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Codes and Ciphers

My book group recently read a 2017 mystery called The Lost Book of the Grail by Charlie Lovett. In the novel, an English bibliophile and an American digitizer track down a mysterious book thought to lead to the Holy Grail. The chief clue: a secret message hidden in the rare books collection of the fictional Barchester Cathedral Library. The message is a complex polyalphabetic substitution cipher that can only be solved by finding key words hidden in the books. Coded messages are common plot devices, used not just by Dan Brown but also by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Neal Stephenson, among many others.

Aficionados distinguish among codes and ciphers. They also talk about steganography, which involves hiding messages, sometimes covertly as in a microdot and sometimes in plain sight as when the first letters of the paragraphs of a text spell out a word. Aficionados also refer to anagrams, which are expression made up by rearranging the letter (or numbers) of another expression. My name, for example, anagrams as BATTLED WAISTLINE.

There is also a distinction between codes and ciphers. A code is a technique for rendering one set of meanings using other, usually shorter, symbols. In early Morse Code telegraphy, for example, a word in the code book could be used to stand for a whole sentence or phrase, enabling efficient messaging. Stenographers and journalists use shorthand and the US Secret Service uses code names for its protectees—like Lancer (for JFK) and Rawhide (for Ronald Reagan). Ciphers refer to messages which are systematically altered by some algorithm, such as replacing one symbol for another. Cryptography refers to both ciphers and codes.

How do ciphers work? The classic example is one called the Caesar shift. This is an encryption in which each character is replaced by one a certain number of places down the alphabet. Julius Caesar’s encrypted messages were said to use a shift of three characters to the left. Edwin Battistella would become BATFK YXQQFPQBIIX. Simple ciphers like the Caesar shift are (said to be) easy to decrypt.

In literary works, such as mystery and spy fiction, encrypted messages can be used as plot devices, obstacles for the protagonists to overcome. Or they can be used as part of the plot itself, where the technique of decipherment is a major part of the story. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” a woman named Elsie Patrick is harassed by coded messages in which each character looks like a dancing person. Realizing the messages are written in a substitution cipher, Sherlock Holmes deciphers them by analyzing the frequency of the symbols. He explains to Watson that “E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and it predominates to so marked an extent that even in a short sentence one would expect to find it most often.” Noting that T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L are the next most frequent letters, he quickly deciphers the message, which said. “Elsie, prepare to meet thy God.”

Sometimes the cipher appears quite complex. Edgar Allan Poe used one as a plot device in his story “The Gold Bug.” The cipher was supposedly devised by Captain William Kidd, the Scottish pirate, giving directions to his buried treasure. It’s a simple letter-to-symbol cipher using numbers and punctuation marks, but without spaces between the word divisions. Poe’s fictional cryptographer solves the cipher by using frequency analysis. You can give it a try yourself. Here’s a clue, the letters E T A O I N S H R D L are represented by 8 ; 5 ‡ 6 * ) 4 ( † 0.

53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.)4‡);806*;48†8

¶60))85;;]8*;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96

*?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8

¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡

1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4

(‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;

Figuring out the cipher in The Lost Book of the Grail was more complex, and the deciphering takes place over many pages of the novel. Frequency analysis leads the protagonists to the letters U, Q and D, which they associate with the Latin words unus, quinque and decem: 1, 5, and 10. The numbers point to books and chapters in the library’s medieval manuscript collection where the key words are found. That discover allows the cipher be decrypted by using the key to partially scramble the alphabet. So the keyword corpus goes before the English alphabet minus the letters in the key. The keyed English is aligned with the slightly shorter Latin alphabet (missing J and W, which were absent in classical Latin).

C O R P U S A B D E F G H I J K L M N Q T V W X Y Z

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

Ultimately, the key allows the protagonists to decipher strings like JULMCURQF CMQJLCHIQ UGBCULUFD as PERSAECUL ASUPRANOV EMHAERELI or per saecula supra novem hae reli-. Finding successive keys and applying them to further bits of text, they decipher the full Latin message. It’s a complex puzzle spread over nearly sixty pages.

Not all secrets are so complex. In the Da Vinci Code, symbologist Robert Langdon is confronted with, among other clues the lines:

13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5

O, Draconian devil!

Oh, lame saint!

Each line is an anagram. “O, Draconian Devil” yields “Leonardo Da Vinci” and “Oh, lame saint” becomes “The Mona Lisa.” The line of numbers is an anagram of the beginning of the Fibonacci Sequence, in which numbers after 1 are the sum of the two previous numbers: 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21. It is the combination of a later lockbox.

Hidden messages, from anagrams to codes and ciphers are part of a long literary tradition. Take some time to enjoy them or create one yourself.

Featured image credit: “Enlightening Math” by John Moeses Bauan. CC0 via Unsplash.

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Test how well you know police shows [quiz]

Are you currently studying for a legal exam? Do you need a revision break?  Are you a fan of policing-based television series and movies?

In celebration of National Trivia Day (United States) test your knowledge of police themed television series and films with our trivia quiz. Covering character relationships, places of work, and police rank… how well will you fare?

Featured image credit: 8mm Filmrolls, by Denise Jans. CCO via  Unsplash .

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Top Eight Developments in International Law 2019

For those who support and believe in the power of international law to effect positive change in the world, 2019 was difficult. There were however a number of important bright sparks, in the form of efforts to negotiate treaties on the protection of marine biodiversity, business and human rights, and the elimination of work place harassment; as well as spotlights shone by national and international courts on the plight of some of the world’s most vulnerable people. The past 12 months have both highlighted the political limits within which international law operates, and the good it can achieve within those boundaries. This post reflects on some of the most important new cases, treaties, and events; as well as the international legal order’s most difficult challenges.

1)  Climate change and loss of biodiversity accelerate

Climate emergency is Oxford’s word of the year and, as we are closing out the warmest decade on record, evidence of global warming seemed to be everywhere. The ferocity of forest fires both in the Amazon and in areas of Australia, fuelled by extreme drought, are but one worrying example. They also illustrate the limits of international law’s ability to force change on governments who are unwilling to accept it. Against this dark backdrop, the 2015 Paris Agreement’s achievements look modest. Climate change poses an existential challenge to international law, in that it affects almost everything it regulates. International cooperation is our only hope of tackling it, but it is difficult not to question whether the existing international legal architecture is up to the challenge.

2) The ICJ issues its opinion on the Chagos Islands

In February, the International Court of Justice handed down its advisory opinion on the legality of the UK’s continuing administration of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. The UK purchased these Islands from the self-governing colony of Mauritius in 1965 in the run up to its independence and has leased the largest island, Diego Garcia, to the US military for the last 53 years. The original inhabitants of the Islands were deported in the late 1960s and early 1970s and have been fighting for their right to return ever since. The Court’s opinion confirms that the UK’s continued presence on the Islands is unlawful and that the Islands ought to be returned to Mauritius, a position subsequently endorsed by the General Assembly. The UK’s response has been a study in silence, dashing Chagossians’ hopes of returning and casting a shadow over the UK’s reputation as a promoter and defender of international law.

3) The Supreme Court decides Jam et al v. International Finance Corporation

Also in February, the US Supreme Court rejected the International Finance Corporation (IFC)’s claim of absolute immunity, in a win for human rights and business litigation. The IFC is the investment arm of the World Bank Group, lending nearly $20 billion each year to development projects in developing countries’ private sectors. The case had been brought by a group of Indian farmers and fishermen adversely affected by a $540 million investment by the IFC in a Gujarat coal plant, which has had a significant detrimental impact on the local environment. The decision opens the way for a consideration of the merits of this case, and similar ones, in US courts. It has also shone a light on the World Bank’s patchy adherence to human rights and environmental standards.

4) The ILO takes a stand against violence and harassment in the workplace

In June, the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted a new convention aimed at eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work. The text obliges its signatories to prevent violence and harassment, including gender-based crimes, in all work situations; and to provide appropriate and effective remedies. Importantly, Article 6 requires that “[e]ach Member shall adopt laws, regulations and policies ensuring the right to equality and non-discrimination in employment and occupation, including for women workers…” That sounds obvious, but women are not protected from sexual harassment at work in nearly a third of countries. It is a fitting way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the creation of the ILO, one of the most quietly influential international organizations.

5) Crisis at the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court has been under a cloud for some time, the early optimism of its founders and supporters long dissipated. This year brought more trouble: In January, Laurent Gbagbo, a former president of Ivory Coast, was  of crimes against humanity after an eight-year, high-profile trial. There are rumours of discord between the judges and some are suing the Court for higher pay. At the same time, the States Parties are keeping their fingers on the purse strings and asking the Court to justify why it has become quite so expensive with so little to show in terms of convictions. In April, the Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber denied the Prosecutor’s application to open an investigation into international crimes committed in Afghanistan in a highly controversial decision. The Chamber based itself on ‘the interest of justice’, which is not a concept it had been asked to decide on. Some of the Chamber’s concerns about the feasibility of the investigation may have been justified, but the decision did nothing to silence those who accuse the Court of being a neo-colonial institution preoccupied with Africa.

There is time still for the Court to turn things around, and it was always going to struggle under the expectations placed upon it at birth. But it will be hoping for a more successful, less contentious year in 2020.

6) Two important new treaties on the horizon

Conventional wisdom says that there is no political appetite for new multilateral treaties, but this year saw two major efforts to develop and expand international law. The first is the proposed new treaty on Marine Biodiversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ). Among other things, the treaty aims to better regulate marine protected areas, promote environmental impact assessments, and improve the management of marine genetic resources. However several important questions remain unanswered, including (crucially) the extent to which the treaty will apply to fisheries.

The second major treaty under negotiation aims to better regulate the activities of transnational corporations under international human rights law. If successful, it will strengthen international cooperation to prevent human rights abuses in the context of business activities and provide access to justice and remedies for victims. The current draft has been written by a committee appointed by the UN Human Rights Council and is likely to go through several more rounds of revision before, hopefully, being opened for signature. It is complemented by the non-binding Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration, which were published in December.

7) WTO AB RIP

One of international law’s most successful dispute settlement bodies came to an end on 11 December: the US’ refusal to allow the appointment of new members of the WTO’s Appellate Body (AB) meant shut down. The AB had long been criticized by the US for allegedly overstepping its mark, but it was widely seen as one of the most efficient and effective international dispute settlement fora. Its shutdown leaves the world trading system without an independent adjudicator.

8) Myanmar taken to court for genocide

One of the most high-profile events in international law came late in the year: the International Court of Justice’s hearings in the provisional measures phase of the case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar for the alleged genocide against its Rohingya people. Most media attention was focused on Aung San Suu Kyi’s presence, but the case is fascinating for other reasons too: it is the first time a state with no direct link to the alleged atrocities has instigated proceedings under the Genocide Convention. The first step is for the court to determine whether or not it will indicate the provisional measures requested by The Gambia to stop the atrocities and preserve evidence. After that, it will decide whether it has jurisdiction to consider the case on its merits and, if it does, it might end up ruling whether Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya population amounts to genocide.

Featured image credit: “Photo” by Juliana Kozoski. Public Domain via Unsplash.

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How linguistics can help us catch sex offenders

Between 2009 and 2011, a now convicted sexual offender in his early twenties was spending much of his time online persuading young girls and boys to produce and share with him sexual images and videos. To maximise his success, he would deceive and manipulate his victims by cycling through numerous different personas—a teenage boy, a young woman, a modelling agent, for example—seemingly trying to find the best fit for the person he was talking to.

Online anonymity is a significant hurdle in policing online sexual abuse, and cases like this are sadly common. As such, law enforcement agencies draw on expertise from a range of disciplines for support, including forensic linguistics. Given that this sort of online abuse occurs almost exclusively through language, linguists are in a unique position to assist police investigations by describing how language functions in various online criminal contexts as well as helping identify anonymous offenders through their language.

In the case mentioned above, the online abuse was enabled by multiple online identities. The man adopted 17 different personas. To understand how online abuse works, it’s important to consider two questions: First, what strategies did the offender use in the attempt to obtain images from victims? Second, did the 17 personas’ strategies vary, or were they linguistically consistent?

To explore these questions, it helps to understand how identity works. Rather than being some static, unchanging entity, identity is in some ways multiple, and at least in part, performed through language. Think, for example, about the various roles you might assume in a day- friend customer, boss, spouse, etc. And think about how your language choices might shift, subtly or dramatically, consciously or unconsciously, across each, enabling you to perform each of those different roles.

The first question is fairly straightforward. Across all 17 personas, the offender’s most common linguistic moves were associated with sexual and non-sexual rapport-building, maintaining/escalating sexual content, and assessing likelihood/extent of engagement. While these moves seemed to represent his overriding goals, he also made occasional use of more extreme and coercive moves which included overt persuasion and even extortion.

The second question got a bit more complicated. You might expect—as I did—a certain amount of variation between different types of persona. It seems reasonable to think, for example, that a mixed-race 15-year-old lesbian persona would differ somewhat from a white 19-year-old male persona. Not the case. Across all 17 personas, linguistically, the offender seemed to perform just two distinct roles. The first was sexual pursuer/aggressor, where he would determinedly pursue victims in an explicitly sexual manner. This typically involved lots of sexual content moves, occasional overt persuasion and extortion, and little rapport-building. His second role was something closer to friend/boyfriend, where he spent most time attempting to build sexual and non-sexual rapport and used almost no coercive strategies.

Most interesting about these opposing roles is that only one persona performed as the friend/boyfriend, where the other 16 personas were clearly sexual pursuer/aggressors, regardless of that identity’s age, gender, ethnicity, etc. So why did this one persona communicate so differently from the rest? News reports around the case, along with police records, verified much of the personal information he provided about himself when assuming this particular persona. In other words, this persona seemed less of a deceptive performance than many of the others, and more like the offender performing as himself, or at least the closest representation of what we might think of as the real person.

When analysing this offender’s linguistic moves, we had expected to find some small differences between personas of varying identity categories; males and females, or those of different sexual orientations, perhaps. What we did not expect was that we would be able to establish a single persona as being the most likely approximation of the real offender. These methods may prove useful in future investigations where offenders are known to be operating multiple online identities, at least in narrowing the pool of interesting online personas. Such analysis could also help where undercover officers are looking to emulate the linguistic strategies of people in this and other online criminal contexts.

It is imperative that we keep exploring new approaches to combating online crime, especially as offenders are taking ever-more sophisticated measures to mask their identities. Online anonymity remains a hurdle to policing online crime, but not a barrier. It’s clear that there’s a lot we can do to discover people’s real identities even when an offender’s language is the only available clue.

Featured image credit: “Black computer keyboard” by Florian Krumm. CC0 via Unsplash .

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How to combat global economic challenges facing the 21st century

The world economy has been through a lot of challenges in recent years—from the challenges in healthcare, income inequality, restrictions in trade, unemployment, and gender inequality, to name a few. In this post, we’ve excerpted some thought-provoking chapters from recent titles that address central problems facing the field of economics today, while addressing some possible improvements.

Reforming healthcare

“We [the United States] like to think that we have the world’s best health system, and in some ways we do. Our doctors and hospitals use state-of-the-art technology, and we’re a world leader in pharmaceutical innovations and in treating heart conditions, hypertension, cancer, and other major diseases. But too many people lack health insurance, which impairs their health and causes economic hardship. And our costs are too high. Healthcare spending has been rising for several decades, and, counting both public and private outlays, we spend far more than any other country with little difference in health outcomes. Slower spending growth would free up resources for other uses, which would help the economy grow faster, boost wages, and raise living standards.” –William Gale, author of Fiscal Therapy. Read a free chapter online here.

The problem of income inequality

“Living standards change in line with GDP per head only if the distribution of incomes is unchanged. If incomes become less equally distributed, the living standards of most people will fall even if GDP per head is stable. The Gini Coefficient is the most widely used indicator designed to measure the distribution of income. UK inequality, on this measure, has risen since 1977, stabilized since 1987, and fallen in recent years. In the US there has been a long-term increase in income inequality. Unless this US trend for increased income inequality halts, it is quite likely that even if GDP per head rises in the US, the living standard of the average voter will fall. The recent data suggest that changes in income inequality pose less of a threat to living standards in the UK than they do to those in the US.” -Andrew Smithers, author of Productivity and the Bonus Culture. Read a free chapter online here.

Restrictions on free trade

Free trade provides enormous benefits to developing countries. The author of the book Free Trade and Prosperity Arvind Panagariya, offers a rousing defense of pro-free-trade policies and their benefits for developing countries. Through cross-country evidence and detailed case studies, Panagariya demonstrates the need for trade openness for sustained growth and poverty alleviation. He explains how openness was key to economic success in many counties such as Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, China and India. Low or declining barriers to free trade and high or rising shares of trade in total income have been key elements in the sustained rapid growth and poverty alleviation in these countries and many others. Free trade is like oxygen: the benefits are ubiquitous and not noticed until they are no longer there. Read more about this book here.

“It is clear that, during the past fifty years, industrialization has been a key driver of economic growth and structural transformation in most of the Asian-14. This role has acquired even greater significance in the past quarter century. Economic openness has performed a critical supportive role in the process, wherever it has been in the form of strategic integration with, rather than passive insertion into, the world economy. The guiding role of governments, as catalysts or leaders, has been at the foundation of success at industrialization. This success, although uneven across countries, has been remarkable. It would have been difficult to imagine in 1950, or even in 1970. In retrospect, this industrialization experience of Asia is often cited by scholars, with polar opposite ideological views, in support of their worldviews. It must be stressed that prescriptive, often oversimplified, generalizations which follow are misleading. The most important lesson from the Asian experience is that there are no magic wands: whether markets and openness or state intervention and controls. The paths to industrialization varied and the recipes for success were country-specific.” -Deepak Nayyar, author of Resurgent Asia. Read a free chapter online here.

Unemployment

“The public measures the strength of the economy based on the strength of the job market, and many fear and suffer from problems in our job market. For several years after the Crisis of 2008, wages for large parts of the labor force stagnated, and the creation of new and better jobs was sluggish. Many left the job market in discouragement. Others worked for bad bosses in jobs that were boring or worse. Still others worked more than one job to make ends meet. In the 1960s, we hoped for flying cars and cures for cancer. Both have been slow to arrive. The growth rates of GDP and of productivity declined. Americans do not appreciate how rare in human history is their expectation that each generation will do better than the previous one. Some have begun to lose that expectation. This makes them unhappy, because hope for a better future is an important determinant of current happiness.” -Arthur M. Diamond, Jr., author of Openness to Creative Destruction. Read a free chapter online here.

Gender equality in leadership positions

“Women make up 50 percent of the world’s population and 40 percent of its labor market participants, but they are severely underrepresented among business and political leaders. Only 19 percent of firms have female top managers, and 23 percent of seats in national parliaments are held by women.1. In the United States, women represent only 18 percent of directors and 5 percent of CEOs of major corporations.2. Less than one in five members of the US Congress is female, and the country has yet to elect a female president.

Although top leaders are themselves a tiny segment of the population, the fact that they remain predominantly male is, at a minimum, a matter of symbolic significance. It shows that, despite decades of educational and labor market progress, both absolutely and relative to men, women have not achieved parity in workplace outcomes.” -Amalia R. Miller, contributor to The Oxford Handbook of Women and the Economy. Read a free chapter online here.

Featured image credit: Image by artistlike from Pixabay.

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Exploring the seven principles of Kwanzaa: a playlist

Beginning the 26th of December, a globe-spanning group of millions of people of African descent will celebrate Kwanzaa, the seven-day festival of communitarian values created by scholar Maulana Karenga in 1966. The name of the festival is adapted from a Swahili phrase that refers to “the first fruits,” and is meant to recall ancient African harvest celebrations. Karenga drew upon traditional African philosophy to select the seven organizing principles (the Nguzo Saba) that structure the observance of Kwanzaa: umoja (unity), kujichagulia (self-determination), ujima (collective work and responsibility), ujamaa (cooperative economics), nia (purpose), kuumba (creativity), and imani (faith). Each day of Kwanzaa celebrates one of these principles, chosen for their emphasis on strengthening bonds of family, culture, and community among people of African descent.

In anticipation of Kwanzaa, the editors of Oxford Music Online and the Oxford African American Studies Center have put together a short playlist that celebrates the festival’s seven principles. Although these songs are not specifically tied to the Nguzo Saba, we feel that each piece embodies an important aspect of its corresponding principle. We could, of course, expand the list with hundreds of other tracks that are equally pertinent to the philosophy underpinning Kwanzaa. This selection is merely a starting point.

“Happy Kwanzaa”—Teddy Pendergrass (2001)

Our first pick, Teddy Pendergrass’s “Happy Kwanzaa,” provides an overview of the principles of the festival, and is one of the few Kwanzaa-specific songs ever produced by a major recording artist. The track is a smooth, buoyant R&B jam that not only lists the seven Nguzo Saba, but also expresses the joy to be found in celebrating them.

“Nation Time (Part 1)”—Joe McPhee (1971)

Joe McPhee’s funky free jazz classic “Nation Time” shares a title with a 1970 Amiri Baraka poem and captures the spirit of umoja (unity) that undergirded Baraka’s dream of black nationalism. (See below for more on Baraka.) In the early years of the Black Power movement, “nation time” referred to an ideal of African American political and economic cooperation that would result in a new black nation.

McPhee’s composition, recorded live at Vassar College, begins with a short call-and-response between the saxophonist and the audience: “What time is it? NATION TIME!” The band then launches into a fast-paced, densely-layered 18-minute piece that manages to showcase saxophone, piano, trumpet, bass, and organ, evoking Coltrane, soul jazz, early funk, and R&B in equal measure. However, the genius of the arrangement lies in the way in which all of these disparate elements are held together—unified—in an engaging, melodic fashion.

“Ain’t Got No, I Got Life”—Nina Simone (1968)

Nina Simone’s “Ain’t Got No, I Got Life” is the perfect embodiment of the principle of kujichagulia (self-determination). The song is divided into two parts, the first part using a minor-inflected groove to underlay lyrics written from the perspective of someone who has nothing in the way of family, love, or possessions. After a brief bridge in which the energy builds and the lyrics ask “why am I alive anyway?”, the second part begins, using a major-inflected groove to underlay a triumphant enumeration of what the person does have: arms, legs, ears, freedom—but, most importantly, life.

“What’s Happening Brother”—Marvin Gaye (1971)

Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Happening Brother” asks questions central to the principle of ujima (collective work and responsibility) within the context of someone (purportedly Gaye’s younger brother Frankie) returning home from the Vietnam War. The music itself is full of chromatic twists and turns, slickly navigating the central key and its related modes, as the song’s protagonist finds his way back into home life.

“Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”—James Brown (1968)

The principle of ujamaa (cooperative economics) is perhaps not one that lends itself easily to expression in music, but it probably wouldn’t find a clearer statement than in James Brown’s anthemic “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” The entire second verse of the song addresses systemic economic exploitation (“But all the work I did was for the other man”) and a solution that entails both personal agency and economic cooperation: “Now we demand a chance to do things for ourselves/We’re tired of beating our head against the wall/And working for someone else.” There’s definitely more to this song than its eminently-shoutable chorus.

“The World Is Yours”—Nas (1994)

Nas’s seminal “The World Is Yours” finds him rapping about the demands and tragedies of urban life in New York City, seemingly a million miles away from the fundamental Kwanzaa principle of nia (purpose). But while Nas doesn’t seem to hold out much hope for himself (“Born alone, die alone, no crew to keep my crown or throne”), he envisions a future in which his as-yet-unborn son will learn from his father’s mistakes and make the world his own. “My strength, my son, the star, will be my resurrection,” Nas says, confident in the knowledge that his son will find a purpose that will uplift them both. Pete Rock’s chorus (“It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine/Whose world is this?”) on the track is unforgettable, too, keeping nothing back in promising the world to those who endeavor to take it.

“Black Art”—Amiri Baraka (1965)

Amiri Baraka’s poem “Black Art” addresses the principle of kuumba (creativity) directly, but rather than engage with traditional ideas of beauty or aesthetics, the piece focuses, at least initially, on art’s ability to upset and destroy. In one of the poem’s early stanzas, for example, Baraka declares with a shout, “We want ‘poems that kill.’/Assassin poems, Poems that shoot/Guns.” The poem is a raw expression of outrage, full of anger and violence, that can be painful to listen to today.

“Black Art” ends, however, with a burst of positivity:

Let Black people understand/that they are[…]/
[P]oems & poets &/all the loveliness here in the world/
We want a black poem. And a/black world.

This coda comes across as an unexpected, inspirational call to unity. Nevertheless, the social implications of Baraka’s “black poem,” as delineated in the piece’s vicious early verses, have the potential to leave the listener severely troubled.

In this recording, Baraka speaks over an improvised track performed by an all-star avant-garde jazz band that included Sunny Murray on drums, Don Cherry on trumpet, and Albert Ayler on tenor sax. Ayler’s staccato bursts and Murray’s cymbal washes fill the spaces that surround Baraka’s words to create a thick, disorienting sonic cloud that amplifies the tension generated by the poem.

“Keep Ya Head Up”–Tupac (1993)

The seventh principle of Kwanzaa is imani (faith), which encourages African Americans to believe in the righteousness of the struggle for equality. Tupac Shakur’s “Keep Ya Head Up” is an anthem to strength and resilience in the face of devastating tragedies in life—but the title of the song keeps returning: no matter how impossible it seems, you have to keep fighting for what’s right.

Kwanzaa playlist

Featured image credit: “candles” by Myriams Fotos. CC0 via Pixabay.

An older version of this article was published on the OUPblog on 26th December 2013 here.

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Why the holidays are the loneliest time for seniors

The winter holidays are a time to celebrate family, friends, and community. But for the millions of older adults worldwide who have no family, few friends nearby, or are lonely and socially isolated, December is far from the most wonderful time of the year. A survey carried out by AARP in 2017 found that 28 percent of U.S. adults ages 50 and older report that they’ve felt lonely during a holiday season over the past five years, and nearly half (43%) have worried about a friend or family member who was lonely during the holidays.

Christmas season may sharpen the dull pains of loneliness, as older adults yearn for their loved ones who have died, or reminisce about happy celebrations in their family home that they have since abandoned for residence in a long-term care facility. Yet social isolation among older adults is a sweeping social problem whose impact extends beyond the family-centric weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Rising numbers of older adults worldwide have no living or nearby kin. In the United States, nearly 7% of adults ages 55 and older have neither a living spouse nor biological children and 1% have no partner/spouse, children, biological siblings, or biological parents – with these rates rising across successive cohorts. Worldwide rates of kinlessness, or having neither a spouse nor children, range from a low of just 2% in China and Korea, to more than 10% in wealthy western nations including Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Rising numbers of kinless older adults are a result of demographic trends over the past century. Declining birth rates mean that older adults today have fewer children than in the past, especially in societies that have maintained restrictive population policies, and where childlessness rates are high. Due to processes of urbanization and globalization, adult children may migrate far distances from their aging parents to pursue rewarding economic opportunities. Moving from the countryside to the city, or from one’s hometown to more lucrative opportunities overseas are especially common among young adults in Asia and the global south. Rising rates of divorce worldwide mean that older adults may no longer live with a spouse. Women are especially likely to grow old alone, both because they tend to outlive their husbands and because they are less likely to find another partner after being divorced or widowed.

Being kinless isn’t the same thing as being lonely, however. Unmarried and childless adults tend to have larger networks of friends, compared to their peers with spouses and children. Friends can be an essential source of practical support and emotional uplift for older adults, especially in countries where non-family ties are valued as highly as familial ties. And even older adults with family by their side are not necessarily spared of emotional loneliness, or a lack of intimacy and closeness in one’s relationships. An older adult who has a stale marriage or chilly relationship with her adult children might feel a sense of aloneness and alienation even when surrounded by others at a lively family dinner. One in four married older adults reports feelings of emotional loneliness, and these rates are even higher for those whose spouses are chronically ill, who have a dissatisfying (or non-existent) sexual relationship, and for whom communication is silent, stilted, or combative.

An absence or shortage of satisfying social and emotional ties can be harmful and even deadly to older adults. Loneliness and social isolation are serious public health concerns because they are linked to far-ranging health problems including difficulty sleeping, poor cardiovascular health, high blood pressure, depressive symptoms, compromised immune function, and dementia, each of which is linked with mortality risk. The societal problem of loneliness and the health toll it exacts on older adults is so profound that in early 2018, the United Kingdom appointed its first-ever Minister for Loneliness, alongside the launch of a national charitable Campaign to End Loneliness.

Old age need not be a time of loneliness and isolation, however. Innovative clinical practices, public policies, and community programs can help mitigate against loneliness and its personal toll. Health care providers can screen older adults for loneliness as part of their usual geriatric assessment, identifying and providing supports for those at particular risk. Meal delivery programs like Meals on Wheels provide not only nutrition to older adults, but are effective in reducing their feelings of loneliness. Publicly-funded volunteering programs like Senior Corps that provide older adults an opportunity to learn new skills, interact with others, and give back to their communities help to reduce loneliness and provide the physical and emotional health boosts that come from meaningful social engagement. Continued investments in programs that enhance older adults’ social integration will have payoffs that linger long after the holiday season has passed.

Featured image credits: Tejas Prajapati via Pexels

 

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How medieval English literature found a European audience

At some point in the year 1430, a scribe working in the city of Ceuta on the north African coast put the final touches to a story collection. The collection had travelled a great distance: through two languages and across well over a thousand miles. The original author was the English poet, John Gower (d. 1408), and the collection was known as the Confessio Amantis (The Lover’s Confession). In the early fifteenth century, the work reached Lisbon. There, a clergyman translated it into Portuguese and this translation was copied as far afield as Ceuta, then under Portugal’s control.

The Confessio Amantis is just one of dozens of works in English that were translated into other European languages during the Middle Ages. On the face of it, this is surprising. After all, the English language had little international currency or prestige in this period.  English political power was also rather limited. There are good reasons why histories of global English usually begin in the early modern period, with expansion into the New World. Nonetheless, the story of how colonial incursions and international networks spread English literature to other parts of Europe at a much earlier point is little known and worth telling.

As in the early modern period, colonisation had a role to play in the transmission of medieval English texts. Many of the surviving translations from English are from Wales and Ireland, where there were established, though limited, communities of English speakers. The earliest Welsh translations were of political prophecies relating to the future of the island of Britain, a topic in which the Welsh had as much of a vested interest as the English. In Ireland, translations from English tended to reflect more international preoccupations. A number of romances, some religious works, and travel narratives were translated from English into Irish in the late medieval period. These texts could move very quickly. The first book printed in English was a set of stories about the city of Troy produced by William Caxton around 1474. Within a few years, this print made its way to Ireland and into the hands of a translator.

But political expansion is not the only force at work here. Texts also travelled across international networks. Religious groups may well have been more important than colonial incursions in bringing English writing to the Gaelic-speaking regions of Ireland. An Irish translation of the crusade romance Sir Bevis of Hampton seems to have been commissioned by a family with connections to the Knights Hospitaller. The layman who translated The Travels of Sir John Mandeville into Irish may have worked from manuscripts in a local Franciscan Friary. Ecclesiastical links also took texts from England to Iceland. A large number of exempla—stories for use in sermons—were translated into Icelandic in the fifteenth century, a period in which several Englishmen were appointed to Icelandic bishoprics.

Sometimes these networks intersected. Fifteenth-century Iceland also had close commercial ties to England. The flourishing stockfish trade prompted English fishermen to settle in Iceland. It seems probable that the English exempla were originally brought to Iceland for use in preaching to these communities.  Commercial connections between printers in England and in the Low Countries may also account for a number of translations from English into Dutch in first decades of the sixteenth century.

Links between courts had a role to play too. The Portuguese Confessio Amantis may well have been commissioned by John of Gaunt’s oldest child, Philippa of Lancaster, who had married the king of Portugal. English-language works were also available at the Scottish court. At the end of the thirteenth century, a Norwegian diplomat visiting the king of Scotland came upon an epic story of familial strife set in the Carolingian period. He had the work translated from English into Old Norse and it went on to circulate in Norway and Iceland as part of a cycle of Charlemagne narratives.

Have we, then, underestimated the international profile of English literature in the medieval period?  The existence of these translations suggests that medieval English texts were a good deal more mobile than we generally assume. However, availability and status are quite different things. There is little evidence that works in English were considered particularly prestigious at this point in time. Medieval translators working from high-status languages, like Latin and French, often go out of their way to mention the language of their source. By contrast, translators working from English very rarely state that they are doing so. Apart from the political prophecies, the sources of these translations tend not to be distinctively English in form or content. Rather, they tend to reflect international interests. Tales of chivalry, saints’ lives, exempla, and works of religious instruction account for most of the translated texts. Their source language may be English, but the culture these translators are absorbing into their own tradition is often more broadly European.

Featured Image credit: “Books” by Gellinger. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Some of our basic verbs: “drink”

Last week (see the post for December 11, 2019), I discussed the origin of the verb eat, which probably has the same root as the ancient Indo-European name of the tooth. Time will tell whether my idea to devote a few posts to such basic verbs will arouse any interest, but I decided to try again. So today the story will be devoted to the verb drink.

The Germanic cognates of drink are surprisingly uniform: in Frisian, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, and even Gothic, the verb is the same (disregarding minimal and fully predictable phonetic differences), but in the other Indo-European languages similar forms are either non-existent or hard to detect. Potion (and I am sorry to say, its etymological doublet poison, which did not always designate a deadly substance) came to English from Latin via Old French. It contains the root pō-, which alternated with pī-, not by ablaut (for the regular alternation ō ~ ī does not exist) but by some inexplicable whim. Was pō- ~ pī- an onomatopoetic, echoic word, like piss and gurgle, imitating the sound a stream of water makes? If so, vowels could alternate freely in it: for example, a measurable quantity of liquid might be called “pō,” while a small measure would be a mere “pī.” Compare Engl. sip, sop, sup.  Latin fell victim to a language game (typical of such words?) and turned pibere into bibere (recognizable from Engl. imbibe). Italian bere, French boire, and others are its descendants.

Quenching his thirst. Image by Olya Adamovich from Pixabay.

Those two forms of the same verb survived in many languages: some generalized pō– (for example, Latin and Baltic), while others chose pī– (notably so, Slavic: for example, the Russian for “drink” is pi-t’). We observe two roots: ed– “eat” and pō- ~ pī- “drink.” As follows from some facts of grammar, the first of them referred to the process, while the second stressed the result of the action.

Some dictionaries say that Germanic replaced the Indo-European root pō– with drink-. But there is no need to insist that Indo-European ever had a single verb for drinking, because the Germanic form could be a different word from the start, rather than an innovation. Although the origin of drink remains “unknown,” attempts to break the impasse have been numerous. An important circumstance should be taken into account here. Words of Indo-European often have n in the middle. Along with prefixes and suffixes, so-called infixes exist, n being the most important of them. It is hard to illustrate this phenomenon from Modern English, but compare stand and its past tense stood; the basic root is st[vowel]d. That is why nearly all hypotheses about the etymology of drink concentrate on the sound complex dr-k or dr-g, with the vowel being i, a, or u (the usual ablaut series, as in drink-drank–drunk and ring-rang-rung).

One search is especially instructive. In the recent posts on monomaniacs in etymology, I mentioned the names of Jost Trier and Jan de Vries. Both were serious, even brilliant scholars, but they often hoped to discover a single principle or factor, a golden key that might open too many doors. Trier attempted to derive numerous words from the concept of community. He produced strings of ingenious but dubious etymologies. Thus, he took the Classical Greek word thrigkós “fence” (read gk as nk), and from the idea of “fence” went to the reconstructed root dher- “to keep in place; support” and further to Old Icelandic drengr “pole, pillar”; hence “a valiant, honest man.” The next step led him to drink, for a drinking feast was traditionally associated with “community work.” The suggested path from “fence” and “pole” to “drinking” is hard to follow, even though, as we will see, drengr and drink may be related.

From fence to drink. Photo by Carms Onoya from Pexels.

Jan de Vries wrote, among many other books, etymological dictionaries of Modern Dutch and Old Icelandic, and, regrettably, he agreed with Trier in nearly all cases. About ten percent of his etymologies are from Trier. Hero worship was Jan de Vries’s most typical feature. In etymology, he followed Trier; in mythology, his god was George Dumézil, and in politics, unfortunately, Hitler. No one accepted this etymology of drink, but, since it appears in widely used dictionaries, it is well-known.

When a common Germanic word lacks a convincing pedigree, it is natural to recur to the substrate. The Indo-Europeans spread over a gigantic territory. At present, all the way from India to Norway, only the Finno-Ugric languages and Basque do not belong to the Indo-European family. Quite naturally, numerous indigenous words infiltrated the speech of the conquerors and therefore have no Indo-European etymology. Similarly, Latin became the language of the former Roman Empire and absorbed multiple native words. The problem with the Indo-European substrate is that we know nothing about the extinct languages, and saying that drink, for example, goes back to some such substrate is another way of saying that the origin we are trying to find is beyond recovery.

Also, why should the ancient speakers of Germanic give up such a basic word as drink? It has been suggested that the verb once belonged to the religious terminology of some of the pre-Indo-European peoples (so not just “drink,” but “drink on ceremonial occasions”). This is another arrow shot into the air: it falls to earth, but we know not where (however, see below). Equally unpromising is the comparison of drink with other dr-verbs, such as drip and drizzle. Those have secure etymologies and are not related to drinking. Perhaps the idea of drinking goes back to drawing, pulling, and so forth: compare to drink everything in one draft/draught, but the desired cognates are found only in Sanskrit and Baltic, and the underlying metaphor sounds rather feeble. In Germanic, the verb appears to be isolated. This is unfortunate, for drinking alone is not to be recommended.

Dry wine, an oxymoron. Image from Pixabay.

The idea of drinking may own something to the concepts of wetness and dryness. With regard to drink, both approaches have been tried. A somewhat similar word for “moist” occurs only in Baltic, but a cognate related to dryness may exist in Germanic. The Latin for “dry” is siccus (which we see in Engl. desiccate “to dry out”), while Latin sitis means “thirst.” The two words perhaps share the same root. Likewise, dry (from drūgiz) and drink (from drincan) may belong together, with n being an infix. This etymology of drink has been suggested by Viktor Levitsky, whose Germanic etymological dictionary appeared in Russian shortly before his death. His etymology is of course speculative (any etymology of drink is doomed to be such), but it looks realistic. The ancient root dher– occurs in words denoting hard, solid, durable things. One of the words with this root is Icelandic drengr “pole, pillar,” cited above in connection with Jost Trier’s reconstruction.

Thus, if we follow Levitsky, the path is not from “fence” to “pole” and further to “feast” and “drink,” but from “durability, hardness” to “dryness; thirst” and “drinking” as a way of fighting thirst. However, we don’t know whether drink first referred to quenching thirst or consuming an alcoholic beverage (hence the conjecture that our etymology may be sought for in some religious ceremony). French trinquer “to clink glasses” and Italian trincare “to guzzle” are both from German trinken “to drink.” Apparently, the German way of drinking impressed Romance-speaking people as worthy of imitation.

“Drought” comes from “dry.” Wait for the rain. Image by Gerhild Klinkow from Pixabay.

And now a postscript. Some verbs develop a strong bond. Thus, lay means to “to cause to lie” (never mind the fact of the old misuse of lay), and set means “to cause to sit.” Therefore, such verbs are called causative. But a small phonetic change and a shift in meaning may make this bond nearly impossible to detect. Thus, the causative of drink is drench, not exactly “to cause to drink.” Note also that the past participle of drink should have been drunken, but drunk and drunken have separated their functions in a rather subtle way (compare the sunk/sunken and shrunk/shrunken divide).

If the slogan in vino veritas “in wine (lives) the truth” has any foundation in reality, perhaps during this holiday season someone will come up with a truly watertight etymology of drink.

The Oxford Etymologist wishes everybody a Happy New Year! Enjoy a break in activities until January 8 but send questions and comments. When we meet again, the century will no longer be a teenager.

Feature image credit: Drinking song set to music, G Bickham, 1731. CC BY 4.0, via the Wellcome Collection.

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AI is dangerous, but not for the reasons you think.

In 1997, Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov, the reigning world chess champion. In 2011, Watson defeated Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the world’s best Jeopardy players. In 2016, AlphaGo defeated Ke Jie, the world’s best Go player. In 2017, DeepMind unleashed AlphaZero, which trounced the world-champion computer programs at chess, Go, and shogi.

If humans are no longer worthy opponents, then perhaps computers have moved so far beyond our intelligence that we should rely on their superior intelligence to make our important decisions. Nope.

Despite their freakish skill at board games, computer algorithms do not possess anything resembling human wisdom, common sense, or critical thinking. Deciding whether to accept a job offer, sell a stock, or buy a house is very different from recognizing that moving a bishop three spaces will checkmate an opponent. That is why it is perilous to trust computer programs we don’t understand to make decisions for us.

Consider the challenges identified by Stanford computer science professor Terry Winograd, which have come to be known as Winograd schemas. For example, what does the word “it” refer to in this sentence?

I can’t cut that tree down with that axe; it is too [thick/small].

If the bracketed word is “thick,” then it refers to the tree; if the bracketed word is “small,” then it refers to the axe. Sentences like these are understood immediately by humans but are very difficult for computers because they do not have the real-world experience to place words in context.

Paraphrasing Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, how can machines take over the world when they can’t even figure out what “it” refers to in a simple sentence?

When we see a tree, we know it is a tree. We might compare it to other trees and think about the similarities and differences between fruit trees and maple trees. We might recollect the smells wafting from some trees. We would not be surprised to see a squirrel run up a pine or a bird fly out of a dogwood. We might remember planting a tree and watching it grow year by year. We might remember cutting down a tree or watching a tree being cut down.

A computer does none of this. It can spellcheck the word “tree,” count the number of times the word is used in a story, and retrieve sentences that contain the word. But computers do not understand what trees are in any relevant sense. They are like Nigel Richards,who memorized the French Scrabble dictionary and has won the French-language Scrabble World Championship twice, even though he doesn’t know the meaning of the French words he spells.

To demonstrate the dangers of relying on computer algorithms to make real-world decisions, consider an investigation of risk factors for fatal heart attacks.

I made up some household spending data for 1,000 imaginary people, of whom half had suffered heart attacks and half had not. For each such person, I used a random number generator to create fictitious data in 100 spending categories. These data were entirely random. There were no real people, no real spending, and no real heart attacks. It was just a bunch of random numbers. But the thing about random numbers is that coincidental patterns inevitably appear.

In 10 flips of a fair coin, there is a 46% chance of a streak of four or more heads in a row or four or more tails in a row. If that does not happen, heads and tails might alternate several times in a row. Or there might be two heads and a tail, followed by two more heads and a tail. In any event, some pattern will appear and it will be absolutely meaningless.

In the same way, some coincidental patterns were bound to turn up in my random spending numbers. As it turned out, by luck alone, the imaginary people who had not suffered heart attacks “spent” more money on small appliances and also on household paper products.

When we see these results, we should scoff and recognize that the patterns are meaningless coincidences. How could small appliances and household paper products prevent heart attacks?

A computer, by contrast, would take the results seriously because a computer has no idea what heart attacks, small appliances, and household paper products are. If the computer algorithm is hidden inside a black box, where we do not know how the result was attained, we would not have an opportunity to scoff.

Nonetheless, businesses and governments all over the world nowadays trust computers to make decisions based on coincidental statistical patterns just like these. One company, for example, decided that it would make more online sales if it changed the background color of the web page shown to British customers from blue to teal. Why? Because they tried several different colors in nearly 100 countries. Any given color was certain to fare better in some country than in others even if random numbers were analyzed instead of sales numbers. The change was made and sales went down.

Many marketing decisions, medical diagnoses, and stock trades are now done via computers. Loan applications and job applications are evaluated by computers. Election campaigns are run by computers, including Hillary Clinton’s disastrous 2016 presidential campaign.If the algorithms are hidden inside black boxes, with no human supervision, then it is up to the computers to decide whether the discovered patterns make sense and they are utterly incapable of doing so because they do not understand anything about the real world.

Computers are not intelligent in any meaningful sense of the word, and it is hazardous to rely on them to make important decisions for us. The real danger today is not that computers are smarter than us, but that we think computers are smarter than us.

Featured image credit: “Lumberjack Adventures” by Abby Savage. CC0 via Unsplash.

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