Monthly Archives: October 2009

The French and their language

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The WSJ had a great article today on the front page:

PARIS — The word on the table that morning was “cloud computing.”

To translate the English term for computing resources that can be accessed on demand on the Internet, a group of French experts had spent 18 months coming up with “informatique en nuage,” which literally means “computing in cloud.”

France’s General Commission of Terminology and Neology — a 17-member group of professors, linguists, scientists and a former ambassador — was gathered in a building overlooking the Louvre to approve the term.

“What? This means nothing to me. I put a ‘cloud’ of milk in my tea!” exclaimed Jean Saint-Geours, a French writer and member of the Terminology Commission.

“Send it back and start again,” ordered Etienne Guyon, a physics professor on the commission.

Keeping the French language relevant isn’t easy in the Internet age. For years, French bureaucrats have worked hard to keep French up to date by diligently coming up with equivalents for English terms. Though most French people say “le week-end” and “un surfer,” the correct translations of the terms are “fin de semaine” (“end of the week”) and “aquaplanchiste” (“water boarder”). A “start-up” company is referred to as “jeune pousse,” or “young shoot” (the term pousse is used for vegetable sprouts), while the World Wide Web is translated as “toile d’araignée mondiale” (literally, global spider web).

But technological advancements mean new Anglicisms are spreading over the Internet at warp speed, leaving the French scratching their heads.

Before a word such as “cloud computing” or “podcasting” (“diffusion pour baladeur“) receives a certified French equivalent, it needs to be approved by three organizations and get a government minister’s seal of approval, according to rules laid out by the state’s General Delegation for the French Language and the Languages of France. The process can be a linguistic odyssey taking years.

“Rigor cannot be compromised,” said Xavier North, the 57-year-old civil servant who heads the General Delegation.

Thank goodness that English does not need an official arbiter. I have nothing against French, other than I don’t understand French spelling, but one of the things I really like about English is that it is a mishmash of many languages. One estimate is that 26% of English came from Germanic Languages, 29% from French, 29% from Latin, and 6% from Greek. Here’s a list of words English has ruthlessly stolen from other languages.

Maybe there are some benefits to top-down central planning of a language, but I like the idea that words don’t need special bureaucratic approval.

Understanding Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

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According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be give "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Note that Nobel used past tense—“the person who shall have done the most…”

But the current Nobel Prize committee did not look to Obama’s past accomplishments, but is instead trying to use the award to promote peace. Here’s the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s press release.

It’s clear that the Norwegian Nobel Committee isn’t giving Obama the award for past accomplishments, but for “hope for a better future.” That might not have been Alfred Nobel’s intent, but the current committee is trying to promote peace by giving the award to Obama in the hopes that he will live up to it.

I think that this cheapens the award to some extent. After all, if they are giving the award for future actions, why didn’t they give the award to President Bush in the hope that he bend more toward the Norwegian’s will? 

We Are Devoting Too Many of Our Best Minds to Lawyering

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Justice Scalia recently said in a interview that we are wasting too many good minds lawyering:

I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise.

I mean there’d be a, you know, a defense or public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?

I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.

And they appear here in the Court, I mean, even the ones who will only argue here once and will never come again. I’m usually impressed with how good they are. Sometimes you get one who’s not so good. But, no, by and large I don’t have any complaint about the quality of counsel, except maybe we’re wasting some of our best minds.

This is undoubtedly true. I know really smart people whose work produces absolutely no real value for society. For example, what value for society does a tax attorney produce? They do not increase knowledge or produce anything of real value, instead they spend their time navigating the labyrinthine tax code. If we had simpler laws, we wouldn’t need to devote some many smart people to figuring out the laws.

The WSJ has the most intelligent take on Obama and the Olympics

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Link

The International Olympic Committee can be a fickle bunch, so there’s no humiliation in Chicago’s failure yesterday to win its bid for the 2016 summer games. The Windy City gave a good effort, losing out in the first elimination round to Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, which eventually won the nod.

We also won’t join those who pounded President Obama for taking a day to travel to Copenhagen to underscore Chicago’s bid, claiming he had somehow shirked the pressing issues of health care and yesterday’s dismal September jobs report. If the country is going to unravel because a President is not in Washington for 24 hours, we’re in worse shape than we thought. Some also fault Mr. Obama for investing the prestige of his office in getting the games, as no President has before, but then Mr. Obama is more closely identified with Chicago than other Presidents have been with other bidding cities.

If Mr. Obama and the White House made a mistake, it was in their apparently boundless faith that somehow Mr. Obama’s personal popularity would carry the day. As if, merely by seeing the rock star in person, the delegate from, say, Egypt would abandon his simmering dislike for America, forget all the dinners and deals cut with the Rio Committee, and reward Chicago. In that sense, the Olympic defeat is a relatively painless reminder that interests trump charm or likability in world affairs. Better to relearn this lesson in a fight over a sporting event than over nuclear missiles.

My favorite line is “If the country is going to unravel because a President is not in Washington for 24 hours, we’re in worse shape than we thought.” Way to many people, both Republicans and Democrats think the President needs to be in Washington doing something, anything, at all times. If America needs a President sitting in the Oval Office to function, then let’s disband the nation.

47% will pay no federal income tax

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From CNN.com:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Most people think they pay too much to Uncle Sam, but for some people it simply is not true.

In 2009, roughly 47% of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Some in that group will even get additional money from the government because they qualify for refundable tax breaks.

The ranks of those whose major federal tax burdens net out at zero — or less — is on the rise. The center’s original 2009 estimate was 38%. That was before enactment in February of the $787 billion economic recovery package, which included a host of new or expanded tax breaks.

The issue doesn’t get a lot of attention even as lawmakers debate how to pay for policy initiatives like health reform, whether to extend the Bush tax cuts and how to reduce the deficit.

The vast majority of households making up to $30,000 fall into the category, as do nearly half of all households making between $30,000 and $40,000.

As you move up the income scale the percentages drop.

Nearly 22% of those making between $50,000 and $75,000 end up with no federal income tax liability or negative liability as do 9% of households with incomes between $75,000 and $100,000.