Wordsmithing

 On or about 1980, when I was about ten, I was at the home of my friend John Parsons and we decided to play a game of Scrabble. I gained the opportunity of making the first word by virtue of my picking a higher value letter, then we drew our letters in earnest and I was just staring at mine. They looked like very compatible letters and I thought I could use most if not all of them in one word. Finally John said "Come on, quit stalling, make a word!" I said "Hold on, I think I got something.

I placed all my letters on the board making the word strived.  He said "That's not a word!" I said "Yes it is." He challenged, "What does it mean?" I said "To strive is when you try to do something." I counted up all my letters as a double word score (first word always falls on a double word) then added 50 point bonus for using all my letters. If memory serves me, I was leading 76 - 0. John quit the game on the spot as we didn't have a dictionary to settle the dispute.

Years later, I wondered (feeling a little guilty) if the past tense of strive was supposed to be strove. I never bothered to look it up and gradually I ceased thinking about it.

I later found out that, over time, through usage many speakers will be unaware that a word had an irregular past tense and they will begin using the regular past tense. Thus, slew gave way to slayed and shew to showed. My web browser just underlined slayed as an error but I can assure you L.L never warned his opponents in a rap that were gonna get slew or slain. I digress. Also, pronunciation often change over time for various reasons, the biggest of which that the pronunciation itself is problematic. The past tense of make used to be maked but who has time to navigate two frictives in a row when the word began with a voiced consonant so the word finally ended up being pronounced exclusively as made. Also, the reason we have so many weird spellings in English is that the spellings are borrowed from other countries or they came from Old English (not the 40 once malt liquor but rather the time of Chaucer). It is why, in the word eight, we don't pronounce the gh but rather the Germans sort of do with the word ocht. Of course, Noah Webster could have cleared up English spelling itself, making it more consistent and phonetic but he relied more on gleaning words from the world of academia which was in the East, an arbitrary decision which leads us to believe that American Southerners speak incorrectly rather than just differently.

Pronunciations and grammar evolve, not because some pointy-headed intellectual told us they should be but because word usage evolve for clarity and simplicity. Thus, nobody speaks of a facsimile machine today but they speak of fax because it's easier to say, Also, nobody talks about what they learned on the world-wide web or the information superhighway. Language isn't imposed from the top down but rather in the most egalitarian way possible, by the usages of the speakers themselves.

Man Made Economic Calamities in Modernity

 Throughout human history there have been economic and humanitarian calamities caused by flooding, droughts, diseases, and insect swarms which destroyed entire crop seasons. When humans have caused such disasters, it was often the result of wars where destruction of crops and property were intentional. In such cases, economic concerns were not the impetus for the wars and the ensuing collapse can be attributed to intentional bad actors. Less common have been economic disasters caused by small groups of people who were, ironically, actually attempting to improve economic conditions. The first that comes to mind was the Russians in the Bolshevik Revolution.

The Bolsheviks in Russia were members of a movement opposed to the Tsarist regime which they believed was repressive of the commoners and a throwback to an earlier time that had run its course. They were inspired largely by the concepts of Karl Marx who asserted that all of history was war between social and economic classes. He taught that capitalism was a tool that the upper classes used to oppress the common people and, as a result, when the Bolsheviks succeeded in overthrowing the Tsarists, the communist party succeeded the Tsarist and the USSR was established. The communists abolished the concept of private property and consolidated small, private farms into large communally run farms that operated, ostensibly, for the good of all. Since the impetus to work hard for personal gain was eliminated, these endeavors ended in spectacular failure resulting in the famine of 1930 - 1933. An estimated 5.7 million Russians died of starvation during this time (source, my friends Gary and Bernard). This was, at the time, the most egregious example of economic catastrophe caused by a small group of people trying to fix the very thing they destroyed.

As bad as that example was, this was dwarfed by the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1961. This occurred due to the Great Leap Forward which was instituted by the planned economy instituted by the Chinese Leader Chairman Mao Zedong (for whom my cat is named, don't even ask). During this time, it is estimated by western scholars that between 15 and 55 million people died of starvation (as for that discrepancy, I challenge YOU to try using an abacus). There were more examples of economic disasters that occurred due to failed policies but I simply chose the most prominent of to 20th century but this is not a concept specific to communism. The next example is in full effect now and it is being waged by the so-called leader of the free world and putative capitalist Donald J. Trump.

It is at this point that I will point out that, whatever your opinions are of capitalism, in the past 125 years the standard of living has gone up, not only for all economic classes, but also for today's poor versus the rich of 125 years ago in nearly every respect. Today's poor have better food, access to better health care, and a longer life expectancy than the wealthy did in the past and the vast majority of improvements have been due to capitalism. When allowed to keep a great share of the profits from the efforts of their work, people are more apt to innovate and take economic risks to create new businesses which results in the hiring of more people from the less advantaged classes. New and better products are created, new service industries are born so, even if you excoriate against the evils of capitalism today, it is likely you do so via computer or cell phone in the comfort of your temperature controlled home before you retire to your living or bedroom to play on your X-Box.

I digress. I am loathe to assert that there is a flaw of the current US President that is bad as his blatant race hatred but if there is a flaw that rivals it, it is his economic illiteracy. Anyone who has completed a course on economics 101 (and don't say he has because rumors are that he payed someone else to take his SATs and there is no reason to believe he ever did his own coursework) would be able to tell you that, in a world where economic outcomes have made nations interdependent, the unilateral imposition of massive tariffs would be a spectacularly bad idea. When he asserted that other nations would pay the tariffs to do business with the United States, those in the know pointed out that the tariffs are not paid by other nations but by the American people. Economically, this is like threatening your neighbor that if you don't get your act together, I am going to beat by own wife and kids. 

Subsequent to this, Trump either continued either in his ignorance or at least pretended not to be aware that tariffs are a tax against your own people. The resulting economic data has settled the debate beyond a shadow of a doubt. The stock market has plunged, companies have either eliminated positions or laid off large swaths of people, and prices have risen. Economists also are predicting product shortages akin to those of pandemic era. This is part where I point out that political leaders often are often falsely credited or falsely blamed for economic forces that are beyond their control. The economy is a thing unto itself and, left alone, waxes and wanes to the multiplicity of forces that affect it. Presidents cannot create a good economy (removing constraints on the economy often create the illusion that the President made the economy good but that's kind of like saying you're a great doctor because you took the other guy's foot off someone's neck). 

No, a good economy is created by business owners, workers, and customers operating with a minimum of interference from government, to wit, people acting freely for their own rational self interest. A President cannot create a good economy but he can wreck it. Trump's tariffs are antithetical to that which made made this the wealthiest nation in the world and we are now paying the price for this malevolent ignorance. America was great before he got ahold of it and what we, the people, have created he is now dismantling bit by bit, right before our eyes. We are losing our budgets, our livelihoods, our ability to benefit from new research, and our access to health care. And amid this all, his cohorts are largely still oblivious to the economic ruin that is happening all around them. My only hope is that, if despite this ensuing tragedy you still support him, you lose the ability to sustain yourself or provide for your health care, and you end up going before your time, that they bury you with your stupid red hat.

Middle Eastern Lentil Soup Recipe

 Soak 2.5 cups of red lentils for at least an hour. Do NOT substitute brown or green lentils as these require a different amount of time to soak. For the best price, do not buy the lentils from a supermarket. Buy them from a halal store where you can buy it in bulk.

Dice up one small onion and three cloves of garlic and saute in oil in a pot (preferably olive oil but regular cooking oil will do). The onions/garlic should be enough to comfortably cover the bottom of the cooking pot.

Put together in a bowl:  2 tbsp turmeric powder, 3 tbsp cumin, 3 tbsp salt, and 1/2 tbsp black pepper, Dump these spices in with the hot oil/onion for 20 seconds to bring out the flavor.

vegetables:  I usually mince up a couple of stalks of celery and one small carrot to give the soup a little more body but this is optional. If you are using these, dump these in and then add enough water to submerge contents of the pot and allow for the eventual addition of the lentils which you should strain in a collend,. .   colland/. . . . collein.. . . .  spaghetti strainer

When water is at a rolling boil add the lentils and stir

After fifteen minutes (this is also optional), dice up a small potato and add to the pot in order to give the soup more body.

Cook at least 20 more minutes.  When it's done it should be like soup. If it's not like soup you either didn't cook it long enough or you used too much water or not enough water. Oops.

When it's done, check for salinity. Add salt if needed.

Serve with lemons to squeeze juice into the soup. Actually I cook the soup with lemon salt which you can buy from the halal store under the name acid salt but fresh lemon is better.

If the balance of spices is not to your liking, adjust next time. I don't actually measure my spices in measuring spoons so I'm just approximating.