Case in point: When I first moved to Austin, Texas I discovered one of the main streets was named “Manchaca”. Now, growing up one of my friends was named David Menchaca (almost identical spelling) and he pronounced his name the way you would expect- “men-CHA-kah.” So naturally when I moved to Austin, I pronounced the street name the way that 99% of Mexico would—”mahn-CHA-kah.” The first time I did, I got a blank stare.

Again I repeated: “Can you tell me the way to mahn-CHA-kah street?”
Finally: “Ohhh…you mean ‘MAN-shack’!” (Pronounced as if it’s a place out back where the men are kept).

Seriously.

I have no idea where this strange pronunciation came from, but it has taken hold and will not budge. It pained me every time I had to pronounce it that way, but otherwise I wouldn’t be understood (the whole point of communication, right?).

It didn’t change once I moved to California.

Just north of San Francisco is a city named San Rafael. Anyone possessing a meager familiarity with Spanish would know how this should be pronounced: sahn rah-fah-EL. Just like Austin’s Manchaca, I received dumbfounded confusion when I referred to this city by its proper pronunciation. In the fourteen years since then, I’ve come to accept and use the painful, colloquial version, “SAN ruffell.” Yuck.

Maybe foreign words are the bugaboo? What got me thinking about this whole subject was the mention of another local city nearby, Santa Cruz. This one isn’t so much about pronunciation as it is enunciation. To me, logic would dictate that the emphasis be placed on the “Cruz” part (santa CRUZ). The reason for this is to distinguish from all of the other “saints” that have been referenced in naming California locales (San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Jose, San Luis Obispo, etc.).

Instead, the locals put the emphasis on the first word (SANTA cruz). I don’t get it. As if there are multitudinous “Cruz”s around and we have to identify the “saintly” one.

Sigh.

But speaking Japanese with its adoption and modification of foreign words has taught me a valuable lesson: you can stick to your correct pronunciation guns, but if no-one understands you when you speak, what’s the point?

Jeff Starr is a San Francisco-based Expressionist oil painter who concentrates on themes of Japan, Dreams, Europe and California.

http://www.jeffreydalestarr.com/

We saw some appalling examples of lack of manners on our recent trip to Europe. While waiting in line at Madame Tussauds (which has a famously slow line), we experienced both people cutting in line and a guy who insisted on smoking even when those around him were repeatedly driven to coughing. Offenders in both cases were obviously tourists. Would they behave that way at home? Maybe. But one thing’s for sure—their attitude was, “I’m on my vacation…placate me!!”.

In reality, the attitude should be just the opposite. When Starr and I are visiting a foreign country, our attitude is this: we are guests of these people. While they’re having to go through the drudgery of work, traffic, laundry, etc., we’re sightseeing carefree. How should a proper houseguest behave? Would you rummage through the fridge without permission? Would you jump ahead of your host while he was heading to the restroom? Would you talk loudly when your hosts were being quiet? And yet, that is what many foreign tourists do.

Why do bad manners bother us so much? I’ve boiled it down to two things: justice and respect. Cutting in line bothers us because it is unjust, not just because we’re being inconvenienced. Proof of this: imagine that you are sitting on a park bench and across the street you observe people waiting patiently in line. Suddenly you see some guy obviously cut in line. It bothers us all the same, even though we’re not personally being affected. It offends our innate sense of justice.

And then the matter of respect. If you consider the feelings of others before your own, it will prevent you from behaving in an obviously obnoxious manner. But that’s the heart of the problem—the feelings of others aren’t being considered at all. “I’m tired….I’m hungry…this line is slow…that’s dumb…we don’t do it that way at home…blah blah blah” We’ve heard those kind of comments far too many times. You’re on vacation on the other side of the world!! A lot of people dream of being able to travel and the opportunity never materializes. Quit being such an ungrateful baby.

Jeff Starr is a San Francisco-based Impressionist oil painter who concentrates on themes of Japan, Dreams, Europe and California.

http://www.jeffreydalestarr.com/

Why did this article generate so much heat? I think a couple of things played a role. Although Jeff wrote more of a personal reflection on a particular pet peeve (he himself seemed incredulous at the response), there is a grassroots visceral reaction to consumerism, waste, and artificiality, heightened by the economic recession, of which the now ubiquitous “Organic” labels are only symptomatic. He clearly hit a nerve, and this is a discussion that I hope to see tackled here soon. Although it seems prosaic, it touches on big ideological and even existential questions—notice that the title of the piece starts, “The Industrial Revolution….” Along with that are issues of economic philosophy with their concomitant political overtones, which are no less of a catalyst for argument.

Yet there was another, outside factor. Nurturing the growth of ConcreteAcademic.com, the editors often use “social-media” to help spread the word about the project. As an experiment, it was decided that this article should be “seeded” on Newsvine with a different, more catchy title, to see what would happen. Jeff’s title was fine for Concrete Academic. We had already hit rock-bottom on boring titles with Numerical Veracity and the Media. But it certainly wasn’t eye candy, and we thought we could come up with something better. So “The Industrial Revolution and the Death of Craftsmanship” was morphed into “Why IKEA Sucks and Is Destroying the World.” Pretty good, no? The Newsvine community ate it up and it went nearly viral by our modest standards, whereas my article the day before on Jazz—which I thought exceedingly interesting—got no play at all from them.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this kind of creative and even brazen wording, and I like to have fun with what I write; I certainly meant the title of this post to be cheeky. But I can’t help but think this says something about our culture, and it surely isn’t flattering. The more vitriolic or asinine the bait, the harder people will go for it. It turns out that advertisers, tabloids, and TV editors really do know what they’re doing when they aim for our basest instincts. This is one of the reasons I stopped watching television years ago.

Let me quickly add that, though a number of comments had to be deleted, and I don’t know how many were filtered out automatically, we got thoughtful comments, too. It’s always good to see solid criticism, whether we agree with it or not. Jeff got called on a couple of points, and I personally would like to see further discussion, though a more irenic tone would be nice.

So, then. Out there it’s local news banter, award shows, gossip blogs, and celebrity sightings. We’re glad you’re here.

There’s no doubt that the Industrial Revolution was a two-edged sword. The benefits have been obvious: through efficient means of mechanization and engineering, products could be made at a much faster rate. Since the greatest expense for most businesses is payroll, it doesn’t take an economics wizard to figure out that a manufacturer who can produce one hundred items a day can sell his wares much cheaper than his competitor who can only produce 10 items a day, all things being equal.

Thanks to visionaries like Henry Ford, plants across the world are running robotic (and now computerized) behemoths churning out consumer goodies like great, wheezing, snorting dragons. Even the lower classes can fill their crackerbox apartments with “assemble-it-yourself” TV stands, end tables, and computer desks.

The downside? These items are 100% junk. Even brand-new, most of these items are wobbly, weak, and drab. But jump ahead a mere year or so and the real nightmare begins: warping, discoloration, small piles of sawdust that would suggest termites (but is actually just the wear and stripping of metal screws against horrific pressed wood fibers).

It never ceases to amaze me when I’m watching “Antiques Roadshow” (especially episodes originating from Europe) when they inspect incredible, handmade furniture that is centuries-old. Armoires from the days of Louis XIV. Chests of drawers dating back to the era of Shakespeare. Glorious Faberge eggs.

So what is the source of this rant? As many of you know, I make my living as a Computer Engineer. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy my work and it pays the bills. But it is not my first choice as a profession. If I had my druthers, I’d be making hand-carved armoires, chairs, and the like. What a sense of satisfaction to create a piece of usable art that, if maintained properly, could be useful to its owners for generations! It would be such a joy to take time and care with every little notch made in the wood, knowing that it would be appreciated long after I was gone.

But as it is…there is very little appreciation for this sort of craftsmanship in our modern, mechanized, instant-gratification society. The amount of money you would have to charge for these pieces makes it sadly impractical as a means of living. I’m sure there are still fine pieces being created out there (if only by the guys at “The Old Yankee Workshop”), but I’m also sure that they’re the sole possession of the super-rich.

Getting back to the opening comment, the lower classes would be much better off (instead of a living room jammed full of junk from IKEA) with a simple, single, well-made coffee table that would last for generations. And society, if in patience acquired these pieces one at a time, would actually save money in the long run. Have heirlooms to pass on to their children. Every few decades just sand down and put a new coat of stain and varnish, and…oh, who am I kidding? The great metal beast just belched out another fiberboard blob of instant gratification.

Jeff Starr is a San Francisco-based Impressionist oil painter who concentrates on themes of Japan, Dreams, Europe and California.

http://www.jeffreydalestarr.com/

You are quite eloquent and make a valid point.  However, there is another point of view.  The speaker had several options.  He could have prayed for himself, prayed according to a specific doctrine, prayed specifically for the event or prayed relative to his audience.  Apparently his prayer was relative to his audience.  He chose a prayer that spoke to their relative emotional needs and used their forms of verbal self-expression.  You contend that speaking to the emotional needs of his audience, using their terminology and their forms of self-expression is pandering.  You also imply that the words and phrases of some other culture are more fitting; more appropriate and more sacred.  You marginalize the values of this audience and relegate this speaker’s cultural appreciation and recognition to simple pandering.  The fact that he warmed their hearts, lifted their spirits and touched their souls appears to be unimportant and irrelevant.

I understand your point of view.  However, it is clearly myopic in scope: not broad enough to embrace the emotional needs of others, too narrow to cover other cultural self-expressions and too judgmental to appreciate other valid viewpoints.  You seem to imply that God does not understand or appreciate the way we speak.  God said, “Have no other God before me.”  God said. “I am Alpha and Omega.”  God said, “Tell them I am sent you.”  This God—All Seeing, All Knowing and All Powerful God—knows all there is to know … about … SWAGGER!!

Amid the darkest night, the brightest star.

Mischievous humor and twinkling eyes,

A smile to rival brightest skies.

Nor can I forget that rapier wit,

Enough to chop you down to size, or make you stop—and ponder life a bit.

Will I one day be someone like you? Strong and wise, in control and caring, even when from afar.

Someone who can learn and teach, maintaining dignity, joy and pride when the lessons of life are unfair and hard?

On the daily I think about you, and cherish the part of you that lives and thrives in me.

Maybe I don’t tell or show you enough, but I’m grateful for who you are—thankful to you for the gift of my heartbeat.

Expressions like these, they’re just mere words—hardly enough for the woman who is a large part of why I live and breathe.

Author’s background on MAMA NEWSOME:

I miss my grandmother. As I wrote this on October 9, 2009 I realized that a month from the previous day, she would have been gone for 3 years. The time flew by. She was an amazing woman. Mother to 11 (do the math folks—pregnant for 8 years and 3 months). Brilliant woman.  She was bedridden the last 3 or 4 years of her life, and yet somehow always knew what was going on with everyone before anyone else.  What kind of person does it take to call from her bed and say, you need to check on your cousin/aunt/sister? I’ll tell you. It’s the kind of person that would listen in to Bible study faithfully via phone and be able to tell you who was new or visiting based on voice recognition. I have no grandparents left, and each of my parents is the oldest child in their respective families. Someone said to me, “Your parents are the oldest people in your family now.” Intellectually I knew that. But I hadn’t quite thought of it that way. It’s a sobering concept.

So what brought on this wave of nostalgia? My mother—she has so many of her mother’s mannerisms. She’s the new incarnation of my Mama Newsome. So I went to kiss her goodnight that night, and it was the way she turned her head and blew kisses at me. My grandmother used to do that. She called it “fish kisses”. When my Mama craned her neck toward me, she looked just like my grandmother. I was transported to 3.5 years ago and Woodlawn Drive in Jackson, MS, so much so that I started crying right then and there because I miss my grandma. All that made me think of the poem I wrote for my grandmother. I was supposed to give it to her at a mini family reunion we were going to have at her house. The weekend it was planned was the weekend Katrina hit. So we never had it, and I never gave her the poem. Instead, I put it on her obituary. Enjoy it.  Reminisce with me.

At least that’s my take on everyday usage. Thanks to the miracle of language, a fascination of mine since I was first learning English at six years of age, we understand each other just fine. This common usage, though, can let us down when discussions take us into higher levels of critical thinking. Failing to discern that we’re using the hard ’scientific’ or ‘technical’ language instead of the plastic ‘everyday’ language can lead to misunderstanding. Words such as argument and criticism have a negative connotation in everyday-speak because most people don’t want to be criticized or get into arguments, but as we flip that mental switch to higher thinking we realize that they are emotively neutral. They’re just part of the parlance of intellectual engagement.

Let’s take a closer look at this language, starting with facts. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC/BCE. Fact. I just checked on Wikipedia. But how does the Great Wiki know? Probably out of a standard encyclopedia or a survey of Roman history, but then where did they get if from? Ok, so at some point down the bibliographic chain a classicist actually read Remus Suitonicus Romanus Historicus, and he said so. But that’s not right either, because whatever he said, it was not “49 BC.” Someone had to ‘exegete’ the date based on whatever was written in the text. How was that interpretation carried out? What were the assumptions it was based on? Did it immediately correspond to other information? What is the weakest link in the limiting data? And remember that “crossing the Rubicon” is not a plain statement of an event, but is rich in significance. Did the reader get the significance right? What role does that part have in understanding the whole?

It turns out that facts are not non-debatables, they’re just the bits and pieces of the historical, philosophical, or scientific models we build. In the latter case those are sometimes literal models. You can crank on the cogs of a heliocentric model of the solar system and see why it works better at explaining the retrograde motion of celestial bodies than the geocentric model does. Most of the time, though, models are conceptual or mathematical. Meteorologists program computers with a model—their systematic body of knowledge of how weather systems respond to heat, wind, moisture, and so on—and the computer uses that information to answer their questions (What’s going to happen to these clouds when the sun rises in the morning?). Their forecasting success depends on how well their model corresponds to reality.

Note that it isn’t a right or wrong situation: they may at times, using the same model, make better predictions than other times. Those successes and failures tell them where the model works well, and where it doesn’t. Note, too, that as the scientist reads incoming data, the ‘facts,’ he understands them based on his over-arching understanding of the whole system.That understanding is a theory, a coherent bundle of propositions that attempt to explain something and which, when unfolded, becomes a model that can be applied to interpret data or make predictions.

How do you prove it? Or if there are multiple competing theories, how do you know which one is right? We have to get beyond the popular conception of simply lining up our non-debatables against a measuring stick. Those facts, the data, have to be interpreted against the model. The better theory is the one that best explains the data.

In biblical studies there are multiple theories about the “historical Jesus”—itself a phrase that juxtaposes the Jesus of history with the Jesus of the Gospels—ranging from God Incarnate to Jewish philosopher. The data is the same, more or less. The question is which understanding of Jesus makes the best sense of the evidence. If one hypothesizes that Jesus was a Jewish philosopher who merely encouraged high ethical standards, then the problem becomes explaining the rise of Christian martyrdom. If one hypothesizes that Jesus was God and encouraged his own worship, then the problem becomes explaining the late split of Christianity from Judaism. And, of course, I’m simplifying: there are many more problems and many other approaches (I picked the two extremes, but I believe neither of them). There is no theory, in science or the humanities, that is without its problems, that has no holes to fill, that needs no further thinking or articulation. There is nothing that is completely settled. There is only the illusion of this at a popular level.

Understanding the rules of the road is the only way to get anywhere, to have a sincere and open exchange of ideas. Purposefully or accidentally we can throw up roadblocks. When the creationist says, “Evolution is just a theory,” or the atheist says, “Religion is a about faith, science is about facts,” they’re both playing a language game, and playing it badly. The arguments fail catastrophically, imploding by their own circularity. Words can and should be tools for dialog and persuasion rather than simply clubs for bludgeoning, and it starts with a neutral vocabulary.

I touched on another example a moment ago: the Copernican and Ptolemaic models of what we now know of as the solar system. The most interesting part of the story is that at first the Ptolemaic model, although it had built complication upon complication to make sense of the apparent motion of the planets, actually did the math better than Copernicus’ conceptually superior system. The Ptolemaic model was complex and ingenious, the Copernican simple and profound. A priori, which would you have chosen?