Brain teaser

I like puzzles that are simple to state and understand. This one is not too difficult.

“There are three boxes. One contains apples. One contains oranges. One contains both apples and oranges.

However, the boxes are mislabeled. One is labeled apples, but contains either oranges or the mix. One is labeled oranges, and contains apples or the mix. And the box labeled Both contains apples or oranges, but not both.

Removing only one piece of fruit from one box, how can you correctly identify all three boxes?”

The puzzling appeal of mementos

Once again we have an utterly absurd fuss ginned up by Republicans over the fact that speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi had handed out to various people the pens used to sign the articles of impeachment. I had known that at formal signing ceremonies in the US, the pens that are used to sign the documents become important trophies that are given out as rewards. Barack Obama used 22 pens to sign the Affordable Care Act and Lyndon Johnson used 75 to sign the Civil Rights Act. Donald Trump also gave away dozens of pens after signing the trade pact with China, an event that no one will remember after a few weeks. But I wondered how you could have more than one pen and the above linked article explains what happens.
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Emojis and me

In the age of email and text messages, some of the nuances that used to be conveyed by the spoken word and visible cues in face-to-face interactions can be lost, and thus there is greater chance of being misunderstood, especially with humor or sarcasm. Emojis seem to promise to fill that niche and have become increasingly popular.

I don’t use emojis, trusting in my ability to use just words to convey my meaning clearly. I also do not use texting abbreviations (‘LOL’ ‘Thx’, ‘TTYL”, and the like), preferring to spell it out. This tends to make my emails and text messages longer than those of others.
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The fanaticism of football players and their fans

Jaime Hoffman, the athletic director of the liberal arts Occidental College, had a meeting with college’s general counsel, head athletic trainer, head football coach, and president and decided that because of the declining enrollment in their football program that resulted in too few eligible players to fully field a team and the danger that injuries posed to their smaller and more inexperienced players, that they cancel the remaining games of the season
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Great moments in sportsmanship

I have written before about my distaste when players even challenge the calls by officials on the field, let alone get into arguments with them and even resort to abusive language. This happens a lot in American professional sports. But what is even more appalling is when team managers (who in my opinion play far too big a role in American sports) go onto the field and argue with officials, with grown men displaying temper tantrums that even a child would be ashamed of. This was on display with a minor league baseball team, where the manager not only resorts to the most crude language against the umpire but ends up throwing equipment all over the field. And his team just sits on the bench and smiles indulgently, as if this is perfectly normal behavior.

Rules are made for people, not people for rules

Yesterday I wrote about Merriam-Webster announcing that it had chosen to make the non-binary singular personal pronoun ‘they’ its word of the year. I have been using it that way for some time now and it comes naturally for me. But it was not so at first. When I first started using it, it was reluctantly and with a sense of unease every time even though I was fully aware of the positive reasons for adopting the practice.

I initially thought that my unease was because it seemed to violate a basic rule of grammar that I had learned and that had become instinctive to me. But I began to realize that there was a deeper reason and that it was because I thought that people who heard or read me using it might look down on my lack of knowledge of proper English and thus think less of me. Since I take some pride in my writing and speaking skills, this bothered me.

Following that self-realization, I made the conscious decision that if something is the right thing to do (which this clearly was) then I should go ahead and do it because why the hell should I care what other people think? In my pre-occupation with my self-image, I had forgotten the basic fact that rules are made for people, not people for rules.

Keeping that front and center turns out to be quite a significant and simplifying factor in decision-making. It should have been obvious to me from the beginning, of course, but sometimes we are not aware of how much our behavior is based on seeking or keeping the approval of others, even those whom we do not know or perhaps even like.

Non-binary singular personal pronoun ‘they’ is word of the year

This was announced by Miriam-Webster today.

Merriam-Webster has named “they” its word of the year.

The US dictionary also recently added a new definition of “they”, reflecting its use as a singular personal pronoun for non-binary people.

Searches for “they” on Merriam-Webster’s website were 313% higher this year than they were in 2018.
…

Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, told the Associated Press news agency that searches shot up when Oslo Grace was rising to prominence, when Sam Smith came out, and when US congresswoman Pramila Jayapal spoke about her gender-nonconforming child while arguing for LGBTQ rights legislation in April.

“It reflects a surprising fact: even a basic term – a personal pronoun – can rise to the top of our data,” the dictionary said in a statement.

“Although our look-ups are often driven by events in the news, the dictionary is also a primary resource for information about language itself, and the shifting use of ‘they’ has been the subject of increasing study and commentary in recent years.

“English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun to correspond neatly with singular pronouns like ‘everyone’ or ‘someone’, and as a consequence ‘they’ has been used for this purpose for over 600 years.”

In addition to being respectful towards the gender non-binary community, it also immensely simplifies things when trying to write in the third person.