Brainworks.

I always wonder about written language. Apart from manatees (Trichechus), humans (Homo sapiens) are the only creatures able to form rhyming couplets and compose poems of any substantial length. Although, and this surprises some people, manatees are offended by limericks.

So I think this book might be something that me and the manatees could enjoy, Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human (and Manatee) Invention, by Stanislis Dehaene (ISBN-13 978-0670021109). Hey, he has a Wikipedia entry so he must be good.

But yet, this is the same guy in this report:"Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking," io9. February 7, 2008.

"Behavioral experiments indicate that infants aged 4 months or older possess an early "number sense" that allows them to detect changes in the number of objects... very young infants are sensitive to both the number and identity of objects, and these pieces of information are processed by distinct neural pathways."

Yeah, tell that to my nephew. The kid is 14-months old and loses at blackjack every time. Sure, he understands that he has three cards in front of him by the way he smears each one with drool, but he doesn't know shit about when to stand on 20. Never mind when to split. The kid has two face card cards for chrissakes and wants more, so I give him another. And you're busted, you idiot. Look at that. You better get more money from your mommy's purse. I'm not giving you more cards until you pay up. Here, play with these scissors.

I've written about writing on my blog. Hey, that sounds funny: I've written about writing. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. (Catches breath.) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

But this book sounds cool because I always wonder about written language, about how most cultures have one-to-many forms of it and no matter how the language evolves, we can still find consistent meaning that allows us to communicate.

There were stories this week about the difficulty autistic children have learning handwriting. And that made me laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. What is wrong with me?

Do any kids even write anymore? Don't they do that thing with their thumbs where messages fly through the air from kid to kid and "brb" and "h8r" are meaningful substitutes for actual words?
But as modern librarian, I avoid paper books, with their germs and their bulk and their simple presence. I prefer ebooks which are so much easier to ignore since they reside out of sight. But yet, I can still tell everyone, "that's next on my reader," or "that's in the queue." But on my bookshelf, that book is just a slab of procrastination, a guilt brick. But on my reader, it's the promise of a new day. Ah, we modern librarians are more awesome than every other librarian put together. Okay, that's too many. But we're more awesome than 53 regular librarians.

So anyway, Reading in the Brain sounds like a book that I can't wait to consider reading, as long as it has lots of pictures, and doesn't use big words.

If you'd like to enter a drawing to win a free book which could be Dehaene's book, but I think it's random from a list of available books, visit Seed Magazine here.

an iPhone future: 我有一个日期

It cracks me up when I see the iPhone commercial with the app for learning a new language. The finger presses the screen where it says,"Can you recommend a good restaurant?" in English and the iPhone speaks out the line translated into Mandarin.

I always imagine that like most people, that iPhone user isn't really going to learn to speak Chinese, but will use that application as a surrogate translator.

So I see the English-speaking user in China holding up his iPhone to ask for a good restaurant.

And it makes me think that there's a companion iPhone app for Chinese consumers that answers the questions posed by American iPhones.

And so the Chinese user holds up his iPhone which has this app for answering the questions from these American tourists.

And then because both phones have speech recognition and voice-control software, the two phones start a conversation while the American and the Chinese stand there holding up their iPhones to each other while blankly staring into space.

And when the American returns home, his friends will ask if he had a good trip. And he'll answer, "I don't know. But I think my iPhone hooked up."


I can see a future where each of us is a slave to our smartphones. Not because we need them, but because we fear them:

Your iPhone:

"Listen bitch, you best walk me down to the park right now or else I'm emailing everyone in your address book those photos I took of you last night. And hurry it up; I have a date."

Yeah, there's a app for that. Or at least, there will be.

Blog like you mean... to express a unique insight... ok sorry, like you mean it.

Some people are upset that Wisconsin has selected "live like you mean it" as their new State tourism campaign slogan. Some authors and companies currently use or have used "live like you mean it" as their titles, trademarks, whatever and they fear that someone might confuse their identities with Wisconsin. And cows.
[story here]

Wisconsin's new branding shows the state name with some figure above it that's supposed to be doing a cartwheel. When I first saw it, I thought maybe the state had adopted upside-down crucifixion as its new means of capital punishment. I don't get what the cartwheel represents. It doesn't appear to be a child, but an adult male turning over on his hands.

Maybe if they had asked me, I would have suggested an image of two people throwing their hands in the air to form a W,... but then people might think of synchronized swimming or a couple being robbed at gunpoint.

The "like you mean it" slogan is one of my least favorites. I hate it slightly more than "I'm loving it" only because one of Maxwell Smart's catchphrases has, "...and loving it" as an addendum to some comment about near-death experiences or fighting KAOS.

"Like you mean it" is one of those phrases that I don't know what the hell it's supposed to mean. There's a retail store that uses "shop like you mean it," and the perky female voice-over says it like it's a challenge, like just regular shopping sucks, like I shouldn't go into their store to buy anything unless I really really mean to buy something, like if I just try something on and then
leave, some clerk will follow me into the parking lot and kick my ass. So I try to comply with their suggested enthusiasm and when I purchase something there, I take out my credit card and slap it onto the counter in a triumphant display, as if to say, "Hell, yeah, I'm buying this thing!"

This is like the kind of thing a crazy person asks just before he flips a coin and makes you pick heads or tails, where a losing guess means he will chop you up into little pieces with an axe. "Do you live like you mean it? Just tell me the truth. I promise I won't kill you with this axe."

Live like you mean it; all I can think is, "My body is converting food and air into useful components which keep me alive, so obviously, I mean to be alive. What the hell are you talking about?"

I guess they mean, "live like you mean to be living" or "live like you mean to be living a full and productive life." But that means that we all need to have a universal understanding of the subject, it this case, life. But we don't. Is life about doing cartwheels? What if I do a cartwheel and lose my wallet? Is Wisconsin going to help me get that back? And you, with those gigantic fake boobs: should you be standing on your head like that? (If you are, can I watch?)

I can see from a quick googly that there are a couple of blogs that use the "blog like you mean it" as a title and many more posts and presentations using it. Good for them. But like I say, I don't understand what message I'm supposed to get from that string of words.

If you get more specific, as in "spank my ass like you mean it," then by all means, say that because the message is very clear to me on how and what I should be spanking. But don't just hang a single verb out there and expect me to know what you're talking about. Live like you mean it? Man, I'd be in jail.

Why "keywords" are insane.

So I was looking for the origin for "no man should be judge in his own case" and found that it comes from the Latin phrase, Nemo iudex in sua causa.

And that found me a link to a page on Answers.com.

Here is what Answers.com says about Answers.com:

Stock Symbol: ANSW. Market: Nasdaq Capital Market

Answers Corporation's mission is to become the leading online provider of answers about anything and the best place for people to share their knowledge.

The Web is a big place, and it's getting bigger. Sometimes, you simply want a clear, straight-to-the-point, helpful answer. Answers.com's unique, patented technologies will help you find that answer — quicker and easier than traditional search engines.
You can count on us. Answers.com combines traditional and new media to provide you with the most up-to-date, accurate definitions and explanations available.

But what they don't tell you is that they seem to use keywords to generate links to additional "useful" information from their site or from their advertisers.

So is it any wonder that I was scratching my head when I read down the page to find:

Learn More
List of Latin phrases (F–O)

Q: What type of organism do Marlin and Nemo live in in Disney's 'Finding Nemo'?
Q: In Finding Nemo what physical impairment causes Nemo's dad to worry about him?
Q: In the movie 'Finding Nemo' what was the address on the mask that Nemo found?

And I thought, What? I just kept looking at the questions until I realized that Nemo appeared in each one, and then my brain smacked itself and said, "Oh, Nemo. As in, Nemo iudex in sua causa."

And I felt a little better for understanding why these things found each other on the Answers.com site. But not really.

I'm a librarian, so I can figure this stuff out. But who else might come across this same page and start to wonder if Nemo was a lawyer or a Latino or if Disney/Pixar used Homer's Odyssey as a basis for the movie, Finding Nemo.

Well, maybe nobody would, but that would be cool. Because Nemo is Latin for Nobody.

Yeah, what the Frankenstein monster said. (Fire. Bad.)

I don't understand our love of fire. Not the hot stuff that cooks food, but the word.

Already, we have:
Firefox (web browser)
Fire Dog (Circuit City's tech-nerds)
Fire crotch (something some idiot almost-celebrity called another idiot slightly-better-known-celebrity)
Firebird (Marvel comics, yeah, like there wouldn't be a comic book character called Firebird)

Does the descriptor "fire" make you want the thing more?

Now Yahoo! just released what seems to be a really cool and useful web app which they mistakenly named Fire Eagle.

Pretty sure that name has to go. Why pick something that sounds like the already super-popular Firefox, or even fire crotch?

But I bet some executive really loved "Fire." And another equally useless executive liked animals. So everyone sat around on some Tuesday afternoon and came up with every conceivable combination of "Fire" and some animal.
Fire Chicken.
Fire Skunk.
Fire Coatimundi.
Fire Whale.
Fire Python.
Fire Hamster.
Fire Mullet.
Fire Squid.
Fire Beagle.

Sadly, no one came up with Fire Kitteh, which would be really awesomely cute.

A slightly less powerful (and former) Yahoo! executive submitted these:
Fire Ass.
Fire Beaver.
Fire Clown.

The thing that makes Fire Eagle cool, unlike the name, is that it can track wherever you are in order for total strangers to find you and kill you. Oh, wait, strike that. Invite you out for a drink.

But it could make the Internet more of a "local" experience. And that could be cool.

FYI: The most popular use for "fire" around my library is, "When is someone going to fire that effing librarian?"

Thingy?

Does anyone have the origin of "thingy"? The first I ever heard the word was in a Monty Python sketch (possibly this one?).

I know that etymologically, it's not a huge leap to add a y to a word, (although I don't think Shakespeare ever did it); half of the dialog in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is some word + y.

But I was curious about the word thingy because it came up in the current Unshelved/ Tutor.com semi-controversy-that-really-isn't, in the ad for the "online thingy" on the Unshelved page.

And it's just a funny thing. Because thing is already a "placeholder" word. It's a descriptor for the unidentified. So to add a y, in my opinion, makes it something else.

Now it's not just a placeholder word for the something, it transforms into a something. I don't think thing and thingy are identical words, or even synonyms. Adding the y is like adding a smiley, like an alphabetical emoticon. It does something, but I'm not sure what.

That's why I ask, Thingy?

Unique. Me-nique.

There was a game a long time ago where you input two words into AltaVista (which was once the top search engine) to see if you could find only one web page:

One-Hit Wonder
You don't have to be a search-engine fanatic, just a bit of a wordsmith, to enjoy Googlewhacking. While a typical query on Google, the popular search tool, may return tens of thousands of hits, the goal of Googlewhacking is to come up with a combination of two words that return just a single result.
The term was coined by Gary Stock, a Web researcher who lays out the particulars of the game at www.unblinking.com/heh /googlewhack.htm. He said the most enjoyable whacks were poetic, like ''blasphemous loganberries'' and ''unforeseeable hippopotami.'' ''They're also excellent names for rock bands,'' Mr. Stock said. (The best I could manage after 15 minutes of play was a score of 3 results for ''persnickety conch.'')
Mr. Stock makes no claim to having invented the game. Indeed, the concept dates from at least 1997, when a mathematics student at the University of New South Wales, Andrew Mitchell, played it using the AltaVista search engine. Mr. Mitchell, who now works for a technology company in Hong Kong, is not surprised to see it resurface. ''One thing that I have learned from nine years on the Web is that if there is a good idea, it occurs to several people,'' he said.

I always liked the idea of owning some unique search result on the Web. In the 1990's it was pretty easy to do this; just put some weird word on your page, even mispelled, and it would make it easy to locate your page in a search. But then the search tools started indexing differently and by 2001 there were too many pages to out there to make this work. But I still try to find something to put in my posts so I can go to Google and type that thing and have my page come up, all by itself.

It's a tiny thrill, but I'm amused easily. And it's not as simple as putting "blorgleflargle" on your page; if you do this, the word(s) should kind of mean something to you. After all, you're a noble blogger with standards to maintain.

Here are some words and phrases I search sometimes to see if I'm still the only person to use them:
MQMPAG (multi-quarter multi-player arcade game) or "ma-kyoo-empag"
MNMNPTH (an ancient being of questionable importance)
pretty atomic library (I'm just surprised that I couldn't find those words together in that order; I thought there would have been some anime comic or something out there)
fantasy alchemy reality time space (FARTS) continuum (again, surprised that humans still haven't exhausted every possible fart gag).

Anyway, I really had nothing else for today.

My first year of offenses.

Idea taken from librariansmatter, I thought I'd list all the offensive words I've used this year. For all the thousands of words I've published this year, this list is pretty short:

• April; ass (specifically, "metal"), masturbate
• May; crap, omfg (does that count?), assholery, ass,
• June; crap,
• July; (the post that got my blog account frozen) sh**, fu**, sh**, fu**, sh**, fu**, sh**, fu**, sh**, fu**, sh**, fu**, sh**, fu**, sh**, fu**, crap,
• August; asses, crap, fu**, crap, you need to find a guy hung like Milton Berle (I just think that's funny), eat my ass,
• September; shhhit, fu**, ass, crap, prick, fu**ing, fu**ed, ass,
• October; (a month of asses) motherf**ker, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, crap, asshole, asshole, crap, crap, ass, ass, ass, motherf**ker, Assholes, Asshole, Asshole, Asshole, sh**, ass, ass, ass, ass,
• November; crap, crap, assholes, pricks,
• December; bitch, ass, sh**, fu**ing, ass, ass, ass,

Wow. I'm worn out. Maybe next year, I'll just list "sh**"s and "fu**"s.

Oh, Merry Christmas.

Playing Scrabble with Shakespeare

There's a song out that I hate, and I just had to Google the lyrics to find out that it's "Girlfriend" by Avril Levine. I'm sure it's a fine song for all the kids to dance to, but this is what makes me nuts:

In a second you'll be wrapped around my finger
'Cause I can, 'cause I can do it better

That double "cause I can" drives me crazy. Because Avril is a literary genius and I think that she could have come up with something else, anything else, to fill that beat.

Does Avril stutter? Is it bad for me to hate a song that might be about a girl with a speech impediment? What other reason is there? It's three lousy syllables. I've heard the song maybe twice, but it makes me think that she loses her train of thought and forgets what's she's going to say then realizes that it's going to be hard to rhyme with "finger;" um, zinger, flinger, Corporal Klinger, so she gives up and says some nonsense.

It's like when I took the English class and we read a poem where the author (maybe Keats) used the word "pelf" to fill the rhyme with "self."
I said, what the hell is pelf?
Pelf comes from Old French pelfre, "booty, stolen goods." It is related to pilfer.

Okay, it's a word, but it's damn suspicious if you ask me. It makes me think that all those old poets just made up stuff when it suited them. And getting to the title of this, I'd hate to be playing Scrabble with Shakespeare.

William: K-L-O-N-G.

Time-travelling Me: Dude, klong is not a word. You can't just make up words.

William: Ahem.
Thou mayest shake thy fist in pro-test.
Thy shouts may ring ere long.
Not four nor five nor six days of rest.
Wilt thouest quit till klong.
There, now it's a word. It means a week, a whole week long. Klong. Triple-word score. Take that! I win. I'm Shakespeare, motherf**ker.

I apologize if Family Guy has already done a "playing scrabble with shakespeare" gag, and I don't mean to step on the toes of the chick who wrote a "playing scrabble with shakespeare" poem that I found just now when I was checking to see if Family Guy already did this, or if I piss off anybody else who might think they deserve credit for this idea. But it's mine, dammit, all mine. Oh, and Shakespeare wouldn't have known about canals in Thailand.

I ain't no (_E=mc2_)

I have a love/hate relationship with language. On the one hand, it is a cumbersome, unweildy tool which often makes me feel clumsy, and on the other, it's a precise instrument capable of expressing the nimblest thoughts.

People are not like ants that spit up a molecule of a carbon+something that tells other ants that there's a hunk of a cherry Pop Tart on the kitchen counter. And we're not like dogs who smell each other's butts to learn that one lives in a ranch-style house with a mocha-colored leather sofa and a pool.

We're people. And we like to talk. And although using smell to communicate is pretty damn cool (unless you're commmunicating your love for Mexican food), no other creatures have constructed language as complex (and if they have, they must be hiding the thesauri up their tiny poop-chutes).

People talk and people write, and people bat their eyelids, fold their arms, and wave their hands either comically or seriously depending on the message they want to express.

And this leads me to why this might matter to a librarian: we can't help people if we can't understand what they want.

Our capacity to convey messages has been, dare I say, corrupted by language. We don't, as a species, all shake our asses to communicate the same message. We lost that ability long ago. Watching me shake my ass now might inspire you to want to make love. To view others shaking theirs, maybe not so much, but damn, it would make the reference interview hilarious.

And so, it is with some apprehension that one approaches the role of researcher, of information provider, of librarian.

I'm sure most of us find it difficult to make out what the patron wants. Some are clear about their needs, but not all. And if we don't understand each other, how can we help? This problem has been applied recently to the medical field. Patients who can't read or communicate with their health care providers are more likely to die from inadequate care.

Holy crap! It's a rare instance of miscommunication in the library that's caused a patron's death. But again, when it happens, it's hilarious.

It's hard enough to get a patron to tell me what she wants clearly and without the preamble: "it's been years since I've been in the library..." And it's nearly impossible to help the patron with the crappy phone.

I don't expect I'll enjoy when my whatchacallit beeps and I see the message: pls hlp m fnd bk wr n pec by leo tlsty. Although in that case, it's only the presentation that annoys; the message is perfectly clear.

It would be great if we could all understand each other. Not just at the reference desk, but everywhere.

Language, as it is, is man's creation. And at its purest form of blasphemy, it approaches the divine.

But I don't compare a librarian's work to God's. I don't think God could do our job: Sundays off, what a wimp.

[note: The above rant was inspired by this site: http://owlcroft.com/english/index.shtml, where the motto seems to be, "To degrade language is finally to degrade civilization."]
[another note: the title of today's message translates to: "I do not consider myself to be more clever than I consider others (to be)." (I am not a smart-ass.)]
[another nother note: man, I need an editor. By the time I'm done proofing, none of this makes sense.]