Symbolized

For the past four years, and for many years before that, I’ve seen mechanical engineering being invariably represented by gears. At least two of them together each time, both usually spur. If you’ve been perceptive of things around, you too would’ve seen much the same. Additionally, for evidence of this, run a Google Image search for “mechanical engineering” and crack how many of them have spur gears associated with them.

And all this when mechanical engineering is so vast a subject as to cover elements from safety pins to satellites.

Such a generalized outlook on mechanical engineering is likely in part because of the “age” of mechanical engineering, in part because of the popularity of gears, and in part because of the perception of ruthless operation people have about machines. I mention age because mechanical is one of the oldest branches of engineering, and since gears have been around for almost as long as the branch itself, they might subtly hint a feeling of its longevity. Secondly, it's hard to find someone that hasn't seen gears in action, be it in watches and clocks, motors, engines, turbines, vehicles, and a myriad other mechanical devices. Gears enjoy more popularity amongst us than any other tool of their league. Even if only the outside of an engine is visible, our mind immediately thinks of the gear mechanism inside. This undue familiarity of the common man with gears would naturally lead to, especially when present for long as suggested here, a generalized representation of the whole of mechanical engineering with the object of familiarity. Lastly, gears are ruthless! If you’ve seen two huge spur gears in action, you will know the kind of emotion they generate. And this emotion itself is representative of machines in general, making gears all the more symbolic of mechanical engineering.

But whether such symbolism is justified or not is an altogether different matter.

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Pynchon's letter

I just found this awesome letter written by Thomas Pynchon, published in Daily Telegraph, supporting and in defense of Ian McEwan. For the uninitiated, Mr. McEwan was the object of a plagiarism controversy in late 2006 as regards his bestselling and highly acclaimed novel, Atonement. What made the whole charges of plagiarism absurd on its face was that it wasn't plagiarism at all; the author had acknowledged, both in the novel and vocally on many occasions, the source of historical information he is purported to have plagiarized. Nevertheless, some unscrupulous attention whores desperately wanting to muster some attention for themselves accused him anyway.

The controversy was much analogous to a news network filing charges of plagiarism against a filmmaker for having based his story on real events reported only by that network...despite the fact that the filmmaker has acknowledged it.

Thomas Pynchon was quick to speak against such wild accusations, as is seen in this letter (dated December 2006):

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When nouns and trademarks become verbs

There is a tendency in people to replace longer words with the shorter (‘faking’ for ‘counterfeiting’), to cut down the length of the words (‘fundas’ for ‘fundamentals’) and to abbreviate words, especially when such words are used in high frequency. (This helpful site ranks words on the basis of their usage). But at the same time, there is yet another tendency to replace an entire group of words with a single word, changing the very grammatical construct of the replacing word. In the course of this treatment, adjectives become nouns, nouns become verbs, verbs become nouns, and adverbs become something else. Some, presumably traditionalists, frown upon meddling with language like this, more so when it is done on a large scale, but such frowning speaks more of their own lack of understanding of the development of language than it does the so-called offenders.

Linguistics reserves a special chapter for the study of functional changes taking place in words: Conversion. Conversion is a form of Derivation (also a linguistic terminology, meaning the creation of a new word from an existing word, the new word being of a different spelling) wherein a word changes its part of speech without undergoing any change in its spelling. As mentioned earlier, nouns becoming verbs, for example, is a kind of Conversion and is specifically called verbification. Verbification is a much happening, though less noticed, process in all languages of the world, and more so in widely spoken ones – in our case, English. It facilitates word economy in written as well as spoken English and cuts down redundancy and awkwardness. This example makes it clear:

Statement A: Don’t tell lies. (lie: noun)
Statement B: Don’t lie. (lie: verb)

Both sentences mean exactly the same, but B is always more preferable. It’s concise, economic, and doesn’t sound awkward.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, particularly 20th Century onwards, such Conversion is no longer restricted to words already present in the English language. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he might not have thought so much of the linguistic usage of his invention as much as he did of its working, but very soon, to his and everyone else’s convenience, the word ‘telephone’, while a neologism, was verbified. It isn’t very uncommon today to hear someone saying, “I’ll telephone you tonight.” And the same applies for the term SMS (a.k.a. text messaging in the West). It’s verbified. Or you could also look at 'blog'. With the technological invention, it was a neologism, a noun. Now, blog is a verb, too ("I love blogging").

Lately, this verification has taken another step forward with trademarks, albeit with a slight twist. Despite the fact that verbification is a productive process in language, it is, say the corporate representatives, an equally unproductive process for the companies whose trademarks are being verbified. In fact, they would go so far as to call it “genericide” and call those who use it as “guilty of genericide.” Nice.

Xerox is perhaps one of the most commonly verbified trademarks. While the actual process is to be called photocopying, almost all of us have at some point made the statement, “xerox it” (with a small x, though it doesn’t make any difference in speech). It even finds an entry as a verb and with a small x in all leading English dictionaries. The problem these companies have with their trademarks being used as verbs or nouns is that the trademark loses its association with the company and becomes a generic term for the process of doing it or for the generic product and hence the brand loses its popularity ‘rights’ over the trademark. Xerox, for example, is so widely used as a verb that the other day I overheard a guy saying he’ll xerox the paper in this machine when the machine in question was a Canon photocopier. It’s good for linguistic conciseness, yes, but bad for the company Xerox that has lost its market value to the now-generic term xeroxing – the process of photocopying. "Using a Xerox photocopier" gives more credit and attention to the brand Xerox than does "xeroxing".

Google, too, has been the victim of genericide, and its founders woefully dissented, in vain, against Oxford Dictionary’s decision of including google as a verb in the dictionary in 2006. Google is now the generic term for searching the Internet for keywords using Google Search Engine, and soon it’ll be a generic term for the process of searching keywords on the Internet. Other trademarks belonging to this category are Hoover (a manufacturer of vacuum cleaners; now hoovering – the process of cleaning with a vacuum cleaner), Photoshop (Adobe Photoshop, a software for editing photos; now photoshopping – the process of editing photos in Adobe Photoshop), and most recently, as voted second by people in Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007, facebook – a verb – for the process of browsing (doing whatever) in the popular social networking site Facebook (“Did you facebook today?”).

Maybe there is an inherent logic to the structure of these words (trademarks) that give us the tendency to verbify them. Photoshopping is structurally similar to ‘shopping’, facebooking is to ‘booking’. That can explain why very few these trademarks get verbified and most do not. But whatever the tendency, it increases the ease with which language is spoken, written, and concisely expressed, and that is what language is all about.

However, I would like to point out at Sony’s shameless attempt to verbify their logo. It’s one thing if people verbify a word, but a totally different thing if the company itself forces it down. And fails. It doesn’t even belong to the field of linguistics, since it’s a damn logo, but here it is, whatever it means ("I Sony it"? or maybe "I Ericsson it", or perhaps "I love it", in which case it is even more shameless than it is to verbify their own trademark):

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World War III

As I was researching the possible scenarios for the outbreak of a Third World War, and meanwhile learned that Churchill actually had plans of starting one (as outlined in Operation Unthinkable) in 1945 but was, much to his dismay, overruled by people smarter than him, I came across two interesting quotes:

"If the Third World War is fought with nuclear weapons, the fourth will be fought with bows and arrows." —Lord Louis Mountbatten

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." —Albert Einstein

Eloquent as they are, I feel my modification to the above quotes is more accurate:

"If the Third World War is fought, there won't be a Fourth one."

But there will always be dense politicians who would, in response to my version, say, "Well then, let's just put an end to World Wars and fight the Third."

You've gotta love this crazy, German-accented satirical video I found on YouTube:



"But I'm le tired..." Hahahahah

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All the pretty horses

Are all horses in the world of the same color? You’d think not.

But you can’t be too sure. Especially not when nutcases like George Pólya are around. His argument is adduced much like this...

There are five very pretty horses. Their color(s), unknown as of yet, but we’ll arrive at that shortly through the givens.



Now the given: Of the five horses, any set of four horses contains horses of the same color. (Will be proven later).

Meaning, if I made a set of four horses out of the first four horses, they’d all be of the same color. If I made a set of the last four horses, they’d again be of the same color. Likewise, a set of first two and last two horses would also give me horses of the same color, and so with any other combination of horses in sets of four. Which color, we don’t care. But do pay heed to the fact that the statement doesn’t say all horses are of the same color. No. Let’s sketch out one set, set 1, for clarity…



Similarly, we have another set, set 2…



Math time now. Let the first horse in the entire group of five be denoted by A, the fifth horse be denoted by B, and the middle three horses be collectively called C. From set 1, it is clear that A=C. From set 2, B=C. And anybody with an understanding of even elemental math knows that when all humans are monkeys and all monkeys are apes, then all humans are apes. So, we have A=B from those two equations, leading us to the (obvious) conclusion that the first horse is of the same color as the fifth. Meaning, all five horses are of the same color. Phew.

That wasn’t so difficult a reasoning as I made it seem, but here comes the fun part. We have to prove our initial given statement. To do that, let’s shoo one horse away into the fields and be left with only four. Now let’s commence the whole logic again with the same initial givens. Color(s) of horses, unknown. A set of three horses in this group of four will always be of the same color, regardless of which three of them you choose for your set. Follow the same line of reasoning and end up arriving at the same conclusion that all four horses are of the same color. Shoo off another horse and do these calculations with three and two and one horse. Since a set of one horse has to be of the same color, the initial statement that any set of four horses in a group of five contains horses of the same color is proved by backtracking the deduction.

Okay, recess time just got over for our horses in the field and it’s time to get back to the stable. All five horses are back. Add another one. Wherever it came from it doesn’t matter, just add. Now you have six. Apply the logic all over again. Arrived at all horses of same color? Make it seven horses. Again all same color. Go on increasing the set one horse at a time to get the same result. 1000 horses, all same color. 10,000 horses, all same color. A million, still all same color.

ALL horses in the world…why would that be any different? They would all be of the same color, wouldn’t they? Of course they would.

Except that our own real-world experience tells us they aren’t, even though this seemingly perfect logical reasoning deduces that they are!

What went wrong then? Maybe George Pólya really is a nutcase. Case closed.

Or maybe not. Maybe, he’s just smarter than us to have fooled us with this. As it happens, he is. Pólya used this reality-contradicting “logic” to expose the, or demonstrate the, fallacy arising out of apparently all-encompassing general statements (laws/rules) when specific cases in which they are demonstrably false aren’t considered. The fallacy in our horse game has been cleverly planted in mathematical induction. Our math equations of if A=C and B=C then A=B are universally valid for all arguments containing three or more elements. However, it just doesn’t apply, indeed it is impossible to apply, when you have less than 3 elements. A=C and ?=C, therefore A=?. Nothing can take the place of ‘?’ as there is nothing to take its place. Therefore, our reasoning is valid only up until we have 3 horses to work with, but the logic breaks down once we are down to two horses. Since we cannot continue the till-now-valid reasoning after reaching two horses, we cannot prove the initial statement, thereby making it a false initial statement. Any theorem based on false assumptions collapses on its face like Nazism.

Hence, all horses in the world are not, as unlikely as it may seem, of the same color.

This type of logic in which the fallacy is intentionally planted in the reasoning is called Falsidical Paradox.

And oddly, I've plagiarized the title of this post from Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses. Sue me.

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