Steve Kass

In scary news today: Stroke Patients Getting Younger, Stroke Rising Among Young People, and so on.

Apparently some researchers reported that some number went up recently, and the number that went up had something to do with stroke and something to do with 15-44 year-olds.

Sounds like a good excuse for a rousing chorus or two of Fire in the Theater! Obesity! Diet Soda! You’re Gonna Die!, no?

No.

The number reported to have gone up recently is not the total number of strokes among 15-44 year-olds, nor is it the rate (per 10,000 people, for example) of strokes among people that age.

The number that went up recently is the rate of strokes in 15-44 year-olds as a fraction of all hospitalizations for that age group. Not an easy quantity to conceptualize. But when a quantity is hard to conceptualize, you aren’t automatically allowed to grab a “you may pretend it’s something else.” pass and lie with impunity. (Do these same journalists give up and write “Boxer” if they can’t spell “Feinstein”?)

Maybe the stroke rate among 15-44 year-olds is not going up.

It could be that hospitalizations of 15-44 year-olds for reasons other than stroke are going down. Maybe hospitals are more and more likely to list multiple reasons for hospitalization than in the past. Maybe many former headaches are now deemed strokes (thanks to the proliferation of imaging tests). Either of these trends would make the numerical rate of stroke diagnoses per 10,000 hospitalizations go up without reflecting an increase in stroke.

Maybe a lot of things. Maybe the rate of stroke is going up among young people. Which might be scary. Or not. It’s possible more and more diagnoses of stroke are insignificant — no worse than a bad headache. Just because “stroke” sounds scary doesn’t mean there can’t be innocuous kinds of stroke.

Unfortunately we don’t know from today’s irresponsible scramble to turn numbers into fear.

1 [of 2]: Raising My Rainbow

RaisingMyRainbow.com is a blog about the adventures in raising a slightly effeminate, possibly gay, totally fabulous son.

It’s written by C.J.’s Mom, a feisty, sassy girl-woman trying to have it all and usually feeling like she is failing miserably while all those around her are none-the-wiser. She works part-time as a business consultant, full-time as a mother and overtime as a walking panic attack.

And it’s about raising C.J. (age 3), the most enchanting child you will ever meet with an insane knack for art and color, interior design and dance. His passions include Barbie, Disney Princesses, Strawberry Shortcake and women’s hair and shoes. Paul Deen holds a special place in his heart.

Go. Read. Be thankful C.J.’s parents love him for who he is.

2 [of 2]: The New York Philharmonic Digital Archive

The New York Philharmonic has just launched the first part of its remarkable digital archive. A New York Times article on the project is here.

Browsing the archive (just launched today) is tricky (for example, you may see “Found In: Scores > Mahler, Gustav,” but neither Scores nor Mahler, Gustav are clickable), and the document reader is finicky (especially until you find and click on the faint unlabeled arrow that undocks a useful navigation bar), but don’t give up. Search for something — anything — to get away from the home page. Then you’re likely to find useful links and category tabs to click.

Today’s word of the day is emmadden.

em·mad·den /ɛm.’ma.dən/

verb
To constructively make mad or crazy, or to feign to make mad or crazy, always without malice or injury, and usually with the complete opposites.

Origin
2011: intentional coinage by Steve Kass (http://www.stevekass.com), variant of madden with intentionally vague technoetymology. Perhaps a portmanteau of madden and imagine, perhaps an intensive of madden, or perhaps a variation of madden that communicates a quality of uncertainty or inconfidence, as if compounded with the interjection um.

Janet Napolitano isn’t making the official announcement until tomorrow, but this is 2011, folks. There are no secrets any more.

DHS to end color-coded terror alert system.

It will be called the National Terror Advisory System. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano will officially make the announcement tomorrow at a “State of America’s Homeland Security” speech at George Washington University.

Brilliant, Janet. Brilliant!

Or maybe building another wall for stuff I throw to hit. Or maybe throwing a wall at the wall. Hard to say. Tumblr. Yes, that Tumblr.

Now and then, I peregrinate past something well worth keeping. Starting today, I’ll keep some of those somethings right here.

Today’s keeper: Is Being Done, an essay by Richard Grant White from the March, 1869, issue of The Galaxy¹. (Publishing² from 1866 to 1878, The Galaxy was subsumed into The Atlantic Monthly; Cornell University Library’s Making of America project contains a complete digital archive of The Galaxy.)

Little did I know that the so-called “progressive passive” tense (as in “Your Amazon order is being fulfilled.”) was a relative grammatical newcomer (i.e., it appeared centuries after Shakespeare) to the English language. White did not welcome it. This is an excerpt from his incisive essay.

In Goldsmith’s ‘Citizen of the World,’ (Letter XXL) is the following passage, descriptive of a play.

‘The fifth act began, and a busy piece it was; scenes shifting, trumpets sounding, drums beating, mobs hallooing, carpets spreading, guards bustling from one door to the other; gods, demons, daggers, rags, and ratsbane.’

Read the second clause of the sentence according to the formula is being done. ‘Scenes being shifted, trumpets being sounded, drums being beaten, mobs hallooing, carpets being spread,’ and so forth. The very life is taken out of it. No longer a busy piece, it drags its wounded and halting body along, and dies before it gets to rags and ratsbane.

Related information: Mr. White’s son, Stanford, the celebrated architect, designed the Washington Square Arch and was murdered in 1906.

[Source: Mark Liberman at Language Log]

A few months ago, I posted a graph and parametric equations for conchiglie rigati. Today I’m sharing a graph and equations for cavatappi. As before, I started with equations from Chris Tiee’s 2006 class notes for vector calculus.

Coming soon, a graph and equations for Möbius pasta.

Roundup from the December Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine. (Which was thankfully captivating, there being no new SkyMall to which to turn.)

Misspellings

• “Luxury” (as “Luxuy”, in large type on page 58)
• “Remembrance” (as in “Pearl Harbor Rememberance Day,” page 126)

Arguable misspelling

• “DAMMIT” (as “DAMNIT, page ??¹) 

Unexpected nonmisspelling

• “memento” (as “memento”, page ??²)

Clichés (and other embarrassments) up the wazoo

Witness this small (trust me) sample from the literal surfeit in “Crowd Control,” a single article by Scott Steinberg, CEO of the “high-tech consulting firm TechSavvy Global,” who limited research suggests speaks and writes thus prolifically.³ The Spirit article wasn’t intended as humor or parody.

• “bet the farm”
• “field day”
• “trust me”
• “au contraire”
• “dress for success”
• “won’t be a cakewalk”
• “make no mistake”
• “weeding out the winners” [My personal favorite. –SK]
• No matter how unique the idea, we’ll dress it for success.”
• Even crappy concepts generate helpful response and criticism.”

Other funnies

I didn’t note the sources or page numbers of these other Spirit gems.

• “(Though the Baltimore monument [to George Washington] is almost 400-feet shorter than the Washington monument in D.C., it’s actually 56 years older.)”
• “reams of red tape” [A close second. –SK]
• “When I watch Dr. Stern practice medicine, I am struck by how little it is like those medical shows on television. She doesn’t rush around with heart paddles and needles.”

¹ Despite the appearance of the jump line “Continued on page 108” on page 99, a dozen or so unnumbered pages (presumably including page 108) immediately and consecutively followed the page bearing the number 101. The first numbered page thereafter bore page number 114. “Page ??” refers to one of these unnumbered pages, though not always the same one.

² See previous footnote.

³ The quoted description of TechSavvy Global was copied from something on the internet. TechSavvy Global’s actual website rather roundly and soundly belies the description. (Remarkably, even the blue underlined email address on the home page is not a link.)

A theretofore charming day, spoiled in the blink of an eye, because I caught sight of the link “David Brooks: Obama’s Very Good Week” in the Times. Brooks isn’t known for sarcastic titles, and it’s been nobody’s good week in Washington. A $25,000,000,000 tax windfall (yes, 25 billion) for the richest 0.3% (yes, less than one third of one percent), and DADT, in particular.

I clicked, but I didn’t read the article. I’m trying hard not to read everything from start to finish that I know in advance will be crazymaking. I wasn’t about to backslide with the likes of Brooks, so I applied the How To Read a Ross Douthat Article approach.

The HTRaRDA approach is this: Type Control-End (preceded by SINGLE PAGE, if available) to reach the bottom of the article, and then read the last screenful. Do not pass Go! You will discover the offensive conclusion without wading through the invidious, lame, emetic screensful that invariably, insidiously, precede it.

Unfortunately, sometimes the insidious run-up extends into that last screenful, and it did today. It was impossible to ignore, because it included numbers.

Warning: The David Brooks quote below is a lie.

According to the most recent Gallup numbers, 67 percent of independents and 52 percent of Democrats support extending all the tax cuts.

Warning: The David Brooks quote above is a lie.

It was painful to follow up on this quote, but I’m still holding onto the belief that it would have been worse to have read Brooks in toto.

On December 1, Gallup reported that “Forty percent [of Americans] want Congress to maintain the tax cuts for everyone, while 44% support setting limits on how much of wealthy Americans’ income is eligible for the lower rates.” In particular, 18% of Democrats preferred keeping the tax cuts for everyone (when offered two alternatives: setting limits or letting the cuts expire entirely). Those can’t be the “most recent Gallup numbers” to which Brooks refers, because 18 doesn’t equal 52, even with rounding. (Maybe at the Times it does, but not on my blog.)

Here are the actual Gallup numbers to which Brooks refers. Over the past weekend, Gallup asked this question: “Suppose that on Election Day you could vote on key issues as well as candidates.  Please tell me whether you would vote for or against a law that would do each of the following.  Would you vote for or against a law that would extend the federal income tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 for all Americans for two years?” Fifty-two percent of the Democrats, 67% of independents, and 85% of Republicans surveyed said they would vote for such a law.¹

Quiz. Given three choices similar to those before Congress (A. extend cuts for all; B. extend cuts but only up to a dollar limit for the wealthy; C. let tax cuts expire), Democrat’s least preferred option is to extend all the tax cuts. (Breakdown: 18% answered A, 21% answered C, and 55% answered B). Is it fair to say that 52 percent of Democrats support extending all the tax cuts?

The correct answer is NO.

Kudos to Gallup for the careful and precise phrase to describe the option before Congress: “limits on how much of wealthy Americans’ income is eligible for the lower rates.”

Shame on Brooks for vulpigerating.

¹ I apologize for previously calling the Republican party the “Party of No.” I should have more precisely called them the “Party of No, except when it will make the rich richer.”

Sir Colin Davis led the New York Philharmonic Saturday evening in performances of Beethoven’s Symphony #2 and Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, with soprano Dorothea Röschmann and tenor Ian Bostrich.

Beethoven’s Second is one of my favorites. Essential Beethoven, it dances and laughs like #7, it sings like #6, it marches like #5, yet without excess, ever elegant and confident. Sir Colin conducted, as he does, calmly, precisely, and without grandstanding, and the performance was delightful.

There’s no agreed-upon set and sequence for Mahler’s Wunderhorn songs, and they don’t comprise an integral song cycle or symphony. Nevertheless, Sir Colin and the Philharmonic made a good case for the choices and order they made.

During the Mahler, I was focused on the voices, so I have little to say about the orchestra beyond that they sounded fine, and perhaps they were outstanding.

Tenor Ian Bostrich, although physically engaged with the songs, didn’t have enough vocal power. In his middle and lower registers, he was barely audible. The orchestra was holding back a bit, it seemed, and it didn’t help that Bostrich tended to project his voice down, not forward, something a man of his considerable height might be accustomed to doing in conversation. What I could hear was beautiful, and I’d like to hear him again, but in a recital and in a smaller hall.

As for Dorothea Röschmann’s soprano, there was nothing to criticize and everything to praise. She commanded sheer power, never harsh, and she delivered pure pianissimos, never unfocused, throughout her ample vocal range, each as the songs demanded, and she demonstrated flexibility as she shifted nimbly from one Wunderhorn “mood” to another.

Lob des hohen Verstandes (In praise of high intellect) is funny and sarcastic. (Synopsis: a donkey, because of his large ears, is chosen to judge a singing competition between a cuckoo and a nightingale. The cuckoo wins.) Here, Röschmann made an ass of herself in the best possible way, and she sang as beautifully as any nightingale has ever done. Das irdische Leben (The earthly life) is tragic. (Synopsis: Starving, crying child dies before the corn can be harvested and baked into bread.) Röschmann was haunting. In the peasant love ditty Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht (Who thought up this little song?), the long, florid phrases spun forth like silver.

Run, don’t walk, to the Carnegie Hall box office for tickets to hear Röschmann sing Handel’s V’adoro, pupille and more in an April 3, 2011 recital with David Daniels.

Neither of last night’s works features a large orchestra, and the Philharmonic performed without several of its principals. Among the missing were Glenn Dicterow, Carter Brey, and Robert Langevin. Incidentally or not (and probably no fault of Sir Colin’s), the Philharmonic was not in top form. Some sections were as stunning as ever — the woodwinds, flutes in particular, were in fine form (save for the horns, who needlessly reminded us how difficult they are to play in tune), and the percussion were as well. As an ensemble, however, the orchestra wasn’t as tight as it can be.

Orchestral failings aside, Davis is, and was last night, a servant to music. This is the guy who can — no easy task — give us Berlioz without overdoing the grandiosity and sentimentality. It dawned on me hours after the concert that nothing seemed too fast or too slow. I don’t remember the last time I concurred with an entire concert’s-worth of tempos. As one critic said half a century ago, Colin Davis was the best English conductor since Sir Thomas Beecham, and it’s not clear England has yet produced his successor. It was a pleasure to watch him, still spry at the age of 83. May he treat us for many more years.