I finally finished the book destined for the Worst Sellers list. What can one expect of a reference work only for linguists interested in the Uto-Aztecan language family? My first book (Morsels for the Mind) did much better: it made the Best Giveaway list, my wife says. Actually, Morsels sells well enough, being much more interesting for general audiences, and it only took a couple of years to write. But the big book took 25 years to write. It should have taken only five, but trying to find an hour here and there around a full-time job, raising a family, ecclesiastical commitments, and keeping an immaculate yard (tisk) is like a McDonald’s short-order cook trying to read. Nevertheless, it finally materialized, and all 30 people in the world who wanted one have bought a copy. So after 25 years of work, I didn’t lose much at all.
Uto-Aztecan: A Comparative Vocabulary addresses the cognate sets (related words) in the Uto-Aztecan (UA) language family, a group of 30 related languages from the Utes in the north to the Aztecs in the south, with the Hopi, Pima, and several other tribes in between. The last book on Uto-Aztecan cognate sets was published over 40 years ago (1967) by Wick Miller and had 514 cognate sets. This work has 2,600 cognate sets, five times as many. It has received very favorable comment from other Uto-Aztecanists (linguists knowledgeable in UA). Only five or six of us Uto-Aztecanists deal with the whole language family. Some are more brilliant than I am, but had other priorities, one died, another became ill, and so like a tortoise among hares, I plodded along, did more digging in the data than others, and wrote the book. To become one of the world’s foremost authorities in a field, it helps to pick a field that hardly anyone is interested in. Millions dream of playing pro ball. No one dreams of Uto-Aztecan.
Maybe it is the difference between making millions vs. losing only a little bit that leaves some fields wide open. Or maybe it is having to become familiar with 30 languages without knowing any well enough to speak that makes most wonder “what’s the point?” To some it may seem pointless, but like a huge jigsaw puzzle, as the picture begins to appear, language can illuminate the origins of the ancient people, much about their movements and history, and it becomes very exciting—more exciting than money, as is obvious from the amount of work vs. sales receipts. Yet while the field’s most notable noted the book as noteworthy, my grandsons put it all in perspective. They do well at computers, so I hired them to create the appendices for this book. The younger, being a Harry Potter fan and knowing that that book sold in the millions, asked how many copies of my book might sell. After my disappointing answer—“maybe 50”—the older said, “Well, I knew it ain’t no Harry Potter.” That sums it up. Maybe it should be a subtitle: It Ain’t No Harry Potter.
Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin's smarts seems to be a favorite topic of her adversaries these days, yet she has plenty enough smarts for me to question the smarts of those who question hers. Ever since her nomination as a vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin has been a lightning rod for good or evil, praise or attack being heaped upon her. The attacks by some internet rumor mills and drained-stream media mites were instant and vicious, often false and outrageous. The possibility of her running on future tickets has evoked similar excitement both for and against her. Debating whether or not she is qualified is mandatory for any candidate, though the facts that she was an excellent governor of a state and that charmer-in-chief had less experience than her should be part of the discussion; but the line, as if by design, that echoes through the chambers of anti-commerce—that she is not smart enough to be president—I find amusing. How did anyone decide that?
Those pointing to a University of Idaho vs. a Harvard education are putting way too much faith in education. I know many Harvard graduates and many Idahoans and see no difference in intellectual capacities.
If public impromptu performance and substantive delivery are the criteria, Palin surpasses most that I’ve seen. I have watched hours of Hillary (Secretary of State), Palin, Pelosi (Speaker of the House), charmer-in-chief, and many others being interviewed. In quickness of mental and lingual agility, Palin performs impressively like a quick bright squirrel and makes the others look like slow lumbering beetles with ideas as aromatic. Palin has by far the quickest mind and the most sensible solutions instantly flowing out of her so rapidly as to make Clinton, Pelosi, and others, including charmer-in-chief, sound like sedated slowbees (though Clinton is much better than Pelosi, with charmer-in-chief wafting somewhere between). Some might suggest that the slower more deliberate delivery is due to more profound thoughts. No, that doesn’t work either. Palin’s ideas and thinking are far superior to those three and compete well enough among the presidential candidates of the last two decades. I’m not saying she is the very best. I consider Newt Gingrich to be the nation’s most brilliant mind for problem-solving and real solutions at national and international levels. Huckabee, Forbes, Romney, Giuliani, and other voices of experience and reason are equally sound (equal to Palin, not necessarily to Gingrich). Yet whether at the very top or not, Palin is in a high enough percentile that saying she is not smart is a lame echo backed by agenda, not facts. Applying her thinking would have us doing much better now than is presently happening.
Some may point to her not knowing the answer to a question or two on nationally televised interviews. Everyone in the world does not know the answers to many, many questions. After ACORN’s fiasco of multiple attempts to help the pimp plan a business using 14-year-old sex-slave prostitutes from South America, charmer-in-chief, who worked for ACORN, was asked about it. He said he didn’t know about that, quickly spinning to: the American people are more concerned about more important things. If he knew (as he must have; it was big news), he seemed not to be telling the truth. If he did not know, it was a much more serious display of ignorance than Palin being stumped by the Bush doctrine, which stumped everyone else too, until clarified. Most crucial is smarts enough to surround oneself with advisers of integrity, brilliance, and depths of experience, in which case a person with principles and reasonable intelligence can do much better than an assumed brainiac brain-washed in ideology too loosely attached to reason and reality. But even a Harvard brainiac (or dubiously dubbed so by some) would know better than to surround himself entirely with swimmers in the same font of false-reality, wouldn’t he? Really? So he’s not smarter than that? Amazing. And then they say Palin is not smart enough?
So someone whose big-government policies are crippling the job-producers (small businesses) in this highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression is smarter? Someone whose far-left financial policies have even Communist China calling us fiscally reckless and irresponsible is smarter? Someone whose spending far exceeds all previous presidents and who has caused the dollar to lose 15% of its value since March is smarter? (This was written in the fall of 2009, a few months after his taking office.) Since charmer-in-chief took office, gold has gone from 850/oz to 1200/oz, silver from 12/oz to 18/oz, and palladium from 225/oz to 380/oz, all increasing about 50%, which suggests your savings and retirement incomes are relatively set to decrease proportionately in the opposite direction, and raises in wages never keep up with inflation either. For every 4% that inflation goes up, you’d be lucky to get a 2% raise. It’s a trick and hidden tax to give the government more money that you pay for in lost relative wages without most people realizing it. Ezra Taft Benson, former presidential cabinet member, called inflation a serious crime, a nation-wide theft. Inflation is caused by government spending (printing) more money than taken in, as is happening now at rates unheard of; thus, indicators suggest the biggest inflation in U.S history is around the corner. Prisoner Bernie Madoff made off with billions, but inflation robs many more people of much more money than Madoff did, so who can we blame to put in prison for the destruction of our fiscal futures? Sarah Palin is smarter than that.
Those pointing to a University of Idaho vs. a Harvard education are putting way too much faith in education. I know many Harvard graduates and many Idahoans and see no difference in intellectual capacities.
If public impromptu performance and substantive delivery are the criteria, Palin surpasses most that I’ve seen. I have watched hours of Hillary (Secretary of State), Palin, Pelosi (Speaker of the House), charmer-in-chief, and many others being interviewed. In quickness of mental and lingual agility, Palin performs impressively like a quick bright squirrel and makes the others look like slow lumbering beetles with ideas as aromatic. Palin has by far the quickest mind and the most sensible solutions instantly flowing out of her so rapidly as to make Clinton, Pelosi, and others, including charmer-in-chief, sound like sedated slowbees (though Clinton is much better than Pelosi, with charmer-in-chief wafting somewhere between). Some might suggest that the slower more deliberate delivery is due to more profound thoughts. No, that doesn’t work either. Palin’s ideas and thinking are far superior to those three and compete well enough among the presidential candidates of the last two decades. I’m not saying she is the very best. I consider Newt Gingrich to be the nation’s most brilliant mind for problem-solving and real solutions at national and international levels. Huckabee, Forbes, Romney, Giuliani, and other voices of experience and reason are equally sound (equal to Palin, not necessarily to Gingrich). Yet whether at the very top or not, Palin is in a high enough percentile that saying she is not smart is a lame echo backed by agenda, not facts. Applying her thinking would have us doing much better now than is presently happening.
Some may point to her not knowing the answer to a question or two on nationally televised interviews. Everyone in the world does not know the answers to many, many questions. After ACORN’s fiasco of multiple attempts to help the pimp plan a business using 14-year-old sex-slave prostitutes from South America, charmer-in-chief, who worked for ACORN, was asked about it. He said he didn’t know about that, quickly spinning to: the American people are more concerned about more important things. If he knew (as he must have; it was big news), he seemed not to be telling the truth. If he did not know, it was a much more serious display of ignorance than Palin being stumped by the Bush doctrine, which stumped everyone else too, until clarified. Most crucial is smarts enough to surround oneself with advisers of integrity, brilliance, and depths of experience, in which case a person with principles and reasonable intelligence can do much better than an assumed brainiac brain-washed in ideology too loosely attached to reason and reality. But even a Harvard brainiac (or dubiously dubbed so by some) would know better than to surround himself entirely with swimmers in the same font of false-reality, wouldn’t he? Really? So he’s not smarter than that? Amazing. And then they say Palin is not smart enough?
So someone whose big-government policies are crippling the job-producers (small businesses) in this highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression is smarter? Someone whose far-left financial policies have even Communist China calling us fiscally reckless and irresponsible is smarter? Someone whose spending far exceeds all previous presidents and who has caused the dollar to lose 15% of its value since March is smarter? (This was written in the fall of 2009, a few months after his taking office.) Since charmer-in-chief took office, gold has gone from 850/oz to 1200/oz, silver from 12/oz to 18/oz, and palladium from 225/oz to 380/oz, all increasing about 50%, which suggests your savings and retirement incomes are relatively set to decrease proportionately in the opposite direction, and raises in wages never keep up with inflation either. For every 4% that inflation goes up, you’d be lucky to get a 2% raise. It’s a trick and hidden tax to give the government more money that you pay for in lost relative wages without most people realizing it. Ezra Taft Benson, former presidential cabinet member, called inflation a serious crime, a nation-wide theft. Inflation is caused by government spending (printing) more money than taken in, as is happening now at rates unheard of; thus, indicators suggest the biggest inflation in U.S history is around the corner. Prisoner Bernie Madoff made off with billions, but inflation robs many more people of much more money than Madoff did, so who can we blame to put in prison for the destruction of our fiscal futures? Sarah Palin is smarter than that.
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