspaper,” the guide says, “but as a trace element rather than a staple. A pun should be a surprise encounter, evoking a sly smile rather than a groan and flattering the intelligence of a reader who gets the joke. Plays on personal names never qualify: no one will be flattered to read, say, that a pitcher named Butcher carved up the opposing team. The successful pun pivots on a word that fits effortlessly into two contexts.”

But un-Timesian puns sometimes slip through the editing process. “Boies Will Be Boies,” the headline over an article that appeared in The Times about David Boies, a well-known lawyer, was faulted by a Times editor in an in-house weekly critique of Times writing. “The Times does not pun on people’s names,” he wrote.

• Claire Regan, an editor at the Staten Island Advance, a New York City newspaper, picked up a New York State Associated Press Association award for the headline she wrote above an article about the level of obesity in Staten Island, “Call It Fatten Island.”
• On a hardware store shelf I found a mousetrap that I had no use for at home but which for years served as a classoom motivation for a lesson on puns. It was a glue trap shaped like a Quonset hut, the ends of which one sealed after a mouse was caught. The name of the trap? Mouse-o-Leum.

While puns are most commonly employed in conversation and in newspaper and magazine headlines, we also see them — like Pollen Nation — in shop names like those I’ve seen in New York City: A haircutter named the Mane Event. Laundries named Spin City and All Washed Up. A coffee shop named Acute Café. A shoe repair shop, Sole Brothers. A now-extinct restaurant located across the street from New York’s American Museum of Natural History whose punning name depends on an abbreviation: Tyrannosaurus Rest. And, of course, the king of all restaurant-name puns, The Dew Drop Inn. Every state in America has at least one.

If you asked your students to bring in punning shop names in your town, could they find some?

Puns are often employed in high school newspaper headlines, partly because students on their staffs tend to have sophisticated language skills; partly because writing for an audience inspires them to write more inventively; and partly because working in a group promotes having all kinds of fun. Recently, I asked members of the Journalism Education Association to submit for this column examples of headline punning in the high school paper they advise. As you will see,  some are more successful than others but all show a welcome inventiveness with language. I applaud their staffs for their initiative and creativity in creating them, and their advisers for encouraging their students to write with zip.

• The student paper at Paradise Valley High School, in Phoenix, Ariz., headlined the review of a band called Sherwood: “Would you read this concert review? Sherwood!” (Sherwood should be read as “Sure would!”)
• When Blake Little, a student at McKinney Boyd High School, in McKinney, Tex., released during his lunch period a chicken he had hidden in his backpack, the principal chased it through the cafeteria, caught it and held it up in victory. The school newspaper’s headline: “Fowl Play.” The subhead: “Student prank no ‘Little’ matter.”
• After volcanic activity in Italy prevented students from Reno High School, in Reno, Nev. from flying directly to the U.S. after a school trip, they returned via Israel. The school paper’s headline over its account of their indirect journey home: “Is[this]rael?”
• Over a story about the school’s Hellenic Club’s project involving inner-city kids’ letters to Santa, the newspaper at Glenbrook South High School, in Glenview, Ill. ran the headline,”Dear Santopoulos.”
• The headline over the same school’s math team’s winning meet: “Divide and Conquer.”
• The theme of Blair High School’s yearbook, the year the Blair, Neb. school went to block scheduling: “New Kids on the Block.”

Thanks, kids — and the teachers who inspire and encourage you — for having fun with language and striving to delight your readers with something different.

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The pun is liberating. It says to students, you can make language do as you please. You can twist words to make them your own. You can make connections between two entirely different things and think on two planes at once. You can improvise language and play with words. Isn’t that a great thing to help develop in students?

“When we make a pun, when we play with words, we are making them our own,” wrote Walter Redfern whose book, Puns, is a classic analysis and appreciation of punning. “Punning appeals to those who take risks,” he wrote, “but also those who expect and value their money’s worth, and indeed bonuses from language.” Puns, he said, result from “linguistic serendipity,” depending on the unexpected utterances of others.

My favorite pun happens to be one that was uttered by my daughter Rachel, when she was 14 years old. What is so telling about it is that, although it was entirely original and serendipitous, she could not have made it had she not been learning about dictatorships in her social studies class.

I had dressed after showering and, about to put my socks on, realized my feet were still wet. Taking a wash cloth from our linen closet, I walked into Rachel’s bedroom, where she was watching a TV program with her older sister Sara, sat down on her bed, and began to dry my feet.

“Is that a special towel?” Rachel asked jokingly.

“It’s a toe towel,” Sara quipped.

And Rachel said, “And it was made by a toetowelitarian, right?”

A Healthy Skepticism

Will Rogers, with tongue firmly in cheek, once said, “All I know is what I read in the papers.” In the 21^st Century, we need to include television and the internet. For all the multi-faults of the multimedia, where else can we get current misinformation? Given those limitations, it is wise, if you ask me (you didn’t but I’ll tell you anyway), to take it all with a grain of salt (euphemism for skepticism).  Cousin Will also said, “It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.”

My point: it is dangerous to base our conclusions on questionable data from questionable sources.  On the other hand, if the source has been consistently right, we can place a quantum of faith in what he, she or it reports.  So, how do we decide which sources to place our faith in?  Here are some thoughts:

1.       What is the background of the source?  For example, is the source is a solid member of some strange religious group founded on balderdash?  Then his or her conclusions may have the same foundation.

2.       Has the source been shown to frequently report “facts” that later prove to be fiction? Then we would be wise to withhold final judgment.

3.       Has the source has proven to be consistently accurate in facts that can be confirmed? If so, we can most likely assume accuracy in un-confirmable areas (I think I have just defined “faith.”)

4.       Is the source speaking from a biased point of view and more interested in party-lines and platforms than logical, open-minded consideration of the facts?  Then we can also expect the reporting to be positional rather than factual.

5.       Is the source a known conspiracy theorist?  I think you know where I’m going here.

Swagger, slide presentations and blackboards are not enough to produce confidence. Take a cup of media, crack the sources, carefully separating the yokels from the trustworthy reporters, add a tablespoon of skeptical salt, stir well,  pour into an unbiased pan, put in the oven and cook until it is not half-baked. I believe this is a good recipe for a measured response. I could be wrong but I don’t think so.

Sir John Carew Eccles, Believer

“People who believe in God are ignorant and superstitious.  Intelligent, educated people do not believe in God.” Perhaps you have read or heard such nonsense spouted by the so-called “new atheists.”  This is an ignorant and arrogant falsehood.  From time to time in this blog, I will feature quotations from highly respected scientists (many Nobel Prize winners) who are solid theists.  Hopefully, such information will put to rest such misinformed arguments among open-minded readers.

Consider Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles.  Sir John was an Aussie, born in Melbourne in 1903 and died in 1997.  More information can be found in Wickipedia and at Nobelprize.org.

Science and religion are very much alike. Both are imaginative and creative aspects of the human mind. The appearance of conflict is a result of ignorance.

We come to exist through a divine act. That divine guidance is a theme throughout our life; at our death the brain goes, but that divine guidance and love continues. Each of us is a unique, conscious being, a divine creation. It is the religious view. It is the only view consistent with all the evidence.

There has been a regrettable tendency of many scientists to claim that science is so powerful and all pervasive that in the not too distant future it will provide an explanation in principle for all phenomena in the world of nature, including man, even of human consciousness in all of its manifestations. [Karl] Popper has labeled this claim as promissory materialism, which is extravagant and unfulfillable.

Yet on account of the high regard for science, it has great persuasive power with the intelligent laity because it is advocated by the great mass of scientists who have not critically evaluated the dangers of this false and arrogant claim.

I regard this theory as being without foundation. The more we discover scientifically about the brain, the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena, and the more wonderful do the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a superstition held by dogmatic materialists. It has all the features of a Messianic prophecy, with the promise of a future freed of all problems—a kind of Nirvana for our unfortunate successors.

We have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.

The amazing success of the theory of evolution has protected it from significant critical evaluation in recent times. However, it fails in a most important respect. It cannot account for the existence of each one of us as unique, self-conscious beings.

Thanks to John Clayton and Does God Exist? Quotes were downloaded from http://www.doesgodexist.org/MayJun10/Eccles-Nobel.html, 18 July 2010

Thoughts on Turning Sixty-Eight

For the past few weeks I have been teaching a Bible class for older folks.  I don’t believe there is anyone in the class under 65 or so.  Since, in a few days I will be the ripe old age of 68, I feel right at home.  At the moment, we are working our way through Leviticus, one of those seldom-studied books.  It’s full of instructions for all kinds of offerings enabling a holy God to live among a very unholy people.  A lot could be said about that but, at the moment, I am thinking more about age than holiness.

Old age is, among other things, interesting.  For one thing, sitting still, I don’t feel old.  It is only when I get up and try to move around quickly that my body reminds me that it has seen better days.  I wake up in the morning with plans to accomplish the same things I did at, say, forty.  As the day progresses, reality sets in: I’m nowhere near the capabilities of forty.  It is disappointing.  Still, I keep at it as best I can.

One of my older-than-me friends tells me there are perks that come along with age.  People want to help you.  They open doors for you and ask if you need a hand.  Young women smile at you and don’t consider you a threat.  You get senior discounts.  That’s all I can think of right now.  I think, however, I would trade these “perks” for more “pep.”  Yes, I would trade it all for pain-free hips, knees, a well-behaved back, and being considered more dangerous in the eyes of young women.

The ranks of the “older folks” are bursting at the seams.  The solvency of Social Security and Medicare systems are threatened.  I notice more and more advertisements aimed our way.  Care facilities for older folks (skilled nursing, assisted living, etc.) are popping up everywhere.  Movies are being made about old codgers and biddies (good news for our aging actors).  I’m glad I don’t have to go through this “aging process” alone.

So how should you young folks respond to all this?  Well, Leviticus provides a good answer.  “You shall rise before the gray-headed and honor the presence of an old man, and fear your God. I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:32).  OK, I know it’s the Old Testament and the Law of Moses and all that but I still think it’s a good idea.

Atheists and Thinkers

“The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer.”

— Albert Einstein [1]

Quotes from two atheists demonstrate an unattractive and arrogant elitism for which there is no credible reason.  Guy P. Harrison said, “…atheism is not a conscious act of turning away from all gods. It is simply the final destination for those who think.” Ernest Hemingway concurred, “All thinking men are atheists.” Many similar quotes from so-called “new atheists,” echo these sentiments.  Such statements are deluded, egocentric and, with all due respect, stupid.  I define “stupid” as willful ignorance.  I suppose we have all been stupid from time to time, but such statements qualify since they are made in spite of facts to the contrary.

Perhaps a teeny history lesson is needed here.  Religious thinkers have existed in every age.  Historically, they laid the foundations for today’s science and philosophy and founded nations.  Can “thinkers” be “believers?”  Below, I provide a list of such people who, in the opinion of most, are “thinkers.”  For the sake of brevity, I have confined my list to the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.  These are men and women who, though some may not believe in a “personal God” have acknowledged a “higher power.”  To this power they attribute some role in the design and creation of the universe and the origin of life.

Winston Churchill Helen Keller Albert Einstein R. Buckminster Fuller Leo Tolstoy Wernher Von Braun Francis Collins C. S. Lewis Ravi Zacharias John Lennox Lord Kelvin Max Planck Simone Weil Arthur Compton

Freeman Dyson Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr. Karl Barth Hans Kung Edith Stein G. K. Chesterton Gertrude Himmelfarb William Lane Craig Francis Schaeffer Nelson Mandela Dallas Willard Martin Luther King, Jr. Rudolf Bultmann Antony Flew Reinhold Niebuhr

This is certainly not an exhaustive list.  But the question remains: were these men and women thinkers or not? Of course, a similar list could be compiled for atheist thinkers.  But, then again, I would not be so blind and bold to say otherwise.  It is estimated that 40% of working scientists are believers.  Yes, they are a minority, but a large one.  But here’s the pertinent query: can they do science without thinking? I think not.

Will this tiny article put a stop to such foolishness?  Not if those who make such inane statements continue to ignore the facts.  Ironic, isn’t it?  Those who disparage theists for believing in God without evidence ignore ample, overwhelming evidence.  Off the cuff, I can only think of five reasons for such statements:

1. They can’t handle the inconvenient truth.
2. They have invented their own exclusive standards and definitions for “thinkers.”
3. They arbitrarily decide that theists can get lucky sometimes but can’t really think.
4. They believe they have a corner on intelligence.
5. They need to get out more.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

You can read about more theist thinkers here and here.

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[1] Goldman, Robert N., Einstein’s God—Albert Einstein’s Quest as a Scientist and as a Jew to Replace a Forsaken God (Joyce Aronson Inc.; Northvale, New Jersy; 1997).

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