Correcting misinformation
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I'm something of a fan of books that correct misinformation — about facts in general, about famous quotations, about medical matters, and so on. Among my latest acquisitions is John Lloyd and John Mitchinson's The Book of General Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong (2006) (with a foreword by Stephen Fry — yes, THAT Stephen Fry), a compendium of 230 misperceptions originally collected for the BBC panel game QI (Quite Interesting). As far as I can tell, it's pretty good (see some reservations below), but it has one serious defect: very few sources or references are given for the claims in the book. Lloyd and Mitchinson mostly just tell us what's so, and there's no way for us to check up on what they say. They do a good job on the Eskimo words for snow (p. 120), but how is the reader to know that what they claim (against "common knowledge") is right?
I've complained about such lack of scholarship at the low end of the literature on word and phrase origins, in particular Albert Jack's appalling Red Herrings and White Elephants (which I trashed here). But it's startling to see it in a book that purports to be authoritative. And other recent misinformation-correcting books do considerably better: see Anahad O'Connor's Never Shower in a Thunderstorm ("surprising facts and misleading myths about our health and the world we live in") from 2007 and Nancy L. Snyderman's Medical Myths That Can Kill You ("and the 101 truths that will save, extend and improve your life"), published this year.
Now I'll turn to the coverage of language-related questions in The Book of General Ignorance.
The answer to the very first question (p. 1), "What's the name of the tallest mountain the world?", introduces a theme that runs through the book, an appeal to technical (rather than ordinary-language) senses of words:
Mauna Kea, the highest point on the island of Hawaii.
The inactive volcano is a modest 13,799 feet above sea level, but when measured from the seabed to its summit, it is 33,465 feet high–about three-quarters of a mile taller than Mount Everest.
As far as mountains are concerned, the current convention is that "highest" means measured from sea level to summit; "tallest" means measured from the bottom of the mountain to the top.
So, while Mount Everest, at 29,029 feet is the highest mountain in the world, it is not the tallest.
I don't know about you, but I felt cheated by this answer. Turns out it was a trick question! (And what's the source for this claim about "the current convention" distinguishing highest and tallest?) A much more helpful answer would have been that it depends on how you measure height. In another context, "What do you call someone from the United States?" (p. 105), Lloyd and Mitchinson are willing to say "there is no agreed upon right answer", so "it depends" should have been available as an answer to the tallest-mountain question.
Four more technical-vocabulary answers (there are others), for the questions
(1) Which of the following are berries: strawberry, raspberry, peach, watermelon? (p. 215)
(2) Which of the following are nuts: almond, peanut, Brazil nut, walnut? (p. 216)
(3) Have you ever slid down a banister? (p. 237)
(4) What do we use to write on a blackboard? (p. 125)
For (1), we're told,
A berry is defined as "a fleshy fruit containing several seeds."
Strictly speaking, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are not berries but aggregated drupes…
Peaches, plums, nectarines, and olives are drupes. The world's largest drupe is the coconut…
Tomatoes, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, watermelons, kiwi fruit, cucumbers, grapes, passion fruit, papaya, peppers, and bananas are all berries.
Blueberries are also berries.
Well, THAT settles things, doesn't it? Given that answer, you can predict what the answer to (2) is going to be like. And so it is:
Nuts are defined as a simple dry fruit with one seed (very occasionally two) in which the seed-case wall becomes very hard at maturity.
True nuts include walnuts, butternuts, hickory, pecan, chestnut (but not conkers [from the horse chestnut tree; British slang]), beech, oak acorns, tan oak, hazel, filbert, hornbeam, birch, and alder.
Peanuts, almonds, pistachios, Brazils, cashews, coconuts, horse chestnuts, and pine nuts are not nuts. So the legendary health warning on a packet of peanuts ("may contain nuts") is, strictly speaking, untrue.
There is, of course, more. I've quoted at some length because Lloyd and Mitchinson are appealing not just to technical definitions for berry and nut, but to a specific type of technical definition, from botany. Obviously, peanuts must count as nuts for legal purposes (hence the health warning), so botany is not the only source of technical definitions. And, of course, for culinary purposes berry and nut are used as in everyday English.
On to (3), the banister-sliding question, the answer to which is:
No, you haven't.
Banisters are the thin struts that support the fat bit you slide down, which is properly called a balustrade or handrail.
The appeal here is to the technical vocabulary of carpentry.
Finally, (4), the blackboard question. This time the appeal is to the technical vocabulary of chemistry:
Gypsum.
School chalk is not chalk. Chalk is made of calcium carbonate…
Gypsum is made of calcium sulphate.
Now, a sampling of other language-related questions in the book.
Which owl says "Tu-whit, tu-who"? (p. 35) [Answer: despite Shakespeare, "No single owl has ever gone 'tu-whit, tu-who.'" How do Lloyd and Mitchinson know this?]
What's a vomitorium for? (p. 78) [Answer: 'entrance or exit from an amphitheater'. The 'room for vomiting' sense is labeled as erroneous in many dictionaries L&M could have cited, including the OED.]
Where does the word assassin come from? (p. 81) [Answer: "Not from hashish."]
Why do deaf Americans feel at home in Paris? (p. 99) [Answer: "American Sign Language bears a striking similarity to the old French sign language system."]
How do the Cherokee pronounce "Cherokee"? (p. 100) [Answer: "They don't. Cherokee speech has no ch or r sound. The correct spelling (and pronunciation) is Tsalagi."]
Would you call someone an Eskimo? (p. 118) [Suitably complex answer describing different usages.]
Where does the equal sign come from? (p. 126) [Answer: Wales, because it was an invention of astronomer and mathematician Robert Recorde, who was born in South Wales. A peculiar answer, to my mind.]
What rhymes with orange? (p. 208) [Answer: the Welsh toponym Blorenge and the English surname Gorringe. Just try working THEM into your verse.]
What does "kangaroo" mean in Aboriginal? (p. 222) [Answer: not 'I don't know', but the kangaroo species Macropus robustus, in the Guugu Ymithirr language. L&M cite no reference — their answer is more specific and detailed than the OED's account — but they do at least point out: "In eighteenth-century Australia there were at least 700 Aboriginal tribes speaking as many as 250 different languages."]
What is "pom" [also "Pommy"/"Pommie", antipodal slang for 'British person'] short for? (p. 223) [Answer: not any of the acronymic derivations, but probably pomegranate. L&M do cite a reference here: Michael Quinion's Port Out, Starboard Home (2000).]
seriously said,
July 26, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
There was a young Briton named "Gorringe"
Who grew up near the Welsh town of Blorenge
He was heard to proclaim
On the source of his fame,
"I'm one of the two rhymes with orange!"
Nick Lamb said,
July 26, 2008 @ 5:53 pm
I can only assume that you haven't watched the show.
The whole _point_ is that they're trick questions. Three of the four panellists are typically comedians or people who famously have something to say on every topic. Their objective is to offer an interesting answer to the question offered. The "common sense" answer is not interesting, even on the rare occasion that it's correct.
Answers which are obvious but wrong lose points. To prove that they are _obvious_ as well as wrong, they're pre-selected, initially Fry had printed cards with them on amongst his cue cards, now they're flashed up on a large screen which otherwise displays pictures somehow relevant to the current question.
So, if you're asked which is the tallest mountain, you must suppress your urge to leap up and say "Everest" and instead you might try explaining about the period in which there was some dispute as to which was highest, for which you will receive points. The fourth panellist is always Alan Davies, who apparently was chosen in part because he already had a reputation in the industry for _always_ repeating common misconceptions. So he usually loses a tremendous number of points, sometimes offering three or four obvious but wrong answers to a single question.
It's a game of skill. Pedants can do pretty well, but you'll do just as well by being quick witted and having plenty of interesting stories to tell. In this sense it's not so different from Radio 4's Just A Minute, which is famously one of the most difficult panel games of all, despite being played for laughs.
The lack of references is understandable coming from people who aren't really academics but rather only interested amateurs. It's perhaps not obvious to them why their book shouldn't be accepted as authoritative. But I'm sure they'd like to ask a question about that on their show.
And now someone who is a bigger fan, or a bigger pedants, will correct me on some or all of these points…
Arnold Zwicky said,
July 26, 2008 @ 7:01 pm
To seriously: alas, Blorenge is the name of a hill rather than a town, but your limerick can no doubt be adjusted to reflect that.
Of course, it's a sort of meta-limerick, with rhyming as its topic.
Arnold Zwicky said,
July 26, 2008 @ 7:19 pm
To Nick Lamb: no, I haven't watched the show. My problem is that the book advertises itself as supplying serious answers to answerable questions; as Lloyd says in his Introduction: "This book is for people who know they don't know very much. It contains hundreds of things that the average person doesn't know. But it doesn't begin to scratch the surface of human ignorance, because it's the kind of stuff that has answers."
There's no mention in the Introduction of the show, and no indication that the premise of the show is different from the goals Lloyd describes in his Introduction. The blurb on the jacket treats the book as a source of information, as do the various reviews quoted on the back cover. The Melbourne Age, in fact, exclaims: "By the standards of the genre [of trivia books], this one has something approaching the force of revelation."
Frank said,
July 26, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
Whether or not peanuts are nuts or not, the statement "May contain nuts" on the package cannot be rendered untrue. It could just as easily read "May contain chicken feathers" and still be true. They didn't say it did, just that it "may".
Since the package is printed before it is filled, it is a perfectly true statement regardless of what eventually goes into the package.
Garrett Wollman said,
July 26, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
Another entrant in this curious subgenre of advice literature (which I believe I've mentioned to Arnold in private mail before) is This Is Not a Weasel: A Look at Nature's Most Confusing Terms by Philip Mortenson. Unlike Arnold's subject today, this book doesn't purport to be a general trivia collection, but more specifically advice on using the 'taxonomically correct' names for living things and their produce. (I suspect actual systematists would argue against any claim for authority for this sort of literature, since their sort of taxonomy is done within the framework of the formal scientific naming system originated by Linnaeus.)
Dill said,
July 27, 2008 @ 2:23 am
The Aboriginal language name is misspelled: it should be Guugu Yimithirr (is the mistake in the book or is it yours?).
Nick Z said,
July 27, 2008 @ 5:49 am
I wouldn't call "conker" slang – it's just the usual word for the things that grow on horse chestnut trees in Britain.
Ray Girvan said,
July 27, 2008 @ 8:23 am
QI is great fun, but they regularly come up with their own misinformation. In the one last week – see It's just plain wrong – Stephen Fry wrongly stated that bones and eye lenses were made of calcium carbonate.
language hat said,
July 27, 2008 @ 9:19 am
Sounds like an appalling book, but then I wouldn't bother paying attention to an alleged reference book that didn't cite sources.
Where does the word assassin come from? (p. 81) [Answer: "Not from hashish."]
I assume, then, that they accept the suggestion that it comes from the name of the sect's leader, Hasan ibn al-Sabbah. This is an extremely contentious issue that will never be settled to everyone's satisfaction, and it is a pathetic abuse of self-proclaimed authority to present an etymology that for whatever reason ("I heard it from a chap who had actually visited Alamut, so it must be true!") happens to appeal to one as the unvarnished truth.
Nick: The show sounds like something that would irritate me no end, but in any case it's irrelevant to the book, as Arnold points out. One might enjoy The Beverly Hillbillies and yet bridle at seeing plots from the show repackaged as a book Culture of the Southern Mountain Zone.
Arnold Zwicky said,
July 27, 2008 @ 9:57 am
To Dill: the spelling Guugu Ymithirr was in the book (and is in a few other sources). I should have recognized it as a misspelling.
Arnold Zwicky said,
July 27, 2008 @ 10:16 am
To language hat, on assassin: L&F do not attribute the word to the name Hasan ibn al-Sabbah (though they do mention him, as Hassan-i Saban). What they say is: "Most Islamic scholars now favor the more convincing etymology of assassiyun, meaning people who are faithful to the assass, the foundation of the faith. They were, literally, fundamentalists."
I know nothing of these matters, but I was suspicious of the "most Islamic scholars" claim as soon as I saw it, and so didn't repeat it in my posting.
For what it's worth, the OED in 1989 gave the "hashish-eater" etymology, in some detail, without comment.
Arnold Zwicky said,
July 27, 2008 @ 10:43 am
To language hat and others: what's especially vexing about the book is that someone (probably L&F's staff) clearly went to some trouble to search references and sources, but we see only the end product of this search.
In some cases, you can unearth likely sources, by googling or otherwise. The "Eskimo words for snow" entry almost surely comes from Geoff Pullum's famous article "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" (in the volume of the same name). And the "tallest/highest mountain" entry probably comes from a geology.com site. No doubt someone with a lot of time on their hands, a lot of reference works at their disposal, and wide background knowledge in a number of fields could find other likely sources for L&F's claims — an interesting intellectual exercise, perhaps, but not at all the intended use for the book.
seriously said,
July 27, 2008 @ 11:51 am
Cool, a "meta-limerick." I'm rather proud of myself! Thanks.
Stu said,
July 27, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
I intended to comment on this when I first saw it, but comments were closed when I first looked. Much of what I wanted to say was covered by Nick Lamb, but I'll add a few extra points…
First of all, the QI panel game show is intended to be humourous (if I may use such spelling) before anything else. The book is British, and the British audience are already aware of the show and the intentions of the book.
Secondly, the programme makers, Quite Interesting Ltd., run a small shop, club and reference library in Oxford (the one in Oxfordshire), where I expect the majority of their research is undertaken – and I imagine you would likely find most of their source material available to read or buy in the QI building (you can read about it on their website if you wish).
Thirdly, the information on the TV show and in the book is not so much to be exactingly accurate or well sourced, but to be Quite Interesting. I do realise that it would seem quaint or even pointless to you to produce a book purporting to be about facts and general knowledge while actually being a compendium of pop science, pedantry and (slightly condescending) bragging, but it is purely for the purpose of light entertainment. It is intended to interest, amuse and, above all, to turn a profit.
I hope this helps to explain some of its peculiarities!
Adrian said,
July 27, 2008 @ 2:34 pm
I'm going running on the Blorenge: http://www.croesomultiday.org.uk/pages/day%20pages/day%202%20The%20Blorange.html
The QI TV show is excellent – pedantry is fun! (How many of each animal went on the ark? and other gems.) But Arnold has a point about the book.
Rob Gunningham said,
July 27, 2008 @ 2:46 pm
When they write 'May contain nuts', what happens when the man with the chicken feather allergy bites down on a feather and drops down dead? He had been warned about possible nuts but not about possible chicken feathers, it sounds as if the manufacturer would be in even bigger trouble than if there were no warnings at all.
Of course, the best legal cover would be to write May not contain nuts.
Arnold Zwicky said,
July 27, 2008 @ 2:59 pm
Stu: "First of all, the QI panel game show is intended to be humourous (if I may use such spelling) before anything else. The book is British, and the British audience are already aware of the show and the intentions of the book."
My copy of the book was published by Harmony Books in New York, not in the UK. (And the book made the New York Times bestseller list.) In addition, there is absolutely nothing in the contents of the book — not even the prefatory material by John Lloyd and by Stephen Fry — that mentions the game show. (One of the reviews quoted on the back cover does mention the show. But the book itself has no visible connection to the show.) Instead, all this material claims that the book presents information, accurate answers to questions. Am I to assume that this is just an elaborate put-on, not to be taken seriously?
Stu: "the programme makers, Quite Interesting Ltd., run a small shop, club and reference library in Oxford (the one in Oxfordshire), where I expect the majority of their research is undertaken – and I imagine you would likely find most of their source material available to read or buy in the QI building (you can read about it on their website if you wish)."
This borders on the contemptuous, but thank you for this gracious invitation to go to the QI building in Oxford so that I can read or buy the material there. Quite simply, it should not be the readers' responsibility to unearth source materials to check on the accuracy of claims in what purports to be a reference work.
Stu: "Thirdly, the information on the TV show and in the book is not so much to be exactingly accurate or well sourced, but to be Quite Interesting. I do realise that it would seem quaint or even pointless to you to produce a book purporting to be about facts and general knowledge while actually being a compendium of pop science, pedantry and (slightly condescending) bragging, but it is purely for the purpose of light entertainment. It is intended to interest, amuse and, above all, to turn a profit."
That is, not a bit of it should be taken seriously. As far as readers can tell, it could all be sheer invention, with no grounding in reality. If that's the case, then the book is a fraud, and I'm sorry I said anything nice about it.
mollymooly said,
July 27, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
Perhaps Harmony Books in New York needs to be upbraided for not providing sufficient context for American readers unfamiliar with the style (or existence) of the TV show. But then, if the book is a bestseller anyway, I can see why they wouldn't bother.
At first, the QI TV show concentrated on debunking commonly-repeated myths, with panellists penalised for propounding those myths. Now that most of the well-known myths have been covered, the show is reduced to things "not a lot of people know" rather than things a lot of people believe the opposite of. So panellists are penalised, not for confidently stating myth as fact, but for tentatively making the obvious but incorrect guess. And so the show is prone to the quiz pedant's equivalent of the grammar pedant's law of prescriptive retaliation.
Nick Lamb said,
July 27, 2008 @ 4:49 pm
Hmm. It seems to me that it's in the nature of a certain type of book that it must be coy about it's true nature. The Princess Bride insists, at length, that Goldman is only the translator, his expertise as script writer coming into play to tighten things up, remove inconsequential passages and improve the flow, but the core of the story is attributed to an entirely fictional person from an entirely fictional place. And this pretence is kept up, readers wrote off for more information and duly received it, extracts from a sequel by the same author, stories of harassment from his lawyers, and so on.
Or take Stanisław Lem. A fair few people are familiar with his relatively mainstream SF work like Solaris, but Lem also wrote literary criticism (which is a struggle to read like most academic criticism, but is insightful and lands some well-aimed blows at his contemporaries) and not only that, but he also wrote fictional literary criticism, ostensibly a collection of reviews by other people, but the works being reviewed quickly become implausible (a novel about Nazis in South America who pretend they're the French court of Louis XIV despite knowing almost nothing about him) and then outright impossible (the history of a corporation which consumed all of the rest of society in order to achieve its goal of personalising individual people's lives for a profit).
Would this latter book, "A Perfect Vacuum" in the English translation, be considered a fraud because the author doesn't warn you on the outside that it's a work of fiction? Or is it saved by the CIP record printed by the publisher on the inside cover page ? Did you demand your money back after seeing the award-winning "Fargo" by the Cohen brothers because it tells you, quite brazenly that it's a true story when actually it's nothing of the kind ?
But actually none of this matters. Although the TV show QI sometimes features tall tales from the panellists, this book doesn't – at least not intentionally. Its authors are responsive to feedback and surely a future edition will include footnotes or some other means of attributing all the interesting facts within to other sources if sales justify an expansion or other changes that would offer the opportunity. Since they don't intend to fool anyone even for entertainment purposes they'd surely also accept the suggestion for future US editions to have a disclaimer of some sort about the nature of the content.
I have another book here which is in the same vein. "The Book of Numbers". It too rarely cites its sources, but it's obviously culled from myriad other reference works, and its unique claim is to be in simple numerical order. So under '12' you can read about the 12th President of the USA, the 12th Pope, the 12th Element in the modern Periodic table, and so on. Like the QI book it aims to be interesting first and factual only second, but without deliberately introducing any falsehoods. This means that some of its claims are dubious (e.g. the various entries on putative "longest words" of the English language), but on the whole it's probably a more reliable source than your daily newspaper and millions of people believe everything they read in that.
Stu said,
July 27, 2008 @ 5:29 pm
I am sorry, Arnold, you've evidently taken my comment in the wrong light. Reading back I can see how it could be read to appear quite rude – but I assure you I didn't mean it to be. What I think we're experiencing, both in the book itself and in your reaction to my comment, is a classic cultural exchange between Brit and American. I think it's fair to say (indeed wiser people than me have said) that Americans prefer to talk straight, while British people rarely take each other entirely seriously by default.
All I was trying to say was that the QI book probably shouldn't be taken to be a work of academic excellence. Not citing sources is obviously a terrible omission by the authors, but then the target audience are unlikely to have any wish to spend a lot of time checking the contents. Coming from an academic background, you would have a different view on the importance of verification, as opposed to the layman who is probably more interested in the laughs, and to some extent in the opportunity to appear better informed than their opponent when engaged in an argument down the local pub.
Sridhar Ramesh said,
July 27, 2008 @ 7:49 pm
To be better informed or merely to appear to be better informed, that is the question. I enjoy the show QI, but given that much of its self-announced theme is ostensibly to show up the difference between those two, it is often quite aggravating in precisely the fashion of the book Zwicky comments upon. The defense "But it's just a show and all for fun" seems a bit lame; if anything, having watched the show makes me feel quite opposite.
Incidentally, as regards nonsense about language, failure to present proper evidence, Stephen Fry's reputation for erudition, Alan Davies's duncecap role, and the show QI, the link http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=node/207 may be of some interest.
Arnold Zwicky said,
July 27, 2008 @ 9:09 pm
Nick Lamb: "Hmm. It seems to me that it's in the nature of a certain type of book that it must be coy about its true nature."
Well, silly me. I just didn't get it. I took the book seriously, when I should have seen it as a fabulizing construction, a playful invention. [Hits head] Taken in again! When will I learn?
My Language Log colleagues have repeatedly chided me — we have our own channels for communication — for my willingness to extend generous interpretations to the things we post about. I will try to harden my heart still further.
Nick Lamb said,
July 28, 2008 @ 5:55 am
Arnold, rather than hardening of the heart, you might put additional effort into reading a whole post before responding to it. My post goes on to assert that this is _not_ such a book. I think you may now be making the same type of mistake as Stephen Fry makes in Sridhar's link. Expressing yourself more forcefully doesn't make you more right.
Rob Gunningham said,
July 28, 2008 @ 6:14 am
But Arnold, putting this book on one side for a sec.
I don't know what you're like in conversation around the dinner table, but at LL you expect everything to be backed up by evidence. I just don't see the necessity of that: partly because so many things that are worth discussing don't include propositions that can be proved, but partly because I'm not writing a paper here, and I can't be bothered to find the citation every time i want to shoot the breeze with a linguist. You are a scientist, but in some circumstances proof can be an unwanted intrusion into human intercourse.
One other thing, that you have noted before to me: it is oddly difficult sometimes in a blog to recognize the comments that are intended to be humorous. There is some truth in Stu's comment that the British tend towards flippancy in most circumstances. Whether it's a good habit I don't know, but I think that attitude must sometimes be next to impossible for the non-British to recognize here.
Going back to the book…
language hat said,
July 28, 2008 @ 9:52 am
"Most Islamic scholars now favor the more convincing etymology of assassiyun, meaning people who are faithful to the assass, the foundation of the faith. They were, literally, fundamentalists."
Oh, for pete's sake. That's the least convincing etymology I've seen yet (and the fact that it's the first time I've seen it pretty much holes the "Most Islamic scholars" business below the waterline as far as I'm concerned, since I've looked into the question a good deal). Googling took me to this page, which discusses Amin Maalouf's novel Samarkand and says:
"A number of Ismaili sources"—now, that makes sense. Of course the present-day, thoroughly respectable Ismailis would be interested in whitewashing the ancestral name, so embarrassing in its "hashish-users" version. Unfortunately, as far as I know the "assassin" name was used only by their enemies; the Ismailis called their assassins fida'in ("fedayeen"). Verdict: malfeasance.
I can't decide whether to be amused or appalled by the culture clash in this thread. Arnold and I (and other solemn Yanks) find it unforgivable that a book presents itself as a reference source while presenting a random collection of untrustworthy statements; those used to the British tradition of po-faced humour (am I using "po-faced" correctly?) find our astonishment almost as amusing as the show. If it can be assumed that the average U.K. reader would not take the book seriously, that's fine, but a U.S. edition should have come with a disclaimer: "This book is in the tradition of Monty Python and Fry & Laurie; do not look to it for actual information."
language hat said,
July 28, 2008 @ 9:53 am
I don't know what you're like in conversation around the dinner table, but at LL you expect everything to be backed up by evidence. …. You are a scientist, but in some circumstances proof can be an unwanted intrusion into human intercourse.
I don't know how to break it to you, but there are different standards for conversation around the dinner table and published books that purport to be reference sources. Would you think it appropriate if you found joke "definitons" in the OED?
Richard Hershberger said,
July 28, 2008 @ 10:15 am
I am late to this discussion, but…
Where I looking at this book in a store, I would put it down after the first question, about the tallest mountain. I am bored by books and quizzes and the like that depend on semantic gamesmanship.
On the other hand, a book can be interesting and informative by dropping the silly quiz format and replacing it with actual discussions. A discussion of the various ways to measure a mountain's height, and which mountains are the largest by various criteria, would be a good topic for an essay. Indeed, I knew the Mauna Loa bit, and I am pretty sure I know it from an old Isaac Asimov essay. I recall he did a similar one about largest rivers, with the Nile winning out by one criteria but various others by other criteria.
But the format of "I can find a way to may interpret the conventional answer to some question such that it is wrong, because I am really really smart" is merely tiresome.
Rob Gunningham said,
July 28, 2008 @ 11:05 am
LH: I don't know how to break it to you, but there are different standards for conversation around the dinner table
Do you mean by this that you come prepared to dinner with a set of reference books, or just that I most likely wouldn't reach the standard of dialogue at your table?
Benjamin Zimmer said,
July 28, 2008 @ 11:09 am
This discussion does help me to understand how another "random collection of untrustworthy statements" got published: The Meaning of Tingo (see this post for details). The author, Adam Jacot De Boinod, was a "researcher" for QI at the time.
Rob Gunningham said,
July 28, 2008 @ 11:11 am
LH: published books that purport to be reference sources.
What they have been trying to tell you is that nobody in their right mind would use QI as a reference source. If that is difficult for you to understand, perhaps you should take it up with the American publishers.
Stephen Jones said,
July 28, 2008 @ 11:29 am
I think it's fair to say (indeed wiser people than me have said) that Americans prefer to talk straight, while British people rarely take each other entirely seriously by default.
Well, they might have been wiser than you, but they were still just as dumb on that particular point. Next we going to hear about how Americans don't do humor. Duh!
BH said,
July 28, 2008 @ 11:55 am
As an American and a fan of the show, I have to say that it's rather irresponsible of the American publishers to give the book no context, and I'm not sure that point is getting across to some from the other side of the pond. The show, its host, and its frequent panelists are virtually unknown here outside of very small circles. Even the token American panelist, Rich Hall, isn't well known stateside except by obsessive SNL fans.
That said and academic responsibility aside, I would have liked references purely because I enjoy reading up on topics when they catch my interest, and I'm sure other QI fans are the same. The joy of knowledge – even when its more clever than informative – is in the sharing.
Ray Girvan said,
July 28, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
I have to admit, I go with the solemn Yanks; Stu's explanation of the intent of the show is new to me to. The general format implies – albeit through a filter of humour and interest value – well-researched debunking of common factoids, and I think it's a widespread impression; in the QI website discussion thread I cited above, one of the researchers says that "It's not uncommon for people on these boards … to arrive full of rage that QI is 'wrong' about something" and he justifies its wrongness by saying that the programme "is not a talking academic reference book – if it was no one would watch it" and that its aim is "to get people to think for themselves … We seek to provoke, not to prove; to stimulate, not to lecture".
That looks a false dichotomy; those aims and good research aren't mutually exclusive. I don't know what the researchers' qualifications are in relation to linguistics, but they're apparently not scientists – "Most of us, both behind and in front of camera, are not scientists but we are all deeply interested in science" – which is probably the core of the problem.
If the aim is really no more than to make money by packaging sloppily researched factoids in authoritative-appearing format, it's a scam. You might as well buy Shite's Unoriginal Miscellany, which is far funnier as fiction, or books like Notes & Queries and Does Anything Eat Wasps? that make no pretence at being more than personal opinions of contributors.
Rob Gunningham said,
July 28, 2008 @ 12:35 pm
LH: am I using "po-faced" correctly?
No. In my experience it usually means the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary's second definition namely, piously or hypocritically solemn But maybe that's what you meant, only you can tell.
Arnold Zwicky said,
July 28, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
Rob Gunningham: "LH: published books that purport to be reference sources.
What they have been trying to tell you is that nobody in their right mind would use QI as a reference source. If that is difficult for you to understand, perhaps you should take it up with the American publishers."
And what we're saying to you is that no one looking at the American edition of the book would have any idea that it is in fact just QI between covers, and that few Americans know about QI anyway. The book claims to be revealing the truth, and its Library of Congress categorization is Questions and Answers, not Humor.
As for taking it up with the American publisher, that's certainly a lost cause. The book been out for a couple of years, it's been earning pots of money for Harmony Books (by what I see as misrepresentation), and the publisher has no motivation to change any of that.
freak said,
July 28, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
stephen- of course Americans do humor. But they don't do humour… As someone (wot, no reference?) once said- The United Kingdom and the United States- two cultures separated by a common language.
Juliette said,
July 28, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
On the last question mentioned:
It seems to me that the explanation would be the French expression "haut comme trois pommes" or "high as three apples"? "Trois-Pommes" is a common nickname for short people, and an alternative one for Pepin le Bref, first Carolingian king. The early date makes it clear that the expression could have crossed the channel with the Bastard.
Stu said,
July 28, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
BH, I agree with you. The American publishers probably could have included some form of explanation – perhaps an introduction by Alan Davies (a serial panellist) or the inimitable Stephen Fry. It shouldn't be listed under 'Questions and Answers', as Arnold Zwicky says it is, it should be under 'Humour' – as evidence by the fact that the panel show producers do not invite academics to compete, only comedians. This is not Does Anything Eat Wasps, it's Book of General Ignorance. Some might say the clue is sitting there in the title.
Stephen Jones, my comment relating to 'wiser people than me' was actually referring to Kate Fox, the anthropologist who turned her studies inwards and wrote the book Watching The English (contrary to popular opinion, the English do sometimes reference their sources). She wrote:
Understand, this isn't a comment on Americans, nor their sense of humour or proven abilities at joke craft, except by way of comparison. It is a comment about the English (more likely British) inability to hold a normal conversation without somehow making a joke out of it. It's sometimes ascribed to a national lack of self-confidence, which possibly proves the point as well as anything else would.
Regardless, the majority of the excerpts from the book I have read are not wrong, per se, just unsourced, contentious or merely tricksy, and given with a false sense of authority – some might say condescending superiority.
Rob Gunningham said,
July 28, 2008 @ 5:35 pm
Arnold Zwicky: And what we're saying to you is that no one looking at the American edition of the book would have any idea that it is in fact just QI between covers
You're taking it up with the wrong person, mate. I don't do publishing. But why don't you just follow your own rule instead of being so rude, and stick to the topic? You've ignored Juliette's post about Trois-Pommes, which is more interesting than anything you have written in this entire post.
Ray Girvan said,
July 28, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
It's Book of General Ignorance. Some might say the clue is sitting there in the title.
Except that it doesn't mean much without context. If I'd never seen QI, I'm not sure what I'd think it meant. For the benefit of those who don't know: "General Ignorance" is merely the name of the final round of the QI programme: one devoted to quickfire debunkings of "obvious" answers on mixed topics, as opposed to the longer thematic threads of the rest.
Steve Harris said,
July 28, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
Am I the only one more concerned about rhymes with orange? (That's even the name of a rather clever daily comic strip.)
Tolkien suggested "doorhinge", which I rather like.