Every time I board an Alitalia plane to fly to Rome, where I live, I wonder who thought it would be a good idea to name the in-flight magazine after Ulysses, a person who took all of ten years to make it home.
Category Archives: Halfpenny thoughts
Halfpenny thoughts no. 4 – Le quatorze Laurel
One of the best things of the French Revolution, in my opinion, are the beautiful new names which were assigned to the months of the year. I especially like misty Brumaire, frosty Frimaire and fruity Fructidor. Rainy Pluviôse is quite nice too.
Compare our tired names, particularly September, October, November and December. These just mean seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth month, respectively, although they are now the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth, because Julius Caesar and Augustus elbowed their way into the calendar by force, dedicating July and August to themselves. Augustus even pinched a day from February to ensure that his month was just as long as his uncle’s.
Julius Caesar was definitely genocidal, Augustus in comparison merely enthusiastically homicidal. So why have we kept the names of these monsters in our year? I think the time has come to deal with this. There are a few ways of doing this:
- Go back to the lovely French Revolutionary names. This would involve a couple of problems, though. Namely that you would need to reverse the order of the names in Antipodean countries so as to keep track with the actual seasons. Frimaire would not be very good to use in an Australian summer. Also, in order to keep some coherence, tropical countries would have to have one year-long month called “Solaire”, with 365 days. At most they could have a month of Pluviôse for the monsoon season.
- To maintain consistency, keep July and August and name all the other months after equally nasty dictators and tyrants. We could have a global poll to decide which figures of history we dislike most. Done on live TV, it would be quite exciting and would earn a lot in sponsorship.
- Ditch Julius and Augustus and replace them with something nicer. My suggestion: instead of July and August have Laurel and Hardy.
People who believe in the death penalty
I’m not saying they’re evil
but they’re definitely medi-eval.
Halfpenny thoughts no.3 – ROW: the new ratio we all need
I earn my living as a conference interpreter, which means that I spend a lot of my time having words enter my ears through earphones and words in another language coming out of my mouth, in the constant hope that there will be some relationship between the two flows.
Often, while engaged in this activity, I have been struck by how many different styles of public speaking there are. And once, at a meeting where people kept on referring to business ratios such as: ROA, return on assets: ROE, return on equity: ROI, return on investment (there are several more), it occurred to me that there was another one we needed – ROW – return on words.
ROW by the way is pronounced the same way as what you do with oars to propel a boat.
I haven’t quite worked out the mathematics yet, but this is basically the formula:
Just to give you an example, here is a sentence which I have heard about a thousand times at the opening of a conference:
We have been able to organise everything splendidly except, unfortunately, for the weather.
This has a ROW of 1/13 or 0.077.
Whereas a more succinct phrasing of the meaning:
It is raining.
scores you an impressive 0.333 ROW.
It would be useful I think for public speakers to be listed with their ROW next to their name, like a batting average, that way you could tell how carefully you need to listen to someone even before they open their mouth.
Some people have an ROW which is amazingly close to zero. Repeating the same concept over and over again is one way to achieve that. At times, when I have been exposed to this kind of speaking, I have thought that it might be a good idea to put a price on words, so that the more you use the more you would have to pay. One drawback is that this would mean that the rich would have a near monopoly on expression.
As an alternative, about a day – every month or even just once a year – on which words are rationed? You would be allocated a fixed number for a twenty-four hour period. It would be interesting because each of us would have to choose what we felt were the most important to say. And this would probably give us some appreciation of what the most important things in our lives are.
What about you? Are you high-ROW or low-ROW? Get your ROW checked today.
Halfpenny thoughts no.2 – What does the Queen sing in the shower?
Thoughts which aren’t even worth a penny
If you have watched any royal ceremonies involving the Queen of England, you may have noticed that she is the only person who doesn’t join in when “God Save the Queen” is sung. She can’t, of course. It would make no sense.
But I am sure that there have been times when she has sung it in private. How could one resist it? When she’s really worked up about something or, almost unthinkingly, in the shower. She would still need to change the words, though. This is what I think she sings:
“God save my gracious Me, Long live my noble Me, Go-od save Me!”
And, perhaps, people would enjoy it more if they too could sing those words instead of the standard version. In this selfie-littered age of self-display and ceaseless selling, this should, really, become everybody’s personal anthem.
Halfpenny thought no.1- stock markets
Thoughts which aren’t even worth a penny
Whenever the stock markets slump, the news is always full of expressions like these ones I have collected:
“Apple fails yet again, $123B vanishes.”
“Investors’ billions vanish as NSE returns worst performance in four years.”
“Bad Year for Japan Banks as $95 Billion of Value Vanishes.”
If money vanishes, then the opposite should also be true. Why is it then that when stock markets surge no one ever writes anything like this ?
“$123B materialises overnight.”
“Investors showered by magically appearing billions.”
“$95 Billion of Value suddenly shows up.”
Sideways Station 