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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