15,842 New Words: Notwithstanding everything else in this article, "Wattle and Daub" would be a great name for a pair of 17th century scientists who also investigate crimes in a steampunk-like setting where they occasionally run into historical figures like Ben Franklin and science is vaguely magical.

Now that he was looking at it more closely, he realised that this wall was different in construction to the other three sides of the room. Whilst the others had the typical brushed look of traditional wattle and daub structures, and each wall was a single sheet of the stuff, this one was made up of more than a dozen sections, a criss-cross framework with only the lumpy runnels of thickened mud dried between them. The hole his head had made was smack-bang in the middle of one of these smaller frames, and Marius could see that the edges were thin and brittle, as if there was no internal structure holding the mud together. He gripped the edge of the hole and pulled. A sheet of daub the length of his forearm came away, shattering against the floor. Marius looked at it in amazement. 
"No wattle," he said to himself. "No damn wattle! But how…?"

The Corpse-Rat King, Lee Battersby

________

Usually I can get what something is from the context, but here all I was able to figure out was that wattle and daub was some sort of construction material.  I was curious as to why Marius would be so amazed that there was no damn wattle.

So I had to look it up.

Wattle is a woven lattice of material -- wood, etc. -- onto which a sticky substance (clay, usually) is daubed. The technique is 6,000 years old, although Wikipedia says not only do some parts of the world still use it, but it's becoming more popular as a sustainable building technique.

But despite Wikipedia's assurances that this was becoming more popular nowadays, I couldn't find any other reference claiming that we 21st Century folk were starting to build our 14,000-square-foot McMansions with mud-based materials.  It seems more aspirational on the part of whichever Wikipedia editor slipped that bit of information into the wattle-and-daub entry.  Hmmm I bet I can get my Wattle'n'Daub Home Construction Manual to sell better with some judicious editing.

That same person also seems to have been at work on the linked page explaining the similar technique of cob, a form of building that involves simply mounding clay and straw and the like into a large wall; the entry for cob tells us that

Cob is fireproof, resistant to seismic activity,^[2] and inexpensive. It can be used to create artistic, sculptural forms and has been revived in recent years by the natural building and sustainability movements.

The footnote is to this 2007 article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which asks the obviously-rhetorical question "Thinking Of Building A Cob Home?" Contrary to the 'fact' that cob is 'resistant to seismic activity,' the article quotes the Seattle Building Inspector as noting cob would cause concerns because Seattle gets earthquakes.  The article asserts that a study was done on cob's ability to withstand earthquakes, and 'according to one account' cob did very well, per the article. Since scientific studies are not usually anecdotal, I checked that out, too.

A 2012 UBC study investigated using "cob and/or straw bales" to build nonresidential structures. It notes that a cob structure in California "had to be reinforced with other non-natural and semi-natural materials like adobe and steel beams" and that such buildings are "structurally unpredictable."  Just what you want in a sustainable home!

People thinking of building their home out of cob should note what I assume to be a heavily-sarcasm-laden quote from that building inspector about whether you could build a home out of cob:

"In a sense, there's no material that couldn't possibly be used."

Straw, sticks, whatever you want: go wild, sustainable building folk!  Why not Silly Putty, so your house could be decorated with impressions of the Sunday comics on all its walls?

Context is meaningless; Or, have I already written about this before? (15,842 New Words Word 3)

When I originally started this series of posts, I was going to look in a dictionary from time to time and find the next word, going alphabetically, that I didn't know.

But recently, reading Nick Harkaway's The Gone-Away World (which instantly made it into my Top 5 books EVER as a book that was so awesome [as my review pointed out] that it made me laugh out loud with how great it was) and I had to stop occasionally and look up a word that I didn't know --

-- which, by the way,  people including Grant Snider, who is a person, is one reason why e-readers are superior to books.

Grant Snider recently drew this:

which is from his site and also which bemoans the loss of "books," which is kind of ridiculous, to me, because 99% of books are about the content, not the packaging, which although nice sometimes (I am actually planning on when I get around to it repackaging some of my ebooks into a large bound volume like a desktop book) isn't the book, it'sjust what the book came in, and old-style paper books cannot compete with new-style ebooks, which not only get delivered instantly even if you are sitting in a doctor's office waiting for a stress test and knowing you're going to be there all day, but which also let you look up words instantly just by tapping them, so that you need not rely solely on figuring out a word from the context.

I think I forgot I was in a parentheses again. Here we go:)

Anyway, figuring out a word from the context is all well and good -- or at least one of those -- but it's not always perfect.  Also, I'm pretty sure it's not even a thing any more. I'm about 91% sure they don't teach phonics or figuring things out from the context anymore in schools, probably because of communism or something, but that's okay because even though I am supposed to say that however I learned things was the best way to learn things, it pretty obviously wasn't the best way, or at least wasn't automatically the best way.

The point is to me that education is supposed to teach you how to think about things, and how to reason out or find the answer.  My rule, for example, for people who want to ask me questions at work are that they are to have thought up an answer first, before they ask me the question.  Very often, people will forget that and they will come and ask me a question, and I will respond to them with my own question.

"What do you think we should do about " some problem, they will ask me, and I ask them right back what they suggest I do about it.

There are various reasons why I do that, the number one reason being that I don't want people who simply push their problems onto someone else, and especially not to push them on to me.  If you have a problem and you simply ask me how to solve it, you've just made your problem into my problem, and not only does that create more trouble for me, but it doesn't help you become a better problem-solver.

You know the old saying: Give a man a fish, and he will ask you why we can't have hamburger for dinner instead because fish is gross; teach a man to fish, and he will wonder why anyone would do this as a hobby.  I mean, it requires that you sit on the side of a lake, or river, and wait and wait and wait and nothing ever happens, really, but then when something does happen, it's over in minutes and then you've got this slimy fish, and what are you going to do with that? Eat it? I don't think so. So you're just going to throw it back? Why bother catching it in the first place, then?  Fishing is dumb.

That old saying.

"Figuring things out from the context" is only one way to think about things or solve problems, and often not the best way. Take, for example, today's new word, which is what this post was about (remember?) now that I'm doing these posts about words I come across in my reading and don't know.

Here's the quote from which I took today's word:

The car is not a street racer...It is a muted maroon colour, and it is as dignified as it is powerful.   It looks distinctly bulletproof and the glass windows are smoked, but even so, it's possible to see that this car has curtains. It also has a silver angel on the front end and the kind of engine they used to put in small planes.  Quite possibly it will catch up with the front runners before it has to change gear.  It is unmistakably a Rolls-Royce, but it is a Rolls-Royce the way Koh-i-noor is a diamond.

So, going from context I can tell... that the Koh-i-noor is a diamond. Some kind of spectacular diamond,  I suppose, but you can't always tell, with diamonds, which sounds stupid to say, but have you ever seen the Hope Diamond? I have.  Or maybe I haven't.  I'm not entirely sure that I was looking at the Hope Diamond in the Smithsonian.

I did see the Hope Diamond, I think, but I'm not sure, as I sit here today, because I saw (I think) the Hope Diamond back in 1994, but years later when I wrote about seeing the Hope Diamond I realized that maybe my memory was not as great as it should be. Or perhaps I had been the victim of a ruse, the way I suspected I was recently when Sweetie and the boys and I were driving down to State Street on Sunday to visit "The Castle," a university building Mr Bunches likes because it looks exactly like a castle, and to eat lunch, and we got to this part of University Drive that was down to one, rather than 2, lanes, and we had this conversation:

ME:  What is this?

SWEETIE:  What is what?

ME: This. This lane closing. When did this happen?

SWEETIE:  This has been this way all summer.  We have driven through it at least five times.  You always complain about it.

Sweetie maintains that's the truth, even now, three days later, when it would be easy enough for her to admit she was just having some fun with me because the alternative is that an entire section of my memory -- albeit a small section, maybe? -- is gone, the part that holds onto the memory that University Drive is one lane has disappeared, and while that's not alarming (I don't drive it every day) on it's own, it is alarming because if that just up and disappeared:

1.  What else might have disappeared, too? Recipes? Song lyrics? The meeting I'm supposed to have today that I won't remember? My PIN number for my ATM card? No, that's still there. and

2.  Why? Why did it go?

(In retrospect, #2 is probably more important.)

So maybe one time I knew what the Koh-i-noor was? I doubt it.  But I do now, because "Koh-i-noor" became the first of my new method of learning 15,842 new words, and the 3rd on that list, and here's what I know about it now:

"Koh-i-noor" is the name of a 186 1/6 carat diamond that is currently part of the "Crown Jewels," held by Queen of England; she got it when the British East India Company stole it from the previous owner when India came under British rule.   Since its discovery in 1526 (or earlier) it has been stolen,  seized, and coveted by a variety of rulers.  While it's valued in carats, now, it was once valued in this colorful way:

The valuation of the Koh-i Noor is given in the legend that one of Nādir Shāh's consorts supposedly said, "If a strong man should take five stones, and throw one north, one south, one east, and one west, and the last straight up into the air, and the space between filled with gold and gems, that would equal the value of the Koh-i Noor." 

The diamond was demanded not as a gift, but a spoil of war, for symbolic purposes after England seized India, and the Koh-i-noor comes with a curse:

He who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God, or a woman, can wear it with impunity.

Knowing all that, as opposed to what I could figure out from the context is like... well, it's like knowing the difference between a diamond and the Koh-i-noor.  When I read the book, I was able to deduce that the Koh-i-noor is some kind of fabulous diamond, which in my mind I equated with the Hope Diamond (which of course I do not equate with fabulousity at all, but rather with disappointment and possible memory troubles, but that's just me), only it's not like the Hope Diamond because this is a diamond that is a spoil of war, that has a long and tortured history,  and which promises that it's owner will "own the world" but "will also know its misfortunes," which in the context of the owner of that Rolls-Royce in the book actually makes perfect sense, because that is almost exactly what happens to the man who turns out to own that Rolls-Royce.

PS: I have long had a debate running about whether "looking something up" is as good as "knowing something," and while I take the stance that nothing is either always good or always better than something else, this is a strong argument in favor of looking something up taking this round.

15,842 new words: Word 1. (This is not a post about writing.)

More pics like this at BRIANE PAGEL: PWNST

Recently, I've become more and more interested in differing kinds of writing -- from deciding to learn a new language I'll call "Computer-ese" because I've only read the intro to the book so far plus I downloaded a game that's supposed to teach you how to think like a programmer, so really I'm like 99% of the way to that dream -- to an increasing emphasis on writing poems (Poetry being what Gandhi once called "the sweet science") -- to my attempts to write specific word count stories, which is not designed to shorten up the stories at all, as I am philosophically opposed to making things shorter for no reason, but which is instead designed to pose a challenge to me, much the way I once went on vacation to San Francisco and saw the steepest hill I had ever seen and I decided that when I went out for my daily jog which I used to even do on vacations 'cause I'm amazing that way or I was, I would have to run up that hill because I wanted to see if I could do it...

...where was I?

Anyway, the other day, when I was out for my walk and thinking philosophical thoughts about nature, I also was trying to think of a way to determine how many words I actually knew, as of that moment.

Just because I was curious, you see.  I wondered whether there would be a way to determine how many words I knew as of any moment, other than simply listing the words I knew, which wouldn't be a real test because then you're just checking on memory, not really knowledge, and my memory is shot: I can barely recall what kind of pizza I had for breakfast today.*

*It was delicious, though.

I was thinking about that because I thought it also might be fun to increase my vocabulary (outside of computer-ese, even) and that it wouldn't hurt for me to know more words than I currently know, except, again, I wasn't sure how many words I knew.

What if, I wondered, I know ALL the words?

It's possible, you know.  It was thought possible, at one time, to know everything that there was to know in the world -- to take all of the human knowledge that had ever been, well, known, and learn it, a task that grew more impossibly Sisyphean every day, when you consider that each day we learn more and more and that the person who learned everything that was to be known at any one point would therefore create a new fact -- the existence of the person who knew everything, and the fact that he knew it all and then didn't, almost an instant later when someone discovered a new bug.

(People say there was a person who knew everything there was to know, but people are stupid.  They also can't decide who that person was.  Most say it was Francis Bacon, some say Goethe, and others say maybe it's Kant.)(It was nobody. There was nobody, I think, who knew everything there was to know.)

But you could know all the words, I suppose -- a limited subset of knowledge, just like you could know all the elements or all the prime numbers mankind has identified. (I have no idea how many there are but I did look up the largest one found.  It's 2^43112609-1, and it has 12,978,189 digits in it.)

So I hit on this quest to learn how many words I know as of now, now being

right now

and right now

and right now

and so on, and a method to learn that, by deciding I would learn myself 15,842 new words.

I hit on that number by determining how many days I had been alive as of the day I decided to do this.

And I decided I'd learn those words by going to the Oxford English Dictionary online, because as it turns out, I don't own a dictionary and don't want to pay for one, and I could access most of that one for free, because I don't want to pay for words if it turns out I already own all of them.

Once there, I decided, I'd start by beginning at the beginning (always a good place to begin) and reading until I came to a word I didn't know.  That word would be my new word, and I'd have learned it and gotten a count of how many words I knew... so far.


So here's New Word 1, which came just seven words into the dictionary -- or one word, depending on how you count it.

I got as far as a, which seems like a word I should know as I use it all the time, but version 7 of a is ...

...hold on: I just noticed that my typeface is different for italics than for regular: If I type a, it comes up a but if I type a it comes up a... weird.

Anyhow, version 7 of a is that it is used, archaically, as a war cry, but only when prefixed to a proper name, with the last-known use of it (according to OED, which ought to know) being

1908   K. Grahame Wind in Willows xii. 284   Mole, black and grim, brandishing his stick and shouting his awful war-cry, ‘A Mole!, A Mole!’

 When next you go to battle with someone, revive that tactic:  "A Sweetie! A Sweetie! I am having this pizza for breakfast!"