The importance of text

Always bet on text. [Link]

At every step of communication technology, textual encoding comes first, everything else after. Because it's vastly cheaper on a symbol-by-symbol basis. You have a working optical telegraph network running in 1790 in France. You the better part of a century of electrical telegraphy, trans-oceanic cables and everything, before anyone bothers with trying to carry voice. You have decades of teleprinter and text-only computer networking, mail and news, chat and publishing, editing and diagnostics, before bandwidth gets cheap enough for images, voice and video. You have pagers, SMS, WAP, USSD and blackberries before iPhones. You haveTeletext and BBSs, netnews and gopher before the web. And today many of the best, and certainly the most efficient parts of the web remain text-centric. I can download all of wikipedia and carry it around on the average smartphone.

The perils of unexamined legislation

Judges rule ACA actually means what it says. [Link]

This result isn’t entirely shocking. As Jonathan Adler, one of the architects of the legal strategy behind Halbig, noted today on a conference call, the government was unable to come up with any contemporaneous congressional statements that supported its view of congressional intent, and the statutory language is pretty clear. Members of Congress have subsequently stated that this wasn’t their intent, but my understanding is that courts are specifically barred from considering post-facto statements about intent.

When you read through the ruling, it’s easy to see the many ways in which the law’s architects brought this on themselves. The law was highly complex, badly drafted and highly controversial. When a Republican won a special election for the Senate in Massachusetts (!), the Democrats had to push it through on a straight party-line vote with some adroit parliamentary maneuvering -- which gave them a health-care law, but one that was badly put together and couldn’t be substantially amended. The gaping holes were patched with administrative fixes, like an Internal Revenue Service ruling that held federally established exchanges to be equivalent to an exchange established by the state. But the vast scale of the law meant that the administrative gymnastics that held it together might not be sustainable.

For example, the core of the government’s case is that Congress cannot have meant to leave federal exchanges without subsidies, because without the subsidies, the insurance markets in states with federal exchanges would inevitably enter into a death spiral. And obviously Congress wouldn’t do that.

The problem, as the justices point out in their brief, is that the government has done just that. Federal territories are subject to the mandates, but they don’t get subsidies. So clearly the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services think that, at least in some cases, Congress would and did enact exactly the system -- guaranteed issue, community rating, but no subsidies -- that the government lawyers are claiming they would never consider.

Courts are cautious about fatally damaging major laws, and if this ruling stands, it would be pretty damaging. Most of the people who bought new insurance on the exchanges qualified for subsidies; many of them will exit if the subsidies are withdrawn, and those most likely to exit are the young and healthy. Which brings us back to the specter of an insurance market death spiral in states with federal exchanges.

That’s not a guaranteed outcome -- I’ll write more about the possible permutations later today. But even if it’s not guaranteed, it’s certainly a risk. So this is a major ruling, which will potentially have major impact on a major law. And that itself is always a bit surprising. The Fourth Circuit reached the opposite result, in another ruling released today: “the court is of the opinion that the defendants have the stronger position, although only slightly.”

So what happens next? In the short term, the case probably goes to an en banc hearing in front of the full appeals court, sometime in the fall, and then quite possibly to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the administration says the subsidies will continue to flow, though it’s not clear upon what they are basing that -- whether it expects a stay of the decision pending en banc review, or whether it is signaling their intention to ignore the ruling until the appeals are exhausted.

This quote seems appropriate:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - - that's all."
(Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6) 

Math vs Maths

So that's where the Brits lost the 's' in Sports. They put it on the end of Math. [Link]

One does not simply use the letters 'mor' to show something is evil

Well, actually, you can. [Link]

In fact, "mor" may be what is sometimes called a phonestheme: a part of a word that tends to carry a certain connotation not because of etymology or formal definition but just by association. Words that start with "gl" often have to do with light (glow, gleam, glimmer, glitter, glisten, etc.) even though they are not all related historically; similarly, words that start with "sn" often relate to the nose (snoot, sniffle, snot, snore, sneeze, etc.). It doesn't mean that all words with those letters have the meaning in common, but there is a common thread among a notable set of them.

How does this happen? Whether it's through sound association or the force of a particular root word, it just seems to snowball. It may be partly through words with phonesthemes in them being preferred to words without (glitter chosen over coruscate because it sounds more, well, glittery), partly through words with phonesthemes in them shifting sense under the influence of the phonestheme (snub is getting more nose-focused), and partly through words changing form to come to have phonesthemes in them.

One possible case of a word changing form to have a phonestheme is the oldest of the "mor" names above, Mordred, the betrayer of King Arthur. His name actually was originally Medraut orModred, Celtic versions of the Latin Moderatus. How did it get the "mor"? Possibly with some influence of his mother, Morgause, or of Morgan le Fay. But possibly also through some sound associations, with murder (earlier murther) and with the French morte. After all, the best-known account of the Arthurian legend is Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

We know that some of the names drew directly and deliberately on "mor" words. J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon and knew very well what he was up to when he chose his words.Morgoth, Mordor, and Moria are all formed using the same mor root that shows up in his Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin, a root referring to darkness and blackness. He borrowed it from the old Germanic word mora, which, as I mentioned, shows up in the modern word murky.

J.K. Rowling is well known as a dab hand at wordplay. Voldemort is right from French: it can mean "flight from death" or "theft of death." Rowling herself pronounces it with a silent t as in the French, though she's just about the only one who does.

Classical roots very likely played a role in the name Morbius, too. The first one, after whom the others (in Spider-Man and Dr. Who) are named, was in the 1956 movie The Forbidden Planet: Dr. Edward Morbius, his ship's master of languages and meaning, a man with an out-of-control unconscious. Morbius himself would have noticed the resemblance of his name to Möbius (of the famous loop) and Morpheus (shape-shifting god of dreams). He probably also would have known its similarity to Latin morbus, meaning "sickness" — source of English morbid. We can reckon safely that Irving Block and Allen Adler, who wrote the story an
d invented the name, had some idea of this too.

ICE/ISEE-3 to return to an Earth no longer capable of speaking to it

Like if Ulysses returned home after the Odyssey and finding no one can speak Greek anymore. [Link]

It's with great sadness that I report today that the Goddard Space Flight Center team has determined that we cannot, in fact, communicate with this spacecraft. Two days, ago, the following was posted on the ISEE3returns Facebook page:

Communication involves speaking, listening and understanding what we hear. One of the main technical challenges the ISEE-3/ICE project has faced is determining whether we can speak, listen, and understand the spacecraft and whether the spacecraft can do the same for us. Several months of digging through old technical documents has led a group of NASA engineers to believe they will indeed be able to understand the stream of data coming from the spacecraft. NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) can listen to the spacecraft, a test in 2008 proved that it was possible to pick up the transmitter carrier signal, but can we speak to the spacecraft? Can we tell the spacecraft to turn back on its thrusters and science instruments after decades of silence and perform the intricate ballet needed to send it back to where it can again monitor the Sun? The answer to that question appears to be no.

The transmitters of the Deep Space Network, the hardware to send signals out to the fleet of NASA spacecraft in deep space, no longer includes the equipment needed to talk to ISEE-3. These old-fashioned transmitters were removed in 1999. Could new transmitters be built? Yes, but it would be at a price no one is willing to spend. And we need to use the DSN because no other network of antennas in the US has the sensitivity to detect and transmit signals to the spacecraft at such a distance.

This effort has always been risky with a low probability of success and a near-zero budget. It is thanks to a small and dedicated group of scientists and engineers that we were able to get as far as we have. Thank you all very much.

Cue sad Hulk music.

Because grammar

New preposition because. [Link]

Let's start with the dull stuff, because pragmatism.

The word "because," in standard English usage, is a subordinating conjunction, which means that it connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other. In that capacity, "because" has two distinct forms. It can be followed either by a finite clause (I'm reading this because [I saw it on the web]) or by a prepositional phrase (I'm reading this because [of the web]). These two forms are, traditionally, the only ones to which "because" lends itself.

I mention all that ... because language. Because evolution. Because there is another way to use "because." Linguists are calling it the "prepositional-because." Or the "because-noun."

You probably know it better, however, as explanation by way of Internet—explanation that maximizes efficiency and irony in equal measure. I'm late because YouTube. You're reading this because procrastination. As the linguist Stan Carey delightfully sums it up: "'Because' has become a preposition, because grammar." 

Illegal Aliens still illegal, still alien

No matter what the AP stylebook says. [Link]

So what in the heck are AP writers supposed to say? “Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality?” Um, this seems a bit unwieldy,AP. If I want to say: “we should not count illegal immigrants among the uninsured in this country because their lack of insurance is an immigration issue, not a health care issue,” how am I supposed to rewrite that by referring to how the people entered and from where and whether they overstayed a visa?

Basically, the idea is to make the concept so unwieldy that you banish it from the discourse, using control over language to change the terms of the debate.

Are you here legally? No, you are here illegally.
Are you a citizen? No, you are an alien.

This is all about changing the language so it becomes impossible to discuss issues that are now considered verboten by all 'right thinking people'.

Former OED editor covertly deleted thousand of words, book claims

I wish I had a word for that. [Link]

An eminent former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary covertly deleted thousands of words because of their foreign origins and bizarrely blamed previous editors, according to claims in a book published this week.

Robert Burchfield's efforts to rewrite the dictionary have been uncovered by Sarah Ogilvie, a linguist, lexicographer and former editor on the OED.

Ogilvie worked for 11 years to research and write Words of the World,published by Cambridge University Press, which challenges the widely held belief that editors of the OED between 1884 and 1933 were Anglocentric Oxford dons obsessed with preserving the Queen's English, and that it was not until Robert Burchfield's four supplements, produced between 1972 and 1986, that the dictionary was opened up to the wider world.

"I observed a pattern, that actually it was the earlier editors who were dealing with words in a really enlightened way. They certainly weren't these Anglocentric, judging kind of editors – they were very sensitive to cultural differences and they seemed to be putting in a lot of foreign words and a lot of words from different varieties of English, which must have been amazing for that day when colonial varieties of English were just emerging," said Ogilvie.

She undertook a detailed analysis of Burchfield's supplement, comparing it with the 1933 supplement by Charles Onions and William Craigie. She found that, far from opening up the OED to foreign linguistic influences, Burchfield had deleted 17% of the "loanwords" and world English words that had been included by Onions, who included 45% more foreign words than Burchfield.

Examples of Burchfield's deleted words include balisaur, an Indian badger-like animal; the American English wake-up, a golden-winged woodpecker; boviander, the name in British Guyana for a person of mixed race living on the river banks; and danchi, a Bengali shrub. The OED is now re-evaluating words expunged by Burchfield, who died in 2004, aged 81.

"This is really shocking. If a word gets into the OED, it never leaves. If it becomes obsolete, we put a dagger beside it, but it never leaves," Ogilvie said.

The importance of 1066

With regards to our language. [Link]

Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, had a very Germanic grammar. Verb conjugations were complicated, nouns and pronouns had different endings depending on how they were used in a sentence, and adjectives “agreed” with their nouns in number, case and gender. (If we hadn’t cleared all this useless rubbish out of the language we would still be spouting nonsense like this: I sit on thi biggi rocki, I throw thum biggum rockum, tho rocko is bigo. Tha girla, however, is biga and I go with thai biggai girlai to thi picturi showi. And so on.) That all changed after the Conquest, and by the time Chaucer was writing, English was well on the way to becoming the sleek and simple grammatical engine that it is today, freeing up untold billions of braincells for more useful tasks.
This grammatical simplicity is one of the reasons that English has become such a global language. Spelling aside, it is much easier to learn than languages with more complicated grammatical structures. Irregularities and verbal complexities are continually being eroded as the English language continues down the path of grammatical simplification on which William the Conqueror quite unintentionally set it.
At the same time, the presence of two languages side by side not only gave English a bigger stock of words than most languages have, it made English a language of subtle connotations. Animals in the field where the peasants dealt with them were known by their Saxon names: cow, pig, sheep. Killed, dressed and served up at feasts to the nobility, they became beef, pork and mutton — all based on the French words for those animals. English had parallel sets of words for body parts and functions, the “couth” ones usually coming from French, the uncouth ones from plain Saxon. Today’s English still follows this pattern: there are more words in our vocabulary than in most languages, and word choice can mean everything in English prose. In the famous examples from Time magazine, “Truman slunk from the room to huddle with his cronies,” while “Ike strode from the chamber to confer with his advisers.” We have our blunt Anglo-Saxon epithets and our precise Norman-French euphemisms, and the habit of hospitality, the openness to loan words from many languages, continues to enrich English to this day.
Unfortunately, the Conquest struck a mighty blow against sensible spelling in English as well. With Germanic and French sounds mingling in the vocabulary and pronunciation changing from generation to generation as the two language streams reacted on one another, vowels changed their quality and consonants did strange things. The two letter combination “gh” once meant something; now we pronounce it like an “f” (tough), like a regular “g” (ghost) or like nothing at all (Hillsborough). French vowel sounds mutated into English ones, gutteral Germanic sounds got frenchified, consonant clusters rose and fell, accentuation wreaked havoc with vowel quantities and bit by bit we created the insane orthographic mess that we thrash about in today.
An ear for the difference between Saxon and Norman-French based words remains important even in popular literature. In the Harry Potter books, the good characters often have trustworthy Saxon or Celtic surnames (Weasley, Dumbledore) while you can tell the bad guys by their evil French names like Malfoy (bad faith) and Voldemort (flight of death). “Muggles” is about as Anglo-Saxon as an invented word can get, and to English ears it sounds like a word that ought to exist even if you have never heard it before.
The historical roots of modern English play an even larger role in Tolkien’s work. Tolkien is one of those rare writers who can give you good Anglo-Saxons like the Riders of Rohan (whose vocabulary and poetic meters are pure Anglo-Saxon) and good people who use a more Norman and Latinate vocabulary—like the people of Gondor and the elves. Tolkien’s own sense of the evolution of the English language influences the Lord of the Rings at almost every level.

Two parties, two perspectives

Democrats: ‘We All Belong to the Government'. [Link]

When major political parties hold conventions, they usually try to craft their messages to reach the broadest possible audience. The parties make the case that they stand for true American values and represent the best hope for freedom and liberty – within their definition of the priorities involved. But even with the acknowledgment that those meanings can shift depending on the issues, the Democratic Party and their convention got off to a very strange and very revealing start this week in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The host committee started off the festivities with a video presentation that defended the use of government as a medium to address social ills and as a unifying presence in American lives. That’s not exactly a novel argument coming from Democrats and progressives. However, this statement was: “Government’s the only thing we all belong to,” the narrator intoned. “We have different churches, different clubs, but we’re together as a part of our city, or our county, or our state – and our nation.”

We all belong to the government? That’s not how most Americans think of themselves. As Mitt Romney tweeted almost immediately afterward, Americans usually labor under the concept that government belongs to the people, and not the other way around. Abraham Lincoln famously referred to American government as “government of the people, by the people, for the people” in the Gettysburg address. He didn’t refer to America as a people of, by, and for the government.

I believe Democrats see that statement as innocuous and meaning belonging to a family or club; "I belong to the government".
I believe Republicans see that statement as sinister and asserting ownership; "I belong to the government".
Those two meanings show the divide between the parties. How can we find common ground?

Collective Nouns

List of collective nouns. [Link]

This is a list of collective nouns which can be sorted by subject or collective term. Collective nouns are words used to define a group of objects. Although primarily applied to animals, collective nouns can be used for people, inanimate objects, concepts or other things.

General collective nouns that can be applied to any subject, such as group, collection or aggregation, are not included in this list. Other collective nouns, such as herd, flock or pack, can be used for many subjects, while yet others are specific to a single species of animal or other object. Some are even more restrictive, and are only used for creatures in a specific environment, for example the term "a skein of geese" is only used when the geese are in flight.^[1]

Why I found this hilarious:

A glaring of cats.

Emily was not amused.

Technology helping people

This will be very useful - and affordable for those who can't speak. [Link]

Intuary, a mobile app startup, recently launched its first app, called Verbally, which is designed to bring speech to those without. Verbally is an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) solution built for the more than six million people in the U.S. suffering from speech disabilities — caused by Lou Gherig’s Disease, stroke, brain injury, Parkinson’s, cerebral palsy, autism, and more. The app allows users to tap the words they wish to communicate onto the app’s keyboard, or choose from pre-prepared words or phrases, which are then in turn transmitted into audio phrases.

The app’s founders, Anil, Gautam Godhwani, along with their cousin Ajay, lost their mother (and aunt) to Lou Gehrig’s Disease in February of this year. She had been a music teacher and singer for 40 years, but in late 2009, her voice began to fail. Seeing the tremendous impact the lack of communication had her, they began investigating solutions on the market. While there are a number of solutions currently available, the touchscreen solutions from large corporations, like Dynavox-Mayer Johnson, cost a minimum of $8K and require at least one month of waiting. Obviously, for those suffering from aggressive illnesses, that wait time is unacceptable.

While iPad apps like that made by Proloquo2Go, for example, offer full feature sets and are more reasonably priced at $190, Verbally hopes to offer a user experience that will appeal to literate adults with high cognition — as well as to those without, and thus reach a larger audience. (MyVoice also makes a nifty communication tool that the speech-disabled can use on the iPhone, which is definitely worth checking out.)

As such, the app offers a full keyboard in which to type the speech the user wishes to communicate, as well as a “Core Words Grid”, which offers over 50 essential words, designed to save users with less mobility 50 percent of the taps required to input sentences. There’s also a “Core Phrases Grid, smart text prediction, customizable keyboard layouts, and choices of various male and female voices — all designed to minimize keystrokes and maximize ease, speed, and choice.

Biggest news of the day

New voice for AFLAC duck chosen. [Link]

Daniel McKeague, 36, a father of three from Hugo, Minn., beat out 12,500 other contestants to replace actorGilbert Gottfried and become the voice of the reinsurance company's duck mascot.
Gottfried voiced Aflac's duck for U.S. audiences for 11 years but was ousted in March after making insensitive remarks on Twitter about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which produces about 75% of Aflac's revenue. Aflac soon announced a contest for Gottfried's replacement, but the company kept a different actor who has long offered a gentler interpretation of the duck for Japanese audiences.
McKeague recorded a 30-second clip at KQRS in Minneapolis, where he works, uploaded it to Aflac's website and later did a more formal video audition.

No pulling a "Gottfireid" from him:

"I understand what's at stake, it is not just getting behind a microphone and screaming 'Aflac.' If you're a spokesperson you have responsibilities."

North American Pronunciation Map

Neat. "on" rhymes with "Don". [Link]

There are 8 major English dialect areas in North America, listed below the map at left. These are shown in blue, each with its number, on the map and in the Dialect Description Chartbelow, and are also outlined with blue lines on the map. The first 6 of these begin at the eastern seaboard and proceed west, reflecting western settlement patterns. 24-Aug.-2010The many subdialects are shown in red on the map and in the chart, and are outlined with red lines on the map. All of these are listed in the margins of the map as well. 28-Aug.-2010In the Dialect Description Chart additional features not shown on the map are provided for distinguishing the dialects.

I don't know. Third Base.

The State Department is trying out material for open mike night. [Link]

Ian Kelly, State Department Spokesman, Daily Press Briefing, Washington, DC

TRANSCRIPT: June 30, 2009, 12:37 p.m. EDT

QUESTION: On Iran, now that the Guardian Council has announced its decision and announced Ahmadinejad as the final winner with even more votes than before, is that enough for the U.S. Government, or are you still going to wait and see what happens on the street and by the opposition?

MR. KELLY: …as the Secretary said yesterday, we’re very concerned about what’s happening in Iran…And I think this process still has to play out.

QUESTION: Well, what are you waiting - what are you waiting to play out? …

MR. KELLY: I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean by what are we waiting for.

QUESTION: Well, you say you’re waiting for it to play out. I mean, I’m just unclear what specifically you’re waiting for?….

QUESTION: What is it that hasn’t played out?

MR. KELLY: I think that there are - that the Iranian Government still has to take some action…

QUESTION: Well, I know, but —

***

MR. KELLY: In addition, we don’t see that they’ve addressed the concerns of the international community about their nuclear program. So we’re still waiting for some actions.

QUESTION: Well, but - I know. I mean, you could wait indefinitely for some actions, but just kind of —

MR. KELLY: Well, maybe we - I hope we don’t.

QUESTION: But - okay, but, I mean, at what point do you say there will be consequences if you don’t see some actions? …

MR. KELLY: Well, you know what the Secretary said yesterday. I mean, we’re going to - we are going to make decisions and base our actions on the national interests of the United States. We have…concerns …about Iran’s nuclear program, and we’re going to just continue to raise these concerns until we see that action is taken.

QUESTION: Well, …don’t you think that’s inconsistent with “we’re going to do what’s in the best interests of our national security interests regardless?”

MR. KELLY: I just - you’re asking us to take actions. I don’t think —

QUESTION: …I’m asking if you’re going to recognize President Ahmadinejad as the legitimate government that you will be - that you say you want to deal with in - on your other national security interests.

MR. KELLY: …[L]egitimacy of any government derives from the consent of the governed. I think that we’ve always had concerns about the political process in Iran…We will make decisions on that based on our dealings with Iran, based on our national interests. We think, right now, that this internal situation needs to play out.

QUESTION: Sorry, can I follow up? But it has played out. The Guardian Council has said –

MR. KELLY: I don’t think it’s played out.

QUESTION: — Ahmadinejad has - so what are you waiting for? You’re waiting for him to be sworn in?

MR. KELLY: Okay. I’ll say it again. We’re waiting for Iran to take some action.

QUESTION: What kind of action?

MR. KELLY: Well, they need to address the concerns of the international community.

QUESTION: But that’s separate from the election.

MR. KELLY: I know it’s separate from the election. We —

***

QUESTION: So at what point do you decide that you’re going to deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

MR. KELLY: Well, we haven’t reached that point yet. We will reach that point when - I mean, we’ve laid out exactly what we think needs to happen in the P-5+1. Javier Solana has invited Iran to participate. We have said that we will participate…

***

QUESTION: It’s a bit confusing. You are saying that you are going to recognize Ahmadinejad when they decide –

MR. KELLY: Did I say that?

QUESTION: — when they decide they will attend this P-5+1 meeting. I don’t see the relationship.

MR. KELLY: Look…the situation is still evolving in Iran…When and if the Iranians respond to the concerns of the international community and decide to abide by their responsibilities under their agreements –

QUESTION: Then —

MR. KELLY: — we will make our decisions based on our national interests.

I think this has been played out.

Omni-Lingual

Funny. From Bunny.

From the Dungeon to the Dictionary

Neat, I wonder what other genre/hobby created words are in regular use. [Link]

I recently received an e-mail from a correspondent who noted that my list of forms of government lacked the word magocracy. I was slightly bewildered that it was not there, for two reasons. I'd thoroughly searched the online Oxford English Dictionary and other sources for all "-cracy" and "-archy" words, so in theory, there shouldn't be any omissions. What's more, it was a word that had been familiar to me for many years. You can imagine, then, my chagrin when I determined that there is no such word - at least, not in any dictionary. That is to say, magocracy is properly *magocracy, using the linguist's convention of an asterisk to represent irregular, improper or non-existent words.

This revelation left me, if not shaken to my lexicographic foundations, then at least perplexed that I had possessed in my vocabulary for many, many years a word that simply did not exist. This admission is rather embarrassing for someone who takes great pride in his knowledge of obscure English vocabulary. How could this happen?

China requiring some citizens to change their names

Obscure characters aren't in the subset of allowed characters on their computers. [Link]

Chinese parents’ desire to give their children a spark of individuality is colliding head-on with the Chinese bureaucracy’s desire for order. Seeking to modernize its vast database on China’s 1.3 billion citizens, the government’s Public Security Bureau has been replacing the handwritten identity card that every Chinese must carry with a computer-readable one, complete with color photos and embedded microchips. The new cards are harder to forge and can be scanned at places like airports where security is a priority.

The bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report. The result is that Miss Ma and at least some of the 60 million other Chinese with obscure characters in their names cannot get new cards — unless they change their names to something more common.

Moreover, the situation is about to get worse or, in the government’s view, better. Since at least 2003, China has been working on a standardized list of characters for people to use in everyday life, including when naming children.

One newspaper reported last week that the list would be issued later this year and would curb the use of obscure names. A government linguistics official told Xinhua, the state-run news agency, that the list would include more than 8,000 characters. Although that is far fewer than the database now supposedly includes, the official said it was more than enough “to convey any concept in any field.” About 3,500 characters are in everyday use.

There just simply aren't enough different names.

By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China’s citizens. Laobaixing, or “old hundred names,” is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans.

The number of Chinese family names in use has tended to shrink as China’s population has grown, a winnowing of surnames that has occurred in many cultures over time.

At last count, China’s Wangs were leading with more than 92 million, followed by 91 million Lis and 86 million Zhangs. To refer to an unidentified person — the equivalent of “just anybody” in English — one Chinese saying can be loosely translated this way: “some Zhang, some Li.”

How do they handle searching for someone? Here, there may be a lot of John Smiths, but how many of them have the same birthday or live in the same city? In China, that would appear to be way more likely. The false positives on searches must be horrendous.

Sports Metaphor Imperialism

This shouldn't be seen as coming out of left field. [Link]

It infects every area of life. In September, a Labour whip said that "British Muslims need to step up to the plate". Even the footballer, Joey Barton, on emerging from prison to play again for Newcastle United, said that "I am always one to step up to the plate." Oh, Joey, Joey. Couldn't you just have been the one to step up to the penalty spot?

George Orwell warned us about all this more than 60 years ago. In his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, he wrote about the dangers of "a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves". He suggested that "many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning ... a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying".

This is what is so disturbing about "stepping up to the plate". Have the people who use it ever seen a baseball game? What's so great about stepping up to the plate anyway? You just put one foot in front of the other. And not only has the government been importing the use of the phrase, but even ideas from the game itself. The "three strikes and you're out" idea for punishing offenders is plucked straight from baseball. In terms of penal efficacy, it is like a middle-order English batting collapse, and we should never have introduced it into our own judicial system.