Dear old dad

Two photos defining good parenting came across my social media recently. Specifically, parenting on the father side.

First off was this one:

One of my Twitter followers thought this was kind of abusive, but from the look on that girl’s face, I believe she’s learnt her lesson. Someone said, “I bet she thinks three times before she skips school again!” I replied, “Bet she’s begging her parents to transfer her to another school. In another city.”

But if you do think this is way harsh, here’s the antidote:

You’re welcome.

Langue et langage

As you know, I enjoy the virtues and vicissitudes of language—any language, I ain’t proud. So this BBC vignette rather appeals to me: linguists sharing their favorite idiomatic expressions from various languages. The ones that don’t quite translate into English.

The Polish one—not my circus, not my monkeys—actually is reasonably transferrable. Lord knows we’ve got a full-bore circus going on, with plenty of monkeys.

(I guess that an expression on our side of the language barrier that might be equivalent is the somewhat wordier “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Usually said just before one packs up for the day and leaves.)

The one here I particularly like is the Chinese phrase about the grass mud horse. That’s because it’s a homonym of the Chinese equivalent of “yo mama”. This syllabic slitheriness reminds me of a slightly roundabout play on words that starts with the French “ouate de phoque”—a homophone for the English whiskey-tango-foxtrot? (Which in French is actually translated to “c’est quoi ce bordel?”)

Only the actual English translation of ouate de phoque is “seal wadding”.

I learned this from a multilingual Facebook friend. Occasionally when he posts something that strikes me as beyond the beyond, I’ll comment “Seal wadding!”, and he has to explain it to others.

Well, perhaps it doesn’t sound as amusing to you as it does to me. Because you just can’t make this stuff up. Unless you’re a linguist, I suppose.

Algo roulette

Y’all know how interesting I find algorithms used for search and for serving ads. (One of the worst instances of the latter actually came from the LA Times; that one is forever printed on my cortex.)

Well, here’s another example that I find deliciously perplexing, served up by YouTube, a Google property:

I mean—are the people who’d listen to Tom Waits and Bette Middler singing a smoldering “I Never Talk to Strangers” likely to be in the market for dating Arabian women? Conversely, are the people interested in dating same likely to be listening to Waits and Middler?

I didn’t click on the link, so I can’t tell if the “dating” site is an iteration of Eastern European women who really, really want to be friends with you. Or what. I just don’t really want to know. I am kind of wondering what, exactly, that algorithm is smoking.

But I’m betting that somehow Facebook is going to be showing me more of similar sites.

Gratitude Monday: what a year

I was riding Metro to work Thursday morning when I realized that precisely a year before I was getting ready for a job interview. The interview, in fact, that brought me to the District They Call Columbia.

It was also the last time I spoke with my BFF: I walked back to my hotel after the interview, kicked off those interview shoes and dialed her to report on the whole thing. How I actually enjoyed talking with the panel of seven, was psyched up by the challenge, loved being in the city in October. She was drifty because of the morphine, but nonetheless expressed her excitement, and made a joke about my one competitor for the job.

Our last laugh.

It’s been a taxing year since that day, and I’m only now starting to feel like I might be getting my head around what I need to do, how to frame my communications, where I need to be. Many rivers to cross, of course, but I can do it.

So today I’m grateful for the way things finally came together, and for the opportunities ahead.

The wheel's still in spin

Man—you talk about an October surprise: the Nobel Prize committee announced yesterday that it has awarded the 2016 prize in Literature to Bob Dylan. You can debate if you want to about whether he’s a world-class poet; he’s sure as hell captured the zeitgeist of generations of people for the last five decades.

(And, look: if you're down with the prize going to Hemingway, you got no squawk with it going to Dylan.)

I’m more open to the question about Dylan as a performer: the one time I shelled out good money to go to one of his concerts, he came out on stage, played and sang with a zombie style and literally when he wasn’t doing either of those he turned his back to the audience. Evidently that was a phase he was going through, but it sucked.

Also—the guy definitely did not hit songwriting homers every time he came up to bat. Case in point would be "Don't Think Twice (It's All Right)". I expect it's intended to be the anthem of the free-wheelin' yout of the 60s, but all I've ever heard was irresponsible claptrap. And my reaction to the lines, "I wish there was something you could do or say/To try to make me change my mind and stay" is to tell him, "fuck you and the horse you're riding away on." Because who needs that kind of tsuris?

On the other hand, I’m one of those generations that have his lyrics woven throughout their lives. It would be impossible for me to pick my “favorite” Dylan, but here are some that I have embraced wholeheartedly.

Naturally, I first heard “My Back Pages” sung by The Byrds. And at that time in my life I didn’t understand what the refrain was about, it was just deep, you know? It was Dylan, man. Here’s a version a whole lotta legends got together to sing at Dylan’s 30^th Anniversary Concert more than 20 years ago:

And yes: that’s Eric Clapton screwing up the refrain.

Another song that’s been at times a lifeline is “Forever Young”. I first heard Joan Baez sing it at a concert in Illinois. But here’s a cover by Norah Jones that may have displaced Baez in my heart:

Is there anyone who hasn’t heard “I Shall Be Released” and felt, “Yeah—any day now…”? Here’s Chrissie Hynde knocking it out of Madison Square Garden at the 30^th Anniversary concert:

And one more from that concert: Tracy Chapman singing possibly the most iconic of Dylan’s works:

One way or another, the order is rapidly fadin', and the times they are indeed a-changin’.

Life of Riley

Y’all know how much I love the Twitters-dot-com. In addition to political exploration, there are all the animals.

No, no—I mean real animals. As in: not members of homo sapiens.

Here’s one, for example: We Rate Dogs.

To be honest, I don’t recall how I came to be following them, and I sure as hell don’t understand what they’re on about. I’m guessing that people send them pix of dogs, and they rate them. The dogs, I mean.

But they’re all 11 and 12 out of 10 ratings. Which they appear to be explaining here:

Well, fair enough.

But the one that caught my eye was this photo of Riley, in a sprinkle doughnut pillow:

That was certainly worth the 13/10 rating. But then there were the reply tweets. Viz.:

The elephant in the room

If you have any kind of connection to mass or social media, you’ll have noticed the terrible quandary that those pleased to call themselves Republican leaders—and especially those whose names are on November ballots in races ranging from Vice President of the United States clear on down through Senators, Representatives, Governors and state legislatures—have found themselves in since the #TrumpTape was released on Friday.

Because they’re desperately trying to demonstrate their loyalty to whatever it is that the Republican party claims to hold as core values as they simultaneously spray themselves with DDT to purge the contagion that the Chaos Monkey they nominated for President is spreading every time he opens his mouth, pretty much.

Let’s put aside the issue that his long litany of racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, cruel, ignorant and delusional statements didn’t seem to ruffle any of these people’s feathers over the past, well, decades. It doesn’t even seem to be an issue to them that the behavior he described on tape (which may, TBH, fall under the “delusional” rubric above) was abusive and in most civilized places illegal. It’s that he used language that no Baptist is supposed to know the definition of that caused them to flap their hands about and call for smelling salts.

The trickle of disapprobation (characterization of his recorded bragging as “unacceptable” and “offensive”, but no unendorsements) that started late Friday has turned into a torrent of not only withdrawal of support for him, but also frantic attempts to put as much distance as possible between them and him. 

They're even—mirabile dictu—calling for him to step down. Like that's ever going to happen.

(And nor should it. People are already casting their votes based on the slates nominated by the various parties. Play the damned hand you dealt yourselves, babies. You don't get to redeal because you suddenly don't like the cards.)

The Chaos Monkey, as usual, is pissed off but not at all dismayed, and he still has connectivity and an iPhone:

Also, I believe the “shackles” he refers to in this tweet are the ‘Pubs who are shoving the women and children aside in their race for the Titanic’s lifeboats:

Well, whatever.

But I do love the way social media stepped up to the plate to frame the current neo-con conundrum in images that they hold so dear:

And, of course, Twitter totally owned it like a boss.

Chemistry and couraging

It’s the second Tuesday in October, so it must be Ada Lovelace Day, when we honor women who’ve made major contributions to the advancement of society via one of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines.

In the past I’ve brought to your attention the mother of modern computers, Grace Hopper (whose Celebration is taking place in Houston this week); Nobel Laureate (in Physiology/Medicine) Rosalyn Sussman; Hedy Lamarr (if you’re reading this on a mobile device, you can thank her for developing the frequency hopping system on which mobile communications are based); and two engineers who contributed to the Allied victory in World War II: Joan Struthers Curran, whose work on little aluminum bits called “chaff” helped to foil Nazi radar and divert attention from the D-Day landings; and Beatrice Shilling, who solved the problem of British fighter planes cutting out mid-dogfight due to carburetors that weren’t designed to support the kinds of maneuvers necessary to take on the Luftwaffe.

Last year I wrote about a woman who went through two careers—one military and one in private practice—as an occupational therapist, during which she designed and patented various devices to help patients achieve and maintain balance. Eventually, after retiring twice, and in her 90s, Barbara Beskind got to achieve her longstanding dream of being an inventor when she joined Silicon Valley design giant IDEO.

Today, though, we’ll go back to academia and to bench research, and talk about Marie M. Daly, the first African American woman to be granted a Ph.D. in chemistry. If you are concerned about your cholesterol, happy about your cholesterol or know anything at all about your cholesterol, it’s largely because of the work that Daly did.

Born in Queens in 1921, Daly was encouraged to follow her interest in science by her family and her teachers at Hunter College High School (which was all-female, a fact that I cannot believe is insignificant). She pursued studies at Queens College, living at home to keep expenses down, and graduating magna cum laude in 1942 with a degree in chemistry.

She followed with a master’s in a year from New York University, while working part-time as a lab assistant at Queens College (who thought enough of her potential to fund her studies at NYU). Following a year tutoring chemistry students she enrolled in the doctoral program at Columbia University, working under another woman pioneer, Mary L. Caldwell, whose focus was on the digestive enzyme amylase. She was awarded her Ph.D in 1947.

Daly taught for two years at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., then received a grant from the American Cancer Society to support a postdoc at the Rockefeller institute in New York. There she worked on understanding the metabolism of components of the cell nucleus. Her career included teaching at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Daly was also an investigator for the American Heart Association, researching how hypertension affects the circulatory system. She was also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In addition to her research and teaching, Daly set up programs and scholarships to increase diversity in the ranks of chemists. Her real passion was expanding knowledge, whether it was as a bench researcher, a teacher or an encourager.

It’s hard to know what kinds of hurdles she faced as a black woman in science in academia. Bias against women and minorities is still rife at all levels of STEM (and elsewhere); rather ironically, this is well-documented in scientific study after scientific study. But she never wavered, not from her first discovery as a child of Paul De Kruff’s book, The Microbe Hunters. She knew at an early age what she wanted to do, and she did it.

All this is an extraordinary tale. But the thing that drew me to Daly’s story is this quote, which is applicable to everyone: “Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: you get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.”

Well, yes you do.

Gratitude Monday: reading through the weekend

On this Columbus Day, I’m grateful for two things:

It’s a holiday for my employer, so I get another day to sleep in past 0520.

And on Saturday morning I picked up the latest in Louise Penny’s detective series about Chief InspectorArmand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. So I had something to read last night and didn’t have to watch the debate.

Team spirit

You might have gathered that I’m not much of a sports fan. I’m vaguely aware that there are events that purport to be athletic endeavors around town, but in my opinion, once “sportsmanship” left the field, they should be called what they are. Which is a bunch of over-hyped egotists pumped-up on performance-enhancing substances engaging in activities that fleece the public, first in the granting of ridiculous tax favors and building of free facilities and then in the wildly over-priced ticket charges.

And that’s before the traffic jams.

Basically, whether it’s baseball, football, basketball or hockey, we’re just talking about another incarnation of corporate welfare.

Given that premise, I might be forgiven for getting confused by logos I encountered when I arrived at the District They Call Columbia earlier this year.

What happened was that I went into a Harris Teeter, saw this logo, and wondered, “Do they have a Walgreen’s [pharmacy] in this store?”

Because, look—grocery stores have over-priced and over-hyped coffee-like-substance chains, and banks and whatnot, so there might be a Walgreen’s…

Only it turned out that logo represented the local baseball team, the Washington Nationals.

But before you slap me upside the head, here’s the actual Walgreen’s logo:

So—an easy mistake.

Back in the very early years of this century in London, my bus route home from a Saturday morning wandering around the Portobello Road market or being a culture vulture at one of the museums took me past Chelsea Football Club. I was watching fans converging on the stadium one day, wearing shirts proclaiming their team support. Viz.:

(Apparently these are now collector’s items, ergo the eBay-worthy pix. Sorry.)

Here’s what I thought: “Man, that Autoglass team really has a lot of fans here.”

Well, look—when the corporate sponsor has bigger lettering than the team logo, what am I supposed to think?

I twigged to the situation at some point before I got home, and then mentioned it to a couple of colleagues on the Monday. They told me I was pitiful.

Well, fair enough. But in this regard, I’m with Sherlock Holmes: my brain does not need to be cluttered up with identifying specific athletic (ish) teams. What I care about is knowing when there’s a game on so I can take alternate routes to where I want to go.