La Comédie Américaine

Sorry, I can't take a knee.

In fact, I can't take anything, anymore.

Our president is a failed reality TV star; our first lady, a Slovenian call girl.

Our cabinet secretaries oppose the missions of the departments they run.

The secretary running the largest one (Health & Human Services) flies at our expense on luxury planes every week to stay at his vacation homes.

The Secretary of Education encourages serial rapists.

Nincompoops (a shock jock, a wedding planner, a fashion model, a golf caddie, a shoe importer) run key federal organizations.

Our lawmakers believe nonsense (the earth is 6,000 years old, global warming is a hoax, contraception causes cancer, all Muslims are terrorists).

They also hope to deny you government-backed healthcare insurance, while they enjoy the same.

You're expected to honor both the flag and the rights of Nazis.

Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Roosevelt cousins may be rolling in their graves. But not me. I'm laughing at the comedy.

The calendar's no longer a calendar. It's the almanac of American decline.

Iconicity

Names should be as much like things as possible.

— Socrates

Corporate logos and road signs often demonstrate iconicity. But words?

A new study suggests they do.

While linguists like Noam Chomsky insist any link between a word and its meaning is a man-made convention, two research scientists, Nora Turoman and Susy Styles, say the link may be a natural occurrence.

That link may be iconic. An iconic word would be one whose form resembles its meaning.

Turoman and Styles found that ordinary speakers, when presented with pairs of ancient glyphs, can correctly guess which letter was used to represent the sound "oo" (as in "shoe") and which was used to represent the sound "ee" (as in "feet").

Their experiments further suggest some glyphs better represent the sound "oo," and some better represent "ee"—regardless of where or when they originated.

The glyphs that represent "oo" are more likely to be complex (i.e., use more ink); the ones that represent "ee," more likely to be simple (i.e., use less ink). The "guess-ability" of a glyph is higher for those that use more ink to represent "oo" and less ink to represent "ee."

But what's the link to nature?

Turoman and Styles claim it's acoustics.

The sounds "oo" and "ee" differ in their acoustic frequencies (we pronounce "oo" at a lower frequency than "ee"). So "oo" fits with big, inky glyphs for the same reason low-frequency sounds are produced by big bells; and "ee" fits with less small, less inky glyphs, for the same reason high-frequency sounds are produced by small bells.

Capital Mistake

You can dress up greed, but you can’t stop the stench.

― Craig D. Lounsbrough

This weekend, I "worked the booth" at the Capital Home Show on behalf of a remodeler, greeting visitors and cultivating leads.

While discussing a deal with another exhibitor, an overly dressed exhibit salesperson (the show manager, nonetheless) appeared suddenly and broke into our conversation, demanding to know why the exhibitor hadn't re-signed for next year's show.

When he said he was undecided, she proceeded to twist his arm.

I quietly left the booth, after a few minutes of the spectacle.

When I next saw the salesperson, I mentioned that she'd interrupted a deal.

"I thought you were just one of their staff," she replied, without apology.

If you sell anything—whether booths, biotech, or blockchain—putting your aims ahead of customers' is a capital mistake.

It may, in fact, be the chief reason most customers detest salespeople.

DiscoverOrg recently asked 230 customers how they feel about B2B salespeople. The answers are chilling:

• Only 18% think B2B salespeople are trustworthy
• Only 35% think they are likable

Chew on that, salespeople. Eight in 10 customers think you're dishonest; two in three, you're despicable.

Ghost Signs

Preservationists call those faded 19th century ads on buildings ghost signs.

They evoke more civil times.

No matter its power, marketers would never have sought to shock 19th century audiences with tasteless imagery (such as this in an outdoor ad for the film Kill Bill):

A child psychologist might argue we should return to 19th century civility.

Not a ghost of a chance.

Entitled

Politico has outed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price for using high-priced charter flights at taxpayers' expense.

His flacks say Price is entitled to use private luxury planes, because he has to "meet with the American people."

I just hope he schedules me in, so I can share with him my thoughts on the morality of using public office to enrich yourself.

Entitled is a storied word.

Its Latin root intitulare meant "to give a title to." 

English first adopted the word to mean "to bestow a rank on;" and then, in the 15th century, to mean "to award a property title to."

Philosopher Robert Nozick was the first person to associate the word with welfare, in 1974.

A Libertarian, Nozick thought you were only "entitled" to things you made with your own tools and materials.

Anything else—like your public schooling, your polio shots, and your pension—you receive as the result of wealth redistribution, a kind of "forced labor." You don't really deserve those things, Nozick said, because you didn't create them; but you tell yourself they're entitlements, to feel better about robbing the rich.

The same year Nozick's book appeared, Richard Nixon used the word entitlements in his federal budget to mean "government payments."

Eight years later, Ronald Reagan used entitlements in a speech to mean "Social Security"—and the name stuck.

So, if Nozick is right, please tell me: why should Tom Price get welfare?