what is an analysand?

     An analysand is someone who is undergoing psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a form of "talk" therapy. According to its own practitioners, it does not have an end. It begins at birth, I suppose--some analysands believe that they can relive the experience of being born. One famous analysand said that psychoanalysis was like being "born again". All psychoanalysts are also analysands--they have therapists whom they visit, or with whom they keep in contact, for life. Psychoanalysts start out as medical doctors--they attend medical school, and can prescribe medication, including narcotics, hypnotics, and anti-depressants.
     Psychoanalysis does not have an end because it does not have a goal--analysands spend a lot of time and money undergoing treatment, the purpose of which is usually described as "feeling better about themselves". Psychoanalysis seems like a waste of time and money to many people, and since it is sometimes paid for with public money, they have a point. When the public pays for therapy, we might expect at least a goal of improved behavior or social attitudes. Behaving better would make analysands feel better about themselves, without a doubt.

relations

     'Tis the season for family gatherings--do you know who your relations are?  Those cousins you haven't seen since the year before last? If they are your mother's or father's cousins, they are your "second cousins". If they are cousins to one of your grandparents, they are your "third cousins". If those cousins you don't remember are people you might never have met, except they are cousins of your cousins, they are your "cousins once removed"--for instance, your mother's sister marries, and her children are your cousins. Those children have cousins, to whom they are related on their father's side--these are your cousins once removed.
   

blackout

     Blackout usually means a power failure--one that affects a neighborhood or a large area, and not just a single home. When the power fails in our home, we say the electricity is out, or the lights are out.
     During the Second World War, a blackout meant that no one was supposed to let any lights show, in case enemy planes were looking for a target to bomb. People used blackout curtains to make sure that household lights could not be seen from the outside, and air raid wardens walked around checking for any light that was still visible.
     Now a blackout also means a sporting event that is not being televised, because all of the tickets have not been sold. The game will not be broadcast in the city where it is being played, to encourage people who want to see it to go to the stadium and buy a ticket.
     Blackout also means to lose one's memory during a drinking binge.

white nights

   It's a fairly new custom in some cities in Europe to have a "white night"--either during the Christmas holidays, or at some other time of year. A "white night" means the lights stay on all night--all kinds of businesses and museums stay open all night, and the people "make a night of it"--going out and staying out, all night.

jury nullification

     A group or party (whose name escapes me ) has been making a case, or attempting to make a case, for "jury nullification". The argument begins by accepting the notion that "jury nullification" is some kind of a legal right, by precedent, in the United States. It isn't. "Jury nullification" is the term used to describe a jury's refusal to convict, even when the defendant seems obviously guilty, and the case against him or her seems to have been plainly made. Juries have done this, but not because they have the "right".  If  a prosecuting attorney could prove that the jury had refused to convict, the members of the jury could be charged with obstruction of justice, among other things.
     "Jury nullification" got a good name when the jury hearing the case against John Peter Zenger refused to convict Zenger of sedition against the British crown. Zenger had published an opinion piece opposed to the British government's policies. In this case, American history looks on the jury's refusal to convict Zenger as patriotism--and rightly so.
     "Jury nullification" got a bad name, however, when white juries in the American South refused to convict members of the Klan, or white persons accused of crimes against blacks. Since no one can be tried twice, the federal government intervened and tried some of those acquitted through "jury nullification" of violating the federal civil rights statutes.

the first tea party

     The original "tea party" from which the "tea party" party takes its name happened in Boston in 1775. It is usually called the "Boston Tea Party". The British wanted the American colonists to pay a special tax on tea. This tax was part of a series of new taxes levied on the Americans by the British government, to pay for the costs of the French and Indian War ( the Seven Years War ). The Americans objected to the taxes, and resented having no say in the British government.  They refused to pay the tax on a shipment of tea, and it remained on the ship in Boston harbor. One night, several colonists, dressed up as Indians, boarded the ship and threw the tea into Boston harbor.
     This was something more than a colorful incident. The British demanded that the colonists pay for the tea. The colonists refused. The British blockaded Boston's harbor, and basically besieged the city--no one could go in or out, not even to deliver supplies, unless the British troops permitted it. This made great political capital for the cause of American independence from Great Britain. News of the poor people of Boston and their plight moved many people to side with the revolutionaries--people who had been lukewarm or indifferent supporters were moved by the accounts of British cruelty reported in the press.
     The Boston Tea Party and the events that followed may have done more to foment revolution than all the other taxes and protests. The British response to the "Tea Party" turned out to be one of the worst political moves of all time--what we would now call a public relations disaster.

us and them

      Some groups have special words to designate someone who is not a member of the group.  For instance, to a Jew, everyone who is not a Jew is a gentile. To a Catholic, every Christian who is not a Catholic is a protestant. To a Hispanic, everyone who does not speak Spanish is an Anglo--no matter if he or she speaks English or not. To an Amish person, everyone who is not Amish is English.
    These are not the same as the words that are used to describe people and the groups to which they do belong. The "out-group" words are used to define people according to the groups in which they are  not included. If you are reading this, you may be all of the above--a gentile--protestant--Anglo--English.

antecedents

     In the American South, people often say that they have "antecedents". This far north, we have ancestors--if Southerners mean ancestors when they say "antecedents". Most people think of  "antecedents" as a grammar term. An antecedent is the proper name or specific person or thing later designated by a pronoun--for example, in these sentences--
"John went to the store. He won't be back for an hour."--"John" is the antecedent of "he".
In these sentences--
"How's your leg? It's fine."--"leg" is the antecedent of "it".
When we read a piece with too many pronouns and too few antecedents, we sometimes lose track. We don't know who or what the pronouns stand for.
Do some people have antecedents, as many Southerners say?  An antecedent would be the person you modeled yourself on, with you a generic copy of some kind--like a weird form of identity theft.

lingua franca or "pidgin" ?

     Lingua franca literally means "money language"--the language people learn in order to do business. If the people who want to do business with one another don't speak the same language, it's impossible to make a deal. One person may learn the other person's language, of course, but they often meet in the middle instead--each learning a third language, which becomes a lingua franca to them. English is a commonly used lingua franca around the world. In Eastern Europe and the Middle East, French is a often used as a lingua franca. People can do business together if both speak French or English--or if they are willing to hire someone who does.
     A "pidgin" language is a bit different. It may be made of two languages or more--but only uses the words most important to the work or business at hand. Merchant marines, with crews who spoke many different languages, developed a "pidgin" language. Everyone could understand the words that were really necessary to keep the ship going and its crew safe. A few hundred words were enough. The "pidgin" became a sort of "work language"--anyone who wanted to understand it would need to translate all of the words, and also know something about the work they were meant to facilitate. Kappish?

why we still need the post office

     Some of the younger people out there in cyberland have decided that we don't need the post office any more. They believe that a package delivery service can handle anything they buy over the internet ( formerly called mail order ), so the post office is no longer necessary.  A lot of people have never mailed a letter--some don't know what a mailbox is. These are young people in their 20's, who consider themselves fairly hip. I would encourage any such young person to visit his or her local post office, and find out what they do there. Three billion pieces of mail a year--that's how many letters the post office delivers. Delivered everywhere in the United States--no extra charge, not even for servicemen overseas--that's what the A.P.O or F.P.O address is for.
     E-mail is a wonderful invention--no paper wasted, no waiting time--but we still need the post office for a lot of things.  If you have never mailed a letter, go out and send one. Or send a greeting card. It's an important life skill, and not merely a thing of the past--yet.

mail order math

     So much shopping is done on the internet now, that paper catalogs have become a thing of the past. Each year my mailbox used to be full of catalogs--especially in the months before the holidays. The Sears catalog was the size of a phone book. Items could be sent through the mail, or to the nearest Sears store for pickup--even large items like rugs or appliances.  A reproduction of an old Sears catalog is  fun to look at--one from a hundred years ago or more, not a recent one.  You can look through it and see all the things you could have bought with only five dollars. Children and teens may enjoy this, too. Pretend shopping is a good math lesson--and with an old-time catalog, there's no risk of actually wanting to buy the things--it can remain just "window shopping".

yes, they could all be wrong

     Don't fall into this trap--two people are arguing about something, and they expect you to take sides--to decide who is right and who is wrong. Assuming that one of them has the "right" answer, you will be expected to help that person win the day. But what if they are both wrong? For example, suppose that one is maintaining that 1+1=3, and one is maintaining with equal emotion that 1+1=5?  Which of them is right? Will you "side" with one of them? Or will you tell them that they are both wrong, and start a third party? 
     The two wrong people may believe that they are standing on a firm logical foundation, since two mutually exclusive propositions cannot both be true. Mutually exclusive would mean that if one is true, the other must be false--as in it's day or night outside--it is obvious, without formal logic, that only one of these can be true at any given time, and in any given place ( the clever will bring up time zones here, in an attempt to prove that these could both be true--not so).   In the example of 1+1, however, the propositions are not mutually exclusive--if 1+1 does not equal 3 ( and it doesn't ), it does not necessarily follow that 1+1=5. 
     

the real philosopher's stone

     The medieval myth of the philosopher's stone may not be as hare-brained as people once imagined. There is an entity that can turn lead into gold, perhaps, or hydrogen into iron--the sun. That's right, the sun. The fusion at the sun's core can combine atoms of hydrogen until they become atoms of iron. If hydrogen can become iron, perhaps lead can become gold.  Of course, if humans could do this, we would probably have so little lead that the price of lead would soar--and so much gold that the price of gold would plummet--so it might not make much financial difference, in the end.

homesteading

     The original homesteading happened in the American West in the middle of the 19th century. The federal government had removed the American Indians from a large territory. The government offered to give a tract of land to anyone (anyone not an Indian ) who would build a house on it and live there. This happened in more than one state. When the government gave away land in Oklahoma, people were lined up at the boundary, ready to run to a piece of land and "claim" it as their own.  People found fascinating ways to cheat--building doll's houses where building a house was required, raising one plant where farming was required, paying other people to stake out claims to land so that they could sell the land later. Many people did start farms, even with all the cheating, and the government goal of settling the territory with non-Indians was accomplished.
  

blacklist

     The most famous blacklist in recent memory was the Hollywood blacklist. In the 1950's, Hollywood film studios kept a list of people suspected of being communists or communist sympathizers, and refused to hire any of them. This was what it meant to be "blacklisted".  Hollywood didn't think this up all by itself. A ( probably ) small but vocal portion of the public complained ( loudly ) whenever they thought that Hollywood movies were being sympathetic to communism. The studios were afraid of them, and instituted the "blacklist" in an effort to appease them. Hollywood, in particular, was being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC )--a committee set up by the U.S. Congress to investigate suspected communists and "fellow-travelers". You can search this under "HUAC" or "Hollywood Blacklist" or  "Mc Carthyism".
     The anti-communists feared that the people who made movies, along with other writers and artists, were in a position to promote a communist point of view. To some of these anti-communists, any movie or book that criticized our society in any way was suspect. If the author thought that poverty was a bad thing, for example, it meant that he or she was opposed to capitalism, and therefore in favor of communism. This extremism took several years to die out. The HUAC investigations, led by Joseph McCarthy, became famous as a "witch hunt". Those who confessed and threw themselves on the mercy of the committee might be left alone--but only if they agreed to provide the names of other communists. Anyone who maintained his or her innocence was suspect, and remained suspect.

school busing

     You might read in an old news article that people once argued about school busing--and they did. They weren't arguing about whether kids should take the bus to school or walk, however. They were arguing about whether or not kids should be bused to different school districts as a means of making unequal schools "fair". First they decided that since the city schools were terrible, compared to some of the suburban schools, that they would bus a few city school students to the suburbs to attend school. This was done as a sort of a lottery--the way people are "chosen" to go to charter schools now.  Instead of improving the schools, everyone in the worst schools might have a chance to attend school someplace else. Most of the parents in the suburban school districts didn't really have a lot to say about busing a few students from the city to their schools. When some districts, in the name of "fairness "decided it would be a good idea to bus a few of the suburban kids into the city schools, they had a lot to say. In a word, they said no.

the draft lottery

     During the Viet Nam war, in the 1970's, the federal government used a lottery to decide who should be drafted next. To be drafted meant to be inducted into the army--whether you wanted to be in the army or not. If someone was drafted and refused to serve, he was jailed.* Young men were eligible for the draft at the age of 19. There was a "lottery" each year, broadcast on television. The government--the Selective Service--put each day of the year into a hat, or some device--just as in a  lottery for a prize or jackpot . These dates were people's birthdays. If they pulled your birthday out of the hat first, you would be the first to be drafted.
     Young men are still required to register for the draft, although no one is being drafted into the army.  The army is all volunteer now. The government still requires registration for the draft in case of a war--a war we would need more soldiers to win.

*Muhammad Ali served a prison term for refusing to be drafted. He was much discussed, and admired by many for having the courage of his own convictions.

pirate radio

     You can see a depiction of a "pirate" radio station in the old movie American Graffiti. The radio "pirate" in the movie is modeled on a real radio pirate. His radio station broadcasts from a ship at sea to avoid detection by law enforcement authorities. Why law enforcement wants to find the radio pirate is not made obvious in the movie. When a pirate radio station broadcasts, other radio stations are lost to their listeners. We have an agency of the federal government--the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC--to assure that broadcasters share the radio wavelengths fairly. Each station is assigned a "frequency"--the number you see on the radio dial. If someone starts up an unlicensed broadcasting station, it can only be at the expense of a station already running. It's a form of censorship or shouting someone down--but this time it isn't by the government, but by the "outlaws".
    

blackball

    To "blackball" someone" is to refuse him membership in a club.  An old-fashioned gentlemen's club had a vote on whether or not to accept a new applicant as a member. Each person had a white ball and a black ball. The voting was accomplished by depositing either the white ball, for yes, or the black ball, for no, in a container of some kind. In some clubs one black ball meant membership would be denied. In some clubs it was three black balls. So one person could "blackball" a prospective applicant for membership.

double exposure

     A double exposure is two photographs made on the same piece of film. The photographs would be combined into one image--as if they were transparent and you could see both of them. You can probably see a double exposure on a photo-sharing site. A real double-exposure was made by taking two pictures, and developing them as one--but digital photo-editing software can produce a similar effect. Two people can be made to look like a third person who resembles both of them, for instance--as in the sites that will show you what your digital offspring would look like.

secret codes in the Bible

     People have claimed to find secret codes and hidden messages in the Bible--including instructions to commit crimes.  This is something worse than clever nonsense. They didn't "find" any messages in the Bible, or in any other book--they put them there. Any book can be used to send a message in "secret code". The recipient of the message would only need a copy of the same book the sender used.. The books would have to be exactly the same-- the Bible, which has been printed so many times, would be more difficult to match in this way than any other book. The sender of the message could use the words or the letters in the book--each letter could be numbered, in order, or each word. The numbers could be sent as a "coded" message. The person who received the message could use the book to "decode" the message--no supernatural agency required.

the value of a dollar

the value of a dollar

     When we talk about foreign trade we can understand what makes our money--American dollars--"worth" something to people in other countries. It is worth something to them because they can exchange it for something that America has that they want to buy. What makes our money worth something to us here in America is in many ways the same. Money is worth what you can buy with it. What puts the "value" in money?  Many people believe that work puts the value in money. There are things, of course, but they are usually made or obtained through work, or "labor" as a textbook would put it. Marx would have said that "capital"--money or the capacity to borrow it--is "stolen labor". Calling money "stolen" from labor is an extremist point of view. Money or "capital" as "stored" labor is actually a more accurate definition.
     Historically, we didn't actually "need" money--coins or bills--until we were doing so much trade with one another that using money would  make the trade easier. When people were exchanging the occasional cow for two sheep, they got along fine without money. The only people doing the "exchanging" would have been those with something extra to "trade". People using all their time and work just to survive had nothing extra to trade.Those who had some extra--for whatever reason ( more sons to help with work, thinking up a better way of farming )--eventually wanted to trade it with someone else. The trade became cumbersome when there were more people involved. The person with the cow to trade might not have wanted the two sheep--the sheep owned by the person who wanted the cow.  The person with the cow might have wanted a horse--owned by a person who wanted the sheep. It would work if they were all present, and all ready to deliver the goods. Money made it possible to store and save excess labor when there wasn't anything to trade it for--perhaps because not enough other people had an excess, but perhaps because all of the local farmers were growing the same thing. The person with the excess labor--turned into livestock, grain, or other stuff--could store it as money for use later. It could be saved for a bad year, in case of injury, or to get something that would cost more than one cow.