Dromedarian Beauty Contest Scandal

The title was just to catch your attention although many of you who know a dromedary is a camel are not fooled. The tidbit of  news quoted below was picked up by most news services yesterday. It is real. 

"Twelve camels have been disqualified from Saudi Arabia’s annual camel beauty contest after receiving botulinum toxin injections to make their pouts look more alluring".

It is amusing though more perplexing is the fact that where it took place human beauty contest is frowned upon - Saudi Arabia. In that part of the world, "frowned upon" also means: "no way - totally out of your mind to even attempt it".

The disqualified camels had Botox injections on their lips, not too differently from what comes out of human frailty though clearly not for the camel's benefit but for the descriminating eyes of the human judges. The whole idea was to make the camel's lips or their pouts a little more ... alluring? Seductive is not the word we'd use in the same sentence with camels but then what should it be when Botox injections are involved? 

        

                      

Apparently stiff upper lip is not the thing. It is the lower lip that entices. I'm not sure what other attributes are being judged in these contests. We can be certain, at least from what I gathered from the story, that the demure look shown on the photos to the right and bottom were not winning attributes.  If Botox played a role the lip portion must be a heavily weighted category.  

Dromedaries are single humped camels as opposed to the Bactrian variety, or double humped camels. Bactrian camels were excluded from the contest. Now we know humps don't count either. This brings us to what should be in the news but was squelched from wide dissemination. Camels (almost all from the Bactrian region) are protesting their exclusion from the contest, for one. Secondly, why are the judges made up of humans only. The protesters further claim that their complaint got nothing more than lip service from the organizers  and sponsors. If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, who but fellow camels can claim the discerning eyes to make the proper scrutiny.

Bactrians are not quite done. Their peevishness go all the way back to the popularity of a particular unfiltered cigarette in earlier decades. That was one little footnote that now I know dromedaries were featured on packs of "Camels" and billboard advertising. The Bactrians, now angling down to pettiness, also complain about our idiomatic expression, "hump day" (referring to Wednesday) or "going over the hump", because clearly we are only referring to single Dromedarian hump. They may have a point because going over two humps, or double hump days offer a higher degree of difficulty and a more rewarding definition of achievment upon surviving through the middle of the week going over two humps instead of just one.

Camels are related to llamas and alpaca. The smaller cousins were likewise excluded from the contest. It is obvious they are not long legged enough.  Besides, their crude behavior that involves high velocity spitting is not socially acceptable either. I understand camels do spit occasionally but they'd rather drool, and only in their own sudsy way. There is something too about the grace and flexibility that camels exhibit when they come down on their knees to accommodate their human riders. Notably, the camel equivalent of Miss Manners has some tips on the proper way to do that. 

Contrary to common assumption camel humps do not store water. They store fat so that in lean times camels can draw from such reserve to keep them going. However, for the sake of physical proportions, camels can't have too much of it, while too little won't be acceptable either. Just enough of everything seems to be right, except that a good overhanging lower lip can be done to excess with all the upside of a well endowed feature of distinction.

Camels in Australia have an altogether different sets of issues. The camels there were brought from Afghanistan way back when. They're good at carrying loads over long distances in places as arid as the outback. They were undocumented, illegal immigrants and to this day are treated as such. When their usefulness ran its course in the advent of the railroad, they were let go en masse. They realize that a lot of different animals were brought in to Australia but why are sheep given privileged status? In fact, camels now are on their own in the outback. Granted their population continue to thrive, they have no proper accreditation. They are also calling out the kangaroos for not helping their cause. The kangaroos can't be blamed because they'd rather that camels get the attention so as to gain popularity as staple meat instead of kangaroo burger.  There is a lot going on there, which is the more reason camels are a little antsy. They do have something to be thankful for though. Dingos have no particular interest in going after them. The wild dogs that are now a protected species prefer kangaroo meat. Again the more reason the 'roos are not on the side of the camels. Camels demand justice and not the objectification in some beauty contest.

The Sauidi's fascination with camels go back to the beginning of their history but I suspect Oscar winner Peter O' Toole, as Lawrence of Arabia, took the camel's popularity to its zenith. Omar Sharif's wide panoramic entrance on a camel was at that time the most expansive appearance of a single actor ever filmed. From that scene one is led to believe that the camel he was riding had to have had a gyroscope assist for Sherif Ali (played by Omar Sharif) to have made that long distance rifle shot with unerring accuracy.

By the way, camels take offense to the fable of the "camel's nose". According to that story, a camel begged its master to allow its nose into his tent, only to have his whole body occupy the tent all to itself. It is a metaphor for allowing one little innocuos act only to develop into a larger undesirable result. Camels claim that they will not do such a thing since they are well designed as a species to withstand all and every conceivable desert conditions. They have three sets of eyelids, hermetically actuated nose flaps, among many attributes to preclude begging for shelter into a cramped tent. Camels too are not too impressed with the slogan, "I'd walk a mile for a camel". It has no meaning to them. If anything, all they ever do and had done for man is to walk endless miles for him.

There it is. We've learned something about camels. We learned too about something else. Small, seemingly harmless habits could develop into something that can get out of control. Be mindful though, camels remind us that that metaphor should never be ascribed to them.

CHOICES, Choices, choices

The title line's symbolism, if you would indulge me, signifies the layering of decisions we make over a spectrum of choices in life or in the minutiae of a typical day. We get to do the life changing major CHOICES, the semi-important ones, and the ordinary, run-of-the-mill, "what beverage would you like with your meal" kind of choice. Whichever it is, it is something we have to do. That's just the way it is. We choose, we decline to make one, or someone will do it for us. Not making a choice, which is technically a choice in itself, could sometimes be more detrimental and often not without consequence.

We look back at our life, where ever we are today, or the lives of other people we either admire or despise and we find that our life and the lives of others are a summation of choices made or not taken. According to one character in a TV science fiction story, a person's life in the end is the sum total of countless choices made along the way by that person. We seem to take it for granted - how often we make decisions - but it is not like breathing out or breathing in. It may seem that way and when it gets to that point then we no longer have control over the outcome. Occasionally, we may find not making a choice seem like an innocuous way out, but it is not. We get used to it and then we wonder later why or how we lost control of our life.

Choices are what's laid out on the menu. A decision is tapping on one.  Choices are what's on the list written by my wife on the way to the grocery store but until she picked up the items, put into the cart, brought to the cashier and paid for them, she has not made a final decision. To execute is the action verb to a bunch of subject nouns. It is all wishful thinking when my wife summarizes her to do list for me, choices are what I get involved in when picking the item I like to do, but choosing is all it is until I do them. But do you know that there are 12 tenses for a verb. Wives are only interested in two of them - the simple past and the past perfect, which are: the husband did it or had done it. The other tenses like, he is presently doing it, or will have done it, or will have been doing it, etc. are not what interests her.  Your bosses at work or your commanding officer may not be too different. How many husbands do we know who refer to their wives as "boss". More compellingly is when the wives are not even within hearing distance.

Obviously, of far greater significance are the series of related decisions we do make over connected choices. Not all decisions are about choices but it is the latter that give us more control and consternation at the same time. The decision to buy a car when the old clunker broke down irreparably, leads to the straight forward decision to get another one. If it is a must to get a replacement (it could be that one decides to not get another at all), the decision is simply narrowed down to one.  That is not to say that it is easy because the ability to pay for one  may not be entirely a given. Granted you have the fortune to afford one leads to the choice of whether to buy one outright, or to lease it. To buy one, leads to - should it be a used one, or a new one? To buy a new one leads to more choices. Which kind, which brand, color, etc.The choices widen first before narrowing down, which is the object of the whole thing. The amount of time involved in the process with one person making the decision can be manageable but introduce a second one or a third and the whole process can be a permutation towards paralysis in extreme cases.

The above paragraph was just to illustrate that life is a matrix. However, there is a difference. In mathematics permutation matrices are a tool to test certain paths. In life sometimes choices picked may not be reversible. Getting married is one. Some may believe that a divorce reverses it but it is not so. During the whole process and completion of a divorce, neither partner is the same person any more and the circumstances before the marriage can never be brought back. Even in cases where both sides believe that divorce is the only choice, the idea or goal that things will get better are the direst of all wishful thinking.

When Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower made that decision to launch the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, it was one that change the direction of civilization. There had been many other examples in the past and many more after that but let's just stay with this one. The decision to free Europe was already a done deal. There was no question it had to be done. The general and his staff went through the agonizing decision from the choices of where to make the first landing, how and when. But it was the general's alone when he picked June 6, 1944. He took it as his alone that he prepared a short hand written note in his pocket that he was prepared to read in public if the invasion failed. He was prepared to own up to the failure if it did turn out to be so.  But what prepared him for that? First of all, how critical was it that he was picked to be the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during the crucial period of the war.

What led to that day began on October 14, 1890 in a small town of Denison, TX. His religious parents of Dutch ancestry moved to Kansas where young Eisenhower chose to be a diligent, though not superbly brilliant, student. But it was good enough to get him to West Point. He chose to be a career military man. He chose not to be the pumped up, eager, combat-seeker of a soldier but one who excelled at organization (a mostly unnoticeable career path but one that was crucial to the invasion). Along the way, his commanding officers relied on his deep dedication to organization and an uncanny ability to administer.  Gen.Douglas MacArthur picked him as his aide while in the Philippines. At one time, MacArthur may or may not have declared condescendingly that Eisenhower was the best clerk who ever served him. That is where Eisenhower's choice to be a thorough organizer that led up to him commanding the Allied Forces that freed Europe. As we can see that man's life was a string of almost providential choices. 

Our individual humble lives are no different. Very few of us can claim that we did not have choices. In some cases we may have had very limited choices because of positions or status of our families. Poverty is always limiting, physical disabilities or where we happen to live, were some of the myriad restrictions. But we always hear of countless individuals who chose not to be limited or discouraged and prevailed in the end. Given the same number of choices, the same limited opportunities, it was always those among us who chose wisely who succeeded. Character building was all about choosing hard work over the easy path. A moral compass is not about taking the direction of easy choices but taking the path that were hardest to travel. The sum total of all the choices made by each is what defines the individual.

That is all and good but what about those who may already are on the wrong path. They may face the predicament of irreversibility but that is not to say that they cannot change direction. Second chances are exactly the patch one needs to repair a wrongly plotted journey. We must never forget that for as long as there are choices laid out the chances to make corrections are always there, regardless of where one is today.

The man on a wheelchair today has a life just as meaningful as an able-bodied person. Franklin D. Roosevelt attested to that and Stephen Hawking continues to prove it today. That is because both made a choice to overcome rather than engage in self pity or the commiseration of other people. They've had their share of dealing with CHOICES, Choices, and choices, the same way each of us had and are expected to continue making for as long we live.   

Good News, Bad News Part 2

There is good news for lobsters. If you were one and you’re in Switzerland. Why? Below was a news item in Switzerland last week, picked up by CNN and The Washington Post.

“This week, the Swiss Federal Council banned cooks from placing live lobsters in boiling water, and as of March 1, all lobsters must first be knocked unconscious by electric shock or “mechanical destruction” of the brain’.

But there is bad news. If you were a lobster, Swiss mandate notwithstanding, you’d still be in a dish somewhere, garnished with all the trimmings or simply dipped in melted butter or in vinegar with minced garlic and a dash of sea salt - all delectably enticing to the palate.

Good news, bad news jests are a distinct comedic genre by itself, sometimes morbid but mostly really funny if taken a certain way, with a swig of good humor.

Please don’t take this as if I am making light of the conditions suffered by POWs in WWII because this is simply all about humor. I remember a couple of ones that had made their rounds for quite some time – from decades ago.

Allied prisoners in a POW camp were gathered up for a word from the German commander.

Commander: “I have good news and bad news”. (He paused for a prompt from his captive audience)

Prisoners: “Tell us the good news first”.

Commander: “It has been months since you had a change of clothing, and a month since you had a warm bath, so today you will have a change of underware”. (Again, he paused).

Prisoners: What is the bad news?

Commander: (Motioning with his hand dividing the prisoners in half) “This half to my left, please exchange your underware with those to my right”.

Weeks later, the same commander assembled the prisoners again.

Commander: Which one do you want to hear first, good news or bad news?

Prisoners: (Sensing that it is better to hear the worse first, get it over with and hope for a redeeming good news), they collectively yelled, “Let’s hear the bad news first”.

Commander: “As you know, winter conditions have brought us very limited food supplies. Beginning today, there is nothing to eat but cow dung”.

Prisoners: (What could possibly be worse than that, so they were eager to hear the good news) “Tell us what’s good!”

Commander: “The good news is that we have mountains and mountains of cow dung”.

Internationally, humor transcends cultural boundaries. I got the following one from a Filipino.

 It was funny in Tagalog and here’s how it translated.

Doc: “I have good news and bad news”.

Patient: “What is the good news”?

Doc: “You are going to die tomorrow.”

Patient: “What could possibly be worse than that?”

Doc: “I forgot to tell you this yesterday.”

Seriously now. Our daily lives oscillate with good news/bad news, in one form or another.  If we want to get to work free of traffic congestion we get an early morning start. That might not seem so bad but in some places it can be taken to extremes. In Manila or Bangkok, and in a lot of densely populated metropolitan capitals, some folks leave for work at 4:00 a.m. to avoid the notoriously clogged arteries toward the workplace. But it means going to bed the night before at 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. to get up at 3-3:30 a.m. if one were to have the proper amount of sleep. In Manila, or Mumbai, a good paying job is at call centers that involve customer support tending to accounting questions, warranty and repair request services, answering technical questions, etc. If the call center is geared towards the U.S., it means working at night in Manila or Mumbai to respond to questions from the U.S. whose customers predominantly call during U.S. daytime hours. English conversant but mostly young people who do these jobs are well compensated for their work. Unfortunately, they go to work when regular workers are going home to have family dinners or social evening functions.  The good news is that they are always going against traffic. The bad news is going to bed when all others are up, so noise and ambient daylight make for sleeping soundly a major challenge. The good news is that businesses are responding to their needs. There are now daylight night clubs. A contradiction in terms but these places are designed to isolate daylight from the outside with opaque windows so that once inside the patrons can’t tell the difference. "Evening" dinners are served and dancing completes the night time activities. All good until they come out to a blinding sun.  It is always good news, bad news isn’t it.

In the animal world, good news/bad news is the prevailing daily scenario. Herbivores feed on stationary vegetation that hardly offer resistance or attempt to run away from them. The bad news is that herbivores are often prey animals to predators they are prepared to and must run away from at a split second notice. Predators have it good in that they do not have to spend a lot of their waking hours feeding, unlike their prey animals that spend 10-14 hours dining on plants. The bad news for predators is that their prey is not that easy to catch. Even the most efficient pack hunters have a catch ratio of about 25%. Juvenile lions were observed achieving very low percentages like succeeding only in one-out-of-ten attempts. Cheetahs must catch their prey within 15 to 30 seconds from the first bound or they won’t catch them at all. Gazelles, Impalas and Springbok are no slouch when it comes to running. For every bit of good news there is an equal but opposite amount of bad news. Don’t hold me to that theory but it is a good one, isn't it, albeit unencumbered by research or a doctoral thesis.

A fair question is why must there be good news, bad news in life. Well, would we appreciate daylight if not for the limiting conditions of nightfall? Would we plead for relief if not for the ill-effects of pain or exhaustion? Would we work so hard for a living if it were not for the realization that the alternative could be abject poverty? 

Good news, bad news are built into the universe and how it came to be.  From nothing was a huge explosion 13.5 billion years ago, according to cosmologists, though not too differently from how the Book of Genesis describes creation.  From nothing came something. The universe may not be what it is if the bad news part prevailed in its early inception.

"Let there be light" was, strangely enough, no different from the cosmological version of a sudden explosion from an infinitely small, dimensionless point to the blinding and energetic Big Bang. No longer debatable since galaxies are without a doubt observed hurtling at tremendous speeds away from each other as seen from ground telescopes at Palomar or through the crystal clear optics of the Hubble Space Telescope. As the theory goes, at some point, in the distant past, they must have all originated from a single point. Suffice it to say that the mathematics and calculations support it.  What is not widely known is how physical matter we see and feel today could not have come about except for one good news overcoming bad news in the beginning. I am going to go "nerdy" here but I promise it will be painless.

During the rapid expansion, the inflation of the "baby" universe, pure energy coalesced into sub-atomic particles first, then creating matter and anti-matter. Anti-matter does not exist naturally here anymore but at CERN (particle collider) anti-matter is created routinely from heavy particle collisions.

As energy condensed into particles, both regular matter and anti-matter were created. But matter and anti-matter annihilate each other reverting everything into energy.  In other words, had that prevailed, matter as we know it today will not exist. That was the bad news. But, as luck would have it, or as willed by the Creator, for every billion particles of anti-matter, there was a billion and one particle of matter. That was the good news. For every billion of matter destroyed by collision with a billion of anti-matter, one particle of matter survived from each of those infinite encounters. That was all the universe needed. Everything you see around us are the remainder of all the collisions. Now, if you do not behold that as the ultimate bad news, good  news you're not living in this universe.

That was not so painful.  Not as much as the pain the hapless lobsters must feel, according to the Swiss proponents of the mandate. However, researchers dispute the conclusion that lobsters feel pain. We must believe that the Creator had provided for that though that should be for a religious discussion. However, we must agree that if the lobsters end up on the dining table, electric-shocked or thrown into boiling water, hardly makes a difference to their predicament. They are food to us. Octopus and other predators like them too. Like all food staples, their edibility is their worse asset.

Good news, bad news is here for good. How we deal with them is what life is all about. The tally of our experiences are a balance sheet of good news and bad news.

Good News, Bad News

The NRA - not that NRA, but the National Rats Association (European Chapter) - just released a statement following the findings by researchers that the plague, known as the Black Death, that ravaged Europe in the 14th century, may not have been spread by rats as commonly believed since and through the centuries until just recently. About 25 million people in Europe succumbed to the disease. Below is a clip from the news three days ago:

"Computer modelling carried out by a research team from the universities of Oslo and Ferrara suggests the first outbreak may not have been down to the rats, but instead can be “largely ascribed to human fleas and body lice”.

The report further emphasized to its rodent-members that they should from now on unburden the guilt heaped upon them by humans for all this time. If anything, only a fraction of the disease should be blamed on them. Human to human contact was the main reason as to how the disease was spread, unlike, say, how malaria is dispersed by mosquitoes.  Besides, it was bacteria that infected the fleas that caused the disease. In a way, the NRA secretariat further explained, the rats were themselves victims of the infestation. The association will launch a public relations campaign to publicize these scientific findings. There is talk of reparations but that demand will be taken up later in the upcoming gathering of the Congress for Fair Treatment of Rodents. The numbers are there - there are more rodents than there are people in the entire planet several times over. They are mammals that include squirrels, mice, voles, guinea pigs, lemmings, prairie dogs, and the giant 100 pound capybara from South America. So, there is wide support for the movement, specially that many of the rodents themselves had been victims of extreme prejudice. By the way, least known but a significant fact, it was the Beaver Equal Action Treatment Association (BEAT for short) that triggered the movement to protect them against mass killing for their pelt that almost extinguished the species.  Their organization became the model for the NRA (again, not that NRA).

The cat population is happy now but there was a time when they were much maligned as well. For centuries the cats were worshiped by the Egyptians; some Pharaohs even had their favorite felines embalmed with them. But then sometime in the 1200's, Pope Gregory IX declared cats as part of pagan symbols and even went on to label them as Satan's animals, particularly the black ones. People in Europe started getting rid of them - a euphemism for mass killings. It was then following that period when the plague began in Europe. It had since been believed that the decimation of the cat population gave rise to the rat population explosion. As an unintended consequence the killing of the cats gave way to rapid rise in rat population that caused the spread of the plague, so went the narrative, but now proven to be false.

The good news is that the rats are exonerated, a religious misinterpretation killed the cats but the bad news is that human unsanitary habits are now to blame for the Black Death. Of course, there was one other human mischief, even criminal fraud, that gave us the expression, "The cat is out of the bag". It was common then to sell piglets in the marketplace.  Often, they were carried in sacks made of thick fabric. In countless transactions, sacks of piglets were sold wholesale (multiple quantities of sacks were bought and sold by merchants). Unscrupulous sellers would put cats in some of those bags. The fraud was revealed only when the cat is taken out of the bag - then the secret is out.

From that, humans, as often the case, are bearers of bad news; or rather they were the "causa primaria". Fortunately for history, there were more "bonum causas" than "causas malorum". Humanity had come up with  more good causes than bad ones.  Otherwise, we may not have the civilization we know today.

Now, we've more than made up for repatriation for the cats. Today, they may already have surpassed the number of dogs in human care (as pets) worldwide. Good news for them but bad for dogs, if only for one reason. Cats not only live longer by perhaps as much as three times than dogs, cats do not have to show any outward loyalty or such nonsense (according to the cats) as public display of devotion or adoration that dogs show to their masters. Or, at least cats don't show them if they were pleased. If anything, they may even feign contempt, as if they are the boss in the household. You see, they get away with not having to do any chore or display tail wagging, tongue-out-hyperventilating joy when the master comes home. Rats or mice go running back and forth in front of them without even a cursory form of harassment. That is beneath them.  Meanwhile, when let out, it is a form of entertainment or a sporting event to go after the backyard birds. They are the number one killer of birds in the U.S. That is the bad news. And the dogs can only look on - disgusted but filled with inutility and an emotional breakdown, even envy, that the cat can spend 20 hours sleeping but when disturbed they can swipe with either front paw, equipped with razor sharp claws, to discourage any canine attempt at friendship or even just by merely closing the distance between them for  curiosity sake.  Good news.  Bad news.

I'm not quite sure where I was going with this. The plague was not spread by rats, cats are at the top of the heap. Now, there is the question that is part myth or truth that are ascribed to one or two Asian countries about their dietary customs. We know for a fact a once a year sort of festival in China that involve dogs. A former president has confirmed partaking in one dietary practice in Indonesia. Some Asian nations do have it in some of their remote areas. Bad news but fortunately the rest of the world adore their cats and dogs. That is the good news.

What about the rats.  They have a long way to go. Guinea pigs are pets but they are also the poster child for animal experimentation that gave us the expression in their honor. Pet shops sell snakes to snake lovers. Along with that mice and rats are sold as well. Rats as a dietary object of the palate is limited but there are dedicated enthusiasts and connoisseurs. That is the bad news for rats.  But then, what about cattle, hogs and poultry? Edibility, from their point of view, is their worst asset. 

The biggest good news for rats is that they are masters of survival. They've crossed oceans via ships as if they know there is so much to explore out there. They are masters of adaptation in that their diet matches those of the species that are at the top of the food chain - us, humans. They eat what we eat.  They live where we live. Their biggest advantage: they are at breeding age by their fifth month after birth and females can have litters twice a year, a litter can be six to ten, depending on food availability. So, we can't be that sorry for them. The NRA (the rodent one) does not have a paw to stand on with their reparation claim. They have our respect - that's good news - but they can never be delightful - that's bad.

Language

If ever we are asked to name only one thing that links people together, we hope we will answer unanimously that it is language. Obviously we can name many others but we will find that each will in one way or the other be facilitated by language. Culture, nationalistic fervor, political direction, anything we can think of will have to be communicated. Communication is language and vice versa. Linking the world together with language is a challenge because today there are officially (or at least considered to be) 6,909 distinct languages.

Of the total, and this is very interesting, Europe only has 230 different languages while 2,197 are spoken in Asia. Understandably because Europe is more contiguous than Asia where the former is usually separated by land borders and packed closer together while the latter is not only widespread there are many ocean borders and much longer historical separations. For example, land bridges during the ice age allowed for people to spread out on foot in the Tropical Zone, but once oceans rose to the level today, islands and island countries were created causing populations to be separated for hundreds of years. Language – prone to evolutionary changes – developed into ever distinct ones as to be entirely different from the original.

We are faced with the question: If the world must adopt only one language which should it be? English seems to be the front runner if there is ever a contest held today. English is my second language but I am an advocate to make it one for the world. There are many reasons why and I will get into it but first let me share below a few, often funny, pitfalls in translation in an effort by many non-native speakers to turn messages into English. Many of you have on a number of occasions run into instructions or passages in owner’s manuals that made you smile, laugh or squirm at reading them. I am not going to pick on Chinese to English translations but it is only natural because today we see more Made in China articles of everything from toys to apparels to tools but other countries of origin are just as susceptible to language mishaps. This is not to make fun of countries of origin but to highlight later at the end of this article the rationale for one global language. 

(Tap each photo to enlarge)

Many are funny, if not unintelligible, but there are those that are too deeply Zen-like.

   

     

Airport signs and notices are critical to foreign travelers. In an effort to be helpful the sign below does deliver the message clearly on one hand but manages to keep some information subject to wild speculation.

Meanwhile, let’s be clear about something. Hazardous materials are exactly that. Now, if you are the type that cannot resist ever touching anything … well, don’t let this other sign be the last warning you’ve ever read.

              

   

The Germans can be strictly ‘By the book” but I suspect they are simply bragging about this one; or Porsche with a V8 engine may indeed be that quick from zero to 100 mph.

You’ve likely read something similar (below) to this one. I’m not sure if this product was made in Russia or primarily targeted to the Russian market by an unidentified manufacturer that we are hard pressed to guess what the product actually is. It may also have some international appeal because there is another language instruction that appears to be in German, but if you only know English – well, good luck.

Below must be from a fancy modern hotel. The switches had to have been manufactured by a high tech company that we can reasonably expect to have some fairly knowledgeable translators in its employ. But “Please namely cleaning” violates English grammar in  every conceivable way.

Some manufacturers want to make sure people are actually reading their washing instructions.

    

Restaurant signs are notoriously known for mistakes in translations. Many can somehow be understood. But the two below cannot be salvaged, even if we try.

           

  

Below is where a little political correctness is in order.

        

The examples above are a tiny fragment in a vast collection from around the world and more are created every day. Meanwhile, the two biggest manufacturers of goods in Asia - namely South Korea and China - are sending a good number of their young students and workers abroad to learn or strengthen their English proficiency. English is being taught in schools in those two countries like no language had ever been so widely pursued in the past. Traditionally, in that part of the world, Australia and New Zealand are the only two English-speaking countries. Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines have it as the predominant second language. Australia and the Philippines are popular destinations for other Asian student/learners to get their English proficiency. The U.S. and England are much too far and too expensive.

Why English?

England would like to maintain that it speaks the language properly. To this day it even insists on spelling the words the English way. Take honour, tigre, organise – these are just a few examples that are red-lined by Microsoft Word when you type them that way.  This reminds me of the lament of Henry Higgins from “My Fair Lady” about English. 

 An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him.

The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.

One common language I'm afraid we'll never get,

Oh, why can't the English learn to

set a good example to people whose

English is painful to your ears?

The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears.

There even are places where English completely disappears.

In America, they haven't used it for years!

Despite all that we know how English had become the world’s efficient language. Commercial airline pilots and ships’ captains use English to bridge all languages. Languages have always evolved over eons of time. Some have become extinct, i.e. Latin and Sanskrit. English is at the pinnacle of the evolutionary path taken by many languages. English had become what it is today by becoming a successful survivor. Just as in the evolution of species in biology, English took on the finest attributes, or rather the attributes of words from other languages as in Latin, Greek and German, etc. and adopted them. Today English had borrowed words from Japanese, Chinese and many other languages that are now well entrenched parts of its lexicon. Even the Filipino word for “bundok” had become “boondocks” that American soldiers took so that one word explained what would have taken several words to explain. And new words are added every day as antiquated ones wither away. That is the secret of English. It took countless words from so many different languages to make word usage more efficient. Tsunami is not just a word to describe the phenomenon of rouge waves from underwater earthquakes but now as a deluge of anything from a tsunami of information, public outcry, etc. That is just one example of one word adopted to take the place of several words. Achilles Heel and Waterloo are words when used in analogies can mean a lot without having to use so many words. It even fashions verbs out of nouns to shorten a sentence. Of course, because English had borrowed so much from different languages, it may not be the easiest to master when it comes to learning idioms and even homonyms (words that sound the same but have different meanings). But it is still a very efficient language in my opinion.

Let me end with the last part of Henry Higgins commentary on English:

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?

Norwegians learn Norwegian,

the Greeks are taught their Greek.

In France every Frenchman knows his language from "A" to "Zed"

The French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.

Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning,

The Hebrews learn it backwards,

which is absolutely frightening.

But use proper English and you're regarded as a freak.

Why can't the English,

Why can't the English,

Learn To Speak?

Again, despite all that, English is likely going to be the world’s language someday, spoken or written, well or not.