are we getting dumber?

     For all the press ink spent on the subject of  IQ, or intelligence quotient (the results of a test given to people to find out how "smart" they are) there is an aspect of intelligence testing that is rarely mentioned. Intelligence, as measured by modern science, is a function of age. If a ten-year-old, say, answers  half of all the questions on the test correctly, his or her age will be a factor in converting  this "raw" score into an "intelligence quotient", or "IQ". If a twenty-year-old answers in precisely the same way, with the same number of correct answers, his or her "IQ" will not be the same as the ten-year-old's.  Assuming that testing for something styled innate intelligence, having nothing to do with education, is a reasonable thing to do, using age as a factor must be reasonable as well.
     It does, however, mean that our grandparents were right--that you should "learn something new every day"--otherwise your score on an IQ test would actually be lower as you age. If you got the same "raw" score at age forty as you did at age twenty, you would, in fact, be getting dumber.

kosher and halal

     Both Jews and Muslims are subject to dietary laws--an unfamiliar notion to most Christians, or to non-religious people. The Jews call food that is suitable to eat, according to their dietary laws, "kosher". The Muslims call suitable food "halal". Neither Muslims nor Jews eat pork--it is forbidden to them by the same scriptures Christians call the Old Testament. When you see a sign or a food label package that says "kosher" or "halal", it means that a religious authority has checked that the food does not violate any dietary guidelines--including how the animal was slaughtered, and what might be present in the plant where it was processed. For instance, a Jew or Muslim would not want to eat chicken that was prepared where pork was also prepared.
    For many Jews and Muslims, this means avoiding many popular fast-food places, since pork is served in them.  For people who are not Jews or Muslims, "kosher" or "halal" on a package of hot-dogs or sausage may simply mean "all-beef".

what is a gleaner?

     The word "gleaner" is being used lately to denote something that remains mysterious--partly because the people using the word don't seem to know what it means. The origin of its new popularity is assumed to be the Biblical injunction against interfering with the gleaners-- but the intentions and identity of the sect or cult teaching this remain obscure.
    No matter. "Gleaner" has a meaning. A "gleaner" came along after fields were harvested and picked through the rows of cut stalks for any grain that might remain. In some societies it was considered to be the least that anyone could do for the poor--to permit them to gather what had fallen on the ground when grain was harvested.

baby blue eyes

     Another in a list of things that not everyone knows--and we too frequently assume that they do. This one began with a baby picture of my daughter, showing her pretty blue eyes.  My daughter has dark brown eyes like mine. Someone looking at the baby picture might think that it was a picture of a different baby--no, it was a picture of my daughter. All Caucasian babies are born with blue eyes. At six months to a year old, their eyes turn brown, if they are going to be brown-eyed adults. If a family has both blue and brown-eyed people in it, they have to wait that long to find out what the baby will look like--whether its eyes will be blue or brown. Babies with green eyes ( which are uncommon) are born with green eyes. My daughter's eyes, at first a light blue, turned a brilliant turquoise, then a very deep blue before they turned brown--at about six months.

children of Ham

     At least one religious or quasi-religious group has a Biblical explanation for racial inequality. They claim that it is ordained by the quotation " the children of Ham shall serve the sons of Noah", or words to that effect. What's missing is that Ham was one of the sons of Noah--he had three of them.
     By the way, the internet makes it easy to look for the source of a quotation--just type it into the search box--and you can read it in its original context.

with age, anything becomes venerable

   In our Academy of Natural Sciences, here in Philadelphia, you can see, along with dinosaur bones, wonderful old taxidermy and pretty rocks, an exhibit of coprolite--which means, well, dinosaur poop.  I suppose anything that gets old enough winds up in a museum.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

     "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is a famous quotation that sounds silly, until you find out why it is so famous. It uses every letter of the alphabet at least once--so when someone was learning to set type, years ago, or wanted to test a typewriter with a key for each letter, he or she only had to type that sentence. It was useful when learning to type, as well. It may still be useful to people who want to check on code they have written for new fonts. Or, you might try texting it.

America, Russia, China, Cold War

     It has been 40 years since I first had someone try to explain to me that Russia and America had once been at war--which, by the way, is not true. At the time, I was in junior high school, and could not convince my fellow student that this was an error. The student had probably heard it from an adult. So, for the record--America and Russia have never been at war with one another. It took more than 30 years to have a student tell me the source of confusion--the "Cold War".
   The "Cold War" was not a war. Not one shot was fired by anyone. The "Cold War" refers to the severing of diplomatic relations between the United States of America, and what was then the Soviet Union, (officially the USSR, often called simply "Russia") after WWII.  There were no ambassadors from the United States to Russia, or from Russia to the United States. We weren't speaking to each other. We (America ) also weren't speaking to the People' s Republic of China, often called "Red China". We would only speak to the government of Taiwan ( also called Formosa), which claimed to be the legitimate government of China. What is today called China went unacknowledged by our government for many years--it just didn't exist.  America has never been at war with China, either.
      The Cold War--the refusal to speak to one another, or to have any dealings at all --made people worry that there would be a real war, maybe a nuclear war, as America, Russia, and China all seemed to spend a lot of their money on nuclear weapons. This ended, not with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but years before--when President Nixon visited both China and Russia while he was in office. Perhaps he'll be remembered for this one day, instead of for the scandals that caused his resignation.
      Remember--America  has fought two wars with England (Great Britain)--and we won them both. We have never fought a war with China or Russia.
     

Divide and Conquer

  Several things I have read on the internet make me wonder how many people know how Hitler actually came to power in Germany in the 1930's. Hitler was a locally elected official. He was sent to the German Reichstag, or congress, to represent his district--in much the same way that we elect congressional representatives in the United States. No one in this parliament could form a majority--there were more than two political parties, and no set of people had enough influence with more than half of them to form one majority. This is how most European parliaments or congresses still operate. When no one can form a majority, new elections may be called, and it all starts over again.
      When Hitler was elected to the German congress, something different happened--the Reichstag (parliament or congress building) burned down, in an act of what we would call domestic terrorism today. Hitler and his allies in parliament blamed the German communists and their socialist and trades-unionist allies. Hitler's increasingly hysterical  speeches helped get them expelled from the congress--leaving a majority for the Nazis and their friends, since the people who had been opposing them were gone.  Most people now think that Hitler or his friends set fire to the Reichstag--but no one has proof of who did it, or why. We know that Hitler took advantage of the opportunity--and of the fear and excitement  caused by the fire--to take control of Germany. The majority in parliament meant that Hitler was the chancellor--like a prime minister in some countries. The first thing Hitler did was to ask for special powers, because of the emergency terrorist situation. He got them. The rest  is history.

The sun never sets on the British Empire

     This is a discussion that I have had in person--the meaning of "the sun never sets on the British Empire".  What my listener refused to believe was that this was, at the time, simply a statement of fact. Britain's colonies and "spheres of influence" spread over nearly 2/3 of the globe--it was literally always daylight somewhere in British territory. For you of the flat-earth persuasion, the saying is just as true--just work it out using your pancake recipe, or however you usually explain such things.
    The date given for this quote is 1821, I think--but anytime in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries would do nearly as well.  We begin with England, conveniently also the start of time zones (zero is at Greenwich, England). Even flat-Earthers have time zones, don't they? You can work your way through the list of British possessions, including Canada, Bermuda, Jamaica, the British Virgin Islands, Australia, New Zealand,  South Africa, India, China as a sphere of influence, Hong Kong, Singapore, Burma,  part of the Middle East as a protectorate, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, the former Rhodesia,  and others. Look on a historical map ( a map of the past )--there are 24 time zones. Britain's territory once spanned all of them.

can do or can't do?

     So tired of hearing the old maxim "Those who can, do, and those who can't, teach" used to refer to teachers--in the sense that anyone who is teaching probably doesn't know how to do anything--that I feel a need to explain what the quotation really means. It started with the military ( the army ). People in their 40's were drafted back into the army in WWII--people who had served in WWI, who had military experience. They were too old to be drafted for any purpose except to teach other people how to be soldiers. All the people young and fit enough were to be soldiers, and those too old to serve in this way were to teach them how to do it.  Those who could, did, and those who couldn't, taught. We won that war, by the way.

Encarta dictionary

     I noticed a few years ago that one of our local libraries replaced the standard dictionary with an Encarta dictionary. Even the librarians did not seem to understand that this was a bad idea, so it must deserve an explanation. The Encarta Dictionary is a dictionary of English as it is spoken in different countries around the world where English is the dominant language--America, England, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, and others. In the Encarta dictionary you can find out that in England, "lift" means "elevator", that a "torch" is a "flashlight", that the "tube" is the subway in England and the television in America, that a hardware store in America is an ironmonger's in England, and that a pharmacy is a chemist's. Spelling and usage differ from country to country as well--in England and Canada color is spelled colour, for instance. In England curb is spelled kerb.

    The Encarta Dictionary was never meant to replace the standard dictionary--not in America, and not anywhere else. It was meant to show how English differs around the world. It doesn't have near enough entries to replace the standard dictionary--you might try to look up the meaning of a word and find that it isn't there. If you are using the dictionary to check your spelling, you might accidentally choose a spelling from the wrong country--and your word would be incorrectly spelled. Or spelt.

Pavlov's dogs

     People often refer to Pavlov's dogs, but the reference is somewhat vague to anyone who hasn't studied some psychology. Pavlov, working about 100 years ago, was investigating what is called "conditioned response".  He rang a bell every time he fed his now-famous dogs. The dogs learned (were conditioned) that the bell meant that they were about to be fed. Eventually, the dogs began to salivate (drool)  as soon as they heard the bell--whether Pavlov fed them or not.  Pavlov proved that autonomic responses--responses that are physical, and over which we have no conscious control, like sweating or drooling--could be influenced by an external stimulus, such as the bell, other than that which would actually produce the response (drooling), such as the food.
     To "salivate like Pavlov's dogs", as the Rolling Stones had it, would be to get all worked up over, say a picture of food, a person, or some other unreal thing that is connected to the response ( getting worked up, feeling hungry)  through one's own memory.