m. c. de marco

I mentioned a few days ago that I’d received my ARCs of Redshirts and that all of them were claimed except one, and that I would do something cool with it as a giveaway. Actually, it wasn’t 100% accurate. It’s not me who is doing something cool with it, it’s Pat Rothfuss. He’s giving going to give it away (signed!) as part of his Worldbuilders fundraiser.

What is Pat Rothfuss’ Worldbuilders fundraiser? It’s his annual and rather spectacular way of getting folks to kick into Heifer International, the charity that helps people in third world countries improve their lives through the power of livestock. Or as Pat puts it, “They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.” The deal is that for every $10 you donate to Worldbuilders, you have a chance to win prizes. Donate $10, one chance. $100, ten chances. The math is pretty simple, actually.

So far this year Pat and the folks contributing to Worldbuilders have raised an incredible $250,000 for the cause… but there’s always more to raise. Thus the contribution of Redshirts. I’ve been a big fan of Worldbuilders since it’s started and it’s a honor to put my work into its service.

Mind you, it’s not just Redshirts that’s up for grabs. There’s literally hundreds of books, DVD, graphic novels and other goodies to be given away, including stuff from Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Bear, Ernie Cline, Kate Elliot, Peter S. Beagle, and of course Pat himself, much of it signed and/or rare. Plus I have a few more things in there as well, including signed copies of Fuzzy Nation. This is all tip of the iceberg stuff; for the whole loadout go to that Worldbuilders link above.

Here’s the thing: The Worldbuilders fundraiser is only through February 7, so if you want in on the action, make your move. It’s well worth it, both for the premium stuff available and, you know, to help folks better their lives.

If you’ve not already clicked through to donate (and why have you not?), I’ll mention that I gave Pat an early sneak at Redshirts. He talks about it a little here on his blog and gives it a full review (without spoilers) on Goodreads. I encourage you to click through and see what he thinks and why in the end he threatens me (in the nicest possible way, of course!) with an axe handle. Oh, Pat. I love you too. Don’t make me set Krissy on you.

"Radical theory explains the origin, evolution, and nature of life, challenges conventional wisdom: Case Western Reserve theorist develops incomparable model that unifies physics, chemistry, and biology", Case Western Reserve press release 1/26/2012:

The earth is alive, asserts a revolutionary scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects—for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA—are animate, that is, alive. With its broad explanatory power, applicable to all areas of science and medicine, this novel paradigm aims to catalyze a veritable renaissance.

Erik Andrulis, PhD, assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology, advanced his controversial framework in his manuscript "Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life," published in the peer-reviewed journal, Life. His theory explains not only the evolutionary emergence of life on earth and in the universe but also the structure and function of existing cells and biospheres.

In addition to resolving long-standing paradoxes and puzzles in chemistry and biology, Dr. Andrulis' theory unifies quantum and celestial mechanics. His unorthodox solution to this quintessential problem in physics differs from mainstream approaches, like string theory, as it is simple, non-mathematical, and experimentally and experientially verifiable. As such, the new portrait of quantum gravity is radical.

John Timmer, "How the craziest f#@!ing "theory of everything" got published and promoted", Ars Technica 1/28/2012.

A paper like this can put a university's Press Information Officer (PIO) in a tough position. According to a PIO at a major university (who asked to speak without attribution because he works in the field), a PIO can typically recognize when something is off on the fringes of science, and they don't want to promote a story that will damage their institution's credibility.

"We do try to avoid doing stories that we feel could backfire on the institution, but it's not always up to the PIO to say no to a paper that is appearing in a peer-reviewed journal," the PIO told Ars. "Note that she [the Case Western PIO] made the point about peer-review explicitly in the release—that’s a pretty telling detail." […]

If the responsibility of press officers can be a bit complicated, the responsibility of news sites isn't. PhysOrg and Science Daily both did what they always do and ran the press release, unedited, as if it were their own original news content. ScienceDaily even added itself as the dateline source.

This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it weren't for the fact that, in a large number of contexts, these two sites are treated as credible sources of scientific information. Items posted there make frequent appearances on social news sites, and a number of people I've talked to have been shocked to discover that the majority of the sites' content is nothing more than rebranded press releases.

What does this have to do with language?  Well, I was going to say that linguistics is one of the few subjects that Dr. Andrulis doesn't promise to revolutionize, until I checked the paper:

The theory outlined in this manuscript is limited in scope. I did not provide gyrosystems to model much of the scientific evidence related to astrophysics, particle physics, and cosmology before the electrogyre, nor did I integrate organismal, ecological, and ethological data after the cellulogyre. I predict that further gyromodel application will reveal its explanatory breadth and power. For example, given that complexity theorists find there to be a unifying organization in ecosystems, language, and economics, I predict the gyromodel will find applications in these subject matters.

But linguistic applications of the gyomodel aside, this episode offers an unusually pure example of (the first steps in) the ecosystem of flacks and hacks.  I've written about this in a number of posts over the years, including these:

"Enhance breast size by 80%", 4/9/2005
"Another day, another reprinted press release", 4/24/2005
"It's always silly season in the (BBC) science section", 8/26/2006
"Flacks and hacks and Hitchens", 12/14/2006
"Flacks and hacks and brainscans", 11232007
"Why don't we have a better press corps?", 9/11/2008
"Debasing the coinage of rational inquiry: a case study", 4/22/2009
"Study: Hacks often bamboozled by flacks", 5/30/2009

The general problem of credulous passing-on of press releases is especially acute in the case of language-related topics, because the countervailing forces (knowledge of the subject on the part of journalists and editors, and fear of reputational damage from public ridicule) are so weak in those areas.

In the case of the Andrulis paper, the claims were so bizarre, and covered such a wide range of fields, and came from such an unlikely source, that there was no journalistic uptake at all. But the paper's publication in an allegedly peer-reviewed journal, the issuing of an enthusiastic press release from an apparently authoritative source, and the re-publishing of that press release at Science Daily, illustrate how little those steps actually mean.

P.Z. Myers offers the explanations that have probably also occurred to you:

This paper is so weird and out there that it is either an attempt to Sokal the field of origins of life research, or the man is seriously mentally ill.

It's also a case where I feel that the bar bet model has a certain explanatory potential.

Update — it may also be relevant that W.B. Yeats was heavily into gyre theory, back in the 1920s. Whether the system of A Vision is connected to the current explorations of Erik Andrulis is unclear — it's not in his bibliography — but the rules are different for poets.

One of the earliest and best photographers in China was called John Zumbrun, but I have also seen his surname spelled various different ways, including Zumbrum.  Some of his pictures may be seen here (this site is run by Thomas H. Hahn, digital archivist of old photographs).

As soon as I saw his surname, I suspected that it might be a variant of the Zumbrunnen among my own maternal relatives who were of Swiss German extraction.  When I mentioned to my sister Heidi (who does intense genealogical research on our family) that I thought Zumbrun might be a variant of Zumbrunnen, she replied, "Oh man, the variant spellings of Zumbrunnen are driving me batty.  I have even seen Zum Pwunnen.  Have you heard of the soundex?  It is a way to index names & deal with all of the variant spellings."

Upon looking up Soundex, I found that it was developed around 1918 and was a method for indexing names in the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 US Censuses.

Soundex is still very much in use today and there is a neat Soundex converter that enables one to easily and quickly obtain the one letter + three digit alphanumeric code for any surname that one enters into the system.

Essentially a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, Soundex encodes homophonous names with the same alphanumeric representation so that they can be correlated despite differences in spelling.

Metaphone is an improved version of Soundex that was invented in 1990 and that takes into account irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation.  The latest version, Metaphone 3, was brought out in 2009 and "achieves an accuracy of approximately 99% for English words, non-English words familiar to Americans, and first names and family names commonly found in the United States, having been developed according to modern engineering standards against a test harness of prepared correct encodings." (Wikipedia)

I thought that I'd give Soundex a try on a controlled body of material.  I've long been aware that there are numerous different ways to spell the name Shakespeare.  In an article entitled "The Spelling and Pronunciation of Shakespeare's Name", David Kathman brings together many of these variants.  Here are the Soundex results I obtained when I entered the variants into the software:

non-literary references

Shakespeare             S221
Shakespere              S221
Shakespear              S221
Shakspeare              S216
Shackspeare             S216
Shakspere                S216
Shackespeare           S221
Shackspere              S216
Shackespere            S221
Shaxspere               S216
Shexpere                 S216
Shakspe~                 S210
Shaxpere                 S216
Shagspere                S216
Shaksper                 S216
Shaxpeare               S216
Shaxper                  S216
Shake-speare           S221
Shakespe                 S221
Shakp                      S210

literary references

Shakespeare            S221
Shake-speare           S221
Shakspeare              S216
Shaxberd                 S216
Shakespere               S221
Shakespear               S221
Shak-speare              S216
Shakspear                S216
Shakspere                S216
Shaksper                 S216
Schaksp.                 S210
Shakespheare          S221
Shakespe                 S221
Shakspe                   S210

Since all of these spellings refer to the same name, ideally they should all have yielded the same alphanumeric code.  It is encouraging, though, that most of the variants come out as S221 or S216, while there are only 4 occurrences of S210.  I have not run all of the variants through Metaphone, though I presume that it would do an even better job than Soundex.

Nevertheless, we should not be so naive as to believe that Soundex and Metaphone can do our genealogical research for us, since they are only meant to recognize patterns that we might otherwise overlook.  For example, the alphanumeric Soundex code for "Mair" is M600, but the same code is also applied to the following long list of names:   MAHAR | MAHER | MAHR | MAIER | MAIR | MARIA | MARIE | MARR | MARROW | MARY | MAURY | MAYER | MAYOR | MEIER | MERRIHEW | MERRY | MEYER | MIR | MOHR | MOIR | MOOR | MOORE | MORA | MORE | MOREAU | MOREY | MORR | MORROW | MOWER | MOWERY | MOWRY | MOYER | MUIR | MURIE | MURR | MURRAH | MURRAY | MURRIE | MURROW | MURRY | MYER | MYHRE | ; I'm certain that these are not all variants of the same name.

On the other hand, although "Mair" and "Maier" are variants of the same surname, that is not the end of the story either.  Before I went to my ancestral village of Pfaffenhofen, Austria in 1967, I had always assumed that "Mair" was an Anglicization of "Maier" or some other spelling of the German surname (e.g., Meyer, Meier, Mayer, Maier, Mier, Meir).  Indeed, many people used to ask me if I were related to Lucy Mair, the British anthropologist, but I knew that could not be so because her name was of Scots or English origin, while mine was of German derivation.  It is interesting that I am listed in Wikipedia as being a person with the surname Mair in a Scots context, though I'm sure that it won't be long after this post goes up that the Wikipedia editors shift me to the much smaller group of people named Mair in a German context.  In any event, when I went to Pfaffenhofen, I discovered that there were many individuals whose surname in the church record books and on tombstones was given as "Mair", and in the Innsbruck phonebook there were scores of people surnamed "Mair".  Even more surprising to me was that it was not uncommon for families to change their name from "Maier" (or some other spelling) to "Mair" and vice versa, depending upon fashion or personal preference.

For those who might be curious, the German surname "Mair" derives from Middle High German meiger, meaning "higher or superior", often used for stewards of landholders or great farmers or leaseholders; today a Meier is generally a dairy farmer. Meier and Meyer are used more often in Northern Germany, while Maier and Mayer are found more frequently in Southern Germany.  (This note is based upon this entry in genealogy.about.com.)

The main purpose of this post, however, is not to engage in genealogical investigations of the surname "Mair", but to bring the Soundex and Metaphone  algorithms to the attention of Language Log readers and to suggest that they might have useful purposes for linguistic research quite apart from genealogical investigations.

"Does Donald Trump support matter?", Special Report w/ Bret Baier, Fox News 2/2/2012. John Crowley's reponse:

Well what's the alternative, thought I.  Denouncing matter?  Indifference to matter?   The Gnostics used to argue over it…

Obligatory screen shot:

Photo by Infrogmation, via WikiNews

Question from the gallery:

How much do you think it will matter that Mitt Romney is a Mormon? And does it matter in your own thinking about him?

Since I think at this point it’s all but certain Romney will be the GOP nominee, I’m not sure it’s mattered greatly in a negative sense. I’m pretty sure in a couple of cases it will work to his advantage; for example, tonight, in the Nevada caucuses, as Nevada is the state with the 7th largest population of LDS folk (4th biggest per capita), LDS folk tend to skew Republican/conservative, and in the 2008 Nevada caucuses, LDS folks who voted GOP went 90% for Romney and were 25% of the caucus voters. So, yes, in Nevada? Not a problem.

Is it a problem with the GOP elsewhere? Possibly, although I don’t have the stats at my fingertips. I will say it’s possible it may have been more of a problem if Romney had been in a more competitive field of candidates, but he got lucky in his GOP opponents this time around. With apologies to Santorum and Paul supporters, at this point it’s between Romney and Gingrich. While you can’t count Gingrich out unless you stake his heart, chop off his head, fill his mouth with garlic and bury him at a crossroad, I think most GOP voters realize at this point that the vampire treatment is exactly what Obama would do to Gingrich in the general election. There’s also the very real possibility that in going down, Gingrich would take all of the modern GOP with him, on the thinking that as he was the one who birthed it, he might as well kill it off, too. Romney, whatever his other flaws or advantages, at least won’t immolate his entire party if he loses the election.

At the end of the day, Romney has consistently been the GOP frontrunner in this election cycle. Gingrich spikes up past him now and then, but that’s just it: He spikes. Then people remember Gingrich is Gingrich (Romney spending millions in attack ads helps) and then it’s back to status quo. I know of grumbles of Romney’s LDS affiliation among some evangelical GOP voters, but it seems like it’s been just that: grumbles. There’s also this: When it comes right down to it, do these evangelical GOP voters dislike the idea of an LDS member in the White House more than they dislike Obama? I’m gonna go with a “no” here.

Regarding the general election, I think Romney’s major problem is not his religious belief but everything else about him, starting with the fact he’s socially clueless about how obnoxious he is about his wealth, and (conversely) how much the electorate is becoming sensitized to the fact he’s a clueless rich dude. I’m not going to suggest his LDS affiliation won’t matter to some voters; it will. I just don’t think it’s going to land in the top five concerns that most voters have about him.

Does Romney being a member of the LDS church concern me personally? No. Readers here will recall that of all the GOP candidates this cycle, the one I liked best (and even sent money to) was Jon Huntsman, who is also a member of the LDS church. So my recent track record on this particular aspect of a candidate’s profile is at the very least neutral.

In a larger sense, on a purely personal and anecdotal level, my overall feelings about LDS church members defaults to vaguely positive. This is mostly because I know a fair number of LDS folks, and the ones I know personally tend to be good people whose company I enjoy. I allow that this may have less to do with their church affiliation and more to do with the fact I like good people and don’t tally church affiliation of any sort as an automatic negative. Good people you like are hard to find and you should cherish them without the use of a checklist. Be that as it may, that’s my initial default, so it doesn’t hurt Romney any.

Regarding the LDS Church as an entity, there’s a lot about its political and social positions I dislike and disagree with, and I think its theological underpinnings are a heaping stack of nonsense. This puts it on a par with a number of churches, including the Catholic church, a whole pile of protestant churches (particularly evangelical churches), and pretty a fair number of non-Christian religions (and/or their various sects) to boot. I certainly could not be an LDS church member now; if I were born into it I’m pretty sure I’d be apostate. But again, that’d be true regardless of church. Luckily for me, aside from a baptism I didn’t have a vote on and wasn’t followed up on in any event, I’ve never had a church affiliation. I don’t have to be apostate; I can just be not religious.

I don’t automatically hold official church positions against church members, regardless of religion. I assume individual church members have brains and agency and may or may not agree philosophically with every single proclamation that comes out of their particular hierarchy. People who assume that Romney will take orders from Salt Lake City are on par with the voters of 1960 who assumed that Kennedy would take orders from Rome. I have no intention of voting for Romney in the general election. But when I don’t vote for him, his being a member of the LDS church won’t be a part of it.

Would I ever vote for a member of the LDS church for public office? Sure, if their political positions were aligned with mine for the office they were seeking. Romney’s don’t, which is why he won’t get my vote in November.

The Analog Science Fiction and Fact web site now has content from the April 2012 issue, as well as the Analytical Laboratory Award ballot...

The last of the editorial staff has left Dorchester Publishing, signaling that the long-time paperback publisher may be giving up the ghost...

PS Publishing has 400 of the 700 copies of Hodder's facsimile-signed slipcased edition of Stephen King's new standalone Dark Tower novel The Wind Through The Keyhole...

Pugh & Bloom and NELA Films debut a new story about a mysterious utopian society… and the man who could undo it all...

Top Shelf offers news of re-releases of Lost Dogs and The Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City, movie update on Too Cool to be Forgotten, and another award for Infinite Kung Fu...

As I noted over on Twitter, this just-released press release from the Susan G. Komen foundation looks like a blink. Feel free to comment on what you believe are the motivations and consequences in the comments. Be polite to each other or I’ll whack you with the Mallet of Loving Correction.

Also, I’m continuing my fundraiser in any event. Just to be sure.

Edit: A take on the apology from the women at Jezebel.

Listener Heather Muir sent me her Scrivener review, and I thought I’d link it here.

Now that I’ve been using Scrivener for a year, I feel ready to review it. I bought it when I won NaNoWriMo last year and got the 50% discount. Best. Purchase. Ever. The great thing about Scrivener is [...]

That’s when the rising sun melts the frost on the ground except for where the frost was covered by a shadow. And then the frost takes on the shape of the shadow. It’s like having a shadow in negative. Until it melts. Just one of those cool things you get to see every once in a while. Thought I’d share.

For some time now, I've been a little bit worried about a few of the decisions Nomi and I make when it comes to raising Muffin and Squeaker. For example, given their age they can be very stubborn at times and throw tantrums if they don't get their way. This can lead to us "giving in" when it just seems easier and minor. If Squeaker wants to sit on my lap during dinner, is that a battle I really need to fight? It's far more important to make sure that the kids brush their teeth before going to bed, isn't it? Shouldn't I focus my energy there, rather than on requiring them to wear pajamas in bed instead of the day's clothing if they really want to?

In our latest The Brookline Parent column at Brookline Patch, I explore a few of the decisions we've made (or are in the process of making), and ask if our Bad Parenting really is so bad.

If you go read the column, you'll find out at least one secret that's liable to get us in trouble in the future.

Or you could click the link to Bad Parenting to see a picture of Muffin and Squeaker on my iPad...and eating cookies for dinner.

"Remarks by the President at the National Prayer Breakfast", 1/2/2012:

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone.  And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.”

The quote is from Luke 12:48, and the Greek original is

????? ?? ? ????? ????, ???? ??????????? ???' ?????
"but to each one to whom much has been given, much will be required from him"

The Latin Vulgate has

omni autem cui multum datum est multum quaeretur ab eo
"but to whomsoever much has been given, much will be asked of him"

The KJV is

For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required

The English Standard Version is

Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required

Unlike all of these, President Obama's version leaves out the "of him" or "from him" associated with required.  The omission is more obvious if we put the relative clause in its usual place:

Much shall be required of him unto whom much is given.

If we chop out "of him", the result is ungrammatical.

*Much shall be required unto whom much is given.

If we swap the order of the clauses in the unchopped version, we get an awkward but (marginally) grammatical English sentence:

Unto whom much is given, much shall be required of him.

Chopping out the prepositional phrase from the second clause of the swapped version makes it smoother, but also makes it ungrammatical and semantically incoherent:

*Unto whom much is given, much shall be required.

President Obama is far from the first person to garble this quotation in an analogous way. The Gates Foundation did it on their web site, announced as one of their two founding principles ("To whom much has been given, much is expected"); President George W. Bush did it in a State of the Union message ("Our work in the world is also based on a timeless truth: To whom much is given, much is required") — and many others have done it over the centuries, starting with JC Bingham, "Report Respecting the Religious State of Spanish America", The Missionary Herald, Nov. 1826 ("Unto whom much is given, much will be required"). There's even a version in verse (George Henry Boker, "The Lesson of Life", 1848):

517 "But woe to you who love the gilded cage,
518 Who pander basely to the present hour,
519 Who build not on that firm foundation, Truth!
[…]
526 Who seek, with untaught power of mighty verse,
527 To lure their weaker brothers far astray;
528 Or praise their blinded errings. Each one knows,
529 Within his heart, himself a hypocrite;
530 Sees the sad tears the ravished muses shed
531 O'er their undoing; hears a potent voice
532 Thunder within his hollow soul—"Thou Traitor!
533 Unto whom much is given, much is required."
534 How back in horror draws the shuddering mind
535 When pondering the fate of erring genius!

For more analytic and historical background, see "Ungrammatical timeless truths", 1/24/2007; "The tangled history of a mangled maxim", 1/26/2007.

I think every writer has a genre or subgenre that they admire, but find baffling. Like a snake charmer watching a trapeze artist. Yeah, yeah, the snakes are poisonous, but you've been handling them for years. But that flip? Those... Cat Valente http://www.antipope.org/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1&id=917

“My last “what should I read next” poll had a clear winner with Throne of the Crescent Moon, which has already been receiving high marks (I liked it as well, but that comes later). Being a bit of a contrarian I wanted to also pay some service to the low-runner in the poll: Faith by [...]

Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is en route to intercept a comet– and to make history. In 2014, Rosetta will enter orbit around 67P/Churyumov Gerasimenko and land a probe on it for a front row seat as the comet heads toward the sun.

DC Comics will be publishing at least 34 issues of prequel series to the iconic Watchmen. Before Watchmen will debut this summer...

Belgian author Joseph-Henri Boex (1856-1940), who wrote as J.-H. Rosny aine, was one of the first authors to write about aliens and alternate life forms...