Current events on site have made me reflect on debating culture and rules again. Our sensitivities about criticsm, the value of our own dignity, and our talent to perceive a sign of disrespect with greater alacrity than its opposite make it extremely necessary to have such a culture, to value it, and to enforce rules that make debate a pleasure, not a chore.

Words may affect us more or less, but with all the jabbering around, most words will only superficially brush the fringes of our brains, if they'll get that close. But sometimes there's a sentence so clear, and so true that simply hearing or reading it changes our perception of the world. When I read “Rights and Obligations of People Who Want to Learn from Their Fellowmen” by Karl Popper, that's what I felt about the first rule. It struck me as the best rule for arguments that I ever heard.

Karl Popper is an Austrian-English philosopher who was a professor at the London School of Economics. He advanced the philosophy of critical rationalism that has impact on theory of science as well as politics. I've read less by him than the brief description might suggest, but I cherish his liberal position and his emphasis on open debate.

I've translated “Rights and Obligations” into English since I've only found it in German. If you know a different translation, please tell me. I'd be interested in reading it.

Lately, I've been playing around a bit with my image manipulation program, GIMP. It took me awhile to get the hang of it, and even now my attempts are pitifully basic. Still, I'm pretty proud of my meager achievement, and so I'll share it with you. If you've got ideas on how to tweak it some more, you're very welcome.

As I've said in my previous entry, I've been following online betting for the presidential elections. A few years ago, I read a book, "The Wisdom of the Crowds" by James Surowiecki, that outlined the theory that betting odds were better at predicting the outcome of elections than polls because betters had something at stake in predicting results and were likely to bet independent of their own preference for a candidate. I've always wanted to test the theory in practice, and these elections were the best opportunity I got.

The theory is appealing, and it's well argued, too, but when I took a closer look at the author's examples of crowds getting better results than experts, I found some chinks in the armor. Surowiecki pointed at the amazing achievements of the Linux community to provide an alternative operating system with open software, arguing that the users had the best intelligence as to what was needed. That provided focus as well as quality control. Now, I've become a fervent Linuxer myself, and the dedication of the community and the quality are amazing, but I can't ignore the fact that Microsoft still holds a commanding post, so I concluded that there must be other factors, like getting money for programming for example, that should go into the equation.

Following the elections, I became even more skeptical. One condition for a crowd to make intelligent decisions is that they are decentralized with each individual getting independent information. But often the odds closely reflected the numbers in the polls. It seems obvious that most of the betters rely on the same kind of information. The betting crowd appears to be a less decentralized crowd than Surowiecki assumed.

Anyway, I'll take the bet. Obama is the favorite by a large margin, the odds at 1.07 against McCain at 13.5. (That's the European notation, in the US it would be Obama -1400, McCain +1250.) It's the worst showing for McCain since January, and he's lost ground in the last 24 hours.

As for the winning margin in the electoral, things get a bit more complicated. The favorite option is that Obama will gain more than 370 electoral votes, though the odds for 350-370 for Obama have been shortening recently.

But if you follow the betting in individual states, betters aren't quite as confident. As of now, Obama would win 364 electoral votes, winning in 28 states plus DC, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsysvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Missouri. McCain would hold on to Indiana, Montana and North Dakota.

The race is closest in Missouri, for most bookies it's an absolute tie with only one bookie giving the tiniest of edges to Obama. I'll go out on a limb here. I'm more confident Obama will win Missouri. I don't think he drew a crowd of 75,000 in St. Louis for nought.

The momentum has been Obama's, so if you are looking for surprises, I'd look at Montana, North Dakota, and maybe even Georgia. The odds look a bit close for comfort for McCain. But if things go wrong for Obama, North Carolina is the place to watch. In every other state where Obama is leading except Missouri, McCain is trailing further behind.

I admit I'm a complete nerd. Still, what is your bet?
 

I have been watching the primaries and the election campaigns intensely. I regularly check the polls, and I even check sport betting sites for clues to the results. I'm not an American, but the elections matter disproportionally. Germany is Obamaland, and it won't surprise you to hear that I'm one of the millions that will keep their fingers crossed for him. I think it would be hard for any Republican nominee to win in Germany. The last Republican to get positive critique was George Bush Sn., and that was after he endorsed the unification of Germany. The Republicans are too socially conservative for Germany's taste, and their positions on social security and health care are considered unsocial.

Then there's the incumbent. Guantanamo, the war on Iraq, and the utter disregard the Bush administration had for their allies have raised our hackles. I think the Democrats could have nominated a scare-crow (as we say in German), and we would have endorsed him. Instead there's this charismatic, sophisticated, well-spoken guy. Is it a miracle we love him?

So, I've been watching. As Lynn McKenzie guessed in an email, it's interesting. I wish I could vote. And I shake my head with incomprehension when I look at the efforts to make people vote. I mean why wouldn't everybody?

If the stakes in this election haven't convinced you, if you've ignored all the calls to the polls, if you're still indifferent, can I at least shame you into the voting booth? If in Germany the turnout in a general election is below 80%, the pundits will lament the end of democracy. It's happened. In the last election, the turnout was the lowest in history, 77%.

Here's a link for reference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout

Whatever your political affiliations, I don't care. Vote. How can you presume to spread democracy around the world otherwise?
 

Again an entry, sparked by Satuawany . She's blogging on her dreams for a contest, and I figured I wouldn't clutter up her comments, but make my own entry on what my brain does when I'm not around.

I'm not a constant dreamer. I remember few of them and always have. I have always dreamed in color, and sometimes the colors are very intense and dominate the whole dream. I've had an orange dream, a blue dream, and one that was predominantly green and purple. Mostly, the colors are just realistic, so you don't realize they are there, but there's usually a very colorful element in it that I remember, like a piece of clothing or an object on a table or something.

The intense color dreams always have a special meaning to me, and they are always beautiful. The blue one was about sailing, and the sea was such a strong and dark blue, it seemed painted. I felt at home, safe and free, and it may well be the most beautiful dream I've ever had. The orange dream played out in autumn, the leaves were yellow and red, the sky was golden, and I found two tiger babies in a cave. (Don't ask me where that comes from.) There was nothing religious about the dream, nor am I religious, but in the dream I felt I was experiencing something spiritual. The green and purple one had a symbolism that I found very befitting at the time I had it. I was planting (purple) seeds below the leaves of a large plant.

In my dreams I spend a lot of time, looking for things in labyrinthine buildings or cities. The buildings rarely ever have a straight line, and apart from walking I often find myself climbing up a wall, or gliding down a tunnel. The light seems to come from all directions. Often the dreams end with the classical being unable to move motive.

One thing that is peculiar about my dreams is that I have deja-vus in dreams, or more precisely a dream memory that is independent of my waking memory. What I mean is that in a dream, I might realize I've been here before, and I can recall an incident that happened here, errh, there, whatever. But the memory is from an earlier dream, and more than once, when I woke up, I knew I hadn't remembered the dream when I had dreamed it first. So when I'm in one of these strange buildings, i might know exactly where to turn because I remember it from another dream.

I've had lucid dreams. In the first and best one I taught myself to fly. I had wings like a dragonfly. But these days, lucidity occurs only in nightmares. When I've got nightmares, I fight. In dreams I've killed several errr characters. They are mostly humans. It's when they turn to monsters that I realize I'm not awake, and then I order myself to wake up. It's not always successful because then I dream waking up and being in my familiar surrounding. Once I found myself on my sofa with my boy-friend sitting next to me. I told him I was so happy to see him because I'd had a nightmare. He bent over to kiss me and his face turned into a devilish visage. I woke up screaming.

I've died only once in a dream, and that was last week, and I was killed. It wasn't a nightmare; the atmosphere was rather comedic. I dreamed I was lying in bed when a trap door opened in the ground, and three young people got out. A man and two women. Young, good-looking guys. The boy took out a gun and shot my boy-friend and me. I got up and scolded him that this was a nasty thing to do. "You killed me. You can't do that!" He went pale and apologized; in fact, he was completely shocked. I figured it was because I wasn't supposed to be speaking, being dead. Then I told him to leave, and he replied he had something to do. He summoned the two women and they went out to the balcony. I waited for them to come back, and it took me a while to realize that they had jumped. I felt guilty, I shouldn't have been so hard on that guy, I didn't want him to kill himself. I ran out to the balcony and looked down. The police were there, I could see them several stories below. Two plain-clothes policemen stood directly in front of the balcony. They were very large, but not enough to account for the height on which their head were. I could look directly into their eyes. But they weren't floating either. They were talking about the suicide, ignoring me completely. It was then I realized I was a ghost, and I thought, well, then I should be spooking. So, I tried to say boo to one of the men in front of me. But I couldn't move, and then I woke up.

If that tells you anything about my personality, I'd be interested in hearing it. If it tells you, I'm nuts - I know that already.
 

Reviewing for the Review Ghouls was extreme fun last weekend. It's so liberating, taking up a persona, writing stuff you wouldn't dream of writing usually. Not because it's rude or crazy, just because it wouldn't occur to you because it isn't you.

And frankly, I enjoyed being psychopathic. Sanity can be rather limiting. The real fun part was not only to write a review imitating someone, it was changing my perception of the pieces I read. The question was, what would Annie have said about this piece. And you know what I tricked myself. That creeped me out.

On a lighter note: I've acted on a long-time resolution and become a mentor for the "The WDC Angel Army" . Pammi is my adoptee. Check her out!



 

I read a book today about the etymology of German words. I love it. It's fascinating to see where all these words come from, especially when they are very old, and you don't feel anymore that it's from somewhere else. It inspired me to do a little quiz for you.

Of course it's about English words. Care to take it?

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About four weeks ago, I got hooked on a blog by linguists. They are fantastic. They catch on many phenomenons of language usage, and the comments are delightfully competent. Non-linguists tend to let their prejudices rule over scientific methods, and this never happens in that blog.

Here's the link, in case you are interested. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/

Anyway, one of the posts I read today mentioned something curious. Many English speakers, especially women, find certain words revolting. Moist seems to be on top of that list, panties is another least favorite. These cringe words are considered a different phenomenon from word rage, "annoyance or anger at jargon or slang associated with a despised group". The words appear to be ugly in themselves.

Now, I wonder if this is strictly true. Often when people say they find a word beautiful, they mean the concept that's behind it. In a survey a few years ago in Germany, the word Heimat (home, homeland) was elected to be the most beautiful word of the German language. Despite the choice being somewhat corny, the word itself is phonetically inconspicuous; the only interesting fact is that the word is feminine though the suffix -at is usually not. To me, here's clearly a transference at work.

I guess the same could happen with cringe words. One woman, expressed her aversion against the word pus, describing how the word seems to do the same thing phonetically as the real thing. Pus is disgusting, but is the mere word, too? Or do we shudder because the word evokes the concept.

What's the story behind panties? Neither slip, nor undies seems to elicit the same disgust. There appears to be an atmosphere of pedophilia around the word. I wonder why. Maybe, you've got a clue. I do understand the discomfort to terms of underwear. One of the translations for panties is a word I had almost forgotten: Schlüpfer. I associate it with the slips my grandmother gave me regularly for Christmas. They were of the kind that causes considerable embarrassment in changing rooms before sports even in sexually unaware children. I abandoned the term with the garments as soon as I could for something more fashionable. But I feel no aversion against the word, just mild amusement.

There's a sexual element in other cringe words, too, though most people complain they encounter the words in cooking programs or culinary school. Moist falls into this category, and creamy and tender. Food and sex have some inner connection, both are sensual in a way, and certain food has often been associated with sexuality, cream, of course, clams and mussels. Could it be, that it's the sexual connotations that cause the revulsion in the cringers?

Funnily enough, it appears to be an Anglo phenomenon. Take the German translation for moist for example, feucht. The diphtong is the same as in English, and the ch is a squishy sound that's hard to explain. It's a voiceless y as in yes. Most foreigners substitute it with sh. It's as evocative as moist is, and the sexual connection is very strong. Yet, I've never heard anyone expressing revulsion against it.

But maybe I'm going out too much on a limb here, there are other cringe words for which I don't have an explanation: luggage for example.

Now, it's your turn. Do you have cringe words? Which ones? And what about moist? Anyone afflicted?
 

After reading several blogs with this survey, I decided I'd take it after all. Even though I'm not very original with regard to the yes/no part of answering. But the author of this survey is working with really funny presumptions, and I'd like to comment on that.

1. Do you have the guts to answer these questions and repost as The Controversial Survey?

Uh, so dramatic. You think it takes courage to pick a side in some age-old political battles? Would I go to jail? Physically attacked? Vulgarly insulted? Would somebody frown? Worse still, would a debate ensue? My knees are trembling.

Should I go around beating my chest because I'm so gutsy I've got a political opinion? I'll try. Yes! I've got the guts. I'll shout it off the rooftops.

Nah, you don't want guts to do this survey, you wanna be nuts.

2. Would you do meth if it was legalized?

Nope, I'm rather fond of the way I perceive reality.

3. Abortion: for or against?

For. It's legal over here during the first trimester, and that's good. There are no other but religious reasons to be against abortion, and while I'm fine with a woman who decides to have a child she didn't plan to have on religious grounds, obediance to religious principles should be voluntary and not imposed on by government.

4. Would our country fall with a woman president?

If it's going to be Gesine Schwan, that's a viable option. She's the SPD candidate for the Federal President. I don't think very highly of her because I know her from her days as a dean in Berlin. But she's not likely to win, and I was kidding anyway. We've got a woman Chancellor for four years now, and the country hasn't gone to the dogs quite yet.

If I remember correctly, my country did fall more than half a century ago and could hardly have fallen lower. The political leader was not a woman. Ever thought about it that way?

5. Do you believe in the death penalty?

Is it a new spiritual entity? I know it exists, even in civilized countries. I consider it a primitive practice of sanctioned revenge. Next thing you advocate is eating your enemies' brains.

6. Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?

It's legal to possess small amounts and smoke here, but not to sell which I think is hypocrite. I think legalization could be a way of controlling the quality; you'd have the means to set standards for the amount of TNC in a gram, or so. Some of that stuff is extremely potent, and you never know until you try. I'm glad that the days are gone when it was demonized as the straightest way to heroine addiction, but right now I feel its dangers are awfully played down. Did you know it can cause schizophrenia?

7. Are you for or against premarital sex?

Now, this is a presuming question though I'm not entirely sure what. If I say I agree, do I implicitly agree that a couple considering sex considers marriage at the same time? Because I certainly don't. Or is marriage considered an inevitable fate that may be preceded by sex? If I drop dead right now, I'd never have had premarital sex. So what kind of sex did I have then?

I don't think sex between consenting persons, old enough to give informed consent, should be regulated. In order to show that I've got some moral standards, I'll say I don't like cheating. But it's not a crime either.

8. Do you believe in God?

I usually try to dodge this question. I'm member of a church and have never considered dropping out. It would feel like a lie. The religious thoughts and values have shaped me and I can't deny it. But I've got lots of difficulties defending the vision of God as presented by the churches against staunch atheists. So if we can agree on God being a very, very abstract concept, inherent to the principles of nature, I'd say, all right, yes.

9. Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?

It's legal over here, and I know a few gay couples who married. If it's cool for them, it's cool for me.

10. Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are moving to the USA?

I wonder how many Native Americans were asked if they thought it wrong that so many Europeans were moving to their country.

Discussions on immigration are always based on fear. Which country, do you think, has the greatest number of immigrants per natural citizen? - It's Liberia. Makes you think, doesn't it?

11. A twelve-year-old girl has a baby...should she keep it?

No, she had better go to school.

12. Should the alcohol age be lowered to eighteen?

Over here it is and always has been. At the moment, the trouble is kids start drinking at 14 or lower, God knows how they get it. I admit that I've always found it funny that you were trusted with responsible decisions like voting before you were trusted with a drink. Come to think of it, though, you've got at least some people voting soberly.

13. Should the war in Iraq be called off?

It shouldn't have been started. Now, you go and end it in the most dignified manner possible.

14. Assisted suicide is illegal...do you agree?

Yes. I know it's considered frightfully liberal to allow people "to end their sufferings"; there have been several spectacular cases in Germany. They've dwindled in number though since there are improvements in pain therapy. I take the point of view that nobody should end anybody else's life, except in self-defense. If you were intent on taking your own life and can't do it yourself anymore, I'm sorry, you've missed the boat.

15. Do you believe in spanking your children?

No. I think it's immoral to hit on persons who are physically weaker than yourself. I'd be impressed if you told me you spanked your boss.

16. Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?

What do you really want to know? Am I Anti-American? No. Or so I believe. Mr Bush might think differently. Am I corruptible? Probably. Do I believe a million dollars are an appropriate incentive to burn a flag? No. Do I believe flag burnimg is an unforgivable crime? No. It's insulting of course, it's meant to be. Do I believe burning flags is a sophisticated way of expressing protest? No.

17. A mother is declared innocent after murdering her five children in a temporary insanity case.

Temporary insanity is a fishy plea. I'd like to hear the details. But it happens.

18. It's between you and a person who is being kept alive by life support, which one dies?

As I've said before I wouldn't kill anybody except in self defense, and I doubt the person on life support would try to shoot me.

I got a feeling I know where this is coming from and I'll give a different example, one that really happened. Two alpinists climb on a glacier. One falls into a canyon. The other one stands on top, holding the line. For some reason, the one on top can't drag his partner up. He can't call for help. He can only do one thing, cut the line to save his life which will kill his partner in the fall, or die with him.

I believe in this situation, I would choose my life over the other. So did the man in my example. The funny part of the story comes after he had climbed down to the camp. He didn't tell anyone. He didn't send a search team on the remote chance that his buddy was still alive. And he was. He had broken a leg and crawled out of the canyon on his own.

19. Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?

Nah. I'm terrified to be judged from my shoewear.
 

I've got a topic today that befits the paralyzing heat of summer. What do you do to cool down? Go for a swim, have an ice-cream?

Yesterday, I surfed the net and found a very cool new word. It's fairly new; the term was coined at 22:56:57 (that's 3 seconds before 10:57 p.m.) on Thursday, January 15, 2004, in Northridge, California. Snowclones.

Snowclones are a subset of clichés, rather template phrases for journalists and advertising agents. The phenomenon got its name from the cliché If Eskimos have N words for snow, surely X have Y words for Z.

Think of sentences that contain "is the new". Here are examples from the first page of a Google search.

Pink is the new Black!
Small is the new Big.
Literature is the new Rock.

Often snowclones can be traced to movies or rock songs.

In space, nobody can hear you X, for example, derives from the movie Alien. The original scream can be replaced with anything audible.

Suffixes can become snowclones, like -core, or -gate. On Wikipedia you can find a list of many scandals that were named with this suffix. My favorites weren't among them: Zippergate, and a German one. Waterkant is a low German word for coast, so when in 1987 it became known that the leader of the Federal State of Schleswig-Holstein, which has two coastlines, had spied out his opponent before the election, the scandal was dubbed Waterkantgate.

When I read the blog of a snowclones data base (http://snowclones.org/), I found a snowclone with particular appeal to me: X is the Y of Z. It's always a metaphor, and in journalism you'll find many absurd examples for it.

I recognized it immediately: The Portuguese are the Brazilians of Europe, a reporter said years ago at a football err soccer match. It inspired me to invent a lot of funny variations at the time.

I thought you might find it fun, too. So, I made a little cool summer game.

Want to join?

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