Monthly Archives: June 2013

Impractical idea No. 103

Posted on by The Old Wolf

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In one of the more iconic images of the early 20th century, a faked photograph shows a blimp mooring at the top of the Empire State Building. The tower was originally designed with such moorings in mind, but the entire idea was a bust from the get-go.

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Here’s the schematic showing how passengers would disembark from a transatlantic dirigible, take stairs down from the 103rd floor platform to the 102nd, and then the elevator to a processing station on the 86th floor. never mind that dirigibles had their passenger compartment in the center, and passengers would be required to navigate narrow passages to get to any potential nose exit.

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The 103rd floor is largely a mechanical room, but it has a narrow door leading to the outside balcony:

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If you’re a dignitary, there’s a chance you can get up there for a photo op – here former Buffalo Bills QB Ryan Fitzpatrick. Notice how low the balcony wall is, which is why the general public is not permitted.

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As for why they never went ahead with the dirigible plan?

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The US Navy, testing its airship the USS Los Angeles (ZR-3), saw it rise to a near-vertical position, after her tail rose out-of-control while she was moored at the high mast at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1927.

Airships can only be moored by the nose at such masts, and severe updrafts from the Empire State Building would have whipped any dirigible around like a child’s balloon.

Well, at least they managed it somehow in “Fringe.”

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Showing the alternate universe to the military

The Old Wolf has spoken.

New York Market, 1917

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Interior retail stalls at Washington Market in New York City in 1917. New York Word-Telegram & Sun Newspaper Collection

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While this is much larger and brighter, it still has the same feel of an indoor market I found in Toulouse, France in 1970:

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Of course, such places still exist: here Quincy Market in Boston:

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I’ve always loved spaces like this, and I think we need more of them.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Sushi Yasuda in NYC does away with tipping

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I’ve blogged about tipping before. Now, a few bold restaurants are beginning to buck the trend.

(Reblogged from The Consumerist)

Note: Sushi Yasuda is the restaurant’s correct name – it appeared in the original article as “Yasada”.

 NYC Restaurant Tells Customers That Tipping Is Not Allowed
By  June 7, 2013

 (From ThePriceHike.com)

(From ThePriceHike.com)

As we’ve discussed here many, many times, restaurant wait staff often rely on tips because their base pay is generally far below the minimum wage level. Since tipping is an anomaly overseas, waiters in most other countries are paid a living wage. Thus, one sushi restaurant in Manhattan, which claims it has always paid its employees well, has recently started telling customers that tips will not be accepted.

On his Price Hike blog, Bloomberg food critic Ryan Sutton writes about the note that was recently added to the bottom of all receipts at Sushi Yasuda in NYC. It reads:

“Following the custom in Japan, Sushi Yasuda’s service staff are fully compensated by their salary. Therefore gratuities are not accepted. Thank you.”

Sutton talked to the restaurant’s owner who says he decided to not go the route of some restaurants who simply add 18-20% service charges on to bills rather than have customer tip. That’s really just the same as the old system; it just saves the diner the hassle of doing basic math.

Instead, Yasuda’s owner raised the menu prices a bit and simply tells customers: Do Not Tip Your Waiter.

“We just take tipping out of the equation,” he explains to Sutton.

The reason more restaurants don’t follow this model is that they are afraid higher menu prices will drive away customers, but this owner maintains that “if you have faith in what you’re serving, and how you’re serving it, you know that when your customers have a good meal and look at their final tally it’s going to be around the same.”

He claims that paying your staff a solid wage that doesn’t fluctuate from day-to-day based on tips is a good way to build stability among your workers.

In spite of this being the standard for most of the world, there are only a very small number of restaurants in the U.S. that don’t accept tips and also don’t tack on service fees.

According to the poll at the bottom of the Consumerist’s page, the question “Should more restaurants do away with tipping?” provided (to me) unsurprising results:

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Whereas in my previous posts I’ve stressed that tipping is not optional and that servers depend upon tips for their daily wage, I would be entirely in favor of eliminating tipping at restaurants and paying servers a dependable, living wage. Naturally, if restaurateurs try to take advantage of this trend to their own benefit and to the detriment of their employees, that doesn’t work… but I’d be willing to bet a lot of servers would line up for a regular job where busting their ass for a party of cheapskate douchebags never enters the equation.

Hats off to Sushi Yasuda! 

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Lies, Spies, and Videotape.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

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Edward Snowden. Hero? Traitor? Irrelevant?

It’s a big deal, and the calls for lionization, incarceration, exculpation, evaporation, and a lot of other “-ations” are beginning to ring from coast to coast and across the world.

I have no doubt the NSA, CIA, FBI, and Mogg knows what other hush-hush agencies would like to see this man suffer in the fiery heat of Satan’s hottest furnace for eternity. On the other hand, civil libertarians are calling for an immediate pardon for a man they see as a brave and fearless national hero.

It appears that Snowden certainly broke the law in releasing the information that he did, but in so doing it also appears that he brought to light an even greater violation of principles than he himself is guilty of. So where do we draw the line?

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“As usual, if you or any member of your IM force is caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

Sean Connery as James Bond

License to Kill

Spies are paid to lie. Governments who employ them lie on a regular basis. The popularity of the action/spy thrillers on TV and in movies proves that we expect, nay, demand it. In real life it may not be right, but it becomes a matter of national security in some cases; nations simply don’t operate along the same moral lines as we would like them to. Can you imagine what would happen if governments were  completely open, honest, and transparent with one another? [1] The “good guys” are pretty much obliged to resort to deception and subterfuge to combat the “bad guys,” and keep their nations safe. That’s what the NSA and the CIA are there to do. For what it’s worth, we even spy on our friends. Don’t ask me how I know… I’d have to lie to protect certain other people.

Unfortunately, the CIA and NSA and other alphabet-soup agencies have also been tasked with things that have much less to do with keeping our nation safe than with keeping it rich, at the expense of other governments and peoples. If you’d like a glimpse into that shadowy world, read “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” by John Perkins; it will most likely raise both your eyebrows and your conscience. An extract of Amazon’s review:

“John Perkins started and stopped writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man four times over 20 years. He says he was threatened and bribed in an effort to kill the project, but after 9/11 he finally decided to go through with this expose of his former professional life. Perkins, a former chief economist at Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main, says he was an “economic hit man” for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business. “Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars,” Perkins writes. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an extraordinary and gripping tale of intrigue and dark machinations. Think John Le Carré, except it’s a true story.”

What has been revealed by Snowdon goes far, far beyond keeping our nation safe from external evils; it has much more to do with controlling a domestic population, and despite groans and sobs of denial from those in the know, I can’t believe – I refuse to believe – that this massive accumulation of data can and will not be used for financial and potentiary gain by those in a position to access and use it.

And the fact that this mind-boggling misuse power was authorized years ago by the “patriot act” does not make it any more right. I’m glad it came to light, and I’m glad there’s a dialog going on, and I hope that some people are going to get their feet held to the fire, and I hope that what comes out of it is more transparency, and better for the citizenry of our country than for the power brokers.

I don’t condone illegal behavior. But I do believe in the principle of the “greater good.” I think Mr. Snowdon has recognized that his actions would carry a heavy price, and it was a price he is willing to pay to act according to the dictates of his conscience. I have no idea how all this is going to play out, but for me, at this moment, I’m keeping him in the plus column.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] Somewhere out there is a science fiction story (or perhaps creative fantasy) about a special blend of coffee that mutates somewhere, and has the stunning effect of making people reasonable. After drinking some of it, the French delegate to the UN stands up and shouts, “It’s all balls!” In the end, the entire world has partaken, and governments actually start acting with decency and common sense, for the good of all the people of the world. I have never been able to relocate this story. If it sounds similar to Mark Clifton’s 1952 story “The Conqueror,” that’s not surprising – instead of coffee it was a mutant pychotropic dahlia root that changed the world:

“So it came about that one by one the members of the Politbureau tasted of the dahlia, even to the leader himself.

All of this took much time, and meanwhile heads of other nations who were not so suspicious of every shadow, and not so inaccessible, were eating regularly of the dahlia.

When finally the sincere word of peace and goodwill came ringing from Moscow to all the world, it was echoed back with all sincerity.”

A lovely story. Read it, if you’d like a smile.

World’s Top Languages

Posted on by The Old Wolf

The other day I posted about being able to talk to most of the world’s people by learning 20 languages out of the over 7,000 currently existing ones. I forgot to post this infographic, so I’ll just add it here as an addendum, because I found it interesting, and it’s actually the thing that got me thinking about the subject.

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In addition, here’s a map showing how linguae francae, or “portmanteau languages”, are distributed across the globe; one can see the broad reach of the top seven.

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The Old Wolf had forgotten.

7 billion people, 20 languages (more or less)

Posted on by The Old Wolf

In 1982, Charles Berlitz, one of the post popular linguists and language pedagogues of recent times (although perhaps not the most rigorously scholastic), made the following observation. The numbers and order of languages have shifted somewhat over the last 30 years, but the idea remains the same.

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“Among the several thousand world languages, only 101 count over 1 million speakers. Of these, the fourteen most important in number of speakers are, in approximate order,

  • Chinese
  • English
  • Hindi/Urdu
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Japanese
  • German
  • Indonesian
  • Portuguese
  • French
  • Arabic
  • Bengali
  • Malay
  • Italian

All of these have over 50 million speakers, including dialects. [Chinese has the most native speakers, but English is more widely spoken worldwide.]

Since most of the world’s population speaks, or is familiar with one of the 14 languages listed above, with one of three other widely-spoken languages – Dutch, Greek, or Swahili – or with a language in either the Scandinavian or Turkic, or Slavic group, it is possible for an individual with the time and inclination to be able to communicate with a great majority of the inhabitants of this planet by learning to speak these 20 languages.”[1]

Wikipedia gives some alternate figures, but the general principle still holds: most of the world’s people speak one of the languages listed above as a first, second, or third language. When one considers that according to the Ethnologue, there are  7,105 known and documented languages on the earth, this makes the challenge of basic communication substantially simpler.

I have experienced this phenomenon myself as I’ve taken trips around the world. Before I had learned Spanish, I was able to hold bilingual conversations using Italian, and got about 65% comprehension. I’ve used German to get by in Bulgaria, and once again Italian in Albania. I have communicated with Russians in Croatian, and also (to my shame) with Slovenians, whose language eludes me despite rubbing shoulders with it for years. All of this, of course, ignoring English, which is used well and widely by so many people. I know Norwegians and Swedes and Finns and Danes and Dutchmen who speak better English than I do, whereas all I can do is look at the ground shamefully, scuff my feet, and mumble “lutefisk” and “Scheveningen.” Well, not quite that bad, but you get the idea.

With the advent of the Internet, the penetration of English is increasing as well, and many countries are beginning to encourage the study of Chinese instead of more traditional languages like French, given the growing presence of China in global trade. I’m up at odd hours of the night (like right now) teaching English to people in Japan, Korea, and China via Skype. For better or for worse, English is on the road to becoming the Esperanto Dr. Zamenhof hoped for, even though it’s devilishly complex and irregular. [2]

Sadly, the number of languages in the world is diminishing almost daily. The list of endangered tongues in Europe alone is astonishing; languages like Ume Saami in Sweden or Tsakonian in Greece could be gone within my lifetime. Given the massive growth of English and Chinese, as well as the predominance of the above-mentioned languages or language families, this might seem to be less than critical. However, Stephen R. Anderson of the Linguistic Society of America wrote, “When a language dies, a world dies with it, in the sense that a community’s connection with its past, its traditions and its base of specific knowledge are all typically lost as the vehicle linking people to that knowledge is abandoned.”[3]

You can’t really study a language without becoming involved with the cultures and histories of the peoples that speak it. I’ve been a linguist for a long time, and I never stop being curious about new languages, new words, and all the associated things that come with them. While my study of Irish Gaelic (or gaeilge) may not do much to save the endangered language over the long run, it’s taught me more about Ireland and its people than I could have ever hoped to learn otherwise.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re either blessed to speak English as a native tongue, or you’ve put in the hours and become fluent, and my hat’s off to you. But I encourage everyone to learn at least one additional language (for what it’s worth, the more you learn, the easier it gets) to broaden your horizons and increase your awareness of the world.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[Edit: Click through for two additional charts which shine further light upon the subject.]

[1] Berlitz, Charles, Native Tongues, Grosset and Dunlap, 1982, p. 6

[2] If you’re not familiar with Gerard Nolst Trenité’s “The Chaos,” give it a read. Try saying it out loud. I dare you.

[3] “How Many Languages Are There In the World?”, Linguistic Society of America, 5/2004 PDF File

Coney Island, 1949

Posted on by The Old Wolf

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A view of the famous boardwalk and beaches shortly before I was born.

A few years later, I was able to ride this attraction:

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This was the Steeplechase, the main attraction of Steeplechase Park, which ceased operations in 1964. The entrance looked like this:

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I remember it well. You sat on these metal horses, held on by only a bulky leather strap. Try building this today and you’d have 10,000 hungry lawyers looking for billable hours suing you for even thinking about it.

Steeplechase park was also the home of the famous Parachute Jump, originally built for the 1939 World’s Fair and later purchased and moved to the Coney Island area. I also remember riding this one. Despite some controversy over its actual decomission date, it appears that it closed in 1964 with the rest of Steeplechase Park.

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The towers remains standing to this day.

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Steeplechase Park was an amazing experience. It looked even more attractive in 1903:

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Found at Shorpy

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The Brick Story

Posted on by The Old Wolf

No, not the one about the lady on the airplane and the guy with a cigar. That’s from about 1960. This one is about 600 years older than that.

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Jiayuguan or Jiayu Pass is the first pass at the west end of the Great Wall of China, near the city of Jiayuguan in Gansu province. It has also been called “Jiayuguan Pass”; however, this form is tautological since “guan” means “pass” in Chinese. Along with Juyongguan and Shanhaiguan, it is one of the main passes of the Great Wall. Construction began sometime around 1372.

Among the passes on the Great Wall, Jiayuguan is the most intact surviving ancient military building. The pass is also known by the name the “First and Greatest Pass Under Heaven” (天下第一雄关), which is not to be confused with the “First Pass under Heaven” (天下第一关), a name for Shanhaiguan at the east end of the Great Wall near Qinhuangdao, Hebei.

There is a famous legend regarding the building of this amazing monument. I have heard two versions, so I present them both here:

  1. A fabulous legend recounts the meticulous planning involved in the construction of the pass. According to legend, when Jiayuguan was being planned, the official in charge asked the designer to estimate the exact number of bricks required and the designer gave him a number (99999). The official questioned his judgment, asking him if that would be enough, so the designer added one brick. When Jiayuguan was finished, there was one brick left over, which was placed loose on one of the gates where it remains today.
  2. During the Ming dynasty, a talented architect named Yi Kaizhan was tasked to build this important outpost and finishing point for the Ming dynasty’s monumental construction effort. After finishing his plans, Yi announced that it would take exactly 99, 999 bricks to build the Jiayuguan structure, no more and no less. Yi’s supervisor thought that Yi was too arrogant and worried that any miscalculation on Yi’s part could reach the ears of the emporer with serious consequences, so he threatened that if Yi’s calculations were off, Yi and all of the workers would be punished. When construction was completed, there was one brick left over and the supervisor delightedly prepared to punish Yi for his arrogance. However, quick-witted Yi immediately told him that this extra brick had been placed by some supernatural being during the night to guard Jiayuguan and prevent its collapse, and that even the tiniest movement would cause the collapse of the entire outpost. The surpervisor, unwilling to take the risk, let the brick stay and was unable to punish Yi , and so the brick remains to this day.

Regardless of which legend has merit, the brick is there for all to see:

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“The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson

The Old Wolf has spoken.