‘To err is human’

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Tweet By ANNE DONNELL I noticed an article about the dictionary. It said there’s an error recently spotted – something about science. Do you know anything about this? -Love It When an Expert’s Wrong! We do love it when the expert is wrong or when the parent is wrong or when the policeman is wrong or when the teacher is wrong or when the neighbor is wrong or when the friend is wrong or when the spouse is wrong. However, something tooth grindingly uncomfortable happens when WE are wrong. Not so fine an experience. By ANNE DONNELL I noticed an article about the dictionary. It said there’s an error recently spotted – something about science. Do you know anything about this? -Love It When an Expert’s Wrong! We do love it when the expert is wrong or when the parent is wrong or when the policeman is wrong or when the teacher is wrong or when the neighbor is wrong or when the friend is wrong or when the spouse is wrong. However, something tooth grindingly uncomfortable happens when WE are wrong. Not so fine an experience. But, that’s for another day, a day when someone calling herself or himself a “life coach” comes and forces us into some yoga, some yogurt, and some self examination. That day probably won’t ever come for me, now certifiably ancient, having recently completed seven decades of riotous living and otherwise, mostly otherwise. The closest I’m getting to all that is reading Jonathan Kellerman’s crime novels featuring Dr. Alex Delaware, child psychologist. Those blood-dripping insights are sufficient for me, I think. For example, I have accepted, through reading Kellerman (his wife Faye writes, too – so many words for one household!) that I’m not a psychopath, which would have been a helpful characteristic for a high school English teacher.    OK, I’ll quit some of the messing around. We are very interested in error; it’s tied to our deep societal affection grabber, money. You know, all those lawsuits. It’s an essential worry for surgery patients, and every horse track is full of people who think they can take any error out of the “system” before the bets are made. Mathematics mentions a round-off error, “also called rounding error … the difference between the calculated approximation of a number and its exact mathematical value.” (Wikipedia, which some say is full of errors). I’m noting that esteemed matheticians, like everyone else, are doing some guessing.              Here’s a formula I just made up: Guess [estimate] multiplied by mental agility equals negative detectability of error. G x MA= -D Notice how close the formula comes to MAD? By the way, that old demon Spell Checker wants to indicate detectability is an erroneous spelling; Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition says it’s correct. Oh, what’s a body to do, I says. So, getting around to QP of T’s (Question Person of Today) question, I do know something about an error found in many dictionaries and now being corrected. Terence Neiland, May 11, on AOL wrote, “The Oxford English Dictionary got it wrong, and it took 99 years before anyone noticed. Siphons don't work, it turns out, because of atmospheric pressure, as the OED has been saying since 1911. It's all down to that law Isaac Newton figured out when an apple hit his head: g-r-a-v-i-t-y. “Siphons work by drawing fluids from a higher location to a lower one, not always an easy thing to do, as anyone who's tried to empty a car's gas tank would confirm. "It is gravity that moves the fluid in a siphon," said Stephen Hughes, a physics lecturer at the University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. So he was stunned when he noticed the OED had made a mistake, telling The Daily Telegraph of London, ‘We would all have an issue if the dictionary defined a koala as a species of bear, or a rose as a tulip.’” Hughes isn’t one to take life as it comes, it seems. He tackled the big guy (OED), and they’ll change the entry in the next edition. ONLINE DEPARTMENT “Rocket Science” (Thanks, AR) Sometimes it DOES take a rocket scientist! Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch an average 4 pound dead chicken at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea was to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow! The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions. You're going to love this: NASA responded with a one-line memo, “Defrost the chicken!” GUESS WHAT? Snopes.com, so fond of blowing up urban legends, says the above chicken story is untrue, though it has been circulated in many forms, and even quoted by that super guy who attended Lebanon’s own Castle Heights and then later ran for president, Retired General Wesley Clark. It probably is an error for most of us to run for president.   Here’s a likely source of error: who wrote the quote in today’s headline?  I’ll tell you next week. Accurately. BW (Bigtime Word) glyptography – the art of engraving stones and gems.  I’ll take those diamonds without initials, please.