Read them their rights

     Overcrowding is one of the major problems facing prisons today. One solution put forward by some is to instate early release programs. Prisoners who are well behaved or attend classes can sometimes accumulate days to be taken off of their sentence. Such programs vary from state to state and prison to prison. Recently, Brazil announced a novel addition to their early release program. In an effort to both decrease the current prison population and to cut back on recidivism, prisoners committing further crimes once they are released, Brazil has started a program in its federal prisons to allow prisoners to shave days off of their sentence by reading books.

     You may be wondering why they are instituting such a plan. Simply put, Brazil needs to make room in their prisons, which recent reports show that they are at 166% capacity, and growing. Under the plan those serving time can cut off four days from their sentence, up to a maximum of 48 days per year, for every book they read and proper book report they submit. However, you may be thinking to yourself, "Giving prisoners time off for just reading and writing, what is that supposed to accomplish?"

     The main goal of the program is to give the inmates the chance to gain a different perspective on the outside. “A person can leave prison more enlightened and with an enlarged vision of the world,” said Andre Kehdi, a Brazilian lawyer who leads a book donation program for prisoners. Also, a study in Britain found that long periods of isolation and a lack of mental stimulus can contribute to, "poor mental health and led to intense feelings of anger, frustration, and anxiety.” Not attributes you would like to cultivate in a captive population.

     As the project is a new one, it remains to be seen if it will be effective. However, it does focus on one aspect of serving a jail sentence that is often overlooked, rehabilitation. Yes, almost all people in jail deserve to be there, but hopefully through programs such as this, maybe they can be turned into productive members of society while they pay their debt to it.
   




1. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazilian-inmates-offered-reduced-sentences-for-reading-books/article4385621/
2. http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/14/world/americas/brazil-alternative-sentence-reduction/index.html
3. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2012/0716/Brazil-s-solution-to-prison-overcrowding-time-off-for-reading-books

"Berry Berry quite contrary"

     Almost everyone loves some kind of berry. Be it blueberries, cranberries, or even grapes, tons of berries are eaten every year. However the term berry can be misleading as some things that are called berries are not, and some that we wouldn't think of as berries, are.

     The official definition of berry is, "a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary". While most "berries" meet this definition, there are some, such as the blackberry, raspberry and the mulberry, that do not. There are five categories of berries that are not berries.

     The first category is the drupes. Drupes are, "fruits produced from a (usually) single-seeded ovary with a hard stony layer (called the endocarp) surrounding the seed". Examples of this category are the olive, the plum, the peach, and the bayberry.

     The next group is the pomes. While the larger pomes, pears and apples, are never called berries, some of the smaller ones, such as juneberries, carry that name.

     The third group of non-berries are the aggregate fruits, which is a fruit that "develops from the merger of several ovaries that were separate in a single flower". Prime examples of these are the blackberry and the raspberry.

     The fourth group are what is called multiple fruits. Multiple fruits, are, "the fruits of multiple flowers that are merged or packed closely together." The mulberry is one big example of this group.

     The final group of "non-berry" berries are the accessory fruits. These fruits are not made from the ovary, but from other parts of the plant. The biggest example of this is the strawberry.

     As for the berries that we wouldn't think of as berries, believe it or not, bananas, pumpkins and watermelons are all considered berries. I guess that goes to show you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover or a fruit by it's name or size.












1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry#Not_a_botanical_berry
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregate_fruit

"But it sounds like that"

If you can hear, then it is safe to say you have experienced a mondegreen. A mondegreen is the name given to the what happens when you think you have correctly heard what some one said, but in actuality you have misheard it as something that sounds similar to what they said, but with a completely different meaning. The term comes from when an author misheard the line of a song, "And laid him on the green" as, "And Lady Mondegreen". While experiencing a mondegreen usually effects only listener, there is one famous case where multiple people experiencing mondegreens while listening to a single song brought the full force of the FBI down upon it.

     Back in the 1960's, rock and roll was starting to hit it's stride, however the ride was not without it's bumps. Elvis had stirred up massive controversy with his shaking hips on TV, radio DJ's were bringing more and more African American music to the attention of white children and more and more people were starting to worry about rock and roll driving kids to sex and drugs. All of this worry and fear came to something of a head in 1963 when the band the Kingsmen covered the song "Louie, Louie", the lyrics of which are below.

Louie, Louie, 

me gotta go. 

Louie, Louie, 

me gotta go. 

A fine little girl, she wait for me; 

me catch a ship across the sea. 

I sailed the ship all alone; 

I never think I'll make it home 

Three nights and days we sailed the sea;

me think of girl constantly. 

On the ship, I dream she there; 

I smell the rose in her hair. 

Me see Jamaica moon above; 

It won't be long me see me love. 

Me take her in my arms and then 

I tell her I never leave again.

     "Louie, Louie" had been around since the 50's, but it never gained national exposure until the Kingsmen's version became a hit in 1963. However there were several problems with their version of the song. First the quality of the actual recording of the song wasn't the best. The main recording that was released was only supposed to be practice version of the song. Next, the boom microphone used to record the song was so high up, the singer had to stand on his tip toes just so that he could be heard. Also, the night before, the band had done an epic 90 minute "Louie Louie" performance the night before the recording. That certainly didn't help bring any clarity to the lead singer's performance. All in all, the band didn't want to release the version they had, but they were charged for the "practice" session, and they decided to keep it. It was this version that made it big.

     Since parts of the song were hard to understand due to the low quality, it is no wonder that rumors began to spread as to the the actual content of the song. While the actual lyrics of the song are very tame, the rumored versions were anything but. Below is one version of what some people thought was actually being sung:

Louie, Louie, 

grab her way down low. 

Louie, Louie, 

grab her way down low. 

A fine little bitch, she waits for me; 

she gets her kicks on top of me. 

Each night I take her out all alone; 

she ain't the kind I lay at home 

Each night at ten, I lay her again; 

I fuck my girl all kinds of ways. 

And on that chair, I lay her there; 

I felt my boner in her hair. 

If she's got a rag on, I'll move above; 

It won't be long, she'll slip it off. 

I'll take her in my arms again; 

tell her I'd rather lay her again.

The lyrics above were not the only dirty version that circulated, with the above and several others being passed around by teenagers thinking that those were the actual lyrics. Eventually, a parent managed to come into possession of a version of the lyrics like the one above and the poo, as we say, hit the fan. 

     As the song was gaining more and more traction over the nation's airwaves, it is no wonder that some parents eventually brought "Louie Louie" and its supposed lyrics to to the government and complained. What followed was a nearly three year long investigation by the FBI. Anyone and everyone who had anything at all to do with "Louie Louie" was brought in and questioned. Acting on one rumor that to hear the profane version of the song, you had to play the record at a different speed than it was recorded the FBI tried playing the record at any and every speed they could, but they still could not hear any clear profanity. Eventually they gave up, saying that they were, "unable to interpret any of the wording in the record."

     "Louie Louie" went on to be covered many more times, eventually becoming one of the most covered songs in history. If the false controversy around it accomplished anything, it may have cemented in the minds of some parents and concerned citizens the darker side of rock and roll. Unfortunately rock and roll would sometimes go on to live up to those expectations.










Sources:
1. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqvXukKL3CwOwp8-d3_t1YXZiQrZiM8nyjJ-lFPOIdKxvhP9NPYdV9SJ5ITfaAta5PqzBzqsczJZVkuf0wlyBx27A3VVVSDVgdTKHThV8dP-D2kbRTmKi7kFVllobCJXvqNpID9z6wKG-9/s1600/hard+of+hearing.jpg
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
3. http://www.fun-with-words.com/mala_mondegreens.html
4. http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/humor/mondegreens.asp
5. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mondegreen
6. http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/louie.asp
7. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/funny/lascivious-louie-louie
8. http://oldies.about.com/library/weekly/aa091602a.htm
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie

Look me in the eyes...

     It has been said that the eyes are the windows of the soul. No matter if you believe that or not, you can tell a lot about a person by just looking at their eyes. Often people will inadvertently give away a lot of information through their eyes, and during the Vietnam war, one American POW used just his eyes to pass purposely pass information back to officials back in the US.

     Jeremiah Denton was an American naval aviator whose plane was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965, and was captured, becoming a POW. In 1966 Denton, as part of his incarceration, was forced to participate in a press conference by the North Vietnamese. As American intelligence experts watched the press conference, they noticed that Denton was blinking a lot more than most people would. They also noticed that there seemed to be a pattern to the way that he was blinking.

     As they studied the video, it was eventually discovered that Denton was blinking in Morse Code. While he was speaking, Denton repeatedly blinked out the message T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code. He did this to try and pass on the message to his superiors that he and other American service men were being tortured while they were being held by the North Vietnamese. Denton said, "In case they fitted words into my mouth, that were apologetic on my part. In other words, faked it. I would at least let them know I'd been tortured by the T-O-R-T-U-R-E."

     While his act gave the Americans important info as to the state of their men who had been captured, it didn't lead to him being released any earlier. Denton remained a POW until he was released with many of his fellow prisoners in 1973. However during his time as a prisoner, he was promoted to captain and was given the Navy Cross, among other honors.






1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgelmcOdS38
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Denton
3. http://www.batesline.com/archives/2009/02/torture.html

What does that mean?

     Some languages are better at illustrating certain ideas better than English. For example, it can take a whole sentence to let some one know in English that you have been gaining weight because you are depressed or overly emotional. The Germans however have been able to take this thought, and condense it into a single word:
Kummerspeck.

     Kummerspeck is a word that is made up of two other German words. The first is kummer, which is german for grief. The second part of the word, speck, is the German word for bacon. So if you were to translate kummerspeck literally it would mean "grief bacon".

     If you think about it, this combination makes complete sense. Bacon tends to be a really fatty food, and if you eat a bunch of it because you are emotional or grieving, then you are bound to gain weight. If English had more stuff like this, maybe it would be easier to get across what we are trying to say.


1. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kummerspeck
2. http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2009/9/15/128975413506387435.jpg

"What did she say...?"

     It has been said that having a child lets you see the world through their eyes. While that is true, what they forget to tell you is that, given the extra time and experience you've had on the planet, you know there are times and places you can't say certain things. Young children no nothing of this concept. To them if they can say a word, they will say it and enjoy saying it, no matter the external situation. The first example my wife and I had of this was when our one year old decided that she wanted to sing the word "poop" over and over in the middle of the church service. While most agreed that it was cute and funny, which looking back on it it was, it was extremely mortifying to my wife and I setting there at the time.

     We didn't realize at the time, but that was a prelude to what was coming next. Since that time in church, our daughter has grown both physically and mentally, picking up new skills and words faster than we can keep track of. Last week, our now 15 month old startled us by saying, with some force, the word "f*ck" over and over again. The first time we heard, it my wife and I looked at each across the living room with shocked expressions and I said, "What did she say?".
 
     We were initially at a loss about what she was actually saying and what she wanted. Our first thought was to try and keep her from saying it again. We realized though that, if we made a big deal out of it, she would want to say it all the time. Fortunately, as I write this, she has only said it among family, and not in public. I dread the judgmental looks when she eventually does though. As best as we can tell, when she says that, what she is really asking for is a fork. Although at first we thought she was talking about a truck.

     With the above in mind, when I saw the following bad product idea at howtobeadad.com I laughed, and in a completely selfish moment, almost wished it was real.

     It also made me realize that we were just beginning to enter our daughter's language related parental embarrassment phase. While how it would work is planned out, I think it would, more often than not, back fire. What they have listed under side effects would probably, inadvertently, be the main output of such a toy.

     They have plenty of even funnier things @ howtobeadad.com, so check them out.





1. http://www.howtobeadad.com/2012/11966/bad-product-idea-10-peter-pottymouth-proper-pronunciation-wheel

Cheap Impulses

     My wife and I saw this the other day at Michael's and I couldn't help but share. Take a look at the picture below and see if you can see anything that could be unintentionally untoward.

I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't see it at first, I didn't either. It wasn't until my wife pointed out what the yellow tags say that we both got a laugh.

Usually adult impulses cost a lot more than 50 cents. Although the spelling level tends to be about the same.

"He has ceased to be!"

     The dead parrot sketch is one of the most famous sketches produced by the British comedy group Monty Python. In it a man tries to convince a clerk that the parrot the he was told was asleep when he bought it, was, in fact, dead. While Monty Python is known for their absurd sense of humor, sometimes real life imitates their art in strange ways. At least that must be the way a man in India felt we he found out that he had been declared dead by his government while he was still very much alive.

     The fact that dead sometimes doesn't really mean dead came as a shock to Lal Bihari when in 1976 he discovered that, according to government records in his native India, instead of walking around on top of the ground, he was supposed to be six feet under it. In a bid to take over a small parcel of land, his uncle had bribed officials to declare Bihari as deceased, so that the land could be signed over to him. One would think that simply being alive would be more than enough evidence to prove that you are not dead. However, the wheels of the Indian government, unfortunately like most, turn slowly, and while he waited, one of the first things Bihari learned about being one of the dead among the living was that he was not alone.

     While he was working on his case, Bihari discovered that there were other people who like him were alive, but were officially dead. Many of them were "dead" because, like Bihari, a relative had bribed an official in order to take over their land. The reason that this became such a problem was that as the population exploded in India, the land that was there was there was being split up between more and more inheritors. Some families were left with no more that a basketball court size parcel of land to make their living on. Under pressure, some started having distant relations and other members of their family that couldn't defend themselves, such as absentee land owner's (as Bihari was), widows, the elderly and anyone else who was vulnerable declared dead. Once that was done, the land that once belonged to their family members was signed over to them.

     Seeing that there were others like himself, Bihari created the Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People. The group hoped draw attention to themselves and have the government declare that it's members were in fact alive. Bihari tried everything he could think of to get attention for himself and his group. He organized public funerals for himself and others, ran for parliament, kidnapped the son of the uncle who had him declared dead , threatened to commit murder, insulted the judges he was called before, threw leaflets at legislators and more. Bihari tried everything he could do to get his name on the official records. In an attempt to gain some profit from the whole ordeal, Bihari tried to get his wife a widow's pension. He was denied, as the officials who had and continued to declare him dead, refused to declare his wife a widow. Finally, after 19 years, those same officials declared Bihari alive in 1994.

     While he was understandably pleased to have his status corrected Bihari was also pleased with what he started with his Association of Dead People. ''In pursuing my battle, I had developed quite an identity,'' he recalls proudly. ''I became the leader of a movement. I knew I had other dead people to save.'' And while many of the members of the Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People are still officially deceased, by 2004 4 of it's members had managed to have themselves declared alive.




1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lal_Bihari
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_the_Dead
3. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054133,00.html
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/24/world/azamgarh-journal-back-to-life-in-india-without-reincarnation.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm

Boom Shaka Laka

     Unless you have been extremely gifted by the gods, chances are that you have had something break down on you once or twice in your life. When that happened, did you ever have the desire to smack or beat it to try and get it to work? If you have, then you, like many of us, have had the urge to perform untrained percussive maintenance.

     Percussive maintenance is the name given to the art of beating on something until it works. The most famous example of this is the one provided by the Fonz from Happy Days. In the show, the character of the Fonz used his expertise to fix a jukebox among other things. While you may be tempted to believe that this mystical fix is fictitious, there are numerous examples of percussive maintenance working in real life.

     NASA, believe it or not, seems to be a big promoter of percussive maintenance. One particularly great example is from the Apollo 12 mission to the moon. The following is a conversation between astronaut Alan Bean and a member of the support crew on Earth, Edward Gibson:

Gibson: There’s no change down here, Al. (Pause) That’s coming in there, now, Al. Okay, what change did you make?

Bean: I hit it on the top with my hammer. I figured we didn’t have a thing to lose.

Gibson: Skilful fix, Al.

Bean: I hit it on the top with this hammer I’ve got. (Responding to Gibson) Yeah, that’s skilled craftsmanship.

That isn't the only example from NASA. During Apollo 16, a malfunctioning alarm light kept blinking until commander John Young tried kicking it. When he reported success, the response from Earth was "It's an old American custom: kick it if it doesn't work." More recently, astronauts Robert Curbeam and Sunita Williams spent quite a bit of time shaking and pushing a solar panel into its case so they could move it to a different location on the International Space Station in 2006

     The people at NASA aren't the only ones who've used percussive maintenance, the people at Apple have as well. Back in the early days of Apple, they released a computer called the Apple III. They hoped that it would give them inroads into the business market. However, the computer had one small problem, over time, the computer would heat up and that heat would cause the connections between the components to become loose and caused the owners of the Apple III no small number of headaches. Eventually it was discovered that if you picked up the computer about two to four inches off of the desk and dropped it, that would re seat the components and the computer would be back in working order.

    While many people in the past have used percussive maintenance to their benefit, beware when using it on modern machines and components. Most modern components tend to be on the delicate side of things and unless you know exactly what you are doing, you may just end up with something that is broke worse than it was. Any one can hit a broke machine, but unless you know where exactly to hit it you might want to hold off.





1. http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2010/09/21/just-give-it-a-good-whack/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percussive_maintenance
3. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PercussiveMaintenance?from=Main.FonzarelliFix
4. http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/Inside-the-Apple-III/1563

Knock Knock!

     In modern English, the phrase "knocked up" is a less than proper way to say that a woman has gotten pregnant. However, during the industrial revolution that phrase had a completely different meaning.

     Timeliness has always been important, and never more so than since the start of the industrial revolution. Sure the machines were there, but if no one was there to run them, they did their owners little good. In order to ensure that they were awakened early enough to be on time for work, many people who lived in the heavily industrialized areas of England relied on the services of their neighborhood knocker-up man.

     The knocker-up man was a man that would go from house to house, knocking on doors and windows to "knock-up" the occupants. Since no one had alarm clocks at this time this would be how you could ensure that you would get up on time. For a small fee each week, the knocker-up man would go up to your door and beat on it with his truncheon until you awoke and opened the door. If you preferred him to knock on your window, he would use a bamboo rod to tap on the glass until you awoke.

     Often times, he knocker-up men were older gentlemen, but women and police who were already in the area on patrol were known to be knocker-up men to earn a little bit more. The knocker-up men weren't always independent  Many plants and mills employed knocker-up men for just their workers.

     As time moved on, eventually the knocker-up men were all put out of work as alarm clocks made their way through society. However, while the job has moved on, some people still retain the less modern usage of the phrase. In some smaller hotels in England, the desk clerks sometimes ask their lodgers if they would like to be knocked-up in the morning. Understandably this has been known to cause some confusion.


1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up
2. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/48753
3. http://www.cottontown.org/page.cfm?pageid=1291&language=eng
4. http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/11mido/til_that_before_alarm_clocks_were_invented_there/c6nrwq2

Ahoy! Ahoy!

     All over the world, the word, "Hello" will often be one of the first words spoken when a phone call is answered. It comes so natural to many of us, that we often say it without thinking. A friend or someone from your family calls, and the first thing they ask usually isn't, "How are you?" or, "How's the kids?" or even, "Can I borrow some sugar?", it's, "Hello?". There even seems to be some sort or unspoken rule that any other greeting lies somewhere in between being rude and angry.  Out of all the greetings that we have, why was this word picked as the one we use to answer the phone?

     It looks like the person who can take the credit for getting all of us to answer the phone with a, "Hello?" is Thomas Edison. Back in 1877, Edison was helping to bring the telephone system to Pittsburgh, Pa. when he produced the first account of, "Hello" spelled that way in the English language. Edison wrote a note to one of his partners suggesting that instead of having a bell ring on the telephone, the person calling would just shout, "Hello!" as, according to Edison, that word in particular could, "be heard 10 to 20 feet away". The word, "hello" seems to be derived from the word, "hullo" which was a slang word used to express that you were surprised as well as to call attention to something. Edison's spelling of, "Hullo" as, "Hello" seemed to stick at his Menlo Park research lab, and from there it spread as they worked on improving and expanding the telephone system.

     While it took time for, "Hello" to become the commonplace greeting, there was another greeting favored by the creator of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell. Bell favored the greeting, which never really took off, of, "Ahoy! Ahoy!". That's something to keep in mind if you ever get tired of saying, "Hello", maybe, "Ahoy! Ahoy!" could be used on talk like a pirate day?







1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7xXSw07zrio
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello
3. http://www.collectorcafe.com/article_archive.asp?article=800&id=1507
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

The Devil's Dictionary

     The dictionary is one of the most common tools used when it comes to understanding or writing language. It is through the dictionary that we find the meanings of new words that we learn. Most people know about the regular dictionary, but not as many people know about the version intended for mature audiences, The Devil's Dictionary.
    
     The Devil's Dictionary first appeared, not as a book, but as a column in the San Fransisco based magazine The Wasp.The column would list 15-20 words that would have their definitions redone in a satirical manner. The editor and chief of the magazine, Ambrose Bierce, started writing the various entries for the dictionary in 1881. A total of 88 articles were written by the time Bierce left The Wasp in 1886. In 1887, Bierce took the job as an editor for the Examiner and changed the name of his column to The Cynic's Dictionary. Unfortunately, as the old name was left behind, so too was the column's regularity. The time between columns grew, and no new ones appeared after 1906.

     The same year that the column stopped, Bierce published a collection of the definitions under the name The Cynic's Dictionary. This book contained the definitions of 500 words in the first half of the alphabet, A through L. The book didn't regain the older more offensive title of The Devil's Dictionary, until a second volume of was published in 1911 that contained definitions for words from the rest of the alphabet. Bierce claimed that the reason the first volume was called The Cynic's Dictionary was his publisher had religious objections to later, "more reverent" title.

     Several examples of the words redone by Bierce are:

Conservative

(n.) A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

Cynic

(n.) A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

Lawyer

(n.) One skilled in circumvention of the law.

Religion

(n.) A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Youth 

(n.) The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.

Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice is never heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and, howling, is cast into Baltimost! —Polydore Smith

     It is amazing just how many of the definitions that Bierce wrote over 100 years ago are still applicable today.







1. http://www.fun-with-words.com/devils_dictionary.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Dictionary
3. http://www.thedevilsdictionary.com/

All doesn't really mean all sometimes

     A duo in England found out that just because the resturant says that it is all you can eat, it may not really be ALL you can eat. Friends George Dalmon and Andy Miles were recently barred from Gobi,one of their local all you can eat resturants in the city of Brighton in the U.K., for eating too much. At least that is the reason the owner of the resurant gave the two men.

     According to Dalmon, the owner of the restrant came up to their table and told them that they were, "disgusting, and we're eating him out of business, so we're nothing but filthy pigs. So, I was quite shocked about this and I asked him if he was joking and he replied 'no, I'm definitely not, I've had it with you two, that's it'."

     Co-owner Peter Westgate didn't appear to be the least bit appologetic when he said of the two friends, "Like when the shark shuts its eyes before it feeds, they're like that. They just get to the buffet and whatever happens they just pile it in. They muck the buffet up for everyone, they push and shuffle people from the barbecue area and it's pretty sad really, because you can eat all you like over five-and-a-half hours - it's not an issue, you don't need to rush."

     A simular incident happened earlier this year in the U.S. when Bill Wisth was eating at the all you can eat fish fry at Chuck’s Place in Theinsville, Wisconsin. Having eaten 12 pieces of fried fish, Bill was told that he was "cut off". The resturant said that supplies were starting to run low, but they were willing to send him home with eight more pieces. Tempers flared and things escalated to the point that police had to be called to remove Wisth from the resturant.

     According to the resturant, this isn't the first time that Wisth had problems with them. In previous visits to the resturant, they claimed that Wisth had been unable to pay his bill and the resturant allowed him to have his food for free.

      Several days later, Wisth returned and picketed the resturant to protest his treatment there. He was given a warning for disorderly conduct because of his protest. However, Wisth said that he planned to keep protesting every Sunday, "until the restaurant rethinks what happened."






1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-19817457
2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2211766/Hungry-diners-given-life-ban-eat-restaurant-dont-look-in.html
3. http://gawker.com/5910720/man-protests-all+you+can+eat-restaurant-after-getting-kicked-out-for-eating-too-much
4. http://krod.com/wisconsin-man-kicked-out-of-all-you-can-eat-fish-fry/
5. http://www.fox59.com/news/wxin-all-you-can-eat-wisconsin-man-kicked-out-of-all-you-can-eat-restaurant-for-eating-too-much-20120516,0,6600303.column

Banned

     Sunday, September 30th,  marked the start of Banned Books Week, a program sponsored by various groups to celebrate the freedom we have to express and exchange thoughts and ideas through the books in libraries and to highlight the challenges to those freedoms. One of the main groups behind this program is the American Library Association (ALA), a group of people whose goal is to help with the development, promotion, and improvement of libraries across America. The need to have such a program as Banned Books Week may be a surprise to many, as Americans will often decry censorship in it's many forms. The banning taking place in the U.S. is not official government censorship, but voluntary removal of books by libraries themselves due to public request. Since the 80's, there have been thousands of challenges issued that have called for books to be removed from libraries across America. Why are all these challenges being issued, how exactly is a book banned and what books are being called out?

     Most often parents are the ones who start the process to get a book banned, seeking to keep the contents of book from children. While parents wanting to protect their children is understandable, librarians have to keep everyone in mind. What is offensive to one parent may not be to another. It is for that reason that many libraries allow books to stay, even if a complaint has been received against it. The largest number of complaints libraries receive are about books that contain explicit sexual content. In many cases such as this the burden of proof lies not with the book's content, but with the offended party to prove that the book is obscene. This acts as a form of defense for the book as it requires the offended party to spell out what they find offensive about the work instead of just pulling the book straight off the shelf. Once that is done, the book banning process takes over from there.    

      Book banning is not as universal or as centralized as some may think. Anytime a book is banned, that ban applies to only to the library or library network that issued the ban and no others. The first step in a book being banned is for someone to issue a complaint. How this is done will vary on a library to library basis. Some may want a form filled out, while at others it may be as simple as telling the librarian that this book is offensive and needs to go. Once a complaint is filed it is up to the library to decide if the book stays or if it goes. How this is handled all depends on how the library is governed. If the library has a governing board then they will be the ones that have to decide, or if not, it may just be up to the librarian. Often times if the complaint comes into a school library instead of a public one, as is most often the case, then it will be up to a process defined by that school board to decide the books fate. However, just because a book has received a complaint that doesn't mean that the book is banned.

      Many complaints are filed each year, but most of them end up in the books favor and it is allowed to stay in the library. Most of the complaints about books are about obscene content they have, but before many libraries consider a book obscene and ban it, often times they will subject it to the Miller test. This test is named after one of the parties involved in a Supreme court case from back in the 70's. One of the questions brought up by that case was what constitutes obscenity. To answer that question, the court came up with a three question test to see if certain content was obscene. For a work to be considered obscene it must:
* Appeal to prurient interests when taken as a whole
* Involve patently offensive sexual conducts
* Contain no literary, artistic, political or scientific value
It is that last clause that has saved many a book from being banned. While they may have the first two checked off, only if a work can meet all three points is it considered obscene. Many books are sexual in nature, but the ones that have remained unbanned have been proven to have some literary or other value.

     With the process outlined above, what books have been the target of bans? Believe it or not, some of what are considered the classics of English literature have been banned in the past. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was banned because of its coarse language. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was banned because some thought that it was pornographic. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was banned due to language and sexual reasons. Today, the largest number of books that receive complaints fall into the category of books that are aimed at a Juvenile readership. Modern hits that fall into this category are the Harry Potter series and the Hunger Games series.




1. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=manzo%2C%20kathleen%20kennedy.%20%22challenged.%22%20education%20week&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CDAQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fs640if.wikispaces.com%2Ffile%2Fview%2FManzo%2BChallenged.pdf&ei=rmZrUNulIZCArQGV-oHICg&usg=AFQjCNGtXabJwwsVgUowf-UJvVEsIKEcIg
2. http://people.howstuffworks.com/book-banning.htm
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_(literature)
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challenged_books_in_the_United_States
5. http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/
6. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/stats

The most versatile word in English

     Please note if you are sensitive about curse words you may not want to continue...

    What one word is the most versatile word in the English language? Stephen Fry tweeted a possible answer when he posted a link to an audio file that was a recording of an Indian professor illustrating just how versatile the word "fuck" can be. The recording isn't the best quality, but it is hilarious just how many examples of ways you can insert "fuck" into a sentence and have it still make sense. The audio is embeded below.

https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/250882376400519168

The Crossword Panic of '44

     The element of surprise can be one of the greatest advantages a military force has when facing a battle. While they were planning for D-Day during World War II, the allies jealously guarded any and all information about the then upcoming invasion, and any suspected leaks were swiftly investigated and dealt with. Even a major-general was not immune to the secrecy fervor when he was demoted and sent home for merely speculating about what date the invasion was going to happen while he was at a cocktail party. With this in mind, it can be reasonably understood that the spies at MI5, the British internal counter intelligence and security agency, became more than a little worried when key code names for different aspects of the invasion began to appear in The Daily Telegraphs crossword puzzle.
     In the months before May of 1944 the codewords for the beaches assigned to the British (Juno, Gold, and Sword) appeared in the crossword but drew no major attention, as they were relatively common words. However, as the planned day of the invasion, June 5th, drew closer, more and more codewords started to appear. On May 3rd, one of the answers was Utah, the beach assigned to the 4th U.S. Assault Division. Next came Omaha on the 22nd, the beach assigned to the 1st U.S. Assault Division. Then on the 27th, the codename for the entire operation, Overlord, appeared, and was then followed by Mulberry, then codename given to specially constructed floating harbors, on the 30th. Finally, on June 1st, four days before the invasion was to occur, Neptune, which was the codeword for the naval assault appeared in the puzzle. While to the casual observer, this may just seem like it was an amazing fluke, MI5 had reason to worry. This wasn't the first time that the crossword puzzle had drawn their attention.
     Two years previously, the crossword had been investigated after a failed battle on the French port of Dieppe . A day before the raid took place, the name of the town appeared as one of the answers in the crossword. The puzzle makers were eventually cleared, with the whole incident being written off as a strange coincidence. However, with the emergence of seemingly classified data appearing again in the same papers crossword puzzle, it is no wonder that MI5 was a little on edge.
     In response to seeing the codewords, MI5 sent two men to question the man who had made the puzzles, a school headmaster by the name of Leonard Dawe. After some time was spent talking to Dawe, the investigators could find no evidence that Dawe was a spy. The concluded that the appearance of the code words was another coincidence similar to the Dieppe incident. But, unlike the earlier puzzle, there is more to the story of the D-Day crosswords.
     In 1984, when a story about the D-Day crosswords was published, Ronald French, a man who had been a student at Dawe's school at the time came forward to solve the mystery of how the codewords came to be in the puzzle. As it turns out, Dawe had a habit of calling upon the children at his school to supply him with words to use and to help him create some of the crossword puzzles. As American and Canadian soldiers were camped near the school, preparing for D-Day, many of the students overheard the codewords being used on an almost daily basis. French recalled that while many of the children there knew of the codewords, they didn't know what they meant. Also, while he could not remember if he was the one who supplied the codewords or not, French clearly remembered being called to Dawe's office and being made to swear on the Bible that he wouldn't tell a soul about anything he knew. The only reason French felt safe coming forward then was that it had been thirty some odd years after it had happened.
     The generation that fought in World War II has been called the greatest generation. The fact that they could keep something as big as D-Day secret for as long as they did, makes me want to believe that claim. I have a hard time believing the only the code names for something that big would leak out in our day. Between twitter, facebook, and the 24 hour news cycle that we live under, it is a minor miracle that we keep any thing secret anymore.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0206/feature1/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1460892/D-Day-crosswords-are-still-a-few-clues-short-of-a-solution.html
http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Crossword-Panic-of-1944/

"And now I know my ABC's"

     Letters are the basic building blocks of any language. And as any language evolves, the number of letters in it's particular alphabet can rise and fall. Almost all English speakers are aware that there are currently 26 letters in the English alphabet. However, as recently as the very early 1900's there was an additional letter in the English alphabet. That extra letter was, "&", the ampersand.
     The ampersand symbol is not an invention of the English language. The first example we have comes from a scrap of papyrus from around 45 AD. The ampersand symbol first came into being as the cursive of the Latin word "et", which means "and". As the ancient Roman scribes were writing, the two letters of et began to be joined, and eventually formed the symbol we know today.
     The name ampersand comes from the early 1800's where the ampersand symbol was printed at the end of English alphabet charts as the 27th letter. When children in school would recite the alphabet, any letter that could be used as a word was preceded by the words per se which is latin for by itself. For example instead of just saying the letter "I", the children would say, "and per se I" As the ampersand was the last letter on the chart, the phrase would go "X, Y, Z, and per se and." At some point, people began saying the last part compressed together, and instead of "and per se and" it became "ampersand". Eventually, around the 1900's, the ampersand began to be dropped off of the letter charts, leaving us with the 26 letters that English has today. 
1. http://hotword.dictionary.com/ampersand/?fb_ref=hotword_activity
2. http://www.adobe.com/type/topics/theampersand.html
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand
4. http://www.word-detective.com/052003.html#ampersand
5. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ampersand
6. http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/112/

"Don't take your guns to town, son"

     Would you change your name if some asked you to? This is a question that three and half year old Hunter Spanjer of Grand Island, Nebraska and his family have to ask themselves after a recent request from his preschool.

     The preschool has a strict weapons policy that forbids anything that even remotely resembles a gun on school grounds. Hunter, who is deaf, signs his name in a way that makes his fingers resemble a gun. According to the parents, they were told that Hunter would not be able to the continue using the S.E.E. (Signing Exact English) symbol for his name due to the fact that it resembles a gun. Hoping to allow their son to keep using the sign for his name and looking for help, the parents went to Facebook and started a page called "Let this Deaf Child Keep His Name Sign", which recieved over 5300 likes in the first few days. However, it seems the schools weapon policy may not be the only reason the school may want to change how Hunter signs his name.

     According to a statement released by the school board, they have no problem with Hunter using the S.E.E. sign for his name, however they want him to learn A.S.L (American Sign Language) for use in school. "Grand Island Public Schools has not changed the sign language name of any student, nor is it requiring any student to change how his or her name is signed," district spokesman Jack Sheard said in a prepared statement. "The school district teaches American Sign Language ("ASL") for students with hearing impairments. ASL is recommended by the Nebraska Department of Education and is widely used in the United States. The sign language techniques taught in the school district are consistent with the standards of the Nebraska Department of Education and ASL."

     Hunter's parents are hoping that the school will provide him with a S.E.E. interpreter along with teaching him A.S.L., but, as of writing, nothing final has been determined.



1. http://boingboing.net/2012/08/28/school-demands-that-boy-must-c.html
2. http://www.1011now.com/home/headlines/Grand-Island-Preschooler-Forbidden-Sign-Language-for-His-Own-Name-167394325.html
3. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/28/13531342-deaf-childs-sign-language-name-looks-too-much-like-gun-parent-says-school-told-him?lite
4. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/school-asks-deaf-preschooler-change-sign-language-name-191629255.html

"We'll have a gay old time"

     Back In 2008, US sprinter Tyson Gay was competing in the Bejing Olympic 100 meter trials semifinals. Easily winning the race, the AP (Associated Press) released a news story about his victory. Under normal circumstances  that would be all there was to the story. However, on the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website, they had an auto correcting filter in place that looked through the words of the AP feeds and then replaced some words with others before the articles were placed on their site. One word in particular that the filter looked for was the word "gay", which the filter then replaced with "homosexual". This turned the head line for the story above from, "Gay eases into 100 final at Olympic trials" to "Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials". Furthermore, every instance of the word "gay" in that and several other articles had been replaced with "homosexual".

      This error didn't last long, and the story was corrected, but fortunately not before several people got screen grabs of the incorrectly changed article and it it spread out from there. News director for the site, Fred Jackson, blamed the change on a software glitch. "We don't object to the word 'gay,'" Jackson said, except "when it refers to people who practice a homosexual lifestyle."

     Tyson Gay wasn't the only one who experienced the name changed. Before the site was corrected, NBA player Rudy Gay was also an victim of the filter, having his last name changed to "Homosexual" as well.







1. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/07/christian_sites_ban_on_g_word.html
2. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/homosexual_sets_world_sprint_record/
3. http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16044.html

Pickled at great expense

     Google Translate is a great tool, but it is far from perfect. Producers working on Episodes, a new BBC show staring former Friends star Matt LeBlanc found themselves in bit of a pickle recently when they tried to use it to translate a phrase into Hebrew for a recent episode.

     Jewish blogger Shahar Golen was watching an episode of Episodes when he noticed a message written in Hebrew on a tombstone in the background. As a Hebrew speaker he was confused by the message underneath the English as it appeared to be gibberish. Once he got a closer look at the phrase, the first thing Shahar discovered was that the Hebrew was backwards. Hebrew, unlike English, is read right to left and English is read left to right. Once that was corrected, Shahar was able to translate it, but he was suprised as to the actual message. Instead of something that resembled the English above it, "Beloved Husband and Father Dearly Missed" , he discovered that the literal translation of the Hebrew was, "he was pickled at great expense".

     At first, Shahar didn't know where such a bad translation could have come from. However, the thought occurred to him to take a look at Google Translate, and there he found his answer. Entering the English phrase into Google Translate, Shahar found that it returned the exact Hebrew that was on the tombstone. He found it humorous, especially in the light of the conspiracy theories about Jews running Hollywood, saying, "Someone at set design couldn’t find a Jew to save his life and decided to wing it. Which begs the question: Aren’t we running this joint?"


1. http://frgdr.com/blog/2012/05/31/jews-do-not-run-hollywood-the-proof/
2. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4027
3. http://translationmusings.com/2012/06/14/lost-in-google-translate-u-s-shows-attempt-at-hebrew-runs-afoul/

Chick-felays is not Chick-fil-a

     Not too long ago, many people were in an uproar over the comments Chick-fil-a founder and COO Truett Cathy about his stance on gay marriage. People on both sides of the controversy protested and/or ate to show where they stood on the controversy. However, as is often times the case, some innocent people were caught in the crossfire.

     Nabeel Kahn, owner and CEO of the Canadian resturant chain Chick-felays was confused when he heard reports of someone coming in and ordering a meal, then asking, "How could they be so discriminating?" Not sensing the confusion of the servers trying to help him, the person responded that, "This is garbage" and then walked out. ”I didn’t have any idea what they were talking about,” said Kahn, “I was selling chicken.” This incident was not the last by people confusing the Canadian Chick-felays with the American Chick-fil-a.  It took Kahn several weeks and several more confusing visits from irate customers before the mystery was solved and he found out about the American COO's remarks.

     Kahn had to go as far as putting a sign up in one of his resturants saying that his resturant has no connection to Chick-fil-a. Fortunatly, Kahn has been able to keep his sense of humor about the whole ordeal, saying “It shocks me that people would ask ‘How can you discriminate?’ How could you think that? We’re brown people,”. Although he wonders, “How can they mistake us, when it’s a completely different logo, different colors, different menu, different name?” 

     






1. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1237546--angry-customers-mistake-chick-felays-for-chick-fil-a 2. http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/12/tiny-totally-unrelated-canadian-chain-chick-felays-takes-hit-in-chick-fil-a-controversy/
3. http://blogs.wsj.com/canadarealtime/2012/08/08/226/

That's racist?

     According to John M. Robinson, the Chief Diversity Officer of the State Department, there are several common phrases that we use everyday that can be highly offensive. In an attempt to educate all of the employees of the State Department, he wrote an article for State Magazine, the official magazine for the state department. In the article Mr. Robinson lists four common phrases that contain racist or otherwise offensive meanings: "hold down the fort", "going dutch", "rule of thumb" and "handicap". But what are the backgrounds behind these words, are they really that offensive?

     The first phrase on the list, "hold down the fort", is offensive to Native Americans due to the host of awful military actions that have been taken against them in the past, at least according to Mr. Robinson. However, I searched around for any info I could find for the origin of the phrase, but found very little, none of which directly pointed to the phrase being used specifically about or toward Native Americans. The original phrase, at least some people believe, seems to be erroneously attributed to Gen. Sherman during the Civil War. In 1864 Sherman signaled a Union fort that was under siege with the following message, "Sherman is coming. Hold out" and "General Sherman says hold fast. We are coming." This got turned round in the Northern papers and took the from of "hold the fort".  The phrase was further publicized when it was used in a popular hymn written by Philip Paul Bliss. While "hold down the fort" may have been used during the attacks on Native Americans, it doesn't seem that the phrase originated because of them.

     The next phrase mentioned in the article is, "going Dutch". The phrase, "going Dutch" goes back to the 17th century when England and the Netherlands were racing each other to build their empires. As a way to make fun of the Dutch, many English people began to use Dutch as a derogatory descriptor in such phrases such as "Dutch courage" (liquor), "Dutch defense" (a retreat), "Dutch nightingale" (a frog) and "going Dutch". Since that time, the only one that seems to have stuck around and entered the mainstream is "going Dutch". That phrase could stem from a couple of sources. The first and least offensive, could be a reference to old style farm house doors that split in two, with one top piece and one bottom piece. That type of door is called a Dutch door, and the thinking is that since those doors are equally split in two, some one used that as the basis of the phrase as an illustration on how they wanted to split the bill. Another, less nice theory was that the Dutch were known to be stingy, and so if you "went Dutch" you only paid for your own expenses. Similar phrases are found round the world, with a common variation being "going American" or "American style" instead of "going Dutch". Once could make the case that since, "going Dutch" does have an offensive origin, it shouldn't be used today. The case could also be made that over time, the offensiveness of the phrase has been lost and it no longer is meant to directly defame the character of the Dutch.

     The next phrase on the list is "rule of thumb". Mr. Robinson asserts that this phrase comes from an old rule where a man could beat his wife with a stick no larger in width than his thumb. However, he is incorrect. The earliest known example of the phrase is found in Heaven upon Earth, a book written by J. Durham in 1685. In the book, "rule of thumb" is used as a unit of measure, which is consistent with other examples of the phrase found in other languages. Some believe that the phrase came from carpenters or farmers using their thumbs as measuring devices to tell how long something was or how deep to plant something.

     As for the potentially offensive history of "rule of thumb", the earliest known belief in it being used as a rule for how much damage you could inflict on your wife comes from 1782, when James Gillray drew a cartoon of British judge Sir Francis Buller handing out sticks for husbands to use. No one knows for certain if he ever actually made such a pronouncement, due to the poor record keeping of transcripts at the time. If Buller did say such a thing, he would more than likely stood alone in his opinion. As less than 100 years after the supposed pronouncement, Edward Foss wrote in his Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England that Buller, "is attributed the obnoxious and ungentlemanly dictum that a husband may beat his wife, so that the stick with which he administers the castigation is not thicker than his thumb". However, even back then, Foss could not find any evidence that Buller had actually said it, and there are numerous examples before and after this statement of laws and decisions protecting women from such abuse

     The modern belief in the offensive history of "rule of thumb", can be traced to 1976, when feminist Del Martin used the phrase as a metaphorical reference. Many misunderstood what she was trying to say, and the belief in "rule of thumb" referring to abuse reared its head again. It even became so widespread that when congress issued a report in 1982 on wife abuse, it was titled, "Under the Rule of Thumb".

     The last phrase Mr. Robinson mentions is "handicap". In the article, even he mentions that he is not 100 percent where this comes from, but the origin he sites is incorrect. The initial origin of "handicap" comes from a method of bartering where two people would offer up items for trade and would place in a small amount of money in a cap that an appraiser would hold. The two parties that were bartering would offer their items and the appraiser, and he would value them. Upon the valuation, both parties would stick their hands in the cap, and the pull them out with either a closed or open hand. An open hand meant the trade was agreed on, but a closed had signified no deal. If both parties made the same decision, either to trade or reject the deal, the appraiser would keep the money that was in the cap. However if one person accepted the trade, but the other rejected it, then the one who accepted the trade would take the money in the cap. This method, originally called hand-in-cap, was later shortened to handicap, and was designed to try and make the bartering process fair to both parties.

     Later the phrase began to be applied to races and other sporting events where some one was either given an advantage, a golf handicap for example, or a disadvantage to level out the playing field. One such example of the latter idea is found in horse races where more weight would be added to a faster horse to slow it down so that it's speed was more in line with the other horses. These types of races became called handicap races. Around the same time, the phrase "handicap" started being used to refer to disadvantages a person might face. It wasn't until 1915 that "handicap" began to be used to describe an impairment of some kind. However this was only used to describe children who were physically disabled. It wasn't until the 1950's that the phrase was extended to include adults and the mentally disabled. Given the above, the word "handicap" has a much less offensive origin than the one Mr. Robinson applies to it.

     As you can see, word origins can be a tricky thing to uncover.However, I hope this clears the air some on where these phrases come from. While I do agree with Mr. Robinson's idea that we need to be careful in what we write or say, we also need to know the truth on where the phrases come from before we decide if we can use them or not.








Sources:
1. http://digitaledition.state.gov/publication/?i=119665
2. http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/30/new-frontiers-in-hypersensitvity-state-department-officer-says-holding-down-the-fort-is-racist/
3. http://juicyecumenism.com/2012/09/01/hold-the-fort-or-not/
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Dutch
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb
6. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-rul1.htm
7. http://www.word-detective.com/back-l2.html
8. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-it-mean-when-you-go-dutch.htm
9. http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~ronald/HandicapDefinition.htm
10. http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/handicap.asp

Jimmy Carter REALLY likes Poland...

     After doing my post about the non existent translation error in Kennedy's famous 1963 speech, I got to wondering, have there ever been any real translation errors that have caused presidents of the past genuine embarrassment? After doing a bit of searching on Google, I hit the jackpot.

     Back in 1977, President Jimmy Carter was in Poland for a state visit. Seeking a translator for his time there, the State department hired Steven Seymour, who was a freelance linguist who was known for his expertise with translating written Polish. That expertise in dealing with Polish on paper, didn't translate into expertise in speaking Polish. During Carter's opening speech, Seymour translated the the English, "I have come to learn your opinions and understand your desires for the future." into the Polish, "I desire the Poles carnally."

     While that one mistake would have been bad enough, Seymour's didn't end there. Carter started talking about how happy he was to be in Poland, which was translated as he was happy to grasp Poland's private parts. Further on in Carter's speech, he talked about his departure from the U.S. which was translated, "when I left the United States never to return...". Lastly, Carter went on to praise the Polish constitution of 1791 as one of three great documents in the struggle for human rights. What Seymour told the Poles in attendance was that their constitution was to be ridiculed.

     Reasonably enough, the Polish people were left in that strange mix of anger and confusion that comes from when the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world tells you that he wants to fondle you and your constitution is awful. However, the Poles weren't just angry because of just the translation. When Seymour did his awful translation job, he added a insult to injury by using Russian syntax and Polish idioms that had been out of style for 100 years. Also, keep in mind, this was the middle of the Cold War. Using any thing Russian is not the best move to make when you are translating to a people who were firmly behind the iron curtain and were being oppressed by the Russians. Not to mention that the Poles have a long history of not liking the Russians generally.

     Now Seymour was rightly fired after this debacle, but the Carter administration wasn't out of the woods yet. Looking for another translator, they hired Jerzy Krycki, a former employee of the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw. Krycki was assigned to translate for Carter at a state dinner. However, there was a slight problem. While Krycki was fluent in Polish, his English wasn't the greatest. So when Carter got up to give the toast, he was greeted with only silence from Krycki. Carter, thinking simply that Krycki had missed his que, spoke the second line of the toast and waited. Greeted by even more silence, Carter knew something was wrong. It turned out Krycki heard the president just fine, he just couldn't understand the president well enough to translate for him. Since he didn't want to repeat Seymour's mistake of mistranslation, Krycki just chose to remain silent. Fortunately, the Polish leader's translator stepped up and translated for the president.

     Fortunately for Carter, no other major mess ups happened during his trip abroad. As for both of the translators, they seemed to recover professionally after the incident, with Seymour continuing his work as a translator for poetry and Krycki working for a news agency. I guess the most important lesson to take away from this is you need to know what others are saying when they speak for you. Otherwise, you might end up propositioning and then insulting an entire nation.


Sources:
1. http://www.foxtranslate.com/translation/interpreter-mistake-offends-poland
2. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://www.jerzy-krycki.mementi.pl/&prev=/search%3Fq%3DJerzy%2BKrycki%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1C1_____enUS417US417%26prmd%3Dimvnso&sa=X&ei=1_I-UL3oI-rO2gWVlIGwDg&ved=0CCcQ7gEwAA
3. http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1880208_1880218_1880227,00.html
4. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/17003
5. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=RO4yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EO4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=5139,2759225&dq=carter+polish+translation&hl=en
6. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19771230&id=hBIsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BscEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3275,5984124
7. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/steven-seymour