{"id":251,"date":"2011-01-22T16:07:53","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T16:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/?p=251"},"modified":"2011-01-22T20:24:06","modified_gmt":"2011-01-22T20:24:06","slug":"the-importance-of-being-silly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/2011\/01\/22\/the-importance-of-being-silly\/","title":{"rendered":"The importance of being silly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since joining OT, retiring from chess (temporarily?) and beginning my new career among this merry band of bloggers, I have been searching for my identity. First, I often feel way out of my element\u2014after all, until recently (embarrassingly, very recently), I hadn\u2019t a clue what was out there\/here on the web-o-sphere. Nature Network and the \u201cBlogfather<\/a>” were like words in a foreign language to me. I am slowly filling in some of the gaps.<\/p>\n

But I still have an identity crisis. Some people collect stamps or coins, I collect passports: Canada, US, Israel\u2014whatever. Am I a Canadian-American-Israeli-Jewish atheist-liberal-scientist? Or am I an American-Canadian-Israeli-scientist-secular-Jewish atheist with liberal leanings? And so on…<\/p>\n

As my identity should be reflected in what I write, the luxury of having such a wonderful and uninhibited choice of topics is always a tricky thing. A quick analysis shows that I am already leaning towards the heavy side, the professorial and serious side. But am I always in my pompous-preaching monolog-mode? I hope not!<\/p>\n

I have been known in my time to play some tremendous (my blog, my choice of adjective!<\/em>) practical jokes. A couple years ago, when a certain Alaskan politician suddenly came into a high level of media exposure, I walked into my lab with my serious-earnest face, and nonchalantly announced that I\u2019d accepted an offer for a great position in Juno, Alaska, and the lab would be moving in 3 months time. But alas, it seems that there\u2019s not much support for basic research in that state:\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Basic research on fruit flies<\/a><\/p>\n

At some other point in time I\u2019ll be more than happy to elaborate on some of my other mischievous endeavors throughout my career in the lab!<\/p>\n

My point is that I can hold my own with the silliest of sillies (watch out, Cath<\/a>!). Or at least I like to think so. So now it\u2019s time to discuss identities and silliness. Through much hard work, I attained the status of being truly bilingual\u2014learning Hebrew well enough to study in university and understand the news when read rapidly on the radio. Fortunately, I did not have to go to classes like these to learn Hebrew (or Italian).<\/p>\n

Italian evening class- Monty Python<\/a><\/p>\n

On the other hand, my lucky children were given Hebrew as a gift, because that is the language we all speak at home. Actually, when we first came to the US, with thoughts of returning to Israel, I spoke English to my daughter. But when we altered our plans, I moved to Hebrew so that she would pick it up more easily, while picking up English at school.<\/p>\n

Well, you might wonder, where is the silliness? Patience, patience….<\/p>\n

As you may already have guessed, my sense of humor has been severely impacted by Monty Python (at my son’s recent birthday party I actually held a “silly walks” competition for the kids–a big hit!), and another sketch that has always been a favorite, is the old Hungarian-English phrase book sketch.<\/p>\n

Hungarian phrase book sketch- Monty Python<\/a><\/p>\n

I have always been fascinated by that \u201clowest form of humor\u201d, the pun, and other cute plays on words. For those who are unfamiliar with this word-play competition, have a read.<\/a><\/p>\n

So imagine what a treasure it is to be able to make bad puns that cross over between two languages! The fun is exponential, and Hebrew-English crossover puns are delightfully funny\u2014but necessitate a select few who are truly bilingual enough (and sometimes cross-cultural enough) to appreciate them. Hebrew may be a \u201clumpy language<\/a>\u201d, but it\u2019s great for puns.<\/p>\n

One unintentional example. Picture me 9 years ago, a postdoctoral fellow carting my chatty and bilingual 3 year old daughter through the Safeway grocery store in Rockville, Maryland. A very liberal, democratic state with one of the highest ratios of Ph.D.s in the US, thanks to the NIH. Despite being bilingual, there were a host of words that my daughter would use in Hebrew, out of habit and simplicity. One pair was\/is \u201cAbba\u201d and \u201cIma\u201d, Hebrew for father and mother, respectively. Another was \u201cgahn\u201d, Hebrew for garden, but also the word for \u2018daycare\u2019 (as in kindergarten<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As I bent over trying to determine which toilet paper was actually cheaper, I found my 3-year old deep in conversation with a nice little gray-haired lady. My daughter was very proud that she had recently advanced from the infant-to-3 year old daycare facility to the larger 3-5 year old one located right at the NIH.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, I heard my daughter tell the lady: \u201cI have a new \u2018gahn\u2019\u201d. The woman was staring at me, eyes ready to tear me apart. My daughter went on seamlessly: \u201cIt\u2019s much bigger than my older \u2018gahn\u2019\u201d. I couldn\u2019t get a word out. \u201cYou should be ashamed of yourself, buying weapons for her at that age\u201d, and she stomped away.<\/p>\n

And since they were in the process of building a new daycare center at NIH, I was disappointed that I didn\u2019t even get a chance to tell her about the great new \u201cgahn\u201d-site…<\/p>\n

post-script: apologies to Oscar Wilde and<\/em> Stephen Curry!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since joining OT, retiring from chess (temporarily?) and beginning my new career among this merry band of bloggers, I have been searching for my identity. First, I often feel way out of my element\u2014after all, until recently (embarrassingly, very recently), … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[80,1237,84,79,82,83],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bilingual","tag-humor","tag-identity","tag-language","tag-puns","tag-silliness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}