my listening post for 2023...

The stash of listens that I had accumulated through the year (all books can be found on Audible, I use the UK service):

1. FURIOUSLY HAPPY
AUTH: Jenny Lawson, NARR: Jenny Lawson
RT: 8h 28m | ST: Dec-22 | END: 18-Mar-23

2. SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND
AUTH: Yuval Noah Harari, NARR: Derek Perkins
RT: 15h 18m | ST: 18-Mar-23 | END: 22-Apr-23

3. THE BOMBER MAFIA
AUTH: Malcolm Gladwell, NARR: Malcolm Gladwell
RT: 5h 14m | ST: 22-Apr-23 | END: 8-May-23

4. TALKING TO STRANGERS
AUTH: Malcolm Gladwell, NARR: Malcolm Gladwell
RT: 8h 42m | ST: 8-May-23 | END: 25-May-23

5. THE PRACTICING STOIC
AUTH: Ward Farnsworth, NARR: John Lescault
RT: 9h 57m | ST: 25-May-23 | END: 22-Jun-23

6. HUMANKIND: A HOPEFUL HISTORY

AUTH: Rutger Bregman, NARR: R.Bregman, Thomas Judd
RT: 11h 36m | ST: 23-Jun-23 | END: 12-Jul-23

7. STORM IN A TEACUP: THE PHYSICS OF EVERYDAY LIFE
AUTH: Helen Czerski, NARR: Chloe Massey
RT: 10h 41m | ST: 13-Jul-23 | END: 3-Oct-23

8. BLINK: THE POWER OF THINKING WITHOUT THINKING
AUTH: Malcolm Gladwell, NARR: Malcolm Gladwell
RT: 7h 43m | ST: 4-Oct-23 | END: 17-Oct-23

9. OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS
AUTH: Malcolm Gladwell, NARR: Malcolm Gladwell
RT: 7h 18m | ST: 17-Oct-23 | END: 15-Nov-23

10. THE TIPPING POINT
AUTH: Malcolm Gladwell, NARR: Malcolm Gladwell

RT: 8h 34m | ST: 16-Nov-23 | END: 5-Dec-23

MY VERY OWN EPILOGUE:

I started the year with Furiously Happy, which came highly recommended. It sounded like a hoot - a lady who had mental health issues AND wasn't afraid to talk about it and laugh at her own absurdities. Let's just say that this is a book that is probably better read that listened to.

Continuing along the philosophical lines, I also did The Practicing Stoic - stoicism is not as negative as a philosophy than the word generally implies. I am inherently stoic by nature but as the philosphy teaches, it is not a journey with an end because a practicing stoic continually aspires to a higher zen-like state of being.

Then, I decided to finally bite the bullet and do Sapiens, followed by its counterpart, Humankind. Honestly, doing these two back to back will either (1) give a reader whiplash, (2) leave them sublimely optimistic or clinically depressed, depending on the order in which both are read, or (3) be really noisy because these two books literally try to out-theorize each other almost point for point. Sapiens is a stark and depressing indictment of people as a race, while Humankind tries to look at that same race through rose-tinted glasses. I am a pessimist and/or a realist, hence i gravitate towards the terrifying study of Humankind.

The odd one out in this list was Storm In A Teacup which was a fun break after Sapiens vs Humankind to learn about physics and how it affects our everyday lives.

The rest of the year was dedicated to almost all the major books that Malcolm Gladwell has written on socio-psychology. I loved every one of the five books - suffice to say that the only difference between Gladwell and I is that he has wayyy more academic knowledge and all the right words to describe what we are both already thinking.

Overall haul of 10 titles (96.5 hours of runtime) done. To be fair, I spent quite a fair bit rewinding many portions of Gladwell's books because i found certain points fascinating and wanted to make sure I understood it well enough to intelligibly regurgitate as anecdotes.

I have decided to start every year with a Booker or Pulitzer winner from the previous year. Hence, 2024 will begin with Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, followed by a final audiobook from Malcolm Gladwell for me to complete, David vs. Goliath.

the absurdity that is english...

I had read this one a while ago and enjoyed it. I recently came across it again recently when it was posted through a mailing list that I am on. Still a great read:

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Then shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England ...

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
we find that quicksand can work slowly,
boxing rings are square,
and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends
and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
in which your house can burn up as it burns down,
in which you fill in a form by filling it out,
and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop?

I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT IF PEOPLE FROM POLAND ARE CALLED POLES THEN PEOPLE FROM HOLLAND SHOULD BE HOLES

AND THE GERMANS GERMS!!!

of luddites and euphemisms...

... of some new words encountered, researched, understood and learnt:

Luddite: [n. LUH-dite] The noun Luddite specifically refers to one of a group of early 19th century English workmen who were campaigning against the automation of the power loom. In the modern context, it refers to an opponent of technological progress.

Etymology: The original Luddites claimed to be led by one "King Ludd" (also known as "General Ludd" or "Captain Ludd") whose signature appears on a "workers' manifesto" of the time. King Ludd was based on the earlier Ned Ludd, who some believed to have destroyed two large stocking frames in the village of Antsey, Leicestershire in 1779. At that time in England, machine breaking could lead to heavy penalties or even execution, which might have led some to use fictitious names for protection.

In a slightly more removed context, Elton John on stage at American Idol Gives Back last week used the the word to refer to his ability to bumble through technology when he couldn't recall the website address of the AIDS Foundation he help set up. "I'm such a Luddite," he said. "I love that; some of the most famous people are so technologically challenged. Makes me feel better".

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Euphemism: [n. yoo-fuh-miz-uhm] 1. the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt; 2. the expression so substituted: e.g. “To pass away” is a euphemism for “to die.”

Etymology: The word euphemism comes from the Greek word euphemo, meaning "auspicious/good/fortunate speech/kind" which in turn is derived from the Greek root-words eu, (good/well) + pheme (speech/speaking). The eupheme was originally a word or phrase used in place of a religious word or phrase that should not be spoken aloud; etymologically, the eupheme is the opposite of the blaspheme (evil-speaking). The term euphemism itself was used as a euphemism by the ancient Greeks, meaning 'to keep a holy silence' (speaking well by not speaking at all).

I have to admit that I had never really known the true definition of the word, Euphemism. Now, I do!

ind-lish...

This curiousity started out sometime last week while at dinner with some friends, where amongst them, was an Indian national. Since the rest were Malaysian, we had a good time giving the Indian a hard time...

English-speaking Indians, if you have never come across one before, are as articulate as they are verbose... a very lethal combination. And I believe that this is one of the reasons why I tend to be cautious about novels written by Indian writers.

Don't get me wrong, I think they have an excellent grip of the language, better than many of the English themselves. My gripe is that they tend to over-do the verbosity when simpler words should sometimes suffice.

But what is stranger is the evolution of the English language in India, as spoken by English-speaking Indians. At dinner, we had pleasure in ribbing the poor girl from Bangalore about a word that is used in everyday business language there; prepone. As opposed to postpone. As in to reschedule a meeting to earlier instead of pushing it to later.

As strange as that word may be to us Malaysians, it doesn't change the fact that it is a word used commonly in India. And that was what I started wondering; how many of these new words have evolved in this fertile language pot into phrases or words that make perfect and concise sense. And some not quite so.

And then, by sheer coincidence, I came across another two today; quakening and updation. Quakening, as in the act of the earth shaking below you in the midst of an earthquake. And I received an email asking for me to send in my latest contact information for updation to their database.

Quirky. So now, I had an itch to find more and Google is my friend:

Convented: not like Sister Enda but more like an Assuntarian
Join duty: first day at work
Tell me: how can I help you?
Pass out: graduate
Redressal: not a red dress rehearsal but a remedy or redress
Hotel: is a restaurant...????
Eggitarian: vegetarian who takes egg and milk
Long cut: erm... opposite of short cut
Paining: this one, i think we all know
On the anvil: something about to happen, on the horizon
Today morning: just like yesterday night
Cent percent: 100%
Centum: one hundred
Full shirt: long sleeves
Half shirt: half sleeves (so means sleeveless is "shirtless"??)

Well, what can I say? And that's just some of it. If you have any more to contribute, please do. I would be chumma chumma (simply) delighted.

Hubristic...

1. [adj.] Of, or relating to hubris.
2. [v.] Displaying hubris (as a personality characteristic)

Root word - Hubris:

1. [n.] Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance: "There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris" (McGeorge Bundy)...
2. [n.] Excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.

Synonym - Hubris:

airs, audacity, brass*, cheek*, chutzpah*, cockiness, conceitedness, contemptuousness, disdain, insolence, loftiness, nerve, ostentation, overbearance, pomposity, pompousness, presumption, pretension, pretentiousness, self-importance, vanity


All in all, it doesn't sound like a good trait to be toting through life, does it? But what if that arrogance was borne out of a valid reason? Or is there ever a reason valid enough to warrant such arrogance and unbridled pride?

Heuristic...

Meteorology Glossary: Heuristic - In artificial intelligence, a rule of thumb, generally based on expert experience or common sense rather than an underlying theory or mathematical model, that can be incorporated in a knowledge base and used to guide a problem-solving process. Most procedures used by human weather forecasters are heuristic, as are many pattern-recognition techniques in radar and satellite meteorology.

Wikipedia: Heuristic (hyu-ˈris-tik) is a method to help solve a problem, commonly an informal method. It is particularly used to rapidly come to a solution that is reasonably close to the best possible answer, or 'optimal solution'. Heuristics are "rules of thumb", educated guesses, intuitive judgments or simply common sense. In more precise terms, heuristics stand for strategies using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem-solving in human beings and machines.

Hence, I think we should strive to approach life heuristically but we should also always recognise that heuristicism is a practice of common sense which is sometimes not as commonly possessed as we would like it to be... so, how heuristic are you?

metaphorically speaking...

I love the English language. I was fortunate to have been schooled by an Irish nun and brought up by parents who spoke and wrote the language in the most proper of manner. My late father would not hesitate to correct grammar and pronounciation, holding fast to his own colonial schooling. The British way was the only way or I'd risk grating him so badly he might have had to smack me over the head for attempting Americanize (with a Z, no less) my speech. Til today, my mother still speaks in full sentences, with punctuation marks in all the correct places and every effort to ensure that T's are crossed and I's are dotted... ok, so that's not quite a clever metaphor but that's not the point of this blog entry.

English is the language that I live IN. Everything about my being is defined, described, felt, remembered, recounted, dreamt up and shot down in English. Even speaking in another language or dialect requires the point to be made in English, albeit in the head, before a process of translation occurs in the brain... the translator not unlike like a nifty application that you can add to Mozilla Firefox to do cool things.

So, in a way, you could look at it in another way and say that English is everything to me. And because it is so much a part of me, I like the tinkering with words and the phrases that emerge to say something relevant in a particular moment, which hits home a point with brevity and wit. Which explains why I like watching Rowan Atkinson in Black Adder or have a simple enjoyment of British wit, by the way. Ironically, I'm a lost cause with poetry... it dramatically sheers over the top of my head...

What I had never realised is that I it was a sub-conscious challenge to myself to always find a way to say things in a different way, different manner and using different words all the time; nuances in shifting a punctuation mark, double entendres, the economy of words heavily laced with meaning, vivid visuals impacted by words and disguised barbed wittiscm that is lost on all in a crowd except those who matter. Ok, ok, sometimes it's lost on them too. But it thrills me and I love it.

Anyway, back to here and now and why I decided to write this particular entry. Along the way, I have crafted a few metaphors and phrases of my own and before I lose them to the vast expanse of a nebulous past space, more popularly known as loss of memory, here are a couple:

"Be there and be hip or be square if you skip" - my weak attempt at speaking young-lish

"If love was simpler, would it mean as much?" - my reply to a friend's comment about love being complicated

(unfinished)