Layng quietly in fields

Layng quietly in fields
Glstening lights

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

I’ll take Hayakowa.




Today's Tids Issue 3,818
For Sensible Moderation:

I’m in that comfortable cocoon that I always find so accessible every time we get a blizzard. The winds are swirling driving snow a mere three inches away from my nose pressed against the window pane. Yet I am secure and warm. The rage of winter stops the world, and we all recede into our peaceful dens. If we turn off all media, it is indeed a pure unadulterated paradise.

“To perceive how language works, what pitfalls it conceals, what its possibilities are, is to comprehend a crucial aspect of the complicated business of living the life of a human being.” – S.I. Hayakowa

In response to the Tids suggestion yesterday that we create a national lottery to support the arts called “ArtMoney”, a seriously aware reader wrote to say, “And yeah, A politician named Art will think it is his and siphon it into his secret Caribbean Island bank account!”

No US presidential administration has been so investigated in the first two months, and it will likely be as intense for four years. Not the slightest character misdemeanor will be minimized. If there is the mere possibility of a black cloud, it will be blown by the winds of angry biased journalists to hang ominously over the White House.

A good late season snow storm is great for all of those people who have invested in plows.

The Question:
Who was S.I. Hayakowa, anyhow?

The Headlines:
--Blizzard Stops Northeast Cold; 5400 Flights Cancelled.
--Fed Meeting Anticipation Will Stall Stock Action At Opening; Oil Continues Downward.
--Environmental Activists Vandalize Trump Golf Course.
--CBC Sees $337 Billion Debt Reduction, 24 Million Fewer Insured In Decade; Repubs Say CBC Gt It Wrong.
--Trump Gives CIA Power To Launch Drone Strikes.
--Somalia Pirates Take Tanker; First Ship Taken Since 2012; Area Under Protection Of US 5th Fleet.
--Consumers Can Expect Gas Prices To Retreat As Crude Prices Get Diluted.
--Volkswagen Merger Talks With Fiat Chrysler A Possibility.

Did you read where overseas US Troops will no longer be able to get Burger King or Subway sandwiches. It will take effect with the new troops moving onto the Poland-Russia border. I expect that the Polish Kielbasa Association has complained. Subway will respond by offering soy dominated fake kielbasa, BK with BasaBurgers. But General is saying Now…no more luxuries for the troops. I thought trump liked the military.

I actually feel healthier on these utterly cold days. Maybe my blood flows faster.

“Exactitude is the lowest from of pictorial gratification.” – SIH

There is a bigtime secret war going on below the surface in these United States. It’s between all of the big companies looking to alter their corporate capabilities for the future. It’s all about gaining a technical advantage to become a player in the anticipated Automatic self-driving car boomlet. Many are overpaying for promising technology just to be there, like Intel yesterday going after the Israeli company Mobileye, estimated to be the big supplier to BMW and others in Europe. (Note: Intel missed out on the Smartphone explosion and they are still smarting. Or, is that dumbing?

I think that angry, demeaning, divisive comedians are a major contributor to the dis-unification of the United States.

When a celeb says something like, “We all pray for harmony and peace within our society,” they are leaving out the parenthetic qualification, (“As long as everybody adheres to my principles.”)

Our local big city, anti Repub, conservative newspaper must have been licking its chops yesterday when the CBC issued its new healthcare program forecast. Because they wasted no time putting up a headline about it in the biggest, blackest type that would fit on a page. Talk about propagandizing the news.

The good news is that if it snows here in July, we won’t have the normal congested summer traffic.

Lets’ say some white singer like Pat Boone put out a video where in the end he would shoot Barack Obama dressed like a clown. The news anchors of America would be marching in the streets. That’s exactly what happened Sunday when Snoop put out that exact vicious scenario. Snoop just laughs it off saying about todays recordings, “…but nobody’s dealing with the real issue with this f…ing clown as president.” What issues is he talking about? I doubt if he knows. Add Snoop to that Tidlet above on the divisiveness of comedic Clowns.

I’m beginning to think I am lucky I’m not in a business dealing with the public. The public is getting crazier and crazier.

One of the great media tricks used to dramatize some movement or actions to appear the result of the Trump presidency, is using “Percentages” instead of raw numbers. Per cents are basically meaningless if you don’t know the numbers. For instance, an increase of emigrations to a country reported as up by 70% is basically like adding 2.8 people to 4 who emigrated the previous month. Hayakowa would hate that dishonest use of his precious language.

Trump says he will now ask the Press to determine where he should donate his accumulated Presidential salary at the end of 2017. Maybe he could send it to NPR. Oh, wait, Lala-Pelozzi would impeach him for an attempted bribe of a media outlet.

The Parking lot: Chapter 83 continues…
   Alex was beginning to feel much better, as the shock of what happened wore off. He thought his face must look like a mess, but all of the blood it produced in pools in the front seat may have saved his life. So far.
   He pushed himself up, and tested his legs. His back felt sore, but there was definitely no blood there. He shuddered a bit as he realized just how close he had been to death.
   There were no sounds at all, no rustling of branches, no muffled coughs, rough breathing; no human sounds.. But, he knew from his adventure with Nancy that these guys were very good.
   Somehow, he had managed to move about 50 yards from his car. He doesn’t remember a moment of his retreat. He began moving, deciding to take a wide circle around to the side of the his car away from Modessa’s House.
  He heard a shout, and stopped, froze. He turned his head slowly, afraid the movement of his neck my alert acute ears. He thought he was getting much too paranoid. Nancy would just forge a head, he thought.
   He started jogging, stopping just as he reached the road, about fifty feet from his car. He crept away from the shielding pushes, and looked up the road towards the house, hearing more shouting and door slams. He sucked it in and ran across the street, stepping on heavy boulders to launch himself up a steep embankment, finally diving into some scrub pines. He hauled his legs up out of sight.
   A car engine rumbled. He rose, now hunched over moved up further into the pretty heavy woods.
   The headlights from the car scoured the bank below his wooded area as it backed out and turned to come down the road towards him. He huddled into himself, held his breath.
   The car stopped. Two men got out, “Find that damn body, came the shout. The doors slammed and the car roared off.

The Answer:
I read a book by Hayakowa about 56 years ago, and it helped me to understand how to better live in a world with people. SI was a Canadian born, but of Japanese ancestry. He was perhaps the greatest ever semanticist, and also a linguist and psychologist. Semantics is the theory of meaning. His first book in 1941, “Language in Action” (A Book of the Month Club selection) was in many respects a response to the dangers of propaganda, especially as exemplified by Hitler. His first book on Semantics was “Language in Thought and Action”. He was a professor at U Wisconsin, U Chicago and finally U San Francisco. He became president of San Francisco State College, becoming a Republican darling when during the well-known Student-Black Panther riot on his campus in 1968, he pulled the wires out of the loudspeakers on a protestors van. Finally, SI became a US Senator using his wit to defeat Dem Senator Tunny.

We could use a little SI Hayakowa today, because he could always see the middle – that there is always much more grey than black and white.


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