Go forth and do not multiply (not what you think)

But first, for those who never read comments...

In the previous post, I included several answers from Jeopardy! including "What is D?", a response to the clue "The letter after C in the Roman numeral for 400." In a comment, a reader named kylie who lives in Australia said, "My brain has absorbed Roman numerals as well as it has because of watching movies. All of them were made in MCM something so by a process of deduction I could have eventually remembered that C = 100 but I would have been too slow for Jeopardy. I didn't remember D because it didn't appear in movie dates."

I replied to kylie that if all of the movies she has seen were made in MCM something then she hasn't seen a movie in XXIV years, since MCMCXIX, in fact, because movies since then have been made in MM something.

It occurred to me later that perhaps the reason most American brains have absorbed Roman numerals as well as they have is related more to the Statue of Liberty than to movie dates. The very tall woman in New York harbor not only holds aloft a torch with one arm but also cradles in the other arm a tablet engraved with the date JULY IV MDCCLXXVI, the date our Declaration of Independence from England was signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvanis -- July 4, 1776.

This time last year I was learning to read Hebrew (not the same as understanding Hebrew). This year I have stumbled across a new way to solve multiplication problems without actually multiplying the numbers together. I tried it several tims and it works.

Suppose you want to solve the following multiplication problem:

15 × 12

We are going to make two columns of numbers. We will call the left column L and the right column R (clever, huh?). Put 15 in the top row of column L and put 12 in the top row of column R.

So far, so good.

Let us continue.

In each row of column L, enter half the number above it, discarding any fraction (that is, half of 15 for our purposes will be 7, not 7.5) until the last row of column L contains "1". In each row of column R, enter double the number above it. In our 15 × 12 problem, your 2-columns will look like this:

15				12
7				24
3				48
1				96

We are not yet done. Here are the three most important things you need to know.

1. If every number in column L is an even number (except the last row, of course, which will always contain "1"), then the last row of the other column (column R) contains the correct answer to the problem L1 × R1.

2. If every number in column L is an odd number, add all the numbers in the other column (column R) together (R1 + R2 + R3, etc.) and the resulting sum is the correct answer to the problem L1 × R1.

3. If column L contains both odd and even numbers, identify (by marking through) all rows in R whose corresponding L row contains an even number. Add together the numbers that remain in column R and the resulting sum is the correct answer to the problem L1 × R1.

The sharp-eyed among you will see at once that important thing 1 is really the same thing as important thing 3.

I realize that this method may take a little longer than actually multiplying, but for those of you who dislike multiplying or never managed to memorize the multiplication tables, you now have an alternate way to determine the answers to multiplication problems.

In other words, if time is not of the essence, you're in like Flynn.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

Recent answers on Jeopardy! that I knew even though none of the contestants knew included:

• Who is John Paul Jones?
  
• Who is John Singer Sargent?
  
• Who is Albert Schweitzer?
  
• What is Oklahoma?
  
• What is a shilling?
  
• What is intestate? (Category: 2T and 3T Words; Clue: A person who dies without a will is said to have died this)
  
• What is D? (Clue: The letter after C in the Roman numeral for 400)
  
• Who is Eudora Welty? (Clue: Female author from Mississippi who wrote Delta Wedding)
  
• What is a mogul?
  
• What is Alabama? (Category: Same first and last letter; Clue: Auto races are held at Talladega in this state)
  
• What is "Little pitchers have big ears"?

It borders on mind-boggling to me that any educated adult, let alone three of them on a televised quiz show, would not know that CD represents 400 in Roman numerals.

Moving right along....

It's almost ancient history now, but last Monday Mrs. RWP and I used a gift card one of the children gave us at Christmas to help us enjoy (by defraying the cost of) a very nice day-before-Valentine's Day meal at Olive Garden. We avoided the crowds expected the next day but still participated in the spirit of the day.

We began with their complimentary "endless soup, salad, and breadsticks" (we chose Zuppa Toscana) and chose different entrées. I ordered Eggplant Parmigiana, Mrs. RWP ordered Shrimp Scampi. As it turned out, each of us ate only half of our entrée. We took the rest home with us, and the next day Mrs. RWP ate the rest of my Eggplant Parmigiana and I finished off the Shrimp Scampi. Before we left Olive Garden, we shared a delicious slice of our favorite dessert, tiramisu, which I never heard of until Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner had a conversation about it in Sleepless In Seattle.

Our February weather here in north Georgia goes up and down like a yo-yo. It dropped to 26°F (-3.3°C) this morning but the high in a couple of days is predicted to be 78°F (25.5°C). According to Mrs. RWP, we're having pneumonia weather.

Yesterday morning we went out for breakfast to Wendy's. After I placed the order for one sausage-egg-and-cheese croissant, one sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit, two orders of breakfast potatoes, and two senior coffees, the cashier said, "That comes to 1066" -- she didn't say "10 dollars and 66 cents", just "1066".

I said, "That is a famous year in history!"

"1066?" she asked, looking puzzled.

"Yes," I said. "1066 is the year the Norman Conquest began in England when William the Conqueror defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings."

So, friends, the title of this post is definitely true. The more things change, the more they remain the same. I suppose I will be running off at the mouth until my last breath.

I am a frustrated teacher, I think. It's not that I try to impress others with what I know, that's not it at all. Facts just sort of spill out on their own, unbidden. I enjoy sharing and am happy when people learn new things they didn't know before.

It goes without saying, of course, that what I know is miniscule, only a tiny fraction, compared to all the things there are that can be known.

There are a lot of things on Jeopardy! about which I know absolutely nothing.

P.S. - The impetus for today's post is that some people blog almost exclusively about the food they eat. I thought I woukd try that today. Surely no one cares what I eat.

Questions that need answers

They may be of no concern to you, but they bother me a lot.

• If the fetus a woman is carrying in her womb is not a human being, why is someone who kills a pregnant woman charged with two counts of homicide?
  
  
• If the fetus a woman is carrying in her womb is a human being, why isn't that person counted when the census is taken?
  
  
• If the Calvinist teaching that a person once saved is always saved is true, how do Calvinists explain the New Testament passage Hebrews 6:4-6 which clearly states that a person who "has been enlightened" and "has tasted the heavenly gift" and "has become a partaker of the Holy Spirit" can "fall away"?
  
  
• If the Arminian teaching that a saved person can be lost but he can get saved again is true, how do Arminians explain the New Testament passage Hebrews 6:4-6 which clearly states that if a person falls away it is "impossible to be renewed again to repentance"?

Here is the passage that should cause both the Calvinist and the Arminian wings of the Christian religion to rethink their respective entrenched positions:

"For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and of the powers of the age to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame." --Hebrews6:4-6

We could get into a big discussion here about whether "falling away" and "backsliding" mean the same thing or two different things, and whether one or both or neither indicates losing one's salvation, and what is apostasy exactly, and though the Prodigal Son may have lost his fellowship with his father he didn't lose his relationship with his father, but we won't because it is just too confusing.

If you want to chime in with your thoughts, be my guest, but I will not publish any comment I deem to be hate speech. Yes, I suppose that is a form of censorship, but (a) it's my blog and (b) I don't care.

Youthful illusions shattered While-U-Wait

Thanks to Miss Ouilda Piner, my English prefessot at Arlington State College (now the University of Texas at Arlington, UTA) back during my sophomore year (1959-60), I have not been able for the past 64 years to enjoy in the way I had previously a poem entitled "To Celia" that was written by the English poet Ben Jonson in 1616. It is perhaps better known as the song "Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes".

At our house the song was contained in "The Golden Book Of Favorite Songs" that sat on our piano. The Golden Book also included other old chestnuts such as "Love's Old Sweet Song" and "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms" and "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" so I thought of it as a sweet love song:

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss within the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine.
The thirst that from the soul dorh rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sip,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope, that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon did'st only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me,
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee.

Miss Piner's class changed all that. According to Miss Piner, far from being a sweet love song, this poem of Ben Jonson's is a scathing commentary on the state of oral hygiene, or lack thereof, in the 17th century. Apparently people didn't bathe all that often either. There was little emphasis on brushing one's teeth.

I have learned since then that our modern sweet-tasting toothpaste in a tube wasn't invented until the 19th century. Ancient Egyptians developed a dental paste made of oxen hooves, myrrh, eggshells, pumice, and water. The Chinese are believed to have applied ground fish bones to their teeth. Arabians in the Middle Ages tried using fine sand.

I thought you would appreciate knowing the truth. Now go back and read the poem again in the light of this new information. I predict that you will never think of it in the same way again.

Still, as some wag once said, halitosis is better than no breath at all.

In other news, if your nose runs and your feet smell, you're built upside-down.

Things that might make you say “Hmm”

A. Customs change at different rates. Sometimes the change happens so slowly that people hardly even notice. Sometimes it happens so suddenly that people can't help but notice.

For example, people who took annual vacations in Ukraine stopped doing that suddenly about a year ago, and everybody knows why. Another example: After Mount St. Helens erupted a few years ago, fewer people wanted to climb dormant volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest. (I don't really know if that's true, but it makes a nifty example.)

An example of slower change is the way people respond to being told "Thank you." In my age group (the Older Than Dirt crowd), we were taught to say "You're welcome". Around the time my children became adults, people didn't say "You're welcome" any more, and everybody was saying "No problem." Now that even my grandchildren are adults, "No problem" has fallen by the wayside. Gen Z'ers and millennials say "Of course!"

The world continues to be a strange place, if I do say so myself.

B. Many words that start with S in English start with E in Spanish and French, I will now use my newly-acquired skill of creating a table with HTML to show you some examples.

ENGLISH--	SPANISH--	FRENCH
school	escuela	école
star	estrella	étoile
spinach	espinaca	épinard
Stephen	Esteban	Étienne
Spain	España	Espagne

C. Some alphabets have more letters than others. Here are some examples:

Hawaiian has 12 letters, 13 if you include apostrophe, and you probably should.

Greek has 24 letters. The one that looks like an X sounds like a K. The one that sounds like an X looks nothing like an X.

The Latin alphabet that we use for English has the 26 letters we know and love. J and W are fairly recent additions, relatively speaking. Old English had two letters called edh and thorn that have disappeared altogether.

The Russian alphabet has 33 letters. Several countries including Russia use the Cyrillic alphabet instead of the Latin one. When the old USSR used to send athletes to the Olympic Games, their uniforms said CCCP. Americans found this very confusing.

The Albanian alphabet has 36 letters, including ç, dh, ë, gj, ll, nj, rr, sh, th, and xh as distinct sounds. The xh sounds like a J. The J does not.

The Swedish alphabet has 29 letters consisting of the Latin letters A through Z plus Å, Ä, and Ö.

The written language of the Cherokee Indians is composed of 85 symbols that represent syllables (sounds) instead of letters.

Mandarin Chinese consists of around 50,000 ideographs although modern dictionaries contain only about 20,000 of them; an educated Chinese person might know about 8,000 of them. To be able to read a newspaper requires knowing between 2,000 and 3,000 of them.

All in all, I find the sort of stuff in this post to be very interesting. I hope you do too. I would hate to think I am talking to myself.

After while, crocodile

You wii understand the title of this post by the time you reach the end of it.

Words fascinate me, how written words are put together from alphabetic characters to document the sounds that come from our mouths. This post, like certain others I have written, will delve into some baffling things about our English language. If you do not share my interest in language you may want to leave right now, but I hope you stay because you just might learn something.

Let us consider the letter C. It can feel extraneous because a 'hard C' sounds like K (cloister, crimson) and a 'soft C' sounds like S (ceiling, celebrate). When you put an H after a C, though, you retain the sound of K in some words (choir, chorus, chloroform) but you come up with an additional sound (church, China) or two (charade, machine) in others. And sometimes the very same string of letters produces two different sounds (cello has a CH sound but cellophane has an S sound). It is all very strange.

Putting two Cs together produces several sounds: baccalaureate (K), cacciatore (CH), and vaccination (KS or X as long as it is the X in exit, not the X in xylophone).

The "Gloria in excelsis Deo" so popular at Christmas time has morphed over the centuries. Choir directors everywhere have to teach their singers how to pronounce it. When classical Latin ruled in ancient Roman times, excelsis had a 'hard C' or K sound (ex-KELL-sis). By medieval times when Italianized church Latin was all the rage, the K sound had become a CH sound (ex-CHELL-sis). Speakers of modern English, who see a word that reminds them of excel, excellent, or excelsior, want to sing an S sound (ex-SELL-sis). Many choir directors, however, tell their people to sing an SH sound (egg-SHELL-sis) instead. C grows curiouser and curiouser.

Vowels can also be confusing because there are 'long vowels' and 'short' vowels' and other kinds of vowels. Consider the sound of the letter U in the words lunar (long U), butter (short U), funeral (diphthong), and put (the sound of the OO in book, cook, and look but not the OO in shoot, loot, and boot). Confusion abounds when it comes to trying to learn the English language.

Some words have U twice but the sounds are different (pendulum). Even if you put our old friend C before U two times in a single word, the same phenomenon occurs (cucumber).

I think it is fitting to end this post in the same way my deaf friend Dave W. used to end our conversations, through a humorous combination of fingerspelling and American Sign Language (ASL) signs:

C U later, alligator.

Your roving reporter, January 15th

On this day in 1559, Elizabeth I was crowned Queen of England and Ireland in Westminster Abbey, London.

On this day in 1892, James Naismith published the rules of basketball.

On this day in 1919, the Great Molasses Flood, also known as the Boston Molasses Disaster, occurred when a wave of molasses caused by an exploding storage tank swept through Boston, Massachusetts, killing 21 people and wounding 150.

On this day in 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis Presley was one week old.

Elvis died on August 16, 1977, at the age of 42. Three days ago, Elvis's only child, his daughter Lisa Marie, died at the age of 54 due to heart problems. Two days before her unexpected death, she had attended the 80th Golden Globes Awards ceremony in Beverly Hills, California, with her mother, Priscilla Presley, where actor Austin Butler was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture--Drama for his performance as Elvis Presley in a film entitled Elvis.

Out of all the many facts about January 15th I could have mentioned to you today, I chose these four. Please rank them in order of importance and state your reasons.

My own feeling is that one's perspective, based on one's experience, determines one's conclusions. For example, Shaquille O'Neal might reach a different conclusion than Mary, Queen of Scots would.

This is what passes for deep thinking in the year 2023.