Bobulate, for Intentional Organization

The unstoppable Radio Lab introduces Words, where one thing leads to another:

Words have the power to shape the way we think and feel. In this stunning video, filmmakers Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante bandy visual wordplay into a moving exploration of how language connects our inner thoughts to the outside world.

It’s impossible to imagine a world without words. Over on the radio, hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich help us do just that. Overlapping wisdom abounds.

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Eunioa, a new book that tells the story, in a way, of vowels:

Eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels — and it means “beautiful thinking”. It is also the title of Canadian poet Christian Bök’s book of fiction in which each chapter uses only one vowel.

Eunoia abides by many rules:

All chapters must allude to the art of writing. All chapters must describe a culinary banquet, a prurient debauch, a pastoral tableau and a nautical voyage. All sentences must accent internal rhyme through the use of syntactical parallelism. The text must exhaust the lexicon for each vowel, citing at least 90% of the available repertoire.

And excerpt from Chapter O:

Loops on bold fonts now form lots of words for books. Books form cocoons of comfort — tombs to hold bookworms. Profs from Oxford show frosh who do post-docs how to gloss works of Wordsworth. Dons who work for proctors or provosts do not fob off school to work on crosswords, nor do dons go off to dorm rooms to loll on cots. Dons go crosstown to look for bookshops known to stock lots of top-notch goods: cookbooks, workbooks — room on room of how-to-books for jocks (how to jog, how to box), books on pro sports: golf or polo. Old colophons on schoolbooks from schoolrooms sport two sorts of logo: oblong whorls, rococo scrolls - both on worn morocco.

See one in motion.

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Simon Schama on the language of food:

The overthrow of gastronomie for “fooding” is the most dramatic recent instance of a language act that is not just incidental to but inseparable from the constitution of a food universe. For it may be that we have now become too logorrhoeic for our own good, whether it’s the almost unimaginable proliferation of food journalism and cookbooks, the multiplication of television food programmes (I plead guilty as an occasional accomplice); the appalling habit (marked in the United States) of training waiting staff to deliver lengthy disquisitions and sermons on their specials — often, and inaccurately, with the personal pronoun attached (as in “my sea bass today comes with wild rice and a stuffing of celery root and rutabaga”). Then there is the menu itself — often a work of faux-literature minus any obligation to obey the basic rules of syntax.

A word of advice, one among many brainy passages:

I’ve made it my own rule of thumb — and I recommend it to you — never to order any item described with more than one verb.

Bon appétit.

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Paul Ford on evolution versus erosion:

In Latin evolvere means “to unroll,” like a sacred scroll. The word “evolve” implies action. But evolution isn’t what happens; it’s what’s left over. Traits arise in populations; death sweeps through; some traits survive to the next generation. And repeat. Species don’t evolve — they erode. And the rock keeps lifting.

Infinite numbers of patterns exist in eroded experiences; they present themselves in urban environments, in nature. Yet instead of focusing on what’s left behind, we, hurrying forward, miss them. Therein the paradox: staying behind may be moving ahead.

(thx, Jason)

Spencer Fry on the definition of “normals:”

A Normal is maybe not an everyday person in every way, but has limited Internet knowledge. They certainly don’t read TechCrunch, they haven’t heard of RSS feeds, they probably don’t have a smart phone or at least don’t have many apps installed, and although they surf the Web a lot, they have little clue what a web browser really is. Another telltale sign is that instead of going directly to web pages, they use the search bar. You know these people if you’re reading this blog.

It’s more important to reach normals:

Normals make up far more than 99% of Internet users. If you fail to reach the masses then you’ll simply fail. You can be the hottest startup on the block with 100,000 active early adopters, but I’d trade every one of those users for Normals in all cases.

Focus on normals. So simple and often overlooked.

Scott Berkun on banning the i-word:

Einstein, Ford, Picasso and Edison rarely said the word innovation and neither should you.

Because:

Ask people who say innovation what they mean. If ever anyone says the word in a meeting, ask “Can you give an example of what you mean by innovative?” If they can’t, you’ve just saved everyone in the room hours of time. Using the i-word is often a cop-out for clear thinking. They are trying to signify creativity, without actually being creative.

A-men.

Seth Godin on clichés:

In printing, a cliché was a printing plate cast from movable type. This is also called a stereotype. When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. “Cliché” came to mean such a ready-made phrase. The French word “cliché” comes from the sound made when the matrix is dropped into molten metal to make a printing plate.

His secret weapon on how to use clichés:

The effective way to use a cliché is to point to it and then do precisely the opposite. Juxtapose the cliché with the unexpected truth of what you have to offer. …. I often use the Encyclopedia of Clichés to find clichés that then inspire opposites.

Hear the sound of stereotypes, a 1949 Number Four VanderCook Proof Printing Press in particular.

Scott Berkun on the word “secret”:

The word secret makes the boring sound fun. Doing laundry is pretty boring, but secret laundry almost sounds interesting. The word secret promises short-cuts, tricks, or things people don’t want us to know, which all connote ways to get one up on others. This little semantic trick works well on newbies, since they know so little, anything can seem like a secret.

But according to Scott, the real secret is:

To invent or create is to take a bet against the unknown. No matter what you do, you are still betting you can do well in the face of many things that are out of your control. Don’t like that? Don’t want uncertainty? Then do something else. Comfort with risk and uncertainty is the real secret name of the game. Anyone who wants to create something new is placing a bet, that their view of the future is better than everyone elses’, or at least their competitors.

On the solar eclipse analemma:

If you went outside at exactly the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun appear to move? With great planning and effort, such a series of images can be taken. The figure-8 path the Sun follows over the course of a year is called an analemma. This coming Tuesday, the Winter Solstice day in Earth’s northern hemisphere, the Sun will be at the bottom of the analemma. Analemmas created from different latitudes would appear at least slightly different, as well as analemmas created at a different time each day. With even greater planning and effort, the series can include a total eclipse of the Sun as one of the images. Pictured is such a total solar eclipse analemma or Tutulemma — a term coined by the photographers based on the Turkish word for eclipse.

Consistency takes planning and effort.

A thank you note by David Bowie in reply to his first American fan letter:

When I called in this, my manager’s office, a few moments ago I was handed my very first American fan letter - and it was from you. I was so pleased that I had to sit down and type an immediate reply, even though Ken is shouting at me to get on with a script he badly needs. That can wiat (wi-at? That’s a new English word which means wait).

For anyone who launches a product, who bravely publishes that first book, who records music, who stands up for ideas of any kind — for anyone who performs for an audience without trackable means for people’s happiness — he or she knows the importance of receiving feedback. And a fan letter, invaluable.

The fan of note was Sandra Dodd, so moved, that she started a fan club on Bowie’s behalf. I find it charming that a 20-year-old Bowie turned around a thank you note immediately.

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