The Tricks of Art and the Art of Tricks

I missed an appointment with my friend Ray today.  My meetings with Ray started out with him tutoring me in Chinese and have now morphed into me tutoring him in Australian culture. Which leads me to the problem of learning languages.  I do claim that I have been half successful 50% of the time with learning Chinese.  It’s just that I lack application.  I have heard that it takes ten years to get good at Chinese (spoken and written).  That is way too long for me.

Some of my friends complain that learning Chinese is difficult because there are so many words that read or sound the same but mean different things.  What about “desert” (dry wasteland) which sounds different from, but is spelt the same as, “desert” (run away from the army)?  Also, consider “dessert” meaning pudding etc which sounds the same as “desert” (run away from the army).  Note that “desert” meaning something you deserve also sounds the same as the pudding “dessert” and the run away from the army “desert”.  This is not to ignore “close” (near) and “close” (shut).  If you look at an English dictionary you will find many, many, many other examples of two or more words that sound the same, or are maybe spelt the same, but which have different meanings. I think I am talking about homophones and homonyms.

My point is that it is not just in Chinese that you find these homophones and/or homonyms.  They must make life difficult for learners of English as a second language.

I believe that what really makes Chinese hard to learn is the writing system.  No one can look at a Chinese character they have not learned and really figure out what it means.  The most one can do is figure out what radical is being used and possibly work out what it just might sound like. But, beyond that, most of us ordinary people may as well be looking at a sentence written in Martian.

As a result of this failure with Chinese…  Actually, I would not class it as a failure, more a realisation that I do not possess the drive to learn the language properly.  Maybe “laziness” is the word I am looking for. However described, this problem has caused me to start to study French. (By “study” I mean occasionally to listen to a few sentences in French and sometimes read a few lines of French, with an English translation, naturally) So far, this has proven much more suitable to my listless language learning style.  I have found that lots of French words look like English words. These words sometimes have the same (or at least a similar) meaning as in English. Apparently, you just have to pronounce them with a French accent.  How hard can it be?  Time will tell although the verbs seen to keep changing and the word French people use instead of “the” or “a” seems to change from “la” to “le” with no apparent rhyme nor reason.  It is something about masculine and feminine nouns.

These features vaguely remind me what little I recall of the Latin that I failed to learn so many years ago. I am rather proud of my obstinate refusal to apply myself to Latin.  I had to learn some phrases parrot-fashion in my capacity of an altar boy in a Catholic church. Eventually, however,  my one-boy stand against Latin (demonstrated by my persistent and repeated failure in the subject) was gloriously vindicated when the Church, the last bastion of the language, gave it up (except maybe in the Vatican) in favour of the language of the place, the lingua loci, if you will.

I have heard it said that it is harder for a non-native speaker of English to learn English than it is for an English speaker to learn… some language or other. Well, I have, more or less, mastered , or, if not mastered, gained a working knowledge of, English.  This happened with very little effort, I may say, although I must concede that spending my whole life in Australia probably helped.

Nevertheless, I will continue to plod along in Chinese.  I am sure a smattering of the language will come in handy sometime. (Incidentally, do you not think that “smattering” is a funny word?)

Avid followers of the media may vaguely recall that a baby humpback whale was killed by veterinarians at Pittwater, Sydney last month. It was said the whale had been abandoned by its mother and was starving.

A legitimate query at the time was: Why didn’t they ask the Japanese who have expertise in these things?  Now that the blood has cleared from the water and the poor whale calf has, presumably, been autopsied, dissected and turned into cat food, it is time to ask again:  Why were not urgent telegrams despatched to the Institute of Cetacean Research in Japan?

Anyone with a passing interest in the activities of the International Whaling Commission would be aware that the ICR is THE premier whale research organisation in the world.  Surely they could have helped.  First, all their scientific research should have given some clue as to how to save the poor little thing.  Second, if all else failed (as it did) then they could have harpooned the sucker.

Instead we were left with the unedifying spectacle of an Australian vet harpooning a baby whale with a syringe. That is not the Australian way. We might well ask, have we lost all sense of dignity and fair play?

My friend Ray told me he had heard of people being hypnotised by reading  texts written in online chat rooms.  I think this is what he was referring to.  I told him I did not think this could happen.

However, I have had cause to reconsider having read http://www.ladyjulia.net/0057.html.  The post dated  16 August 2005 entitled Can someone really be hypnotized by text only? convinced me it is feasible.  So I will have to tell Ray to knock off reading those texts.

I am often sucked in by texts when reading fiction so I  develop affinity with the character/s in the novel and I suppose this is  a form of trance. In that sense I have been hypnotised into believing the premise of the story and reacting accordingly.

Nevertheless, I do not think I have performed any actions (such as, barking like a dog; walking around like a chicken; and the like) such as might be the province of the stage hypnotist.  Only booze, and lots of it, can produce that effect, I am proud to say.

And this is what Ray was really asking about: can you, by reading text, be hypnotised  into performing some action such as paying someone a lot of money on paypal or sending out your bank account details.  I said I did not think so: that is actually just internet fraud, not hypnosis.  Maybe I’m wrong to make this distinction.  Maybe I was hypnotised by http://www.ladyjulia.net/0057.html.

I thought I would eschew the use of exclamation marks!! And don’t you think I have been using too many question marks lately?? I know I find it annoying! Don’t you?

Of course, there is a point to punctuation. There are books written about it. I haven’t read them. It shows, I suppose.
Sometimes, it is said, with regard to punctuation and other things, less is more. I, personally, don’t buy it. Less is less and more is more, as far as I am concerned. I think the less-is-more brigade mean that less is best.

Either that or it is some salesman’s trick: “If you want this car with front and rear seats, climate control air-conditioning, six-stacker CD player, sat-nav, sixteen cup-holders, angora-like carpets, silk-touch safety belts, ivory-look steering wheel, silver-plated spark plugs, inbuilt vacuum cleaner, etc etc it will only cost you $39,999 drive away no more to pay. BUT, if you would like our sports model which has no frills but the engine makes a lot of noise so it sounds like you are going fast…then you will pay $69,999!” In that case, I agree, less is more.

Which leads me to “The Einstein Factor”. I was watching this on TV the other night(http://www.abc.net.au/ einsteinfactor/). I think quiz contestants have a lot to answer for. I notice that none of the contestants on “The Einstein Factor” has chosen “global warming” as their specialty. Oh! I forgot: we’re not allowed to say “global warming” any more since, apparently, if we say “global warming” too many times it might lead to another ice age. We now speak of “climate change” or better still “anthropogenic climate change”. Which leads me to a stunned silence.

I suppose the risk is that the adjudicators on the aforementioned show would start an all-in brawl about the questions, let along the answers. For example:

Question - If all the car-makers are putting “climate control ” air conditioning in cars these days why can’t we control the climate?

Is the answer: A. We can, but it only works in developed countries.

B. We can, but it is just too hard to get everyone to choose the same setting; or

C. We can’t, because you have to wind the windows down for it to work and no one is prepared to do that.

Somehow or other I wandered onto web page about medical conditions (illnesses, syndromes, disorders or diseases). For example: http://www.kcom.edu/faculty/chamberlain/Website/diseases.htm

I noticed many medical conditions are named after people. Apparently, these are likely the doctors or researchers who first identified the condition. Some have intriguing, long names like Hand-Schuller-Christian Disease; Or Caffey-De Toni- Silvermann Syndrome. Your correspondent imagines there was furious battling over the order in which the names are listed.

Other conditions have simple, short names but this does not necessarily indicate a simple disease. Innocent-sounding, short names do not mean that you will be any less sick. They all sound horrible. Take Q Fever. The “Q” stands for “query” and in the 1930s, the time it was being investigated, that was the protocol for identifying an unknown agent. It is possibly the most infectious disease in the world. The pathogen is everywhere except Antarctica and New Zealand.

Of course, illnesses such as Rat-Bite Fever are named after the cause of the condition, not a person called Dr Rat (or Dr Rat-Bite). Other examples: Cat Scratch Fever; Tennis Elbow (the latter not as you may suspect, being caused by being elbowed by your partner in a game of doubles.)

In other cases, a disease is named after a sufferer, such as Lou Gehrig Disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS - perhaps the most famous sufferer today being Stephen Hawking). As the American comedian Denis Leary said: “Poor Lou Gehrig - died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. How the hell did he not see that coming? We used to tell him, ‘Lou, there’s a disease with your name all over it pal.’”

Next, there are conditions that seem to be named after the place they come from. Ross River Fever falls into this category. The virus that causes it was first identified in 1963 from mosquitoes trapped along the Ross River in Townsville. This has given rise to a potential, though as yet unrealised, tourism bonanza: “Welcome to Townsville - home of the famous Ross River Virus!!!”

Similarly, Ebola virus was named after a small river in the former country of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Incidentally, there is a lady dentist in Cairns called Dr Epi Bola: “My dentist is E Bola.”

Interestingly, some diseases names sound like the names of countries - Progeria: ” I should stay away from Progeria at this time of year; dreadfully hot don’t you know?”.  Others are named for the cries of their victims - Itai-Itai: Japanese for “Ouch! Ouch!”.  Sodoku, a kind of rat-bite fever, sounds very like that annoying  Japanese numbers game.

Then there are the grotesquely named Kabuki Make Up Syndrome and Happy Puppet Syndrome. These are truly just too awful to describe and one must be very sympathetic to any sufferers of either of these conditions.

Anyway, the point of all this is that you can become famous by doing nothing at all but dying of a new disease.

Someone sent me this:

WOMAN’S DIARY
Saturday 31st May 2008
Saw him in the evening and he was acting really strangely.
I’d been shopping in the afternoon with the girls and was a bit late meeting him, thought it might be that.
The bar was really crowded and loud, so I suggested we go somewhere quieter to talk. He was still very subdued and distracted so I suggested we went somewhere nice to eat.
All through dinner he just didn’t seem himself - he hardly laughed and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me or to what I was saying. I just knew that something was wrong.
He dropped me back home and I wondered if he was going to come in. He hesitated but followed. I asked him what was wrong, but he just half shook his head and turned the television on. After about ten (!) minutes of silence I said that I was going upstairs to bed, I put my arms around him and told him that I loved him deeply. He just gave a sigh and a sad sort of smile. He didn’t follow me up immediately but came up later and, to my surprise, we made love - but he still seemed distant and a bit cold.
I cried myself to sleep - I think he’s planning to leave me - maybe he’s found someone else.

Man’s Diary
Saturday 31st May 2008
Cowboys lost.
Gutted.
Got a root though.

(For non-Aussies: The Cowboys are the local football team. A “root” means sexual intercourse)

If “news” is a report of an event ( this is roughly how it is defined in dictionaries) then newspapers do not contain news.  I say this for a number of reasons.

First, any time I have ever been involved in an “event” and then read a newspaper’s report of it, there was always at least one  important error in the reporting.  For example, in the days when I was a prosecutor there were often reporters physically present in court when cases were heard.  I say “physically present” because their subsequent reporting indicated that what passed as their minds was clearly somewhere else.  If I read the paper later I had trouble recognising the cases in which I had been involved.  Names were changed (to protect the guilty?), people who were convicted were evidently acquitted, the sentences handed down had apparently been changed by the good graces of the reporter and the number and details of the offences committed had strangely altered.

Also, newspaper articles are sometimes accompanied by photos which prove the report wrong.  For example, I recently saw a report of a traffic accident in the local paper.  According to the article, a Triumph motorcycle was hit by a motor vehicle. The accompanying photo was of a wrecked Yamaha Virago motorcycle.  Now, some people may think this is nitpicking (OK, I suppose it is).  But, if the author of the article makes this kind of obvious mistake then how can the reader trust anything that is written?

My second (and last) point is that newspapers are more concerned with venting opinions about what other people say and do.  Yeah, I admit this is nothing new as television and the internet have rapidly made newspapers, as sources of news, redundant.  If you read what passes for political commentary in Australia you can choose between articles written by journalists who agree with you and those who don’t.   I mostly choose the first option.  If I feel the need to wash my breakfast down with lashings of apoplexy, then I read those journalists whom I know to be my politically opposites.

So newspapers aren’t!