Saturday, April 29, 2006

This week's quiz, last week's answers

Last week’s questions (U.S. presidents)

1. Who first lived in the White House?

2. Who skinny-dipped in the Potomac River?

3. Who served two non-consecutive terms?

4. Who said "Give me a one-armed economist?"

Last week's answers

1. John Adams, the second president, moved in in November 1800. The seat of government during the term of George Washington, the first president, was in New York City.

2. John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams. I read about the incident years ago, the source of which I can’t find. As I recall it, while Adams was in the water someone stole his clothes from where he had left them on the river bank; when he discovered them missing, he called to a young boy who was passing by to go to the White House and bring him some more clothes.

However, I did run across a somewhat different version of the story: A widow of an army veteran of the Revolutionary War, one Anne Royall, had been seeking a pension for her husband’s service by presenting her case to various government officials in Washington, without success; then, one day she happened on Adams doing his dip and sat by his clothes until he listened to her petition. Twenty-some years later, Congress passed a pension law under which a pension was granted for her late husband’s military service, but his family received most of it. Rather than being angered by her confrontation with him, Adams invited Mrs. Royall to the White house and introduced her to his wife. (Source: The Free Dictionary)

3. Grover Cleveland. A Democrat, he won the 1884 election and served from 1885-89. Seeking reelection in 1888, he beat his Republication candidate, Benjamin Harrison, in the popular vote by a mere 476 votes out of almost a total 11 million cast; however, he lost the electoral vote (as Samuel Tilden did in 1876 and Al Gore in 2000). But, four years later, running against the incumbent Harrison, he won the popular vote by 381,000 and also the electoral vote and served from 1893-97.

4. Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president who succeeded to the presidency following Roosevelt’s death in 1945 and then won a full term in 1948 and served from 1949-53. Having grown tired of hearing "on the one hand..., but on the other hand..." from his economic advisers, he made that famous comment.

Congratulations to Anonymous in Tustin, CA, who answered all four questions correctly. Good luck to him/her on future quizzes.

This week’s questions (African republics, former colonies)

1. Prior to the first World War, Germany had five colonies in Africa. Following her defeat in that war, those colonies were put under the mandate of either Britain or France (one of them was split geographically between those two countries) or South Africa. During the mid 20th Century all became independent republics.

Name two of those (for those who changed their names when they became independent, give either their colonial or their present names) and tell which European countries had them as colonies during the period following World War I until independence.

2. Ghana was the first former sub-Saharan colony to become independent (from Britain) in 1957, at which time it changed its name. What was its former name?

3. Two former French colonies, Senegal and French Soudan, both gained their independence in 1959 and joined together to form a republic to which they gave a new name. However, the marriage lasted only a few months, following which Senegal split and took back its former name. The former French Soudan kept the new name for itself and has it today. What was that new name?

4. Three European countries besides Britain and France had colonies in Africa until the independence movement swept that continent in the latter half of the 20th Century. Name two of the three European countries and name one of the colonies of each (using the colonial name).

Answers next week

Next week's questions (U.S. states)

Thursday, April 27, 2006

People dying today ain't never died before

"There’s people dying today ain’t never died before." Those were supposedly the words of Gooch, an elderly black man in my hometown, upon hearing of the death of a local prominent citizen. Gooch was considered to be something of an unschooled philosopher (a sort of earlier-day Yogi Berra).

Several opera singers, who never died before (except on the opera stage), have passed away recently. Just last month I heard of the death of Anna Moffo at the age of 73. Ms. Moffo, a Pennsylvania native, sang many soprano roles at the Metropolitan Opera in New York: she was particularly known as Violetta in La Traviata and as Turandot in that opera. I got her autograph, for my collection, during the 1980's when she was a judge at the auditions for young singers put on by the Baltimore Opera Company; my collection consists of three, the others being those of the soprano Licia Albanese (who also was a judge at one of the auditions) and the tenor Carlo Bergonzi, during a reception for him when he sang the role of Nemorino in L’Elisir d’Amore for the Baltimore Opera Company some years ago.

(Had I been prescient back in 1962 I could have also gotten the autograph of James Morris, now an internationally famous bass/baritone. In 1962, the year we moved into our house, our delivery boy for the Baltimore Sun newspaper was (you guessed it) James Morris, age 16 at the time; he grew up a short distance from us and attended the same junior high and high school that our two children did years later.)

Others who have died within the last 2 ½ years are:
Birgit Nilssson (2005)
Renata Tebaldi (2004)
Robert Merrill (2004)
Nicolai Ghiaurov (2004)
Franco Corelli (2003)

Some singers, for me, have "owned" particular roles--by which I mean that, when I think of certain operatic roles, a particular singer comes to mind. Jan Peerce is always Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata, Franco Corelli is Cavaradossi in Pucinni’s Tosca, Jon Vickers is Otello in Verdi’s Otello, Robert Merrill is Giorgio Germont in La Traviata, although I also very much like Sherrill Milnes in that role. (Corelli was known as a hotdog, frequently hamming it up with many exaggerations in his singing–such as holding a high note overly long--for which, I believe, he was liked by most people. Once when my son was young, he heard a recording of Corelli singing the aria "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca that I was playing and asked, "Why is that man crying?")

My interest in opera began in 1949 when I went to New York to work at my first job after college. At that time one could buy a ticket in the "Family Circle," the highest level from the stage at the Metropolitan Opera (at its old location at Broadway and 39th Street) for $2.50 Today, it is hard to believe a price that low; however, it is also hard to imagine that one could have lived in New York on a salary of $240 a month. One could, and did–that was my salary for the first eight months I was there; afterward I changed companies and got $260 a month. So, to attend the Met with a date, which I frequently did, cost the very significant sum of $5.40 (two tickets plus subway fare of $.40, four trips at a dime each), even if we never did anything else, such as have dinner before the performance or a drink afterward.

Another favorite venue was the New York City Opera, which was still new (it began in 1945); it was on West 55th street. Like the Met, it moved to the Lincoln Center in 1966.

One of the most memorable performances that I attended at the Met was La Traviata with Jan Peerce and Licia Albanese. Traviata has always been my favorite opera.

Peerce (born Jacob Pincus Perelmuth) died in 1984. He is my favor tenor as to operas that I have attended, although overall I slightly favor Nicolai Gedda, whom I have never seen perform. Peerce’s voice was "patrician," as one critic has put it. His rendition of "Un di felice" from Traviata turns me on today, as I listen to it on a recording, as it did the first time I heard it. After having only seen Peerce from far away in the Family Circle at the old Met, it was a wonderful experience to see him up very close at a recital he gave in 1970 at a gymnasium on the campus of the Naval Academy in Annapolis. Unlike some opera singers who mix a few opera arias with pop tunes during recitals, Peerce, accompanied by a pianist, sang one aria after another.

I regretted that Jan Peerce, a man whom I admired so much as an opera singer, I saw as a bigot when he virtually disinherited his son Larry upon his marriage to a Gentile. I understand that there was some reconciliation in later years that brought them closer together. (Larry Peerce was a freshman at the University of North Carolina my senior year there; after graduation, he became a documentary film producer.)

In 2005 I attended a performance of Verdi's I Lombardi at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, one of the world's best-known opera houses. It is expansive, finding my seat was quite an experience. The ticket price was the equivalent of $23, amazingly inexpensive for an American. (Currencies in South America are so cheap compared to the U.S. dollar that hotels, restaurants, and everything one purchases all seem like super bargains, especially to an American who has travelled to Europe and had sticker shock when the dollar has been weak against the euro.)

At the Teatro Colón I had the pleasure of chatting with two ladies, one on each side if me, during the intermissions. They told me many interesting things about the performances there--one was why the orchestra was dressed in casual street clothes (I had never seen orchestras other than in formal evening wear). The reason was a long-standing protest by the players against the management--I didn't get exactly what they were protesting, whether salaries, working conditions, or whatever.

I was amazed at the English translations in the printed program for the performance: while the main text was (naturally) in Spanish, there were sidebar English translations, which ranged from mildy bad to laughable. I wondered that such an institution as the Colón couldn't find a native English speaker to edit the translations.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

No "thou" and "thee" in English

Fortunately, in English we only use the word "you" for everybody (don’t be cute and tell me about "youse" and "y’all"), whereas, in all other languages that I know anything about, there is a formal "you" and an informal one–"thou/thee/thy," etc. Of course, "thou/thee" was used in English centuries ago but has long since vanished from our normal vocabulary, and is used only in church ritual, poetry, certain types of music, and the like.

Although I said above that "thou/thee" is informal (i.e., used between family members and close friends), it is that but also a bit more: it is used to address individuals considered (by the addresser) to be on a lower level as to age or social standing. For example, young children are almost always addressed in the "thou/thee" form by adults, and also by other children; also that form is usually used by masters when speaking to their servants. The noun for this form is tutoiement in French, the verb for using it is tutoyer; in Spanish the terms are tuteamiento and tutear respectively.

I say it is fortunate that we don’t use the "thou/thee" because it avoids sometimes embarrassing situations or occasional undesirable communication between individuals. A few times I have had individuals address me that way in Spanish, individuals wanting to be chummy, but with whom I didn’t share the feeling. (During a plane trip to Mexico City on a consulting assignment some years ago, my seat mate in casual conversation learned that my assignment involved the property-casualty insurance field, whereupon he told me that his brother was an insurance agent there (using the tuteamiento with me). That same evening, as I was just getting settled in my hotel room, I got a phone call from his brother inviting me to visit him; I begged off, using a very tight schedule (which was true) as an excuse.)

I faced a more complex situation when I spent almost two years in the early 1950's working for the oil company Texaco (now part of Chevron) in Dakar, Senegal, in west Africa. At the time, Senegal was a French colony; it gained its independence in 1960. Soon after arriving there, I noted that the white French frequently used the tutoiement when speaking to the native black Africans (the indigénes). After being uncertain at first as to how I should handle this situation, I later concluded that I would tutoyer those Africans who wore the native dress--bou-bou’s (long cloth robes), Arabic-type sandals, and usually a fez or a helmet--but would use the formal vous with others who dressed in European style.

This system seemed to work well for me–I had no unpleasant incidents. Although I almost did: one Saturday afternoon, when the office was closed, I was there to catch up on some work when there was a knock on the door. Standing there when I opened it was a large black man wearing a bou-bou; he wanted to see if a certain Texaco employee was available. I had to tell him that the office was closed and that I was the only person there, adding that on Monday I would tell the person he wanted to see that he had called. I didn’t know the man, but something told me that I shouldn’t tutoyer him, so I used the formal vous. My decision was fortunate because I learned later that he was the owner of several gas stations and an important customer of my company.

When I returned to Dakar in 1994 to visit for the first time since my tenure there, I used the formal vous exclusively–I assumed that in an independent Senegal the old tutoyer would be out of place, just as it would be stupid for a white person today to address an adult black man in the U.S. south as "boy," a form which was customary many years ago.

I find interesting the difference between the Spanish (including Latin Americans) and the French in the use (or non-use) of the "thou/thee" in advertising. The Spanish use it widely (almost exclusively); some examples:

"¿Qué secciones puedes consultar?" ("What sections can you connect with?") An advertisement in the Madrid newspaper ABC regarding a service of the paper that can be accessed by Blackberry and similar electronic devices. Puedes (actually, tu puedes, with the tu omitted, as is often done) is the "thou/thee"; the formal would be puede (actually usted puede, with the usted omitted).

In the Buenos Aires, Argentina newspaper Clarín I saw "¡Registrate gratis!" ("Register free") It was an ad for a website to purchase electronic equipment. The "ate" at the end of the word is the "thou/thee"–the formal would be Registrese (the "ese" being the difference).

The French, however, seem never to similarly use the "thou/thee" in advertising. In the Paris newspaper Le Figaro I saw an ad for a subscription to the paper’s newsletter on the Internet: "Inscrivez vous à la newsletter du Figaro." Likewise, the Paris newspaper Le Monde had an ad for a subscription to it "Abonnez vous, 6 euros/mois." ("Subscribe for 6 euros per month")

Following are the various forms of "thou/thee":

English.....Spanish.............................French
thou..............tú...................................tu
thee..............te, tí...............................te, toi
thy................tu, tus (plural)...............ton (masc.)

...........................................................ta (fem.)
...........................................................tes (plural)
thine............tuyo (masc.)....................tien (masc.)

....................tuya (fem.)......................tienne (fem.)
....................tuyos, tuyas (plural).......tiens, tiennes (plural)

Also, the verbs that go with these words are conjugated differently: example (in French): vous allez ("you go"), tu vas ("thou goest").

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

This week's quiz, last week's answers

Last week's questions (countries of the world)

1. What European country has as its constitutional co-heads of state the president of another country and the Catholic bishop of yet another (a third) country?

2. What country in the Western Hemisphere has a parrot in the center of its flag?

3. What European country has only one of the colors of the spectrum in its flag? (two hints: (1) the colors of the spectrum are: red. orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (2) the flag has three horizontal stripes).

4. The American national anthem begins with "Oh." What other country’s national anthem also begins with "Oh" (or "O")? (hint: American sports fans have heard it).

Last week's answers

1. Andorra. A tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France. Its founding occurred in the year 1278, when its rulers were proclaimed to be the French count of Foix and the Spanish bishop of Urgel (Andorra was squeezed in between the Spanish region Urgel and the French region Foix ). Years later, the president of France replaced the count of Foix as its co-titular head.

2. Dominica. A small island located between the French islands Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean. Formerly a British dependency, it gained its independence in 1978.

3. Estonia. The northernmost of the three Baltic countries. At various times in its recent past it was under Russian domination, from which it gained independence in 1991. Its flag has three horizontal stripes, which from top to bottom are blue, black, and white.

4. Canada. The English version: Oh, Canada, our home and native land...; the French version: O, Canada, terre de nos aiëux....(Oh, Canada, land of our forefathers...).

(I have visited each of those countries.)

This week's questions (U.S. presidents)

1. Who first lived in the White House?

2. Who skinny-dipped in the Potomac River?

3. Who served two non-consecutive terms?

4. Who said "Give me a one-armed economist"?

Answers next week

Next week's questions (African republics, former colonies)

Beware of preferred stocks

Ordinarily I don’t use my blog to give instructions–generally, I am more in need of instructions than qualified to give any. But one thing I do know a thing or two about is investments: for many years I was a security analyst (one who analyzes stocks and bonds for investment purposes) at a major trust company and for many more years, a private investor, which I still am.

I totally disagreed with an article in the August 2005 issue of the magazine Smart Money which promoted straight preferred stocks as a good investment for income. I thought it ill-advised for the magazine to publish the article (which I recall was written by a free-lance contributor) without any disclaimer such as "The opinions in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily..." I sent a letter to the editor of the magazine, which I am including below; not surprisingly, it was not published.

I forgot all about the matter until I came across an item in a recent issue of Barron’s on its "Other Voices" page in which an individual who had recently retired described how he handled his investments, both prior to and after retiring. He mentioned using preferred stocks–I assumed he meant straight preferred stocks since he didn’t indicate otherwise. (I don’t criticize Barron’s for not adding a disclaimer inasmuch as its "Other Voices" page is dedicated to outsiders, as its title implies.)

For whatever interest it might be to any who visit my blog, I include below the text of my letter to Smart Money. Please note the qualification in it that it only applies to INDIVIDUAL investors and to STRAIGHT preferred stocks.

My letter (which was sent some time in August 2005):

The promotion of preferred stocks to "goose your income" in the article "The Preferred Way to Boost Returns" in your August issue is very poor advice. There is almost never a justifiable case for an individual (as distinct from a corporation) to buy a straight (as distinct from a convertible) preferred stock. A preferred stock is a hybrid between a bond and a stock, and bears the disadvantage of each of those types of securities without enjoying the advantages of either.

Like a bond, a preferred does not participate in any future earnings and dividend growth of the company and any resulting growth of the price of the common. But the bond has greater security than the preferred and has a maturity date at which the principal is to be repaid.

Like the common, the preferred has less security protection than the bond. But the potential of increases of market price of the common and its dividends paid from future growth of the company is lacking for the preferred.

With the current historically low levels of interest rates, purchase of a straight preferred would be particularly foolhardy. The article comments that the three "Preferred Picks" provide current yields of just over 6%, adding that these yields are attractively higher than the current 4% on 10-year Treasuries. Only a snake oil salesman would make this pitch without pointing out what would happen to today’s market price of those "preferred picks" if interest rates should head back up to where they were in the early 1980's.

Suppose that an investor paid par ($100) today for one of the "preferred picks," which would give a current yield of just over 6%. Now suppose that in a few years 10-year Treasuries were to yield 13+% to maturity, as they did in 1981; these preferreds would yield at least 13%, which would knock their market price down to $46, for a 54% loss. (In all probability, they would yield some 2% more than the Treasuries–as the article suggests–or something like 15%, which would take the market price down to $40, for a 60% loss.) The important difference between preferreds and Treasuries (or any investment-grade Federal agency or corporate bond) is that the bonds would move up to par as their maturity date is approached, whereas the preferred, having no maturity date, might remain at these $40 levels for a long time.

The advantages of straight preferreds mentioned in the article (currently yield some 2% more than 10-year Treasuries, rank ahead of common stock in the case of bankruptcy, dividends are taxable at a maximum 15% rather than at ordinary income rates, as in the case of bond interest) are indeed paltry when compared to their inherent disadvantages described above.

The article comments, "Many investors would do better with a fund (of preferred stocks) than individual preferreds." This could be, if a manager of such a fund were astute at trading over a period of time. But better advice for individuals is : STAY AWAY FROM STRAIGHT PREFERRED STOCKS.

Monday, April 17, 2006

The shame of Darfur (more)

Shortly after my posting The shame of Darfur on 4/9/06, I learned of "SAVE DARFUR: Rally to Stop Genocide" to take place in Washington, DC on Sunday, April 30, 2006. It is to begin at 2 PM at the National Mall. Details can be obtained on the Internet at www.savedarfur.org/rally or by phone at 202-478-6148.

Although I have never participated in such an event, I plan to do so for this one. I hope to see you there!

Recent readings

THE LIGHTHOUSE, P. D. James, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2005, 335 pages.

This is the most recent of the 86-year-old British author’s 18 books. Although I have plowed through some of her previous mysteries featuring British police Commander Adam Dalgliesh (Death in Holy Orders was the last I read), I simply couldn’t do it with this one. Typical of her mystery novels, The Lighthouse runs to 335 pages; it would have been far more interesting had it been many fewer pages (my choice for the length of mysteries is just a few over 200 pages).

My beef with her works is the tiresomely excessive length of fanciful prose that she uses to set the various scenes and to bring the numerous characters into the story (there are always more than a handful) and to guide them through it.

In The Lighthouse the opening scene is set at typical length with Dalgliesh in conference with his superiors regarding his assignment to investigate a murder on a tiny island off the west coast of England.

To have the security forces involved was always a complication. Dalgliesh reflected that the secret service, like the monarchy, in yielding up its mystique in response to public enthusiasm for greater openness, seemed to have lost some of that half-ecclesiastical patina of authority bestowed on those who dealt in esoteric mysteries. Today its head was known by name and pictured in the press, then previous head had actually written her autobiography, and its headquarters, an eccentric oriental-looking monument to modernity which dominated its stretch of the south bank of the Thames, seemed designed to attract rather than repel curiosity. (p. 5)

The foregoing is only about half of this scene-setting paragraph.

A female detective over whom Dalgliesh has command is introduced:

In her flat above the Thames, Detective Inspector Kate Miskin was still in bed. Normally, long before this hour, she would have been at her office and, even on a rest day, showered, clothed and breakfasted. Early rising was habitual for Kate. It was partly by choice, partly a legacy of her childhood, when burdened with the daily dread of imagined catastrophe, she would drag on her clothes at the moment of waking, desperate to be ready to copr with the expected disaster: a fire in one of the flats below preventing rescue, a plane crashing through the window, an earthquake shattering the high-rise, the balcony rail trembling, the breaking in her hands. (p. 12)

Such involved prose can be acceptable in a regular (non-mystery) novel to add color to the scenes and insight into the personalities of the characters; many celebrated novelists (Charles Dickens, for one) have used such style to good effect. But, as a mystery reader, I want to get to, and stay with, the action with a bare minimum of such folderol; I don’t think I am alone in that respect.

Similarly, the TV police procedural Homicide would have been a show I should have enjoyed–I like police action shows (I usually watch Law and Order) and it was set in the Baltimore area where I live. But there was too much soap opera in it (one detective dealing with his wife’s illness, another spending too much time musing on the meaning of life, yet another, a divorced man, finding a soul mate whom he first saw working in a fast-food restaurant but also was studying music at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory). But because of all that baggage I gave up watching it. (There is almost nothing of the personal lives of the main characters in Law and Order.)
COBRA II:The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
........Michael R. Gordon and Bernard Trainor, ........Pantheon Books, New York, 2006
........603 pages, including Notes, Appendix, .........and Index


The instant you open the book you know that you will be in for a long stretch of reading–even before the “Foreword,” there are 19 pages of maps of Iraq with many marks on them to indicate where various battles were fought.

The “Foreword” offers the following background of the invasion:

We wrote this book to provide an inside look at how a military campaign that was so successful in toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime set the conditions for the insurgency that followed. The Iraq war was a war of choice, not of necessity. It was also one of the most covered but least understood episodes in American history.

Then it goes into a five-paragraph dissertation as to how the authors researched the myriad aspects of the war:

For three years, we have done exhaustive research on all...fronts...We assembled the history from the ground up...by reviewing the contemporaneous and unpublished notes of participants and through repeated interviews with senior officials, generals, and their staffs.

The “Foreword” concludes:

The Iraq war is a story of hubris and heroism, of high technology wizardry and cultural ignorance. The bitter insurgency American and British forces confront today was not preordained. There were lost opportunities, military and political, along the way.

The first 496 pages of the book provide very detailed descriptions of the campaign, beginning with the decision-making by the Bush administration--focusing mainly on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld--prior to the invasion, and then with all the military action up to the book’s publication in early 2006 (again in very great detail and with 18 black-and-white photographs). While these battlefield reports are probably of great interest to military historians, I scanned them to get a sense of the war effort but, at the same time, to not get bogged down in the minutia.

I found the most impressive part of the book the 11-page final chapter, “Epilogue.” On its first page it says:

...President Bush and his team committed five grievous errors. They underestimated their opponent and failed to understand the welter of ethnic groups and tribes that is Iraq. They did not bring the right tools to the fight and put too much confidence in technology. They failed to adapt to the developments on the ground and remained wedded to their prewar analysis even after Iraqis showed their penchant for guerilla tactics in the first days of the war. They presided over a system in which differing military and political perspectives were discouraged...Instead of making plans to fight a counterinsurgency, the president and his team drew up plans to bring the troops home and all but declared the war won.

Later it says:

The war planning took about eighteen months. The postwar planning began in earnest only a couple of months before the invasion. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Franks (General Tommy Franks, who headed the invasion) spent most of their time and energy on the least demanding task–defeating Saddam’s weakened conventional forces–and the least amount on the most demanding–rehabilitation of and security for the new Iraq.

(Curiously, none other than Vice President Dick Cheney is among those who plug the book on its dust jacket. Identified as “former Secretary of Defense,” he is quoted as saying: “A fascinating account of the war. I recommend it to my friends as something that gives them a different element of some of the key decisions that were made.” That seems a bit like Ken Lay praising Conspiracy of Fools, by Kurt Eichenwald, a book which excoriates the Enron management.)

To anyone who would criticize the conclusions of the book’s authors as Monday-morning quarterbacking, or hindsight with 20-20 vision, I say such criticism might be appropriate if our invasion of Iraq were clearly a war of necessity, such as World War II following the attack on us by Japan. In such a case, our defensive reaction probably would include some unwise tactics brought about by human fallibility. But the invasion of Iraq was not such a war; whether or not it was meritorious, it was an elective war–not one that had to be. Because of that, those who planned and implemented it are far more deserving of criticism for their mistakes.

Another interesting slant on the Iraq war is that expressed in a review of the book by Steve Coll in the 4/3/06 issue of The New Yorker:

The President and the members of his war cabinet now routinely wave at the horizon and speak about the long arc of history's judgment--many years or decades must pass, they suggest, before the overthrow of Saddam and its impact on the Middle East can be properly evaluated. This is not only an evasion; it is bad historiography. Particularly in free societies, botched or unnecessary military invasions are almost always recognized as mistakes by the public and the professional military soon after they happen, and are rarely vindicated by time. This was true of the Boer War, Suez, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and it will be true of Iraq.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Verbal indigestion

I have a strange disease: verbal indigestion. When I read or hear someone use words or phrases that are contrived, hyped, an affectation, hackneyed, smarmy, politically correct, a repetition of four-letter words, or otherwise annoying, I have an acute attack of this indigestion. (Maybe it’s not so strange, maybe others have it too but don’t want anyone else to know–sort of like being HIV positive or having herpes.)

What brought on this discourse was my reading of a recent issue of the magazine Smart Money, in which I found an article on wine. The authors, a man and a woman said to have written books on the subject, got me to run for the antacid in a hurry. Their assessments of various wines did it.

The nose alone is vibrant and filled with minerals, passion fruit and kiwi...

Crisp and complex, with a tiny hint of earthy funk at the end that gives it grounding and complexity...

Crisp and refreshing, with clean, intense, grapefruit-earth-mineral tastes that just about explode with life.

The Encarta World English Dictionary gives three definitions of funk: "a type of popular music that derives from jazz, blues, and soul"; "a state of melancholy or hopeless sadness"; and "a strong unpleasant odor." So, I don’t think a wine with funk in it (especially if it were earthy), even if it were just a "tiny hint," would be to my taste. If it also had "grounding and complexity" I am pretty sure I would stay away from it. With an "unpleasant odor" I wouldn’t get near it.

I don’t know what to make of the hyphenated grapefruit-earth-mineral. (Hyphenated words are the next thing to a single word--what used to be "to-day" in the USA we have made "today," although it is still "to-day" in most other English-speaking countries.) But, I won’t try to make one word of the grapefruit thing because I am befuddled enough with it hyphenated. I know what grapefruit tastes like, but combining it with "earth," (which I would never want to taste), and then throwing in "mineral" (the only minerals I have ever tasted were yucky) would give me pause.

Knowing that the g-e-m thing is "clean" would give me some comfort, but then considering that it is "intensive" and "just explode(s) with life"–I don’t know. I think I would pass on that one.

Since wine critics are considered by some to be demigods, they can get away with such flatulent verbiage; anyone questioning their style would be looked down on as a plebeian.

And for others, like The Lord High Executioner in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, "I’ve got a little list, who never would be missed."

The politicians. They love "the American dream" and talk about "hard-working Americans" as they (the hard workers) "sit around the kitchen table" doing whatever–like wondering how these guys ever got elected to office. And they can’t resist "the fact of the matter" (since the matter being discussed is clearly known, just "the fact" would do fine).

Or those who picked up "this point in time" from Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia during the Watergate hearings in the U.S. Senate during the 1970's. Senator Talmadge spoke with the speed at which one travels on the Capital Beltway during rush hour, so getting out just "this time" took long enough but including the two additional words made it seem like forever. Of course, "this point in time" has been taken over by many people other than senators, but I believe it was Mr. Talmadge who got it started.

The writers, speakers, and just everyday people who get hooked on the latest trendy words and phrases like "roll out" (for the introduction of a product or service by a company), "platform" (for the basis of a business operation), "ramp up," and "tipping point."

Sure, I know language is an evolving thing; if it weren’t we would be speaking the Old English of Beowulf: "Þæt we hine swa godne gretan moton" ("that we might be allowed to address him, he who is so good") or the Middle English of Chaucer: "Ther been ful goode wyves many oon" ("There are very good wives, many a one.") from "The Miller’s Tale" in The Canterbury Tales.

Sure, I also know that I use words and phrases that were new not so long ago but are now in everyday use, like "rip off," "screw up,"and "cool." So I guess it is like food and drink: some things give one indigestion while, for others, they are a pleasant repast.

Those who use affectations in their speech or writing. An example of this is the editor of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, a very fine work published in 2005 (the "new" in its name distinguishes it from The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, by William Baring-Gould, published in 1967). The editor of this new version was born in Chicago and is now a lawyer in Los Angeles; as far as I am aware, he has never lived outside of the USA. Yet in his writing he uses British spelling when it is different from American: colour, favour, defence, licence, and many others. Apparently, due to his subject, he is trying to put his readers, wherever they live, in a jolly British frame of mind. To me, it seems an affectation.

I, too, used British spelling when, during the 1980's and 1990's, I wrote as a correspondent for a London-based publisher of insurance industry newsletters. London is the insurance center of the world, so the majority of readers of those newsletters were accustomed to British English; therefore, I felt it proper to adhere to that spelling (otherwise, my editor would probably have done it for me). However, when I wrote my book Insurance in the United States: A Handbook for Professionals, which was published in 1993 by that same publisher (and later published and marketed by Lloyd’s of London Press, who acquired my original publisher in 1995), I used American spelling, and had no problem with my editor about it.

Please excuse me, I have to go and take some more antacid.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

The shame of Darfur

It was said, after six million Jews were murdered in Nazi concentration camps before and during World War II, Never again! Again, after the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, it was said, Never again! Yet genocide has been going on for three years in Darfur–defenseless black Africans in that area of Sudan have been victimized by the Arab Janjaweed militia, with the backing of the Sudanese government in Khartoum.

And the shame of it all is: NONE OF THE WORLD POWERS ARE TAKING ANY MEANINGFUL ACTION TO STOP THIS RAMPAGING CRUELTY.

A 9/30/05 news release by an organization, the Darfur Action Committee (which seems to have some affiliation with the University of California at Los Angeles), commented:

The Janjaweed are killing civilians, razing and burning villages, raping women and young girls, abducting children, poisoning water supplies, and destroying sources of food. The death toll has reached up to 400,000 people since February 2003. More than 500 people die each day, 15,000 each month. More than 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes...As many as 1 million civilians could die in Darfur from lack of food and from disease within coming months.

A news bulletin released by the United Nations on 4/6/06 stated that "close to" 200,000 people have been killed (half the number cited in the news release above) and 2 million "uprooted," with 90,000 displaced people living in one camp, known as Kalma. To make matters worse, the bulletin reports, the Sudanese government has ordered a non-government organization, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which has been providing humanitarian services at the camp, to leave. A UN relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, was quoted as follows:

With no one to replace the NRC, I fear that conditions for the 90,000 people in the camp will worsen...(The government’s order that the NRC leave) is just one example of the rising levels of restrictions that the14,000 aid workers in Darfur and in many other parts of Sudan face every day.

The bulletin goes on to say:

Such restrictions range from long delays in exit and re-entry visas for NGO (non-government organizations) staff, unjustified interference in the recruitment of staff, to delays clearing imported humanitarian goods and equipment.

This United Nations news release includes text of a resolution by its Security Council, which is replete with the usual diplomatic verbiage. It speaks of the continued violation by the Sudanese government of a 2004 cease-fire agreement and "evidence of widespread violations of humanitarian law in Darfur...(it is proposed) that the Security Council adopt a "zero tolerance" approach to violations of (the cease-fire agreement)."

The news release also reported a planned "mini-summit" to be held in April in Nigeria to "discuss ways to speed up efforts to reach a peaceful solution to the (Darfur) conflict."

A recent article by the columnist Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer provides another report on the horror of Dafur. She writes of a former Marine captain, Brian Steidle, who was assigned to the African Union as an observer in Darfur. Ms. Rubin writes:

The Bush administration calls this killing by its rightful name–genocide–but has yet to use the kind of political muscle that might stop it...(Steidle says) "We saw villages leveled, burned bodies, babies that had been shot..." The ex-Marine had no doubt who was to blame for the carnage...(t)he Sudanese government, in an effort to crush Darfur rebels, sent in its army along with an Arab militia known as the janjaweed. Their goal: to "cleanse" Darfur of its ethnic population.

(Mr. Seidle) wants a million Americans to write President Bush and urge him to ensure that a strong multinational force is sent to Darfur...(He) wants to show that one person can make a difference. But he can succeed only if , one by one, other Americans join in.

And what is George Bush, that champion of freedom and democracy for all the earth’s people, doing about the horrific Darfur situation? His feckless approach is evident in the following letter which went out from the White House over his signature.

I send greetings to those observing the "Week of Prayer and Action for Darfur."

Our nation is appalled by the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. We grieve for the men, women, and children of Darfur, victims of atrocities arising from a civil war that pits a murderous militia against a collection of rebel groups.


Another paragraph in the letter states: "We are urgently seeking an end to the conflict in Darfur. We will continue to work with the Congress and the African Union to provide aid to those who are suffering."

It is appropriate that this letter was dated on April Fool’s day 2006.

Even if Bush wanted to send military assistance to Sudan, there probably aren’t enough troops to spare because of the large number already tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he certainly could use the political capital that he bragged about after his reelection to organize the leaders of the major European countries (most of whom have far greater ties to Africa than the U.S.) and African leaders to take military action–preferably with a United Nations mandate–to stop the rampaging murderers.

What can you and I do about this shameful situation in Darfur? We can certainly write to President Bush, as suggested above, and also to our representatives in Congress–which would make us feel better and might possibly help: two bills have been passed in Congress which await a conference committee's action to reconcile the House and Senate versions.

An organization, "Save Darfur," has said in a news update that this legislation "would place further penalties on the government of Sudan and on those persons complicit in the genocide, and also calls for stronger U.S. participation in the Darfur peace process." However, in an election year it is probably wishful thinking to expect any real action by our government.

Ongoing updated information is available from "Save Darfur" at www.SaveDarfur.org.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

This week's quiz--countries

1. What European country has as its constitutional co-heads of state the president of another country and the Catholic bishop of yet another (a third) country?

2. What country in the Western Hemisphere has a parrot in the center of its flag?

3. What European country has only one of the colors of the spectrum in its flag? (two hints: (1) the colors of the spectrum are: red. orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (2) the flag has three horizontal stripes)

4. The American national anthem begins with "Oh" (Oh say, can you see...).What other country’s national anthem also begins with "Oh" (or "O")? (hint: American sports fans have heard it)

Answers next week.

Next week’s quiz topic: American presidents

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Wal-Mart redux: maybe softening?

Since my 3/28/06 posting Everybody hates Wal-Mart except those who shop and those who work there, two related items of interest have appeared in the print media.

One was an article in the 4/5/06 issue of the New York Times, entitled "Wal-Mart Offers Aid to Rivals." It commented that the company is " ...turning to an unusual business plan: helping its rivals." The article goes on to say that Wal-Mart will offer assistance to small businesses (it mentions hardware stores, dress shops, and bakeries) in urban areas where it has opened new stores. "(I)t would offer those businesses financial grants, training on how to survive with Wal-Mart in town and even free advertising within a Wal-Mart Store." This aid to these small businesses is further described as follows.

Wal-Mart will hold seminars to coach the businesses on how to compete with the giant discount stores–by, for example, intensifying customer service...At the same time, Wal-Mart will invest $500,000 in local chambers of commerce, to be used for small-business Web sites and business improvement seminars.

The company’s motivation for this unusual program is explained:

Wal-Mart acknowledged the program was not entirely altruistic. The company is trying to open 50 stores in urban neighborhoods in the next two years, and the aid to small businesses could help build support in cities like Los Angeles and New York where it has met strong resistance.

The other item is a review in the 4/3/06 issue of Barron’s of a new book The Bully of Bentonville, by Anthony Bianco, a writer at Business Week. The tone of the book (which I haven’t seen) is set out in the following reviewer’s commentary:

For much of the book, Bianco paints Wal-Mart as an unstoppable, soulless machine running roughshod over the countryside, municipal leaders and, most of all, its rank-and-file employees. He spends most of the book documenting the company’s overbearing attitude toward workers and its anti-union stance (the company says it is "pro associate," not anti-union).

But then, the author takes a different angle:

For the first time since its 1962 founding, he argues, Wal-Mart’s business model has "broken down and is in need not of repair but of replacement."...Competitors from Costco to Target to Whole Foods Market have managed to succeed in a Wal-Mart world. Some of Wal-Mart’s problems are due to the influence of its social and labor critics , but mostly it comes down to competitors offering different choices and a better shopping experience.

Wal-Mart acknowledges that its superficially magnanimous offer to help small businesses to compete with itself is not entirely altruistic. Would anyone have thought that it was "entirely altruistic?" The charge of the book’s author that the company is being beaten up on by other large companies who are now playing in its league may or may not be true (he offers no evidence to that effect), but it seems reasonable that such may be happening. Given these points, it appears that Wal-Mart is now learning to play defense, after all the years when it has had the ball.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

My own “wardrobe malfunction.”

Not as spectacular as that of Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl, but antedating hers by about 20 years, I had my own such experience. Around mid-morning one day when I was working in downtown Baltimore, my fly would not zip back up (the little gizmo that goes up and down the zipper track had broken). It so happened that I had a date that day for lunch with a business acquaintance from New York. Normally when visitors arrived to see me, the receptionist would phone me and I would go out to greet them. However, this day when my visitor–a long-time female acquaintance–arrived, I asked my secretary (who was in the know about my predicament) to escort her to my office.

Upon my visitor’s arrival into my office, I didn’t get up to shake hands with her as I normally would have but, rather, remained glued to my chair with my lap out of sight under my desk. Of course, I explained my situation to her; I was not embarrassed, as I would have been with someone I only knew slightly (especially a female), because we had known each other for many years.

Our date was to go for lunch to Tio Pepe, a well-known Spanish restaurant in Baltimore. Luckily, it had been raining that morning when I left home for the office, so I had a lightweight raincoat at the office, which I wore, even though the rain had stopped, to hide my predicament as we left my building and walked up to Tio Pepe. Upon our arrival there, the conversation with the maitre d’ went like this:

Maitre d’: Sir, wouldn’t you like to check your raincoat?

Me: Er, no thanks, I’ll just keep it on.

Maitre d’: But sir, it’s not raining in here.

So, I could sympathize with Ms. Jackson that day in 2004; she didn’t have a raincoat handy to fix her problem.
Name:
Location: United States

Mycroft Watson is the nom de plume of a man who has seen many winters. He is moderate to an extreme. When he comes to a fork in the road, he always takes it. His favorite philosopher is Yogi Berra. He has come out of the closet and identified himself. Anyone interested can get his real name, biography, and e-mail address by going to "Google Search" and keying in "User:Marshall H. Pinnix" (case sensitive).

Powered by Blogger

FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Free Top Ten Search Engine Submission!
  • Excite
  • What-U-Seek
  • Webcrawler
  • NetFind
  • Lycos
  • Infoseek
  • AltaVista
  • HotBot
  • Goto
  • Northern Light
Site Title
URL
Name
Email
Free Advertising
 Blog Top Sites a href="http://www.blogtopsites.com/"> Blog Top Sites