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It's interesting, isn't it, that the strangest things will start you thinking. I was getting the kids ready for school this morning, and something got my mind going. The result:
All of you are, of course, familiar with The Horse Whisperer, about a fellow who trains wild horses simply by whispering sweet nothings in their ears. Michael Ritz, has a similar talent. He trains moose by talking to them. No one has written a book about him, but there is an obscure opera. So obscure, in fact, that the author of the opera has hired a group of people to perform it. This troup is composed of people who are all thin enough to come down your chimney and sing the opera in your living room. Yes: Mike Ritz's Moose Talking is sung by the Chimney Width Choir.
Have a happy holiday season!
TEd
TEd
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I hereby propose the adoptation of the unit of measure of the value of a pun, to be called the TEd, the unit being decibel-seconds and defined as the loudness of the groan measured in dB multiplied by the length of time required to get it measured in seconds. (or dB/sec; the loudness divided by the length of time, I can't decide which)
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to some degree, the db-sec measure could become unmanageable, as the longer the input the louder the output is likely to be; that is, the db-sec scale could be logarithmic or parabolic or something like that. (and who would want to do the empirical work?) so, in the interest of expediencies, I'd go with db/sec. making it into an index, bigger numbers would indicate more... er... less pain....
btw, coincidentally (or not) the verb 'ted' means to spread out, scatter, or strew abroad for drying -- it seems to apply to making hay, but it seems ripe for transferral.
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Pooh-Bah
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I would factor in units of pain, mental or physical, caused by the, ummmm, TEdicism. Or perhaps you are already assuming a direct correlation between pain units and loudness of groan?
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I'm with Max. As much as I groaningly respect Your Punfulness, TEd, I sounded it out several times and didn't get it.  post-edit: Figures... soon as I post this, I figure it out. If he had *actually written it *, C.C. Moore would be rolling in his grave. And I groan. ~~~~ * There's at least one who allows as how it was plagiarized.
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a case in point, faldage -- just the sort of thing that will skew the db-sec scale, when ASp found [Max finds] out what this is.
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TEd, without peer, is hereby officially dubbed dub-dubbed? a knight;
hence our Pun-ster may now be referred to as Sir Pun.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good Knight.
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>I would factor in units of pain...
this being, as we all now know, the dol. may I humbly suggest the doldb (to be pronounced duldub -- the first u being an accented schwa).
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Gosh. I humbly accept the title Sir Pun. Well, as humbly as I can. Reminds me that Exxon proved that a big oil company didn't have to be Humble.
Anyway, in my younger days, I might have been known as Sir Pun Teen.
TEd
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I apologize to our non USn correspondents who apparently do not have as a major part of their Yuletide ethos the obviously American classic poem attributed to Clement Moore. I had no idea that this wasn't known throughout the English-speaking world. It DOES take the fun out a pun when you have to have someone explain it to you.
TEd
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...known as Sir Pun Teen
That one deserves a good belt, yes? (You decide which kind.)
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Dear TEd: Once a King, always a King. But once a Knight is enough.
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But once a Knight is enough.
The Knight, before Christmas, remarked to his spouse,
"The kids are at Grandma's. We've got the whole house..."
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In the city of Moscow, there lived a communist named Rudolph. One day in late December, in what had so far been a very mild winter, the weather suddenly turned awful as Rudolph and his wife sat at their homely table drinking vodka.
"Goodness", exclaimed his wife, "snow."
"No," said Rudolph, oblivious to what fell heavily outside their window, "it's rain!"
"You may want to forestall the inevitable, but I still say it's snow," protested the wife.
"Look,", he insisted glowingly, "Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear."
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As I've said before, we Aussies are just simple folk.
Please explain.
Oh, and have a very merry christmas y'all!!
stales
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Got this with a quick Google ... the note at the end was part of the entry.
Merry Christmas all!
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas
or Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas
by Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863)
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, DASHER! now, DANCER! now, PRANCER and VIXEN!
On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DONDER and BLITZEN!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”
-------------------------
According to sources cited at University of Toronto English Library, the original 1823 version has the last two reindeer named, "Dunder and Blixem." Also according to the UTEL, this ballad was written in 1822 for Moore's two daughters, Margaret and Charity, and a year later was anonymously published in the Troy [New York] Sentinel on December 23, 1823.
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For y'all's information, and with no intention at all of being a Grinch on this day, I offer the following: "As Foster relives in Author Unknown, 'The Night Before Christmas' was first published without attribution in 1823. Years later, Moore was mistakenly credited with the poem, and he did nothing to alter that thinking, according to Foster's research. Foster says a major reason that Moore was allowed to steal 'The Night Before Christmas' was the simple fact that 'he was a Bible professor and a Bible professor wouldn't lie.' It was up to Foster, then, to determine why Moore, like a 19th-century Grinch, would claim the rights to the story. He says he found evidence, and he offers his conclusions in Author Unknown. 'Moore was a man who was pretty vain,' says Foster. 'He never felt that he got enough credit for anything. And the one thing he got credit for was this poem that he didn't write, and it made him pretty famous.'" http://www.cnn.com/2000/books/news/12/06/foster.anonymous/Ho, ho, ho! 
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I Get it, TEd, I finally Get it. (So why am I so sad.)
Here in the Bible Belt we live by a saying,
Hate the Sin, love the Sinner
Even Angels don't apply this saying to puns and punsters.
Milum.
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ASp, how seriously can one take Mr. Foster's claim that the "The Night Before Christmas" was authored not by Clement C. Moore (as has been accepted for well over a century) but rather by Major Henry Livingston Jr.? There's nothing new here: The Livingston family has been claiming authorship for years -- and finding no takers. "No one has questioned the authenticity of this account [of Moore's authorship] except the descendants of one Henry Livingston, born in 1748...The Livingston family stoutly maintained that their ancestor was the true author of the ballad. Somehow it found its way into Moore's hands, they claimed, and More was unable to disown it once it had been attributed to him. Stevenson carefully considers the Livingston claim and roundly rejects it. The sole basis for it seems to be that Livingston did write some verses in anapest meter, but, as Stevenson says, all anapestic verse sounds the same."* (Martin Gardener (1991), relying upon Burton E. Stevenson, (1924). That seems solid authority: Mr. Gardner for years authored a monthly column for Scientific American; Mr. Stevenson (1872-1962) is prominent enough to be listed in bartleby.com.) The Livingston claim had been thoroughly investigated -- and rejected -- when a Livingston descendant triggered Foster's interest. Could Foster have simply concluded that a "man bites dog" story would garner him more attention, and royalties, than "dog bites man"? As best I can tell, he neither offered new evidence nor published in any academic journal, subjecting his view to peer review and critique -- and his claim has not achieved scholarly acceptance. ------- * "Anapest" is in the original; not meant in the slightest as a punning reference to any ayleur!
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Dear Keiva and Anna:
Have the psycholinguists investigated the poem? Can't they pin down just about anything to determined authorship? If they can't, if their powers are so weak, then there goes another favorite illusion of mine, up in morphs!
Best regards,
Wordwisher
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psycholinguists
Seems like just such a linguistic analysis was at the heart of Mr. Foster's research. A century of belief in a lie does not make it the truth. Witness long held beliefs that the common belief during the 15th century was that the Earth was flat and that Columbus was right in his opposition to those beliefs. Columbus and everybody else who cared to look at the evidence knew the Earth was round; Columbus was off by quite a bit regarding the size of the Earth.
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A century of belief in a lie does not make it the truth. Come now, faldage: that's a straw-man argument.
No one suggested that the "general belief" is automatically true. But the betting is that way, and one who would refute that belief has a heavy burden of proof -- particularly if the general belief has survived the test of serious scholarship.
Old notions can be crackpot -- but new notions can be crackpot too, and often are.
As to the specific case, see post below.
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As to the specific case: Foster, though a professor, apparently did not subject his claims to peer review and critique (he went straight to the popular press). He does not even mention Stevenson's contrary study. The book bears a strong smell of self-aggrandizement, a sense that his words are a godlike revealed wisdom: e.g.: "Foster reveals [that] our identities are encoded in our own language. Foster has discovered how to unlock that code, and has invented an entire new field."
IMHO, Foster suffers from what I call "smart person's disease": a diminished ability to recognize that one's own views might conceivably be mistaken. I emphasize that that is just MHO -- but it is a HO opinion backed by specific evidence.
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one who would refute that belief has a heavy burden of proof
I don't know if you're saying that's how it should be, but I certainly don't think so. Most people use Occam's Razor and only cut off the piece that they can swallow most easily. Why should the person who actually applies a critical eye to discover the truth be forced with the burden of proof just because the illogical answer is what's socially accepted?
This doesn't mean I'm taking sides in the 'Twas the Night Before Christmas indecision.
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Why should the person who actually applies a critical eye to discover the truth be forced with the burden of proof just because the illogical answer is what's socially accepted?
My logic, jazzo, is that when you opinion differs from the vast majority of informed people, which is more likely: (a) that one person (you) is illogical, or (b) that every one of hundreds (them) is illogical? A decent humility suggests the former; it seems a tad presumptuous to suppose otherwise. That's not dispositive, but it does indicate where the burden of proof lies.
This, or course, does not equally apply to those areas where an opinion is likely to be reached for emotive rather than informed reasons. And please note that I am speaking of informed opinions.
Put more pithily: In a dispute between one person and the universe, I will (absent special reason) put my bet on the universe.
(Parenthically: you and I may be using the phrase Ockham's Razor differently. As I understand the term, the razor also argues for presuming (a) over (b).)
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Wow, I just watched "Grumpier Old Men" for the first time, and one of Burgess Meredith's lines was about your former residence. He had just told Sophia Loren's "mother" that he'd been to Hawaii, and she asked, "Which island?". His reply: "Kummunnawannalayya". Sound it out if you need to! 
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when your opinion differs from the vast majority of informed people
Aside from the fact that the great majority of the people in this issue have been informed by the byline on the reprinting of the poem I must admit sufficient ignorance of the whole argument to ask you for some references for your dissent to Mr. Foster's claims. All I know is that he claimed to have done an analysis of the language in Mr. Moore's work and that of whoever he claims "really" did it and, on the basis of his work, believing that Mr. Moore wrote TNBC would be like believing that Dr. Seuss wrote the Declaration of Independence.
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Faldage, you ask ... for some references? Please see citations I provided above. They have stood the test of time. Why do you find them less convincing than Foster?
You note that the great majority of the people are ill-informed, merely believing what they have read.
1) So what? The "great majority of people" have the same basis for believing that the world is round -- but that does not disprove (or prove) their belief. Your point carries not logical weight.
2) I, however, specifically referenced and cited "informed" opinion.
3) By normal scientific standards, the opinion of one person (e.g., Foster) does not merit accepting his conclusion until it has been tested in the crucible of peer review.
You seem to have accepted Foster (without reading him); you say that disagreeing with him is like believing that Dr. Seuss wrote the Declaration of Independence. Faldage, your statement is IMHO credulous and snippy.
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I suppose I could accept Stevenson (1924) as a reference if there were a bibliography of Mr. Stevenson's works somewhere in sight. A search of bartleby.com shows only some notes about Mr. Stevenson as editor of some works on Victorian poetry (at least 18 volumes worth) 2nd edition, 1922, but nothing that I could find with the year 1924 associated with it.
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Faldage, I have the exact name of the Stevenson work at home, and will post it for you (by editing this post) when I get home from work. BTW, Stevenson also anthologized poetry. I have on my shelf a 4000-page (!) collection he put together, which went through several editions. Now you know why I started some "poetry" threads! Edit: Google up "Burton E. Stevenson" 1924 and you'll find Famous Single Poems And the Controversies Which Have Raged Around Them (London: George G. Harrap, 1924), which I believe was reprinted in 1977.
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The Declaration of Independence
By Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
We were so friendly you and I,
We see no longer eye to eye.
Oh what a shame, oh me, oh my.
We’re of your race,
Yet need our space,
Please let us be,
Oh my, oh me.
All the world has heard our cry,
And now they get to see us try.
We WILL be free
Oh my, oh me.
The people of this continent
Are with God’s gifts so confident,
Certain rights with blood we buy,
Oh me oh my, oh my oh me.
Governments are here to serve,
And from this view we will not swerve.
We do agree to disagree.
Oh my, oh me.
I got started on this on my lunch hour, but I need to get a huge amount of stuff done before I go home to do a medium amount of packing. I'll be back on 1/12/02, and I hope to see the rest of the declaration done by that time!
TEd
PS
I may get a chance to look in but certainly only briefly. Will be in hopefully sunny Tampa. I guess I should have inquired to see if there are any ayleurs in those parts. Let me know by tonight!
TR
TEd
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