Category Archives: information

Language please

In every transaction, we humans have created specific languages. The vocabularies of business are a case in point. The language of love is another [and very, very different] one.

Let’s address the business model first. I worked in marketing, to be exact, direct mail marketing. The language was one that addressed [see the pun and move on] the needs of our industry.

We were busy targeting audiences and anticipating percentages of response. It’s been ages, so I have lost mastery of what all we were on about.

Your banker and realtor have business vocabularies linked to returns. It’s likely that you’ll always be intetested in % in any biz.

Lawyers no doubt understand tort and litigation as I, for one, do not.

My doctor had better have some knowledge of arcana not easily accessible to me.

All of this is conducted in English,  by the way. [If you’re Catholic, your priest may be reverting to Latin, although it’s as likely not.] So, under an umbrella of English, we have little pools of business dialects. As it were.

Just sharing the obvious for you to elaborate.

r-e-s-pectfully

Not everyone treats the months with as much reverence as we do.

In Spanish, for instance, there are no caps introducing their names. September is just an ordinary noun (except if it starts the sentence). Nothing exalted about septiembre.

It’s interesting because some languages put lots of regular words on pedestals. German is an example along with our own germanic tongue.

Learning as I go

Being a proponent of American style freedoms as they evolve and move forward, I have often used the term democracy.

Origins? Dêmos (the people, or perhaps the many, or ¿the mob?). Kratos [power], so could it be simpler? Yeah, it could.

It’s already muddled by the question of who the dêmos might be. Add to that that the word for assembly ecclesia is a root with associations to religion, and I am reeling in uncertainty.

Critics of the Athenian model of dêmoskratos abound of late. Socrates, anyone?

As it has been pointed out the gents who framed the document that establishes our form of government called our nation a Republic. They based their pre- cedence on the Roman formula.

I don’t want to take this issue lightly. “And for the Republic for which it stands.”

The principles of rights and freedoms are honored in that Latinate model as well, of course.

May we always embrace the 4th of July and uphold the privileges of a free nation.

Over the moon

Ok. Now I feel foolish.

The weather site just showed me that the moon was set to set around 2 in the afternoon.

Not to belabor this “news,” but I am processing the information. A slow learner looks like.

I didn’t know that. I didn’t know a.m. there was a moonrise followed by a moonset.

According to this, it’s out from just before 1 a.m.

This indicates that we’ve got moon about 14 hours.

Competitive

Putting the pressure on when you’re on the verge of “owning the space” seems like a strange strategy. Yet lately I see ads for YouTube as if they needed to put in an extra fight.

Congress is likely pulling TikTok out of the market. That will leave YouTube to, as they say, be the platform for stories to be told. [They don’t actually say that. I paraphrased their ad.]

Why didn’t they post these ads before?

Holiday greetings

Once upon a time, holidays were made from creation myths. They explained seasonal cycles and celebrated the good and the mysterious in the world.

We still have those and then all the phony commercial ones, like international pizza day.

Here’s a made-up “world day” I find useful and amusing: Back-up Day. Buy a device to store photos and data. Free up space. YAY.

Enjoy whatever you are celebrating. Today and everyday.

Nomads

There was a time in history when some of us were homebodies while others were wanderers.

Nomads moved around foraging and following game. Settlers farmed or fished (I guess) and built cities for trade and community.

Does such a division still exist between the migratory and the stay-in-place?

There are people who sit still in one place, and people who restlessly move about.

Is this ingrained and hereditary? Is it a choice or serendipity?

Of course, there are those who wander in search of fortune or improved circumstances. There are migrants forced to leave home because of political exigencies.

There are also those of us who seek our careers in one place. My story is one of mixed experiences; we once were migrants but I was young; now I choose to be a New Yorker.