Chamblee54

While researching a post about Molly Ivins, PG stumbled onto a lovely site called Booknotes. This site enables authors promoting their latest books. It seems to have gone out of business in December 2004, but the interviews are still available. PG likes to listen to “stuff” while he edits pictures, and Booknotes appears to be a treasure chest.
The multi tasking soundtrack last night was a chat with Hendrik Hertzberg, who is familiar to readers of The New Yorker. BTW, the majority of TNY readers live west of the Hudson River. Supposedly, the biggest number of readers is in California.
In 1965, Mr. Hertzberg was about to get drafted. At the time, this meant a one way ticket to Vietnam. Young men looked for alternatives to this, some of which were legal and moral. Mr. Hertzberg heard about an organization called the National Student Association. “And so I went to work after college for the National Student Association for a year. And it wasn`t just because the National Student Association was a wonderful cause that advanced liberal ideas and fought communism abroad and all of that sort of thing. Later, we learned that it was a CIA front, but I didn`t know that. What I did know was that if you worked for the National Student Association, you didn`t get drafted, that — it wasn`t exactly that you were deferred, but anyway, nobody got drafted while working for the National Student Association, so it was a way to have a year without worrying about getting drafted.”
The National Student Association has a facebook page, which one person likes. “The 1967 revelation of NSA’s ties to the Central Intelligence Agency sparked a national scandal, but did not measurably damage NSA.”
The CIA was involved in all sorts of things in those days. ( It still is today.) One of the fronts was Radio Free Europe. When PG was a kid, the cartoon shows had a commercial for Radio Free Europe. (It was different from the one embedded here.) These fund raising commercials were part of the scam. These commercials netted around $50k a year, towards a multi-million dollar budget. (source)
Soon after the war stories, the conversation turns to religion/tribal allegiance. LAMB: Explain this. “The Nuremberg laws would say I`m Jewish. The Law of Return would say I`m not.” HERTZBERG: Well, according to the Nuremberg laws, if you have a — if you had a Jewish father, the Nazi classification, you were a Jew. But the Law of Return, where — what entitles you to citizenship, automatic citizenship in Israel, you`ve got to have to have a Jewish mother. So I`m Jewish one way, I`m not Jewish the other way. I guess I feel sort of 51 percent Jewish because my name, Hertzberg, sounds Jewish, and therefore, people respond to me, often assume that I`m … 100 percent Jewish.”
This conversation was in 2004, when BHO was a little known Senator. Today, BHO, who had a white mother, is routinely considered black. If you go by the laws of the Nazis, BHO is black. If you go by the laws of Israel, BHO is white.
Mr. Hertzberg took a break from journalism to write speeches for President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Hertzberg is a member of the Judson Wellover Society. HERTZBERG: Judson Wellover was the very first White House speech writer. Not the first person to write speeches, ghost write speeches for a president — that would probably be Alexander Hamilton for George Washington — but the first person who was ever hired just to write speeches in the White House was Judson Wellover. He was hired by Warren G. Harding, and he — it was such a matter — it was such a shameful thing to have somebody writing — hired to write speeches that they hid his salary in the budget of the White House garage. And when we started, when Bill Safire and I started the Judson — the society of sort of a marching and chatter society or dinner — we have a dinner every couple of years of White House speech writers from all administrations, we named it after Judson Wellover.
Warren Harding is credited/blamed for coining the phrase “founding fathers”. Was Mr. Wellover involved? This is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress.

In a recent survey, 78.7% percent of the respondents agree with the statement “Statistics can be trusted to give an accurate description of the facts”.
Statistics are a part of modern life. Numbers tell us who is expected to win, who is expected to lose, and how many men wear a tie. Statistics are often misleading, or an outright lie. And yet, people believe statistics. (The middle three letters of believe are lie).
Talk about statistics is little better. Mark Twain gets the credit/blame for popularizing the phrase, “lies, damn lies, and statistics”. According to Wikipedia , Mr. Clemens may have been mistaken. “Twain popularized the saying in “Chapters from My Autobiography”, published in the North American Review in 1906. “Figures often beguile me,” he wrote, “particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'”…”The term was popularised in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881): “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” However, the phrase is not found in any of Disraeli’s works and the earliest known appearances were years after his death.”
Mr. Twain was in the twilight of his career, and angry at aggressive militarism. Why would he would give credit/blame for a phrase to a conservative Prime Minister of England, dead twenty five years?
When PG took English101, the teacher was an inspiring lady named Ann Peets. Between stories of Faulkner and comma splices, she contributed this gem. ” The best way to win an argument is to use statistics. The best way to use statistics is to make them up. ”
In 1954, a bestselling book came out, “How to Lie with Statistics .” The premise was that the pros knew the tricks, and the public has a right to self defense. There are numerous examples of the ways that you can lie with numbers just like you lie with words. Calculator lips don’t move.
One word to watch out for is average . The three most popular types are mean, median, and mode. Mean is the one most people think of as average…you add all the figures up, and divide by the number of entries. In median, you line up the entries in numeric value, and choose the entry in the middle. In mode, the number that the most entries identify with is the average. Any one of these three can be called average, and yet none might describe the typical entry.
HT to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub for attributing the LDL&S quote to Mr. Disraeli. MFB was talking about global warming denial, a cesspool of lies and statistics. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These pictures were taken by Ansel Adams at a relocation camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. Pictures of Mark Twain were recently posted. This is a repost.

There is a tasteful feature on the innertubes now, A Few Good Reasons Why White People Should Not Wear “Mohawks” or Dreadlocks. Yes, this is another polemic about cultural appropriation. If you want to skip the text, and look at the pictures, no one will get mad. Or get even. If you read the text, you might get odd. It is your choice.
The gist of the tract is “When white people wear “Mohawks” or dreadlocks it twists those hairstyles into symbols of privilege rather than symbols of survival and resistance.” Little is known about why the Natives of Upstate New York wore their hair the way they did. Isn’t calling this hair choice “symbols of survival and resistance” playing into the game of misunderstanding non European cultures? Anthropology is not an exact science.
The tract is not well written. Maybe the author feels like using good grammar is appropriating someone else’s culture.
There is one part of the tract that had PG shaking his buzz cut head. “This is a free country. Can’t I do whatever I want? This country has never been free for people of color/non-white people. Certainly, you can choose wear your hair however you want. Historically, however, people of color have not been able to make that choice.” This is not why the Bronner Brothers are multi millionaires. Black Americans spend more on hair care products than the gross national product of many African countries.
Both mohawks and dreadlocks are high maintenance affairs. After his struggles with shoulder length redneck curls, PG is not about to shave the sides of a beaver tail every day. And dreadlocks have always seemed to be just a bit on the dirty side. The rastas are welcome to wear dreadlocks, as long as they pass the spliff.
One thing PG has wondered was answered as a result of this polemic. Did the Mohawk tribe really wear their hair that way? When you type “Did the Mohawk… ” into google, the rest of the phrase to pop up is “Did the Mohawk Indians have mohawks?” Someone else has wondered the same thing. Wikipedia has more information.
“The mohawk (also referred to as a mohican in British English) is a hairstyle in which, in the most common variety, both sides of the head are shaven, leaving a strip of noticeably longer hair in the center. Though mohawk is associated mostly with punk rock subculture, today it has entered mainstream fashion. The mohawk is also sometimes referred to as an iro in reference to the Iroquois, from whom the hairstyle is derived – though historically the hair was plucked out rather than shaved. … The Mohawk and the rest of the Iroquois confederacy (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscarora and Oneida) in fact wore a square of hair on the back of the crown of the head. The Mohawk did not shave their heads when creating this square of hair, but rather pulled the hair out, small tufts at a time. … Therefore a true hairstyle of the Mohawks was one of plucked-out hair, leaving a three-inch square of hair on the back crown of the head with three short braids of hair decorated.”
They didn’t shave the sides of the head, they plucked the hair out. That does eliminate the need to shave the sides of your head every day. This is not the way the fashion conscious hair people do the modern mohawk. The question arises if this non authentic hairstyle is really cultural appropriation.
Part of the polemic took a question and answer format. “But, I wear my hair this way as a statement against oppressive cultures and governments. How is that racist?” “You can take a stand against oppression and dominant cultures without appropriating the cultures of the people being hurt by them. Appropriation actually enforces oppression, it does not stand against it. Appropriation is part of the problem, not part of the solution”
To paraphrase this, you can be anti racist without proudly avoiding high maintenance hairdoos. Especially one that bears little resemblance to the actual article.

There was a statement in yesterday’s post . “Black Americans spend more on hair care products than the gross national product of many African countries.” This was tossed out in a careless moment, which is not a good thing to do. Today’s post is an investigation. For purposes of this report, America’s gross national product is the republican party.
Finding out how much African Americans spend on hair care is more google intensive than this slack reporter imagined. Madame Noire has a feature, Black Women Spend Half a Trillion Dollars on Haircare and Weaves! Why? “Black women spend half a trillion dollars to keep our hairstyles tight, our weaves looking good and our “kitchens” tamed. Why do we do this?” The $500 billion figure might include pain and suffering. Target Market News is more conservative, reporting “Personal Care Products and Services – $6.66 billion”.
In the chatter about a Chris Rock movie, Good Hair, the phrase “9 billion dollar hair trade industry” is used. The Magazine Publishers of America report that advertising spending on “Hair Products & Accessories” was $1,242,700 in 2007.
The short answers are “a lot”, and “we don’t know”. It is probably less that $500 Billion. For the purposes of this feature, we will go with a conservative estimate. This would be Target Market News. Since not all “Personal Care Products and Services” are hair related, we will call our number Five Billion. This is probably a conservative figure, but for our purposes it will do.
The second part of the statement was “Black Americans spend more on hair care products than the gross national product of many African countries.” The numbers come from Wikipedia and the International Money Fund. There are sixteen African countries with GNP less than $5 billion. They include: Mauritania, Swaziland, Togo, Eritrea, Lesotho, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Liberia, Seychelles, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Comoros, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The last seven have a GNP less than the amount spent advertising hair products and accessories for Black Americans.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

During a recent facebook deterioration, on social issues, someone posted a 410 word statement. PG noted the promiscuous use of first person singular. A study ensued.
1 – I, or verb contractions using I, occurs 27 times in this statement.
2 – I was used in the first seven sentences. The eighth sentence did not have I, but did contain me.
3 – The tenth sentence does not have I, but does contain my.
4 – The last sentence has I five times. The first two have I three times. Six sentences use I twice.
5 – There are 410 words in this statement. There are 15 sentences. Six percent of these words are I.
6 – I is the shortest word in the English language. It is also possibly the least important.
Many people use the word I too often. The use of this word implies that the listener is interested in what the speaker thinks or does. When someone says I, the lips are usually moving. I is the central letter in both lie and believe. (As another FBF noted, I statements can be useful.)
This does not take away the controversy over what word, in the language, is the shortest. A British facility, the Daily Mail, ran a story,The shortest word in English? Depends on how you measure it
Q. We all know that the longest word in the English language is Floccinaucinihili-pilification, (Spell check suggestion:Oversimplification) meaning inconsiderable or trifling. But what is the shortest word in the English language?
A. This is a controversy that has divided the English-speaking community for more than a century. One faction, headed by Dr Robert Beauchamp from the Oxford English Dictionary, believes that the shortest word in the English language is ‘a’, while another faction, headed by Professor Melanie Kurtz from Chicago University, contends that it is ‘I’.
In his most recent book on the subject, Further Arguments In Favour Of A (OUP, £19.99), Dr Beauchamp claims that, though ‘I’ is arguably the thinnest word in the English language, ‘a’ is the shortest, in the sense that it is not as high.
Professor Kurtz, on the other hand, has argued in a number of pamphlets that, if one unravels the various loops and curls that form a single ‘a’, and stretch it into a single horizontal or perpendicular line, then the letter in question is undoubtedly longer than ‘I’.
Meanwhile, dissident scholars continue to argue the case for ‘o’ and for small ‘i’, though in broader academic circles the first is generally dismissed as not really a word and the second is felt to be questionable: they maintain that the gap between the little dot and the main body of the word/letter is a constituent part of the whole and cannot be discounted when it comes to the full measurement.
One of the comments is highly repeatable. “is it true…..the shortest sentence is ..I am. and the longest sentence…I do.?” – Tommy Atkins Blighty, 02/10/2009 18:45
In the digital age, capital letters are used less and less. If the lower case i is used as a first person singular, then it is both the shortest and the skinniest. The dot on the lower case i is known as the tittle. It is not known what the tittle thinks of the jot, or whether they believe each other.
For those not suffering platitude fatigue, here are the 21 Most Important Words in the English Language. The most important word: We ~ The two most important words: Thank You ~ The three most important words: All is forgiven ~ The four most important words: What is your opinion ~ The Five most important words: You did a good job ~ The six most important words: I want to understand you better ~ The least important word: I.”
A site called vocabula has a feature on the worst words in english. There are two phrases using I.
I mean Meaningless formula (a verbal tic, if you will) used habitually by many to begin nearly every sentence, especially those that are not intended to clarify anything preceding them. I need you to … A completely unacceptable replacement for “please.”
Since we cannot say, for certain, that I is the shortest word in the language, the uncertainty about the longest word should not be surprising. The longest word in German would be a short story by itself. According to Los Angeles Trade-Technical College “The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters ispneumonoultra-microscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.” (Spell check suggestion:ultramontane-microscopicsilicovolcanoconioses)
Part two of this feature is about a popular contender for the longest word. It is known here as The S Word. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This repost is written like H.P. Lovecraft.

There is a feature today on NPR discussing ” “What’s The Longest Word In The English Language?”. The old crowd pleaser antidisestablishmentarianism was dismissed as “Just a bundle of suffixes and prefixes piled up into a little attention-grabbing hummock.” It also has 28 letters, which won’t even get it into the playoffs.
When it comes to big words, there is nothing like science. In 1964, a book called “Chemical Abstracts” published a 1,185 letter word, referring to a protein found in the tobacco mosaic virus. It starts with glu and ends with sine. This word is 8.44 tweets long.
Words like glu…sine are not used often, which brings us to the obvious winner, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It is the theme song for a dance routine in a movie starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke , and a few dozen animated characters.
According to the urban dictionary, Miss Andrews was not fond of Rob Petrie. “It’s reported that Ms. Andrews replied, “Fuck you! I hate you!! You’re a ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidouchebag’!!!! And get away from my door!! Why don’t you go eat “A Spoonful of Feces “!!!” (This problem might have been caused by SupercalifragilisticexpiHalitosis )
At 34 letters, the s word is the longest english word that most of us have heard of. While it probably was made up by over-imaginative songwriters, it is defined by a reputed dictionary. It translates as superkalifragilistikexpialigetisch (German), supercalifragilistichespiralidoso(Italian) and supercalifragilisticoespialidoso (Spanish). The French are too cool to use it.
A website called Straightdope has a highly entertaining feature called Is “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” a real word referring to Irish hookers? . “Our research first took us to a lawsuit that was filed after the movie came out by Life Music, Inc., against Wonderland Music, the publisher of the Mary Poppins song. It was a copyright infringement suit brought by Barney Young and Gloria Parker, who had written a song in 1949 entitled “Supercalafajaistickespeealadojus” and shown it to Disney in 1951. They asked for twelve million dollars in damages. The suit was decided in the Shermans’ favor because, among other reasons, affidavits were produced from two New Yorkers, Stanley Eichenbaum and Clara Colclaster, who claimed that “variants of the word were known to and used by them many years prior to 1949.”
The decision makes for fairly humorous reading. Apparently the judge got tired of writing out the whole word, so every time it had to be mentioned it was replaced by the phrase “the word” as if it were some loathsome artifact that had to be held at arm’s length. “
There is another story that has the s word appearing in a humor magazine at Syracuse University. An archivist named Mary O’Brien says that rumor surfaces every ten years or so, and is not true. Another old husbands tale has children in summer camps taught a song super-cadja-flawjalistic-espealedojus. This cannot be confirmed or denied.
As for the tale about Irish entrepreneurs , there is a story in Maxim magazine. It says “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, the word supposedly coined by Mary Poppins to make kids sound “precocious,” was actually invented by turn-of-the-century Scottish coal miners. It was used to request “the works” from prostitutes by men too shy to recite specific acts.” The link supplied by StraightDope does not work.

“We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. … So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don’t personally have a kid in school; it’s because I don’t like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.” John Green
This turned up on Facebook the other day, beside a picture of John Green. I am a major fan of The Anthropocene Reviewed, a podcast created by Mr. Green. On AR, Mr. Green “rates different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale.” Mr. Green also talks a lot about his wife and children. This made the comment about “I don’t personally have a kid in school” seem a bit odd. I made a comment about the meme.
“Let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don’t personally have a kid in school…” “Green lives in Indianapolis IN, with his wife, Sarah Urist Green, whom he married on May 20, 2006, and two children.” “I am a John Green fan, mostly because of The Anthropocene Reviewed podcast. In it, he rates the human experience on a scale of one to five stars. I give this meme one star.”
”meme or no meme I still support people becoming educated. I know some folks that are very low on the educational scale (related to some actually) those folks can vote and still repeat the lies about the 2020 election being stolen and other conspiracy theory BS. The common factor, lack of intelligent education. There are many people out there getting their education and News from Facebook and other social media. It’s alarming.”
“I am not opposed to education. I am also a John Green fan, and I suspect he would not like having a sixteen year old meme used to promote education. Part of education is critical thinking. Lack of ct is why people believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. My critical thinking hobby told me that this meme was not a good way to promote education. I give the meme one star.”
I went to google to get the text at the start of this post. While I was there, I found a couple of tasteful comments. “I love posts like these because it really allows for logical exercise since there are so many fallacies contained. It’s like an Easter egg hunt for the illogical!” “I’ve never seen someone complain about the idea of public education. If anything, people are upset about public schools receiving too little. I like John Green, but it seems like he is just setting up dominoes to knock them down.”
There was one other item about John’s children, in or out of public school. On February 14, 2013, Mr. and Mrs. Green appeared on Obama’s 2013 Google+ Fireside Hangout. Mrs. Green asked President Obama for advice on what to name the daughter they were expecting. Mr. Green has a talent for promotion, and probably had connections that got him on the hangout. President Barry even said to tell their daughter “not to forget to be awesome.” This is one of Mr. Green’s sayings.
Anyone who goes on facebook has seen memes. You see rude things about politicians, examples of hypocrisy, and quotes from famous dead people. It doesn’t matter that the famous dead person never said it … the mememonger agrees with the idea. Memes are a substitute for thinking. You just see something that you agree with, and share it on your timeline. Sharing a flaky meme is not a sign of effective education. I give facebook memes one star. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

Part Three of the 2022 chamblee54 report on The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is here. (BALL wear LIT uhn) Parts one and two are there. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Jimothy walked into the joint like he owned the place, which he did, but not like a typical owner of a place like this; more like a classy, silver spoon owner, except not classy like wearing tuxedos to horse dancing and equine NASCAR event classy, but an eating a gas station hotdog with a knife and fork, napkin on his lap kind of classy. Elliott Cox, Clover, SC
Doris learned two things working at the Post Office—the first was that when Jake came in and asked her if she wanted to see a really big johnson, he didn’t mean he wanted her to go through The Special Limited Presidents stamp collection, and the second was that she didn’t need to head outside at the end of each shift with a bag of envelops and a trowel because it turned out the dead letters were not, in fact, actually dead. Susanne Antonetta, Bellingham, WA
While scrolling through the online catalog of the Acme website trying to decide if he should order rocket roller skates, TNT, and an anvil, or—Fool-Me-Twice fake tunnel paint, the Coyote suddenly realized, ‘Hey, I could just order food.’ Rusty Hamilton, Candby, OR
I’d just lost my third game of solitaire in a row, and was eyeing my last two Chesterfields, when she walked in, wearing an outfit that said “hospital orderly” but whispered “French maid” (a couple of the buttons were straining, but I didn’t feel sorry for them) . . . there was a package on her hip and a question on her lips—she had the legs of a supermodel, long and shapely: “Shall I leave them here on the slab, Dr. Frankenstein?”—and when a dame’s got gams like that, it’s hard to say no, especially when they’re so fresh. Benson Smith, Somerville, MA
As Bridgett the Discount Dominatrix flicked the length of clothesline she used as a whip, he licked the ball gag, which was really a tennis ball held in place by a length of duct tape, and thought, *Dad was right, you really do get what you pay for.” Andrew Nance, St. Augustine, FL
Pfandrilys was a classic beauty of her star-faring race, and Brian’s love was immediate, their kisses were magical, if scaly, and the alien sex was mind-blowing, and if only Brian had read more exobiology, perhaps he wouldn’t have been surprised that, when all was done, and they lay spent in each other’s arms, she bit his head off. Thomas Hill, Mountain View, CA
Whoever figured out that combining basic cyber-bullying techniques with third-generation sex robot AI technology would tap a gigantic market among submissives was a freaking genius, mused Mistress Tiffany 3.1 as she toweled off and plugged herself in to recharge.
G. Andrew Lundberg, Los Angeles, CA
Whenever Elvis graced the bar stools at the steakhouse, he never failed to order a rare steak, bordering raw, and oozing greasily at the edges; and during the interviews after the musician’s untimely death, none of the waiters could deny that he loved meat tender.
Leah Dagenbach, Loveland, OH
“Not again!” exclaimed Dusty the absent-minded trail boss, as he suddenly realized that he’d led the cattle drive to the wrong tumbleweed-infested prairie town, although a good time was soon had by all at The Saddle Sore Saloon, especially when the nattily dressed piano player started taking musical requests, including the lively square dance tune “Don’t Cry On My Shoulders ‘Cause You’re Rustin’ My Spurs.” Joanne Morcom, Calgary, Alberta,