Factlet (16)

The Canadian Dollar
   I don't have much time this morning, but I will attempt two things. The first is to provide the image above which will haunt us for a long time. It is from the cover of the Atlantic, which was published during the month of halloween in 2024. 
   The coach arrived in Washington, Canadians are spooked and the loonie is sinking. For some perspective on how low it can go, here is the Factlet:
The Canadian $
Jan. 21, 2002: 61.79 cents
"The dollar fell to its all-time low on Jan. 21, 2002, according to the Bank of Canada, hitting 61.79 cents US. (Over the next several years, the dollar climbed upwards until it reached its all-time high of $1.103 US on Nov. 7, 2007."
This Factlet is a few years old, but the numbers for the low and high Canadian dollars are likely correct.
  As for the word "Factlet", new readers can see the origin of the term in the post that revealed what a Gee-Gee is. The most recent one is about Maurice Maeterlinck, but, after re-reading it, I am not sure what the actual Factlet is. It may be that Maurice wrote The Life of Termites. I was clearer in the one about Balzac, he loved pears. Perhaps a more useful Factlet is #3, which is depressing to read at this time of year since it revealed in 2019 that "90,000 Packages Disappear Daily in N.Y.C." 

Maurice Maeterlinck (Factlet 15)

  On relatively sunny days only short posts are produced, generally in the form of "Factlets." The last one related to Honoré Balzac and this one is about Maurice Maeterlinck. That in itself is amazing in that the producer is barely unilingual and has not read, in English, anything written by either man and would not be able to understand them at all in French.

  Maeterlinck is mentioned here, not because he wrote a book about,The Life of the Bee (an insect of current concern), but because he wrote one about termites. The interesting thing about The Life of Termites is that Maeterlinck produced the book although he may never have met one.

    Since I said this would be short, the point is that this post is really about plagiarism, a subject now even more concerning than bees. The Life of Termites has been described as  "a classic example of academic plagiarism". Living during "The Plagiarism Wars" raging on this continent, you have likely read many articles on the subject, but I doubt that any mention Maeterlinck who purloined most of The Soul of the White Ant, which was really written by the Afrikaner, Eugène Marais, and is really about termites. It is because of bespoke information such as this, that you visit Mulcahy's Miscellany. 

Post Script (often the useful part)
   This is the section that allows me to go on. You will know about the dismissal of an ivy league university president and the charges of plagiarism, and that combatants on either side in the other war (the culture one), are combing through the works of the enemies, who now may be nervous, even if they only copied something written in Afrikaans.
   If you are now thinking about subjecting the writing of your opponent or ex-spouse to the scrutiny of a commercial service like Turnitin, read first, this article: "The Plagiarism War Has Begun: Claudine Gay Was Taken Down by a Politically Motivated Investigation. Would the Same Approach Work for Any Academic?" The Atlantic, Jan. 4, 2024. 
  The author, Ian Bogost, attempting to answer the question raised in that title, ran his own dissertation through the plagiarism wringer, which seemed to show that he had copied most of it. That was not at all the case, so you need to be careful before you lay your own charges.
   The linguist, John McWhorter thinks, "We Need a New Word for 'Plagiarism'," (NYT, Jan. 23, 2024.) He argues that perhaps a distinction needs to be made between stealing ideas, or sentences from a fictional work, both of which are more problematic than cutting and pasting the basic boilerplate statements borrowed from non-fiction academic works. He concludes:
  "Cutting and pasting is not the same as stealing ideas. “Plagiarism,” as a term, should be restricted to the latter. That means we need a new term for the former. There is no reason the new term has to be a formal one derived from Latin like “plagiarism” — or “duplicative language” for that matter. And in fact perhaps it should not be. Latinate words tend to look and feel more intimidating, handy for things you get in trouble for. Our new term could be less menacing, in line with referring to something that should be sanctioned less, if at all. Perhaps we already have the term: “cutting and pasting” — as distinct from, rather than a form of, plagiarism."

Sources:
 For Maeterlinck, Wikipedia will do. For another example from the Factlet genre,  "Match Making" will do.

A Fact: Maeterlinck won The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911.

See this for information about the winners of the Ig Nobel Prize.

Scissors and Spelling

 Factlet 13 - There are Over 480 Ways to Spell 'Scissors'

   I have not posted in a while, nor have I presented another Factlet. I thought of this one because I just saw an ad for scissors as illustrated below:

The ad reminded me of the page provided below which is the 59th one in Schott's Quintessential Miscellany (of which, by the way, I became aware only after choosing the title: Mulcahy's Miscellany.)

This photo is not a very good one, but I assure you Schott does present all 480 spellings on the page which is found in a very small book. The book by Barrow he refers to is this one: To the Curious; The Word Scissars Appears Capable of More Variations in the Spelling than any Other, T.T. Barrow. 

Sources, etc.

  The ad was spotted in a recent issue of The New Yorker. 
The site found at the scissor maker Ciselier is worth a look and they even have their own blog.
The source for the page provided above was given, but you should know that there are other Schott's: Schott's Original Miscellany; Schott's Food and Drink Miscellany and Schott's Sporting Gaming and Idling Miscellany. They are small books containing large amounts of information. For example in Schott's Quintessential... you will find the names of all of Churchill's pets and all of the addresses at which he (and they) lived. 

For the last three fascinating factlets before this one see: A Few More Factlets.

The Bonus: 

  The Canadian Spelling Bee Championship ended yesterday, but you are not too late for the U.S. "Bee Week" which is going on now. It is interesting that, although spelling English words correctly can be difficult, most of the recent champions in spelling bees have names which don't appear to be English.

Match Making

Factlet (13)

   This is not about what you think, it is about matches. Back when many people smoked, matches were needed and the line uttered by Lauren Bacall to Humphrey in To Have and Have Not, "Anybody got a match?," was often heard.  One of my sisters had huge glass containers and vases full of colourful matchbook covers. Now you rarely seen them and only infrequently get asked, "Buddy, got a light?"

   I thought of those match-filled days of long ago when I ran across this paragraph which provides the Factlet(s):

"For this tree [Western White Pine], almost exclusively now [c1949], yields us our wooden matches. Formerly they were made from the Eastern White Pine, but as the first growth of that species approached exhaustion, the western species, its closest relative and similar to it in the physical and chemical properties of its wood, began (from about 1914 on) to bear the whole burden of matchwood production. This may not seem a great drain - a match so slight a thing - but remember that twelve thousand wooden matches are struck, by the American people, every second. That makes more than 103 million in twenty-four hours. To produce a year's supply of matches, three hundred thousand mature pines must yield up their lives. If grown to a pure strand, they would cover an area 2 miles wide and 10 miles long."

   I suppose that one could view all of this as "progress" since fewer trees are being cut down to provide matches.  On the other hand, less trees are being used to produce newsprint and that is not good. Trees grow back, but newspapers are unlikely to return, even in digital form.

Source:

   That paragraph will be found on p.38 of A Natural History of North American Trees, by Donald Culross Peattie. It's a much more interesting book than the title indicates. See my post about Peattie. 

   If you are interested in the disappearance of the ordinary objects we grew up with see: Going Going Gone: Vanishing Americana by Susan Jones & Marilyn Nissenson. Among the things that have gone: Bank Checks; Carbon Paper; DDT; Girdles; Men's Garters; Nuns; Slide Rules; Tonsillectomies and Typewriters and Wedding Night Virgins.

All of those topics are covered in the book and I have a copy if you want to borrow it.

Post Script: 

   If you are more interested in the subject of "Match Making," see my post - "Lonely in London."
Remember these?

A Few More Factlets

Wonder Woman - Factlet (10)

   If you are thinking about working out more (or even some) when the weather gets better, then this brief set of statistics may serve as an incentive. On the other hand, if you are breathing heavily after walking from the couch to the fridge, you might get depressed when reading about this woman for whom a 100-mile run is just a jaunt. She is clearly both finely tuned and named.  The stats are from here: “Woman Ultrarunners Age Like Fine Wine: Camille Herron, 40, Has Set Another World Record,” Victor Mather, New York Times, Feb. 27, 2022. On your ready, get set, go:

She has set multiple world records in open-road races and on tracks, in distances from 50 miles to races that lasted 24 hours. In 2017, she shattered the 100-mile world record by over an hour, finishing in 12 hours 42 minutes 40 seconds…

On Feb. 19, she did it again, breaking her own world record, in 12:41:11, a pace of 7:37 per mile. She also beat all the men in the race, with the first male runner, Arlen Glick, coming in about 30 minutes behind her with a time of 13:10:25.

If you are not yet impressed, she mentions at the end of the article: “I also hold the world record for 24 hours. I ran 167 miles in a day.” (about 270km).

Southern Ontario Real Estate - Factlet (11)

    If the rundown bungalow on your street is being offered for sale under a number in the high six figures, then I suppose it is reasonable to assume that the land upon which it sits is also worth a lot. This is good news for farmers, but rather bad news for those of us who enjoy eating. The raising of rutabagas looks less glamorous when one realizes that the land can produce warehouses more quickly and the yield is far, far more profitable. As I said in my earlier rant, there will soon be nothing but tarmac from Tillsonburg to Tilbury and all of southern Ontario will soon look like Toronto the Carbuncle. Here is the factlet:

"The rush is widespread, involving tens of thousands of acres of land in regions outside the Greater Toronto Area, including the Golden Horseshoe and all the way to Windsor, he adds. “Two years ago, we were talking between $300,000 to $450,000 per acre across Southwestern Ontario. Now it’s $800,000 to $1.5-million per acre."
From: "Commercial Real Estate Sees Record-breaking Canada-wide Land Rush," Wallace Immen, Globe & Mail, March 1, 2022.

If you are concerned about the loss of good agricultural land, there is an election soon. Here is a good resource produced by Environmental Defence Canada. 

WOE CANADA - Factlet (12)

   Given the focus on Identity and Indigeneity this statistic made me wonder if there will be a Canadian identity in the future, or several thousand solitudes not just two.

There are more than 630 First Nation communities in Canada, which represent more than 50 Nations and 50 Indigenous languages.
From: First Nations. 

Post Script:

   For the fine distinction between FACTLETS and FACTOIDS, new readers should see my post about GEE-GEES.