Inherently Funny Words: Buh-, Puh-, Kuh-

This morning on my daily COVID-19 walk I listened to Charles Duhigg's How To! podcast, specifically the episode "How To Be Funny". The episode featured comedian Gary Gulman, who explained to a pastor seeking to liven up his sermons that certain words are just inherently funny - a general rule are words starting with the buh-, puh-, or kuk- sounds ("Chicken is funny while "hen" is not).

I saw Jerry Seinfeld mention the concept of an inherently funny word as well in a New York Times video some time ago, that "pop tart" was just an inherently funny word (notice that puh- sound!). This is also not new nor secret, as I read today on Wikipedia; Neil Simon noted inherently funny words in his 1972 play, Sunshine Boys:

Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know what words are funny and which words are not funny. Alka Seltzer is funny. You say 'Alka Seltzer' you get a laugh ... Words with 'k' in them are funny. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland ... Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. Cab is funny. Cockroach is funny – not if you get 'em, only if you say 'em.

Economists on Screen

NPR's Planet Money did a 4-part (that I could find) series, "Economists on Screen" about a year ago. Wait, no John Nash?

1. Episode 1: Crazy Rich Asians
2. Episode 2: Jack Ryan
3. Episode 3: Aaron Sorkin (really The West Wing)
4. Episode 4: Stockholm 

For the record, literally none of these are even a tiny bit accurate.

Social distancing *does* work

It *will* prevent the spread of the coronavirus

Also, all other infectious diseases

Just like abstinence prevents pregnancy

The world holds many dangers so we should say indoors

There'd be no air crashes if we never flew

Don't lift heavy you'll hurt your back

Avoid running if you want to keep your knees

We should ban youth football to protect youth's brains

Outlaw pools to eliminate drownings

Note there's no birth defects if we never had children

Don't wonder what's around the next corner (it might be trouble)

And most of all, note that if we never risked love, there'd be no heartbreak

The End of the Beginning: Birthday #39 in Quarentine

In a different reality I would have started my 39th year in Yellowstone National Park, exploring the main geyser area, and splurging a couple of nights in the Old Faithful Inn. 

Instead, I got up to photograph the sunrise from the Harvard Bridge, I had a filling bacon & egg breakfast (and later brie and South African forelle pear lunch), started David McCullough's "The Great Bridge", played Civilization 6 (launched a joint war against Brazil), walked to the Prospect Hill Monument where George Washington first raised the flag (and I almost bought a condo, overlooking Somerville), watched real-life derangement and revenge documented in the film "Tread", stepped into The fossilized imprints of actual dinosaur footprints in Holyoke, and ate the meal of the year at Sturbridge's BT's Smokehouse.

So, I traded baby bison for baby gosslings. I visited no UNESCO site, but I checked-off a few things I'd never done before. And I had a wonderful birthday.

The humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth

In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain. 

Here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in that great gulf they had made, overtaken by a death that must have seemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be. To me also at that time this death was incomprehensible. All I knew was that these things that had been alive and so terrible to men were dead. For a moment I believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been repeated, that God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain them in the night.

War of the Worlds “Dead London”

A reopening thought experiment

1. "Hey, we can re-open American tomorrow. If we do that, no other trade-offs except ten dementia-vegetables in some Kansas nursing home with contract COVID-19 and die. Do you want to open America?" Absolutely, let's do it!
2. "Hey, we can re-open American tomorrow. If we do that, no other trade-offs except two of your siblings will contract COVID-19 and die. Do you want to open America?" Absolutely not!

Case #2 also has one-fifth fewer the causalities, yet but it's an obvious 'no'. I exaggerated the first case somewhat, but it'd likely the same assessment if Case #1 had ten strapping lads instead of people at the very end of life already. People far away you don't know, when it's abstract like that, the loss is less and easier to make. It's only when those closer to us are affected, even if minuscule in quantity, is felt so much more.

A Daring Adventure (Helen Keller on security, or its illusion)

In 1940, Helen Keller published Let Us Have Faith. The chapter “Faith Fears Not” included the following:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. God Himself is not secure, having given man dominion over His works! Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Faith alone defends. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

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