Mythical Monsters
[–> "Maryland Mythical Monster" people, please see below.]
I have just discovered that I'm not the only one (I hadn't really expected to be, either) who has in interested in seeing the search strings that people use to get to my blog. (My earlier remarks about some unusual search strings are here.) Richard Rockley of Skeptico writes (in "Google Me"):
I love checking the Google search strings people use to find this site. It tells me exactly what people are searching for, which articles they find in their searches and Skeptico’s ranking for that search. […]
Until two days ago, astrology was the most popular subject ….
Today it has changed. Women’s breasts are now the number one subject….
I know how it happens. I noted earlier that I am apparently an authority on "Gay Fart Stories", for instance.
Since then, a few more of interest have turned up:
tight trousers
hedge apple trees
texas red heifer
Now, despite their oddity at first glance, these made sense in the context of some of the things that I have posted about. Use the search feature at right if you are interested.
Then, there are phrases that surprise me partly because I never would have expected to find that I'd actually used that combination of words, but mostly they surprise me because someone chose to search for these phrases, which seems unlikely:
gay dinosaurs
naked aviatrix
foreskin aesthetics
fat naked lady pictures
Unexpected, yes, but rather neutral; they don't really say much about the searcher, except to suggest an interest, say, in naked aviatrices, who may also be fat and naked.
Sometimes, however, a search string does show up which suggests that the searcher might be looking for people who agree with his own strongly held worldview. For example:
stupid ass libertyville teachers
Some people are just surprising:
people interested in group sex and the unusual
I would have expected that many people looking for "people interested in group sex" would already deem it "unusual" rather than looking for "people who are interested in group sex" in addition to being "unsual".
Then there's the total mystery search. I know how this one came about — that's not the point. I wrote a short post ("You Snollygoster You!"), that was really about the word "snarky". There's a quotation in it that refers to "… the snallygaster, a mythical monster supposedly found in Maryland…".
Immediately after I published that article, I started getting a continuous stream of searchers, mostly with UK addresses, looking for some variant of
maryland mythical monster
I am not particularly surprised that such a search string should have led searchers to my blog.
The perplexing question is why all these people in the UK are searching for "maryland mythical monsters" in the first place. Is it just because they're looking for a citation to the quotation that contained that phrase, or is there some more interesting plot afoot that demands urgent knowledge of such monsters?
I hope that someone visiting as a result of searching for "maryland mythical monsters" will leave a comment explaining why they did the search in the first place. Please!
Herring Farts
Some people know that I am an old fart, and have therefore an abiding interest in farts, but I have not yet mastered using the fart for communication, except as it might be construed as some sort of anti-social, vaguely aggressive statement.
Through a chain of links that is now lost to me, I arrived at this fascinating fact from FishUpdate.com:
01 October, 2004 –
Flatulence may be a social faux pas for us, but for some fish it appears to be of great social value. Herring seem to fart to communicate with their neighbours at night – a discovery which scooped researchers Dr Bob Batty (Scottish Association for Marine Science), Dr Ben Wilson (University of British Columbia) and Professor Larry Dill (Simon Fraser University) an Ig Nobel award in Biology.
[…]
The fish, which gulp air from the surface and store it in their swim bladder, can release it through a duct to their anus. Although it was already known that herring could release large clouds of bubbles to confuse predators, releasing small bubbles intermittently when not under threat had not been seen or heard before.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
"Ethical Lapses"
The thing that strikes me as odd, as I read the mushrooming stories about Tom DeLay, is that these stories keep using the phrase "ethical lapses" to describe his syndrome; given the phrase's currency, it must have originated at some point and then been parroted since.
Usually, we associate the word "lapse" with a brief excursion away from something usual, as in "he [momentarily] lapsed into silence" or "she suffered a [temporary] memory lapse".
From what I learn about DeLay's behavior, it seems then more to the point if we construe the phrase "ethical lapses", slightly ambiguous as it is, to mean momentary excursions into ethical behavior, as in "Tom DeLay [momentarily & temporarily] lapsed into a situation in which he acted ethically, but it quickly passed."
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Such Language!
Special Marriage
Another Eureka! moment, thanks to the NYTimes via the International Herald Tribune ("Exploiting Terry Schaivo").
…supporters of Schiavo's parents, particularly members of the religious right, leaned heavily on Congress and the White House to step in. They did so on Monday with the new law, which gives "any parent of Theresa Marie Schiavo" standing to sue in federal court to keep her alive.
This narrow focus is offensive. The founders of the United States believed in a nation in which, as Justice Robert Jackson once wrote, we would "submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules." There is no place in such a system for a special law creating rights for only one family.
For years, we politically oppressed Gays and Lesbians have petitioned our government for equal rights on any number of fronts, and been taunted in return by critics (self-proclaimed non homophobes) with their favorite bumper-sticker cry of "No Special Rights".
It's suddenly clear that we were wrong to insist that we were not demanding special rights, merely equality.
With the current "marriage is a sacred institution", "non-federally instrusive small government" congress and their urgency to pass special-rights legislation, it's clear that we'd make more headway if we did demand special rights, since those seem to be in favor now.
Just imagine: Isaac and I could be married by a special act of congress, made out in our names and conferring no precedent whatsoever. Cool! Even better, we could show our gratitude by making a campaign contribution to Tom DeLay, thanking him for his special intervention.
Now, do we really think he'd turn down an offer like that just because of his principles?
In: All, Eureka!, Splenetics
A Simple Test
I propose that every Republican politician be asked this simple question: Do you believe that the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago? In other words, is everything we have learned about the age of the universe, our planet, and the life thereon nothing but an elaborate hoax?
They'll have two choices. First, they can acknowledge the truth, and offend their most rabid supporters. Or they can say they do in fact believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in which case they will have proclaimed for all to see their antipathy toward the very notions of science and rationality.
Or they might take a third path – trying not to answer the question. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with that.
[Paul Waldman, "You Say You Want Some Evolution…".]
Their Dismembered Remains
Pigeons strutted happily among their dismembered remains.
[Ghost of a Flea, by James Sallis, p. 101.]
The meaning is assisted, somewhat, by the preceding sentences:
I'd gone across for coffee and doughnuts…. We'd both wisely foregone the doughnuts after tasting them. Pigeons strutted happily….
I'd say it makes a strong case for using the semi-colon.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Such Language!
"Old Jewish Men Confused"
[NYTimes] Scott McClellan, the press secretary to President Bush, called on you and allowed you to ask questions on a nearly daily basis. What, exactly, is your relationship with him?
[Jeff Gannon] I was just another guy in the press room. Did I try to curry favor with him? Sure. When he got married, I left a wedding card for him in the press office. People are saying this proves there is some link. But as Einstein said, "Sometimes a wedding card is just a wedding card."
[NYTimes] You mean like "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"? That wasn't Einstein. That was Freud.
[Gannon] Oh, Freud. O.K. I got my old Jewish men confused.
[From "Blogged Down: Questions for Jeff Gannon", interview by Deborah Solomon from the New York Times.]
The Gannon Affair continues to sputter along, largely through the efforts of Gannon himself. Unfortunately, an air of pathos has overtaken him, as he tries to capitalize on a situation that he mistakenly believes is all about him when in fact he's much more akin to an algebraic variable used in a much larger equation, in whose ultimate solution he has no part.
Plus,
[NYTimes] Do you find it hard to be a gay conservative in this country in light of the right-wing hostility to gay rights?
[Gannon] I prefer that to be a private issue. I am more interested in national defense, taxation and immigration than in personal issues. I would like people's personal lives to be behind the barrier once again, like they used to be.
he'd feel much, much better if he'd deal more honestly and maturely with his feelings about being gay, and put behind him this naive dreaming that things would be much better if only he could return to his closet.
Gay conservatives are so tiresome when they start apologizing by saying they feel there are more important things than "personal issues".
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Illegal but Very Cheap
Here's another for the innumeracy files.
I heard on the radio today news that the Feds had "slapped" Wal-Mart with a fine of $11 Million to settle claims that Wal-Mart had illegally hired undocumented aliens. The spokesman for the Feds was deliriously happy with this result, evidently because it was the largest fine in the history of such things, and would, therefore, show Wal-Mart a thing or two.
Alas, he doesn't understand the magnitudes of numbers. Wal-Mart's yearly revenues are in the neighborhood of $160 Billion, a number over 14 thousand times larger than $11 Million. Thus, this fine is only o.oo7% of Wal-Mart's yearly revenues. Even supposing that their profit margin is only 5%, this fine would still only be a miniscule 0.14% of their yearly profit.
Now, I'm not going to wade into the Wal-Mart good / Wal-Mart evil controversy, but I think most people should be able to see that a fine of 0.007% (that is, 1,000 times smaller than a typical sales tax), is pretty far from a serious punative fine. In fact, I'd say it's a pretty cheap price to pay for doing business any way one wants.
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
Religion a Choice?
The Panda's Thumb reports on research suggesting that "Genes contribute to religious inclination".
Now, if I were writing the story, no doubt a thriller pitting anti-evolutionist Christians against brilliant, couragous, but slightly naive scientists studying evolution, I'd probably plan a climax in which it is revealed that genes — those bugaboos that keep throwing Darwin in the face of the self-righteous creationists — in fact are the cause of anti-evolutionary behavior. It would be delicious, ironic, and the source of lots of exciting conflict right there at the end of the book.
I just wish I could think up things this good.
They find, apparently, that young people tend to believe what their parents believe, but that as they grow older these children go off in their own directions. This pretty much describes what my upbringing would have looked like, although I can tell you that when I was young I did not so much believe as my parents did, but instead I went to church the way they insisted that I do. When I was grown enough to say no, I did and thence began my descent into my current gay, atheist lifestyle.
Whatever would happen to the culture wars if it's discovered that being gay and being Christian are both genetically determined?
In: All, Splenetics, The Art of Conversation
One-Testis Beetles
There is some payoff for reading all those boring-to-death scientific headlines; every now and again one gets an unexpected treat like this:
Researchers Find Three Major Beetle Groups Coming Up One Testicle Short
BERKELEY – A surprisingly large number of beetles are missing one of their testes, the male gonads of insects. As far as the researchers who discovered this can tell, the insects are not in any way bothered or impaired by this absence.
The discovery is striking because most animals are bilaterally symmetrical, which means the left and right sides of the body roughly mirror each other. […]
While animals such as jellyfish and starfish are radially symmetrical, bilateral symmetry is, hands down, the dominant body shape in the animal world, thanks in part to the drive for forward motion.
That's not to say there is no precedent for such deviations from bilateralism. One well-known example is the male fiddler crab, which has an outsized claw on one side that is used to attract female crabs and fend off male competitors.
Still, the researchers said the complete absence of an organ, or absence asymmetry, is rare. […]
At last, a use for the singular form "testis", which we thought only ever got used in the plural "testes".
I don't really want to make light of this research, nor argue with the researchers that, in their context, this discovery might be startling and unexpected and lead to other interesting discoveries.
However, I am a bit puzzled over their insistence that bilateralism is so prevalent that finding just one testes take one aback, scientifically. After all, what's the thing that's right there next to the the testes: the penis, right? How many creatures are there who have two penises?
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., The Art of Conversation
Republicans Unexpectedly Oppose Traditional Marriage
When I first read these paragraphs in an editorial from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("Congress: Democracy's day off"), I looked back at it several times, wondering where the typo was, or where the word had been left out that changed its meaning:
The House passed on a voice vote, without hearing or thought, a measure to give federal courts jurisdiction to review decisions to withhold food, fluids or medical treatment from an incapacitated person, saying that it violates either the Constitution or U.S. law. They'll probably call this "Terry's law" because it's designed to prevent the husband of Terry Schiavo from removing a feeding tube.
This is one of those really tough decisions that families make every day. But the bill's sponsors would prefer that federal judges overrule spouses.
Surely, I thought, in this brave new world of moral regressiveness that looks to restrain the zealous activities of "activist judges" — especially when it comes to the sovereignty of the spouse in a traditional, mixed-gender marriage! — congress would never, ever pass a bill that would extend the power of the judiciary and effectively redefine the hallowed institution of "marriage". Apparently I was wrong.
I guess those wacky House Republicans just get more like a random-number generator every day. I wonder what they'll think of next.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Rock into Rocket Scientist
My new motto: I evolved from a rock into a rocket scientist.
Evolutionists may need billions of years to make people believe a rock can turn into a rocket scientist, but that time just isn’t available.
[Dr. Kent Hovind, aka "Dr. Dino", from Universe Is Not "Billions of Years" Old, to be found on his "Creation Science Evangelism" website.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
Scientific Truth
Mark, the "Moderate Liberal", wrote a good piece called "The War Against Evolution", trying to understand, as I do with very little success, the anti-science forces at work in the USA today. It's all very trying (the anti-scientism, not Mark's essay).
He and I, who both have degrees in Physics and are therefore part of the "science elite", so we know that in fact there is no "scientific dogma", but he touches on a very important point:
Remember, most of us "elite" think of science as a very different endeavor than, say, the priesthood. After all, scientific theories must be falsifiable and withstand years of observation, experimentation and criticism before any scientist will begin to think of a theory as fact.
But to the lay person, science is no different than any other elite endeavor; a bunch of people in power they don't know get together to determine their version of the truth, then preach it to everyone else.
I do, in fact, think of it — science, that is — as a very different endeavor, perhaps a unique intellectual quest. Laying out my philosophy (and not "mine" so much as what I understand to be "the" philosophy of scientific endeavor, or even the basis of the "scientific method", such as there is one) will take more than these 500 or so words, but Mark offers a very useful starting point.
Set aside for a moment the philosophically fundamental ideas about theories and falsifiability and all that — I do, in my way, reserve the right to disagree with Mark about the details of how science works. Nevertheless….
It's the idea of the "elite" that brings out something I've long thought is a unique characteristic of science, an idea that bolsters its claim to some subset of truth:
Science invites anyone to examine its claims.
Oh, sure, to understand some of the claims may take years of study to achieve, but it's all there, waiting for you. Science does not rely on authority to operate. Agreed, most people (i.e., those not part of the "science elite", indeed, even scientist who don't specialize in some field) get their information about scientific truths from scientific "authorities". But, in my mind, getting information from these "authorities" is a practical short cut, not a dogmatic elite; everything they say is testable, in principle, if you feel the need.
This, I believe, is a defining characteristic of science: it's truths are writ in an open book, inviting all to see, to understand, and to test. No truth in science is ever absolute.
Science thrives on openness and skepticism. In the end, if scientific practice is to survive, it will be this invitation to skepticism, examination, and revision that will win out over external, dogmatic forces that would attempt to coerce scientific truth towards their perferred, non-scientific goals.
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Notes to Richard
ID and Astrology
Because I suffer from hubris, as all scientists seem to do, I sometimes imagine that I'm a clever, creative person with an inventive mind. Then, suddenly, my fortress of personal fiction crumbles when I am faced with creative invention that zooms light-years past any of my own paltry attempts.
Thanks to Steve Reuland at The Panda's Thumb ("When the Moon is in the 7th House…"), I have spent several perplexed, if not unpleasant, moments looking over the incredibly inventive material at Benevolent Design, the official home of The Christian Guardians. They have two goals for their website:
- One of the purposes of this website is to offer our help to anyone dedicated to disproving Darwinism and/or proving that the Shroud of Turin is the true burial cloth of our Savior, Jesus of Nazareth.
- The second purpose of this website is to provide and disseminate facts that will help Christians to better defend and keep their faith against the many enemies of Christianity.
They see their work as built on the shoulders of giants: i.e., those who invented "Intelligent Design" as a "scientific" creationist's answer to [boo, hiss] Darwinism.
The breakthrough claimed by the Christian Guardians is their discovery of what they call "Magi Astronomy". As they point out, "Magi Astronomy" is good astronomy:
We know there are many Christians who believe that astrology is forbidden but we assure you that is not the case. If astrology were forbidden by Christ’s true teachings, why would the Gospels tell us this story about the Star of Bethlehem?
In fact, there are over 600 references to astrology in the Bible and none of the references condemn astrology. (See footnote 1.)
At the Christian Guardians, we believe that astrology is much like most other things. Just as there is good and bad in almost everything else, there is bad astrology and there is good astrology.
You must be wondering what has any of this to do with Intelligent Design?
We talk about all this because we have discovered a way to disprove Darwinism by using good astrology, and we have improved Intelligent Design by using good astrology…
This "Magi Astronomy" is pretty powerful stuff, too. The main thrust is to void "neo-Darwinism", but another link on the Christian Guardians' website will lead you to their stock-market forecasting software.
Here's a quick excerpt that suggests the direction of their startling new "disproof" of Darwin:
Have you ever wondered why Michael Jordan’s parents were not great athletes?
[…]
The reason any parents can have fabulously talented children is that God designed it that way. God designed the world such that the alignment of the planets on a day someone is born helps the person to have certain talents and abilities.
[…]
The reason any parents can have fabulously talented children is that God designed it that way. God designed the world such that the alignment of the planets on a day someone is born helps the person to have certain talents and abilities.
[…]
If Magi Astrology really works, then Darwinism does not work.
This is obvious a great theory, since it gets all those things in there in one place. Just be clear: God did not invent evolution in order to create species. Instead, He invented astrology so that a few extraordinary children might be born now and again to give their parents hope and faith in the future. Now, if only they could build a Grand Unified Theory of Magi Astronomy that shows how the Shroud of Turin contradicts Darwin — well, that would be quite a feat.
Fascinating.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., The Art of Conversation
Propeller Heads: No Joy
Bull Moose comments (in Corporate not Conservative) on the current state of affairs in Washington, DC:
Conservatives are left to wax nostalgic about the long lost halcyon days of free trade, deficit elimination and welfare reform – the Clinton years. Republicans have severely underestimated the popularity of FDR's social security program. Even the Bushies have embraced big government conservatism. There can be no joy among the propeller heads at Cato and Heritage.
No Brainer
Today's entry in the "Unfortunate Juxtaposition of Headlines in the RSS Feed" came from The Scotsman:
- 'No risk' man fried and ate friend's brain (by Shenai Raif)
- Why Scots don't like inviting friends to dinner (by Alastair Jamieson)
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
"Obvious Natural & Social Reality"
Possibly the most quotable paragraph from Superior Court Judge Kramer's decision, released yesterday, finding that the State of California had no compelling interest to deny marriage to same-sex couples:
Thus, the cases cited by the plaintiffs do not establish that California courts have recognized that the purpose of marriage in this state is procreation. Instead, these cases establish that annulment is a remedy for the fraudulent inducment to marry. The facts in plaintiffs' cases also confirm the obvious natural and social reality that one does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to be married. Thus, no legitimate state interest to justify the preclusion of same-sex marriage can be found in plaintiff's cases.
["Tentative decision", Woo v. Lockyer, in the superior court of the state of California, country of San Francisco, by Judge Richard A. Kramer, available for download at LambaLegal.org.]
Carrying the Sword
"Separation of Church and State" is such a tired old platitude, so 1780s. "Carrying the sword in place of the Lord" just has such a nice modern, authoritarian, patriarchal ring to it:
In a 1989 ruling, [Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia cast the deciding vote in Stanford v. Kentucky, concluding that the execution of a 16-year-old boy was not cruel and unusual punishment. At the forum [on the death penalty at the University of Chicago on 25 January 2002], Scalia claimed that the state had the moral authority to act "in place of the Lord in carrying the sword."
[From "Activists Take On Justice Scalia", by Julien Ball, The New Abolitionist, February 2002, brought to my attention by an article at TalkLeft.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Earworm Origins
Deep down, I'd like to believe that I don't really care that much about priority and doing things first and getting proper credit and all that, but sometimes a matter comes along that is so supremely unimportant, so trivial and petty, that one can get a little irritated. This is one such story, and it concerns the widespread use, in English, of the word "earworm". Pay close attention.
The word would seem to have appeared in the popular lexicon relatively recently, on 29 October 2003, in the article "'Brain itch' keeps songs in the head". I don't know yet whether this is the word's first appearance in the popular English press, but the BBC seems to think that it's pretty new, given the way they describe it. Here's the lead from the article:
Research in the US has found that songs get stuck in our heads because they create a "brain itch" that can only be scratched by repeating the tune over and over.
In Germany, this type of song is known as an "ohrwurm" – an earworm – and typically has a high, upbeat melody and repetitive lyrics that verge between catchy and annoying.
Songs such as the Village People's YMCA, Los Del Rio's Macarena, and the Baha Men's Who Let The Dogs Out owe their success to their ability to create a "cognitive itch," according to Professor James Kellaris, of the University of Cincinnati College of Business Administration.
The description of the word is basically correct (even if one has issues with the presentation of the "research findings"), and you can easily track the word as it spreads through various blogs whose authors first learned about the idea from this BBC report.
Somewhere along the way, a bit of misinformation crept into the story concerning the provenance of the word. I don't yet know its source, or when the mutation occured, nor at whose hand. Here are a few examples.
- From Netscape "Fun & Games": "Top 3 Songs That Get Stuck In Your Head" (no date indicated)
Call it the playlist from hell. But the real No. 1 song that gets stuck in our heads is different for each of us, according to University of Cincinnati marketing professor James Kellaris. He's done so much research on this odd and annoying phenomenon that he has coined a term for it: earworm.
- From a blog entry "Each Beat Feeds the Earworm", dated 22 October 2003, that refers to a no-long-available Yahoo! News story:
"Earworm" is the term coined by University of Cincinnati marketing professor James Kellaris for the usually unwelcome songs that get stuck in people's heads. Since beginning his research in 2000, Kellaris has heard from people all over the world requesting help, sharing anecdotes and offering solutions.
- Or this unusually glowing version from the Arrowhead High School (Hartland, WI) student newspaper, the Arrowhead Smoke Signal, of 14 November 2003:
Earworm is the respiratory infection for music lovers worldwide. Finally, there is a term for getting an extremely annoying song or jingle stuck in your head. The expression “earworm” can be attributed to the genius of one man, University of Cincinnati marketing professor James Kellaris. [Keep your eye on that unusually odd phrase about the "respiratory infection for music lovers" — we'll get back to it later.]
This additional "fact", that Prof. Kellaris "coined" the term, has even made its way into the Wikipedia entry for "earworm":
Use of the English translation was introduced by James Kellaris ….
whence the "fact" has begun its spread through the blogoon, as in this example from Buffalo Bandit's Blogtastic Blog:
Potter Earworm
I know what you're thinking, "Earworm?! Ewww, gross! Buffalo Bandit sucks." And while all of that may be true, you aren't thinking of the right definition of the word. According to Wikipedia, an earworm is: […]
The problem with this additional new fact, that Prof. Kellaris "coined" the term (because he's "done so much research on it"?), is that it is not true. Obviously there's a bit of a problem with that idea since, as the first BBC story showed, the word is claimed to come from the German "ohrwurm" (which I haven't yet actually verified), and to be just a literal translation into English. He may have introduced "earworm" into the marketing and psychology literature sometime after "beginning his research in 2000", he may have introduced the term to the english-speaking press, but he did not introduce the term into common and widespread use among English speakers. How do I know?
I know, because I occasionally claim that I did in 1992, although I have now found a trail leading to somewhat earlier citations (which I'll point out further on), although I believe that those earlier usage instances had a limited influence.
Here's my part of the earworm story.
During the period 1992 – 1994, I was an actively posting member of the Usenet newsgroup called "soc.motss" (motss = "members of the same sex", a low-profile name for a gay and lesbian meeting place on line). In the middle of some discussion I made a posting in which I related that I had been introduced to a useful new word to describe those nasty little tunes that get stuck in one's head and refuse to go away: "ear worm". In fact, I even gave the same etymology as the BBC did a decade later. The word had been relayed to me by my partner, Isaac, who said he'd read it in a book and thought it interesting enough to mention it to me, since we both enjoy unusual and odd words.
Fortunately, I don't have to try to recall exactly how all this happened, since (as was pointed out to me by a friend, Chris Ambidge, who has been a devoted fan of the word "earworm" for over a decade), Google groups has archives of soc.motss posts from those days.
Here is the link to a thread in which my initial "ear worm" post appears. Google itself cites this by saying "The earliest google(tm) reference to the phrase 'ear worm' in soc.motss is 1992-12-09". This is me writing — the editorial comments are mine from the original:
I have very little German [which means I may spell it incorrectly, or discover that the meaning is incorrect], but my polyglot bear tells me that the German's have a word for this phenomenon of the mental music which will not stop: "ohrworm" [literally, "ear worm"].
I did, in fact, spell it incorrectly. "Polyglot bear" refers to my partner, Isaac, who first told me about the word and claimed its German origins.
Later on, in what Goodle describes thus: "The earliest google(tm) reference to the word 'earworm' in soc.motss is 1993-03-18" — that is, I used it as a single word rather than a two-word phrase. I had this to say about it:
An ohrwurm is an inscrutible thing–where *do* they come from? Some of them, I've found, correlate with something that I heard on the radio about three days earlier. Some of them are simply stupid tunes that one hears in passing and, blam, one's stuck. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to mention the name of a tune. [I understand that this can even happen with those intricate tunes of Madonna.]
Then there was one morning I can remember when I woke up and my ohrwurm was singing the beginning of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto #1. That's it, just the first 6 bars or so, over and over and over. It was exhilarting for awhile, then it became simply maddening. The only way I could stifle it was to buy a recording, and let it listen to the entire thing. It died a peaceful death; requiescat in pace.
Aside from their notable tenacity, these worms can also be quite clever [if not *intricate*]. I have
known one which could sing the subject of a Bach fugue and then transform it effortlessly into a fragment of a Mahler symphony.
(Quite obviously, earworms are not restricted to particularly simply pop tunes, despite claims to the contrary quoted from the press above. Also, I seem to have anticipated some of Prof. Kellaris' conclusions.) The "subject" line of that post was "Subject: ear worms"; later, the phrase contracted into the single word "earworm".
Google makes two further claims of precendence:
- The earliest google(tm) reference to the phrase "ear worm" outside of
soc.motss is dated 1989-06-23 in rec.music.gaffa. John Precedo wrote "Incidently, there are songs I hear that I HATE, and yet can't stop humming…you've probably heard some like this yourself. According to my sister, the Germans call them "ear worm". That's the trivial fact for today. " Thus adding to the lore that the word is of German origins. - The earliest google(tm) reference to the word "earworm" outside of soc.motss is dated 1993-03-19 in alt.tv.simpsons , which I saw at the time and took naturally to imply that its author was also a reader of soc.motss, although he evidently preferred not to announce the fact.
Now, none of this would be terribly interesting except for the fact that the word "earworm" became quite popular in soc.motss, so commonly used that I sometimes claim (although I haven't verified the claim) that there was always an "earworm" thread running continuously in the newsgroup for at least the next 10 years, such as mentioned in this post by David W. Fenton, from 29 April 2003 (i.e., some 10 years later and, no doubt coincidentally, on the eve of my birthday), or this post by my friend Chris Ambidge who, as you will see in that post, shares my interest in the origins of the word "earworm".
As for its popularity, consider this Google search for the word "earworm", in newsgroups, and restricted to posts just by Mr Ambidge! Google claims there are 78 instances. Searching all groups returns 7,900 instances, including this one by Doug Wyman (a familiar correspondant to me during my tenure in soc.motss) in misc.writing, dated 19 October 2001:
Does anyone have a reasonably documentable source
for the word "earworm"? I first heard it used on
soc.motss.I was wondering if this is a usenet originated word.
Are usenet specific terms becoming commonplace enough
to use in real world society?I wonder what percentage of society reads one or more
usenet forums regularly.
Thus, we can see that use of the word "earworm" was already widespread, and even its usage of considerable interest, for quite some time before Prof. Kellaris began his research on the subject.
It's fun to look at the results from that Google search: note the preponderance of its usage in soc.motss, and look at its spread into other groups as the decade progressed from 1993. You'll even note that many people anticipated some of Prof. Kellaris' results by suggesting ways of eliminating particularly pernicious earworms.
Now, to tidy up the citation linkage. Thanks to some interest shown by Guy K. Haas in an another report from the same time as the BBC article that I first saw:
Here, in MSNBC, they report that "James Kellaris, a marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati" has studied "How unwelcome songs get stuck in our heads — and how to unstick them."
Now, they say that he calls them earworms, as though this was a new label, but this term has been around for years, and is just a translation from the German: "Ohrwurm."
There's that reference to the German origins again! But not so maddening this time, because Mr. Haas is kind enough to track down a citation: he references an article on "earworm" at The Word Spy, which claims the earliest known citation:
But the idea of a tune, a melody, a combination of musical sounds that seems to be on everybody's lips at the same time, that spreads through a society as rapidly as a respiratory infection, and seems to invasively seize and occupy space in peoples minds until they finally succeed inforgetting it, merits a word of its own.
The Germans use the word Ohrwurm (rhymes with "door worm," where the "w" is pronounced like a "v") to denote these cognitively infectious musical agents. Whenever somebody complains to you that he just can't keep the latest pop tune from running through his head, tell him he can dispel it by calling it by name and by thinking about the original German meaning, which captures some of the mnemonicalli parasitical connotations of the word, for Ohrwurm literally means "ear worm" and is also used to refer to a kind of worm that can crawl into the ear.
—Howard Rheingold, "Untranslatable words," The Whole Earth Review, December 22, 1987
Ta da! At last we have what looks like it might be the original source of the claim to German heritage for "earworm". I think I can leave it here for the moment, before taking up the "ohrwurm" thread.
By the way, this citation describes these tunes as a thing "that spreads through a society as rapidly as a respiratory infection…", which must be the source of that otherwise inscrutable turn of phrase from the Arrowhead Smoke Signal mentioned above: "Earworm is the respiratory infection for music lovers worldwide." Which is odd, since it was the Smoke Signal that claimed "coinage" of "earworm" for Prof. Kellaris, even though it seems evident that the author of that claim had access to the more complete story from Rheingold book. Curious.
It also brings things full circle for me, since Isaac reminds me that he read about "earworm" and "ohrwurm" in "some book" which, we can now be certain, was Howard Rheingold's Untranslatable Words. Sometimes, it's a small linguistic world.
And now, of course, I have so many questions for Prof. Kellaris that deal with our shared fascination with "earworms". It also makes me want to know whether he ever read the Usenet newsgroup soc.motss.
*** Update [23 March 2005]
The BBC article mentioned above caught the eye of at least one actual musician, Scott Spiegelberg, who has written a bit in his blog about "Catchy Tunes".
Dissent vs. Disloyalty
Louisville native Bob Edwards warned last night [in a speech at Centre College] that the United States is in a period like the McCarthy era of the 1950s, in which the government is stifling political dissent while the news media and the public fail to speak out in vigorous opposition.
[…]
He quoted Edward R. Murrow's famous TV response to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunt: "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," and "we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."
["Newsman says dissent stifled: Bob Edwards says Current Period like McCarthy Era", from the Lexington [KY] Herald-Leader.]