A Brief Post, for Which We Are Likely to Receive Flak from the Distaff Side

Overheard on a commercial the other evening:

"1 out of 4 women have difficulty reading a home-pregnancy test."

Are they written in Sanskrit?

Copenhagen Dreamin'

So President Obama and other world leaders have reached a "meaningful" accord on climate change. We confess we've given only a cursory glance at the initial article from the Times, but we're skeptical about how "meaningful" the accord is. To quote Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Consider what did NOT make it into the final agreement: "a collective agreement among nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050"; "language calling for a binding accord 'as soon as possible.'" Think about that latter excision: People can't even agree that they should come to an agreement! Is it any wonder we're skeptical?

At the risk of sounding pessimistic--you know we always try to be a beacon of sunshine and optimism--we can't shake the thought that it's way too late to turn down the thermostat--at least through international treaties and negotiations. We do think it's possible to reverse global warming, but it's ultimately going to be done by individual nations acting in their own interest. Whether that will be good or bad, though, is an open question.

An interesting article in The Atlantic discussed some of the more radical propositions for cooling the planet, primarily by blocking the sun's rays ("Re-Engineering the Earth"). Zeppelins that spew sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere! Ships constantly churning seawater into the air, creating extra clouds and effectively "painting the sky white"! Electromagnetic guns aimed at the midpoint between the earth and sun fire ceramic frisbees into space, creating a galactic sunscreen and plunging the earth into a semi-permanent state of eclipse!

These are real proposals.

The frisbee sunscreen would cost several trillion dollars. But what's most interesting--and frightening--about the other proposals is their relative cheapness. As Hillary Clinton pledges hundreds of billions of dollars to developing nations to help them go green--on top of however many billions (trillions?) of dollars the US would have to devote to its own environmental efforts--these and other climate "fixes" could be implemented for a fraction of the costs. The seawater project mentioned above would cost about $600 million dollars to start up and about $100 million a year to maintain; a fleet of sulfur-spewing zeppelins would incur similar costs.

Sure, this isn't pocket change, but to put it in perspective, this means that Bill Gates could, if he wanted, single-handedly stop global warming. No? OK, Steve Jobs, then. Whoever. The point is, one person or small group of people could decide to take matters into their own hands and save the planet. And while this idea has a certain appeal--if things get really, really desperate, the problem can be solved--the law of unintended consequences looms menacingly. Because even if these quick fixes work as expected, there's no telling what may happen next. If those sulfur zeppelins stop working, the result would not be global warming--global parboiling is more like it.

Ultimately, the best argument for collective action--and, again, we're skeptical it can be achieved--is not that something needs to be done, but that something will be done. We need to make sure it's responsible people that are doing it.

By the way, for the opinions of a more well-informed environmentalist, check out "Our Feet Are the Same." It's a good read.

Doing Well by Having Fun II

Rather than discussing the student we spent about an hour with today explaining why, since he hadn't done more than half the work for the class, he was receiving a failing grade--rather than discussing that, we say, we thought we'd share another winning student essay with Solipsist Nation.

(Digression: On TV right now is "Psycho IV: The Beginning." Parse that title, if you will. EOD)

The topic was "Think about a specific goal that you hope to accomplish. Discuss some of the steps you think you will need to take to accomplish that goal." Generally, the responses run a predictable gamut: get a college diploma, play in the NBA/NFL, become a nurse, blah blah blah, yawwwwwwwnnnnn! Imagine our delight, then, when we read the following (we paraphrase, but assure the Nation we are not taking liberties with the student's content):

"Ever since I was eight years old, I have had a goal: to pose for Playboy magazine."

Did we need to read more? She had us at Playboy. Being a conscientious teacher, though, YNSHC soldiered on.

What became immediately apparent was the girl's sincerity. She's obviously given this a great deal of thought. The steps she described were logical enough: To exercise and keep herself in good shape (obviously); to practice her interviewing technique because "Playboy doesn't want any airheads"; and to develop her self-confidence because "it could be intimidating being in a room with 40 naked women."

Speak for yourself.

At any rate, despite its outre nature, this was clearly a passing essay. The proverbial cherry on top, though, came with the grading. Recall that these essays are read by two instructors. The Solipsist read the essay first, passed it, and then handed it off to another instructor. The second instructor agreed that it was, overall, a good essay, although she thought the paragraphs could use more detail. That's not what she wrote on the feedback sheet, though. She wrote, with no pun intended (we know this instructor--there was no pun intended):

"Overall, this essay is good, but your body needs more development."

Snort!

Doing Well by Having Fun

We've spent considerable time kvetching about the shortcomings of our writing students, but we don't want you to get the impression that it's all bad. Indeed, every once in a while, we're treated to something delightful.

During this last round of exams, one of the writing topics students could choose was to discuss the positive or negative elements of a job or a task. Shortly after the exam began, one of our better students asked us if he could ask us how to spell a word. We said sure.

(Digression: We're not one of those teachers that tells students to "look it up." For one thing, if a student is unsure how to spell something, how easy will it be to look it up? For another, what's the fundamental difference between consulting a dictionary and asking a teacher? Either way, you are making effective use of educational resources. EOD)

The word he needed help spelling was "Vatican." We gave him a quizzical look. "As in, the place where the Pope lives?" Yes. We spelled it for him and considered asking what the hell he was writing about, but decided against it.

About an hour later, he came up to our desk. "Mr. S., I'm not sure if you can answer this. . . but I'm worried that I'm not doing the essay right."

We couldn't give much assistance--this being a test and all--but we asked what he meant. "Well, I think my essay is kind of turning into a story." Now, you should understand that, in this writing class, we teach a real paint-by-numbers, fill-in-the-blanks kind of essay writing technique. We focus only on illustration essays--make a statement, provide examples to illustrate that statement. In other words, we don't teach students to write narrative essays, and we try to provide writing prompts that lend themselves to illustrative expository writing.

We explained to the student that it's certainly possible to write an essay in a story format, but we wanted the student to make sure that he had all the "requirements": Does your essay have a thesis statement like we discussed in class? Yes. OK, do you have at least three body paragraphs? Yes. Does each of those body paragraphs have a topic sentence that relates back to your thesis statement? Yes. Do you give details to illustrate those topic sentences? Yes. In that case, we assured him, it should be OK. He went back to his writing.

Later that day, but before we had begun grading the essays, we saw this student in the library. We had to know! What, exactly were you writing about?

"Oh, I was writing about the negative elements of a job."

What job?

"Well, it's OK to make stuff up, right?"

Yes. What job?

"I wrote about a time I had to sneak into Russia to steal a bottle of Holy Vodka for the Pope."

Huh. . . . And, the negative elements?

"Lousy room service at the Vatican, having to fight my way through a bunch of demonic strippers who were protecting the vodka, and then not even being thanked by the Pope. Am I gonna get in trouble for this?"

We reminded the student that the essays were always read by two instructors, and you could never be completely sure how a reader would react. . . . For our money, though, we thought he might just have written the best in-class essay we would ever read.

By the way, he passed with flying colors.

Blah (A Brief Post)

Can it be a coincidence that the affliction "Seasonal Affective Disorder" acronymizes as "SAD"? Seems to be quite a bit of it going around these days. Our FFB Emi Ha is under duress. Anonymous is curmudgeonly (in fairness, though, there's nothing seasonal about that). And even we feel a certain malaise.

Do the holidays get us down? Not especially. We care very little one way or another about the holidays. We're celebrators of Festivus if of anything at all--the cynical, non-holiday pretty much sums up our attitude.

We think the malaise springs more from a constant chill--not cold, exactly: Cold would be preferable. You can bundle up against cold. You can't really bundle up against generalized chilliness. And that chilliness gets down deep into the bones.

Stay warm, Solipsist Nation.

To Intentionally Offend (Part II)

(CAUTION: If this is your first visit to The Solipsist. . . where the hell have you been?!? At any rate, welcome, but be sure to read yesterday's post first, or you'll be hopelessly lost.)

As for the intriguing but disingenuous, some say splitting the infinitive confuses readers by describing the manner in which something is done before describing the done-thing itself. Thus, for example, if President Obama declares that it is the government's intention "to quickly divest" itself of any ownership stake in General Motors, a reader might conceivably be brought up short, wondering what President Obama could be doing "quickly" before being enlightened by the next word.

Now, we are in favor of anything that makes reading smoother--clarity is job one. But do proponents of this argument truly believe that anyone is confused by this? Perhaps a four-year-old just learning to decode letters might be put off, but for most readers, who do not sound out one word at a time, any conceivable confusion will be subconscious and momentary. Experienced readers--who despite prescriptivists' best efforts are commonly exposed to split infinitives--know to simply move off of the adverb to find out what is being done. (See what we did there?)

The complaint seems to be that splitting the infinitive puts added emphasis on the adverb. To which we say, precisely! As Sloppist Susan Ruda commented yesterday, "I am frequently guilty of using the split infinitive [which] emphasizes the meaning of an adverb within a sentence. That usage is acceptable. I find in proofing my written work that I too often split an infinitive when that emphasis is unwarranted." In other words, it's a matter of style: If you want to emphasize the adverb, do it--split away! If not, don't.

What makes this quibble especially disingenuous is that the purist complains that splitting the infinitive--"to quickly divest"--places undue emphasis on the adverb at the expense of the verb; however, this same purist would presumably have no problem with the phrasing "quickly to divest" which places even greater emphasis on the adverb even earlier in the sentence.

Another factor to consider when debating whether to split the infinitive is mellifluousness: When does it just sound better? In fact, we think that this is the primary reason for the classic Kirkism "to boldly go." Consider the phrase in its entirety:

"To boldly go where no man has gone before"

Certainly, there would have been nothing wrong with "boldly to go" or "to go boldly." But check this out:

First, humor the Solipsist: Change "no man" to "none." We hope you will agree that this maintains the meaning and even avoids the taint of sexism that was subsequently remedied by "no one." At any rate, the emphasis in the original falls strongly on "no," so we think this is acceptable. Now, read it out loud:

"To boldly go where none has gone before."

You know what you've got there? Iambic pentameter. The rhythm of Shakespeare. And if splitting an infinitive gives a writer a touch of the Bard, we hope that they will choose to freely split.

To Intentionally Offend

And now, because we can't think of anything better to do, our long-awaited commentary on split infinitives.

First, in case you don't know, an "infinitive" is a verb in its "pure" state--verb qua verb, if you will. In English, the infinitive is formed by placing the preposition "to" in front of the base form of the verb, e.g., "to be," "to dance," "to sing," "to laugh," "to love," etc. An infinitive is action or state of being unbounded by time or place--unlimited by subject.

Of course, infinitives are of limited usefulness. After all, when we think of actions, we usually think about them being done by someone (or something) at a particular time. Thus, we conjugate verbs to link them to subjects and place the action they describe in the present, past or future. In other words, a conjugated verb loses its "infinite" quality.

Now, a "split infinitive" is an "error" that occurs when one places an adverb between the preposition ("to") and the verb. Perhaps the most famous split infinitive of all time is Captain Kirk's--and later Captain Picard's--description of the Enterprise's mission: "to boldly go where no man/one has gone before."

You may reasonably ask, "Well, what's wrong with that?" The answer depends on whether you adopt a descriptivist or prescriptivist approach to grammar. Descriptivists, who as their name implies "describe" the way language works, would say there is nothing wrong with split infinitives. Prescriptivists, who prescribe rules, say split infinitives are signs of ignorance (at best) or the apocalypse (at worst). But astute members of Solipsist Nation will still ask, "Why?" Whence sprang this prescriptivist antipathy toward the humble split infinitive?

We have heard two rationales--one inane; the other intriguing, but disingenuous.

The inane: Grammarians back in the day observed that English adopted much of its language--particularly its vocabulary--from Latin. Furthermore, these lovers of language considered Latin a superior language: the language of culture, knowledge, classicism. Since Latin and other Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, etc.) have no split inifinitives--nor for that matter does English's closer relative, German--then split infinitives must have no placen in English.

What makes this argument inane is that Romance languages have no split infinitives because they can't: Infinitives in these languages are single words. The Spanish word "hablar," for example, translates as "to speak" in English. There's nowhere to stick an adverb ("habienblar"?). Basing modern conventions on the limitations of previous eras and foreign places, seems ill-advised. The Romans didn't have flush toilets or television, either.

TOMORROW: The disingenous. Plus: When to properly use split inifinitives (hint, that ain't it!)