Thinker's Almanac - July 1

 

Subject: Thinking and Writing - The Elements of Style

Event:  Birthday of William Strunk Jr., 1869

Fortunately, the act of composition, or creation, disciplines the mind; writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.  -William Strunk, Jr.

Today is the birthday of William Strunk, Jr. (1869-1946), the author of one of the most influential writing guides ever written, The Elements of Style.  Strunk originally created his guide in 1918 as an unpublished pamphlet for his students at Cornell University.  After Strunk died in 1946, his former student, the author E.B. White (Best known for his book Charlotte’s Web), revised and expanded Strunk’s work.  When it was published in 1959, The Elements of Style became a bestseller and to date has sold over 10 million copies.

Today, the guide -- commonly referred to as “Strunk and White” -- has become probably the most universally respected reference work for writers.  It’s also designed for readers, however.  In his introduction, White expresses his teacher’s sympathy for the reader:

Will felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up on dry ground, or at least to throw a rope.

In addition to a rope, Strunk and White provide concise principles of composition:  eleven commandments for crafting sentences, paragraphs, and compositions:

1. Choose a suitable design and stick to it.

2. Make the paragraph the unit of composition.

3. Use the active voice.

4. Put statements in positive form.

5. Use definite, specific, concrete language.

6. Omit needless words.

7. Avoid a succession of loose sentences.

8. Express coordinate ideas in similar form.

9. Keep related words together.

10. In summaries, keep to one tense.

11. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.

To illustrate the sixth commandment, “Omit needless words,” notice how Strunk and White practice what they preach:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. 

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Writing is never easy, but it is an essential practice for developing and examining your thinking.  As Strunk says, writing paradoxically both drains the mind and supplies it.  It’s always a challenging process, but reading an excellent style guide like The Elements of Style will make things a bit easier.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What analogies are used by Strunk and White to explain the writer’s responsibility to the reader and the reasoning behind being concise when writing?

Challenge - Primary Principle for Powerful Prose

What would you argue is the single most important rule for effective writing?  Look at the rules laid out by Strunk and White, and also research other principles your favorite writers swear by for communicating clearly to a reader.  Select your single most important rule; then, make the case for your rule by explaining it in detail along with showing examples where appropriate.

Sources:

1-Strunk, William.  The Elements of Style. Project Gutenberg, 2011.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - June 9

BACKWORDS - Word Game

What were the four words that Walt Disney used to define success?

Subject:  Innovation - Disney’s Four Cs 

Event:  Debut of Donald Duck in the cartoon “The Wise Little Hen.”

Walt Disney began his career as an illustrator while he was serving as a soldier in France during World War I.  He supplemented his soldier’s salary by drawing and selling caricatures of his comrades in arms.  They were more than happy to buy them so they could sent them home to their families in the United States.  

After the war he worked for the Kansas City Slide Company, drawing advertisements that were projected onto movie screens.  Seeing his drawings on the big screen fueled Disney’s imagination:  Would it be possible to combine moving pictures with his cartoons?  Although Disney did not invent animation, he did become the first to create animated cartoons that were more than just advertisements.  On November 18, 1928, Disney’s Steamboat Willie premiered introducing the world to his most famous creation Mickey Mouse.  Five years later, on this day in 1934, Disney introduced another of his iconic cartoon characters Donald Duck in The Wise Little Hen.

                                                Image by Welcome to All ! ツ from Pixabay

What truly made Disney an iconoclast, however, was his idea of producing a full-length animated film.  Cartoons were seen as light entertainment to be shown before a film, but no one -- besides Disney -- ever imagined that a long cartoon feature could become a box office hit.  Even though banks rejected his loan applications for the project and even though his critics called his project “Disney’s Folly,” Walt was undeterred.  On December 21, 1937, Snow White debuted.  It grossed $8 million dollars, a record for its time.

The profits from Snow White propelled Disney’s other projects and made his company a great success.  In 1955. he fulfilled another of his imaginative visions by building and opening the theme park Disneyland in Anaheim, California.  Just like with Snow White, his critics said the project was too risky and was doomed to failure.  Walt didn’t listen and forged ahead to make his dream come true.  

Walt Disney summarized his recipe for success in four words:

“I can’t believe that there are any heights that can’t be scared by a man who knows the secrets of making dreams come true.  This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in Four Cs.  They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence” (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What are Walt Disney’s Four Cs and how did his work exemplify them?

Sources:

1-Berns, Gregory.  Iconoclast:  A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently.  Boston, Massachusetts:  Harvard Business Press, 1020 (37-9).

THINKER'S ALMANAC - June 7

Although students don’t like them, why is a pop quiz actually a good thing?

Subject:  Study Strategies - Testing Effect

Event:  Premier of the television quiz show The $64,000 Question

There is always a place I can take someone's curiosity and land where they end up enlightened when we're done. That's my challenge as an educator. No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives. -Neil deGrasse Tyson

On this day in 1955, the quiz show the $64,000 Question premiered on CBS.  Today we take game shows for granted, but in the early days of television, these shows were high stakes dramas that mesmerized the television audience and posted record ratings.  The $64,000 Question spawned a number of successful imitators:  The Big Surprise, Dotto, Tic Tac Dough, and Twenty One.

                                                                Image by Garaz from Pixabay

The success of the quiz shows ended, however, in 1958 when a scandal surfaced where evidence showed that the results of the shows were rigged.  As a result, the quiz show craze died, and the networks stopped airing them (1).  Quiz shows did not gain favor with the public again until the 1960s when shows like Jeopardy began to attract viewers. (see THINKER’S ALMANAC - March 20).  At this point, the “quiz shows” were rebranded as “game shows.”

It is interesting that tracking down the history of the word “quiz” has left lexicographers somewhat quizzical.

One story involves James Daly, a theater manager in Dublin.  In 1791, Daly supposedly made a bet with a friend, saying he could introduce a new word into the language within a single day.  He then created the nounce -- or nonsense word “quiz” and paid people to write the word in chalk on walls throughout the city.  By the end of the day, the word was on everyone’s lips (2).

Although this is a good story, it probably is not true.  Instead, the word “quiz” is probably just a clipped version of the word “inquisitive,” an adjective meaning “unduly curious and inquiring.”

While the origin of the word “quiz” might not be certain, one thing is fairly clear:  in school, most students are not big fans of quizzes.  Counterintuitively, however, educational researchers have documented quizzes, or testing, as one of the best ways to retain learning.  The testing effect -- also known as retrieval practice -- is a learning strategy where students practice recalling what they have learned by writing it down or reciting it out loud without looking at their notes.

In a 2011 study, students were evaluated on their ability to retain and apply information from a reading passage.  Some students simply read the passage, others read and re-read the passage, and a third group read the passage, and then paused periodically to practice retrieval by writing down what they remembered without looking back at the passage.  

The results of the study revealed when students were tested one week after reading the passages, the group that applied retrieval practice as a strategy not only remembered more but was also better able to apply their knowledge to new contexts (3).

The testing effect works because the conscious effort of retrieving information builds connections in the brain and strengthens memory.  The process of forgetting and remembering also provides feedback.  While re-reading a passage can create an illusion of understanding, the active process of retrieving the information without notes provides the students with metacognitive feedback:  via retrieval without notes, students can determine what they truly know versus what they need to study further.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the testing effect, and what evidence shows its effectiveness?

Challenge - One Week In June:  A Quiz

Based on your reading of the seven entries for June 1 through 7, write seven quiz questions that can be answered with one or two word answers.

Sources:

1-The Museum of Broadcast Communications. “$64,000 Question.”

2-Manswer, Martin.  The Guinness Book of Words (2nd Edition).  Middlesex:  Guinness Publishing Ltd., 1988.

3-Karpicke, Jeffrey D. and Janell R. Blunt. “Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping.”  Science, Volume 331, Issue 6018 11 Feb. 2011.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - June 6

What philosopher’s dead body is on display in a glass case at the University of College London?

Subject:  Utilitarianism - Bentham’s Auto-Icon and Hedonic Calculus

Event:  Death of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, 1832

It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong. -Jeremy Bentham

On this day in 1832, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham died at the age of 84-years-old.  What makes Bentham’s death somewhat more memorable than his birth is the unconventional directions he left in his will regarding what he wanted done with his body.  Rather than a traditional burial, Bentham requested that his body be dissected for the benefit of medical science.  Furthermore, he asked that his skeleton and mummified head be dressed and placed on display.  

                                                            Image by 35069 from Pixabay

Bentham’s directions were followed; unfortunately, the process of mummifying his head did not go well, leaving his face discolored and distorted.  Because of this, his head was replaced with one fashioned out of wax.  The term Betham used for display of his posthumous remains was “auto-icon”: instead of the traditional statue, he wanted his actual body to be its own icon.  Today, visitors to the University of College London can find Bentham on display in a glass case.  He is sitting in a chair, wearing a hat and holding his favorite walking cane.  His mummified head, however, is not on display; it is stored out of public view in a wooden box (1).

More important than Bentham’s body are the ideas he promoted about how people should live their lives and behave ethically.  More than any other philosopher, Bentham is known for his utilitarianism, the idea that we should determine what is right based on whatever will produce the most happiness for the most people.  As a legal and political reformer, Bentham's goal was to apply utilitarianism to improve not just his own life, but the lives of all of society.

To this end Bentham systematized utilitarianism into a kind of science of happiness, a method he called the Hedonic -- or Felicific -- Calculus.  Seven factors were included in his formula for calculating happiness:  intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity (or how soon pleasure would happen), fecundity (or how likely the pleasure produce is likely to produce additional pleasures), purity (or how much pain is mixed with the pleasure), and extend (or the number of people impacted by the pleasure).  By assigning a number to each factor, say on a scale of 1 to 10, we can attempt to quantify how much pleasure will be produced by a particular action.  The total then is the happiness value of that action; Bentham’s term for this was “utility,” meaning usefulness.  The central tenet of utilitarianism is that the more pleasure an action produces the more useful that action is to society (2).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What are the seven factors that make up Bentham’s formula for happiness?

Challenge - Quantifying Your Quality Time : Compare two of your favorite pastimes by calculating the pleasure produced by each.  Judge each pastime by assigning a number between 1 to 10 to each of the seven factors.  After you have made your calculations, compare the two numbers (each out of 70 possible) and write a brief explanation of how the two numbers compare to your feelings about each pastime.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

June 6, 1944:  Today is the anniversary of the largest invasion in history as the Allied armies assaulted the beaches of Normandy, France with 133,000 soldiers from England, Canada, and the United States.  The war in Europe would not end until nearly one year after D-Day, but without a successful invasion on June sixth, the progress of the war and the final outcome certainly would have been different.

Sources:

1-Duignan, Brian. “What Is Jeremy Bentham’s “Auto-Icon”?”  

https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-jeremy-benthams-auto-icon

2-Warburton, Nigel.  A Little History of Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011:  119-125.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - June 5

What was Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand,” and how did he argue that this “Hand” is at work in a capitalistic society?

Subject:  Economics - Smith’s Invisible Hand

Event:  Birthday of Adam Smith, 1723

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.  -Adam Smith

Adam Smith was born on this day in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland.  Today Smith is recognized as the father of modern economics, a title he earned by writing the most influential economics manifesto ever published, The Wealth of Nations (1776).

ADAM SMITH

- Image by scotlandstudycentre from Pixabay

In his work, Smith presents his economic theory that if the government does not interfere with the economy, the free market can regulate itself.  According to Smith, the forces of supply and demand will guide the “Invisible Hand” of the market.  Free trade, free markets, and the individual motivation to make a profit will provide the necessary impetus to create collective wealth and prosperity (1).

Commenting on Smith’s influence on the capitalist economy, the historian Yuval Noah Harari says the following:

...Smith’s claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history -- revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective.  What Smith says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming rich I benefit everybody, not just myself.  ‘Egoism is altruism.’ (2)

According to Smith, it is, therefore, the forces of individual self-interest that guide “The Invisible Hand,” producing benefits for the greater public good.

In 1958, Leonard Reed, the founder of the Foundation of Economic Education (FEE), wrote an essay called “I, Pencil” to concretely illustrate the market forces behind Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand.  Reed writes his essay by personifying a pencil and having this humble pencil tell its story, the story of how multiple market forces worked independently in different parts of the world to produce a single pencil.  No single mastermind can be credited with the production of a single pencil; instead, its existence, just as the existence of other products like cars and toasters, is the result of the Invisible Hand at work (3).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  In economics, what is meant by “the invisible hand”?

Challenge - The Persuasive Pencil: Read the essay “I, Pencil,” and summarize the story that Reed tells about the pencil relates to Adam Smith’s economic philosophy.

Sources:

1-Hart, Michael H. The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Person in History.  New York:  Citadel Press, 1978: 218-221.

2-Harari, Yuval Noah.  Sapiens:  A Brief History of Humankind. New York:  Harper Perennial, 2015: 310.

3-Reed, “I, Pencil” 1958 The Foundation for Economic Education.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - June 4

Subject: Cognitive Fluency - Churchill’s “We Shall Fight” Speech

Event:  Winston Churchill’s address to the House of Commons, 1940

Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing. -Karlheinz Stockhausen

On this date in 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons and the British people.  France had fallen to Nazi Germany, but all was not lost: over 300,000 allied soldiers had been successfully evacuated from Dunkirk.  Churchill’s purpose in this speech was to buoy the spirits of the British people. Europe had fallen, but the British Empire would not give up and would not go down without a fight.

  WINSTON CHURCHILL 

- Image by Simon Goodall from Pixabay

In the final paragraph, or preoration, of his speech, Churchill unleashed one of history’s most dramatic finishes:

We shall fight on the seas and oceans,

 we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,

 we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.

We shall fight on the beaches,

 we shall fight on the landing grounds,

 we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,

 we shall fight in the hills;

 we shall never surrender . . . . (1)

There’s a fine line between repetition and redundancy, but as demonstrated by Churchill, when employed at the right time and at the right place, repetition can create the kind of dramatic emphasis that rolls and resonates like ocean waves, repeatedly crashing on the rocky shore.  Churchill, a master of rhetoric, knew what he was doing. He knew just when and just where to employ this echo effect for maximum impact.

Another element of Churchill’s mastery is his use of succinct, simple language.  As he explains in his “Scaffolding of Rhetoric,” published when he was 23 years old:

The shorter words of a language are usually the more ancient. Their meaning is more ingrained in the national character and they appeal with greater force to simple understandings than words recently introduced from the Latin and the Greek. All the speeches of great English rhetoricians–except when addressing highly cultured audiences–display a uniform preference for short, homely words of common usage–so long as such words can fully express their thoughts and feelings… (2)

In Churchill’s case we would certainly recognize how he is mobilizing language for benevolent purposes; however, we should also realize that the same principles may be used for malevolent purposes.  For example, Churchill’s rival in the war, Adolf Hitler, knew the power of using clear language and repetition for spreading misinformation and propaganda.  In Mein Kampf he wrote, “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention.  It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over” (3).

The brilliance of Churchill’s rhetoric is supported by a modern concept from neuroscience called cognitive fluency, which means that the human brain not only prefers things that are easy to think about, it also sees things that are easy to think about as more true than things that are hard to think about.  For example, companies with easy-to-pronounce names are more successful than companies that have hard to pronounce names.  The word “fluency” simply means flow. Information and words that flow smoothly are easier to process and are more likely to stick with your reader.  Similarly, as Churchill’s speech demonstrates, simple words and words that are repeated, are easier to process and to remember.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is cognitive fluency, and how does it relate to Churchill’s memorable speech?

Challenge - You Can Say That Again: Some of the best-known sayings, expressions, titles, and aphorisms in the English language use repetition for effect:

No pain, no gain

First come, first served

United we stand, divided we fall

Put up or shut up

Never Say Never Again

What are some examples of great quotations that repeat at least one significant word?  What would you say is the best thing ever said with repetition? Read the quotations below as examples; then, research a quotation that you think is particularly well stated.  In addition to presenting the quotation and the name of the speaker, explain why you like the quotation based on both what it says and how it says it.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. -William Shakespeare

There are two great days in a person’s life – the day we are born and the day we discover why. -William Barclay

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. -Ellen Parr

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him. -Thomas Szasz

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. –Martin Luther King Jr.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. –Albert Einstein

Sources:

1-International Churchill Society.  “We Shall Fight on the Beaches.”

2-Churchill, Winston.  “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric.”  https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-094/the-scaffolding-of-rhetoric-2/

3-Robson, David.  The Intelligence Trap:  Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes.  New York:  W.W. Norton, 2019: 141-145.