Interesting Thing of the Day

NextBus / Friendlier mass transit through technology

Joe Kissell — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

One evening Morgen and I were at a dreams group meeting way across town. The most direct route home was by way of San Francisco’s MUNI light rail line, but as we approached our stop, we saw that we had just missed a train. Knowing how infrequently trains tend to run late at night, a friend who was waiting with us wondered out loud how long we might have to wait for the next one, and whether we should consider finding an alternate route. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, and after a few clicks on the keypad, I announced: “Looks like 11 minutes.” We decided to wait. Sure enough, exactly 11 minutes later, the train arrived. This little trick came courtesy of a high-tech service called NextBus.

Location, Location, Location
The idea behind NextBus is sophisticated yet elegant. Every vehicle on a transit line is equipped with a rooftop device that contains a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and a radio transmitter. The GPS receiver constantly tracks the vehicle’s exact location by satellite. This information is transmitted to a central computer, which calculates the amount of time it should take that vehicle to reach its next several stops, based on its current speed, typical travel time, and other variables. These predictions are continuously recalculated, so that even with delays, traffic, or detours, the estimates remain highly reliable. The information is available in real time via the Web and can be viewed using the built-in browsers on most cell phones and PDAs. In addition to time estimates for particular stops, you can even see a live map showing the locations of all the vehicles being tracked. Digital displays are also posted at some bus stops and shelters for added convenience.

Municipal governments and transit agencies subsidize the NextBus service—which is free to users—as a way to reduce frustration among riders. Knowing when the next bus is going to arrive can help you plan your schedule, avoid spending unnecessary time in the rain, and travel more efficiently. NextBus is also extremely useful for route planning. For example, there are usually several ways to get from place to place in San Francisco. If I know that a train won’t be coming for a while, I can opt for a subway or bus instead—perhaps more walking, but a shorter overall travel time.

Can You Track Me Now?
Of course, NextBus is far from perfect. I’ve seen the system predict the arrivals of trains that never came, and I’ve also been told the next train was 45 minutes away only to have one roll up the next minute. One of the reasons for the inaccuracies is that transit systems sometimes switch trains between lines for one reason or another. If a train from line A happens to be on track B, the system doesn’t know what to do with it, because it can’t tell what route it’s ultimately going to take. The tracking devices are also subject to electronic failure, and can sometimes get out of sync when going through tunnels. Then there’s the fact that the computer needs a certain amount of history in order to perform a calculation. I live near the beginning of a certain transit line; the first stop is only three minutes away. So when I ask NextBus when the next train is coming, it often gives a wildly inaccurate prediction 20 minutes or so in the future, based on the average departure times of the trains. A few seconds later, though, the prediction may become “3 minutes.”

The NextBus service is currently deployed in dozens of different transit agencies across the United States and England, and is expanding into Canada. However, some agencies still have only limited coverage. In San Francisco, for example, where all the light rail trains have tracking devices, only a tiny percentage of the buses do—even though the service has been in place since 1999. And in some other cities, the service is still in a pilot or demonstration stage, awaiting approval or funding for a full roll-out.

Still, NextBus is a textbook example of technology as it should be—useful, accessible, and simple. Unlike regular trains, the buses and rail lines that use city streets have no hope of running on a strict and reliable schedule. Although NextBus won’t make them arrive sooner, it keeps riders happier while they wait. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about NextBus...

For more details, visit the NextBus Web site at NextBus.com. In addition to learning about the technology behind the service, you can get real-time arrival estimates for public transit in numerous U.S. cities. The Nottingham NextBus site provides information for Route 11 in Nottingham, U.K.

NextBus uses patented technology to track buses. You can read about a lawsuit challenging patent infringement that was settled in early 2003.

Fortune Cookies / The authentic Japanese-American Chinese treat

Joe Kissell — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

For reasons I am at a loss to explain, I never tasted Chinese food until I went to college. Around the middle of my freshman year, I decided to make myself a “to do” list of experiences I’d always wanted to have. One of those things was trying Chinese food. Not long afterward, my roommate decided to take my cultural enlightenment into his own hands. “We’re going to Chinatown for supper tonight,” he said. Not only would he not take no for an answer, he even told me it was going to be a double date and who I was to ask out. I dutifully phoned the woman in question and off we all went, driving about an hour from the campus into the heart of Manhattan. That evening I had my first egg roll, my first wonton soup, and my first lo mein; I even managed to get the hang of chopsticks pretty readily. And needless to say, the meal ended with the obligatory fortune cookies, another novelty I’d never seen before. I’ve been a fan of Chinese cooking (and fortune cookies) ever since.

My adopted hometown of San Francisco also has a large and vibrant Chinatown, and I was delighted to learn that fortune cookies were in fact invented here. When we got married, Morgen and I decided to have a San Francisco-themed wedding. In addition to the San Francisco-shaped wedding cake (really), we got a bunch of those cardboard Chinese take-out containers, filled them with treats, and distributed them to all of our guests. Among the goodies was a custom-made fortune cookie with a special message thanking guests for attending.

You Will Have a Satisfying Dessert
I have always liked the idea of fortune cookies. As confections go, a fortune cookie is about the lightest dessert I can imagine, which is usually just what I’d hope for after a Chinese meal. I can’t recall ever having a fortune from a cookie come true, but there have been fortunes that gave me food for thought (so to speak), and even a patently goofy saying seems like a delightfully quaint way to end dinner. But even though I knew fortune cookies were invented in California, it never really sank in until recently that this made them an American idea that probably would be (and indeed is) considered strange in China. It turns out that the story is even weirder than that—fortune cookies are not merely an American invention, they’re a Japanese invention that was adapted for Americans and then co-opted by Chinese restaurant owners. That the fortune cookie, given its mongrel roots, has become so iconic of Chinese restaurants in America is truly amazing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There are several competing histories of the fortune cookie, none of which is entirely verifiable from recorded history. Many accounts trace the cookies’ origin back to 13th- and 14th-century China, which was then occupied by the Mongols. According to legend, secret plans for an uprising were hidden in moon cakes that would ordinarily have contained lotus nut paste, which was unpalatable to the Mongols. The successful uprising, planned with the help of the hidden notes, led to the formation of the Ming Dynasty. This story may be true, but I have seen no evidence that it inspired the treats we know of today as fortune cookies. There can be no doubt that the modern fortune cookie design originated in California.

Fame and Fortune Will Be Yours
However, there is quite a controversy over who actually invented them. David Jung, a Chinese immigrant living in Los Angeles who founded the Hong Kong Noodle Company, claims to have invented fortune cookies in 1918—though no one seems to know where the recipe or idea came from. The alternative and generally accepted story is that they were invented in San Francisco by a Japanese immigrant. Makoto Hagiwara was the landscape designer who created the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. According to Hagiwara, the fortune cookie was based on a Japanese treat called Tsujiura sembei. He sweetened the recipe to appeal to American tastes, enclosed thank-you notes in the cookies, and served them to his guests with tea. Depending on which account you read, Hagiwara began distributing the cookies in either 1907 or 1914, but in any case they clearly made their appearance well before the 1918 date claimed by Jung. Within a few years, however, Chinese restaurant owners in San Francisco had copied the recipe, replacing the thank-you notes with fortunes. The rest, as they say, is history.

Of course, over the past couple of decades, the fortunes that appear in fortune cookies have gotten sillier and more annoying. For one thing, they now almost always include “lucky numbers,” which mysteriously seem to match the pattern required for lottery entries. There’s also a trend toward smiley faces, which make me frown, and Chinese writing, which is just baffling considering the cookies’ origin. Even the fortunes themselves make less and less sense. Whatever happened to the simple “You will lead a long and prosperous life” or “Never eat fish on a Monday”? But when it comes to fortune cookies, I suppose an appeal to tradition is missing the point. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Fortune Cookies...

There are a great many (often contradictory) histories of fortune cookies on the Web. See for example:

You can buy customized fortune cookies online from:

Custom Fortune Cookie Company (I’ve ordered from them and can give them my personal recommendation)
FortuneCookieSupply.com
e-fortunecookie.com

Looking for collections of (real or simulated) fortune cookies online? Try Bad Cookie or Weird Fortune Collectiion.

For more information on San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden, see iNeTours.com.

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory has been making fortune cookies since 1962. They are not the largest factory in the U.S., nor do they use a machine to fold the cookies, as most other factories do. They do, however, offer tours.

Pastrami / Cure for the common deli

Joe Kissell — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

Sometimes the ideas for interesting topics come to me in rather roundabout ways. For instance, I was trying to come up with just one more topic that could somehow be construed as involving things that are stuffed. As usual, I asked my wife, Morgen, if she had any ideas. She made a few suggestions, none of which really grabbed me. Finally she said she was stumped and apparently gave up. A few minutes later, however, she handed me a book by Patricia Volk titled Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family. That was, of course, a very promising sign. Then she pointed out that the author’s family had run a restaurant in New York called Morgen’s—spelled the same way as my wife’s name. A lovely coincidence. (Morgen, it turns out, is the maiden name of the author’s mother—and also the name of a beagle that Volk and her sister once owned.) Flipping a few pages ahead, my wife showed me a picture of the author’s great-grandfather, Sussman Volk, whose claim to fame had been that he “brought pastrami to the New World.” Now we were getting somewhere.

All right, I understand that pastrami is not ordinarily stuffed or used to stuff anything else, but that’s not the point. The point is that I had never spent so much as five seconds thinking about pastrami before, but now that I knew there was at least one interesting story about it, I suddenly began to realize there were other questions to ponder too. Such as: What is pastrami, anyway?

Meet the Meat
Let me be candid here. I could probably count on both hands the number of times I’ve eaten pastrami in my life. It’s not that I have anything against it, I just never really think about it. When I walk into a deli—which is not all that often—I habitually gravitate toward the turkey and the roast beef. For all the times I’ve seen the corned beef, pastrami, and other cured meats sitting there, it has simply never occurred to me to order any. Nor, until yesterday, had it ever occurred to me to wonder exactly what it was; I vaguely realized that it was some sort of beef product, and that was pretty much that. But once I did start wondering, I found the answer kind of surprising.

The dictionary informs me that pastrami is a “highly seasoned cut of smoked beef.” However, there are lots of cuts of beef, and surely not every one of them that’s highly seasoned and smoked is pastrami. Or is it?

What Are You Smoking?
One way to make pastrami is to smoke corned beef. This, of course, brings up the question of what corned beef is in the first place. Curiously, corn has nothing to do with it. Perhaps a clearer term would have been “salt-cured brisket.” Brisket is the term for beef that comes from the lower chest of a cow, just behind the front legs. To make corned beef, this meat is cured—typically by soaking it in a seasoned brine for a few weeks. The grains of salt traditionally used to make the brine were about the same size as a grain of wheat (or “corn” in British English)—hence “corned” beef. When corned beef is smoked (to add flavor), seasoned with more spices—and, in most cases, steamed—it is then known as pastrami.

However, there’s more than one way to make pastrami. It need not start with corned beef—or indeed even with brisket. Pastrami can be made from other cuts of beef—such as the plate, which is located just behind the brisket. And rather than soaking it in brine, it can be dry-cured in a salt paste. Pastrami is often, though not always, covered with spices such as cracked pepper and coriander seeds before being smoked. In fact, there are so many different ways of making pastrami that the only thing you can really say for certain is that it’s a “highly seasoned cut of cured smoked beef.” So the dictionary was pretty close after all. However, similar methods are employed to make so-called “turkey pastrami,” “tuna pastrami,” and other beefless products.

Coming to America
But back to Sussman Volk…he had immigrated to New York from Lithuania in 1887 and set up a butcher shop. A friend asked Volk to store a suitcase in his basement while he traveled home to Romania for a few years. In exchange for the storage space, the Romanian friend gave Volk his pastrami recipe, and Volk began selling it at his butcher shop. It became such a hit that customers asking for pastrami sandwiches (on rye bread, of course) soon crowded the small shop. He moved a couple of doors down the street to a larger location with a few tables, and thus created New York’s first delicatessen.

The term delicatessen, by the way, is German in origin and originally meant “edible delicacies.” It later came to mean the shops where ready-to-eat meats and other foods were sold. Meanwhile, the word pastrami comes via Yiddish from the Romanian word pastramă, a term apparently borrowed from Turkish and meaning “cured meat”; it may also be related to the Romanian verb a păstra (“to preserve”).

So thank you, Morgen, for telling me about Patricia; thank you, Patricia, for telling me about Sussman (and another Morgen); thank you, Sussman, for delicatessens; and thank you, anonymous Romanian friend, for the pastrami recipe. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Pastrami...

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family by Patricia Volk is a wonderful book. The pastrami story is just one of many amazing tales; members of the author’s family were responsible for all kinds of noteworthy achievements.

Learn more about pastrami by reading What exactly is pastrami? at HowStuffWorks.com or How are corned beef and pastrami made? at the Food Network.

Want to make your own pastrami? Read detailed instructions at RandyQ’s Barbecue Ramblings, About.com, or Dan Gill’s Home Page.

Piñatas / History of a breakthrough

Joe Kissell — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

I can’t remember when I first learned of the existence of piñatas, but it must have been at a very early age. Perhaps a kindergarten teacher was demonstrating papier-mâché and told us that people sometimes use it to make colorful candy jars that you can break open with a stick at a birthday party. There’s nothing about this concept that any kid wouldn’t appreciate. Candy: good. Party games: good. Wanton destruction of decorative objects with full parental consent: good. All in all, a great concept, and I always wondered why I didn’t get to have one at my birthday parties.

Then one day, I went to a friend’s birthday party and had my first and only hands-on experience with a piñata. In fact, “hands-on” is an exaggeration. Like each of the other children, I was blindfolded, spun around, and allowed three swings with a long stick in what I could only guess was the right direction. I didn’t break the piñata; I don’t think I even hit it—the adult who was tugging at the rope from which the piñata was suspended to “make the game more challenging” saw to that. Then it was the next kid’s turn, and he had essentially the same experience. Finally, the birthday boy had his turn, and in what can only be described as an incredible coincidence, he managed to beat the stuffing out of the thing. Did I then at least get my fair share of the spoils? I did not. Being the deferential type, I did not push and shove to gather up the candy, and by the time I got to it, all the good stuff was gone. By the end of the party I had completely revised my opinion of piñatas as being a really bad idea.

As Italian as Pasta
By the time I visited Venice a few years ago, I had completely suppressed this unhappy memory. I saw the house reputed to have been Marco Polo’s, and thought that was pretty cool. I never guessed that this legendary explorer may have been to blame for yet another of my childhood traumas. In North America, most people think of the piñata as a Mexican phenomenon (albeit one that has become ubiquitous among other cultures as well). And so it is, but it took a rather circuitous path to get there—from, of all places, China. Probably.

While researching the origin of the piñata, I found a number of conflicting claims. Although pretty much everyone agreed that the piñata was brought to Mexico by the Spanish, some sources traced its ancestry from Spain back to Italy. Others said piñatas came from Italy, yes, but not originally—that Marco Polo discovered them in China and brought them to Italy on one of his excursions. Still others claimed that the piñata can be traced to rituals performed in parts of Africa well before it appeared in China.

As near as I can determine—and bear in mind, I’ve performed just a few hours of fairly casual research on the subject—the history of the piñata as we know it today did indeed begin in China (at least as far back as the 12th century). A figure in the shape of an animal such as an ox or buffalo was filled with seeds and broken to celebrate the coming of spring. During the Renaissance, a variation on this custom appeared in Italy—though whether Marco Polo was truly responsible for its importation is a matter of some dispute. One way or another, the Italian pignatta came to be a clay pot—often in the shape of a pineapple, not an animal—filled with trinkets rather than seeds. It was ceremonially broken on the first Sunday of Lent, so rather than having a merely seasonal symbolism it came to have religious significance as well.

From Italy the pignatta spread to Spain, where it took on a more ordinary shape, and apparently underwent a linguistic change as well. The term piñata came to be used not for the pot itself (called la olla), but for the game or ritual of breaking it. And the contents tended to be sweets, though the Spanish retained the pignatta’s association with Lent. Eventually, the clay pots started to be covered with colored paper and other decorations, approximating their modern appearance.

Jars of Clay
Spanish missionaries brought the piñata to Mexico as, of all things, an evangelistic tool. Apparently a similar ritual had evolved independently among both the Maya and the Aztecs. In the native Mexican tradition, a clay pot filled with trinkets was set on a high pole and broken in mid-December as part of a ritual honoring the birthday of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war. The Spanish co-opted this concept as part of their Christmas celebration, assigning Christian meanings to the ritual. The pot came to represent the devil, and striking it was symbolic of overcoming evil. At some point, the standard Mexican piñata design came to be a sphere with seven conical points—a shape that, depending on who you ask, was meant to represent the Star of Bethlehem (as appropriate to the Christmas story) or the seven deadly sins (as appropriate to the defeat of evil).

The tradition of designing piñatas to look like cartoon characters and other distinctly nonreligious forms is a relatively recent occurrence, dating back only to the early 20th century as far as I can tell. The switch from paper-covered clay pots to papier-mâché is even more recent, and may have occurred to satisfy the growing demands of American tourists wanting cheap souvenirs from Mexico. Meanwhile, the religious significance has all but disappeared, and though the piñata is still frequently associated with Christmas in Mexico, it’s equally common at birthday parties and other celebrations throughout the year.

Of course, you’ll never see a piñata at my parties, because after much soul-searching, I’ve decided I’m opposed to violence against hollow paper containers. But more importantly, think of all that innocent candy inside. The risk of collateral damage is just too great. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Piñatas...

These articles discuss the history of the piñata, assuming a Chinese origin:

Piñata: Party’s Game Is Ancient History
History of the Piñata by Wendy Devlin
The Rise of Dot-Communism by Theta Pavis in Wired News

Other sources, which trace the piñata to an Italian origin, include:

Carnevale: The Italian Pre-Lenten Festival at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
Piñatas
A Birthday Place (also mentions Aztec influences)

And according to Pinata and the Sala Ceremony by Latranei Gaibole, the ancestor of the piñata actually appeared first in Africa—though exactly where in Africa or when is unclear.

Modern Mummies / Resurrecting the art of arrested decay

Joe Kissell — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

We have all heard of people who had their bodies cryogenically preserved after death in the hope that some day, medical science will be able to bring them back to life and cure whatever illness caused their demise. That hope may be overly optimistic, but I can at least respect the logic behind the decision. Unlikely though it may be, I can’t say categorically that such a restoration is beyond the reach of some future science. With that single exception, however, I have never understood the ages-old practice of keeping dead bodies from decaying naturally. It’s not that I’m some soulless pragmatist, but I believe that death is the point at which a body becomes superfluous to its erstwhile owner—keeping it intact thereafter seems superstitious and creepy. Of course, that’s just my opinion. Some of my best friends are superstitious and creepy, and I don’t hold it against them.

Grave Concerns
Each culture has somewhat different beliefs about what should happen to a corpse. In North America, the majority of the deceased are embalmed so that they’ll look lifelike for a funeral several days later; they are then buried in airtight caskets inside concrete vaults or grave liners. Some people may derive comfort from the notion that a departed loved one is still somehow whole, but in ancient Egypt, much more was at stake than the feelings of the bereaved. During the centuries when the art of mummification was practiced, it was based on a deeply held belief that only if the tissues of one’s body were kept intact after death would the soul survive throughout eternity.

To oversimplify greatly, the goal of Egyptian mummification was to rid the body of moisture so that it would not decay. They had to start with the internal organs, which have the tendency to remain moist for a long time after death, providing a fertile breeding ground for bacteria. Some of the organs were deemed important enough to preserve separately; others, like the brain and kidneys, were seemingly useless and were discarded. The empty cavities were filled with a desiccant salt called natron, which also covered the outside of the body. After a period of a month or more, when it had absorbed all the moisture from the flesh, the salt was removed. The body was then stuffed with spices and sawdust to restore a more natural shape, covered with long strips of linen bandages, and buried in a sarcophagus.

Preservation Reborn
Thousands of years later, mummification is making a comeback. In 1994, Bob Brier, a professor at Long Island University in New York, performed an Egyptian-style mummification on a man who had died and left his body to science. Brier followed the historical procedures as closely as he could determine, in an effort to learn details about the process that could not be discerned simply by studying mummies that had been sitting around for millennia. At the time, Brier’s project was the subject of numerous news reports and even a National Geographic documentary. But now he has been upstaged by a new, high-tech method of mummification that is available to the general (dead) public—for a price.

Summum is a religious group based in Salt Lake City, Utah, founded in 1975 by Summum “Corky” Ra (né Claude Rex Nowell). Among other things, Summum teaches the importance of preserving the body after death—and conveniently, they offer just such a service. For about US$70,000, your body will be carefully preserved using a patented process that inhibits decay without drying out the flesh. Your mummified body will be placed into its own custom-made bronze sarcophagus, which can then be buried or entombed just like any other casket. Hundreds of people have already signed up for the service, but none of these people has died yet—so far, Summum has only mummified pets.

As enticing as this deal is, I can make you a better offer. For only $50,000, I would be happy to sit down with you and help you to feel better about the natural process of decay. I’ll even throw in a trip to Egypt and a large batch of my homemade chocolate chip cookies, which are guaranteed to make you happier in life (and, I’m sure, well beyond). —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Modern Mummies...

Bob Brier is the author of Egyptian Mummies: Unraveling the Secrets of an Ancient Art and Encyclopedia of Mummies.

The official Summum Mummification page has complete details about their program. The rest of the information on the site was too, ah, advanced for me to make much sense of.

Other articles about Summum and/or Bob Brier:

Spiritual organization offers modern mummification by Shelley Preston (Columbia News Service)
Show me the mummy! by Chris Colin (Salon.com)
How to Make a Mummy (National Geographic)
An Egyptian Mummification by Richard Deurer

Also see How Mummies Work by Tom Harris at HowStuffWorks.com.

Demosthenes' Stones / Improving your diction, Athenian style

Joe Kissell — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

It’s a good thing I had never heard of Demosthenes when I was a child. I would have gotten in trouble. My mom would have said, “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” And I would have replied, “Don’t you want me to be a famous orator like Demosthenes? I’m training!” And then I would have been sent to my room without any more of whatever my mouth was full of. Kids, this is why grownups are always saying things like, “You’re too young to understand. Just take my word for it.” It’s for your own good. And if you get in trouble for talking with your mouth full, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Repeat After Me
Even as an adult, I get in trouble over Demosthenes. A while back, Morgen and I were watching “My Fair Lady” on TV. For those unfamiliar with the story, a linguistics professor in London named Henry Higgins makes a wager with a friend that he can rid a working-class girl, Eliza Doolittle, of her Cockney accent and teach her to speak like a proper lady. In one of his many drills, he insists that Eliza fill her mouth with marbles and then read a series of phrases. So of course I said, “Oh, just like Demosthenes.” Morgen gave me one of her patented looks that means “How do you expect me to know these obscure facts if I don’t read about them on Interesting Thing of the Day?” I was tempted to respond with a look that meant “Oh come on, everybody knows about Demosthenes,” but I opted instead for the path of marital concord. After all, one shouldn’t look a gift topic in the mouth.

Appropriately enough, Demosthenes had a name that, for many English-speaking people, is a tongue twister. I have always pronounced it “di MAHS thə neez,” which is what my trusty dictionary says. However, no less an authority than Demosthenes Spiropoulos, proprietor of the Web site WorldOfDemosthenes.com, says: “The name is pronounced: Dee-moss-sta-kness.” So take your pick; I suppose it depends on how authentically Greek you want to sound (which, in my case, is not at all).

Speaker System
The story is this. Demosthenes lived in Athens from 384 B.C. to 322 B.C. As a young man, he suffered from a speech impediment—which may have been a stutter, an inability to pronounce the “r” sound, or both. He designed a series of exercises for himself to improve his speech. According to legend, he practiced speaking with stones in his mouth, which forced him to work very hard to get the sounds out. When his diction became clearer, he got rid of the stones and found he was able to enunciate much more effectively than before. He also practiced reciting speeches while running and speaking over the roar of ocean waves to improve his projection. These strategies must have worked, because Demosthenes achieved fame as the greatest orator in ancient Greece. He is best known for his passionate speeches urging the Greek citizens to defend themselves against invading Macedonian king Philip II.

Naturally this story is repeated often with a moral of “work hard, be persistent, and you will succeed.” Alas for Demosthenes, historical acclaim is all he got for his efforts. His speeches, though popular and well-received, did not prevent Greece’s conquest by Macedonia. Shortly thereafter, Demosthenes was falsely accused of taking a bribe and sent to prison. He escaped, but remained in exile until Alexander the Great died. Demosthenes then returned to Athens and once more tried to lead a popular uprising. He failed again, but not without attracting the attention of the authorities. When he learned that he faced imminent capture and possibly death, he committed suicide by taking poison he had long kept hidden in a pen. Tragic though his end was, the story of Demosthenes’ dramatic forensic achievements continues to inspire speakers to this day. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Demosthenes' Stones...

The S Curve / What is wrong with success?

Rajagopal Sukumar — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

Guest Article by Rajagopal Sukumar

While the saying “success begets success” has almost become a cliché, there is no dearth of stories covering inexplicable failures of extremely successful people and corporations. Reading some of these stories and the books on this topic led me to the question: What if there is something fundamental that we are missing about success that leads to all these spectacular failures?

S Curve
My research brought me to the fascinating concept of the S Curve. Apparently, when you plot expertise with respect to time, it traces an S-shaped curve.

As depicted in the accompanying diagram, when we begin learning a skill, we are a bit slow initially at the tail of the S curve. As time progresses, learning proceeds at a dramatically increased speed, helping us to climb the steep slope of the S curve very quickly. At the top of the slope, we are deemed experts in that particular skill. From then on, even if we put a lot of effort into improving ourselves in that area, the resultant learning will not be proportional. The top end of the S curve is also called the slope of diminishing returns. At the top of the S curve, many people succumb to the effects of hubris, which gives them a false sense of security because the world believes and acknowledges that they are the experts in that field. Unfortunately, the world keeps moving and some other new skill becomes important, which renders this expert obsolete.

Success May Breed Failure
John R. O’Neil has written an extremely interesting book titled Paradox of Success. In this book, O’Neil analyzes many high-profile failures and in the process explains how the S curve closely fits the pattern of learning and how success causes people to fail because some strengths have become so accentuated to now be the cause of their failure.

Is there a way out? What do we do after we reach the peak of the S curve?

One answer is that we can start a new S curve. By analogy, consider mountain climbing, which is sort of similar to learning new skills. Initially, we start at the bottom with a clear estimate and a timeline to climb the mountain. As we come to grips with the terrain of the mountain, we are able to climb more efficiently and reach the summit. Having reached the summit, we cannot stay there for long, depending on the altitude. For instance, if we were climbing Mt. Everest, we could be there at the peak only for a few minutes due to atmospheric conditions and human limitations. Descent becomes important pretty soon. But if we are keen mountaineers, we set our sights on the next mountain to climb. In a similar way, when we reach the top of the S curve of a particular skill, we should start the S curve of the next important skill. Ultimately, our skill set should look like a mountain range with a lot of mountains (or a lot of S curves) in it representing various skills that we have learned.

Many of us trace multiple S curves in our lives as we learn new skills, but mostly these are incremental or evolutionary transitions. It is harder to make major or revolutionary transitions—ones that involve us moving from one career to a completely different one—say, a teacher becoming a politician.

Master of the S Curve
To take the idea of making revolutionary transitions to its extreme, I wanted to see if there is anyone out there we could call the Master of the S Curve—someone I define as having had at least three revolutionary S curves in his or her life. I set the threshold at three, because a lot of people have two S curves—for instance, many politicians come from other walks of life, and many sportspersons become commentators or coaches. Therefore, a lot of them automatically have two S curves.

Using a quick and dirty research approach, I looked at individuals both contemporary and historical, including TIME magazine’s 100 greatest people list and other Greatest-People-of-All-Time lists. I was looking for people who reached a high degree of success in one field, transitioned into an unrelated field, achieved success in that field, and so on—3 or more times. Since I felt that innately multi-faceted geniuses such as Leonardo da Vinci excelled in many fields at the same time, I excluded them. Of course, I also did not include people who did not become famous because it is hard to know about them. Believe it or not, I could shortlist only two people: Albert Schweitzer (musician/theologian, doctor, humanitarian/social reformer) and Benjamin Franklin (printer/publisher, inventor, statesman/politician).

Many scientists have shown that when you expect something to turn out a certain way, it almost always does—a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a note of caution, while we should be aware of the S Curve and how it affects us, we should not automatically assume and expect that the S Curve will play out no matter what we do. If we do that, we will take away the power of human endeavor. —Rajagopal Sukumar

Guest author Rajagopal Sukumar lives in Chennai, India and serves as the Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) of a software consulting company that specializes in the global delivery model. You can read his personal blog at www.sastwingees.org.

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More Information about The S Curve...

The Paradox of Success by John R. O’Neil is a must-read book on this subject.

For more information on my shortlisted Masters of the S Curve, read about Albert Schweitzer or Benjamin Franklin. Self-fulfilling prophecies are described at Fact-Index.com.

Although this article covers the application of S Curve to the acquisition of expertise, S Curves are something akin to a law of nature and has been applied to many other facets of our world. If you want to learn more about the fascinating applications of S curves, please read Predictions by Dr. Theodore Modis, where he uses them to model the staying power of products, birthrate among women, number of fatal car accidents, and many others. Vito Volterra and Alfred Lotka built a set of mathematical equations for the S Curve known as the Lotka-Volterra Equations, which they used to model the predator-prey population. Cesare Marchetti, an Austrian physicist, used the equations to predict energy demands.

Some more food for thought—are there corporations that have three or more revolutionary S Curves? From a corporate failure perspective, Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma is a seminal work. The enormous amount of research that went into that book and the theoretical underpinnings that Christensen describes has made a huge impact on students of strategy such as me. The Innovator’s Solution—the follow-on to The Innovator’s Dilemma—had an even greater impact on me, owing to what I believe is a more cogent theoretical foundation than the first book.

Perpetual Motion Machines / The endless quest for free energy

Joe Kissell — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

I distinctly remember learning the laws of thermodynamics in a science class—it must have been around eighth grade. After explaining these laws, the teacher added, “…and that is why perpetual motion machines are impossible.” So this fact has been firmly implanted in my brain for a very long time.

What I did not realize back then is that over the centuries, hundreds—if not thousands—of hopeful inventors have dedicated their lives to disproving these laws by building machines they believed would run indefinitely with no input of energy. Patent offices around the world became so inundated with designs for alleged perpetual motion machines that they now routinely dismiss such submissions without so much as a glance. But although every such design ever attempted has failed, the pace of research to find that subtle trick that results in perpetual motion has, if anything, accelerated. While doing some research on another topic, I stumbled upon a Web site listing an incredible number of current or recent projects. And sadly, many of these are not merely futile but fraudulent, as their developers convince investors to fork over large sums of money to pay for something that is just not possible.

That said, the books and Web sites created to debunk claims of perpetual motion technology are equally numerous—and equally passionate, if not more so. As obsessed as true believers may be in proving their claims, the skeptics are just as obsessed with disproving them, and greater enthusiasm from one camp is met with renewed fervor from the other. Whether this self-reinforcing feedback loop itself constitutes perpetual motion is a question better left for philosophers.

The term perpetual motion is perhaps a bit misleading, since technically, nothing about the laws of thermodynamics prohibits something from moving forever. Arguably, the motion of planets in space and electrons in atoms is, in some sense, perpetual. But the point of building a perpetual motion machine is typically not just to get something to stay in motion, but to do work of some sort—propel a vehicle, power a mill, heat your coffee, or run your computer. Any output of energy (whether in the form of heat, electricity, motion, or whatever) that goes beyond the input minus what the machine itself uses is what conflicts with the laws of thermodynamics. Nowadays, designers are concerned less with producing motion than with producing excess energy in the form of electricity or heat, so terms such as “free energy” and “over-unity” are often applied to devices, moving or not, whose energy output ostensibly exceeds their input.

Laying Down the Law
For those of you who haven’t been in eighth grade recently, here’s a quick review of the laws of thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Thus, the total energy within a system is a constant; although a system can turn one form of energy into another (say, electricity into motion), the net output can never be greater than the net input. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the Law of Entropy, states that heat cannot be turned into other forms of energy with 100% efficiency. Or, to put it more generally, in any system involving the conversion of energy (per the First Law), some amount of energy will be dissipated into the environment in the form of heat. (There’s also a third law and a zeroth law—no kidding—but those are not usually applicable to perpetual motion machines.)

A machine could achieve perpetual motion only by violating one or both of the first two laws of thermodynamics. For example, if there were some sort of motor that spun on its own forever, that would be a violation of the first law, because it would produce energy output without energy input. And if there were a device that converted electricity into motion, and then used that motion to drive a generator producing more electricity (to keep the cycle going indefinitely), that would violate the second law, which predicts that eventually the loss of energy due to inefficiency would cause the machine to stop.

Running on Empty
So the question most perpetual-motion and free-energy enthusiasts start with is, “Who says I can’t break those laws, anyway?” Surely, the inventor says, there must be some way to exploit gravity, magnetism, or other natural forces in such a way as to produce a machine that will run forever. And the attempts over the years to do so have been nothing if not creative. Some devices are purely mechanical; others depend on water, gases, or chemical reactions; still others have no visible moving parts, operating at a molecular or even quantum level. And yet, each design that has actually been built—large or small, simple or complex—has eventually stopped producing energy (if in fact it ever worked at all), just as the laws of thermodynamics said would happen.

Of course, there is a nagging problem. The standard scientific definition of a perpetual motion machine is “a machine that violates one or more laws of thermodynamics.” But this sounds suspiciously like an attempt to define such machines out of existence—it allows skeptics to say, “Whatever it is you’ve designed, it can’t be a perpetual motion machine because we define such machines as ones that can’t possibly exist.” It’s rather like saying, “I define a flying saucer as an imaginary spacecraft. Therefore, whatever you saw in the sky, it could not by definition have been a flying saucer.” However well justified scientific skepticism may be, this is a rhetorically unfair tactic. And it has only spurred free-energy proponents to work harder to prove they’re right.

So Near, and Yet So Far
In a typical scenario, an inventor has an idea for a novel design. When the machine is actually constructed, it seems to work for a while but then stops, prompting the inventor to conclude that with further refinement, it would keep going. Or a device appears to produce excess energy, until it is discovered that the measurement technique was flawed, and that energy from another source was in fact being applied to the system. Because it’s possible to make extremely efficient machines that run for a very long time with just a small initial injection of power, it’s tempting to believe that a truly perpetual solution is just around the corner. The only problem is, the distance between “a very long time” and “forever” is infinite.

Despite the best efforts of scientists, engineers, and crackpots alike, the laws of thermodynamics have held their own and show no signs of being breakable. Several large cash prizes have been offered for people who can construct a working perpetual motion machine and prove its capabilities under rigorous test conditions. The prizes lie unclaimed so far. But for someone to offer such a prize is not merely a statement of confidence in the laws of science—it’s a dare. And I think that deep down, many skeptics hope someone eventually proves them wrong. Free energy is something we all wish we could believe in, like world peace—and entropy makes one as elusive as the other. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Perpetual Motion Machines...

Eric’s History of Perpetual Motion and Free Energy Machines is a long list of attempts to create perpetual motion machines from the 13th century to the present.

The best and most complete site I’ve found covering perpetual motion is Donald Simanek’s The Museum of Unworkable Devices. Other resources include:

Perpetual Motion Machines by Randall Woods
Perpetual Motion by Kevin T. Kilty
Why there aren’t any perpetual motion machines by Bob Jenkins
Perpetual Motion in the Wikipedia
The sci.skeptic FAQ on Strange Machines: Free Energy and Anti-Gravity
MadSci FAQ: Perpetual Motion

Eric Krieg offers a $10,000 prize to anyone who can successfully demonstrate a “free energy” machine.

For a more thorough discussion of attempts to build perpetual motion machines, read Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession by Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume. Or, to get the other side of the story, see Quest for Zero Point Energy Engineering Principles for Free Energy or Tapping the Zero Point Energy: Free Energy in Today’s Physics by Moray B. King. (But remember: I warned you.)

There have been a couple of attempts to set the laws of thermodynamics to music—including “Entropy” by Moxy Früvous (buy it on the iTunes Music Store | lyrics here), on their B album (iTunes Music Store | Amazon.com) and “First and Second Law” by Flanders and Swann. Bela Fleck has an album of classical music (played on the banjo, natch) called Perpetual Motion.

Propeller Beanies / The story of the geek's icon

Joe Kissell — Fri, 31 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

When I write technical books and articles, I generally assume my audience is composed of ordinary people, not programmers or computer experts. I try to provide enough context and detail so that any reasonably intelligent person can get the gist of what I’m saying, even without prior experience in the topic I’m discussing. But in one of my ebooks, I described a certain procedure that, because it was somewhat complex, should only be attempted by those with a fair amount of computer know-how. The way I put it was this: “Unlike everything else in this book, this rather involved (and entirely optional) technique does require you to wear a propeller beanie…”

A few months later, I got an email from the man who was translating the book into German. His very reasonable question: “What is a propeller beanie?”

I found it surprisingly difficult to answer the question. I can describe what a propeller beanie looks like, but if the translator put the German equivalent for “child’s skullcap with a decorative plastic propeller” in the book, that would not be meaningful to the readers—they’d wonder, “Why must I wear a silly hat to be able to do such-and-such with my computer?” After explaining, as best I could, the cultural significance of the propeller beanie in America, I told the translator that it would be best just to say, “This technique requires you to be technically proficient.” I have no idea if there is any shorthand symbol in German that represents the same bundle of ideas that the propeller beanie does in English. But this exchange, besides bringing back memories of graduate linguistics courses in the problems of translation, made me wonder where the propeller beanie actually came from, and how it came to mean what it does today.

Putting On Your Thinking Cap
Science fiction author and cartoonist Ray Nelson claims to have invented the propeller beanie while still a high school student in 1947. The story is that he and some friends decided to take some pictures parodying science-fiction icons of the day. To represent a hero with an antigravity device, someone decided they should put a propeller on a hat, and Nelson quickly put one together from scraps of plastic he had lying around his room. One of his friends, George Young, believed at the time (and apparently still does) that Nelson bought the cap at a dime store rather than making it himself; Nelson maintains to this day that the cap was his invention. In any case, they all agreed the propeller beanie was a great joke, and Young later wore the hat at a science fiction convention—to much general approval. So Nelson drew a cartoon featuring Young in a propeller beanie as a symbol of science fiction fans. This cartoon led to other cartoons and eventually to an animated TV show called “Beany and Cecil” in which one of the characters, Beany Boy, wore the eponymous propeller beanie. The show in turn led inevitably to merchandising, and thus a cultural phenomenon was born.

There being (as far as I’ve been able to determine) no drawings or stories of the propeller beanie that predate Nelson’s claim, I believe that he did in fact invent it. Due to a series of misunderstandings, Nelson was not properly credited with the invention when it was first commercialized, and though the manufacturer (and the cartoonist from whom they licensed the design) made millions on the propeller beanie, Nelson himself received none of that money. In any case, no one disputes that Nelson was responsible for popularizing the propeller beanie through his cartoons.

Mark of the Geeks
Meanwhile, the sci-fi fans who had made their own propeller beanies by hand and worn them proudly when they were an “in” joke stopped wearing them as soon as they became popular among the mainstream youth of America. Although the propeller beanie appeared in comics for years afterward, the fad itself soon faded, and any child over a certain age who still wore such a cap was considered socially unsophisticated—reinforcing the stereotype of the science fiction fan as being out of touch with reality (including fashion trends). Eventually, however, computer enthusiasts resurrected the propeller beanie as a self-deprecating badge of honor—as if to say, “Yes, we know we’re out of touch with reality, and we’re proud of it!”

That is the sense in which I’ve always known the propeller beanie: a representation of the nerdy programmer. In the early 1990s, I was living in Pittsburgh and working as a computer graphic artist. A few blocks from my office was the headquarters of a small software company, and I got to know several of the employees there through a mutual friend. This company (which has been out of business for many years now) had a group of faithful hangers-on who served as beta testers—people who try out new software before its release and look for bugs, so that they can be fixed before it ships. I signed on as a tester for one of their products, and dutifully found and reported as many bugs as I could. When the software shipped, they honored their best beta testers by giving them a propeller beanie and a certificate that said “Order of the Beanie.” Getting my own beanie was a proud moment, and I think I still have that certificate somewhere. Later, when a friend and I started a (short-lived) consulting company called ComputerGeeks, Inc., we used a picture of a propeller beanie as our logo; our slogan was “We’re geeks so you don’t have to be.”

The classic propeller beanie is brimless and multicolored, typically with alternating wedges of yellow and red. Some modern designs add a brim—effectively making it into a baseball cap with a propeller. You can even find motorized propeller beanies. What you cannot find, of course, is a propeller beanie with enough lift to fly off your head—much less take you with it. But the computer geek culture actually uses the propeller beanie in much the same way as it was originally intended: a way to make fun of oneself and the sillier side of the technology we love. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Propeller Beanies...

You can read much more by and about Ray Nelson on his Web site, RayNelson.com.

Other versions of the story:

Where Propheads Come From by Loren MacGregor
Where Propheads Come From—A Second View by Robert J. Vitello
Comments by Chad Childers on Roymeo’s Blog

In 1950, Jerome Lemelson patented a variation on the propeller beanie that provided a tube the wearer could blow into to spin the propeller.

You can buy the classic (multicolored, brimless) propeller beanie from such online sources as Archie McPhee, VillageHatShop.com, and Hats in the Belfry.

The Hurdy-Gurdy / Violin, bagpipes, and kazoo combined

Jackie Chappell — Wed, 29 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

Guest Article by Jackie Chappell

In 1996, I bought an album I knew next to nothing about, by an artist I had never heard of before, on the strength of the album being issued on Peter Gabriel’s excellent Real World record label. The album was “Big City Secrets” by Joseph Arthur, and from the very first track I knew that I had made a good purchase. However, I really sat up and listened when I got to track 3, “Mikel K.” In the background of the song there was a really odd-sounding instrument. It sounded a bit like a violin (or a folk-style fiddle) played with a never-ending bow, and had a bagpipe-like drone note in the background. As if that wasn’t enough sonic complexity for one instrument, there was also a rhythmic buzzing sound, slightly reminiscent of a kazoo. What in the world was it? A quick check of the liner notes revealed only one instrument that I hadn’t heard of before—a hurdy-gurdy.

Don’t They Usually Come with a Monkey?
The first image that popped into my head was of a kind of barrel organ, where a handle is turned to drive bellows which force air through organ pipes, and which is also usually accompanied by some kind of simian assistant. I was so fascinated by the sound that I did some research, and found that my misconception was a common one. The hurdy-gurdy (or vielle à roue, as it is known in France) is played by turning a handle, but the resemblance to a barrel organ ends there. The body of the instrument can be box-shaped or with a rounded back like a lute, and many examples are beautifully decorated with inlaid wood. The handle turns a wheel covered in rosin, which vibrates the strings; the hurdy-gurdy functions like a violin with an endless bow, so that there is no pause in the sound at the end of a bow stroke. Instead of sounding notes using the fingers, the musician presses sliding, un-sprung keys which make contact with the strings and shorten them to make a sound of the required pitch. The drone comes from one or more strings which do not get pressed by the keys, and therefore sound the same notes continuously. The final part of the puzzle is the moveable bridge, or chien (French for dog), which supports one of the drone strings and can be manipulated by a skilled player so that it vibrates against the body of the hurdy-gurdy during playing, making a rhythmic buzzing noise. The whole ensemble has a driving, continuous sound, with its own percussion produced by the chien; it is impossible not to tap your feet along with the music.

The Golden Age of the Hurdy-Gurdy
It should therefore come as no surprise that the heyday of the hurdy-gurdy was in the medieval period, when it was used to accompany dancing. However, between the 14th and 16th centuries, the complexity and range of the popular music of the day increased beyond the capabilities of the instrument, and it fell out of favour with professional musicians, while remaining a firm favourite in rural areas with folk musicians. There was a bit of a hurdy-gurdy revival in the 17th to 18th centuries, as the instrument was improved and much new music was written for it. Oddly, this was partly due to its former association with the rural peasantry. The French court of Louis XIV started a fashion for what might be called “peasant chic”: the King was fascinated by his own idea of the simple, rural life (of course, this was a somewhat rose-tinted view, ignoring all the harsh, unsanitary, and downright unpleasant aspects of peasant life), and the hurdy-gurdy fitted in with this fashion perfectly. Eventually, the fashion changed, and by the French Revolution, the hurdy-gurdy had been returned to the rural working people. Today the peculiar sound of the instrument has a great affinity for all kinds of modern music, as I discovered. It makes an interesting acoustic counterpoint to largely electronic music, and the Celtic/Middle-Eastern feel of the sound complements world and folk music equally well. In my opinion, there are few pieces of music that aren’t improved by the addition of a hurdy-gurdy—but perhaps I’m a bit biased.

The Sad and Seedy Side
The hurdy-gurdy also has a dark side to its history, which can be traced back to Hessen, Germany in the 1800s. Poverty was rife in rural areas because of increasing family sizes and the division of inherited land, so farmers started to make brooms and fly whisks in the winter which they then sold in the summer as pedlars. Initially, they sold their goods locally, but their trade soon spread to other areas of Europe, and as far as Britain and Russia. Being shrewd folk, they realised that brooms are not the most fascinating of household commodities, and that they would gather more of a crowd of potential purchasers if some form of entertainment was included. This took the form of pretty young “hurdy-gurdy girls” who danced and played music. Inevitably, the girls became more of a draw than the brooms, and before long, young girls were being persuaded by “soul-merchants” to leave their homes and families to play and dance in seedy music halls for sailors, miners, and other groups of men bereft of female company. The girls performed as far afield as gold-rush California, Cuba, and Australia. Some were drawn into prostitution, and while a lucky few became rich from their trade, most led miserable lives and returned home poor and ill. For many years, the trade was a public secret, with officials turning a blind eye (or even profiting from it) but eventually it changed from public secret to public scandal, and was finally outlawed in 1865 by a government edict.

Hurdy-Gurdy Gurus
So who is the Jimi Hendrix of the hurdy-gurdy scene? My vote would go to Nigel Eaton. His father, Chris, also makes the instruments, which must be handy if he has a Pete Townsend moment at a gig, and smashes up his hurdy-gurdy. Nigel has formed numerous groups centered around the hurdy-gurdy, including Blowzabella and Ancient Beatbox, as well as playing as a session musician with performers as diverse as Led Zeppelin and Joseph Arthur. In fact, this is where I came in—Nigel Eaton was playing on the Joseph Arthur track I mentioned at the start of this article. Like the rosined wheel of the hurdy-gurdy, I have come full circle. —Jackie Chappell

Guest author Jackie Chappell is a biologist at the University of Birmingham (UK).

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To get your first taste of the hurdy-gurdy the same way I did, listen to Big City Secrets (Amazon.com | ) by Joseph Arthur.

Hurdy-Gurdy at the Oscars: At the 2004 Academy Awards, Alison Krauss sang “You Will Be My Ain True Love” from the soundtrack of Cold Mountain. Sting, who wrote the song, accompanied Krauss on the hurdy-gurdy. You can see a picture here.

If you’re burning with curiosity to hear a genuine hurdy-gurdy, there are some excellent sound samples here. The clip labelled “The Dining Table” is particularly good, and shows off the buzzing chien to great effect. If the bug bites, Alden and Cali Hackmann’s Olympic Musical Instruments site has an exhaustive discography of recordings featuring the hurdy-gurdy. You can read about the “Hurdy-Gurdy Girls” at the wonderfully named Universe of Bagpipes. Robert A. Green has also written a history of the instrument in 18th century France. If this article has inspired you to learn how to play, a trip to Chris Eaton’s Hurdy-Gurdy Site would be a good place to start.

The Story of Doughnuts / The truth, the hole truth . . .

Joe Kissell — Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

In the mid-1990s, I visited Las Vegas for the first time. I was there for an internet conference, and a friend of mine who had been there many times took it upon himself to show me all the standard tourist sites and make sure I got the complete Las Vegas experience. We walked down the Strip, taking in the obligatory pirate show, erupting volcano, and other spectacles. But there was one sight I had never heard of that was later to become a regular pilgrimage for me: the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts shop in the Excalibur hotel.

At that time, Krispy Kreme hadn’t expanded to become the phenomenon it is today. The only commercial doughnut shop chain I had ever known was Dunkin’ Donuts. But Krispy Kreme was definitely something special. For one thing, visitors could watch the doughnuts being made; a window ran along the side of the shop where the line formed. I was fascinated by the mechanism that flipped the doughnuts over in the oil when they were half-cooked, and watched in awe as they passed through a curtain of glaze. Although doughnuts are such a simple food, I felt I was watching something magical. Then I tasted one, and was even more impressed. I had never known what a fresh, hot doughnut was like—the difference from what I had experienced before is like that of fresh bread hot from the oven compared to week-old supermarket bread. It was light, soft, perfectly sweet—delicious. I couldn’t understand why Krispy Kreme hadn’t taken over the world yet; of course, it was only to be a matter of time.

When a local newspaper ran an article about the history of doughnuts, it got me wondering how many other things about doughnuts I had been taking for granted all along. I decided to do a bit of research.

From Oily Cakes to Doughnuts
Doughnuts as we know them today originated in the mid-1800s. Their predecessor was the olykoek, a treat Dutch immigrants to the U.S. made by frying the leftover bits of bread dough in hot oil. Exactly how the name “doughnut” came to be used is the subject of some disagreement. According to some sources, the Dutch twisted their dough into knots, hence “dough knots”. Others point out that the olykoeken tended not to cook through in the very middle, so some makers would put nuts in the center (“dough-nuts”) to make them more palatable.

The uncooked centers seem to have been, directly or indirectly, the reason behind the hole. According to several widely diverging accounts, the doughnut hole was the invention of a New England sea captain named Mason Crockett Gregory (or Hansen Gregory or Hanson Gregory, depending on who you ask) around 1847. Gregory’s mother Elizabeth made olykoeken and sent them with her son on his journeys to sea. The least likely but most colorful version of the story, and therefore the one I like best, is that Gregory needed a place to put his olykoek while he steered the boat, so he impaled it on one of the spokes of the steering wheel. Other sources say that Gregory came up with the idea in a dream or claimed to have received it from angels; some say he simply didn’t like the uncooked centers (or the nuts his mother filled them with) and poked them out; still others say he may have encountered a cake with a hole in the middle during his journeys and decided to adapt the idea to the olykoeken. Whatever Gregory’s real reason for adding the hole, it had the beneficial effect of making the doughnuts cook more evenly, and the idea quickly caught on.

Success Rolls On
Nearly thirty years later, in 1872, John Blondell received the first patent for a doughnut cutter. Doughnut technology advanced significantly over the next few decades. By the 1930s, automated doughnut-making machines were producing the treats in huge quantities. And in the 1940s and 1950s, chains like Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts sprang up, taking mass-produced doughnuts to the masses. In Canada, meanwhile, the name most often associated with doughnuts is Tim Horton, a former hockey player who lent his name to a nationwide chain of doughnut shops.

Fond though I am of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, I have become increasingly aware that the doughnut illuminati don’t take them very seriously. I asked my friend Russ, a doughnut connoisseur, where to find the best doughnuts in San Francisco. Without any hesitation, he said, “Oh, Wirth Brothers Pastry Shop on Geary. They’re the best by far; I’ve been going there for years.” If there was something better than Krispy Kreme, I had to experience it for myself. In the interest of science, I set out on a field trip.

Hole Is Where the Heart Is
Wirth Brothers is a small, inconspicuous bakery; their doughnuts are barely even noticeable in the display case among the cakes and pastries. But I went in and ordered a few, assuring the owner that they came with the highest recommendation. She smiled knowingly; apparently she gets that a lot. The current proprietor is neither a Wirth nor a brother, but she’s been making doughnuts by hand for 28 years, following the recipe of the store’s original owner, who opened the business in the 1930s. She said the recipe is no secret, but that the key is the half-hour of hand mixing they do every morning, which gives the doughnuts their unique texture. “Come back at 8:00 in the morning,” she advised me, “to get them when they’re hot.”

I then headed to the local Krispy Kreme, where even in the evening, the “Hot Doughnuts Now” sign was illuminated, signifying the availability of doughnuts fresh off the conveyor belt (as well as free samples for each customer). I carefully compared the Wirth Brothers doughnuts with the Krispy Kreme, trying to maintain a properly objective attitude. The doughnuts from the bakery were significantly larger, and much chewier. When I bit into one, my teeth met some resistance halfway through; I found this “al dente” quality quite pleasing. The Krispy Kremes, however, were uniformly light; it was like biting into sweet, slightly oily air. I repeated the experiment on another pair of doughnuts, just to be scientifically responsible. There was no doubt: Krispy Kreme was merely fantastic, compared to the heavenly perfection of the Wirth Brothers doughnut. To be absolutely sure, though, I will have to repeat this experiment at various times of day and at numerous outlets around the country. I love science. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about The Story of Doughnuts...

The first article I read on doughnut history was Sugary Dreams by Silke Tudor in the SF Weekly. A different spin is found in Doughnuts: A Definitive History by Mr Breakfast; yet another version of the story is found in Kimberly Skopitz’s A short history of doughnuts.

Krispy Kreme franchises are spreading like a benign virus, and although profits (and stock prices) have slipped due to the inexplicable low-carb fad, I have every confidence in their long-term success. Dunkin’ Donuts and Tim Hortons are less trendy these days, but still worth a visit.

Read about the history and strategies of Krispy Kreme in Making Dough: The 12 Secret Ingredients of Krispy Kreme’s Sweet Success by Kirk Kazanjian and Amy Joyner. If it’s doughnut science you’re interested in, check out How to Dunk a Doughnut: The Science of Everyday Life by Len Fisher.

I didn’t feel it was worth mentioning the obvious in the article, but the doughnuts I was describing are the traditional, plain glazed, raised (or yeast) variety. Cake-like doughnuts are simply not real doughnuts, in my opinion, and while I do admit to an occasional hankering for a jelly- or custard-filled doughnut, it has never seemed quite right to me to call them “doughnuts” since they’re not shaped like a ring.

Sedona's Energy Vortexes / The world's most popular invisible tourist attraction

Joe Kissell — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

Allow me to get this disclaimer out of the way right up front: today’s interesting thing might not exist. But let’s be fair—I am not one to judge something by its ontological status alone. If it does exist, it’s very interesting indeed, and if it doesn’t, the widespread belief in its existence is equally interesting. I am referring to a natural phenomenon supposedly found in several places around Sedona, Arizona: something called an energy vortex.

The town of Sedona, about two hours’ drive north of Phoenix, is situated in an area of rare and stunning natural beauty. Towering rock formations and iron-rich reddish soil give the landscape an otherworldly appearance. This looks like what you imagined as the Old West, and countless films have been shot here. Kids will recognize it as the habitat of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. If you’re looking for a scenic vacation spot, Sedona is the place to go. It’s a favorite destination for romantic getaways, with a resort or a spa around every corner.

Doing the Twist
A large percentage of Sedona’s visitors, however, come to experience something you can’t see at all. An endless number of books, Web sites, brochures, and local guides proclaim the wonders of several so-called energy vortexes. A vortex, it is claimed, is an area of invisible, swirling energy emanating from the earth and producing an uplifting, rejuvenating sensation in visitors. Nearby, one often finds juniper trees with severely twisted trunks and branches—an effect attributed to the vortex energy. So powerful is this force, in fact, that it has twisted the laws of grammar in the entire region. What would in other parts of the English-speaking world be called “vortices” gets twisted into “vortexes” in the local parlance.

What exactly is an energy vortex? There is no convincing answer to that question, the only common thread being that they are spots of increased energy. Some people use terms such as “magnetic,” “electrical,” or “electromagnetic” to refer to this energy, but I have heard of no scientific measurements that indicate any unusual electromagnetic activity in the area. Even if there were, it’s not clear how human beings would be able to sense it directly. Others say it’s nothing of the sort, that it’s psychic energy of some kind, which explains why it can’t be measured. But the energy is nearly always described using the term “subtle,” with the promise that you will feel it “if you are a sensitive person.” In my less charitable moments, I suspect “sensitive” is meant as a euphemism for “credulous,” but you can make up your own mind.

Looking for a Sign
Actual evidence for the existence of the vortexes—apart from all the footprints and cairns left by tourists—is sketchy at best. The twisted juniper trees, which are indeed quite unusual, are the only physical indication of invisible forces, and only a very few of the trees have this feature. You’ll see a twisted tree right next to a perfectly ordinary one. It seems strange that a vortex would produce such a highly localized effect, and I can imagine any number of other causes for the twisted trees.

Locals seem to be in agreement that there are four main vortexes near Sedona, though some claim there are a number of other smaller vortexes, and others describe the whole area as being effectively one giant vortex. Vortex experts (vortexperts?) go into great detail about how one vortex is more masculine, one more feminine, another balanced in its energy. Others speak of energy as moving upward or downward, depending on the vortex. Clearly there is more to the vortexes than fails to meet the eye.

Taking Vortexes for a Spin
A couple of years ago, I was in Sedona to participate in a t’ai chi retreat. I scheduled some extra time in my trip so that I could visit the vortex sites and see (or feel) for myself whether there was anything to the claims. I was prepared for—even hoping for—a significant experience. I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel, but I was looking forward to finding out.

Armed with vortex maps, hiking shoes, and sunscreen, my companions and I began visiting the best-known vortexes. In each location, we hiked to the spot said to be the epicenter of vortex activity and spent some time standing or sitting quietly, trying to clear our minds, relax our bodies, and allow ourselves to experience whatever was there to be experienced. At the first two or three vortexes—reputed to be the stronger ones—I had a very distinct experience of fresh air and sunshine, of perspiration from the heat and the hike, and a sore behind from sitting on the rocks. These are all powerful sensations, of course, but not particularly unusual ones. Beyond that, I just didn’t sense anything. My companions spoke of feeling energized and refreshed, but I figured that was attributable to very ordinary causes.

Our final stop, called the Airport Vortex, was supposedly a weaker vortex. Again we hiked to the appropriate spot (thoughtfully marked with a ring of stones by earlier groups of vortex-seekers). This time I felt…weird. I don’t have a better word for it than that. There was something very unusual about the way I felt there that just made me walk around for a long time with a puzzled look on my face, trying to put my finger on it. A little tingly, perhaps? Maybe, but that could mean anything. Happy, invigorated, clear-headed? Sure, I guess, but that wasn’t really it either. All I can tell you is that I felt an indeterminate but positive sensation there that I hadn’t felt before and didn’t feel afterward. I don’t know what it was, and I don’t know that it wasn’t my imagination. Whatever it was, it certainly was subtle, and curiously, I was the only one in the group to feel it, whereas I had been the only one not to feel anything at the other locations.

I Want to Believe
I’ll be the first to admit this is hardly a resounding proof. I may wear Birkenstocks, but I’m not really the crystals-and-incense type, if you know what I mean, and I have always regarded New Age beliefs with more than a bit of skepticism. That’s not to say I don’t find them extremely interesting. As with any meme that rests on unproven claims, my inclination is to suspect there’s something real behind it, though perhaps not what people commonly believe. Maybe there really is some unmeasurable form of energy concentrated in vortexes; maybe my psychic sensitivity is too underdeveloped or my skepticism too strong for me to perceive it. Or maybe the phenomenon that has been described using “energy vortex” terminology is something entirely different but nevertheless not imaginary. This is all, of course, possible, and I’d like to believe it. I’d like to think that the next time I go to Sedona, I’ll experience more than pretty rocks and fresh air. But the effect will have to be quite pronounced to convince me it’s not just in my head.

Vortexes or not, Sedona is a marvelous place to visit. Endless miles of hiking trails, postcard-perfect photo ops at every turn, and desert tours in a hot air balloon or pink jeep make it a memorable destination. I’ll go there again, and maybe next time I’ll be more attuned to the energy and have a different experience to report. See you at the vortex. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Sedona's Energy Vortexes...

This article was featured in the 37th meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle.

There are hundreds of Web sites that talk about Sedona’s energy vortexes, though very little original or unique information. This page is a representative sample; for many more, try a Google search.

Amazon.com lists a number of books on the vortexes. I haven’t read these and can’t vouch for them personally, but they might be worth a look: Sedona Vortex 2000 and Sedona Power Spot, Vortex & Medicine Wheel Guide by Richard Dannelley is published by the Vortex Society. There’s also Sedona: Psychic Energy Vortexes by Dick Sutphen, Sedona’s Best Vortex Guidebook by Jamie Butler, and The Sedona Vortex Guide Book by Robert Shapiro. In Sedona, the gift shops and bookstores have a wide variety of other books and pamphlets to help you find your way around.

If you go to Sedona, an early-morning hot air balloon ride is well worth the money and includes a traditional champagne breakfast. Several companies offer the balloon rides; look for brochures in any hotel lobby, and be sure to call a day or two in advance for a reservation. If skeletal health is less important to you and you’d like to get a little closer to the scenery, try Pink Jeep Tours for a jarring but fascinating ride through the desert.

The Globe Theatre / Shakespeare's ideal venue, then and now

Joe Kissell — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

In my senior year of high school, all the students in my English class were required to write two term papers. But two of us were granted a special exception. The teacher gave my friend Nick and me the option of handing in alternative projects in lieu of the second paper. In my case, I had written a funny yet tragic account of an unhappy relationship—I use the term loosely—that I had experienced the previous summer. I was writing it just for fun, but my teacher found out about it and said I could type it up and turn it in as my second essay. I did—and got an A, too. Nick was the only student in class who was not required to type his term papers. As long as I’d known him—since kindergarten—he had said he wanted to be an architect. And he had developed an architect’s handwriting: every letter perfectly formed. The teacher’s offer to Nick was that he could build a scale model of the Globe Theatre out of Popsicle sticks instead of handing in a second paper. He declined, and I always thought that was a pity. We had learned about Shakespeare’s famous London venue in class, and I would have loved to see what it looked like. Besides, I couldn’t imagine that writing a term paper would have been more fun—but maybe that was just me.

I was thinking about this last year when I visited London for the first time. I had heard that the Globe Theatre, destroyed centuries ago, had recently been rebuilt, and I was eager to see it. I didn’t particularly care if I saw a play there; I just wanted to go inside and look around. When we got to the Globe, on the afternoon of our last day in London, they had just admitted the last tour group of the day; the only way left to see it that day was to buy tickets for a play. The box office informed us that the show was almost sold out. There were two options: we could buy either fabulously expensive tickets for seats behind a pole that would obscure our view, or cheap tickets for standing room. We debated which option we’d dislike the least, but by the time we had made up our minds two minutes later, all the remaining tickets for the day were gone. So all I got to see of the Globe Theatre was the outside, the gift shop, and the ticket office, none of which was especially impressive. (Note to self: plan ahead next time.)

I take some consolation in the fact that this combination of comedy and tragedy would probably have delighted William Shakespeare, or whomever it was that wrote the works attributed to him.

Building and Rebuilding
The original Globe Theatre was built in 1599 on the south bank of the Thames in London’s Southwark district. The 1599 Globe was not an entirely new building, however. Shakespeare’s troupe had been performing in another theater across the river (called simply The Theatre), but because of the high cost of leasing the land on which The Theatre was located, it was dismantled; the pieces were moved across the river and reassembled, then dubbed The Globe Theatre. Not only was the Globe the primary venue for many of Shakespeare’s plays, he specifically wrote many of them for that theater. The original Globe burned to the ground in 1613, after a cannon went off during a production of Henry VIII and a spark ignited the thatched roof. The Globe was rebuilt within a year, however, and continued to operate until 1642, when it was closed (along with the rest of London’s theaters) by the Puritans who found it morally objectionable. In 1644, 28 years after Shakespeare’s death, the Globe was demolished.

Only a few rough sketches of the Globe survived over the centuries, but based on archeological evidence, texts, and other sources, it has been possible to make some fairly reliable educated guesses about the details of its construction. The original Globe apparently had 20 sides, making it appear almost circular. The central part of the theater was open to the sky; seating was provided in a three-story, covered gallery around the outside. But many theatergoers stood in the central court in front of the stage to watch performances. The audience was expected to interact with the actors in Shakespeare’s time, though in many cases they simply wandered in and out, eating, drinking, and talking with the play going on in the background.

Return of the Globe
In 1996, after almost three decades of planning, a new replica of the Globe—built by hand using authentic materials and construction techniques—reopened in London not far from the site of the original. The designers’ goal was to make the new Globe as similar as possible to the first one, making concessions only as necessary to comply with fire regulations. The replica of the Globe Theatre in London is just one of many around the world, but it is undoubtedly the most historically accurate. As in the early 1600s, actors perform without amplification, spotlights, backdrops, or other scenery, and with only a minimum of props.

The new Globe represents not just the reconstruction of a historically significant piece of architecture, but a way to relive the entire experience of live drama in the 1600s. All the world may be a stage, but if you want to see Shakespeare as the author intended, this particular stage is the best. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about The Globe Theatre...

You can read a vastly more detailed account of both the old and new versions of the Globe Theatre (including more and better pictures) on any number of Web sites, including:

The Globe at the Shakespeare Resource Center
The WWW Globe Theatre
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre at Scary Rob’s Gateway
Shakespeare’s Globe Theater by R. Moore at AllShakespeare.com
The Rebirth of Shakespeare’s Globe in the Smithsonian Magazine

For show times and to buy tickets for a performance at the Globe Theatre in London, see the London Theatre Guide.

The Old Globe in San Diego is perhaps the best-known replica of the Globe Theatre in the United States. Another is in Odessa, Texas: The Globe of the Great Southwest. Yet another replica of the Globe Theatre opened in Rome in October, 2003.

A number of books describe the Globe Theatre, especially the story of its rebuilding. See for example Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt, edited by J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring, Staging Shakespeare at the New Globe by Pauline Kiernan, and for children, William Shakespeare & the Globe by Aliki.

The Ultimate William Shakespeare Collection is a fully formatted, PDF version of the complete works of Shakespeare for $25.

Walloon / Green Bay and the French connection

Joe Kissell — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

When I mentioned to Morgen that I was trying to come up with another good language-related topic to write about, she was silent for a moment, then proclaimed matter-of-factly, “Walloon.” This being a term I’d never heard of, I gave her my standard Scowl of Incomprehension, which she met with her deadly Blank Stare of Shame. This silent exchange is what we do when one of us is incredulous that the other could possibly lack some crucial piece of knowledge. Finally I broke down and said, “OK, what’s that?” Still expressionless, she said, “It’s a language spoken in Belgium.” Hmmmm. French I knew about, but not this one. Sounds really exciting. I said, “Is it interesting?” She said, “Maybe.” And that was that.

It turned out, as it always does, that she was right—it is interesting. But the very first interesting fact I learned about Walloon was one she wasn’t even aware of: Belgium is not the only place where native speakers of this language are found. The other is Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Special Relativity
When I think of Belgium, I think of food—in particular, things like chocolate, waffles, cheese, and beer. When I think of Green Bay—which, I admit, is a rather infrequent occurrence—cheese and beer also spring to mind, along with football. I never jumped to the conclusion that there must be a Belgian connection in Wisconsin, but indeed there is. It’s the only outpost in the New World where you can find a community of people who speak Walloon.

Some linguists classify Walloon as a dialect of French, but it began developing a distinct character as early as the 8th century and acquired its own name by the 16th century. The differences are significant enough that many consider Walloon a distinct language (though unquestionably a close relative of French). For example, in French, the word for “the” takes on a different form depending on the gender of the noun that follows it; in Walloon, as in English, the definite article is always the same. Walloon, unlike French, also uses a single word to mean “his” or “her.” Word order is different (adjectives usually come before the noun, whereas they follow the noun in French), and there are numerous differences in spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Furthermore, Walloon itself has four distinct dialects, each concentrated in a different region of Wallonia.

Where’s Wallonia?
Wallonia? Yes indeed, Wallonia is the name for a region covering roughly the southern half of Belgium. Although this is home to Walloon, that is by no means the only language spoken there; French is of course the official language, and there’s also a local, “Walloonized” version of French—plus several other languages in the same family. When thousands of Walloons (as the residents are called) moved to North America in the mid-1800s, they settled in a corner of eastern Wisconsin near Lake Michigan, where there were already some French Canadian residents. By and large, the Belgian immigrants continued speaking their native language, which over the past 150 years has apparently changed less than any of the Walloon dialects spoken in Belgium. Other than Green Bay and Wallonia, the only places where you can still find communities of active Walloon speakers are Brussels and a few small villages in northeastern France.

Estimates of the number of Walloon speakers vary. Most sources say there are at least a few hundred thousand people who actively speak Walloon (though virtually all of these also speak at least one other language)—with as many as a million more people who can understand it to some degree. However, it’s far more common to find active speakers among people over 60 than among children and young adults. Walloon is not considered an official language of either Belgium or Wallonia (um, not to mention Green Bay), so it’s relatively difficult to find Walloon media and educational materials. As a result, use of the language is rapidly fading—especially in Wisconsin. However, there is a movement afoot in Belgium to revitalize Walloon; part of this movement is an effort to apply a single system of spelling to the diverse dialects, which should aid greatly in the propagation of literature and Web sites. There are a number of Walloon magazines and theatrical productions, and the language is heard occasionally on television and radio. Supporters of the language want it to be taught in school as well.

Although my utilitarian side sees great value in standardized languages, my conservationist side feels the same sort of grief about endangered languages as it does about endangered species. If there’s anything at all I can do to help the cause—such as buying more beer—I’m only too happy to oblige. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Walloon...

The Green Bay Press-Gazette covered the decreasing use of Walloon among Green Bay residents in Old language needs new life by Nathan Phelps.

To learn more about Walloon, visit:

And now, today’s sermonette about editorial integrity
I’ve said this before and sadly, I’ll probably say it again: an astonishing amount of information on the Web is simply copied (often without attribution) from other Web sites—and in far too many cases, copied incorrectly. Consider this (apparently original) quote from wordIQ.com:

Walloon should not be confused with Belgian French, which differs from the French of France only in vocabulary and pronunciation.

The entry for Walloon in the Encyclopedia portion of TheFreeDictionary.com says:

Walloon (Walon) is a regional Romance language spoken in Belgium, which differs from the French of France only in vocabulary and pronunciation.

This is how misinformation spreads. Plagiarism is bad enough, but inaccurate plagiarism is truly appalling.

Bahasa Indonesia / The complex story of a simple language

Joe Kissell — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700

Happy birthday to us: Incredible but true: Interesting Thing of the Day is 10 years old!

During college I spent a summer in Indonesia, and naturally I picked up a bit of the language. When I say “the language,” I’m referring to Indonesian or, as it is known in Indonesian, Bahasa Indonesia (“language of Indonesia”). This statement is not as obvious as it may sound; Indonesia is home to hundreds of languages, and of these, Indonesian is not spoken as a first language by the majority of the population. But it is the lingua franca, so it’s useful for citizens and travelers alike. I found Indonesian to be very straightforward and easy to learn, free of most of the irregularities and annoyances of the Romance languages.

What I understood at the time was that Indonesian is, for the most part, the same language as Malay (Bahasa Melayu), the national language of neighboring Malaysia. I assumed that there were some differences, but that the main one was simply the name. I had no idea at that time of how either version of the language came into existence. It turns out that there’s a bit of a modern myth about the language’s origin—but the truth is even more interesting.

Artificial Intelligence
Several months ago while doing some research on an unrelated topic, I stumbled upon a Web page claiming that Indonesian was an artificial language. I’d never heard that before and it piqued my interest, so I searched further. A few minutes of Googling turned up quotes such as the following (identities omitted to protect the guilty):

Bahasa Indonesia is an artificial language made official in 1928. By artificial I mean it was designed by academics rather than evolving naturally as most common languages have.

…Indonesian [is] a very simple Malay-based artificial language, designed by academics, and was the official language for a multiethnic country of over 230 million inhabitants.

…Indonesian is a constructed language made by a Dutch missionary in the 1920s on the basis of synthesizing some local languages.

…[Indonesian] was devised by a Dutch linguist, based on various Malayan and Indonesian varieties…in the 1920s.

The language in Malaysia, Bahasa Malay, is a constructed language, and was designed to be easy to learn, as the various people in Malaysia and Indonesia who were told to form rather large nations after WWII needed a common language.

…every language is artificial—it just depends how many people create it. Bahasa Indonesia is also invented but by a group.

Bahasa Indonesia is essentially a constructed language designed to fool foreigners into thinking Indonesia is a monoculture.

…the other major semi-artificial language of recent times, Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of Indonesia, is a syncretic amalgamation of existing Malay dialects that were still in current use.

Even though it is basically the Malay language, [Indonesian] has in common with Esperanto…the fact of having underwent [sic] a kind of planned restructuration to simplify grammar and reduce exceptions.

With all that evidence, I was very nearly convinced—though I wasn’t entirely certain what I was convinced of. This string of claims sounded a bit like the telephone game, where a message changes just a bit with each retelling. Then a little voice in the back of my head whispered, “Primary sources, Grasshopper.” Every fact on the Web appears to be equally authoritative, but just because somebody says something with conviction doesn’t mean it’s true. So I went to an actual library (two of them, in fact) and looked at ancient documents known as “books”—some more than fifty years old—to see if I could get to the bottom of this story. After all, if a Dutch linguist (or missionary) did in fact invent the language, I should be able to find that person’s name. And if a committee of academics invented it, I should be able to find some record of that momentous project.

Let me cut to the chase: as with all myths, this one has a kernel of truth to it. But the claim that Indonesian is an “artificial” or “constructed” language is simply untrue.

This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is Island
Indonesia is an archipelago consisting of over 18,000 islands, of which about a third are inhabited. That these islands—and their greatly varying cultures and languages—should be considered a single nation is a relatively recent (and, ethnographically speaking, artificial) notion. Nevertheless, for centuries, traders sailing from one island to another have needed to communicate with each other. Malay was the local language of Malacca, a port town near the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula. According to legend, local fisherman in Malacca developed Malay as a synthesis of several nearby languages in the late 16th century. However, written records of Malay date back as far as the 7th century, so it is more likely that the fisherman simply integrated new words into the language. (Such borrowing happens in virtually all languages, and the newly incorporated words are known as “loan words.”) In any event, Malacca was a hot spot for traders, and by the time the Dutch colonized Indonesia (then known as the Dutch East Indies) in the 17th century, Malay had already come into widespread use as the regional trade language.

During their more than three centuries of occupation, the Dutch, unsurprisingly, attempted to enforce the use of their own language for trade. In the process, Malay—as spoken in Dutch territory—picked up a number of Dutch loan words, while the Malaysian speakers of Malay developed a somewhat different vocabulary. Meanwhile, due to the influence of Islam, which had been introduced in Indonesia as far back as the 13th century, Malay also picked up a number of Arabic loan words. Because parts of Indonesia were Hindu, Sanskrit also gave numerous words to Indonesian—including “bahasa” (“language”). And since Portugal traded in Indonesia and for many years controlled East Timor, many Portuguese words also found their way into the language. In short: without question, the Indonesian variety of Malay did indeed borrow heavily from numerous other languages, but this was a natural linguistic evolution. However, there’s still more to the story.

The Language of Change
By the 1920s, public sentiment in Indonesia was turning strongly toward gaining independence from the Netherlands. In October 1928, the Sumpah Pemuda (Pledge of the Youth) proclaimed that in Indonesia, Malay was to be called “Bahasa Indonesia” and considered the national language. However, there being no nation as yet, this was more of a rallying cry than anything else. In 1945, Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands and stated in its constitution that Bahasa Indonesia was its official language—though it took four years of fighting before the Dutch acknowledged Indonesia’s right to self-rule. So depending on how you look at it, Indonesian became the official language in 1928, 1945, or 1949—though at that time, only a tiny percentage of the nation’s population spoke Indonesian as a first language.

Following independence, the people of Indonesia rapidly abandoned Dutch (to the extent that they had grudgingly adopted it) and began to embrace their new official tongue. It is now the first language of as many as 30 million people, and a second language for more than 140 million. Although these numbers are still small given Indonesia’s total population of more than 230 million, they represent astonishingly rapid growth for the language.

In 1972, the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia collaborated on a project to reform and simplify spelling for both versions of the language; this consisted largely of eliminating Dutch spellings in favor of more phonetic Malaysian spellings. Malay and Indonesian have about an 80% overlap in vocabulary and are mutually intelligible; the variations in vocabulary, pronunciation, and usage have been compared to the difference between American English and British English. Where Indonesian retains many Dutch loan words, Malay typically replaces these with words based on English.

I like Indonesian a great deal; it has such an elegant structure that it’s tempting to believe it could only have been made artificially. But in fact it’s as natural as the next language, notwithstanding its exceptional capacity for absorbing foreign vocabulary—and contributing to linguistic mythology. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Bahasa Indonesia...

This article was featured in Asian History Carnival #6.

A Short Indonesian History is a high-level overview of Indonesia’s development as a nation.

To learn more about Indonesian history, check out Indonesia: Peoples and Histories by Jean Gelman Taylor or A History of Modern Indonesia by M. C. Ricklefs.

For more information about the Malay and Indonesian language(s), see NationMaster.com (Bahasa Malaysia | Bahasa Indonesia) or the Wikipedia (Indonesian Language | Malay Language). You can also read about Indonesian and Malay in the Ethnologue, a compilation of data on all the world’s known languages.

Interested in learning the Indonesian language? Try Teach Yourself Indonesian Complete Course by Christopher Byrnes, Bahasa Indonesia: Book 1—Introduction to Indonesian Language and Culture by Yohanni Johns, or Colloquial Indonesian by Sutano Atmosumarto.

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