June 17 issue TIME ASIA
LETTERS
Tempest in a coffee cup
Re: "Leslie Buck" (May 17): There is no documented proof that the late
Leslie Buck actually designed the Anthora (sic) coffee cup. In
addition, while TIME says the name came from the way Buck
mis-pronounced the word Anthora, a type of Greek vase called
"Amthora," other accounts say the word was a typo in a 1963 magazine
article about Greek vases that the paper cup firm copied without
fact-checking. Maybe TIME should have done some fact-checking, too.
Dan Bloom
Chiayi City, Taiwan
An Oily Matter
Re "The Meaning of the Mess" [May 17]: Offshore drilling has been conducted for decades with relatively few problems. Unfortunately, all it takes is one calamity to bring out the alarmists who call for a ban on the activity in the calamity's aftermath. The BP oil spill is the exception, not the rule.
Stephen V. Gilmore,
Charlotte, N.C., U.S.
How much more evidence do we need to understand that the "Drill, baby, drill" philosophy is irresponsible and places our economic stability and environmental future in jeopardy? I hope this tragedy moves us to demand increased financial support for and political action toward renewable-energy development and implementation. It's time to stop making excuses and start insisting that Big Oil be held accountable for its negligent actions and profit-driven policies. Clearly, we can begin by showing the politicians who indulge oil executives the door with the exit sign.
Brad Hruska,
Shaker Heights, Ohio, U.S.
Deconstructing the Broadway Bomber
I am concerned with the Grand Theft Auto – esque depiction of Faisal Shahzad in the May 17 issue. In a world where people crash a state dinner to promote a reality show, we might be encouraging would-be terrorists with the promise of romanticized press coverage.
George Davis,
Williston, Vt., U.S.
We have always been a nation that is willing to help other countries, but what do we get in return? A stab in the back. I think it's time we make getting into our country and becoming an American citizen much harder. I am furious that someone like Shahzad came into our country freely, got an education, then tried to hurt as many of us as possible. We as Americans need to put a stop to this injustice.
Lynne Gaylor,
Clearfield, Pa., U.S.
Shahzad's attempted bombing proves that Americans should be more concerned about the legal immigrants who want to harm us rather than the illegal immigrants who only want a job.
Kenneth Lee,
Raytown, Mo., U.S.
Although the events in Times Square were certainly frightening, the political backlash against Pakistanis and Muslims was even more so. As a Pakistani American, I implore my fellow citizens to practice tolerance toward this culturally rich, peaceful community whose members have overwhelmingly turned their backs on the terrorism and violence that have plagued their native region. Don't make us pay for the mistakes of others.
Zoya Mehmoud,
Alexandria, Va., U.S.
TIME's article on the Times Square incident is rather biased. There was a great deal mentioned about the tragic loss of life that could have occurred if the explosion had taken place on May 1, but little about the many deaths suffered by civilians at the hands of drone missile attacks in Pakistan. Is a Pakistani life not worth the same as that of a U.S. citizen? You should be bridging the gap between Muslims and the West instead of heightening tensions.
Syed Naheer Ameer,
Karachi
Bring On the Bieber!
Re "Pop Star 2.0" [May 17]: Since I am an aspiring musician, Justin Bieber's story is an inspiration. With all the artists out there who rely on connections or reality shows to gain success, it is refreshing to see a young person make it big by his own means. His natural musical talent makes marketing his preteen charm easy.
Alva Ramirez,
Los Angeles
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1992245,00.html#ixzz0pBkkFUTH
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
So? So! So.....
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS tells us:
So, this is about the word “so.”
If you speak English for work or pleasure, there is a fair chance that you’ve done it, too.
“So” may be the new “well,” new “um,” new “oh” and new “like.” No longer content to lurk in the middle of sentences, it has jumped to the beginning, where it can portend many things: transition, certitude, logic, attentiveness, a major insight.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, late last year: “So, it’s not only because we believe that universal values support human rights being recognized and respected, but we think that it’s in the best interest for economic growth and political stability. So we believe that.”
A dispatch on National Public Radio last month, in which a quarter of sentences began with “so”: “So it’s, I think, the fifth largest in the nation. So, but now that’s the population in general. So there are sort of two, there are two things that are circumstantial.”
A quotation in a report last month from Channel NewsAsia, based in Singapore: “So, what we’re doing is — elephants have had these migratory routes, basically like islands connecting parks between each other; they’ve got nowhere to move and people have encroached on them.
“So, we negotiate with the people to move from the land. So, what we do, we buy the land, build them houses off the corridors and give them exactly the same amount of arable land back.”
A recent news briefing by Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, in which 5 of 21 sentences began with “so”: “So, all those issues, we hope, will be addressed in the report of the secretary general.”
For most of its life, “so” has principally been a conjunction, an intensifier and an adverb.
What is new is its status as the favored introduction to thoughts, its encroachment on the territory of “well,” “oh,” “um” and their ilk.
So, it is widely believed that the recent ascendancy of “so” began in Silicon Valley. The journalist Michael Lewis picked it up when researching his 1999 book “The New New Thing”: “When a computer programmer answers a question,” he wrote, “he often begins with the word ‘so.”’ Microsoft employees have long argued that the “so” boom began with them.
In the software world, it was a tic that made sense. In immigrant-filled technology firms, it democratized talk by replacing a world of possible transitions with a catchall.
And “so” suggested a kind of thinking that appealed to problem-solving types: conversation as a logical, unidirectional process, proceeding much in the way of software code — if this, then that.
This logical tinge to “so” has followed it out of software. Starting a sentence with “so” uses the whiff of logic to relay authority. Where “well” vacillates, “so” declaims.
To answer a question starting with “well” suggests you are still considering it, don’t know fully but are getting there. To answer with “so” better suits the age, perhaps: A Google-glued generation can look it up where their parents would have said “I don’t know,” Facebook and Twitter encourage ordinary people and not just politicians to stay on message, and we gravitate toward declamatory blogs and away from down-the-middle reporting.
“So” also echoes the influence of a science- and data-driven culture. It would have been unimaginable a few decades ago that literature scholars would use neurological correlation analysis to evaluate texts, or that ordinary people would quantify daily activities like eating, sex and sleeping, or that software would calculate what songs we will like.
But in algorithmic times, “so” conveys an algorithmic certitude. It suggests that there is a right answer, which the evidence dictates and which should not be contradicted. Among its synonyms, indeed, are “consequently,” “thus” and “therefore.”
And yet Galina Bolden, a linguistics scholar who has written academic papers on the use of “so,” believes that “so” is also about a culture of empathy gaining steam in a globalized world.
To begin a sentence with “oh,” she said in an e-mail, is to focus on what you have just remembered and your own concerns. To begin with “so,” she said, drawing on her study of a database of recorded ordinary conversations, is to signal that one’s coming words are chosen for relevance to the listener.
The ascendancy of “so,” Dr. Bolden said, “suggests that we are concerned with displaying interest for others and downplaying our interest in our own affairs,” she said.
“So” seems also to reflect our fraught relationship with time. “Well” and “um” are open-ended; “so” is impatient. It leans forward, seeks a consequence, sums things up. It is a word befitting a culture in which things worth doing must bear fruit now, where it is more fulfilling to day-trade grain futures than to raise grain.
Today we live in fragments. You may be reading this column while toggling among your cellphone, iPad and laptop while eating lunch and proofreading a report. In such a world, “so” may serve to defragment, with its promise that what is coming next follows what just came, said Michael Erard, the author of “Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean.”
The rise of “so,” he said in an e-mail, is “another symptom that our communication and conversational lives are chopped up and discontinuous in actual fact, but that we try in several ways to sew them together — or ‘so’ them together, as it were — in order to create a continuous experience.”
Perhaps we all live now in fear that a conversation could snap at any moment, interrupted by so many rival offerings. With “so,” we beg to be heard. This, we insist, is what you’ve been waiting to hear; this is the “so” moment.
E-MAIL pagetwo@iht.com
So, this is about the word “so.”
If you speak English for work or pleasure, there is a fair chance that you’ve done it, too.
“So” may be the new “well,” new “um,” new “oh” and new “like.” No longer content to lurk in the middle of sentences, it has jumped to the beginning, where it can portend many things: transition, certitude, logic, attentiveness, a major insight.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, late last year: “So, it’s not only because we believe that universal values support human rights being recognized and respected, but we think that it’s in the best interest for economic growth and political stability. So we believe that.”
A dispatch on National Public Radio last month, in which a quarter of sentences began with “so”: “So it’s, I think, the fifth largest in the nation. So, but now that’s the population in general. So there are sort of two, there are two things that are circumstantial.”
A quotation in a report last month from Channel NewsAsia, based in Singapore: “So, what we’re doing is — elephants have had these migratory routes, basically like islands connecting parks between each other; they’ve got nowhere to move and people have encroached on them.
“So, we negotiate with the people to move from the land. So, what we do, we buy the land, build them houses off the corridors and give them exactly the same amount of arable land back.”
A recent news briefing by Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, in which 5 of 21 sentences began with “so”: “So, all those issues, we hope, will be addressed in the report of the secretary general.”
For most of its life, “so” has principally been a conjunction, an intensifier and an adverb.
What is new is its status as the favored introduction to thoughts, its encroachment on the territory of “well,” “oh,” “um” and their ilk.
So, it is widely believed that the recent ascendancy of “so” began in Silicon Valley. The journalist Michael Lewis picked it up when researching his 1999 book “The New New Thing”: “When a computer programmer answers a question,” he wrote, “he often begins with the word ‘so.”’ Microsoft employees have long argued that the “so” boom began with them.
In the software world, it was a tic that made sense. In immigrant-filled technology firms, it democratized talk by replacing a world of possible transitions with a catchall.
And “so” suggested a kind of thinking that appealed to problem-solving types: conversation as a logical, unidirectional process, proceeding much in the way of software code — if this, then that.
This logical tinge to “so” has followed it out of software. Starting a sentence with “so” uses the whiff of logic to relay authority. Where “well” vacillates, “so” declaims.
To answer a question starting with “well” suggests you are still considering it, don’t know fully but are getting there. To answer with “so” better suits the age, perhaps: A Google-glued generation can look it up where their parents would have said “I don’t know,” Facebook and Twitter encourage ordinary people and not just politicians to stay on message, and we gravitate toward declamatory blogs and away from down-the-middle reporting.
“So” also echoes the influence of a science- and data-driven culture. It would have been unimaginable a few decades ago that literature scholars would use neurological correlation analysis to evaluate texts, or that ordinary people would quantify daily activities like eating, sex and sleeping, or that software would calculate what songs we will like.
But in algorithmic times, “so” conveys an algorithmic certitude. It suggests that there is a right answer, which the evidence dictates and which should not be contradicted. Among its synonyms, indeed, are “consequently,” “thus” and “therefore.”
And yet Galina Bolden, a linguistics scholar who has written academic papers on the use of “so,” believes that “so” is also about a culture of empathy gaining steam in a globalized world.
To begin a sentence with “oh,” she said in an e-mail, is to focus on what you have just remembered and your own concerns. To begin with “so,” she said, drawing on her study of a database of recorded ordinary conversations, is to signal that one’s coming words are chosen for relevance to the listener.
The ascendancy of “so,” Dr. Bolden said, “suggests that we are concerned with displaying interest for others and downplaying our interest in our own affairs,” she said.
“So” seems also to reflect our fraught relationship with time. “Well” and “um” are open-ended; “so” is impatient. It leans forward, seeks a consequence, sums things up. It is a word befitting a culture in which things worth doing must bear fruit now, where it is more fulfilling to day-trade grain futures than to raise grain.
Today we live in fragments. You may be reading this column while toggling among your cellphone, iPad and laptop while eating lunch and proofreading a report. In such a world, “so” may serve to defragment, with its promise that what is coming next follows what just came, said Michael Erard, the author of “Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean.”
The rise of “so,” he said in an e-mail, is “another symptom that our communication and conversational lives are chopped up and discontinuous in actual fact, but that we try in several ways to sew them together — or ‘so’ them together, as it were — in order to create a continuous experience.”
Perhaps we all live now in fear that a conversation could snap at any moment, interrupted by so many rival offerings. With “so,” we beg to be heard. This, we insist, is what you’ve been waiting to hear; this is the “so” moment.
E-MAIL pagetwo@iht.com
What's the future of the news business in a world of multiple media inputs?
When things go wrong at the New York Times with its sometimes shoddy or unvetted reporting or PR-press release-influenced reportage, though this sort of thing may be common throughout the industry, we hold the Times to a higher standard, in part because of the high standards it has established for itself over the decades, and in part because the Times itself swaggers through the media landscape hinting (and sometimes saying outright) it is unanswerable to anyone but itself. [And even then, the Public Editor doesn't seem to get much respect.]
With the news that the Times will erect a paywall in January, however, I got to wondering how much of the Times is essential (though I have no problem paying for news, and do). We now live in a world of multiple media inputs, and for most people "news" is no longer a package, printed on paper and delivered early in the morning, but discrete stories, collected from a wide range of sources, including in my case The Economist, the Guardian, the NY Times, the LA Times, Slate, and more. I subscribe to a superb (and free) e-newsletter called The Browser, which sources stories (I think) via reader recommendations (which are then curated, I think) and has broadened my list of media inputs enormously.
Except for print subscribers, how many people read the NY Times cover to cover anymore? And specifically, what media outlets are "the best" for business news, global politics, sports, domestic news and politics, arts, etc.? If you're a media owner, and you're not "best in class" (and you don't have a political slant, e.g. Fox News, that puts you in the always-more-lucrative-than-the-news entertainment business), in any one category, what's your future?
http://politicomix.blogspot.com/
Facebook Profile:
http://www.facebook.com/roberto.devido
Roberto De Vido
Yokosuka, Japan
Japan-based corporate communications strategist • 20 years in Asia (resident in China/Japan, working regionally) • satirist • cartoonist • comics writer
Roberto De Vido is a communications consultant based in Japan. He has over 15 years of experience working with multinational clients in China and Japan. Prior to moving to Japan, he lived in Hong Kong, where he founded a public relations company and a custom publishing firm, and launched an independent advertising-supported magazine.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Flying is a modern-day lottery: The 158 people who were killed in the Air India Express plane crash in Mangalore lost the lottery! Sigh!
Flying is safe, very safe, according to industry statistics. But don't
ask the people who died on the ill-fated Air India Express jet that crashed about
statistics. They are dead now. As in Rest in Peace dead. Dead. Gone.
Landing in rainstorm and low visibility! Stupid pilot! Gambling with the lives of his crew and passenger manifest. Gone with the wind now.
You also might remember the news of the ill-fated flight of a Swissair jet
flying from New York to Geneva back in the 1990s, and also the news
reports about LAPA Flight 3142 that failed to take flight in
Argentina. Yet, even with this new crash, airline reservations will
remain strong, the flying public hardly blinks and the sky's the limit.
Nothing changes much in the world of aviation and flying safety.
It's
a gamble, every flight is a gamble but statistically, you stand to
win. The numbers are on the side of the living.
But there's a funny thing about the way plane crashes are reported in
the news media -- and the way the news is received and digested.
After any major crash, after the bold headlines and day-after
analyses, reality returns to the normality that is life.
People who are neurotically afraid to fly (let's call them "fearful
flyers") feel justified in thinking the way they do. They often clip
out front-page newspaper stories and put them in a mental scrapbook.
"See," they tell everyone who listens, " flying is not safe, never
was, never will be. How much more evidence do you need?"
Psychiatrists report this all the time. After every major crash that
makes international headlines, the fearful flyers among us (and there
are many; 30 million in the US, maybe three million in Taiwan) say: "I
told you so."
And they add, just so we won't forget: "I am not neurotic. You think
flying is safe? Go ahead and fly, sucker!"
People who are not afraid to fly have another survival mechanism, call
it a defense mechanism. They see the news on TV and read the stories
in the press and say: "Too bad, a real tragedy. But it was just fate,
an ill-fated flight. The planes I fly on will never crash. I am
indestructible, I am a realist."
And they will fly, again and again. Because flying is safe and
statistically you've got a better chance of arriving on time and in
perfect condition (minus the jet lag, of course, or the boozy
hangover) than the poor blokes in urban traffic jams below. Every Web
site devoted to fear of flying will tell you so. And statistics don't
lie.
There's a third group who find plane crashes reassuring. These are the
people who put their faith in God or Buddha or Allah.
"See, " they say to anyone who will listen, "God works in mysterious
ways. When your time comes, your time comes. God is just calling you
back early. The pearly gates await you. You have nothing to fear but
fear itself. Trust in the Lord and the Kingdom of Heaven shall be
thine."
It works, too. Every group finds something in plane crashes, food for
thought, fuel for fiery arguments. And they are all right.
And then there are the plane spotters, those devilish plane buffs who
stand near runway approaches at major airports around the world and
take comfort in watching the slow, graceful approaches of jetliners
and prop planes as they jockey for landing rights and runway reunions.
There are lots of them out there, every day, everywhere. Fascinated by
all kinds of aircraft, they come armed with cameras and a sense of
mission. Plane crashes don't stop them, grizzly TV images don't stop
them, even typhoons don't stop them.
The final word on plane crashes? There is no final word. The world
returns to normal, very quickly, and everyone retreats to their
private vision of heaven and hell. The bell rings. Classes resume in
the School of Hard Landings and nobody's the wiser.
Except insurance companies. They learn the most from these things.
In India, there will be a thorough investigation, a report, assigning
of blame. Funerals for the dead, psychiatric counselling for the
families.
But nothing will change. Pilots will still attempt to land their
magnificent flying machines in stormy weather, corporations will still
put emphasis on the bottom line, passengers will still put their trust
in some magical non-existant God, amazing technology that enables them to be god-like for a few
hours in the air, and fate.
Flying is safe, very safe, according to industry statistics. But don't
ask the 8 survivors of the recent Air India Express about statistics. They almost lost the
lottery.
After every accident, there is hand-wringing, assigning of blame,
officials who humbly take responsibility and resign. Newspapers
dutifully print obituaries, TV news segments will show us the grieving
families, over and over again.
It doesn't matter if it's TWA Flight 800 over Long Island or the
Lockerbie explosion over Scotland or even the KAL 007 shootdown over
the Sea of Japan or Air India Express from Dubai to Mangalore.
Planes fly, planes explode, planes crash. Every flight is a race
against time, against lift and stall, against the elements. Is flying
safe? Sure.
One wonders if anything has been learned. Flying is still a lottery in
which most of us come out as winners. But for many modern travelers,
the flying is over; they lost the lottery and died unspeakable deaths over the past 50 years. Who's counting?
God?
ask the people who died on the ill-fated Air India Express jet that crashed about
statistics. They are dead now. As in Rest in Peace dead. Dead. Gone.
Landing in rainstorm and low visibility! Stupid pilot! Gambling with the lives of his crew and passenger manifest. Gone with the wind now.
You also might remember the news of the ill-fated flight of a Swissair jet
flying from New York to Geneva back in the 1990s, and also the news
reports about LAPA Flight 3142 that failed to take flight in
Argentina. Yet, even with this new crash, airline reservations will
remain strong, the flying public hardly blinks and the sky's the limit.
Nothing changes much in the world of aviation and flying safety.
It's
a gamble, every flight is a gamble but statistically, you stand to
win. The numbers are on the side of the living.
But there's a funny thing about the way plane crashes are reported in
the news media -- and the way the news is received and digested.
After any major crash, after the bold headlines and day-after
analyses, reality returns to the normality that is life.
People who are neurotically afraid to fly (let's call them "fearful
flyers") feel justified in thinking the way they do. They often clip
out front-page newspaper stories and put them in a mental scrapbook.
"See," they tell everyone who listens, " flying is not safe, never
was, never will be. How much more evidence do you need?"
Psychiatrists report this all the time. After every major crash that
makes international headlines, the fearful flyers among us (and there
are many; 30 million in the US, maybe three million in Taiwan) say: "I
told you so."
And they add, just so we won't forget: "I am not neurotic. You think
flying is safe? Go ahead and fly, sucker!"
People who are not afraid to fly have another survival mechanism, call
it a defense mechanism. They see the news on TV and read the stories
in the press and say: "Too bad, a real tragedy. But it was just fate,
an ill-fated flight. The planes I fly on will never crash. I am
indestructible, I am a realist."
And they will fly, again and again. Because flying is safe and
statistically you've got a better chance of arriving on time and in
perfect condition (minus the jet lag, of course, or the boozy
hangover) than the poor blokes in urban traffic jams below. Every Web
site devoted to fear of flying will tell you so. And statistics don't
lie.
There's a third group who find plane crashes reassuring. These are the
people who put their faith in God or Buddha or Allah.
"See, " they say to anyone who will listen, "God works in mysterious
ways. When your time comes, your time comes. God is just calling you
back early. The pearly gates await you. You have nothing to fear but
fear itself. Trust in the Lord and the Kingdom of Heaven shall be
thine."
It works, too. Every group finds something in plane crashes, food for
thought, fuel for fiery arguments. And they are all right.
And then there are the plane spotters, those devilish plane buffs who
stand near runway approaches at major airports around the world and
take comfort in watching the slow, graceful approaches of jetliners
and prop planes as they jockey for landing rights and runway reunions.
There are lots of them out there, every day, everywhere. Fascinated by
all kinds of aircraft, they come armed with cameras and a sense of
mission. Plane crashes don't stop them, grizzly TV images don't stop
them, even typhoons don't stop them.
The final word on plane crashes? There is no final word. The world
returns to normal, very quickly, and everyone retreats to their
private vision of heaven and hell. The bell rings. Classes resume in
the School of Hard Landings and nobody's the wiser.
Except insurance companies. They learn the most from these things.
In India, there will be a thorough investigation, a report, assigning
of blame. Funerals for the dead, psychiatric counselling for the
families.
But nothing will change. Pilots will still attempt to land their
magnificent flying machines in stormy weather, corporations will still
put emphasis on the bottom line, passengers will still put their trust
in some magical non-existant God, amazing technology that enables them to be god-like for a few
hours in the air, and fate.
Flying is safe, very safe, according to industry statistics. But don't
ask the 8 survivors of the recent Air India Express about statistics. They almost lost the
lottery.
After every accident, there is hand-wringing, assigning of blame,
officials who humbly take responsibility and resign. Newspapers
dutifully print obituaries, TV news segments will show us the grieving
families, over and over again.
It doesn't matter if it's TWA Flight 800 over Long Island or the
Lockerbie explosion over Scotland or even the KAL 007 shootdown over
the Sea of Japan or Air India Express from Dubai to Mangalore.
Planes fly, planes explode, planes crash. Every flight is a race
against time, against lift and stall, against the elements. Is flying
safe? Sure.
One wonders if anything has been learned. Flying is still a lottery in
which most of us come out as winners. But for many modern travelers,
the flying is over; they lost the lottery and died unspeakable deaths over the past 50 years. Who's counting?
God?
typestalgia -- [14,5657 thumbs up]
typestalgia
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=typestolgia
(noun) - A nostalgia for old manual and electric typewriters as well as the sound of typewriting on such machines
"I like my computer with its sleek keyboard, of course, but I must say, I also harbor a personal typestalgia for the old days of manual typewriters and electric typewriters."
-- overheard at a watercooler in Manhattan, May 15, 2010
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=typestolgia
(noun) - A nostalgia for old manual and electric typewriters as well as the sound of typewriting on such machines
"I like my computer with its sleek keyboard, of course, but I must say, I also harbor a personal typestalgia for the old days of manual typewriters and electric typewriters."
-- overheard at a watercooler in Manhattan, May 15, 2010
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