Aphorisms vs soundbites

Scene 74 of a movie called Papyrus: My Favorite Font. This documentary movie explores diversions, loose threads, stray ends of language. In this scene, the interviewer, Evan, a professor near the end of his career and tenure, seeks to resurrect his position by interviewing famous but fading movie stars. His focus, could we exaggerate a little and suggest fixation, is on those stars who have had the smarts enough in their career to throw out regular provocative aphorisms, aka in present parlance soundbites. Some will of course jump up startled and protest that aphorisms and soundbites are worlds away. Evan has an appointment with Ethan who played in a number of action movies.

Evan: Names are symbols.

Ethan: Yes, there are the names we identify people with. My name for example, it means strong. But that was before.

Evan: And for me, my name is Evan, it means young fighter, but I am neither any longer.

Ethan: These conditions pass.

Evan: Scripts you have read, I guess they often contained hidden symbols.

Ethan: All the time. Symbols, signs, slogans. I was in a film once, and the writer kept changing the numbers every day. He’d come in and scribble out “Hits him twice” and write three for example. And I’d ask what does it matter, and he’d say, “These things count. It affects the outcome.”

Evan: Beyond numbers, the lines you had to memorize, does any writer stand out in your mind as especially brilliant?

Ethan: Sure. Woodrow.

Evan: He gave us ideas like “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.”?

Ethan: And “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”

Evan: Why are so many of these stars so clever with aphorisms about money? Like you know… “A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars, that's subtraction.”

Ethan: Aah, Mae. Not just a pretty face. She had her head screwed on right.

Symbols for correct / incorrect

In Japan it is exam season. End of year exams, entrance exams. These entrance exams are IMPORTANT. So much so that in a recent meeting, the dean felt compelled to spell out just what the three cornerstones of a Japanese university were. The gateway is the entrance exam. The campus is the curriculum. Placing students in a job is the exit.

Everything else, research, learning about life…. Never mind. These are back seat luxuries. This is the real world. Get good students, give lots of hours of tuition, make sure they get a job. I have no objection to these as goals, just the emphasis placed on those three. Reminds me of Ronald Reagan insisting that all briefs on political crises being simplified so they fit on one A4 sheet of paper.

Today’s comment is a comparison of English and Japanese marking systems.

And if that is not confusing to a westerner trying to relearn the correct symbols, how about this:

Look the same? Aha, but 0 (J) does NOT = 0 (J). 0 (correct J) begins from the bottom of the circle and goes clockwise. 0 (zero J) begins from the top of the circle and is traced anticlockwise. The devil is in the details.

So you learn to mark as follows:

So 0 = 2 ?

No wonder we have the impression that Japanese products are sometimes beautifully engineered but at the expense of the overall big picture.