Category Archives: literature

Many of you will recognize the title of tonight’s post as a snippet of the first sentence (and paragraph) of “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens. That one...

Many of you will recognize the title of tonight’s post as a snippet of the first sentence (and paragraph) of “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens. That one sentence in its entirety has 119 words, 169 syllables with a Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease of -34.1 and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 47.6. The two metrics, courtesy of Readability-score.com, would indicate at a passing glance that the opening sentence would be impossible for most people to read much less comprehend. Yet the juxtaposition of the best of times enjoyed by England, and the worst of times endured by France, during 1775 is easily understood along with the subtle mockery by Dickens of “its noisiest authorities”. “Giving him/her the dickens” was a phrase meaning giving someone the devil back in Shakespeare’s time, a couple of centuries before Charles Dickens took pen in hand, though Mr. Dickens made a literary career out of bedeviling the unjust.

The past year was a study in juxtapositions. For some of you, 2012 was the best of times. There were births, graduations, engagements, promotions, weddings, new homes, favorite teams making the playoffs, and other celebratory achievements. For others, including me, 2012 was the worst of times. There were deaths (and far too many of them), divorces, lost jobs, lost homes, player lockouts, misfortune, and dashed hopes. For the rest of you, 2012 was just a year, neither good nor bad. It was merely indistinguishable and unnoteworthy from other years.

Humans are optimistic by nature. For thousands of years we have looked to the New Year to absolve the shortcomings and misfortunes of the old year and look forward with optimism that the new year will be better. It is more than huddling with people outside to see a ball or some other object drop, cuddling up with someone special while watching television coverage of New Year’s celebrations worldwide, or hoping for a kiss from someone special at the stroke of midnight, though all are enjoyable endeavors.

New Year’s symbolism echoes our optimism. The melancholy and decrepit old year gets ushered out and the joyous and innocent baby new year gets pressed into service. Our old year is weary from our tribulations, melancholy from our sorrows, and decrepit from bearing our burdens, while our new year is energetic, happy, and fit. We have weathered millennia of tragedy and strife, and no doubt will face other challenges in the upcoming year, but for this brief instant in time, all is happy and well. “Out with the old and in with the new” indeed.

For those of you on the roads tonight, please be careful and lay off the joy juice before driving. If you’re outside watching something drop besides the temperature, stay warm and enjoy yourselves! For those of you spending time with loved ones (or just a loved one), make the hugs meaningful, and enjoy your first kiss of the new year. Happy New Year, and may 2013 be better than 2012 for all of you!

No, this isn’t about the Bill Murray movie from several years back. This started with a gleeful Facebook post which resulted in me trying to find a recipe for tater...

No, this isn’t about the Bill Murray movie from several years back. This started with a gleeful Facebook post which resulted in me trying to find a recipe for tater tot hotdish, which resulted in me finding a piece of notepaper Lucy left in the recipe box with a couple of Finnish phrases on it. Lucy was extremely proud of her Finnish heritage. She had the two phrases written out with a brief description of what sort of wall hanging contained each statement. She had seen these in one of three places: Finnish Gifts in downtown Minneapolis, Bergquist Imports in Cloquet, MN or Irma’s Finland House in Virginia, MN.

The first phrase was “Ota hymy huuleen ja juoksee vastatuuleen”. She had written “Smile and run against the wind” as a translation. Google Translate indicated “Take a smile on the lip and runs into the wind”.

On the back page was “Siunaa Jeesus ruokamme, ole aina luonamme“. Lucy’s translation was “Dear Jesus, Thank you for our food and be present with us always.” Google Translate came up with something puzzling: “Jesus will bless our food, not always with us”. The subtlety of language comes into play. This is why auto-correct features are unintentionally hilarious or painfully vexing.

Google is a huge corporation. They have many brilliant minds working for them and advanced technology at their disposal. Something as simple as a before meal prayer still proves problematic for computerized translation, but a human translator has an easy time.  Words can have multiple meanings and definitions depending on context. A machine will try to use algorithms, which parse words and then assign a weighting factor to determine probable usage. All that sentence diagramming we were subjected to in middle school was not for naught.

The Chinese proverb “A picture is worth ten thousand words” is quite appropriate thousands of years later. Brilliant writers can “paint with words” in ways that I cannot, but even they get hindered by the sterility of purely written words. A human reader can remember passages that were a few words, sentences, paragraphs or chapters back, which help convey mood and context. A machine will look at a preceding word, the preceding sentence, and the current one. Even today, how many times has an email or note from someone caused the wrong reaction because even though the grammar and usage was correct, the intention was lost? How many times have passages been “taken out of context” to prove or disprove a thesis?

Take the three word phrase “I love you.” The phrase is easily translated into hundreds of languages.  No problem with meaning, right? C. S. Lewis very artfully demonstrated the difficulties of expressing emotion through language in “The Four Loves“. Love, while seemingly a simple concept is an extremely complex emotion with many different contexts. For example, Marcy is married, has a child, both parents still living, several siblings, and many friends. Even though Marcy will say “I love you” to her spouse, child, parents, siblings, and friends, there is a different form of love expressed using the same words.

In addition to words, humans will use tonality, inflection, and expressions to help convey meaning. We’ve seen movies where one buddy will slur “I love ya” before the copious quantities of alcoholic libations previously consumed are unceremoniously liberated and/or unconsciousness. “I love you” spoken to a spouse can have different meanings depending on mood. The degree of love between two people can differ. Romantic comedies have used a variation of A loves B madly, B loves A not as much (or at all), hilarity ensues while equilibrium establishes or fails, and all the loose ends tidy up in about 105 minutes. Affection, or caring, or adoration, or comradery:  it’s still those three words, “I love you”.

The visual and audible cues are very important. How do we determine if a person is angry or pretending, sincere or lying, happy or putting on a brave face? We try to “read” a person’s clues in their voice, eyes, mouth, nose, neck, posture. People with certain spectral disorders lack the ability to pick up those cues, and some sociopaths have the ability to “fake” these cues on demand. Without those cues, we are subject to misinterpretation. Some people were uneasy watching “The Polar Express” because the available cutting edge Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) failed to adequately capture facial expressions. Compare those characters to a newer CGI film like “Avatar” and notice the more life-like facial expressions.

Make it simpler for your loved ones. Find time to ota hymy huuleen ja juoksee vastatuuleen when there is no risk for frostbite. Be genuine with your hugs and tell your loved ones that you care. Give them as many cues as you can. There is elegance in simplicity especially in a fast-paced and complex world.