The meaning of Fastidiousness

At Melissa May's blog, RShapiro left a comment with this description of "fastidiousness".

I've decided to concentrate on fastidiousness, which is a virtue related to modesty, but not the same as modesty. Fastidiousness is where cleanliness and neatness meet politeness and good manners. It's a quieter version of "classy." I think "Cleanliness is next to godliness" has been overplayed, but insofar as clean, neat dress, homes, and offices put others at greater ease, fastidiousness is something of a virtue too. So, like all professionals should, I'm trying to make sure my clothes fit properly and are appropriate to the occasion.

HT: Christa Taylor

Choosing our candidates

Keli Carender, aka Liberty Belle, a young conservative-libertarian activist in Seattle, makes an insightful comment in her post of April 27:

I will say this though: the time for protesting is winding down as campaign season picks up. I will be choosing my candidates in the next couple of weeks and I will be spending much more time on their campaigns than I will on organizing protests. We must be victorious at the ballot box or we will be up a raging creek without a paddle. We will only win in November if each of you finds one or two candidates to support and you give it your all. We all must sacrifice to get good people elected. Please, please make your decisions as soon as possible and COMMIT!

The last three years, I have waited until I got the ballot to choose my candidates. Keli is choosing her candidates now, in order to help them win other people's votes, not just her own.  I admire that.

To write love on her arms

Twa beautiful things I found this morning. First is Cori's blog Reaching Through the Dark, a string of song, prayer, drawings, and encouragings to win over those of us struggling with self-destructive thoughts.  From there, I found a link to an organization for the same purpose called To Write Love on Her Arms.  Read their opening story here.

Review: "Dreaming of You" by Selena

On the radio today, I heard the song "Dreaming of You" by Selena.

 Click and give a listen, then read my initial evaluation below.

Negative
Reminiscent of mid-nineties pop tunes
Sappy-sparkly singing and lyrics
"Nowhere in the world I'd rather be / than here in my room dreaming about you and me" makes halfway sense if her lover is literally with her, but since he's not, it's either dishonest or she idealizes dreams over the reality of being together.

Positive
Spanish background utterances
Tune has unexpected range
Tune is reminiscent of Mandarin pop
Regular and extended quatrimeter that depends on stress but is eminently punctuated
"Here in my room" and "tonight" paints a setting
Rhythm switches between 3/4 and 4/4, and between syncopated and regular

I looked up her bio, and it turns out it was written in the mid-nineties!  Selena was a tejana (Mexican-American) music star, which explains the Spanish in the background. "Dreaming of You" was released in 1995, a few months after she was murdered by the president of her fan club at age 24.  It turned out to be her biggest single, and it made #21 on the Billboard Hot 100 list for 1995/1996.

For some reason, people must still like her, because it was playing today on K103, Portland's soft rock station.

The self-revelation of run-on sentences

Sometimes writers had better stop when they're ahead.  The last clause in the sentence below unpeels everything that came before it.

And creationism? Anytime someone tells me they are a creationist, I find a way to get the hell away from them ASAP because they are either incredibly stupid, incredibly ignorant or blind to reality, in any case, they have virtually no "information" I have any interest in hearing.

Compliments of fenriq on Metafilter.com, December 4, 2003

Dix are for Dax

 Dictionaries are for autodidacts. If you don't know what that means, look it up.

Learning to read

 Over at David's blog, we have a little discussion going over the question: "What is it in our teaching that keeps highschool students from learning proper research skills?"

The two main deficiencies we came up with were self-discovery and reading skills.  Here's my latest response, expanding on reading skills:

"[M]any of the skills I mentioned are also found on standardized tests like the SAT or GRE. What I didn't learn just from heavy-duty reading, I learned from test prep materials.

For example, just last week I was reminded of analogies when I was studying for the GRE. Check out The Princeton Review's chapter on analogies here... it's excellent. Once students are able to spot relationships between objects and think of parallel relationships with other objects, then they apply it to what they're reading: "How does this relate to what I'm trying to find? Or if it doesn't relate, how does it narrow the possibilities?"

For reading comprehension, you could use short stories or articles with comprehension questions (timed, of course). These are also on standardized tests. The desired result is the ability to skim, or focus, or pick out details, as the situation requires.

Sentence-stripping or arcing... at the sentence level, you have to learn to ignore the extra words and find the subject, verb, object, and connectors. I first started doing this with a sentence-diagramming workbook in 7th grade, but it took off in constitutional law class when I had to read wordy supreme court opinions. Underlining the key words, and restating if necessary, is essential. At the paragraph level, John Piper has a method called arcing. I haven't learned it, but it makes sense. Check out http://biblearc.com.

Relevance is just something I constantly have to remind myself of. If I chase too many irrelevant topics, I get distracted or bored, and the time is gone. Search functions, indexes, tables of contents are your friends.

Footnotes and bibliographies are your friends even more. Try picking up two or three scholarly books on the same subject. Scan through their bibliographies for matching sources. Look through the footnotes for the chapter that is most relevant to your area of research. Is there a name or a book that keeps coming up? Get it. That's the expert that both of your authors look up to, or are responding to. I originally heard this from Gregg Harris, and now it's like a game for me. (Hint: to find scholarly articles or old reviews of old books, try Jstor. Your local library might be subscribed.)

Manageable note-taking: I still haven't mastered it yet. Two hints here: 1) Experiment with outlines for your essay before you start writing. Use mindmap software, a whiteboard, or a notebook... it doesn't matter as long as you do it. Then fill in your text and quotes in the outline. 2) Underline and write in the margins. Have a conversation with the author, because your opinion is just as human as his, and you can't write about what you thought of his ideas unless you remember what you thought... and finally, you should ask the author questions. They might be answered in the next paragraph. Do this moderately with books you own, and heavily with articles you've printed out. Keep the articles in a folder, and when you get to a place in your essay that you remember a point from article X, you can reach in and quote the exact wording, because you probably underlined it.

Finally, check out Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book.

Did I miss something? Have a story to add? Comment below, or join the original conversation.

David Livingstone quote

In the past couple months, my friend David and I have been tracking down quotes used in the NCFCA Apologetics speech event.  First, we unearthed the George Bernard Shaw quote (2SA1).  Then, David theorized about the structure of Category 1, the attributes of God.  More recently, I documented the Linda Hope quote (4SA5).

Today, I decided to track down 1SA1, a quote from David Livingstone:

Analyze and respond to the statement, “The existence of God and of a future life is everywhere recognized in Africa.” David Livingstone

This statement is taken word for word from Augustus Strong's Systematic Theology (2nd ed. 1889) p. 31.  Strong is severely outdated as a source on religious anthropology, but if you're starting to write a speech on the subject, this section of the book is organized, orthodox, and well-stocked with quotes.

Those races and nations which have at first seemed destitute of such knowledge have uniformly, upon further investigation, been found to possess it, so that no tribe of men with which we have thorough acquaintance can be said to be without an object of worship. We may presume that further knowledge will show this to be true of all.

[Robert] Moffat, who reported that certain African tribes wore destitute of religion, was corrected by the testimony of his son-in-law, [David] Livingstone: "The existence of God and of a future life is everywhere recognized in Africa."

 Using Google Books, I was able to find many editions of Livingstone's book Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa.  They all contained the quote in one version or another, but it's clear that the book was abridged over the years.  The first edition (1857) should be the most accurate reflection of Livingstone's thought.

From chapter 8, p. 158:

The indirect and scarcely appreciable blessings of Christian missionaries going about doing good are thus probably not so despicable as some might imagine; there is no necessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of a God, or of a future state, the facts being universally admitted. Everything that cannot be accounted for by common causes is ascribed to the Deity, as creation, sudden death, &c. " How curiously God made these things!" is a common expression; as is also, " He was not killed by disease, he was killed by God." And, when speaking of the departed—though there is nought in the physical appearance of the dead to justify the expression— they say, " He has gone to the gods,"...

 Because Strong introduced Moffat into the story, he must have been reading from the appendix to Dr. Livingstone's Cambridge Lectures, edited by William Monk (1858).  There, Monk repeates the quote from Missionary Travels and contrasts it with earlier statements from Robert Moffat that the Hottentots and Namaquas did not have a concept of God.

Livingstone's statement brings with it some conditions.  First, he was writing specifically about some bush tribes in Zambia: the Bakalaharis, the Bechuanas, and the Bakwains.  Second, it must be compared with the findings of other missionaries like Moffat, and with those of modern anthropologists.  Third, while Livingstone reported that Africans knew that God existed and there was life after death, he also said on the same page that they thought kneeling in prayer was hilarious, and their sense of right and wrong were far from Christian.

To put Livingstone's words into perspective, read the entirety of chapter 8 in Missionary Travels, and then search the book for words like 'existence' to find other anecdotes about African beliefs on spirits, gods, and a life after death.

Finally, we must realize that Livingstone had a definite bias.  He was sent as a missionary, but his main goals were exploration and social justice.  He preached, and only made one African convert that we know about.  He recorded observations on geography, natural history, medicine, anthropology, culture, religion, and commerce.  He was motivated to open up the interior of Africa to "Christianity, commerce, and civilization," to replace the slave trade with production of raw materials for export, and to recruit missionaries to settle in Africa and be a colonizing force for the gospel.

Sjoerd Rijpma, in her book An African Surprise: What Livingstone really discovered in tropical Africa, points out a number of distortions in Missionary Travels (pp. 16-23 of the pdf).  She concludes,

It may have been disconcerting to hear ‘what Livingstone really did in Africa’. Yet, if one considers that he was an explorer with a ‘mission’ in the first place, and that he did not want to be obstructed in this mission, it is possible to see our own frustration and that of his twentieth century biographers in perspective. He was not the nice missionary, and doctor, and not even a successful ‘amateur field scientist’, nor a ‘highly motivated Victorian missionary’. For those reasons one must conclude that David Livingstone cannot be considered as a ‘usable’, let alone ‘reliable’ source of ‘general’ information. However, his specific observations as a professional, all in the field in which he was trained (medicine, natural history), ‘reveal Livingstone at his best, recording information in which his emotions and ideals were not directly engaged’, as we soon shall see.

 Even though Livingstone's accounts are not totally reliable, I would trust specific anecdotes of his conversations with tribal people.  His conclusions about religion being universal can be backed up with evidence from other sources, including Romans 1:16-21:

[T]he gospel... is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek [non-Jew].... For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.  For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him...

David Livingstone's travel accounts open for us a window on how Africans (his subject) and Europeans (his readers) of the mid-1800s viewed the world.  Let me emphasize: he was one of only a handful of sources by which Brits and Americans could learn about people in Africa.  According to lists here and here, he was one of the first to report from Zambia and other parts of the interior.  When Livingstone said most of the tribal people he had met already knew about God and an afterlife, this contradicted the ambivalent reports of his father-in-law Robert Moffat, and confirmed Romans 1 as factual.  It was big news in 1857.

In that spirit, I offer you a link to Juvenile Missionary Magazine (1857) p. 178, with a story of David Livingstone's travels repackaged just for kids.

Floydian Snip

I think they meant "Judges, not Jurors".  Oh, the pressures of politics to produce excitable and mildly clever script on the dregs of last night's coffee.

Kaplan on the Economics of the Family

Bryan Caplan of the Liberty Fund's Econlog taught a class at George Mason University about the economics of the family.  In the notes, he outlines the dynamics of the market for mates, labor allocation within the family unit, the economics of family size, economic incentives for divorce and out-of-wedlock births, and finally he gives an alternate view of gender history in light of these economic factors. 

Here's a sample: 

Most people today probably marry for love, but few regard all attributes as equally lovable. Instead, most people are looking for a partner with desirable traits... This suggests that we can look at dating/love/marriage as a special kind of market.

It is usually a barter market, where a given level of "male mate value" enables you to "buy" a given level of "female mate value." (Exception: dowries, bride-prices).

One big part of the expense [of having kids] is the mother's foregone labor earnings. The more income a mother can earn, the fewer kids we expect her to have. This is precisely what we see - high-income women have fewer kids, and family sizes are smaller in rich countries than in poor countries. However, this argument is not air-tight. As wealth increases, demand for all goods - including kids - rises.

Divorce can also be analyzed from an economic point of view. Individuals try to get divorces when they decide they are better off without their spouse. Make divorce cheaper - more people get divorced. Ban divorce - people think harder about who to marry.

Complication - women's mate value generally falls more rapidly than men's. Lifetime benefits of a marriage can be equal for both men and women, but men's benefits are more "front-loaded" than women's. Alimony is one way to try to keep incentives well-aligned.

The traditional family structure was technologically necessary for most of human history assuming women wanted to have children. An overwhelming majority did. Family structure changed because technology reduced the burden of household production, and because families decided to reduce their number of children.

Memo to Generations with Vision Forum: invite Professor Caplan to speak at your next family econopolicy conference.  I haven't heard much from their current lineup, but somehow I'm tired of seeing the same keynotes each time.

Don Nadie vs. Don Alguien

Solomon's humor is legendary.  The NVI Spanish translation of Proverbs 12:9 gets it just right.

Vale más un Don Nadie con criado
      que un Don Alguien sin pan.

'Mr. Nobody is worth more with a servant than Mr. Somebody without bread.'

Another Spanish version, Biblia en Lenguaje Sencillo 'Bible in Simple Language' doesn't capture the same sense, but its poetry reminds me of Silvio Rodriguez' "La Verguenza".

Mas vale pobre acompañado,
    que rico abandonado.

'A poor one accompanied is worth more than a rich one abandoned.'

Updating the manuals

I'm chronologically challenged.  I pretend it's because I love history.  The upside is I only pay used prices for books and food that are out of date.  The downside is they're sometimes stale.  The second upside is that I never have to wait for the sequel to come out.

Case in point: Bible Translation: Frames of Reference, edited by Timothy Wilt.  It was published in 2002 by St. Jerome in Manchester, UK, the only publishing house in the world solely dedicated to printing translation studies. 

From the Introduction (pp. ix-ii):

In 1999, during a seminar on the training of new Bible-translation consultants, it
was observed that Nida and Taber's (1969) The Theory and Practice of Translation
(TAPOT) was still considered by a significant number of people to be indicative of an
organizationally supported, contemporary approach to Bible translation. Over the decades
since TAPOT's appearance, many publications on translating the Bible and secular
literature have indicated ways in which T APOT is limited, dated or untenable, and have
presented enlarged or alternative perspectives. But these more recent studies have often
focused on a particular academic sub-field or on translations in a particular language.
Those attending the seminar concluded that it would be helpful to have a book providing
a general perspective on Bible translation at the turn of the twenty-first century, in part by
indicating important developments since the appearance of TAPOT. Bible Translation:
Frames of Reference attempts to offer this.

I have the prequel to TAPOT on my bookshelf, Toward a Science of Translation by Eugene Nida (1964).  It's nice to know that the profession has progressed since that time, and that the old men want to keep us in the loop about those changes.

PS: Why do most of the best translation scholars live in Europe? 
Why do most of the best missiologists live overseas on the field?
We have the best theoretical linguistics here in the States, but their accessibility is another story.  I guess that's why all three of the types I mentioned write books.  And... there is a period between the time missionaries return home and the time they die of old age.  They're a great, unknown, resource then.

Non-verbal oral literature?

Mountford, K. 1978. Ph.D. qualifying examination for linguistics. Lingua Pranca (Ernst & Smith, eds.). Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.

Develop a new non-verbal system of communication independent of all known linguistic models. Estimate the impact this form of communication would have had on the oral tradition in literature if it had developed instead of speech.

The mysterious "good vibes" quote

In the list of topics for NCFCA apologetics speakers, there is one quote with a mysterious source.

4SA5, as I call it (category 4, statement analysis 5), states the following:

Analyze and respond to the following statement, “I know that all of the good vibes he sent out will return to carry him off to a better place.” Comment made after to death of Bob Hope.

Who made the comment?  I had wondered for six years, ever since the topics were released in 2004 and I was a first-year speaker in high school.

Now, we knew there are random sources, but there is no such thing as a generic source.  Take that female voice on the telephone, for example.  If we knew who said the "good vibes" quote, could we understand better what it means?  Yes, for several reasons.

1. We might be able to find the actual quote, and compare it with the official version published by NCFCA.

2. We might be able to contact the source and ask what he or she meant.

3. We might be able to gather context from the words surrounding the original comment, and combine it with other things the source has said or written.

Who said it?  The same young lady that baffled this blindfolded TV audience in 1956.




And now, thanks to modern news databases, we have the actual quote in context.  From a CNN newscast of the press conference:

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We've got to take our viewers now -- Linda Hope speaking about her father.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
LINDA HOPE, BOB HOPE'S DAUGHTER: ... to have you all here is really wonderful. And I just wanted to express our appreciation. I speak on behalf of my family, for all of the outpouring of love and affection that not only the media has shown but, also, all of his many fans and friends. And it is, you know, so heart warming to all of us at this stage.

And I just wanted to let you all know that Dad had an amazing send-off. All of the family was together with him and he died very peacefully last night, just about 9:30. And I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. And I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up.

Here's how other news agencies reported the quote in print:

Agence France Presse -- English
July 28, 2003 Monday
Bob Hope to be buried privately, public mass to follow

"I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up."

              ------------------------

Northern Territory News (Australia)
July 30, 2003 Wednesday
Hope's last smile was for family
BYLINE: By STEVE GORMAN

Linda Hope said: "Dad had an amazing send-off ... I think all the good vibes he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up."

            -----------------------

The Northern Echo
July 29, 2003
TRIBUTES PAID AS LEGENDARY COMEDIAN BOB HOPE DIES
BYLINE: Tom Kelly

She said: "Dad had an amazing send-off. All the family were together with him. I don't think he could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. "I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back."

                ----------------

Agence France Presse -- English
July 28, 2003 Monday
US entertainment legend Bob Hope dead at 100
BYLINE: MARC LAVINE

"Dad had an amazing send-off," daughter Linda Hope said. "I can't tell you how beautiful and serene and peaceful it was." A priest and medical staff were also with the showman when he passed away, she said. "I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. I think all the good vibes that he put out
during his lifetime came back to take him up."

           ----------------

The Toronto Sun
July 29, 2003 Tuesday Final Edition
END OF THE ROAD;
BOB HOPE EXITS WITH A SMILE BUT NO LAST WORDS
BYLINE: BY SUN WIRE SERVICES

Linda Hope said, "Dad had an amazing send-off ... I think all the good vibes he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up."

             -------------------------

Agence France Presse -- English
July 29, 2003 Tuesday
US entertainment legend Bob Hope dies at 100
BYLINE: MARC LAVINE

"Dad had an amazing send-off," daughter Linda Hope said. "I can't tell you how beautiful and serene and peaceful it was." A priest and medical staff were also with Hope -- who is the most honoured entertainer in history -- when he died, she said. "I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up."

            -------------------

CNN
July 28, 2003 Monday
SHOW: LIVE FROM... 13:00
Remembering Bob Hope
BYLINE: Frank Buckley, Kyra Phillips


This morning, at the Television Academy, Linda Hope, who is Bob Hope's daughter, described her dad as a man who was -- quote -- "full of fun," as she put it. She also set the scene last night, as he passed away here at his home.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LINDA HOPE, BOB HOPE'S DAUGHTER: ... Dad had an amazing send- off. All of the family was together with him and he died very peacefully last night, just about 9:30. And I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. And I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

           -------------------

Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia)
July 30, 2003 Wednesday
No last line, just a kiss and a smile

Describing her father's final hours as he lay dying of pneumonia on Monday night at his home -- two months after he turned 100 -- Linda Hope said: "Dad had an amazing send-off . . . I think all the good vibes he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up".

           --------------------

Press Association
July 28, 2003, Monday
JOKING TO THE END, BOB HOPE DIES AT 100
BYLINE: Tom Kelly, Anita Singh and Simon Baker, PA News

She added: "Dad had an amazing send off. All the family were together with him. I don't think he could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. "I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back." A priest said a mass for the comic and several nurses who had treated him were also at his death bed. "The fact that there was a little bit of an audience around warmed dad's heart."

            --------------------

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
ROUNDUP: Legendary entertainer Bob Hope dies at age 100
July 28, 2003, Monday

"Dad had an amazing send off. All the family were together with him," Linda said. "I don't think he could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back."

             -------------------

Belfast News Letter (Northern Ireland)
July 29, 2003, Tuesday
COMEDIAN BOB BOWS OUT WITH A LAST LAUGH

His daughter Linda said that when asked shortly before his death where he wanted to be buried, he said: "Surprise me." She added: "Dad had an amazing send off. All the family were together with him. I don't think he could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. "I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back."

           -------------------

City News Service
July 28, 2003 Monday
Bob Hope-Family
BYLINE: By CHE TABISOLA, City News Service
DATELINE: NORTH HOLLYWOOD

One of Bob Hope's four children said today that her father's death at age 100 at the family's longtime Toluca Lake home was "beautiful and serene and peaceful." "I just wanted to let you all know that Dad had an amazing sendoff," Linda Hope said. "All the family was together with him, and he died very peacefully last night, just about 9:30. "And I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death," she said. "I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up."

            ----------------------------

BPI Entertainment News Wire
July 28, 2003, Monday
Showbiz colleagues thank Hope for the memories;
The Hollywood Reporter


"I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. I think all the good vibes he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up." -- Daughter Linda Hope

            --------------------

The Mercury (Australia)
July 30, 2003 Wednesday
Family creates final audience
BYLINE: MICHAEL McKENNA

Linda said her father, who turned 100 in May, had had an "amazing send-off ".
"I think all the good vibes he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up," she said.

           -----------------

The Irish Times
July 29, 2003
Hope leaves them laughing to the very end
BYLINE: By CONOR O'CLERY, North America Editor

"I think all the good vibes he gave off during his lifetime came back to take him up. "Dad had an amazing send-off. It's been an amazing life. You couldn't ask for a more beautiful, peaceful time."

           ------------------

Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)
July 30, 2003 Wednesday
World wakes to life without Hope
BYLINE: MICHAEL McKENNA in Los Angeles

His daughter Linda said her father, who turned 100 in May, had an "amazing send-off". "I think all the good vibes he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up," she said.

           ------------------------------

Agence France Presse -- English
July 30, 2003 Wednesday
America's court jester Bob Hope buried privately

"Dad had an amazing send-off," daughter Linda Hope said as she announced his death Monday. "I can't tell you how beautiful and serene and peaceful it was." "I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up."

            ----------------------------

hollywoodreporter.com
July 29, 2003 Tuesday
Showbiz colleagues thank Hope for the memories
SOURCE: Online
BYLINE: Staff report

"I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. I think all the good vibes he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up."
-- Daughter Linda Hope

            ----------------------

City News Service
July 28, 2003 Monday
Thanks for the Memories, Bob


"I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death," Linda Hope told reporters outside the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. "And I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up."

             -------------------

MSNBC
July 28, 2003 Monday
SHOW: SHOW: COUNTDOWN 20:00
COUNTDOWN for July 28, 2003
BYLINE: Keith Olbermann; Monica Novotny; Tom Brokaw; Pete Williams
GUESTS: Darryll Dawkins; E.J. Dionne; John Dean

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LINDA HOPE, DAUGHTER OF BOB HOPE: I don't think you could have asked for a more peaceful, beautiful death. And I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up.
(END VIDEOTAPE)

Now that you have reviewed all the different reported versions of the quote, what kind of variation do you see?  A word left out here and there; the sort of thing that happens when a reporter is on the scene with a notebook.  Or a few sentences clipped and added out of order; the sort of thing that happens when a reporter takes raw soundbites and makes them a coherent story.

And then you have NCFCA's official version.  Look at them side by side:

NCFCA: “I know that all of the good vibes he sent out will return to carry him off to a better place.”
CNN:  "And I think all the good vibes that he put out during his lifetime came back to take him up."

Exactly 8 out of the 21 words were in the original.  Some of the other words are paraphrases, and some were added to interpret the underlying meaning.

Where did the NCFCA version come from?  We'd have to ask them.  I would surmise, though, that someone on staff there heard it on the radio or TV, or read it in one of these stories, and wrote it down later from memory when he or she was compiling the list of apologetics quotes.

At any rate, with an inaccurate quote, you have to choose your keywords carefully when you search for the original.

When the human brain is motivated by a goal like compiling a list of quotes around a topic, it will remember things that it filed earlier under that topic.  The brain has subconsciously filled in details to make sense of the utterance in the context of that person's beliefs and experience.  A famous example of this is Sir Frederic Bartlett's experiment with the American Indian story "The War of the Ghosts".  (I first heard of this example in Greg Thomson's class on Second Language Acquisition at SIL.)

What if we apply our findings to other apologetics topics, for instance the accuracy of the gospels? We should expect variation among reporters, especially when the wrote 30 years after they heard Jesus' words, not just a day or a year.  We shouldn't be surprised when details are rearranged to tell a coherent story.  Above all, we should be thankful for the sovereign influence of the Holy Ghost on the apostles, that helped them remember and write down a true account of Jesus' life and teachings, in a form that would be useful to the church.

Is there anything else that will help us interpret what Linda Hope mean by "good vibes"?  See the following interview from just two months before her father died:

CTV Television, Inc.
08:12:50 - 08:17:45 Eastern Time
SHOW: CANADA AM
May 29, 2003, Thursday
Bob Hope Celebrates 100th Birthday
ANCHOR: Lisa LaFlamme
GUEST: Linda Hope, Daughter of Comedian Bob Hope

LaFLAMME: One hundred years ago today the legendary Bob
Hope was born. And show business has never been the same. His
career has spanned more than seven decades, and although he is best
known for his outrageous comedy routines, the former vaudeville
performer perhaps made his greatest mark entertaining US troops
abroad. "My Life in Jokes" is a new book co-written by Bob Hope
and his daughter Linda. And Linda joins us this morning from New
York.
Good morning, Ms. Hope.

HOPE: Good morning. How are you?

LaFLAMME: I'm well. And what an absolute pleasure it was to read
this book. How much fun was it for you writing it with your
father?

HOPE: Oh, it was great fun. I went through all of his
autobiographies that he had written. And he had done several of
them at different phases of his life. And I went through
interviews and all of that stuff. So I really compiled it. He did
all the work early on and then I just kind of put it in some kind
of order for this particular book.

LaFLAMME: But such a massive volume of work to have to go through
to pare down to such an adorable-size book, actually. Was that a
tough part, to wheedle it down?

HOPE: It was an enormous task. And actually we had a very short
period of time to get the job done so that it would be on the
stands in time for his birthday. So it was a challenge, to say the least.

LaFLAMME: How is he doing? I mean 100 years. Any insight into
the secret of his longevity?

HOPE: Well, actually -- thank you for asking -- he's doing pretty
good. And I think probably if you were to ask him the secret of
his longevity it's a couple of things. One is laughter, which I
think he certainly believes that laughter is the best medicine.
And I have seen him where he has travelled and been tired and had
to perform at a certain moment in time. And he gets up for it and
then would come back after doing a 45-minute to an hour show and be
absolutely energized by all the good vibes from the laughter.
And two other things. One is that he was a great walker. He
walked every night. No matter where he was he would take a walk
just before he went to bed -- and enlist anybody who was around to
walk with him. And the last thing is massage. He is sort of the
poster boy for massage because I think since he was, you know,
probably in his 40s he has had a massage almost every day of his
life.

LaFLAMME: What do you think the best moment of his life has been?
HOPE: Gosh, it would be hard to say. But I think certainly when
he got married to my mother it was a high point, because they just
celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary. Which is an amazing
record.
And then I think on another level a couple of years ago the
Congress declared him an honorary veteran of the United States.
And that meant that he was then numbered among those men and women
that he loved to entertaining. So that was a very touching moment
for him.

LaFLAMME: Did he also sort of entertain you and his four kids?
Did he entertain you guys at home, or no?

HOPE: Absolutely. We just had the greatest time with him. I
mean, he was born to have a good time and to share that laughter.
And he shared it very generously with us and with his public. But
life was never dull with him.

LaFLAMME: What about premieres? You know, would he gather up the
kids and take you to the movies as they opened? Or how did that
work as far as running a normal family and having such a massive
career?

HOPE: Well, we actually did get to go to an awful lot of those
things. I remember one evening, it was kind of funny. I was a
teenager and very excited because we got to go to the Oscars. And
my mother and dad were all done up, Dad in his tuxedo and Mother in a lovely gown.
And it happened to be raining that year. And when we got home we
discovered there was a leak in the dining room. So, my dad rolled
up the cuffs of his pants and my mother put on an apron and I was
there holding the bucket. And we mopped up our dining room. So,
it was sort of a great equalizer. You had the glamorous moments
and then came home to a leaky roof, like a lot of people have.

LaFLAMME: That is a great story. And you know what, Linda Hope,
this is a great book and a tribute to your father. And we thank
you so much for joining us today.

HOPE: Well, thank you. It's nice to be with you.

LaFLAMME: And happy birthday to your father.
HOPE: Thank you.

I'll let you do the rest of the research on your own.  Start with the full versions of the articles quoted above.

• Transcript of Linda Hope's press conference
• The rest of the articles

And if you want to go further, read the book.

• Bob Hope with Linda Hope, My Life in Jokes

Doty on Bible Translation in Thailand

Today I found one of the most significant PhD theses I have ever seen.  It was written in 2007 at the University of Auckland in New Zealand by Steve Doty.  Dr. Doty now teaches linguistics at Payap University in Thailand, one of the schools I'm considering for my next degree. 

In this thesis, he tells the story of a paradigm shift in Bible translation since 1950, from "literal" to "meaning-based", all the way to having local communities choose their own approach to translation.  He tells the role of SIL (Wycliffe Bible Translators), and their very influential translation theorist, Eugene Nida.  Then he explains how this change took place and examines a dozen of the critics of this movement.  Finally, he provides original research from a survey in Thailand on how well people are able to understand Bible stories translated three different ways.

I took the liberty of uploading the thesis to Scribd because the servers at Auckland aren't working right now. 
Browse below.
SH Doty, The Paradigm Shift in Bible Translation in the Modern Era, With Special Focus on Thai

How to avoid graduation

How to Avoid Graduation is 54 pages of sober, self-inflicted fun.  It was written by "Sam Ask", a Swedish academic, and translated into English by one of his grad students, hoping to avoid graduation no doubt. 

Here's a sample from pages 46 and 47:

Get married, get divorced, join a club... The basic principle is that all changes in life are bound to take up a lot of time, and thereby actively contribute to reaching the ultimate goal, which is avoid graduation at all costs.  This strategy can be generally formulated as "Change X" where X can be given an arbitrary value...

• Change your partner.
• Change your place to stay.
• Change your job.
• Change your car.
• Change your advisor.
• Change your computer.
• Change your word-processor.

The last one is especially recommended. Lengthy hours will go to learning the new program and above all to converting old dissertation files to the new format.  The classical change-strategy is however:

• Change your thesis topic.

A footnote to history

People in history have more sides than we know. Take, for example, the Wright brothers, or the author of Strong's Concordance.

1. Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the airplane.  If they hadn't, the rest of this would just be a footnote to a footnote.

2. Their father, Milton Wright, was a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.

3. When Milton was 30, he asked Susan Koerner to join him on a mission to Oregon. She said no to Oregon and yes to him. They stayed in Ohio.

4. In the 1890s, the United Brethren had a massive church split. Some say it was over introducing Calvinism... some say it was over allowing members to join secret societies like the Freemasons. Either way, one group left the conference and started their own denomination under the same name, and proceeded to claim the church publishing house and property. Wilbur wrote two pamphlets for his father, defending the conservative sect which was against secret societies.

5. The church split became a property-ownership case in the supreme courts of Ohio, Oregon, Illinois, and several other states. In the Ohio case, one side brought in as their witnesses Phillip Schaff (editor of The Creeds of Christendom and The Ante-Nicene Fathers) and James Strong (author of Strong's Exhaustive Concordance).

Read about it in The Bishop's Boys by Tom Crouch, the following catalog of Wilbur's writings, and the History of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ (1910).

flush / flesh

This comic is good. Chaucer would approve.

Stick World Comics: flush / flesh

What do you think the real origin of "flush it out" was?

The De-Assification of Music

"I am for the luxury ideal in art but let the luxury be ideal and not a reversion to savagery." - Carroll Brent Chilton, The De-Assification of Music (1921)

Why you should start a company in Portland

Laura Rich, "Why you should start a company in... Portland, Oregon." Fast Company (March 23, 2010)

The Portland Development Commission is so proud, they sent a link to their email subscribers.  If a mayor wants to help attract entrepreneurs, it helps to meet with the start-up team the first time they come to the city.  Good job.