Cupertino Contretemps

(Illustration from them.us)

Just when I thought the Chronicle was a decent newspaper that kept its news and opinion sections separate, it produces this headline:

A Silicon Valley teacher used pronouns in a TK class. Parents demanded they go back ‘in the closet’

The slant from the headline? Pronouns are relatively harmless, "back in the closet" harks back to the historic suppression of homosexuality, and "parents demand" hints that they're intolerant uneducated rubes, probably religious. However, digging into the article reveals that non-binary pronouns are being taught to four-year-olds in Transitional Kindergarten.

The individual at the center of the battle teaches 4-year-olds in transitional kindergarten at Dilworth Elementary School and was placed on leave in August after parents complained that they were discussing content they did not believe was appropriate for young children. Supporters of the teacher, including many experts in early childhood development and instruction, said the criticism appears to be leveled against the teacher’s gender identity, not what they’re teaching.

The reporter's bias is evident. She accuses the parents of transphobia ("against the teacher’s gender identity, not what they’re teaching") by using the "many experts...said" ploy. She also adopts trans pronoun language ("what they're teaching" not "what she's teaching").

I agree with the parents that non-standard pronouns are wholly confusing for kids who are learning the alphabet and basic arithmetic. Teach four year olds the fundamentals, then branch out to nuances and exceptions when they're years older. Parents' protests, IMHO, have nothing to do with animus toward the teacher's personal characteristics, just the content of his or her instruction.

Get the woke ideology out of elementary schools, and the kids will have a much better chance of getting into a good college (if that's what they want).

An Amusing Interchange

A radio host interviews an NBA head coach about a young player.

Coach: He's more athletic than people give him credit for.

Radio host: You mean he's white.

Coach: I was waiting for you to say it.

Everyone tiptoes around race, even when they're speaking about white guys.

Don't Burn Yourself

(WSJ illustration)

The word "toast" conjures pleasant images. A slice of buttered toast can be the perfect start to the day, and raising a glass in a toast fills the room with conviviality.

Bill Murray coined a third definition in the 1984 movie Ghostbusters when his character Peter Venkman declared, "This chick is toast" then blasted the demon with his proton pack.

That use of toast seemed to fill a need for a word signifying death and destruction but with a less ominous tone. It immediately caught on:

The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes Murray’s ad-lib as the earliest known occurrence of “toast” with the modern meaning, calling the usage “proleptic.” Prolepsis is a figure of speech in which a future state is represented as already occurring, so “You’re toast” joined other proleptic expressions like “You’re dead” or “You’re history.”

Your humble blogger doesn't use the term because future states sometimes don't materialize. A sage who says "Putin is toast" or "San Francisco is toast" may very well end up looking stupid. Why confirm what people are thinking if you don't have to?.

Diversity in Appearance But Not in Thought

Tabia Lee (Chron photo)

The director of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at De Anza College in Cupertino has been fired. Tabia Lee, a Black woman, had served less than two years on the job. [bold added]

Tabia Lee received a letter in March saying her contract would not be renewed in June because she was uncooperative with colleagues, unwilling to accept constructive criticism and unlikely to change. Lee is a vocal critic of many of today’s diversity and inclusion practices, and many colleagues at the school said she belittled their racial justice initiatives...

Lee said she will fight to keep her job as faculty director of De Anza’s Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education, which she has carried out remotely since the fall of 2021. Her job description at the public community college of 16,000 students is to promote a “commitment to equity, social justice and multicultural education” and create an “inclusive campus environment” within an “institution-wide transformation.”

Critics said Lee sought to transform the college in the wrong direction. Groups representing Latino and Asian Pacific American employees urged the district’s Board of Trustees to remove her, contending that she subverted anti-racism initiatives by opposing everything from their efforts to gain more say in campus governance to their use of the gender-neutral term “Latinx.” In a letter to the college, Lee cited research suggesting the word has little support among Latinos themselves.

Debates on its merits can fill volumes, but my own take is that the vast majority of community college students have little use for DEI. They come to De Anza, Foothill, and the College of San Mateo to learn practical skills that they can use on the job today.

Racism and social justice may be important to some people, but those are distractions for students who are trying to learn computer programming or accounting or chemistry. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both of whom went to De Anza College, seem to have done just fine without DEI.

Speaking of Holes

Don't call it a manhole, you sexist pig.

This headline puzzled your humble blogger:

Body found in ‘sewage hole’ near Jack London Square in Oakland

My initial reaction was that a "sewage hole" must be a new element of the wastewater system. Is falling into a sewage hole another danger we must avoid? The entire story (below) did not provide clarity.

A body was found “lodged inside of a sewage hole” near Jack London Square, according to the Oakland Police Department.

The person was found unresponsive inside the hole at about 7:40 a.m. Saturday in the 300 block of Broadway, the police department reported. Oakland firefighters helped remove the person, and though paramedics tried to render aid, the person was pronounced dead at the scene.

The circumstances surrounding how the person ended up in the hole, and how long that person had been in there, remain unclear. The person’s name has not been released, pending notification of next of kin.

Anyone with information about the death can contact Oakland police at 510-238-3821 or 510-238-7950.

Understanding came with the realization that the new stylebook tries to eradicate all traces of gender from ordinary language. "Manholes" should be called maintenance, utility, or sewage holes.

IMHO, the replacement of "sewage hole" for "manhole" obfuscates meaning, substitutes a multi-syllabic phrase for a perfectly fine two-syllable one, and makes unnecessary work for a reporter who has to look up which system the hole leads to. And that's why I never understood or did well in the language arts.

Good at Describing How Terrible We're Feeling

Used to help kids express their feelings about disasters in Asia,
this worksheet can be adapted for use by adult Californians.

Saturday's post concerned the series of natural disasters that struck California in the 1860's. But we shouldn't overlook reporter Carl Nolte's remark on how we use the language to make today's problems seem historically important: [bold added]

Everything is dramatic. Even the weather comes with a Hollywood touch: Forecasters now use words like atmospheric rivers, bomb cyclones and king tides, all recently coined terms to describe conditions that have happened for thousands of years. You know how it is. A new story every night.

Meanwhile, just before our own big sets of rain and wind, an immense snowstorm swept the East. Mountains of snow and ice — 52 inches of snow in Buffalo. Thirty-seven people died in Erie County. Now that is real weather.

Despite its problems in the 19th century California overcame them and grew. It was the land of opportunity, and the population swelled to 40 million. Now people are leaving, and that's before any truly horrible calamity.

When the 100-year floods and the 9.0 earthquakes eventually come, will we have the strength of character to recover? That's unclear, but I'm sure we'll invent words that will perfectly describe how terrible we're feeling.

Free the Tree

"Stanford hates fun" passes for controversy in 2022

Each of the two institutions of higher learning that I attended in the 1970's had a marching band that annoyed alumni greatly. Their halftime shows were filled with iconoclasm, not to mention scatological and sexual humor.

The more that our elders' generation was horrified the better. Halftime shows were a rollicking time, often better than the football game.

50 years later the people who want to clamp down on politically incorrect humor come from within the band, the student body, and faculty. Stanford University is a leader in this role reversal, and its mascot, the Tree, has become the center of a cultural contretemps. During halftime at a game between Stanford and ASU, "the Tree unfurled a 40-foot banner that said 'Stanford Hates Fun.'” [bold added]

The students on the band’s executive committee said in a statement to the Stanford Daily that they suspended the Tree because he used his platform to spread a message without going through the required channels.

"Required channels"? These brilliant students, many of them not old enough to drink, are going to be our future leaders and are already inured in bureaucratic pettifoggery. But it gets worse.

Administrators this year published a 13-page index of words to be avoided on the school’s websites. It suggested “ballsy” be replaced by “risk taker,” “you guys” by “everyone” and “Karen” by “a demanding or entitled White woman.”

The language policing is far more extensive than anything the blue noses attempted to do back in my day. With its multi-billion dollar endowment Stanford asks for but doesn't need my money. And I don't intend to give a another cent, at least until the Tree is free.

Act and Write Your Age

To baby boomers who want to avoid offending Gen Z (born 1997-2012), the advice is: don't use the thumbs-up 👍 emoji.

Sending a thumbs-up can be seen as passive aggressive and even confrontational, according to Gen Z who claim they feel attacked whenever it is used.

Whether the chat is informal, between friends or at work the icon appears to have a very different, 'rude' meaning for the younger generation.

A 24-year-old on Reddit summed up the Gen Z argument, saying it is best 'never used in any situation' as it is 'hurtful'.

The wisdom is age-old: don't try to speak, or text, or employ emojis to make the kids think you're au courant. Leave the pictograms to others, and communicate the way you were taught. The kids will respect you more.

Persuasion by Netflix

Not your grandmother's Jane Austen: Dakota Johnson's
Anne Elliot breaks the fourth wall and holds a rabbit
throughout the film.

Still a Jane Austen neophyte, I watched Netflix' Persuasion this month. Like the screen versions of Pride and Prejudice, the movie necessarily dispenses with the nuances of the novel in order to tell the story in under two hours. If inspired to move on to the book, the viewer can then savor the subtleties of the characters as they navigate the rules of Regency society.

To get right to the point, I liked the film. It had outrageously self-absorbed characters that provided the grist for protagonist Anne Elliot's ironic observations, and the requisite Austen plot twists that provided a happy ending for most of the players.

But it's a good thing that I didn't read the reviews first. They slammed the movie because of the modern dialogue ("He's a 10" "Now we're strangers, worse than strangers, we're exes") and the 21st-century sensibility of Anne Elliot.

Here's an example of movie dialogue that would never come from the pen of Jane Austen.

[Male character]: He [Wentworth] could be an admiral some day, great service to the Crown and all that it holds dear, but instead he'd rather fart around inland for the rest of his life.

[Woman character] Oh, let the man fart where he likes.

It's obvious why diehard Austen fans ("Janeites") are outraged, but I'm not so wedded to historical authenticity. It's fiction.

We Are Not the Demographic They Were Looking For

Beyond Menu is a website through which customers place take-out orders. The website and app are useful for smaller restaurants that don't wish or can't afford to build ordering-and-payment features into their own sites.

Your humble blogger is no marketing expert, but the logo "BM" next to pictures of delicious dishes to which he is lactose intolerant does not convey a positive impression.

(NIH: "In the United States, about 36 percent of people have lactose malabsorption.")

Additional note: the meaning I'm attributing to "BM" is only the fourth most popular definition, so perhaps it will recede even further as geezers pass from the scene.

Seven Dirty Words -- In Retrospect Not So Restrictive

George Carlin (Reuters photo)

This week marks the 50th anniversary of George Carlin's “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," which your humble blogger won't delineate here but can be quickly found with an Internet search.

Knowing the culture of 1972, one can easily guess at a dozen that could be on the list---George Carlin's seven will be a subset--and all refer to sex or excretory functions whose utterance horrified polite society. You still shouldn't say any of them in church, but they are increasingly used in musical lyrics and entertainment.

The bluenose old ladies who once dictated the rules of language have been supplanted by the latter-day Red Guards pouring out of our colleges to police what can't be said (e.g., "all lives matter") and what one must say (e.g., "black lives matter") to avoid shunning.

Maybe Carlin’s gift to the world wasn’t identifying the hypocrisy of having words you can’t say on TV but pointing out that shutting down words or ideas or thoughts is destructive to a free society. He’d probably be aghast at the state of social-media censorship today. If the price of our freedom is that someone may take offense, Carlin surely would think that’s worth the cost. I’d agree.

Thanks to censorship and technology, the public airwaves have been greatly diminished. Car radio moved to SiriusXM and Spotify. Television moved to cable and satellite and Blu-ray. Now it is all streaming and anything goes. I still think youth need to be protected, but good luck with that. Eight-year-olds with smartphones can hear the forbidden words daily. I laugh at Netflix’s kid-magnet warnings: “Gore, Language, Smoking.” Even Disney isn’t as family-friendly as it used to be.

Carlin died in 2008, as cancel culture and campus safe spaces for the anxious were beginning to become widespread. Today, there is a long list of things you can’t say, including “all lives matter” and “chief” and “birth mother” and even “master bedroom.” Goodbye discussion and thought. Then add sports-team names and wrong pronouns on playgrounds and shoot, we miss you, George Carlin.

After seeing how the new Puritanism works, a world where George Carlin can't say seven dirty words doesn't seem as restrictive.

He Who Must Not Be Named

A title that many strive for (market business news)

In the latest example of progressive sensitivity, the San Francisco Unified School District has banned "chief" from job titles:

The word “chief” will no longer be used in reference to job titles in the San Francisco Unified School District in an effort, school officials said, to avoid the word’s connotation with Native Americans.

The leader of a tribe is referred to as "chief", but the term, IMHO, has long ago ceased to have its principal association with Native Americans.

"Chief" is employed in U.S. military ranks, from "Chief" Petty Officer to Joint Chiefs of Staff to Commander-in-Chief. Used colloquially, "chief" is a useful term that combines authority, informality, and affection. I have never heard it used pejoratively or mockingly.

And the word doesn't even come from the Native American language. It's Old French:

c. 1300, "head, leader, captain; the principal or most important part of anything;" from Old French chief "leader, ruler, head" of something, "capital city" (10c., Modern French chef), from Vulgar Latin *capum, from Latin caput "head," also "leader, chief person; summit; capital city" (from PIE root *kaput- "head"). Meaning "head of a clan" is from 1570s; later extended to headmen of Native American tribes (by 1713; William Penn, 1680s, called them kings). Commander-in-chief is attested from 1660s.

Normally I wouldn't care about words that organizations choose to use internally, but we have seen what happens when woke-ism declares itself to be the arbiter of acceptable ways to communicate in schools.

Indoctrinated intolerance leaches out from the schools to society, and pretty soon the products of the school system are cancelling people because of the way they speak.

In February three members of the San Francisco Board of Education were recalled because they spent their time renaming schools, replacing merit-based admission with a lottery system at Lowell High, and dragging their feet on re-opening. It looks like not everyone got the message.

Present Tents

Now that I'm retired, I have (even more) difficulty keeping up.

Earlier today I had to go to McDonald's(!) to discover the term "table tent." In McDonald's case a table tent is the triangular plastic on which a customer's order number is inscribed.

Table tents are more commonly used as marketing tools.

These cardboard, self-standing mini billboards can help you display promotions, menu items, service list and more. They’re also a great way to greet and guide customers at tradeshows, reception areas, and lobbies.

"Table tent" has been in use for at least a decade,

Frankly, I don't like the coinage because the underlying noun, "tent," is a temporary shelter made of cloth, soft plastic, or cardboard. "Table tent" appears to originate from the triangular shape that used to be commonplace but is no longer a prerequisite for tentship.

There's no point in being distressed. If McDonald's is using language that I'm unfamiliar with, I should just accept that I have become permanently out of the loop.

An Existential Danger to Keeping Our Interest

1966: shocking. 2022: Ho-hum.

In high school some friends of mine would fake-argue as they walked around the campus. One would shout "Essence!" and the other would yell "Existence!"

Nerd humor is what can happen after one takes a philosophy course about existentialism. At one time existentialism was all the rage among the cognoscenti. It was European. It provoked the straight-laced. It said God did not exist during a time when being an atheist probably meant you were a communist.

In the history of philosophy, essence preceding existence is a prerequisite for religion while existence preceding essence means that God ain't necessarily so. Existentialism is a serious matter.

But not in 2022.

Existentialism's power and meaning has been eroded to nothingness by the overuse of the adjective existential. [bold added]

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the other day that “climate change is the existential threat of our time.” The New York Times editorialized that Donald Trump and his supporters pose an “existential threat” to the Republic. Scientific American declared that wildfires are putting giant sequoias at “existential risk.” A Barron’s headline read, “Bitcoin is facing an existential crisis.” Bloomberg Law wrote, “Wall Street ends crazy year with existential angst.”

...The wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster report that “existential” began trending two years ago when then- Sen. Kamala Harris used the term in a vice-presidential debate with Mike Pence. Referring to climate change, she said it is “an existential threat to us as human beings.” According to Webster, lookups of the word spiked 8,000% that night.

(Sandberg image)

From your humble blogger's perspective it's easy to see why the adjective existential rose in popularity, and it has very little to do with philosophy. Existential is a short-hand way of saying it-endangers-the-very-existence-of ("the asteroid is an existential threat to life on earth").

To get people's attention in a world of sound and fury, dangers must be hyped, such as Kamala Harris' referring to climate change as an existential threat to humanity. As the writer noted, the word has been overused to the point where “French dressing faces an existential crisis.”

It's time to strike existential from existence.

The Beam in Their Own Eye

Having studied Latin in middle school and rather unsuccessfully trying to learn conversational French and Spanish during the '80's and '90's, your humble blogger was struck by the foundational importance of gender in the Romance languages.

(Gif from NBC News)

At the beginning of the 21st century, in the drive to eliminate gender from American English, a strange word, Latinx, seeped out of the academy into the mainstream.

How would American Hispanics react?

Latinx was initiated by a Progressive movement that purports to have their interest at heart, but labeling a group with a genderless brand-new word seemed a bit like the cultural imperialism that Progressives decry. (For the record, I believe that we should strive to call people by the names that they wish to be called, but when addressing members of a group who themselves disagree, we should try to use the terms that the majority find least offensive.)

There were Hispanic voices speaking out against Latinx when we posted on the subject in 2019, but they were still early days.

In the intervening two years more evidence has come in that 'Latinx’ Isn’t Popular With Latinos:

Actual Latinos shun the word “Latinx.” According to a November 2021 poll by Bendixen & Amandi International, only 2% of Americans of Latin descent refer to themselves that way. Some 68% prefer “Hispanic” to “Latino” and “Latina.” And 40% are offended by “Latinx,” which means it’s a mistake for a politician to use the word, at least around Latino constituents.

Will the white Progressives who use Latinx respect the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Hispanics? I doubt it, they see white supremacy everywhere but in themselves.

A Dead Language: In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti

Gaia is an icon of modern environmentalism and
has influenced the feminization of God

The Episcopal Church has gone through many changes in the past half-century, e.g., the ordination of women and gay priests and an overwhelming tilt toward Progressive politics, and it appears that another dramatic change is in the offing--the re-gendering and non-gendering of the Christian God:

In some seminaries and university religion departments, “Godself,” [in place of "Himself"], though somewhat awkward, has become second nature; professors are even known to dock points from papers that use “he” for God...

The 2021 language guide of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) recommends titles such as “Mother,” “I Am,” “Hen” and “Woman.” In 2018, the Episcopal Church’s 79th General Convention, while stopping short of authorizing a full revision of its 1979 Book of Common Prayer, encouraged liturgical experimentation, including with “inclusive and expansive language and imagery.” And more casually across mainline Protestantism, it’s not uncommon to hear God, and especially the Holy Spirit, referred to as “she.”

To baby boomers these developments aren't new. In the late 60's and 70's, priests in college towns rattled theological comfort zones by introducing new religious forms and concepts to young mainline Christians. At Catholic and Protestant services, for example, I heard God referred to as "She" and prayers to pagan deities such as Gaia. In college I first experienced the folk mass while then-exotic varieties of bread were served at Holy Communion.

That's what college was--a place where one could experiment with new things, question the assumptions under which one operated, and try out different religions. But we always knew we could go back to our home churches, if we wanted to lead a mainstream though possibly boring American life.

Over the past 20 years, I've noticed--infrequently, to be sure--that some Episcopal priests sneakily insert words and phrases, including feminine pronouns, for God. This phenomenon occurred long before the 2018 General Convention "encouraged liturgical experimentation." I use "sneakily" because those words and phrases are certainly not consistent with Anglican theology.

If revolutionaries are going to change the venerable and venerated words that constitute one of the bases of faith for the overwhelming majority of congregants, they ought to explain why such change is necessary. Why is "God the Mother" or "God the Sexless" truer to Christianity than "God the Father?" Why is the Holy Spirit feminine, especially when He impregnated the Virgin Mary, or is the Immaculate Conception nonsense, like the rest of the Nicene Creed?

I hope the Episcopal Church doesn't plop the rumored new Book of Common Prayer in our laps and say "Use this, sheeple." It could be enough to make some of us Catholics.

Destination Wedding (2018)

Misleading: there's little smiling.

Sometimes tiring of too much saccharine, I switch off the Hallmark Channel and go to Netflix and Amazon Prime for romantic comedies, where the visuals are PG-13 but the language is R-rated.

Expectations were middling for 2018's Destination Wedding, currently streaming on Netflix, but with leads Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder there was a good chance the production wouldn't disappoint.

The movie begins as many Hallmark scripts do, with two strangers clashing at the airport. Making things worse, they find that they're both going to the same wedding at a winery in Central California.

Unlike a Hallmark plot, there's no guarantee that Frank and Lindsay will end up together. The dialogue is spirited, and the topics often dark and misanthropic. The only subject on which they agree is their loathing for the groom, Keith, who is Frank's brother and Lindsay's ex-fiancé.

Comments:

I liked the movie.

The repartee was sharp and Neal Simonesque; Keanu Reeves, not famous for his erudition, got off words like "avoirdupois" as if they were natural to his vocabulary.

Distracted by the cinematography that showed off Paso Robles and the hubbub of people at the airport, hotel, and wedding, it took me 20 minutes to notice that it was a two-person play; Frank and Lindsay had the only speaking parts.

The music and transition from various pre-wedding activities to the wedding itself helped to lighten the atmosphere and give the audience a break from the intense dialogue. I don't mean emotionally intense, but pay-attention-to-every-word intense to catch all the humor and cultural references.

The question that loomed from halfway to the end was whether the conclusion would be heavy (Pygmalion) or Hollywood (My Fair Lady). Which way do you think it went, dear reader?

The script made funny, subtle references to some of Keanu Reeves' famous action-hero characters. In the clip below, he can't tear open an airplane snack because "there is no notch."

Emily and Amy Didn't Write About This

As a follow-on to yesterday's post about punctuation in the modern age, the WSJ publishes a guide to digital etiquette.  (Your humble blogger's comments are in green.)

Faux pas: pasting URL link

Don’t: Paste a long URL link into an email
Do: Hyperlink the text instead
Nothing uglies up an email exchange or reveals that you’re behind the times quite like a 10-line URL link with more symbols than letters (See our poor dinosaur’s faux pas). In most email servers, however, you can hide a hideous URL by hyperlinking it to related text in the body of your note. I prefer pasting "hideous" URL's, then converting the link to text; some servers consider links to be spam.

Not appetizing to me

Don’t: Ask for a menu
Do: Learn to scan QR Codes
People’s unwillingness to touch potentially germy surfaces and devices during the pandemic has greatly accelerated the adoption of unique QR codes. At most restaurants, only the out-of-it still ask for the opportunity to squint at a sticky menu; instead use your smartphone’s camera to scan the QR code (typically found on a placard at your table) to easily access the eatery’s offerings online. I like looking at printed menus; some restaurants spend a lot of time designing them. As for online menus, seen one, seen 'em all.

Don’t: Squirrel away your microwave manual
Do: Watch how-to videos on YouTube
You can finally clear out that drawer of old appliance manuals you keep “just in case.” The tech-savvy know that, should they need to troubleshoot a device, jump-start a car, learn how to hyperlink a URL (see above), or even change a setting on a Gmail inbox, they can simply type a query into YouTube’s search bar and watch the video with the most views. When I can't find the manual, I do watch YouTube videos, which have too many ads before, during, and inside the videos. Yes, I'm too cheap to pay Google for an ad-free subscription.

Don’t: Listen to music on Pandora
Do: Download Spotify
Beyond unearthing new artists, the best reason to download a music app is to share your taste with friends (and romantic partners). While more than 10 million people have hopped off Pandora since it was bought two years ago, according to Music Business Worldwide, dropping its active user base to around 55 million, Spotify—with its impressive algorithm for discovering new music—now boasts more than 165 million users.  Apple Music, which is part of an Apple One subscription, is good enough for me.

Don’t: Get cash from an ATM to reimburse a friend
Do: Use Venmo
Dragging a cohort along to an ATM so you can hand her a bundle of sticky bills is like insisting on communicating with her by snail mail. Venmo and CashApp help you automatically find friends in your contacts list or, if you’re sitting together, you can scan each other’s unique QR codes. Plus: No line ups.   I'll put up with mild convenience so as not to let another company into my financial affairs.

Don’t: Write down all your passwords
Do: Utilize a password manager
If you still keep passwords stored in an email draft in hopes of eluding hackers, assume your passwords have already been compromised and come up with new ones. Better yet, download a password manager like LastPass, Keeper or Dashlane. Each can securely create and store unique codes for every platform you visit, allowing you to keep dodgy types from accessing all your personal emails and information. I've got an admittedly inefficient paper system that is, as far as I know, unhackable and won't be until mind-reading devices come along, and even then, why would they bother with me?

Don’t: Store files on a thumb drive
Do: Use the Cloud or Dropbox
New computer models are quickly phasing out USB ports, so if you have all your most secret and important files stashed on a USB thumb drive, you are a bit of a dinosaur and you need to move fast. Your best option is to use a secure cloud server like Apple iCloud, Dropbox or Google Drive, which provides anyone with a gmail account 15 gigabytes of free and safe storage. "Secure cloud servers"?  If they can hack Microsoft cloud, I'm gonna keep my thumb drives for sensitive files that I can't afford to lose.

Watch Your .'s and !'s

(Image from cbc)

Your humble blogger is a language dinosaur. I've only recently become aware that ending text messages with a period (".") is a sign of insincerity or worse, though the young 'uns knew this in 2015. [bold added]

When that reply was followed by a period, subjects rated the response as less sincere than when no punctuation was used. The effect wasn't present in handwritten notes.

According to [psycholinguistics professor Celia M.] Klin and her fellow researchers, that's an indication that the text message period has taken on a life of its own. It is no longer just the correct way to end a sentence. It's an act of psychological warfare against your friends. In follow-up research that hasn't yet been published, they saw signs that exclamation points — once a rather uncouth punctuation mark — may make your messages seem more sincere than no punctuation at all.

It's bad enough that you can lose your job over using what you thought were the proper pronouns. But bad punctuation? Good thing I'm retired!!!!

Answering the Trap Questions

Out: build a better (mouse)trap. In: avoid
trap questions. (Korn Ferry photo)

Leaders of major companies are more highly compensated than ever. To be fair, their jobs are also more complicated than ever.

They have to answer to a multitude of constituencies ("stakeholders"), some of whom are concerned with matters other than revenues and profits. The slightest verbal miscues, even not saying something, can put a CEO's job at risk.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is a master at answering the "trap question." Here's an example of one from last month's Stanford economics conference:

"Let’s talk a little bit more about equity. Before the pandemic, the world was facing big challenges: climate change, structural racism, economic insecurity, wealth inequality and more....What is the responsibility of the corporations, particularly the underlying connection to racial justice in the U.S. and elsewhere?”

Before reading Mr. Nadella's answer, how would you respond, dear reader? All the problems on the list are intractable, beyond the capacity of even mighty Microsoft to solve. Also, "responsibility" is a trap word: if he says Microsoft is responsible, it can never succeed; if it is not responsible, he will sound callous.

Here is Mr. Nadella's answer, as described by WSJ writer Andy Kessler:

Mr. Nadella isn’t CEO of a trillion-dollar company for nothing. Coolly and calmly, he explained that “the social purpose of a company is to find profitable solutions to the challenges of people and planet,” crediting Oxford economist Colin Mayer for the definition. “Driving broad economic growth is perhaps the biggest thing that a company can do,” Mr. Nadella added. “In order to have the pie distributed evenly, the pie should first grow.”

As Andy Kessler explains:

finding “profitable solutions” is—shh, don’t give it away—basically the same as Milton Friedman’s “the social responsibility of business is to increase profits,” except with the crowd-pleasing word “planet” tacked on.

IMHO, public figures aren't liars when they say they are against climate change, racism, etc. However, they couldn't have gotten to where they are without a single-minded dedication to their business, their personal skills in sports or entertainment, or whatever else got them to the top of the heap.

Besides obeying the law, all other considerations are nice but secondary, and too many distractions could jeopardize their primary mission. Invest in social-media consultants, practice using words like "systemic racism", "sustainability", "equity", and others that placate the woke, and carry on.