Word for Today: Otiose

otiose

o·ti·ose
Pronunciation[oh-shee-ohs, oh-tee-] –adjective
1. being at leisure; idle; indolent.
2. ineffective or futile.
3. superfluous or useless. [Origin: 1785–95; <>

—Related forms o·ti·ose·ly, adverb o·ti·os·i·ty
Pronunciation[oh-shee-os-i-tee, oh-tee-]
Pronunciation, o·ti·ose·ness, noun


—Synonyms 1. lazy, slothful. 2. idle, vain, profitless. 3. redundant, worthless, pointless.

Otiose is from Latin otiosus, "idle, at leisure," from otium, "leisure."

From Dictionary.com

Mr. Federspiel's surreal flourishes and commentaries straddle the line between interesting and otiose. Most of the surrealism is pretty but pointless.
-- D. F. Wallace, "The Million-Dollar Tattoo", New York Times, May 5, 1991

Although the wild outer movements and the angular Minuet can take such clockwork precision, the Andante, with its obsessive, claustrophobic dialogues between strings and bassoons, seemed sluggish and otiose.
-- Tim Ashley, "VPO/Maazel", The Guardian, April 16, 2002

The umlaut he affected, which made no difference to the pronunciation of his name, was as otiose as a pair of strategically positioned beauty spots.
-- Peter Conrad, "Hidden shallows", New Statesman, October 14, 2002

One hazard for religions in which all professional intermediaries are dispensed with, and in which the individual is enjoined to 'work out your own salvation' and is regarded as fully capable of doing so, is that belief and practice become independent of formal organized structures which may in such a context come to be perceived as otiose.
-- Lorne L. Dawson, "The Cultural Significance of New Religious Movements: The Case of Soka Gakkai", Sociology of Religion, Fall 2001

Some of the terms which lawyers reach for have their origins in historical legal distinctions; some reflect the dual use of legal French and legal English five or six hundred years ago. Sometimes "legal pairs" just trip off a lawyer's tongue -- or pen, at any rate. Even lawyers who would not dream of telling a client that they have "made and entered into" an agreement, or that something is a "good and sufficient" reason for fighting the case, may still inform their clients that an agreement would be "null and Void" or " each and every" partner must be a "fit and proper" person to run a business.

The golden rule is to use one word rather than two wherever possible. And is isn't just legal terms that you should bear in mind. Consider the following:
Would you be good enough to ...
We should be grateful if you would ..
We would ask that you ...

As Margot Costanzo points out, what is wrong with "please"?

Similarly, "in respect of", "in connection with", "in relation to", "with regard to" could all be replaced by the word "about" or cut altogether.

However, there is one exception to this golden rule of one word,not two: old and middle English "portmanteau" words. These are words such as: howsoever, whosoever, hereby, herein, hereunder, herewith, therein, thereby -- and so on. Avoid these. Even if you can justify them in your formal drafting of wills, pleadings, leases, contracts and other formal legal documents -- and we are not convinced that they are justifiable even with that context -- they have no place in legal writing. There is never a good reason why any of these words should appear in your writing. They are simply not necessary. Or, as one lawyer to another, they are otiose, nugatory and to be avoided.

--- Fio Boyle et al, "A Practical Guide to Lawyering Skills "

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NPR: Planet Money Podcast

Money makes the world go around, faster and faster every day. On NPR's Planet Money, you'll meet high rollers, brainy economists and regular folks -- all trying to make sense of our rapidly changing global economy. Visit this podcast's Web site.

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Warnings

Warnings

by David Allen Sullivan

A can of self-defense pepper spray says it may
irritate the eyes, while a bathroom heater says it's
not to be used in bathrooms. I collect warnings
the way I used to collect philosophy quotes.

Wittgenstein's There's no such thing
as clear milk rubs shoulders with a box
of rat poison which has been found
to cause cancer in laboratory mice.

Levinas' Language is a battering ram—
a sign that says the very fact of saying,
is as inscrutable as the laser pointer's advice:
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.

Last week I boxed up the solemn row
of philosophy tomes and carted them down
to the used bookstore. The dolly read:
Not to be used to transport humans.

Did lawyers insist that the 13-inch wheel
on the wheelbarrow proclaim it's
not intended for highway use? Or that the
Curling iron is for external use only?

Abram says that realists render material
to give the reader the illusion of the ordinary.
What would he make of Shin pads cannot protect
any part of the body they do not cover?

I load boxes of books onto the counter. Flip
to a yellow-highlighted passage in Aristotle:
Whiteness which lasts for a long time is no whiter
than whiteness which lasts only a day.

A.A.'ers talk about the blinding glare
of the obvious: Objects in the mirror
are actually behind you, Electric cattle prod
only to be used on animals, Warning: Knives are sharp.

What would I have done without: Remove infant
before folding for storage, Do not use hair dryer
while sleeping, Eating pet rocks may lead to broken
teeth, Do not use deodorant intimately?

Goodbye to all those sentences that sought
to puncture the illusory world-like the warning
on the polyester Halloween outfit for my son:
Batman costume will not enable you to fly.

"Warnings" by David Allen Sullivan from Strong-Armed Angels. © Hummingbird Press, 2008.

From The Writer's Almanac

National Memory Screening Day November 18, 2008

Are You at Risk for Alzheimer's? 3 early signs to watch for, and new treatments that can help.

By: Mike Cuthbert | Source: AARP.org

To listen to this story Click Here.

Many boomers wonder if their "senior moments" might be signs of Alzheimer's. In this radio spot, specialist Dr. Murali Doraiswamy of Duke University helps listeners distinguish reality from fear.

Drawing from his new book, "The Alzheimer’s Action Plan: The Experts' Guide to the Best Diagnosis and Treatment for Memory Problems," Doraiswamy describes screening tests, how to differentiate Alzheimer's from other types of dementia, and how to tell normal forgetting from problematic forgetting. He also reviews the latest prescriptions for slowing memory loss in Alzheimer's patients.

Most important, he emphasizes, is to detect the disease early, before major damage sets in. Early warning signs to watch for include:

● The memory loss is getting progressively worse.
● Friends and family are urging you to get a checkup.
● You can't remember what you forgot. Whole pieces of your past experiences are missing, and your memory can't be jogged.

Click image to enlarge

Related Stories/Links

A Guide to Altzheimer's Disease

Learn about boosting brain health
Altzheimer's Association

Local Resource

National Memory Screening Day November 18, 2008

Local Sreening
Name of Organization: Summit Research Network
Location of Screening: 2701 N.W. Vaughn St., Ste. 350
Portland, Oregon, 97210
Time of Screening: 9:00AM-5:00PM
Phone Number: 503-972-9821
Website: http://www.summitportland.com

And a leaking one at that

Feds, States, Cities: In One Fiscal Boat

For Release Sunday, October 12, 2008
© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group

By Neal Peirce

For many years, official Washington — its own “echo chamber,” as some say — has been ignoring the financial needs and prospects of state and local governments.

That era is now coming to a crashing end.

The headline event is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appeal to the federal Treasury for an emergency $7 billion loan to cover California’s immediate operating expenses. Massachusetts has submitted a request too.

The Wall Street fiscal crisis effectively shut the state-local government sector out of borrowing — either for long-term bonds, or of more immediate gravity, bridge loans to keep them afloat awaiting sales tax and April income tax receipts.

But the stage for a “perfect fiscal storm” was already set by the seriously weakened fiscal condition of so many state and local governments. On top of the stunning $43 billion in prospective deficits that 29 states had to cover with spending cuts or tax hikes, taxes for the fiscal year starting July 1, at least 15 of these states have already seen serious new budget gaps emerge, reports the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Indeed, versions of California’s budget crisis are being registered from Georgia to Arizona, Florida to New Jersey to Ohio. In New York State, epicenter of the financial earthquake triggered by Wall Street’s complicity in the mortgage foreclosure mess, fears of massive layoffs by financial houses are expected to add $1 billion or more to the $5.4 billion deficit the state already faced.

State-local taxes will surely have to rise: by global standards, we’re in fact a relatively low-tax nation. And the financial wizardry that helped trim bond sale costs in recent years is likely toast — we’ll see a return to plain-vanilla bonds with fixed rates of interest.

Then there’s the impact of the stock market plunge on state and local pension systems with their estimated $3 trillion in long-term liabilities. The funds’ expected investment returns of roughly 8 percent are now wildly unrealistic. Unfunded liabilities, notes John Petersen of George Mason University, a senior analyst of state-local fiscal systems, “will probably grow exponentially.”

The often-ignored reality, says Petersen, is that state and local budgets are 12 to 13 percent of the entire national economy. “In the last (2000-2001) recession, they held up because property taxes were doing well. But now it’s the fatal storm — everything is going down. It’s a 9/11 for government finance.”

Yet there may be something of a silver lining, Petersen suggests: “This financial — and now fiscal — crisis means we’re all in this together. We will need strong government — federal and state-local — to lead us.”

Nationally, that’s already clear. The federal bailout of major banks, insurance companies and mortgage lenders, proves free market fundamentalism doesn’t work, that careful and thorough government regulation and oversight is imperative.

But to fashion a full recovery policy, official Washington will be obliged to work more closely with state and local governments, devising major fiscal recovery plans, shared agendas and reasonable regulation.

An immediate example: we’re seeing 10,000 foreclosures a day. In the next year, some 1 million to 2 million adjustable rate mortgages are due to adjust upward. The local impacts may be devastating, requiring fast federal action (perhaps fast revisions of the bankruptcy code).

An active debate is already necessary: Should Congress approve of billions of dollars in revenue sharing for states and localities hard hit by the decline in tax revenues caused by the foreclosures federal inattention triggered, and falling property values?

The shaken national economy and depression of state and local tax bases may indeed last several years. How could we not plan a serious federal-state dialogue — starting in weeks, as soon as a new president is elected — on remedial steps?

The opportunity for frank and realistic discussions, a new intergovernmental compact, is strengthened by the emergence in recent years of “a really strong generation of governors, bottom-line managers, who watch their agencies week by week and hold their managers accountable.” Making that case, Neal Johnson of the Pew Center for States points to such reform-minded governors as Martin O’Malley (Md.), Christine Gregoire (Wash.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Jon Huntsman (Utah), Jennifer Granholm (Mich.), Mitch Daniels (Ind.) and Ted Strickland (Ohio).

In every field from road and transit funding to Medicaid, says Johnson, “we need to open a frank dialogue on who’s responsible for what, recognizing we are all in the same boat together.”

Actually, before Ronald Reagan killed it, we had a national Advisory Committee on Intergovernmental Relations, focused on just such issues. Its top fiscal analyst, John Shannon, often told me: “It’s an ill wind that doesn’t bring some good.”

Maybe — just maybe — today’s fiscal hurricane could restore a breeze of dialogue and rationality. It’s high time to get America’s governments — and the metro regions so critical to our economy — onto the same page, thinking through, planning survival strategies for perilous times.

---

Neal Peirce’s e-mail is npeirce@citistates.com.

New Roof For Central Library

Have you wondered what that crane was doing on the 11th Ave. side of Central Library? Read on.

Downtown: Main library adds roof full of plants

by Clint Bowie, Special to The Oregonian

Thursday October 09, 2008, 1:00 AM

The leaky old roof at Multnomah County's Central Library has been replaced with a green one, with 17,000 plants, including sedums and drought-tolerant grasses.


"The county has been championing eco-roofs for a number of years," library spokeswoman Penny Hummel says. "So when we needed a new roof for the Central Library, they decided to pursue funding for an eco-roof."

Work was paid for in part with two grants, one from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and one from the Green Investment Fund.

The new roof is expected to cut energy costs 6 to 8 percent in summer and 50 percent in winter, Hummel adds. The plants also will help reduce rainwater runoff and will most likely double or even triple the life of the roof, she says.

County Commissioner Maria Rojo de Steffey unveiled the 7,200-square-foot greenspace at a dedication ceremony late last month. Tours of the roof will be offered this fall. Learn more at www.multcolib.org.

--Clint Bowie

A Different Brain Drain

Multitasking Teens May Be Muddling Their Brains

by Jon Hamilton

To hear story Click Here and then on Listen Now.

Morning Edition, October 9, 2008 · Doing several things at once can feel so productive. But scientists say switching rapidly between tasks can actually slow us down.

Even though modern technology allows people to perform more tasks at the same time, juggling tasks can make our brains lose connections to important information. Which means, in the end, it takes longer because we have to remind our brains what we were working on.

Zach Weinberg, a junior at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, sits in front of his computer in his family home in suburban Maryland.

Within the span of seconds, Zach switches between e-mail, iTunes, Facebook, a computer word puzzle game and messaging his buddy online. Somewhere amid the flurry, Zach manages to squeeze in some homework, too.

While he is working on an algebra calculation, an instant message from his buddy Alex Donesky pops up on the screen. They chat about a French assignment for a few minutes, exchanging quips about Robespierre and Napoleon. Then Zach shifts his attention back to math, but not before changing to his favorite band on iTunes.

For the record, Alex and Zach are good students. And obviously they're good multitaskers, too.

Alex's mom, Barbara Donesky, says she's dazzled by the skill her son has developed, and how quickly he can click around on the computer and make things happen.

But she's afraid Alex is losing out on other skills.

"I want him to be able to concentrate. I want him to be able to focus," she says.

"I mean, it's my personal belief that all these things just fragment your ability to concentrate. And I see it in myself, you know, since I've started e-mailing and using the computer very regularly."

Multitasking: 'A Brownout In The Brain'

Scientists say she has reason to be worried — although there's not much data yet on teens.

David Meyer at the University of Michigan has spent the past few decades studying multitasking — mostly in adults.

"For tasks that are at all complicated, no matter how good you have become at multitasking, you're still going to suffer hits against your performance. You will be worse compared to if you were actually concentrating from start to finish on the task," Meyer says.

Multitasking causes a kind of brownout in the brain. Meyer says all the lights go dim because there just isn't enough power to go around.

So, the brain starts shutting things down — things like neural connections to important information.

When Alex clicks on a message, his brain starts losing the connections it was using for his French assignment. The pathway to Robespierre — fading fast. The path to Napoleon, not so clear anymore.

To restore those connections, Meyer says, Alex will have to repeat much of the thought process that created them in the first place.

The technical name for creating, or recreating, these neural pathways is "spreading activation." It involves building connections step by step. Meyer says it's similar to what we do when we free associate.

"I say to you, 'What do you think of when I say the word apple to you?' And you start vibing on apple. 'Oh, apple's a fruit, it fell on Newton's head. Newton was a physicist. He invented the first theory of gravity.' And on and on," Meyer says.

When we're interrupted, re-establishing those connections can take seconds or hours.

"It goes on subconsciously and eventually, if I'm lucky, I get back up to speed with what I was thinking about before," Meyer says.

Good In Small Doses

Zach concedes that multitasking might make him less efficient. But his friend Alex maintains that, in small doses, multitasking can help him stay alert — like when he listens to music and does a math problem at the same time.

"If I have only one thing, I drift off a little bit," Alex says. "But if there's something else going on in the background that I can just sort of block out, I feel like I can concentrate on something more — whereas if I'm only doing one thing, it's harder for me to concentrate."

Scientists say Zach has a point. Studies show it's pretty easy for us to keep music in the background when we focus on something else.

But when something in the background forces itself into your consciousness, you do get distracted. Such as when your computer announces: "You've got mail."

"Everybody does get distracted by it. But most people learn to get used to that distraction and when to say 'no, I've got to work, and I'm not going to give into this,' " Zach says.

Fighting Distractions

Saying no to distractions depends, in part, on being able to control your impulses — something that's not fully developed in a teenager's brain.

And Alex says it's not easy for him. He says it's hard to give your full attention to any one thing when you're used to monitoring a screen full of options.

"You're teaching yourself to give 10 percent to each little icon. And then click away when there's a moment's pause," Alex says.

In fact, Meyer says, our brains can get hooked to where "they literally need a fix of multitasking."

Addicted To Juggling Tasks?

There's not much research on the addictive nature of multitasking. But Meyer likens it to playing video games or skydiving: We all get a buzz from novelty and variety. Of course, when the stakes get higher, multitasking can stress you out.

"The brain areas that you would see light up and the biochemicals, the neurotransmitters that would be getting released would be quite different if I was an air traffic controller trying to land a whole bunch of planes at La Guardia Airport or wherever. I wouldn't be having pleasure then," Meyers says.

For teenagers like Zach and Alex, the experience of multitasking falls somewhere between the rush of skydiving and the anxiety of landing planes. Regardless, Alex says, it's all they know.

"Even for me right now — and I haven't been exposed to it that long — it's already natural to multitask in these ways," he says. "Like your will is, your heart is in that place where you are just wanting to multitask, and you're conditioned to it. That's how you're going to keep going."

Even, he says, when you don't want to.

From a related NPR article:

Shown in red, the frontal lobe houses the "executive system" of the brain; it decreases in volume as we age. This region helps the brain decide which tasks to focus on and when to suppress irrelevant information. Click on image to enlarge.




The volume of gray matter, or the neurons of the brain, peaks in the early years of development.