Thursday, May 04, 2006
An Embarrassed Yuckysaurus!
It’s now official. The English language has chalked up one billion words. That is billion, not million. Now some of these words are actually phrases. That total was announced by the Oxford English Corpus, which has been tallying words since 2000 in a database to aid in the publication of new dictionaries. The database accumulates words from wherever English is spoken around the world. Now don’t rush out and try to buy a new dictionary the size of your house. All this is computerized. And to be sure it does include some words which might be labeled suspect. For instance, I was reading a book about dinosaurs to my grandson, when I suddenly and impulsively inserted a new word for a new species of dinosaur—yuckysaurus. My grandson immediately fell in love with the yuckysaurus. Too much in love. In a few days he had started telling his daycare friends about the “yucky!” And then one day his teacher asked if anyone could name a dinosaur other than a T-Rex. That was a cardinal mistake. Never ask a four-year-old such a question. Of course, he volunteered a “yuckysaurus.” The teacher was more than a bit taken aback. She informed him that there was no such animal. He insisted that there was so. His grandfather had said so. No one can argue against a grandfather. Not even the Oxford English Corpus!
With one billion words, no wonder it is so hard to learn the English language. However, other languages can be equally daunting. I know one young lady who was visiting Spain, staying with a host family. She was proud of her new proficiency in Spanish and wanted to demonstrate it, when she made a minor mistake in etiquette. She wanted to say, “I’m embarrassed.” What she actually said was “I’m pregnant!” Her host asked “How long have you been ‘embarrassed?’ ” “Just a couple of minutes,” she replied. Everyone laughed.
Language problems are not unique to humans. If you have seen March of the Penguins, you can empathize with the parents. In a colony of 10,000 Emperor Penguins, 5000 abandon their newborns to their spouses and then trot off to feed for a few weeks. Before they depart they must teach the new chicks a unique song that no other chick can recognize. Imagine about 5000 different songs, only one of which is of interest to you. When the mother returns, the chick sorts through the songs and finds its mother for a joyful reunion.
Researchers think that they have found the ivory-billed woodpecker alive and possibly well in Arkansas. The videos have been inconclusive. But the audio recordings are pretty convincing. Well maybe! Some experts are still arguing about the patterns of sounds. Some say it could be the pileated woodpecker. Others say that it could be a blue jay proud of a new song that he learned from his parents, who had learned it in turn from their parents and so on. But the bottom line is that no one actually knows what the ivory-bill actually sounds like. It seems that there are no actually recordings of the real mccoy. There are only handwritten notes of an Audubon member. Audubon people are, after all, notoriously inaccurate when compared to grandfathers.
Starlings are the latest species to be subjected to language testing. A group of researchers at the University of California at San Diego decided to teach an artificial bird language to a group of starlings. First, they created a unique blend of warbles and rattles. If they recognized the correct pattern they got food otherwise they turned out the lights and left them in the dark. Nine out of ten starlings mastered the new language. Good, but not good enough. The chicken at the old IQ Zoo, in Hot Springs, AR, got fed when she beat a human at tic-tac-toe. She never lost. Not even grandfather could beat her.
It’s now official. The English language has chalked up one billion words. That is billion, not million. Now some of these words are actually phrases. That total was announced by the Oxford English Corpus, which has been tallying words since 2000 in a database to aid in the publication of new dictionaries. The database accumulates words from wherever English is spoken around the world. Now don’t rush out and try to buy a new dictionary the size of your house. All this is computerized. And to be sure it does include some words which might be labeled suspect. For instance, I was reading a book about dinosaurs to my grandson, when I suddenly and impulsively inserted a new word for a new species of dinosaur—yuckysaurus. My grandson immediately fell in love with the yuckysaurus. Too much in love. In a few days he had started telling his daycare friends about the “yucky!” And then one day his teacher asked if anyone could name a dinosaur other than a T-Rex. That was a cardinal mistake. Never ask a four-year-old such a question. Of course, he volunteered a “yuckysaurus.” The teacher was more than a bit taken aback. She informed him that there was no such animal. He insisted that there was so. His grandfather had said so. No one can argue against a grandfather. Not even the Oxford English Corpus!
With one billion words, no wonder it is so hard to learn the English language. However, other languages can be equally daunting. I know one young lady who was visiting Spain, staying with a host family. She was proud of her new proficiency in Spanish and wanted to demonstrate it, when she made a minor mistake in etiquette. She wanted to say, “I’m embarrassed.” What she actually said was “I’m pregnant!” Her host asked “How long have you been ‘embarrassed?’ ” “Just a couple of minutes,” she replied. Everyone laughed.
Language problems are not unique to humans. If you have seen March of the Penguins, you can empathize with the parents. In a colony of 10,000 Emperor Penguins, 5000 abandon their newborns to their spouses and then trot off to feed for a few weeks. Before they depart they must teach the new chicks a unique song that no other chick can recognize. Imagine about 5000 different songs, only one of which is of interest to you. When the mother returns, the chick sorts through the songs and finds its mother for a joyful reunion.
Researchers think that they have found the ivory-billed woodpecker alive and possibly well in Arkansas. The videos have been inconclusive. But the audio recordings are pretty convincing. Well maybe! Some experts are still arguing about the patterns of sounds. Some say it could be the pileated woodpecker. Others say that it could be a blue jay proud of a new song that he learned from his parents, who had learned it in turn from their parents and so on. But the bottom line is that no one actually knows what the ivory-bill actually sounds like. It seems that there are no actually recordings of the real mccoy. There are only handwritten notes of an Audubon member. Audubon people are, after all, notoriously inaccurate when compared to grandfathers.
Starlings are the latest species to be subjected to language testing. A group of researchers at the University of California at San Diego decided to teach an artificial bird language to a group of starlings. First, they created a unique blend of warbles and rattles. If they recognized the correct pattern they got food otherwise they turned out the lights and left them in the dark. Nine out of ten starlings mastered the new language. Good, but not good enough. The chicken at the old IQ Zoo, in Hot Springs, AR, got fed when she beat a human at tic-tac-toe. She never lost. Not even grandfather could beat her.
Monday, May 01, 2006
The Voyeuristic Ghost!
Tonight if you are in Europe or Denmark you have the chance to hear John Lennon from the Great Beyond. That is if you ante up $9.95 on a pay per view. Of course the producers are gambling that you have forgotten their previous dismal effort back in 2003 to channel Princess Diana. That one was a complete fiasco. The only real connection in this production is that it was filmed in La Fortuna, a New York Restaurant that Lennon liked very much.
Just one week before the telecast, a ghost was reported in the Low Valley Arms pub 250 miles north of London. The owner reported seeing a woman in the ladies’ room with just a half a face. The police reported hearing toilets flushing themselves. Now we have a toilet that flushes itself, but I never associated it with a ghost. We also had one additional experience with a flushing toilet. We woke up in the middle of the night and heard the john gurgling water. It stopped and then it flushed again. We rushed to the bathroom to find our Siamese cat playing with the flush lever.
A few years ago we stayed at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. That hotel is reputed to have several ghosts. Although at check-in we were under the impression that there was only one. Supposedly, a nurse pushed a gurney up and down the hall in the wee hours of the night. Then we learned of another one. A workman had fallen during construction and was supposed to occupy Room 218. Then we discovered the story of a ghost who frequented the bar. He drank alone and then faster than you can say “poof,” he would vanish.
In 1936 Norman Baker lost his license to practice medicine in Iowa, and moved his operation to Arkansas the following year. To say that he was a quack would be an understatement. One of his “remedies” for brain tumor supposedly consisted of peeling back the scalp and pouring in a mixture of spring water and ground watermelon seeds. Fortunately, his tenure at the Crescent Hotel was short. In 1940 he was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to four years at Leavenworth. A significant number of ghosts date from his occupancy.
However, the period of history of immediate interest to us would be the years 1908 until 1924 ,when it operated as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women. Now what makes these years really pertinent is that about eight years ago the Arkansas Association of College History Teachers held its annual convention in the Crescent. Since I was a member of that group, my wife and I stayed at the Crescent. We stayed in Room 202, which I later learned was a haunted room. While I can’t be completely certain, I do believe that a young female from that time span must have occupied that room. It must have been a young female who was interested in her male instructor.
Now why do I think this? First, the change that I had laid out on my bedside table disappeared by the next morning. Now it could have been taken by anyone in the middle of the night who had a master key, including a male ghost, of course. But then some rather bizarre things began to happen. First, whenever I went to the bathroom I could not close the door. My wife had no problems. Then, as I was undressing the window shade suddenly went bonkers and shot up. We pulled it down, and it went back up immediately. After six or seven more times to secure it, we gave up. The next morning it worked perfectly. Now who would be interested in seeing a middle age guy get undressed, but a shy and modest young female from the twenties? Yep! I began to think that I had a voyeuristic ghost on my hands. The next day while all the historians were in a meeting, the fire alarm went off and everyone was hustled outside. After an hour we were finally were allowed to go back inside. At the time nobody even thought of a ghost. It was not until we started packing to head home that I discovered that a pair of my boxer shorts was missing. It was the same pair that I was wearing when the window shade bounced up. Now I realized why it took an hour to get back inside after the fire alarm. It took the female ghost that long to rummage through our dirty clothes bag to find her prize. It was definitely a voyeuristic ghost. It could have been worst. I understand that extraterrestials are known to take body parts. And there are some things of which I only have one.
Tonight if you are in Europe or Denmark you have the chance to hear John Lennon from the Great Beyond. That is if you ante up $9.95 on a pay per view. Of course the producers are gambling that you have forgotten their previous dismal effort back in 2003 to channel Princess Diana. That one was a complete fiasco. The only real connection in this production is that it was filmed in La Fortuna, a New York Restaurant that Lennon liked very much.
Just one week before the telecast, a ghost was reported in the Low Valley Arms pub 250 miles north of London. The owner reported seeing a woman in the ladies’ room with just a half a face. The police reported hearing toilets flushing themselves. Now we have a toilet that flushes itself, but I never associated it with a ghost. We also had one additional experience with a flushing toilet. We woke up in the middle of the night and heard the john gurgling water. It stopped and then it flushed again. We rushed to the bathroom to find our Siamese cat playing with the flush lever.
A few years ago we stayed at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. That hotel is reputed to have several ghosts. Although at check-in we were under the impression that there was only one. Supposedly, a nurse pushed a gurney up and down the hall in the wee hours of the night. Then we learned of another one. A workman had fallen during construction and was supposed to occupy Room 218. Then we discovered the story of a ghost who frequented the bar. He drank alone and then faster than you can say “poof,” he would vanish.
In 1936 Norman Baker lost his license to practice medicine in Iowa, and moved his operation to Arkansas the following year. To say that he was a quack would be an understatement. One of his “remedies” for brain tumor supposedly consisted of peeling back the scalp and pouring in a mixture of spring water and ground watermelon seeds. Fortunately, his tenure at the Crescent Hotel was short. In 1940 he was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to four years at Leavenworth. A significant number of ghosts date from his occupancy.
However, the period of history of immediate interest to us would be the years 1908 until 1924 ,when it operated as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women. Now what makes these years really pertinent is that about eight years ago the Arkansas Association of College History Teachers held its annual convention in the Crescent. Since I was a member of that group, my wife and I stayed at the Crescent. We stayed in Room 202, which I later learned was a haunted room. While I can’t be completely certain, I do believe that a young female from that time span must have occupied that room. It must have been a young female who was interested in her male instructor.
Now why do I think this? First, the change that I had laid out on my bedside table disappeared by the next morning. Now it could have been taken by anyone in the middle of the night who had a master key, including a male ghost, of course. But then some rather bizarre things began to happen. First, whenever I went to the bathroom I could not close the door. My wife had no problems. Then, as I was undressing the window shade suddenly went bonkers and shot up. We pulled it down, and it went back up immediately. After six or seven more times to secure it, we gave up. The next morning it worked perfectly. Now who would be interested in seeing a middle age guy get undressed, but a shy and modest young female from the twenties? Yep! I began to think that I had a voyeuristic ghost on my hands. The next day while all the historians were in a meeting, the fire alarm went off and everyone was hustled outside. After an hour we were finally were allowed to go back inside. At the time nobody even thought of a ghost. It was not until we started packing to head home that I discovered that a pair of my boxer shorts was missing. It was the same pair that I was wearing when the window shade bounced up. Now I realized why it took an hour to get back inside after the fire alarm. It took the female ghost that long to rummage through our dirty clothes bag to find her prize. It was definitely a voyeuristic ghost. It could have been worst. I understand that extraterrestials are known to take body parts. And there are some things of which I only have one.
