Heidi Bond has just discovered what I learned at last fall's "matriculation dinner". Olives and alcohol are complementary goods. Why? I have no idea.

I am happy to announce that Jeremy Reff, the mostly-absent mastermind of refference will be joining Crescat Sententia.

The assimilation continues.

Quoth Jacob Levy:

Virginia Postrel, the ever-stylish analyst of aesthetics, has charged me, the academic who went through college in a Grimace-purple corduroy jacket (yes, really) and whose idea of office decor is restacking one of the countless fallen stacks of paper, with being excessively concerned with being fashionable and cool.

I wrote earlier about a few ways that copy-editing is like being a non-supreme judge.

Here's another way: when other people aren't completely satisfied with your product they start assigning some of your caseload to another judge. This may or may not increase "accuracy" but it definitely increases inconsistency, especially when the two of you eventually discover that you've been consistently and merrily divergent on a certain line of decisions (like whether vice-presidential or vice presidential is the proper compound adjective).

The result is a set of precedents that combines both judges' opinions, and is probably inferior to what would have resulted if either had been allowed to hold sway.

My post earlier about the strange game theoretic analysis of subway platforms has gotten a couple of responses, which makes me happy. Rather than append them to that already bloated post, I'll mention a few quickly here.

Anthony Rickey notes that the Japanese authorities have attempted to take all the fun out of this game by designing their subways in an intelligent fashion. I suppose that's good-- I highly support the Chicago-sensible-address-numbering system over the Manhattan-anybody's-guess system-- but I have inexplicably and irrationally mixed feelings anyway.

Hei Lun at Begging to Differ argues that it's sometimes easier to get a seat in a low-traffic train car, because one often has to steal the newly-vacated seat from somebody who was already standing in the car. If one's polite and waits until everyone has disembarked, I find this theft is rarely feasible on D.C. trains, especially since most people stand up and queue at the doors before the train has even stopped or its doors are open. Besides, there are advantages to crowd-minimization other than the availability of a seat (like the increased space given to a standing passenger to hold his book).

[Hei Lun also argues that the number of folks who get on the train such that they will get off near the train is unobservably small. In locations and times where that is the case (not rush hour D.C.), one should obviously not bank on this, and follow the other observations in my post.]

Oh, and one reader followed the link from that post to my old post about the window-blinds game and noted that one should also be sensitive to any information one has about one's fellow players there:

I know a group of people who live in the West Village who all leave their blinds open all the time, whatever they're doing - it provides a lot of drama for the residents, and I think that's why they do it, as a form of theater. There are two buildings that face each other on Jones Street, and pretty much all the residents of both apartment houses leave their blinds open even while they are changing or having sex. It is acknowledged among the residents that they do this. They amuse each other by stopping each other in the street and asking, "Did you get a new boyfriend?" "Been working out?"...the person I know in the complex ... met her boyfriend, who lives in the building opposite, by waving at him across the way.

Yesterday I argued that being left at the altar was not as bad as being unilaterally divorced. It's difficult to prove these sorts of claims, but a Crescat reader writes in with some personal experience that provide some confirmation of this.

At the very least, those who cavalierly plan to go through with marriages intending to end them shortly thereafter ought to tread very carefully and try to be sure that their semi-betrothed takes a similarly cavlier view.

My reader writes:

Speaking as a victim of unilateral divorce, I'd much prefer to have been left standing at the altar. Upon getting married, I made numerous lifestyle changes, including repainting the house a color more to her liking, converting my wood shop into a family room, throwing out some old but very comfy furniture, taking out a second mortgage to pay off her debts, that sort of thing. Worse still, while SHE evidently regarded our marriage vows as containing some unspoken caveat, I was naive enough to have taken that "till death do us part" bit seriously, and felt very betrayed, as well as horrified to discover just how bad a judge of character I was. As a consequence I'm pathologically afraid of trying romance again, because I don't think I'd survive going through this again. Next time the suicide attempt might be successful, after all...

Sorry, but the time to back out is before you say "I do". Not after.

Translations from languages with three distinct sets of pronouns and conjugations (formal, pseudo-formal, informal) into languages with only one (maybe two) set is a bit unnerving -- this is the case with my most recent birthday present: a translation of my grandmother's recipes from Bengali into English.

It's well done -- Mom showed it to me a couple of weeks back, as a functional copy. She was starting the desserts section, and the rest was, for the most part, finished. All the recipes are written out as directly (as possible) translated from my grandmother's various letters. At the bottom, in red, are modifications which my mother has found useful, and added as an appendix is a series of recipes of my mom's own ingenuity which she's incorporated upon coming to America thirty years ago.

I suppose I shouldn't complain, but I'd be wrong if I weren't to point out that there's something not right about it. These recipes are, for the most part, translations of letters from my grandmother to my mother, and utilize the informal set of pronouns and conjugations -- a form that is well translated into "little one," or "dear one," but even more endearing and much less artificial than these coerced English equivalents. Thus, my grandmother's "You should grind the masala by hand and lightly toast it, my dearest," (again, another terrible translation of the original Bengali -- this time by me) becomes the barked order: "You then grind, and lightly toast the masala." Or my favorite: "After that, Khuku [my grandmother's Informal Name for my mother -- dak nam, for those who've read Lahiri's Namesake], place a drop of the syrup on your thumb. It should be sweet enough that when you squeeze then slightly separate your index and your thumb, you should be at least three strands of sauce form, dear one," which very succinctly translates into "The sauce should be very sweet." followed by red ink reading: "Sickeningly sweet."

It's not that mind the translation. It gets the job done, of course, and is as friendly as it can be in the (pardon the comparison) relatively stoic and unemotional 21st century American English. But what bugs me is losing my dak nam to the jussive, or, in the best cases, the second singular pronoun -- in effect, losing my grandmother's voice. And, to be sure, I tend to think that that's mostly what these recipes are about.

I should be careful here, of course. I hold mustard steamed shad very close to what I imagine is the center of my pathetically worn-out and unhealthy heart (along with asafoetida lentils and Mogul Lamb). But part of the reason I do this, of course, is the memories I associate with each of these recipes -- birthdays, weddings, visits to India, house-warming parties, and even early spring, when shad returns to the Ganges (there is, I am convinced -- no fish better than Ganges-shad, or in the original, Gonga-ilish). Perhaps most relevant is memories of my grandmother, even though those are fairly faded.

And I suppose that for the most part, that's precisely what I'm looking forward to in my mother's recipes -- not only how to make English muffins fit with roast lamb (trust me, they do), or Mandelbread that slices thin enough, or rice pudding that people actually want to eat, or crepes stuffed with khir, but memories of Christmasses (when we used to have them), birthdays, and mid-winter. Although this makes me a bit worried as well.

It's not that I can't imagine doing the same for the following generation. I think I can safely vouch that my editorial notes will probably be a bit less health conscious: i.e., when my grandmother writes: "mix the butter with the flour," to which my mother adds: "using olive oil here works just as well, and is healthier," I cannot see myself doing anything else but noting (perhaps in blue next to my mother's red): "if cooking for yourself or me, use butter. Otherwise use olive oil." But whereas my mother had the opportunity (in truth, was probably forced) to introduce an entirely new cuisine to the family book, I don't think I have too much to add in the end -- the food sources are much too saturated for all this. Mom's already curried, mashed, boiled and (on rare occasion) deep-fried most every possible fruit, vegetable, and animal there is outside of the Bengali tradition, and my grandmother's pretty much got the rest covered (including, but not limited to, frog legs, turtle, and sheep's head). And although it is true that neither my mother or my grandmother cook with alcohol at all, there's only so much you can talk about cocktails and other forms of spirit, Saganaki, Fra Diavolo and Crepes Suzette.

I suppose I shouldn't worry too much about this. Grandma had Mom when she was seventeen, and Mom had me when she was thirty-six -- at which rate, I should have children around when I'm sixty, and that gives me quite some time (thirty-eight years, to be precise) to drum up some good recipes, and twenty more years to perfect them and right them down.

That said, however, ekeing out my own role in this whole immigration business is still turning out to be much more of a handful than I expected...