The More You Spend The More You Save

This evening, I caught the tail end of a Zale's commercial exclaiming,, "The more you spend the more you save."  Contrast that with, "A penny saved is a penny earned."  Neither actually makes any sense except for the fact that if you do save a penny on day 1, then on day 2, it is as if you earned a penny on day 1 though of course you didn't.  The Zale's ad is even stupider, which is troubling for it presumes (as is true for many people I fear) that people will be so seduced by the combination of the gratifying concept of spending -- don't we all love to spend? -- and the comforting concept of saving to rush to Zale's  to buy diamonds.  However, trust me, if you go by Ben Franklin's adage on day 1 you will have more money on day 2 than if you abide by Zale's.

At the Zale's web site linked to the title of this blog, you get a bit different version of this promotional scheme, namely "the more you buy the more you save."  Notice that these two claims are linguistically different.  We spend money to buy things.  However, what the web site offers is savings in proportion to how much you spend, not how many things you buy. 

According to Zale's, if you spend $250-$449, you save $25 dollars.  Clearly the smart shopper would spend just $250 and get thereby a 10% reduction.  If he or she were to spend $449. he or she would get a tiny bit more than 5%.  If he or she spends $500 to $999, he or she wold get $50 back, which offers the same percentage reduction/savings.

Offers scale upward from the lowest level of spending upward to a maximum of $1,000 if you spend $5,000 or more.  Notice that spending $5,000 gets you a savings of 25%.  Wow, what a deal!  The problem is that if you stayed out of Zale's and did not spend $250 there on day 1, you would still have $250 on day 2, but if you spend that $250, you would be down $225.  So, spending money at Zale's doesn't save you money unless you are determined to spend $250 and don't go to a store that gives you a better break.  In short, while a penny saved may not be a penny earned, a penny spent is definitely neither a penny earned nor a penny saved.

I am lucky.  My wife has never demanded or even hinted she wanted diamonds or any other kind of pricey jewelry.  I think I did once buy some pearl stud earrings in a fit of romantic fervor,  but that would have been a long time ago.  I suggest to men that they flee from any woman who really, really wants jewelry, other than, say, an engagement ring.  My wife and I got married with no engagement ring and no wedding rings, but when we went to Scotland for a couple of months the next Summer, we had a craft jeweler make us matching wedding rings.  I suppose that made us legal.  It sure made my mother-in-law happier.  It is possible to spend money on other, probably more sensible things.

Israeli Linguist A Bit Too Full Of Herself

An Israeli linguist seems to think she has turned the linguistic world upside down with her new meaning for the word "most."  A UPN article states

Professor Mira Ariel of Tel Aviv University says her research "is quite shocking for the linguistics world" and proves some of her fellow linguists are wrong in their definition of the word "most."

She claims that we linguists believe that

"most" generally means 51 percent to 99 percent of a group of people or objects.

but that in a survey she and her colleagues did, a number of persons

understood "most" to mean about 80 percent to 95 percent of a group and not the much larger range of 51 percent to 99 percent.

One very serious problem with her claims is that no self-respecting linguist would ever say that "most" means 51 percent to 99 percent of a group or means '80 percent to 95 percent of a group.'  This is just now how we use the word "mean."

Professor Ariel seems not to understand the distinction between "meaning" and "use".  It very well may be that people use "most" in a proposition like "Most Ps are Q" in circumstances in which 80-95% of the relevant Ps have the property Q.  But that is not what it means.  That is how we use it.  I am not sure how to characterize what it means but I am sure that that is not what it means.

If I say, that most Ps are Q and it turns out that 97% of the Ps are Q is what I said false?  Surely not. And if it turns out that 75% of the Ps are Q, is what I said false"?  Again, surely not.  This may not be how people generally use "most" but the meaning of "most," whatever it is, is consistent with these two claims being true and so long as that is true, then we can be sure that Professor Ariel is wrong about what "most" means.

The Right Wing Propaganda Machine

After Obama was inaugurated, he made himself excessively visible.  Anyone in show business knows that you always leave them wanting more.  The problem is that Obama kept himself front and center, shoiwing up on TV virtually every day.  Before we had time to want to see him again, there he was announcing this or that new appointment, putting forth this or that new policy, or giving an interview.  As a result, Obama fatigue has set in and that has left him very vulnerable to the lies being told by the health industry about his and the Democratic Congressional health care bill, Fox News, and whoever else feels animus toward him, including especially those who harbor ill-feeling toward African Americans.

Naturally, the Antis will say they are pure of thought and that their objections to Obama are based on his actions as well as his apparent inaction.  The Rasmussen Reports don't bear them out.

Seventy-four percent (74%) of African-Americans Strongly Approve along with just 19% of white voters (see other recent demographic highlights from the tracking poll).
Among all voters, just 34% now give the President good or excellent marks on his handling of the economy while 47% say he is doing a poor job in that arena. On national security issues, 42% say good or excellent while 41% say poor.
Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters believe that political correctness kept the military from preventing the Fort Hood shootings. 

So, what we see is a striking division between Blacks and Whites as to how he is doing, which is a bit of a give away that racial attitudes are coloring perceptions.  That sort of thing didn't keep him from being elected but given the continued high unemployment and many other issues, he is guarnteed not to have a second term.  As James Carville famously said, "It's the economy, stupid."

The last of these three items is especially interesting.  It is clear that the military knew that Major Hasan was a Muslim and that he was disgruntled.  Naturally in a country Bush poisoned with his constant drumbeat of "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", "9/11", etc, and given the disposition of people to posit conspiracies wherever they see something they don't understand, right-wingers and various and sundry other nutcases are sure this was part of a terrorist plot.

Conspiracy theories are the refuge of those who have agendas or are laboring in ignorance.  I recall the theories graduate students had about admissions policies in my university department.  Early on we used  a Master's exam to help determine who would be admitted to the Doctoral progrm.   A minority would not be admitted and the theory emerged that we had a quota, never mind that limiting the number of students we admitted actually hurt the department economically.

I first encountered the theory that Major Hasan's actions were the result of a terrorist plot on the Dennis Miller show and that political correctness, the bane of right wing, was in full flower in this case.  I was rather surprised.  Naturally, the military is reluctant to jump to the view that Hasan was acting out of an anti-American or anti-military political stance.  That would be beyond stupid, bordering on being imbecilic.

Not so, the right wing in America tells us.  At Right Pundits we find

Why are we able to so easily label Malik Nadal Hasan a terrorist? The fact speaks for itself. He is just as much a domestic terrorist as Timothy McVeigh was labeled so for his heinous act in Oklahoma City. And while McVeigh perpetuated his act from afar in silence, Malik Nadal Hasan shouted anti-American political views at his victims as he mowed them down with automatic weapons.

 The first thing I learned about Major Hasan is that he really, really, really didn't want to go to Iraq.  The military is not disposed to worry overmuch about where soldiers do and do not want to be posted, but they probably should in some cases.  This would have been one.

The title of this article is "Malik Nadal Hasan: Muslim Terrorist Challenges Obama’s Timidity."  I suppose this could be more misleading but I don't know how.  I seriously doubt that Obama told the military how it should go about its investigation or how it should present the facts to the public.  Nevertheless, Obama is vulnerable to any attack on anything American by any Muslim.  Its a right wing freebie.

Obama neeeds to do the following by next year at this time.

1. Get the health care bill in place.
2.  Somehow get unemployment to turn around.  I can think of some ways -- how about using unemployment benefits as subsidies to businesses who hire the uneployed for a year, say.
3.  Get the hell out of Iraq.
4.  Render Al Queda and the Talliban totally impotent.

If he does 1 and 2, it is possible that he will get a second term.  If he does 1-3, he will get one.  If he gets all four he will be elected President for Life.

On Be Look Professional

Many years ago (1967 or so), I bought a wonderful Yamaha 250 cc motorcycle, the manual for which had this instruction for shifting gears:

Tachometer tells the moment to do.

Unfortunately, the RPMs given for gear shiftng kept this very fast motorcycle operating a little slower than a motor scooter. One evening, I told a friend who had ridden behind the original owner that the instructions couldn't be right and he offered to ride behind me and tell me when to shift. He did not look at the tachometer. He used his ears. I suppose the manual could have said.

Ears tell the moment to do.

Once I got the pitch right, I was golden. I suspect that some junior executive at Yahama persuaded his bosses that his English was excellent and he could ably translate the manual. On balance he didn't do badly.

Today, I happend across a web site while hunting for information as to what might be down the line for Blackberry phones given the buzz surrounding the iPhone and the new Androd phones. I came across this paragraph.

The Blackberry mobile phones are looking professionals and stylish mobile phone with can peoples are attract to this phone. Blackberry is the smart phones which is the most popular in the world with its charming features. It offers accessibility to an extensive variety of applications many wireless instruments across the world. It provides accessibility to an extensive variety of applications on several wireless instruments across the globe. by data and other services.

This piece of prose shocked me even more than that Yamaha manual.

This articale comes from Weblineindia, a link to which is associated with the blog title. That's what's shocking. If I have prejudices in regard to India, they are (1) Indians are very smart and very well-educated; (2) Many if not most Indians know English either natively or fluently; and (3) India has a bunch of great cuisines.

I clicked on the link and the first paragraph that popped up was this one:

Now a day ecommerce is a very popular among the internet users, so what is Ecommerce? People are habituated to sell and purchase their products or any types of items on the internet, its called ecommerce, and to online sell products you need ecommerce web...

So, it only gets worse. It is possible that these articles were written in some regional Indian language and run through some bad translating program. More likely, we are dealing with people who have big brains (see prejudice 1 above) but smal English language centers (see apparently false prejudice 2).

These articles are represented as "free content for your website or blog," which further confirms the axiom that you get what you pay for. I know that what I am writing is rather snobish, possibly even mean-spirited, for I would seem to be making fun of people who are, after all, doing their best. To that, I say, "bullshit." If I planned to publish something in German or Spanish I sure as hell wouldn't translate it myself.

Surely, if you are actually trying to inform people, to say nothing of sell things to them, you will want to do better than this:

The Blackberry Solution is used to access mobile email and personal information. Also other of the self applications are also used. But the development Blackberr software for the solution of Blackberry. Also Blackberry application, for assistance if issues arise.

This reads as if they are offering some sort of spyware ("access personal information"). If that isn't true, then they are very engaging in linguistic self-abuse.

Iran Disinformation in re Israel

I watched a BBC show "Endgame" last night about how the fall of apartheid came about and I was interested in learning more so I "prayed" through the good offices of Google to "God" (the Internet) and hit upon the idea of checking out the CIA World Factbook, an excellent source for basic information. This search collected the link associated with the title of this blog. According to the report, which makes a prima facie case for the demise of Israel within 20 years with the Jews in Israel emigrating to the US, Russia, and Europe.

This "report" noted (my words) that seismic shifts such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the deconstruction of the Soviet Union, and the fall of Apartheid can happen with surprising speed. This is true. The problem is that the report is a phony. The origin of this story comes from an Iranian web site. Read the changing headlines at the top of the page and you will see that it has an Iranian bias -- that is, a bias toward stories concerning Iran and its enemies.

I have long wondered why Iran hates Israel so much. There has never been direct Iranian-Israeli hostilities; Iran's borders don't touch Israel's; Iran is not an Arab country; Iran is Shia while most of the Arabs that Israel has engaged in military conflicts with are Sunni; Israel actually cooperated with Iran when it sold them arms in the notorious Iran-Contra affair; and etc. So, why?

The reason, according to an interesting blog, The JC.com, is that Israel is a Western country which presents the same threats to any fundamentalist Muslim society that the rest of the West does, in that it offers freedom of speech and action, something that is anathema to fundamentalist Muslims. The Mullahs know that freedom and speech and action will lead inexorably to the importation of Western values, starting with their kids wearing blue jeans, listening to and playing pop music, and, alors! dancing while touching. That will lead to the sort of sesmic shifts that the phony Iranian story noted.

I do not know whether Israel's proximity in any way has hastened the importation of Western values, any more than would have happened anyway. The Internet brings the world to everyone. However, Iran can't focus its hatred on all Western devils, including those of Europe, for that would would make their craziness all the more apparent. Focusing on Israel and the US, which have a close relationship of course, gives them traction with and influence over fundamentalist Muslims in the Arab world, especially those who are fairly frequently in active hostilities with Israel.

Usually, Iranian propaganda is overt. This time it was subtle. And way more persuasive. It gulled a bunch of dimwits to parrot its message such as those of Al Jazerra (who possibly didn't really care whether it was true or false), Global Research.ca, Ease News.net, and The San Franscisco Bay View. As in all things, it is best to do a little research before you buy into anything you read.