Shut up!

Word is spreading through the internet about the Sony patent for interactive advertising. Figure 9 of the application involves a person being prompted to shout “McDonalds!” in order to end the television commercial and get back to his violent TV programming. The picture in question is here:

“Imagine how awkward ads for herpes medication could be. And by awkward I mean awesome.”
— @KesselJunkie, August 24, 2012

I haven’t read the patent, so maybe this is explained, but I’m unsure why the guy in the picture has to stand up and throw his hands in the air. Maybe there are motion detectors involved, but if so, it’s probably just to play a joke on the public, making them look like idiots while they yell at their TVs. If I were using this technology, I’d be scanning it for hidden micro-cameras designed to record me acting like a fool for your YouTube viewing pleasure.

This gave me an idea, though. Whenever someone is rambling, instead of politely excusing yourself or trying to get them to change the subject, just stand up, throw your hands in the air, and shout, “McDonalds!” Feel free to use the same technique in movie theaters while they’re playing the commercials and trailers for bad movies.

After you’re done, tweet that you did it, and cite me as your inspiration. Please. I need this.

Based on the lengths of my posts, I’m sure this will be used against me soon.

Follow me on Twitter @RobertEBodine
Follow Sony on Twitter @Sony
Follow Kessel Junkie on Twitter @kesseljunkie

Write to the Point by Wordrake

I don’t think either Obama or Romney is your brother, but I’m certain they’re not brothers.

I stumbled across a website recently called Write to the Point by Wordrake. It’s target market consists of attorneys, selling them Wordrake software that corrects common writing errors.

What interest me is their daily tip to improving your writing. For any that have read my article, Language Matters, you know I find this important. One of the three justifications for not caring about language errors is that the point of language is to communicate, so as long as the message is communicated, there’s no problem. As their tip on the serial comma (a.k.a., Oxford comma) demonstrates, though, language errors, especially in writing, tend to hinder communication, and all of you that have ever posted to the internet know this to be true. On the internet, misunderstanding is the rule, not the exception. Even when speaking, a misplaced modifier — especially “not” — in a 2-second statement often receives requests from the listener for a 1-minute clarification. How this doesn’t convince you to correct your writing is beyond me. It’s in your own selfish interest to do so.

Do yourself a favor: Sign up for their daily tips. How could it possible hurt? Besides, if you learn enough from the tips, perhaps you won’t need the software.

Follow me on Twitter @RobertEBodine

I’ve Invented a New Racial Slur!

“Mars is for Martians”? Not anymore, Reddies!

That’s right. These “Reddies” can kiss my ass.

I’m not stupid. I know you’re all laughing at me, but the next thing you know, these Reddies are going to want to get married. Then you’ll see. You’ll *all* see.

You know, the name of this blog is “Rob’s Blog of Controversy,” right?

Follow me on Twitter @RobertEBodine

“Because”: The Most Underappreciated Word in the English Language #yourepartoftheproblem

Recently, I performed some small experiments via social media, hoping people would bite. They did. It confirmed the existence of a frustrating phenomenon about which I’ve been complaining for some time, though I haven’t quite articulated clearly to my readers (both of you).

No one cares about anything that follows the word, “because.”

Because .  . .

Still with me? Good. I’m glad at least you care, but you’re the exception, not the rule.

I won’t link to my experiments. I don’t think it’s fair to call out people unless they’re in a position to defend themselves, and by assumption, they aren’t here to defend themselves. You’ll have to take my word for it, which I’m sure you’ll do . . . until I tell you that people on your side did it also. Generally, what I did was write a short statement of opinion, but in the tradition of legal writing, I started with my conclusion. That is, I might say something like:

I believe the death penalty is a constitutional form of punishment. . .

I then immediately follow the statement with either some logic or, in the case of the failed experiment of this post***, some nonsense, such as:

. . . because I like to soak my feet in orange juice. It feels like grapeade. Peace out.

*** The experiment didn’t yield any results, but not surprisingly, on the same day I published it I received results from a different post that wasn’t even controversial. It never freaking stops!

The point was to show that, once people know that you disagree with them, they stop reading because they’ve already assumed you’re wrong.  Why? Because they couldn’t possibly be wrong. Their fragile egos can’t handle that possibility. This is consistent with a lot of my pre-experiment experiences, including many of my real articles on this blog. Many people criticize or compliment my articles (or even single, short paragraphs) without reading them in full, and it’s obvious when that happens. They make arguments that I’ve already addressed, meaning that they’re actually not addressing my points. My opinions could be wrong, but I wouldn’t know it because they’re arguing points I’ve already, in my mind, proved wrong.

This is, in part, a consequence of what’s called the “argumentative theory of reasoning.” In short, we argue to win rather than to learn. As a result, the reasoning behind our arguing is irrelevant to both ourselves and those with whom we’re arguing. This can have tremendous value to a very primitive society, but so can infanticide. On the other hand, this is a plague on intelligent society (as is infanticide, but that’s not my point). Whenever we make a simple statement, and certainly when I write one of my far-too-long articles, people ignore everything we say after “because,” which in my case means everything after my first sentence. In news channel interviews, the moderator might force the arguers to be polite, but you can always see the arguers’ eyes glazing over as they shake their heads side-to-side as if to say, “No; you’re an idiot,” before even a tenth of the argument has been made. This isn’t anticipation of the full argument but rather stubbornly refusing to hear the other side.

Guess who’s really the idiot?

Probably all of them.

But It Doesn’t Have to Be Like This

This type of stubbornness can be a very effective tool when you’re conscious of it. When I was in law school, I was known among my study groups for saying some pretty whacky things. For example, I once told some friends, “I’m a moral relativist, and I believe child molestation is okay. Why am I wrong?” Most people, including those friends, are extremely annoyed by such exercises, but this was law school. This was why we were all there. They had to take interest in the debate. Chicago-Kent is a private school, so we were paying $25,000 a year for the privilege to put up with nuts like me.

I was doing the whole, “I’m going to win this argument at all costs,” thing, but I was aware that I was doing it. I was using my instinct (enhanced by the fact that I was raised in the Washington, DC area) as a tool to challenge myself. I’d paint myself into an intellectual corner and have to fight my way out. I’d even take points of view with which I disagreed (obviously). Really, isn’t that what lawyers are supposed to do? For all I knew, I had a bright future in defending child molesters.

So, even in our modern civilization, this characteristic isn’t necessarily bad, so long as we’re aware of it and deal with it. It actually encourages us to address issues we might otherwise ignore until we’re forced to by some whacko. (If caught off guard, we might lose the argument, and he might not be discouraged from going a-diddling at the playground.) If you really want to learn, though, you need to be brutally honest with yourself when your insecurities cause you to lose touch with reason. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with saying, “I hadn’t considered that. I don’t like it, but I can’t refute it. Call me tomorrow and I’ll try again to kick your ass.” There’s also nothing wrong with asking questions. No one – not even experts – knows everything, and it’s rare indeed for two people with exactly the same amount of knowledge on a subject to come together and argue. In most arguments, sooner or later, someone’s going to have to fall into the role of student, and if the topic is particularly complex (like almost all we’re discussing nowadays), both arguers might find themselves switching back and forth into that role. It might help if you’d recognize that for some issues there’s no objectively correct answer, so technically, it’s possible that neither of us are truly wrong.

Trying to win should be the means. Finding the truth should be the goal.

But in the End, Most People Are Dicks

Unfortunately, most people gladly succumb to their insecurities. It’s so much easier than the alternative, which involves listening to what we don’t want to hear. Accordingly, most people I know will not have made it past the title of this (or any) article, so they’ll continue the pattern of unproductive discourse that plagues our political debate. They’ll continue to polarize around political parties, because it’s easier to follow an ordered set of opinions that it is to formulate your own. They’ll continue to hurl personal insults rather than think about what the other person has said. They’ll continue to speak in snarky generalities, oversimplifications, or metaphors designed to attribute extreme views to the other person in order to characterize them as a nuts, thus justifying their own refusal to listen.

This isn’t something I’m making up. Ask a psychologist if you must – they’ll confirm it – but you know damn well from your own experiences that it’s true. You’ve all felt that mix of anger and fear whenever you’ve felt cornered intellectually. Why? What’s the worst that could happen? I’ll tell you: You might learn something you didn’t know. Why is that such a bad thing?

A Solution That Won’t Work

Despite my lack of faith in people, I’d like to see everyone start using the hashtag, #yourepartoftheproblem. I want you to use it even on Facebook, which doesn’t recognize hashtags, because, after all, it won’t have much of an effect even on platforms that do recognize hashtags. Most people won’t care, remember? Like all hashtags, movements, or any mass effort of any kind, this can and eventually will be overrun by abusers, so let’s lay down some ground rules. Use the hashtag only when someone says/does:

1. “All [political label] party members are [insult].” If you believe that statement in any form, just close your browser window now. You’re beyond hope.
2. Criticizes you obviously after reading only enough of your written statement to deduce that you’re on the other side.
3. Resorts to snarky catch phrases that oversimplify the issue, and therefore put words into your mouth (but see B, below).
4. Uses the hashtag, #youarepartoftheproblem, simply because someone has a different opinion. If you see this, pull out the first three rules or the six that follow and demonstrate clearly why the person falls into that category.

As for you, make sure to obey these rules:

A. Don’t fall into the four traps above.
B. Don’t punish honest arguments simply because they’re simple. Use them as a starting point. Twitter gives us only 140 characters for our first statement, and even Facebook, Google+, and others are difficult media for real conversation. Be patient and ask for clarification of points that seem strange to you rather than assume their meant to insult you or support an insane position.
C. Don’t punish someone because they don’t communicate well through writing. It’s not as if online posts are interpreted properly as a rule.
D. Don’t hold information hostage. Keeping people in the dark is a sure sign that you’re not secure in your position, which means there’s a need to address it.
E. Don’t use information as a tool to belittle others. You’re not better than anyone else, even if you know more. Besides, sometimes experts lose the forest for the trees.
F. Don’t think of yourself as an adversary. Think of yourself as a teacher and a student. Those are the people who seek the truth.
G. Stop using #youarepartoftheproblem when it gets hijacked by those who are part of the problem.

You have to police yourselves carefully here. It’s very easy to fall into category 4 or to violate any of the rules from the second list. In part, that’s because the root of our political differences isn’t something as high level as where you stand on the death penalty, environmentalism, campaign finance reform, or stricter immigration rules. Those issues are completely unrelated, and from the most simplistic viewpoint, there are 24 different sets of views you can have on just those four (e.g., “pro-pro-pro-pro,” “pro-pro-pro-con,” “pro-pro-con-con,” and so on). Yet a large majority of Americans seem to fall into one of only two sets of views on these issues: “pro-con-con-pro” and “con-pro-pro-con.” Doesn’t that seem odd?

Not really.

The ties that bind our viewpoints on unrelated issues run much more deeply than the particular political issues themselves. Our views are based on very low-level assumptions on the role of government and our obligations to each other (i.e., the “social contract”). These assumptions are so ingrained in our thinking that, for most, they’ve probably been relegated to our subconscious. This would explain why at times we can’t imagine how the other side can see things their way, and we never seem to gain any ground with each other. It has less to do with the issue, and more to do with a deep, broad concept we seldom give any thought.  (This also explains why, in my anecdotal experience, I’ve never known someone to go to law school, learn the details and history of the law, and change their political stances once they graduate. Everyone stays the same, politically speaking. They just learn better arguments.)

Here’s a crude and poor example, but it illustrates the point. Pro-life citizens believe that a fetus is a human being no different from you and I, and as such is deserving of the same constitutional protections as you and I. Pro-choice citizens believe the fetus is not a human being with the same access to rights as you and I (though there are multiple ways in which pro-choice citizens will characterize the fetus’s “nature”). If you’re arguing any other issue, you’re actually not arguing with one another, and that’s by design. If you assume that the other side is making the same assumption as you, you can paint them as a monster (i.e., a baby-killer or someone attempting to lower women to a social caste at the same level as the family pet). None of us are trying to do either, and if you put aside your anger and insecurity for just a second, you’d realize that.

Would we all then see eye-to-eye? No, especially not on this particular example issue, and thus the losing side in the argument (at this moment, the pro-life movement) would see the result as an atrocity needing correction. However, for most issues, empathy leads to honest discussion, and honest discussion leads to an agreeable compromise (or dare I say agreement!). Uncivil discourse prevents this from ever happening.

Conclusion

If anything can change human behavior, it won’t be a long-winded post on this obscure, seldom-read blog, but this article shouldn’t be seen as an attack against its readers. Everyone acts this way at times. I still won’t have discussions on the Second Amendment because I don’t trust my ability to approach it rationally. This doesn’t mean I can’t do better. I just need to try. If I do, success is inevitable, but success can be fleeting. It can be lost if I don’t stay vigilant. Also, there’s nothing wrong with honest disagreement. We can have strongly held views. This article isn’t about whether you’re substantively right or wrong. It’s about how you treat other people. It’s about the procedure you take when arguing with them.

Unfortunately, I have little faith in humanity in general, but I believe an asteroid will kill us all before we do it ourselves, so maybe this article was a waste of time. If so, I apologize.

Language Matters!

Edumakation is the Key

A while back, I posted the following to Twitter (abridged), Google+, and Facebook:

Person in front of me is asked, “How’s school going?” He responds, “It’s going good.” I’m thinking, “Apparently not.” Knowing how to speak English properly is a curse. My head hurts constant . . . errrr, I mean constantly, and it hurts allot . . . errrrr, a lot.

This, of course, was met with resistance. People are very insecure by nature, and, not coincidentally, they’re internet tough guys when they get a chance to generate drama. To start, everyone missed the point of the post, which is that I constantly hear grammatical errors, and it’s maddening. I wasn’t judging the guy at all. I was simply pointing out that very few errors get past me, and I’m always correcting people’s words in my head. Wouldn’t that drive you nuts?

Moving on, as an attorney and native East Coaster, I like to argue, so I went ahead and engaged one of the responders that I felt was being polite in his disagreement. To summarize, he pointed out that all that mattered was that the message was communicated, and that because he was speaking, rather than writing, the message was much more likely to be received. In other words, he recited two of the three basic tenets of those that defend the mangling of our language:

1. If we’re communicating, then mission accomplished.

2. It is easier to infer true meaning from the spoken word than the written word, so more leeway should be given with speech.

He forgot the third tenet:

3. Language constantly evolves.

My response then summarized a conversation I had with a friend of mine that addressed the exact problem demonstrated by the student-speaker from my experience, to wit: using adjectives as adverbs. My friend, Matt, defended the disappearance of adverbs, citing all three of those tenets. My response was simply, “You smell bad.”

Being my friend, Matt laughed off the insult and called me an asshole or something, but I pretended not to understand and asked why he thought I was insulting him. You see, Matt suffered traumatic brain injury when an improvised explosive device blew up his vehicle in Iraq. While his case is relatively mild, one of the consequences of his condition is that he’s anosmic (i.e., he has no sense of smell). I was simply trying to empathize with him on his condition. Despite the fact that I was using the second simplest phrase in the English language (besides phrases like, “I am”), his reaction went from one of thanks to one of taking offense (in jest of course). This occurred simply because I was too lazy to add the suffix, “ly,” to my adjective. That’s quite a swing in understanding for so simple a statement, wouldn’t you say?

An Even Better Example: Misplaced Modifiers

When I say to you, “All liquids are not beers,” you know what I mean. I’m actually trying to say, “Not all liquids are beers.” In other words, I’m not trying to say that beer isn’t a liquid (an obvious misstatement). I’m instead trying to say that beers are liquids (the exact opposite of what I technically said), but they aren’t the only liquids. Soda, water, gasoline, and so many others aren’t beers, but they are liquids nevertheless. In speech, and even in writing, we’ll correct the error automatically, in part because we make the same mistakes ourselves. This is how most of us speak.

“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

So why is misplacing “not” a problem? Well, the example I gave is trivial. In fact, it’s so trivial, you may never have the need to say it. On the other hand, what if I’m discussing quantum mechanics with you? Most of you would run from such a conversation, but stay with me. Pretend you care about quantum mechanics. If I say, “All bosons are not neutrinos,” am I correct? What if I’m a physics professor that knows the answer and is trying to teach this to you? What am I trying to teach you? Are neutrinos a subset of bosons, or are neutrinos not in that group at all? Because the statement is not trivial, and thus more important to say, it’s vital that I get it right, but also vital that you understand what I say when I do get it right. That means that we both must understand and properly speak English. If either one of us is a point of failure in that regard, communication fails, and so do you on the physics exam.

If you think this post has been torture, be thankful I spared you discussions on misplacing “only” and misusing the past tense in the subjunctive mood. Instead, I give you one of my favorite quotes addressing the latter, which most Americans don’t truly seem to understand.

Source

Ask the Dodo Birds What They Think of Evolution

Yes, language is evolving, but evolution can go in both directions. Although there will be phrases that are always understood (for now), the new rules being established create a systemic problem that will make communication difficult in enough situations as to represent a problem. Clearly, when linguistic evolution impedes communication of even the simplest spoken phrases, you’ve violated the first two tenets that justify this evolution. In other words, any argument for this “evolution” is self-destructive. Moreover, this is adding to a problem that will never be fixed: typos. Proper English has become a habit for me, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if you pored over this post and didn’t find a single error even though I wasn’t particularly careful — I’m not being paid to write this — but on the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if you found an error or two. We all make mistakes. There’s no reason to add to that by adopting rules that further impede communication.

Whether you agree with me or not, it should count for something that you all understand exactly what I’m trying to say (unless your knowledge of the English language has deteriorated so badly that you almost aren’t speaking English anymore). Unfortunately, it’s also become my curse, which was the point of the original status update.

We’re Writing More

Now consider this: With the internet upon us, people are speaking much less, shifting our communications to the written word. (If you have any reading comprehension skills left, you realize that I’m not making a statement as to whether the majority of communication is now in writing.) According to the second tenet, that means that the problem is getting worse. If you don’t believe me, look to your own experiences instead. Each of us with any significant internet time has a number of examples of misunderstandings from reading emails and posts like this one. (See my last post on this blog for an example.) For all I know, some of you are taking offense to this when there is absolutely none intended. Some of that could have been avoided simply by using boldface or surrounding asterisks to emphasize a word or two. Unfortunately, with a 140-character limit, your bytes are apparently too precious to waste on such trivial matters as not accidentally telling someone to kiss your ass. My original post uses such shorthand, so I don’t intend to overstate my argument here by condemning slang or shorthand, but note well that much of this is based entirely in laziness, not character limits, and fostering that laziness makes misunderstandings even more likely.

I Know That I Don’t Matter

Just like the characters in Idiocracy, many of you may be reading this as arrogant, but I assure you I know exactly how much my views matter. Whether you accept this argument or not, I know it’s irrelevant. These changes to language, for better or for worse, are happening, and nothing I say or write will change that. However, you should be aware of, and prepared for, the consequences. If you think we already have too many lawsuits, lost friendships, and uncivil discourse, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You better brace yourself for the coming storm of defamation and emotional distress lawsuits, while simultaneously giving up hope that political discourse will become more civil. Be very careful as to how you word things, as people will take offense to your most innocent statements. I suggest you all buy an Oxford American Dictionary and the Chicago Manual of Style. I, on the other hand, am simply going to start drinking heavily.

Follow me on Twitter @RobertEBodine
Follow the Chicago Manual of Style on Twitter @ChicagoManual
Follow Oxford Dictionaries on Twitter @OxfordWords