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.

Pictures With Non Sequitur Titles

"Do you want to be comfortable, or do you want to be great?"

What It Is Like To Not Do Nothing.

Nothing never is.  Even when you do nothing you do something, and in particular sometimes the nothing that you do involves not just doing something but thinking about the somethings that you will do when you are done doing nothing.

It is hard to do nothing not least because there are so many people around the world and particularly around you around your world that want you to do something, but even when all those people immediately around you, all those immediate people don't want you to do something you find it's hard to do nothing

Hence: you lay on the mattress on the floor in the blue room that once belonged to the oldest child and then the second-oldest child and now is the domain of the immediate-est people, the youngest and second-youngest, and you are pushed back onto your back by the second-youngest and he topples on top of you and mumbles the word that you know now means to tickle him and so you do.

Is something nothing? Is that nothing when you do something, is lying there on a mattress tickling someone nothing? Or something? Your mind whirls: maybe you could watch a movie go play in the yard check out how the garden is take them to the pool go to the Dollar Store to replace the inner tube with the leak that you duct-taped just ten minutes ago but now has another leak and you need two inner tubes two! because they each want one and you didn't know they would each want one, you bought one only for the child you thought would want one but now they both do and what do they do with them they walk around the house with them, around their waists, inflatable belts or maybe they fear a flood so you have to have two and one is deflating all over again, sad wrinkled flopping on the floor.

Maybe you should go to the botanical gardens.

Is nothing ever?  Tickle and tickle and tickle and what movies do we have?  Lying on the bed arms wrapped around him from the back, hands tousling his hair that sometimes it seems impossible to keep combed, he is lying motionless, too, and the two of you do almost nothing for a moment and you think that if this could last for 100 years this moment I would be perfectly content but even then your mind is racing ahead should you plan on playing a game of chase? Maybe take a picnic to the botanical gardens? What movies do we have?

It is Sunday morning, a time that is hard to do nothing.  When you were young you sat in Church, where you were expected to do nothing but listen, and you didn't really, which is why today you feel you don't understand the story of the 'prodigal son,' you think sometimes that the story makes no sense but think that in the end it must be that you missed the point of it, and Sunday mornings have a feel to them a feel to them that makes you want to do something not nothing maybe because all those years ago all those fine Sunday mornings when you were 4, 5, 6, 10 were wasted -- church is wasted! -- were wasted with sunny outdoors and the smell of freshly cut grass from the people who mowed their lawns on Saturday so they could do nothing on Sunday, all those Sunday mornings when you were rousted early and dressed nicely and sat quietly and listened not at all, maybe the fact that you could not do nothing those mornings, that you could not do something either makes you so hesitant to do nothing today.

Maybe you should go to the swimming pool.

Nothing is not.  You lie there on the bed, feeling a small hand squeeze yours while you do not think about all the things you have to do during the week because you want to stop thinking about all the things you could do right now but also a small tiny part of you in your head wants to not even think about that, wants to do nothing, wants to just sit, and you hear that voice echoing around the whirlwind in your mind and know that you should listen to it but you never do, and should you?

Should you?

Maybe you could go to the playground.

Should you?

You get up, finally, and go downstairs and put on music and put on a television show and pick up some of the mess but not all of it and you plan on all the things you will do when you are done doing all the things you are already doing, and you ask what should we do today? 

And nobody says nothing.