Whither Language?

I'm no Henry Higgins, or any sort of student of language, but I have been wondering lately what the English (or American) language will sound like in a hundred years. I recently got a Twitter account, which is an amusing little service (though of minimal use to me personally, some, like Gary Vaynerchuk, seem to be using it to great effect). The thing about Twitter is that one is limited to messages of 140 characters.

That got me thinking about the other pressures we have to compress our messages into the fewest words. Cell phone text messages are similarly limited; TV sound bites force public figures to over simplify their message; and the sheer volume of information available to people on the web reward those able to get their point across quickly and efficiently, if not comprehensively.

So, what does that mean for language structure? Our language patterns obviously change fairly rapidly, and to a more significant extent than just the shift in popular slang. Backed up by no research whatsoever, it seems to me that 50 to 75 years is about the length of time it takes for significant style changes to occur. Movie dialogue and political speeches from the 40s and 50s is decidedly different than today, to say nothing of the 1860s or 1770s.

It seems that the pressures of information flow will force us to strip language down to its bear bones, ensuring the essential meaning is communicated quickly as one may not have the opportunity to get further. Americans in general have the reputation of going straight at the heart of a topic, compared to other cultures who approach issues more leisurely. It may be that those cultures may have more of a language adjustment in the near term than we will. (a sampling of the latest Twitter messages often reveals at least a couple posts in Japanese and Chinese, and sometimes in languages I don't even recognize)

In all, I hope that we will find some sort of balance between the need to quickly share information with the benefits of being able to fully explain context, and the beauty of well written or well spoken words.



P.S.- For those disappointed in my lack of posting lately, I would like to highlight the "no periodicity" clause of my blog introduction. Sure, I'd like to be inspired more often, but such is life.

Trivia for the Night

Going into tonight's game, the Cubs and Dodgers have met 2,024 times. The series is tied 1,012 - 1,012. They had never met in a post season game.

They Don't Do Nostalgia Like They Used To

I’m not a Yankees fan by any means, but as I am sitting here watching the final game in Yankee Stadium, I must say I am very disappointed that ESPN failed to show any of the pregame festivities. It seems like it would have been easy to shift SportsCenter over to ESPN2 and get a nice ratings boost from all the baseball fans looking to relive a little history. (Or perhaps I would be extremely disappointed once again in the stark realities of America’s collective taste and find out that they did do that study and found that people would prefer to watch highlights from NFL week 3 rather than highlights of 85 years of baseball’s most prestigious venue)

Without even thinking too hard, I come up with Ruth hitting the first home run at the stadium, Gehrig’s farewell speech (not to mention his consecutive games streak only recently broken), the only perfect game in the World Series, Jackie Robinson stealing home on Yogi during the World Series (though Yogi would argue), 26 Championships (plus however many World Series that the Yankees lost), the first time in baseball history where a team came from three games down in a seven game series (against the Yankees, but the final drama played out in Yankee Stadium) and the emotional World Series after 9/11.

So, I think it would have been worth and hour of ESPN's time to let baseball fans around the country share in the pregame ceremonies.

To come full circle, here are some of the first and last stats for Yankee Stadium. Hopefully Wrigley and Fenway will stay around for many years to come.

(Firsts shamelessly copied from Dugout Central)
First Game: April 18, 1923
Score: Yankees 4, Red Sox 1
First Pitch by: Bob Shawkey (Yankees)
First Batter: Chick Fewster (Red Sox)
First Hit: George Burns (Red Sox; no, not that George Burns, but he could have been, the late actor was 27 at the time)
First Home Run: Babe Ruth
First Error: Babe Ruth


Last Game, Sept 21, 2008
Score: Yankees 7, Orioles 3
Last Home Run: Jose Molina (Yankees)
Last Run Scored: Brett Gardner (Yankees)
Last Hit: Jason Giambi (Yankees)
Last Pitch by: Mariano Rivera (Yankees)
Last Batter: Brian Roberts (Orioles)

China Olympic History

One thing I really enjoy about my family is how intellectually curious everyone is. In a comment to my last post, my ever-inquisitive sister-in-law asked "Say, here's a question, why did China not participate in the [Summer] Olympics during the 30+ years prior to the 1984 LA Olympics??"
Wow, here I am, someone who eats up all sorts of China stuff and I had no idea there was such a gap. That, of course, instigated a spate of internet research to find out what the history was. Which is a fascinating thing in itself when you're researching the history of regime that controls things as tightly as the Chinese. You can go for the official version with the usual biases, random articles that seem helpful, but you're not really sure of the quality / accuracy, if they have an agenda or what it is, wikipedia entries that could use a little grammar help, the Americanized version (i.e. many pictures and few words), etc..
It's a muddled history, depending on which source you read. Ah, if I only had primary sources! But, I'm not quite up to that level of research on this topic tonight.
Anyway depending on which source you read, here are some Chinese Olympic highlights

1896: The IOC either does or does not extend and invite to the Qing dynasty to participate in the first Olympics. If they do get an invite, the Qing dynasty does not reply.

1932: The government in Manchuria was going to send two athletes, but one of them(Liu Changchun) refused to represent the Japanese puppet regime, and was then sponsored by the Chinese nationalist government. The other athlete (Yu Xiwei) either was arrested by the Japanese or also attended the games. I go with the first option, as he is not mentioned in the official version of the history, and if a 2nd Chinese athlete had spurned the Japanese, I'm sure the PRC would mention it.

1952: China attends for the first time as the "People's Republic of China" (though arrives too late to compete due to political disputes as to whether to invite Taiwan or China) A cut from the "official version" shows you why I love reading propaganda: "With the overthrow of the Kuomintang government, which was rotten to the core, the People's Republic of China was established in the next year. Paying great attention to the people's health and the cause of sport, the new regime adopted a positive attitude toward the global Olympic Movement."

1956: Versions of this are pretty darn muddled, but suffice it to say that the whole "one China" question raises it's head. It appears to me that the PRC boycotted the games since they included athletes from the Republic of China (Taiwan). PRC-slanted histories say the IOC banned them from the games or kicked them out of the IOC in favor of Taiwan, but my impression is that their logic is that since the IOC tolerated the presence of Taiwan, they "forced" the principled PRC to withdraw, which is in their view, being banned.

1980: The PRC rejoins Olympic competition at Lake Placid following a compromise where Taiwan will compete under "Chinese Taipei", using a special flag, rather than their national flag. However, they boycott the Summer Olympics in the USSR, along with other countries, due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

1984: The PRC rejoins the summer competition. Actually, since the 1952 team was the first PRC team, and arrived too late to compete, and the 1956 team boycotted on the eve of the games, this is really the first team from the PRC to compete in the Summer Games.

Anyway, there is a brief history of China in the Olympics for everyone. It may even be mostly accurate! ;)

Fun With the Press

One thing I am endlessly fascinated with is how the press chooses two things. The first is story placement and how long to run a story. The second, and subject of this blog is pictures they choose to use, especially for really well known people that must have hundreds of file photos. I remember when Condeleeza Rice was in the middle of the controversy as to whether she would testify before Congress or not. While she was refusing to testify, cnn.com had a very dour looking picture of her, with her arms folded across her chest. But, when they ran the story saying she had just agreed to testify, suddenly it was a much more genial picture of her. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I'm not going to accuse cnn.com of putting politics into their picture-choosing, I just think it's interesting. Is real thought put into it, is it random, a subconcious choice by the picture-person, two different people choosing the pictures, etc, etc, etc..


So, with that background you may understand that I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I saw the picture cnn.com put up for the lead story of Sen. Edwards admitting his extramarital affair:


See what I mean? I'd say it's a pretty darn good picture of him and about the worst picture in the world of her. I imagine there are not nearly as many pictures of her, but there are other pictures. How the heck did they decide to place those two pictures together?
Whatever the reason, keep your eyes open when perusing the news sites. It's pretty interesting!

The Third Kind of Lie

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Benjamin Disraeli


My uncle sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal by Bruce Gilley entitled "The Beginning of the End". The article itself describes the author's view that Tiananmen Square forced the Chinese Communist Party along a line that will eventually lead to democratization. I may follow up in future posts that take issue with that portion of it, but I haven't the time to craft that piece tonight.
I would like to throw something out there about one of his arguments, namely that economic development causes a change in population's toleration of authoritarian regimes. The two paragraphs are quoted below. (I have been unable to find a free copy of the article, so cannot link it right now)

" Second, as China develops, so will the preferences of its citizens. Given its current low level of economic development ($4,660 GDP per capita in 2006 according to the latest revisions to the World Bank's price-adjusted data, about one tenth of the OECD average), it is completely normal that those preferences are not strongly democratic at present. Most countries with similar income levels – Angola, say, or Azerbaijan – are also authoritarian.

The Chinese Communist Party's successful incorporation of the new middle class and of private business leaders is also wholly normal for a country at its stage of development. In Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines, not to mention throughout Latin America, the middle class and business sector were no less co-opted by authoritarian regimes until the very eve of democratic transition."

Assuming he is correct about the basic argument, which I am not convinced he is, there are two flaws that I see. First, that there is no guarantee that China's economy will continue to grow. There are many serious concerns as to how long it can sustain its growth.
The second formed the topic for this post. I do not pretend to be an economist, but Prof. Gilley is not one either, apparently. I got on the handy World Bank website and checked out some of the figures myself - as I am wont to do - and found several flaws:

- It is apparent he is citing per capita Gross National Income (GNI) vs. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Maybe an innocent mistake, but when something like that happens, I immediately become suspicious that the person citing the numbers is not familiar with what they are really citing.

- After citing the Philippines as an example of the middle class rising up do overthrow the authoritarian regimes, one would think their per capita GNI is in the same ballpark as the other countries he listed - it's actually lower than China's - $3430.

- When you have 1.3 billion people, the big problem with raising per capita GNI is the "per capita" part. To raise the GNI to the OECD average mentioned in the article ($35,586), China would have to raise its GNI to $46 Quadrillion. That's over 3/4 of the WORLD's gross income for 2006. But, assuming no ceiling and that large population gives you equally large workforce, and a 12% GNI growth rate, which China has been maintaining for the past 5 years or so (which even the Chinese agree has to slow down sometime), it would still take 18 years. And that's assuming the aging population, male-to-female ratio, environmental, urban-rural, and energy consumption problems don't slow them down further.

China may democratize, and I hope they do, but I'm not holding my breath.

PS - If there are any real economists out there, please feel free to comment. I'd love to hear what you think.

BoooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOrrrrriiiiiiiinnnnnnnnngggggg!

For baseball fans, this is the most boring day of the season. The only day from opening day to the playoffs when there is no baseball going on. (ok, the day before the All-Star Game doesn't have a game either, but it has the home run derby and the general anticipation of the All-Star Game)

So, for those bored baseball fans, you might want to check out the "UniWatch" column over at ESPN.com. This is an interesting column if you haven't seen it before, going into all sorts of interesting history of uniforms and noticing minute details that no one else ever would. They go a bit overboard today in their description of seemingly every single incident in All-Star games where someone wears the wrong team's helmet to bat, but overall it's an interesting and fun column.