Friday, January 02, 2015
Define BEMUSED
Feelgood item in this morning's news: Baby was born on New Years Day, and both parents were also born on NYD. The odds are nominally 48 million. Real odds would be considerably less, because as I've said 48 million times, all human tastes, talents and tendencies are partly innate. If both parents come from ancestors with a tendency to give birth around the winter solstice, the chance of such a birth is much stronger. Nevertheless, it's still a rare event.
The father was quoted: "We named her ..."
Yes? Did you name her Jan? Fireworks? Newyear? Auldlang? Timeballina? Hangoverette?
"We named her Autumn because that's one of our favorite seasons."
Autumn????? Autumn????? ONE OF your favorite seasons? How many favorite seasons do you have? 5 or 6?
BEMUSED.
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Trying to figure out why Autumn is so perfectly wrong. It's a category problem. There are lots of names that wouldn't induce bemusement. Rita, Taelyrr, Nevaeh, LaShqiperia. Those might be pleasant or unpleasant depending on taste, but not bemusing. They don't make contact with the category at hand. Autumn engages the category and then turns it all inside out and upside down. In a baseball analogy, Rita and Taelyrr would be balls or strikes. No contact. After you make contact with the ball, Jan would be a single, Hangoverette would be a triple. But Autumn??? It's like making contact and turning the ball into a Royal Flush or a Hotel On Park Place or a Come On Down!
¶ 5:50 AM 
BEMUSED.
= = = = =
Trying to figure out why Autumn is so perfectly wrong. It's a category problem. There are lots of names that wouldn't induce bemusement. Rita, Taelyrr, Nevaeh, LaShqiperia. Those might be pleasant or unpleasant depending on taste, but not bemusing. They don't make contact with the category at hand. Autumn engages the category and then turns it all inside out and upside down. In a baseball analogy, Rita and Taelyrr would be balls or strikes. No contact. After you make contact with the ball, Jan would be a single, Hangoverette would be a triple. But Autumn??? It's like making contact and turning the ball into a Royal Flush or a Hotel On Park Place or a Come On Down!
¶ 5:50 AM
