Competition


No crowded aisles today at Whole Foods

A few weeks ago I mentioned that a new Trader Joe’s has opened less than a mile from Whole Foods. Yesterday, on a Monday morning, Trader Joe’s was busy. But Whole Foods was as un-busy as I’ve ever seen it. It’s interesting that Trader Joe’s seems to siphon off so many customers from Whole Foods, because they’re not the same kind of store.

For one, Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry a lot of stuff. If you read up on the grocery business, you’ll learn that the bigger grocery stores may carry up to 50,000 items. Trader Joe’s carries only about 4,000 items, and 80 percent of them are Trader Joe’s own brand. Trader Joe’s is a nice supplement and cost-reducer for grocery shoppers, but most people are going to have to shop somewhere else as well.

Still, I doubt that Whole Foods is hurting. They have one of the highest pre-tax profit margins in the grocery business, 4.3 percent. The average for the grocery industry as a whole is closer to 1 percent. As for Trader Joe’s profits, very little is known because the company is privately held.

Iambus, King of all the North


King Iambus slays an anapest (Arthur Rackham). OK. Actually it’s King Arthur slaying a dragon.

As an editor with lots of friends who are writers, I have lots of conversations about writing. When talking about writing, sometimes it’s important to talk about the rhythm of language. To talk about the rhythm of language, one needs a handle on the terms that describe rhythm in language. One also needs to understand the simple methods used to examine the rhythm of a sentence. These methods are more commonly applied to poetry, but they’re just as valid for prose. These methods are very similar to the way we talk about rhythm in music. Every good writer is aware of rhythm, at least unconsciously, just as every musician is aware of rhythm.

Once upon a time, high school students got at least a taste of this in English class. They all learned that Shakespeare wrote his plays in iambic pentameter (also called “blank verse”), though most students probably didn’t pay much attention. It also used to be that every college student in English 101 and 102 learned how to scan verse and describe its rhythm. Nevertheless, as an adult, I don’t recall ever having met a single person (other than English professors) who had a grip on this. Let’s review!

Which brings me to this little piece of doggerel:

Iambus, King of all the North,
Sucking trochees ventured forth.
Galloping dactyls emerged from their nest,
But he struggled and conquered this anapest.
Spondee!

Before we’re done here you’ll understand the genius and usefulness of the little verse above.

Here are the words that are used most in describing rhythm in language. The two-syllable rhythms are iambic and trochaic. One also speaks sometimes of an iamb or a trochee. An iamb is a unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. Say the word, “omit.” That’s an iamb. A trochee is an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable. Say the word “writing.” That’s a trochee.

oh-MIT

WRITE-ing

The three-syllable rhythms are dactylic and anapestic. One also speaks sometimes of a dactyl or an anapest. A dactyl is an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables. Say the word “ignorance.” That’s a dactyl. An anapest is two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. Say the word “understand.” That’s an anapest.

IG-no-rance

un-der-STAND

Say the word “understand” five times in a row, aloud. Your rhythm was anapestic pentameter. All language has rhythm, for better or for worse.

I should mention one other two-syllable rhythm — spondaic. One also speaks sometimes of a spondee. A spondee is two accented syllables in a row. Say the words “bad breath.” That’s a spondee.

BAD BREATH

Let’s return to Shakespeare for a moment, and hopefully to something that you remember from high school. Here is the opening line of Sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

If you read that line in a sing-song voice to exaggerate the rhythm, it sounds like: ta-DAH ta-DAH ta-DAH ta-DAH ta-Dah. If you count them, you’ll see that this line of poetry consists of five iambs. Hence, iambic pentameter. We might also speak of five feet of iambic.

There is a shorthand notation for this, used on blackboards in English 101 and 102. Iambic pentameter: ˘ ′ ˘ ′ ˘ ′ ˘ ′ ˘ ′

Iambic: ˘ ′

Trochaic: ′ ˘

Dactylic: ′ ˘ ˘

Anapestic: ˘ ˘ ′

Spondaic: ′ ′

Dactylic is the waltz rhythm: ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three. It’s also a sort of galloping rhythm. Anapestic rhythm also can sound like a gallop:

gid-dy-YAP, gid-dy-YAP, gid-dy-YAP, LET’S GO!

That was three anapests followed by a spondee.

Scan this famous (and beautiful) quote from Star Wars and note its rhythm:

Young fool. Only now do you understand.

The shorthand of its rhythm is: ′ ′ . ′ ˘ ′ ˘ ˘ ˘ ˘ ′ . “Young fool” is a spondee, and “Only now do you understand” contains a dactyl followed by an anapest. The most powerful and memorable sentences often have a compelling, poetic rhythm. In music, this juxtaposition of a dactyl and an anapest would be called syncopation. Syncopation is an unexpected disturbance of the rhythm, but a disturbance which has a meaningful musical effect. If you happen to be an English major and a Star Wars fan, then you know that a dangerous disturbance of the rhythm in the emperors’s speech also signifies a dangerous disturbance in the Force.

Wasn’t that easy? Now that you have the tools, let’s look at some English prose, starting with some very bad prose, and examine the rhythms. When you read these sentences, instead of actually saying the words, just say “dit” for each syllable and listen to the sound:

There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men’s hands cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any deliver out of his hands. — Rev. Jonathan Edwards, 1741

I can think of few rhythms in English prose that are uglier than the rhythms of preaching. Enough said.

One of my greatest pleasures is to heap scorn on Ayn Rand — not only for her putrid ideas but also for her putrid prose. Remember, just sound out the syllables:

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. — Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand oftens falls into hammering, machine-gun rhythms. I wonder why.

I always like to cite Tolkien’s prose as examples of fine writing and the natural rhythm of the English language:

… and a door between them and the night … (Three feet of anapestic.)

Then they all fell silent, and one by one the hobbits dropped off to sleep. (Trochees before the comma, iambs after the comma.)

The face of Elrond was ageless, neither old nor young. (Six lovely feet of iambic.)

There’s a connection between rhythm and vocabulary. In general, writers can control their rhythm — and their mood and tone and emotional effect — by relying on words that came into the language through plain old Anglo-Saxon English. Words that came into the language through French after the Norman invasion in the 12th century are much colder words, more abstract, with rhythms that are more difficult to manage. Some examples of Anglo-Saxon words: home, hand, love, dog, dig, dirt, belly, book. Some examples of French words: affection, domicile, stratification, diminution, authorization. Not only are the French words cold and abstract, their rhythms usually work poorly in good English sentences.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I should mention here that no writer repeats the same rhythmic pattern over and over. That would soon become boring. And though it’s true that Shakespeare’s plays are predominantly iambic pentameter, there are many irregularities, many elements of syncopation, many surprises. However, iambic pentameter is often said to be the natural rhythm of English, so we can hear a lot of iambic pentameter without it becoming conspicuous or boring. In fact it has a musical effect, as in a sonnet. Good writers — consciously or unconsciously — manage their rhythms. When a writer is in the flow, the rhythms will support and intensify the writer’s mood and intent. The rhythms will strongly affect the reader, unconsciously, and in some mysterious way make the reader more receptive to the writer’s intent.

As for the bit of doggerel we started with about the King of the North, I first encountered it in Theodore Bernstein’s The Careful Writer (1965). As far as I know, that’s where it originated, since Bernstein gave no source and since I’m sure he would have given credit for it if someone else had come up with it. If you memorize this verse and know how to scan each line for its rhythm, then you’ll never slay a dactyl when you meant to slay an anapest.

Spondee!


Update: I should mention the words that are used to denote the number of feet in a line of verse:

1. monometer
2. dimeter
3. trimeter
4. tetrameter
5. pentameter
6. hexameter
7. heptameter
8. octameter

Narc'ed out by gmail


Click on the image above for a high-res version

The media today are focusing on the downfall of David Petraeus, the former CIA director. The Atlantic has a piece on how the FBI snooped on Petraeus and his mistress. It was from identifying information in the header of Google email.

All email has a header. Most email programs show only the “To:”, “From:”, and “Subject:” fields, etc. But there are other fields that give information about the computers that sent and received the email as it made its way across the Internet. In the example above, I have grayed out the parts that identify me and put a red stripe over the part that identifies the sender. (Click on the image for an enlarged, more readable version.) The email above was sent by a computer with the IP address 178.248.187.57. A “traceroute” command (any nerd knows how to do a traceroute command) shows that that IP address is in Paris.

By default, all email servers include this information, as far as I know. The only way to avoid it is to stay away from corporate email and free email services such as Google or Yahoo. There are paid email services that are more secure. For example, Neomailbox.com offers an email service that suppresses this information. Their servers also are offshore, in Switzerland. That will cost you about $50 a year.

It blows my mind that a CIA director would be so stupid as to allow career-destroying email to touch Google’s gmail servers. Not only does gmail include identifying information in the headers, Google also will happily turn your email over to any goon who asks for it — local, state, or national. And when you sign up for Google’s gmail you give Google permission to read it all — incoming and outgoing — to build a dossier on you.

You get what you pay for. Use gmail and Yahoo at your own risk.

Here are some guidelines for secure use of email:

1. Don’t use free email services such as Google or Yahoo.

2. Never use your work email for anything that would embarrass you or anyone else.

3. Don’t allow your email to be archived on someone else’s server. If you use IMAP, your email is being archived. POP3 is more secure, because the mail can be deleted off the server a day or two after it is downloaded to your computer.

4. Consider a secure, offshore email service such as Neomailbox.com.

5. Consider encrypting your email with an email client such as Thunderbird, which supports a PGP encryption plug-in. A PGP encryption plug-in also is available for the Macintosh mail program.

6. Never forget that when your email crosses the Internet, it’s like a postcard in the mail — anyone who has access to the servers and routers that handle the email can read it, because it’s clear text. A typical email may pass through a dozen or more routers on its way to its destination. It’s also commonly assumed that the U.S. government is capturing and storing a copy of virtually everything that travels over the Internet. If that’s true, encryption is the only defense. Setting up encryption is not that hard, but I’ve never been able to persuade a single person to do it.


Reuters

What did the cat see?

Lily was in stalking position with her nose to the glass, staring down at something just on the other side of the door. I couldn’t see what it was, but I approached quietly with the camera. Lily moved away, and the bird hopped away from the door when it saw me. I think they must have been virtually nose to nose, having a stare-down. From Lily’s perspective, I get it. But what in the world was in it for the bird?

iPad readers

This week, a Sony Reader app for iPad was released. That’s now four major readers available on the iPad that I know of — Apple’s iBooks, Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

Sony did it right and makes it possible to download all the books you’ve previously bought to the new iPad app. I was an early adopter of the Sony Reader (more than five years ago), so I had bought quite a few books. All those books now reside on my iPad.

I’ve not yet tried the Nook app, because I don’t yet have an account at Barnes & Noble. I’ll probably open an account, though, because it’s nice to have as many options as possible when buying books.

Books take up a relatively small amount of storage space, so it’s great to be able to carry so many books around with you. It’s also nice that the books are searchable. If you remember something from a book you’ve previously read that you want to look up, it’s easy.

The process of getting older classics into digital format is continuing. I’m finding that many science fiction classics from the 1980s and older are now showing up in Kindle editions. There are often lots of typos, however. It’s clear that the books were scanned and run through an OCR system with very little proofing. Some classics still haven’t made it to digital, though. A few weeks ago I was unable to find anything at all by Daphne du Maurier.

Trader Joe's

A Trader Joe’s recently opened in the town where I do most of my shopping — Winston-Salem. It’s in the space where a Borders bookstore used to be, and it’s less than a mile from Whole Foods.

I had not been to a Trader Joe’s since I left California more than four years ago. In California, Trader Joe’s was often criticized by foodies for being the Walmart of the grocery business, and there is some truth to that. I did not have time on my first visit to check out lots of products in the store, but my first impression is that the produce was somewhat better than it used to be, and there may be a greater effort to avoid imports. Most of the produce had a “Product of the U.S.A.” label, but there seemed to be no effort to be more specific than that and list the state of origin.

To me, Trader Joe’s strength is in what I call “semi-perishables” — things like nuts, nut butters, cheese, condiments, wine, and so on. If Trader Joe’s has what you need, it will certainly save you money. I’ll confess that I even do some of my shopping at Walmart, if they have what I want and it saves me money. For example, Walmarts always have King Arthur flour (of which I use a lot), and it’s a dollar a bag less expensive at Walmart. I also buy organic soy milk at Walmart, because it’s cheaper there and they carry the Westsoy brand that isn’t flavored or sweetened.

I’ll continue to go to Whole Foods for some things, but Trader Joe’s is going to save me money.