Dave's Whiteboard

I try not to let January 25th pass without a nod to Robert Burns.  Lately I find good counsel in his Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous

My Son, these maxims make a rule,
An’ lump them aye thegither;
The Rigid Righteous is a fool,
The Rigid Wise anither:
The cleanest corn that ere was dight (sifted)
May hae some pyles o’ caff in; (bits of chaff)
So ne’er a fellow-creature slight
For random fits o’ daffin. (folly)
— Solomon: Eccles. ch. vii. verse 16.

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel’,
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye’ve nought to do but mark and tell
Your neibours’ fauts and folly!
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,  (nicely running mill)
Supplied wi’ store o’ water;
The heaped happer’s ebbing still, (even though the hopper is ebbing)
An’ still the clap plays clatter.  (it’s making lots of noise)

Hear me, ye venerable core,
As counsel for poor mortals
That frequent pass douce Wisdom’s door  (sober Wisdom’s)
For glaikit Folly’s portals:  (thoughtless)
I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes,
Would here propone defences-
Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes,  (stupid tricks)
Their failings and mischances.

Ye see your state wi’ theirs compared,
And shudder at the niffer;  (contrast)
But cast a moment’s fair regard,
What maks the mighty differ;  (what accounts for the difference)
Discount what scant occasion gave,  (take away your luck)
That purity ye pride in;
And (what’s aft mair than a’ the lave),  (often more than all the risk)
Your better art o’ hidin.  (your greater skill at concealment)

Think, when your castigated pulse  (If even your often-punished pulse)
Gies now and then a wallop!  (still jumps at times)
What ragings must his veins convulse,
That still eternal gallop!
Wi’ wind and tide fair i’ your tail,  (with the wind and current in your favor)
Right on ye scud your sea-way;  (you glide over the waves)
But in the teeth o’ baith to sail,  (sailing against both)
It maks a unco lee-way.  (makes for an uncommonly offcourse voyage)

See Social Life and Glee sit down,  (sit down, as in to drink)
All joyous and unthinking,
Till, quite transmugrified, they’re grown  (they’ve turn into)
Debauchery and Drinking:
O would they stay to calculate  (oh, if only they’d wait and figure)
Th’ eternal consequences;
Or your more dreaded hell to state,  (what you fear worse)
Damnation of expenses!  (the cost)

Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames,
Tied up in godly laces,
Before ye gie poor Frailty names,
Suppose a change o’ cases;
A dear-lov’d lad, convenience snug,
A treach’rous inclination-
But let me whisper i’ your lug,  (in your ear)
Ye’re aiblins nae temptation.  (maybe you’re no temptation)

Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang,  (a little wrong)
To step aside is human:
One point must still be greatly dark, -
The moving Why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark,
How far perhaps they rue it.

Who made the heart, ’tis He alone
Decidedly can try us;
He knows each chord, its various tone,
Each spring, its various bias:
Then at the balance let’s be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.

Gathering material for a post later this month, I came across this video of Capercaillie’s Karen Matheson.  Fear a’ Bhàta may date to the late 18th century.  I first heard it perhaps 15 years ago, and only later learned that my mother sang it as a child.

(Gaelic fear, man, sounds a bit like the English word fair. In the chorus, because the singer is addressing the boatman, the case changes and the word sounds more like English ear.)

Fhir a’bhàta, na ho ro eile
Fhir a’bhàta, na ho ro eile
Fhir a’bhàta, na ho ro eile
Mo shoraigh slàn leat ’s gach àit’an téid thu

Boatman, o ho ro eile
Boatman, o ho ro eile
Boatman, o ho ro eile
A fond farewell wherever you go

Is tric mi ’sealltainn o’n chnoc a’s àirde
Dh’fheuch am faic mi fear a’bhàta
An tig thu an-diùigh no’n tig thu a-màireach?
‘S mur tig thu idir gur truagh a tà mi

I often look from the highest hill
To try and see the boatman
Will you come today or tomorrow?
If you don’t come at all I will be downhearted

Tha mo chridhe-sa briste, brùite
‘S tric na deòir a’ ruith o m’ shùilean
An tig thu a-nochd no’m bi mo dhùil riut
No’n dùin mi’n dorus le osna thùrsaich?

My heart is broken and bruised
With tears often flowing from my eyes
Will you come tonight or will I expect you
Or will I close the door with a sad sigh?

‘S tric mi ‘faighneachd de luchd nam bàta
Am fac’ iad thu no ‘bheil thu sàbhailt’
Ach ’s ann a tha gach aon dhiùbh ‘g ràitinn
Gur gòrach mise ma thug mi gràdh dhut

I often ask people on boats
Whether they see you or whether you are safe
Each of them says
That I was foolish to fall in love with you

I’m getting a jump on all those New Year’s Eve posts today by bringing back my guide to enjoying Auld Lang Syne, complete with an updated demo (by Eddi Reader).

Lang may yer lum reek.

In a recent New York Times article, Richard H. Thaler talked about dollar auctions.  In business schools and economics classes, a professor will offer to sell a dollar (or a twenty-dollar bill) to class members via an auction.  The catch is that when the auction ends, the winning bidder pays up and gets the money–but the second-highest bidder also has to pay up, even though he or she gets nothing.

Under that rule, with stubborn bidders, Thaler says, the total paid for $20 can exceed $50.

The original dollar auction as invented by Yale’s Martin Shubik (who described it in this 1971 article [PDF]).  Escalation of commitment is the concept under which, after people have begun bidding in such an auction, they’re increasingly reluctant to stop.

Thaler’s real topic is the website Swoopo.com, an auction site practically printing money on the escalation-of-commitment principle.  Items go on auction at an opening price of one cent.  Some items have a minimum bid of one cent; I found others with a minimum of 12 cents.

There may be other minimums–but the price of each bid is 60 cents.  Got that?

I watched one instructive auction for about three minutes as I started this post.  The item?  Lego Duplo set 5609, a construction play set.  As I’m writing, you can buy this on Amazon for $104.13 with free shipping.  Swoopo said the item was worth “up to $110,” which is reasonable.

Each time someone bid, the minimum increase was twelve cents — but each bidder had to pay Swoopo 60 cents per bid.

In the three minutes I watched carefully, there were at least 60 bids–probably more; I missed some as I was making hash marks.

The winner bid $41.76–but placed 56 bids, which added $33.60 to the price.  So the net net, as they say, was a price of $75.36 for the winner, a savings of about $29 off the Amazon price, or $34.64 off the value stated on Swoopo.

The point is that the winner wasn’t the only bidder.  A price of $41.76, at twelve cents per bid, means 348 bids.  At 60 cents apiece, that’s $208.80 in bid charges.  Add the $41.76 cost to the winner, and Swoopo took in $250.56 for a $110 toy.

That’s some margin.  Or, as Thaler puts it in his article, “the difference between Swoopo and Best Buy is that at Swoopo you end up paying for stuff in the other guy’s shopping cart.”

I don’t mean to criticize Swoopo (necessarily).  I do recall the magician Penn Gillette, who often performs in Las Vegas, responding to a question about whether he gambles while he’s there.

“No,” he said.  “I’m too good at math.”

My parents, one Christmas, gave me an album by Peter, Paul and Mary.  Ignoring the question of how Mom and Dad knew who these people were, I didn’t like Peter, Paul and Mary.

Or so I thought.

By the following year, I wanted a guitar.  And I guess I learned informally, because I didn’t take lessons, and I didn’t know anyone who knew guitar.  I had found Earl Robinson’s Folk Guitar in Ten Sessions, which was more about accompanying singing than fancy fingering.

So: listening to Yarrow, Stookey, and Travers pulled me into a web of songs.  Some were traditional, some were contemporary, but for me they related in a way that other kinds of music hadn’t.  Related in the sense of having a connection, and related in the sense of giving an account of things outside.

I started learning about other kinds of music, about the “folk process” through which tradition song gets transformed, about social relevance.  And I learned that making music was not something only professionals did, or only other people: making music was an invitation.

I don’t know if Mary played an instrument.  Her voice helped carry the heart of a song: the braid of sounds and story.  Chan fhiach cuirm gun a còmhradh — it’s no feast if there’s no talk — and there’s not much of a song if there’s no connection.

In an interview, Mary said, “I’m not sure I want to be singing Leaving on a Jet Plane when I’m 75, but I know I’ll still be singing Blowin’ in the Wind.“  She died yesterday, three years short of that, but the connections remain.