© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

On a very regular basis, many of us plug an electric appliance into a wall outlet. Not only do we expect the plug to fit, we also expect the appliance to work, probably without even thinking about it. Yet that can be so only if all the suppliers of electric sockets and plugs serving a given region follow the same socket-and-plug design, and the corresponding electrical conventions. And as you might have experienced, while you can take a device with a US plug and use it directly in Japan, you cannot do so in Germany, and vice versa; at the very least, you'll need an adaptor. [I have several: one is a single piece that allows selected prongs to protrude; the other provides a series of convertors that stack on one another. Both handle US, European, UK, and Australasian inputs and outputs.]

Since December 1984, I've worked on a number of US and international standards in the Information Technology area. I won't bore you with the esoteric details of that work, but, later on, I will mention a couple of projects with which you might relate. For the most part, I'll focus on other, every-day examples of standards and conventions.

Regardless of how, why, or by whom a standard is created, it needs to be written as a clear specification, so people can build products and provide services to comply with that standard. The person in charge of writing such a specification is often called a project editor or redactor. [For the past 12 years, that has been my main role in standards-related work, hence the title of this essay. From a standard's writer's perspective shall is a very strong word whereas can, might, could, and should, are weak words. And may is strong if its means "having permission" rather than "might".]

Standard or Convention?

There are two main kinds of standards:

• Mandatory/Regulatory (defined by local, national, or international public health and safety officials, for example)
• Optional/Industry initiatives (to allow interoperability and preservation of investment in equipment and training)

Sometimes, a vendor or consortium of vendors so dominates a market that its products became a de facto standard.

Standards We Use Regularly

Often when I put gasoline into my car, I see a sticker on the pump saying something like, "This pump has been calibrated and tested by the local/state Department of Weights and Measures on <test-date>." How do we know we're getting exactly 2 gallons of gas or that the 1-kg packet of meat we're paying for weighs exactly one kilo? Of course, it's not practical to measure everything we buy/use; we simply have to trust someone to have "done it correctly". Behind the scenes, a lot of people work to make that the case, and if they do their job properly, you'll never know or even think about them.

Regarding environment and health, there are standards for water quality, air quality, and automobile exhaust emissions. We have standards for seat belts and airbags. And given the growing use of the term organic with respect to food, we have an evolving—but not universal—set of definitions. However, read the fine print; there are always marketers trying to stretch the truth. [By the way, when people talk about organic produce, I joke that it really does taste much better than that inorganic stuff!]

When it comes to utilities and appliances there are a whole host of standards, many of which vary considerably from one country to another:

• Electricity: In the US, we use 110 volts and 60 Hertz with the plug having two vertical, flat blades and an optional circular ground (earth) pin. And even then, on some plugs one of the flat blades is taller than the other. [100 years ago, a lot of power generated in the US was 40 Hertz. In my original country, Australia, it is 240 volts, 50 Hertz, with two, flat blades at an angle to each other and an optional third flat blade as the ground.] For a lot of information about different plug/socket conventions, click here.
• Telephone: For those of us in the US still having a landline, we very likely plug our phone into an RJ11 jack. However, that wasn't always the case. When I lived in Chicago in 1979, my phone's wall socket had four pins equally spaced around a large, circular plug. [20+ years ago, when I started traveling internationally with a laptop computer using dial-up internet access, I bought a large set of adaptors that converted an RJ11 plug into pretty much every local phone socket type that existed.] Of course, now we have wireless mobile phones, but they use a myriad of incompatible conventions, and phone vendors can put locks on their handsets. There is also a standard for international telephone numbers, having the general form
  
  + <country-code> <area-code> <local-number>
  
  For example, +1 703 555 1212 is in the US (country code 1) with area code 703, which is in northern Virginia.
• Radio: It still amazes me that I can stick a stationary antenna up in the air and use it to listen to news and music. And to be able to do that in a car moving at 50 mph or on a jet flying at 600 mph, is truly amazing. Beyond that, we need some standard transmission bands, such as AM, FM, XM, and short wave.
• Television: The US (and other countries) had NTSC (jokingly referred to as "Never Twice the Same Color" or "Not The Same Color twice"), the Germans and Aussies (and many other countries) had PAL, and France and its territories, and Russia (among others) had SECAM. Then, of course, we had the VHS vs. Betamax videotape format war. And just to make it interesting, the audio on a PAL VHS tape can be heard on an NTSC VHS player, but the video cannot be seen due to the different number of lines per frame.
• Audio/Video: If you are like most people, you have a rat's nest of cables behind your stereo/TV cabinet. Currently, I have RCA, composite, S-Video, component, and HDMI cables. They're all standards; they just need entirely different (and sometimes expensive) cables. For a lot of information about different audio and video interfaces and connectors, click here.
• CD: After all the shakeout with videotape formats, the audio CD folks got it right. An audio CD can be played on any player anywhere in the world. What a concept! Of course, that was too sensible, and more complexity was needed; we had audio CD, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, Video Compact Discs (VCD), Super Video Compact Discs (SVCD), PhotoCD, PictureCD, CD-i, and Enhanced CD. (Did I miss any?)
• DVD and Blu-ray: When this media arrived, piracy of intellectual property was a growing problem, so while your average garden-variety digital video is the same around the world, the notion of DVD region codes was introduced. Australia uses a region code of 4 while the US uses a code of 1. So when a friend from Down Under brought me a prerecorded video, it wouldn't play on any of my video players. And while it would play in my Windows-based PC, the player software warned me that it would only play a "foreign" code-based DVD 10 times after which it would permanently switch the code of my DVD drive to that foreign code only. I am happy to report that when I burn a DVD with my home-movie maker software, it uses the universal region code 0. Of course, DVDs come in a number of flavors: DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM, with Dual-Layer being added to the mix.
• Digital Photo: While there are numerous formats for these, the camera industry seems to have settled on JPEG.

Most of us drive a car or use public transportation. Doing so involves a whole host of standards. For example:

• Nuts and bolts: The size and threading
• Tires: Diameter, width, and quality
• Batteries: Voltage and quality
• Fuel and Oil: This may include fuel efficiency standards
• Windows: Safety glass specifications
• Traffic lights: This simple, but very important, invention is pretty much universal. However, some countries still pass through yellow when going from red to green, while most do not. Also, in some countries the set of lights is arranged horizontally while in others it is vertical.
• Highway Signs and Traffic Rules: In the US, at most intersections controlled by lights, drivers can turn right on red after stopping.

The financial world employs numerous standards, which include:

• Credit, Debit, and ATM/Cash Machine Cards: The size of the card, the format of the number, and the magnetic stripe encoding
• Electronic Funds Transfers: These use an international Bank routing number and account number

In the world of personal computers, there literally are dozens of standards:

• Floppy Disk: There have been a number of popular sizes and formats.
• Network Cables: The world finally settled on the RJ45 Ethernet cable.
• Device Cables: We've had serial, parallel, and SCSI ports and cables. Now, everything seems to be USB with some FireWire.
• Surfing the Internet: Web pages have to be organized in some known fashion, and web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari need to understand that organization. If you have ever sent email to a person in another country, the chances are their address ended in a 2-letter country code, such as ".uk", ".jp", or "fr".

A few other standards we use on a regular basis are, as follows:

• Postal Service: Postal codes and standard envelope sizes.
• Barcodes: Used by most large supermarkets and department stores. According to Wikipedia, "The very first scanning of the now ubiquitous Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode was on a pack of Wrigley Company chewing gum in June 1974." Other popular codes are QR and RFID.
• Time Zones and Daylight Savings Time

Who Develops Standards?

On the regulatory front, boards are often convened at the local, state, or federal level, with input solicited from the public.

In the more formal standards world, we have Standards Development Organizations (SDOs). Some examples are:

• International: IEEE, ISO, IEC, and ITU
• National: The US has ANSI, the UK has BSI, Germany has DIN, and France has AFNOR, for example
• Government: US Food and Drug Administration, US Environmental Protection Agency
• Consortia: Ecma International, OASIS, W3C

In short, anyone or any organization can establish a specification. Unless it involves an area needing government regulation, it's mostly a matter of marketplace relevance as to whether that specification becomes a de facto or formal standard. And just because a standard is produced by a recognized SDO doesn't mean it will succeed. Unfortunately, the world is full of failed standards!

In the case of commercial enterprises, to avoid being seen as pursuing antitrust activities, there usually needs to be at least two competing groups working together using an open development process.

Compliance Testing

In many cases, a product or service that claims to conform to a standard must be verified by testing, with a certificate being issued before conformance can be claimed legally. For certain products, governments might require such conformance before a vendor can qualify for procurement consideration.

In the computing world, we have what are called validation suites. These are used to test an implementation to see if it conforms to a given specification.

I have seen many products (mostly electrical in nature) with the label UL. According to Wikipedia, "UL (Underwriters Laboratories) is a safety consulting and certification company headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois. It maintains offices in 46 countries. UL was established in 1894 and has participated in the safety analysis of many of the last century's new technologies, most notably the public adoption of electricity and the drafting of safety standards for electrical devices and components."

Maintenance of Standards

I can easily imagine that the entire specification for the US 110-volt plug-and-socket standard takes up no more than a few pages of text, diagrams, and tables. As such, once all interested parties have proofed this, there is a very good chance it can be frozen for a very long time, possibly forever. On the other hand, a standard for a computer programming language might run 1,000 pages, and because its basic building blocks can be combined in an infinite number of ways, it can be difficult, time consuming, or even impossible to prove that its specification is not incomplete or self-contradictory in some way. In any event, as technology evolves, such languages need to be extended. This requires there to be a process by which the public can submit questions about a specification or to point out possible errors or shortcomings. [The largest and most complex specification I've worked on contains 6,500 pages. The committee responsible for maintaining that meets face-to-face three times a year for three days and by teleconference for two hours each month.]

Some of My Regulatory and Standards Work

Back in the early 1970's, I worked for an Australian state government Department of Chemistry, in the pesticide residues section of the Food and Drugs division. On a regular basis, I checked samples from the egg, milk, and fresh vegetable markets. Pesticides can enter the food chain through chemical sprays on food fed to farm animals and poultry. However, farmers are prohibited from spraying crops too close to harvest, so this doesn't happen.

One day, I took delivery of 20 dozen bottles of red wine. Over a several-week period, I had to test each one for artificial coloring, which was banned. Day after day, I found nothing, and I tested my control method continuously. Then finally, in the last few bottles, one failed the test. It was with great excitement that I hollered out the window to my boss—who was getting in his car to go home—that "I'd found one". He hurried back and watched me test it again, and, YES, it was indeed positive! [The German word shadenfreude comes to mind.]

At that same time, some of my colleagues were testing for mercury in fish. It was also the heady days of all those nasty things like 2,4-D (a major ingredient in Agent Orange), 2,4,5-T, and chloropicrin.

After leaving Chemistry, I went into the field of computing working for a state highways authority. Every truckload of concrete delivered to every jobsite had a sample taken. Three days later, that sample was crushed with all kinds of information being recorded. I implemented a system to process the results. [By the way, if a batch failed the tests, the contractor had to rip up all the concrete from that batch at their own expense!]

If you have used Microsoft Word for some time, you may well have noticed that with the 2007 edition, the files created changed from type DOC to type DOCX. The former was a format proprietary to Microsoft, and was wildly popular. However, some US state and foreign governments wanted office software that read and wrote files that could be understood by any vendor. The result was IS 29500, a 4-Part standard involving some 6,500 pages. Not only does this cover Word's "DOCX" format, it also covers the formats for Excel and PowerPoint. As a result, Apple uses this format for the office tools on its platforms, as do other vendors.

In the past 25 years, I've also been involved in writing specifications for software that needs to support culturally diverse audiences by dealing with such things as name, address, and telephone number formats; a variety of date and time formats; a large variation in alphabets and writing systems; and so on. If you think for a moment what might be involved in making the exact same program (MS Word, for example) work in US English, British English, Swiss German, Russian, Japanese, and Arabic modes, you'll have some idea why standards can be very important.

Conclusion

As I travel around the world, I sometimes come across commercial or industrial developments with large banners or signs outside saying ISO 9000-Compliant. According to Wikipedia, "The ISO 9000 family of standards is related to quality management systems and designed to help organizations ensure that they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders while meeting statutory and regulatory requirements related to the product."

Every area of life is affected by standards, which can be as diverse as welding for pipelines, oil and gas exploration, how to cook the perfect pasta, how to make the perfect cup of tea, how to taste wine, toothbrushes, acoustics and hearing, and musical instrument tuning. There is even Irish Standard I.S 417:1988. Specification for Irish Coffee., which outlines the ingredients used, the minimum quantity of Irish Whiskey, the depth and quality of cream, and the temperature, among other things. Whatever will they think of next?

© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

I was raised in Australia in the 1950s and '60s, where the Imperial System of units was used. In 1970, I started working in chemistry where everything was metric. Then, in the early 1970's, Australia adopted the Metric System. In 1979, I moved to the US, which has a modified version of the Imperial System. However, I still travel regularly to countries that use the metric system. As a result of these varied experiences, I can easily switch from feet to meters, from miles to kilometers, and from pounds to kilograms.

The Imperial System, or variants thereof, is sometimes referred to as the foot-pounds-second (FPS) system. At times, the metric system was referred to as the centimeter-gram-second (CGS) system. Later, there was the meter-kilogram-second (MKS) system, but that was replaced by the International System of Units (SI). Of course, it is perfectly normal that there are other systems as well, including the tongue-in-check FFF system.

The Imperial System

I well remember being in a group of students marching around the yard in elementary school reciting various weights and measure values, such as the following: 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1,760 yards in a mile, 5,280 feet in a mile, 63,360 inches in a mile, and so on. [I remember doing likewise with multiplication tables!]

Add to those numbers things like 16 ounces in a pound, 2,240 pounds in a ton, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon, 640 acres in a square mile, and water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit and boils at 212 degrees F, and you soon see the problem. There is neither rhyme nor reason with respect to the multiplier; you simply have to learn these by rote!

It's right about now that I'm reminded of one of my most often-cited quotes: "Nothing is a complete waste; it can always serve as a bad example!" [Anon]

The Metric System

Compared to the Imperial System the metric system is infinitely simpler to teach, learn, and remember. For a given category of measurement such as length/distance there is a single base name, the meter (for which I'll use the US spelling). The quantity is expressed using one of a small family of optional universal prefixes resulting in things like millimeter, centimeter, and kilometer. Here are the basic prefixes:

Other commonly used prefixes are mega- (megabyte, megahertz, megapixel, megaliter), giga- (gigabyte, gigahertz), tera- (terabyte), micro- (microsecond), and nano- (nanosecond, nanometer). For the complete set click here.

Note that in the world of computer science 1KB (one kilobyte) is often understood to be 2¹⁰ bytes, which is 1,024 bytes, a number slightly more than 1,000.

By the way, a milliliter (ml) is the same thing as a cubic centimeter (cc).

Differences between the US and Imperial Systems

According to Wikipedia, "United States customary units are a system of measurements commonly used in the United States. Many U.S. units are virtually identical to their imperial counterparts, but the U.S. customary system developed from English units used in the British Empire before the system of imperial units was standardized in 1824. Several numerical differences from the imperial system are present."

About 20 years ago, I was visiting friends here in the US when their son and I got talking about what he'd been learning at boy scouts. He told me that a gallon of water weighed 8 pounds, to which I replied that that didn't sound right. As far as I knew, a gallon weighed 10 pounds. It turns out we were both right when you took into account the contexts in which we each had learned our measures, he in the US and me in Australia. At approximately 4.5 liters, an Imperial gallon is about 20% bigger than a US gallon (which is about 3.8 liters). Correspondingly, an Imperial pint is 20 fluid ounces while a US pint is only 16.

Back in the early 1970's, when asked how much I weighed, I replied, "12 stone 8 pounds". However, the US does not use the stone. As a stone is 14 pounds, for Americans, the equivalent weight would be 176 pounds.

The US also has short versions of several weight units. For example, the US uses the (short) ton, which has 2,000 pounds, while the long ton used by Imperial unit folks has 2,240 pounds. The Imperial hundredweight has 112 pounds, whereas a US hundredweight is only 100 pounds. Do not confuse a short or long ton with a metric ton (or tonne).

There have been various attempts to have the US "go metric"; however, none has succeeded on any grand scale. In any event, the fact that the US does not require imports to conform to the US system, combined with the influx of products from countries that do use the metric system means that a mixture of measures exists. For example, one can buy a car with 350 cubic-inch engine or a 5-liter V8.

America's immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico, use the metric system, and as one gets close to those borders, one sees distance signposts in both miles and kilometers.

Abstract systems

If you cook with recipes, you will be familiar with measures such as cup, teaspoon, and tablespoon. And while these have formal definitions, we tend not to think of them as such. For me, I know that to cook white rice, I simply need put 1 cup of rice in 2 cups of cold water, and boil. (Of course, I could just as easily substitute a drinking glass or a bucket for the cup; the proportions stay the same.)

Some years ago, I stayed with a family in Japan, and I asked if I could cook a Mexican meal for them and their neighbors. They were delighted not only to try Mexican, but also to see a man in the kitchen, something that is apparently quite rare in that country except for chefs in restaurants. (It was a challenge to find all the ingredients to make tacos.) The problem arose when the three women pulled out their notepads and were ready to write copious notes on how to prepare the food. I started cooking the ground beef. "How long do you cook it?" I replied, "Until done!" "At what temperature?", they asked. "Adjust the heat as you like", I replied. Of course, when it came to adding spices, I simply said, "Add sufficient to taste." This so frustrated the onlookers that they put away their notepads; it was clear they needed strict rules to cook, and I almost always "fly by the seat of my pants".

Dealing with Conversions

It is likely that relatively few people will experience a change in their weights and measures systems unless they emigrate or their country adopts the metric system. However, for those of us who travel internationally on a semi-regular basis, we do have to change contexts if we are to understand our local environment. Just how much does gasoline cost in Country X? Seeing a price of 1.73 Euros/liter on a pump gives you no clue as to how many US$/gallon that is, and vice versa. And although the signpost says that its 23 miles to the next exit, just how far is that in kilometers? Another example is tire pressure. In the US/Imperial world, we measure the number of pounds-per-square-inch (psi); however, in the metric world, they use kilopascals. And as for fuel efficiency, the familiar miles-per-gallon (mpg) becomes liters/100 km, which employs a reversed ratio. Fortunately, many cars sold in the US today have speedometers in both US and metric units, so drivers can tell just how much over the speed limit they really are driving when they cross into Canada or Mexico.

From my Aussie experience, I remember my mother having trouble with sugar. Previously, it came in 4-lb (pound) bags, and for a whole host of things she made in bulk—think preserving fruit in jars—she knew how many bags to buy/use. However, when the metric system was adopted, the bags were now 2kg, which at about 4.4lbs is more than just a little bit larger. A major adjustment was needed. Similarly, she needed to convert the degrees C in recipes on printed packaging to her degrees F, as she wasn't about to replace her old oven "just because some fool in government changed the measurement system".

A common thing to buy for lunch was a 1-pint carton of flavored milk; however, the metric equivalent was 600 ml, which is significantly larger. Basically, certain assumptions that had been proven correct for years were no longer true, and some manufacturers took advantage of that by downsizing their product yet keeping the price the same. How would the average consumer tell the difference? [I recall that this kind of thing was widespread when various countries converted to the Euro.]

Length, Distance, and Thickness

Depending on the size of the thing being measured, we use different units, for example: A thou (a US mil) is a thousandth of an inch. Although it's used in various contexts in engineering and manufacturing, I first came across it when checking/setting the gap in an automobile's sparkplug, using a feeler gauge. Metric versions measure in hundredths of a millimeter.

Regarding altitude and ocean depth, we talk in thousands of feet (or meters). Occasionally, we use miles, as in Denver, the mile-high city, and in near-earth space.

When it comes to human hair and cells, we use micron, which is a synonym for micrometer. And as the name implies, nanotechnology is measured in nanometers.

Most of us raised in the British Commonwealth learned that the length of the pitch for the game of cricket is exactly 22 yards long; that is, one chain, and that there are 10 chains in a furlong and 80 chains in a mile. A chain is 100 links or 4 rods (or 4 poles or 4 perches). (The length of horse races is often stated in furlongs.)

The term mile is shorthand for statute mile, and is 5,280 feet (1,609 meters). The latter term is used to distinguish it from the nautical mile, which at 6,076.1 feet (1,852 meters) is longer. A nautical mile is approximately one minute of arc of longitude at the equator. An international treaty defines territorial waters as a 12 nautical-mile strip along a coastal at the average low-tide mark.

The fathom is a non-metric unit equaling 6 feet. It is mostly used in the context of water depth. Initially, it was the distance between an average man's outstretched arms. According to Wikipedia, "It is customary, when burying the dead, to inter the corpse at a fathom's depth, or six feet under. A burial at sea (where the body is weighted to force it to the bottom) requires a minimum of six fathoms of water. This is the origin of the phrase 'to deep six' as meaning to discard, or dispose of."

Another nautical measure is the cable, which is one tenth of a nautical mile.

Many of us know that Jules Verne wrote a popular book called 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and that some characters in European fairy tales wore seven-league boots. But just how much is a league? Its three miles. Originally, the term referred to the distance a person or a horse could walk in an hour.

By the way, back in the good old days, the meter was defined as "one-quarter of one ten-millionth of the circumference of the Earth (along the great circle coincident with the meridian of longitude passing through Paris)"; however, nowadays, it's based on the speed of light. [Why can't they just leave things alone?]

Speed

Yes, we all know about vehicle speeds of miles/hour (and kilometers/hour), but what about stuff that goes really fast? How do we measure that? The fastest thing we know of is the speed at which light travels in a vacuum. At 186,282 miles/second (299,792,458 meters/second), that's pretty darned fast. [The second fastest thing I know of was my 8-year-old son when spitting out a slice of dill pickle—which he knew in advance that he didn't like—that I had bet him a dollar he wouldn't eat!]

Now we think of seeing things instantaneously; however, with the earth being approximately 93 million miles from the sun, at the speed of light a sunray takes about 500 seconds (that is, 8 1/3 minutes) to reach us. This distance from the Earth to the sun is one astronomical unit. [By the way, sunlight reflected by the moon takes only about 1.2 seconds to reach Earth.] As such, looking very long distances—such as with a space telescope—we see light that has traveled a very long way and thus gives us a picture of what used to be there. We currently have no way to see what is actually there now! A more earthly example is in communicating voice via a satellite link; there is a short delay. And the time it takes to send a message between Earth and Mars takes about 5–20 minutes depending on those planets' positions.

For those of you who have a lot of time on your hands, there is the light year, which is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year (that is, in 365.25 days). That's 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kms). [Of course, if you worked in astrometry, you'd prefer the parsec instead.]

For all of you budding interstellar space travelers, after the sun, our nearest known star is Proxima Centauri, which is about 4.22 light-years away. As that is some 32 trillion miles (42 trillion kms) away, you'll need to get an early start.

Compared to light, sound travels v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, at a mere 1,126 feet/second (343.2 meters/second). According to Wikipedia, "The speed of an object … divided by the speed of sound … is called the Mach number. Objects moving at speeds greater than Mach 1 are traveling at supersonic speeds." (By my calculation, my subcompact car tops out around 0.08 Mach; don't blink or you'll miss me as I race on by!) One application of this knowledge is in figuring out how far away a storm is. When the lightning flashes, it reaches an observer more or less instantaneously; however, the accompanying thunder takes 5 seconds to travel each mile (3 seconds each km), so each second delay between seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder is 1/5 of a mile (0.32 km).

To all you "Sesame Street" sailors, today is brought to you by the letter arrrr (as pronounced like a pirate), and a knot is one nautical mile (1.85 km) per hour, which is about 15% faster than 1 statute mile/hour. And yes, the name comes from counting the number of knots in a line.

Area

In the metric system, smaller areas—including a house lot—are measured in square meters, while a farm would be measured in hectares, with a hectare being about 2.5 acres. Every so often, I meet a farmer in my area here in rural Northern Virginia. When I ask him how much land he has, he typically replies, "About 75 acres." To which I reply, "That's not a farm! In Australia, my sheep dog had a yard bigger than that!" [The farm on which I was raised had 4,000 acres, and the average size farm in my hometown area these days is 6,000 acres.] Now if you go into the Aussie outback to visit a sheep or cattle station, you're talking property sizes in the hundreds of square miles, and where people commute by light aircraft. There are 640 acres in a square mile.

In Australia during the Imperial days, the floor space of a house was measured in squares where a square was 10x10 feet. An average-size house in my hometown area was 12–13 squares. The 3-storey townhouse I lived in for many years here in the US was 26 squares, and many McMansions in the area I now live are 50+ squares and sit on 5 acres; what a country!

If you are looking to measure teeny, tiny things, check out the unit barn.

Temperature

The two most common temperature scales are Fahrenheit, written as °F, and Celsius (also known as Centigrade), written as °C. Water freezes as 32 °F (0 °C) and boils at 212 °F (100 °C). And just in case you don't know the conversion formulas, here they are:

°F = ((°C × 9) ÷ 5) + 32
°C = ((°F – 32) × 5) ÷ 9

Trivia question: Which temperature is exactly the same number in both °F and °C? Answer: –40. Don't believe me; use the conversion formulas above.

Now it's worth noting that the boiling temperature mentioned above is not universal. This is because it is defined in terms of one standard atmospheric pressure. Specifically, the boiling point of water is lower at lower pressure and higher at higher pressure. For example, go up 1,000 feet (≈300 meters) and the atmospheric pressure decreases by about 4%. So, when cooking in the mile-high city of Denver, Colorado, for example, you'll need to reinterpret some of your recipes.

As you well know, some people have way too much time on their hands, and so the Kelvin scale was born. The starting point for this is absolute zero (0K is −273.15 °C and −459.67 °F), the temperature at which all thermal motion ceases. [For me, I'm certain that 70 °F (21 °C) is already too cold. In any event, in the Australian vernacular, absolute zero is known as Bloody cold or Colder than a witch's tit!] The Kelvin scale simply is the Celsius scale with 273.15 subtracted. Not to be outdone, some scientists not of the metric faith and with idle hands came up with the Rankine scale, which also represents absolute zero, but with a value of 0 °R. This scale simply is the Fahrenheit scale with 459.67 subtracted.

Here are some numbers you might find interesting:

• The normal human body temperature when taken orally is approximately 98 °F (37 °C).
• The hottest temperature ever recorded on earth was 134 °F (56.7 °C) in 1913 in Death Valley, California
• The surface temperature of the sun is about 9,941 °F (5,505 °C), which as Icarus discovered to his own peril, was a little too hot for high flying especially when his feathered wings were held together with wax.
• At an altitude of 34,000 feet (10,460 meters), the temperature outside my plane while flying recently over remote Canada on my way to Japan was –63 °F (–52.8 °C). As a result, I kept my window wound up tight!

Odds and Ends

Here is a pot-pourri of other units:

According to Wikipedia, a span "is the distance measured by a human hand, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. In ancient times, a span was considered to be half a cubit." Do you know how long your hand's span is? I find that useful when I'm buying something whose size I'd like to check, yet I don't have a tape measure handy.

If you want to measure the height of your horse, you'd do so in hands, one of which is 4 inches long. When it comes to fractions, this is a rather interesting unit. Specifically, the "decimal" places use a number in base 4 rather than base 10 (decimal). For example, consider a horse 58 inches high, which is 14½ hands. This is written as 14.2 hands, not as 14.5, as you might expect. A horse an inch taller would be 14.3 hands, and one another inch taller would be 15 hands (not 14.4)!

Now that I've moved to a house in the country and I have a potbelly stove, I'm considering buying some firewood. In the US (and Canada), that comes by the cord. A cord of wood occupies a volume of 128 cubic feet (3.62 cubic meters), or a stack about 4x4x8 feet. The metric folks use the stere. In the UK, the term fathom can be used to measure a quantity of wood. Now, I ask you, "Is that normal?"

We've all heard about gemstones having "x-carats", but just what is a carat? It's a unit of weight equal to 0.007055 ounces (200 mg). A carat is subdivided into 100 points.

If you do enough crossword puzzles or play enough Scrabble games, you'll come across the printers' measures em and en. Some of their siblings are pica and point.

If after reading this you still have free time, check out bushel, dram, grain, pennyweight, and scruple, plus avoirdupois weight, troy weight, and apothecaries' weight.

Conclusion

For more information than you probably will ever want to know about units of measure, click here.

In 1972, in the week following Australia's implementation of the metric system, I was at my neighborhood deli. An elderly gentleman ahead of me said that he wanted two kilograms of milk, at which the owner looked over at me and smiled, and served the man two liters. Yes, it was amusing, but at least the customer was trying to get with the program.

During the changeover Down Under, there was a national debate on the pronunciation of the word kilometer, and even the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, got into the debate. Was it ki·lo·me·ter or ki·lom·eter? The best response I can make is that we don't say ki·log·ram or ki·lol·i·ter. [Regarding Gough, the joke goes that he had a sure-fired way of shortening the unemployment lines; simply ask the people to stand closer together!]

In the 1970's, the band 10CC had quite a few hit songs. If you follow the hyperlink and read carefully the section titled "Original line-up, 1972–76" you'll see that the band's name refers to a volume of a certain body fluid emitted from a male's nether regions. After that, the name The Beatles seems almost banal!

By the way, did you hear about the one-armed fisherman? He caught a fish this long! (Holds up one hand.) Now that joke hardly measures up, does it?

© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

My guess is that most of us probably live in relatively few different places during our lives. In my case, I left home soon after my 16^th birthday, by which time I'd lived at five different addresses. Since then, I've lived at 10 more. Overall, I've averaged fewer than four years/house. And, NO, I'm not in the Witness Protection Program!

I started accumulating stuff soon after I left home and as finances allowed. I was 18 years old when I "set up house" with two friends. Seven years later, I traveled more than halfway around the world to take up a job for at least a year. Putting my life into two suitcases was quite a challenge and required ruthlessness. So when the travel plans changed drastically only weeks before departure, and I was limited to only one case, halving my "treasures" turned out to be quite easy. Who needs two sets of socks and underwear anyway? [By the way, regarding socks, you can get five days from a pair: wear them, turn them inside out, swap feet, turn them inside out again, and go without! This is a well-known fact exploited around the world by young men who have left home and who have to do their own laundry.] I should mention that some years later, once it was clear that I was staying abroad, I did ship a container of stuff that had been in storage.

Apart from having a limited baggage allowance, moving abroad requires one to evaluate one's life from a number of perspectives. Can I do without all my favorite things, my familiar environment, and my friends? So much so, that if one stays in the same environment for a long time, beyond a certain point, moving across town—forget about moving to another city, state, or country—can be a very intimidating prospect for all those people who get very settled in their ways. "How will I make friends?" "Will I have good neighbors?" "Will there be room for darling Tricky Woo to run and play?" "I'll have to start from scratch." "I can't bear to think about it." "That settled it; I'm not moving!"

In 1984, I moved to a townhouse. A month later, my son was born and he lived there until he completed his first four years of university. I lived there a total of 28 years. Often when I went down into the basement, I'd look around at all the stuff I had in storage—indeed had around the house in general—just waiting to be used perhaps, maybe, one day! From arriving in the US in 1979 with one suitcase and a briefcase, I'd progressed to a 1-, 2-, then 3-bedroom apartment, and then to a 3-level, 3-bedroom townhouse. Where did need end and want start? Having traveled to the third world and seen whole families living in one or two small rooms, I was pretty sure I could live with less in a smaller space without any unnecessary hardship. I was very interested in downsizing not only my living space, but my life as well.

This essay outlines the process I used to prepare and sell that townhouse, to determine what sort of place I'd like to live in next, and to find and move to that place.

It's All in the Planning

I started out by following my own advice, and making a plan. (See my essay from May 2011, "Planning for Success".) Over several months, it was revised and expanded. One of my golden rules is, "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right!" Besides, buying and/or selling a house is about the biggest financial transaction most of us will ever carry out.

The goal was to sell my townhouse and, hopefully, to downsize, which meant getting the house ready for sale, selling it, finding a new place to live, and moving. Very quickly, I recognized that selling one place and buying another were both big tasks on their own, and combining them would complicate things especially if I could find a new place, but not sell the old one. After all, there was a big housing slump here in the US, and I wasn't going to sell at a low price. Besides, there was one big question: In what area did I really want to live? In reality, I could live within an hour of any major airport in the world in any place that had a decent internet connection. However, not only doesn't that help narrow the problem it expands it hugely!

Having owned one residence or another pretty much continuously for 36 years, and having lived in societies in which home ownership is the pinnacle of personal financial achievement, I thought only of owning the next place. However, somewhere along the way I had an epiphany. To separate completely the selling and buying stages, why not rent for a year in between, during which time I'd figure out "what next and where next?" And if I didn't have an answer, I could rent for another year! So the plan became to sell my house, to then rent it back from the new owner while I looked for a new place, and then to move. Then a year or so later, I'd look to buy another place. Yes, it would involve moving twice, but that just meant I'd have two chances to get rid of stuff and to re-evaluate my downsizing plan. (Something good really does come from everything.) And most importantly, buying the new place would not be contingent on selling the old place.

To begin, on the selling side, I identified two real estate agents who both came highly recommended. I met with each separately and explained my plan. I asked for their advice on how to prepare my townhouse, and I wanted to know the best times of the year to have a place on the market. In fact, I had a whole list of questions, which I refined as I went. With the advent of the internet and electronic property-access lock-box cards, things had changed quite a lot since I last bought or sold a property. I made no commitment to either of them regarding using them for the sale, and rightly, they considered it an investment in a future possible relationship. We made a thorough inspection of the house and I made notes about all the suggestions they each made regarding renovation, cleaning, and other preparation. Prior to their visits, I'd made a detailed list of all the things I thought might be factors, based simply on common sense (which, unfortunately, doesn't appear to be so common), and I was very happy to find it covered the vast majority of things. I then wrote a detailed renovation plan with a time line.

In parallel, on the renting/moving side, I started to make notes about my requirements. There was just me, I wanted to rent for at least a year, and I was happy to get rid of a lot of stuff. Besides, I was going to repaint the inside of my old house and replace the carpet before the house went on the market, so why move everything out temporarily only to move it back again, and then move it permanently when I leave? Better just to get rid of stuff during the renovation stage. [Many people I know can't bear to think about being separated from their stuff. "I can't decide what to get rid of, so I'll just pack it and take it to my new place. I can sort through it there. Sure!" I can say with absolute certainty that that is not a plan for success! By the way, I highly recommend listening to George Carlin's take on stuff.]

Regarding my next, or at least a future, style of living, I explored the idea of having a really small, permanent home base and traveling in a camper van, a travel trailer (called a caravan by some), or a Motor Home/Recreational Vehicle (RV). I also considered buying land and buying a prefabricated, transportable home, or building a log cabin from a kit.

Finally, I "bit the bullet" and decided I'd buy a mobile phone to help me in locating the rental property. Now don't fall out of your chair just yet. Rex with a mobile? Yes! However, as you'll read later, I still haven't violated my principles from my November 2010 essay, "Technology, Unplugged – Part 1".

The Renovations and Preparation

The main renovation tasks were as follows:

• Replace the vanity cabinets, sinks, faucets, towel rails, and lighting in two full bathrooms, a half bathroom, and a vanity area in the master bedroom. [The bathrooms themselves had been renovated some years earlier.]
• Remove all window treatments and brackets from all walls and ceilings, repair the drywall, remove all wallpaper, and paint all inside walls and ceilings.
• Repair and paint all exposed wood outdoors.
• Replace all carpet.

Minor tasks included pressure washing the deck, landscaping both front and rear yards, trimming ivy growing up the front walls, and cleaning.

On the purging and preparation-to-move front, I dealt with the following:

• Disposed of most of my professional library. (I retained "visiting" rights, however!)
• Donated bookcases, loads of office supplies and equipment, and many personal things to thrift shops and Non-Profit organizations.
• Gave away tools and personal stuff to friends and acquaintances. [In the end, anyone who came to visit had to take something home with them when they left!]
• Made numerous runs to the recycling center, disposing of many hundreds of books and the shredded remains of 25 years of personal records (after I'd scanned copies to my computer).
• Recycled or donated 20 years-worth of old personal computers and equipment.
• Disposed of all hazardous waste (e.g., paint and chemicals)

This all took place over an 8-month period, at my own (controlled) pace. By the time it was all done, the place looked so good I thought perhaps that I should stay in it. And, in fact, if I didn't get a decent offer, that's exactly what I planned to do!

On the Market We Go

I decided to have the house ready for sale by mid-January, and although mid-winter might seem a bad time to sell, I was assured that it was one of the three best times. While there might not be many buyers, neither are there many properties. Besides, when it comes down to it, you only need one, the right one.

When the first open house was held, I had my feet up on a Caribbean island where it was 80 degrees F with wind chill! After that, I was in-town for subsequent open houses, but was asked to "vacate the premises". Each time I came home, I had to locate certain things that I'd left out, but which the selling agent had hidden from public view "lest they upset the karma of a possible sale". How dare I leave a clean skillet on the stovetop? Oh, and thou shalt not put any blue tablets in the toilet water tank while the house is on the market. Apparently, although prospective buyers may well have blue water in their toilets, they are not allowed to see it in a house that's for sale. Say what?

Apart from open houses, buyer agents came by during the week to look. All of them actually called ahead and made an appointment, but just in case they didn't I had to actually keep the place in tip-top condition all the time, as in make the bed every morning and do the dishes after every meal. Oh, the games people play!

During open house, every light in the place had to be on and all the blinds had to be open. But with its being winter, that was hardly energy-efficient, but, hey, it's not the agent's money!

The Serious Offer and Negotiations

A couple of weeks after the house had gone on the market, I received an offer that was so low, I considered it an insult, and to the buyer's dismay, I completely disregarded it. Then came that one buyer I wanted. She and her agent spent no more than 10 minutes looking through, and a few days later submitted an offer, which was low, but not insultingly so. I countered by dropping my price just a few thousand and I re-presented the long list of renovation and replacement work. Her next offer went up almost all the difference, and we soon made a deal. That was five weeks after the place had gone on the market.

As it happens, having a signed contract at a given price is just the start, as that was subject to several inspections. One inspector found a faulty power outlet and broken seals on two windows, one large one small. So I repaired/replaced those. He claimed the chimney needed to be cleaned, but as it had never ever been used, I refused. He claimed that the roof needed replacing, to which I countered that it was done 10 years before and had a life of at least 25 years. He tried to save face by insisting it be cleaned. I refused, but my wimpy agent offered the buyer money from his commission towards that. The house failed the radon test. $1,000 later, that problem was fixed (although it resulted in the installation of an exhaust fan that would run 24-hours a day forever).

Finally, we agreed we were done, but as neither party was in a hurry, we delayed settlement for several months. During that time, I had the buyer over several times for afternoon tea, so she could measure things and plan her own move. I also prepared a detailed list of things regarding maintenance as well as a list of local businesses she might care to know about, as she was moving from out-of-state.

The Settlement

The buyer and her agent, and my agent and I met in a conference room at a title company. After signing lots of sheets of papers, we shook hands and went our separate ways. There were no last-minute snags and the proceeds were transferred to my bank within 24 hours. The sales contract gave me a 5-week rent-back during which time I had to keep the place "in good repair".

The Search for a Place to Rent

Over a number of months, I'd been driving around several neighboring, rural counties getting a feel for the geography and kinds of places available. Along the way, I was refining my criteria. Then, as soon as the settlement check cleared, I started my search in earnest.

• Using an online search facility, I identified 12 potential places and spent a weekend planning an efficient order in which to view each from the outside and without an agent. (I discovered that nowadays, a buyer also needs an agent, unless it's a private sale.)
• I bought a prepaid-card mobile phone, so I could interact with renting agents as I was driving around reading their advertising signs.
• I set my alarm for quite early on a Monday morning. The weather out was miserable, I hadn't slept well, and I had a raging headache. Then as I pumped gas in my car, I locked the keys inside. Things went downhill from there!
• The first house was very nice, in a quiet neighborhood, in the largest town of the neighboring county, but it had three levels, which meant stairs. It, or something like it, would be my safe option if I failed to find "the right thing" in my rent-back period.
• Then came some truly forgettable places, some truly awful locations, sometimes along bad or unfinished local roads.
• Then I found a split-level house on an acre of land with many large, evergreen trees. It looked very good and it came with great neighbors. I called the agent listed on the sign to find that someone had submitted an application the previous day. Bugger!
• After more bad weather, more crappy places, crappy locations, and bad roads, I followed a sealed road along the tallest hill in the area in heavy fog. Forget getting in and out on the steep roads in that area.
• I eventually found a very nice, small stone cottage way out in the country, but it had stairs, and I probably couldn't get large furniture up the narrow staircase.
• By 7 pm, I was back home, dejected. But, of course, it was only Day 1 and the 5-week countdown clock had hardly moved.
• At 7:30 pm, I phoned the agent I'd spoken to earlier that day and suggested we submit a second offer. She said that wasn't worth the effort; however, a new place had just gone on the market that afternoon and she suggested I look at it online. I did, and despite the outrageously high monthly rental, I fell in love with it. After looking at all the photos, reading the detailed description, finding the location on a map, and considering the cost, I called her back that evening and asked her to set up a viewing the next day. (Instead of thinking about how much money it cost, I thought in terms of how many days a month I'd have to bill clients to pay the rent. When that came up to a very low number, it was a no-brainer decision. Besides, the place was on five acres with a 4-acre forest. In fact, it really was a botanic garden with a house in it!)
• On the Tuesday, I inspected the place and filled out an application.
• I was approved on the Wednesday.
• On Friday, I signed a 1-year lease and got the keys.
• On Saturday, I started moving in.

So, one day after I started looking, I found my dream house, and I made only one call on my mobile.

The Rent-Back

I had negotiated five weeks rent back, which I figured was sufficient time to find a place to rent. I moved all my stuff out in a week, so the only thing I needed to do in the remaining four weeks was to clean a place that had been painted and had new carpet. It was not a difficult task. On one of the final visits I made to it I thought, "I lived here for 28 years, but I am so much in love with my new place and the whole idea of moving to a new life that I have absolutely no separation anxiety whatsoever. After all, it was just a house! Home is where I currently live."

The Move

I moved a lot of stuff by myself in a minivan from which I had removed the seats. On several days, I had an assistant who helped with some of the mid-size stuff. I unpacked boxes as I moved, so I could reuse them and to see the progress I'd made.

For the last two days, my son came to visit and we moved all the big/heavy stuff using a pickup truck. There was only one door into the new house that could accommodate large things, and even that had to be removed to get the sofa through. Although it rained a little that week, it didn't while we were driving between houses.

After a number of sports injuries and subsequent knee surgeries, I pretty much avoid certain physical activities. However, I'm a 110%-effort guy, so I pushed hard, which resulted in my left knee swelling considerably. Fortunately, that was temporary, but it took 10 days to recover fully.

Life in Paradise

I'd abandoned pay-TV several years earlier, and I very quickly found I had no real TV reception via an antenna. Thirty seconds after discovering that, I viewed that as a positive thing. After all, I wanted to spend more time reading, writing, entertaining, and watching videos. Also, the internet service was slow, but it was adequate. I really didn't need much speed for email and casual internet browsing.

The kitchen was a delight, and as I like cooking and entertaining, I set about making full use of that. The property came with a John Deere tractor with which I had to cut the grass. That brought out the farmer in me (as you can see from the accompanying photo). The outdoor deck and entertaining area were wonderful, and I ate outdoors as often as possible. I also sat there late at night and watched the stars. And the forest was complete with deer, rabbits, and lots of birds. Even a large turtle came to visit one day. There were no streetlights glaring in my windows and the constant noise of a city was a fading memory.

There were a few adjustments, but nothing major: no pizza delivery; I couldn't just walk to the store; there was no town trash/recycling pickup; I had a 150-foot drive to shovel if there was snow; I had a well (no power=no water) and a septic tank. I did, however, have no stairs (YES!) and a window over the kitchen sink (and YES! again). I had a great landlord and some nice neighbors. And I had a 2-car garage, my first ever cover for a car.

The Post Mortem Results

Despite the national downturn in home sales, I got a good price for my house. It helped that my city, Reston, is always in demand and that a subway line is coming to the area in the next year. The fact that I didn't have to sell by any given date made it is a calmer process. My detailed plans all held up and there were no unpleasant surprises.

Regarding downsizing, my new place is slightly smaller including a 2-car garage, but not that much so. However, by downsizing all my stuff, I'm well positioned for the next move at which time I expect I'll get rid of quite a few more things. Along the way, I reinforced my dislike for the real estate business.

I used the move as an opportunity to change all sorts of things; basically, it allowed a complete attitude change in many respects.

What's Next?

Since my move, I constantly notice which of my things I'm actually using. Of all the things I kept during the big purge, I still don't use 90% of them on any regular basis or at all!

Having scouted out the area to which I moved, I've decided to buy something small, and I've refined my selection criteria and figured an upper price limit. My plan is to buy 2–3 months before my rental agreement expires, so I'll have plenty of time to do renovations and repairs. I'm quite prepared to redo completely a kitchen and bathroom, to paint inside and out, and to replace all the floor coverings. All those things are cosmetic and can easily be changed. All that said, if I don't find the right place, I'm quite willing to rent again, but definitely something smaller and much cheaper.

Conclusion

I firmly believe that one can and should plan for success, but one should leave room for the nice, fortuitous surprises that can come along. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I've also reconfirmed that it's good practice to re-evaluate one's lifestyle occasionally and to expand one's horizons. I consider the whole move to be an adventure with a safety net.

If I hadn't called back that rental agent, I never would have found my dream rental house! Our lives are defined by the actions we take and, just as importantly, by the ones we don't take.

Now I mentioned earlier that I'd finally bought a mobile phone. It's a nifty Samsung unit that cost only $10, and I subscribed to the Tracfone pay-as-you-go plan. The phone came with double-minutes and after I had it for a couple of months, I bought a 2-year card that gave me 1,000 minutes. The total cost is slightly less than $8/month. The thing is I don't use it unless it's absolutely necessary or very convenient, and only a couple of people have my number. I am so disciplined that in six months, I've used it to make fewer than a dozen calls. Besides, I have unlimited calling on my home phone, so why pay for calls that I can make at home for free? I haven't even activated the message-answering option, and I don't do texting or email on it. Unlike many people, I have a very full life without having to play with my phone every spare moment.

© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

Once I moved to the US in the late 70's, it took a few years for me to get myself financially established there, but after that, I started thinking about what I might be able to do for some less-fortunate folks. Around that time, a major weekly newsmagazine ran an article comparing the top 50 or so well-known charities showing how much of each dollar actually went to an organization's projects. [It truly was stunning how big a percentage of total disposable assets the overhead was for some of them—to the point that their charitable projects seemed almost secondary!] One of them provided "more bang for the buck" than the others, and I started supporting that charity. 25 years later, I still am, and in a much bigger way.

I've lived 16 years in rural Australia, 10 years in suburban Australia, 32 years in suburban America, and recently I moved to rural America. Australia and America both have good standards of living although my guess is that due to its extensive social safety net Australia doesn't really have an underclass. The US certainly does!

We are all shaped by the influences of our environment, and I grew up in a small-town rural community, made up of farmers, fruit growers, a few professional people, and lots of working-class people. In general, the State and Federal Governments were expected to take care of those who needed help. That said my state has many towns with strong community organizations and branches of national and international service organizations. In my home region, the hotel (having drinks, meals, and accommodation) in each town is owned by that community and run as a non-profit venture with proceeds going back into the town's development. The projects involve town beautification, campgrounds, picnic areas, riverfront development, and the like.

From about the time I turned 16, I started playing a game, "What would I do with a spare $100?" As my own situation improved, the value of the amount went to $1,000, then $10,000, $100,000, and so on, with it now being in the millions and billions. [I've always thought it would be awfully embarrassing to win the lottery, but not have a plan for what to do with the money!]

Fast-forward to 2006. After a trans-Atlantic daytime flight to London, I lay awake jet-lagged in my hotel bed for many hours during which I had an epiphany. Instead of just dreaming and talking about all the good I might do should I ever have more than enough money, I thought, "Why not start out small, get the experience of setting up a non-profit and working with small projects, and actually do something real now instead of maybe later?" And so I did, and on a shoestring budget too. Now, nearly seven years later, my little charity is well, it has done good work, and I've learned a lot.

In this essay, I'm going to talk about my experiences in creating a non-profit organization (which I'll abbreviate as NPO), but without getting into the details of my foundation except to say that it works primarily with underprivileged kids here in the US. [As I've discovered repeatedly, unfortunately, the Third World is "right around the corner".] As I've done this in the United States, issues of a legal or tax nature will necessarily be US- and, in some cases, US state-specific.

Why Not Just Give as You Go?

For the vast majority of people, this is just fine. Perhaps you give to one or more favorite projects on a regular basis and it comes out of your pay before you get it. And maybe you have a little extra from time to time to give to various groups especially around major holidays.

For many people, they live paycheck to paycheck, so they are too busy trying to keep their own situation afloat to be thinking about helping others financially. But for those of us with some discretionary income, can we do more? As for me, not only did I want do something, I wanted to be involved in deciding where the money actually went, and in seeing that the overhead was kept as small as possible. I was certain I did not want to be an armchair philanthropist. (A lot of people feel good about writing out a check for the "needy", but they never actually met those in need. That is, except for the buzz they get by giving, they are otherwise unaffected by that need.)

But I Don't have That Kind of Money!

Mention the term Non-Profit Organization or charity, and many people think of the multinational groups like International Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, and Save the Children, or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. After all, they are ones we hear about in the news. But, of course, the vast majority of NPOs are small, local-run affairs that don't have the time, budget, energy, or need to blow their own horn, so you never hear about them unless you go looking.

Don't you have to be super rich to start your own NPO? In a word, NO; I started mine with $1,600. To be sure, it has a lot bigger asset base now, but nothing too big. [I'm reminded of a lawyer in the DC area who works with people who want to start their own NPO. She said that it wasn't worth doing unless one had $10 million to start with. Once I learned of her consulting fees, I understood why her clients needed that kind of money.]

Don't you have to have a big ego to start your own NPO? I can't attest to the size of the ego one might need, but the question suggests that having a largish ego is a bad thing. In fact, show me a repeatedly successful person and I'll show you someone with a sizeable ego.

To be sure, starting an NPO takes some serious thought, effort, and commitment. After all, it's a business! Once you have it going, you have to keep it going; otherwise, you defeat your original purpose. For that reason, most people would shy away from going that route. If they fall on lean times, they can simply reduce their contributions or simply not give to their usual charities. But even if you have your own NPO, you don't have to donate to it on a regular basis. Rather, you give when you can and have most of the assets invested for later disbursement (see later below).

If you start something, you are much more likely to keep it going. And once the vehicle exists, it's much easier to "get in the philanthropic mood". Until you do that, the dream of starting something is exactly that, an untested dream. (See my essay "Talk is Cheap. Write it Down" from February 2011.)

One of the reasons to start something formal is to involve the whole family, thereby training the next generation in basic business practices as well as philanthropy. And consider having them inherit responsibility instead of (or as well as) monetary assets.

Public vs. Private Charity

One basic question is whether your NPO will be funded just by you/your family, or whether it will raise money from the public at large. The US taxman sees the former as a private charity and the latter as a public charity. That said there is nothing stopping a private charity from accepting donations from outside the founding group. In either case, the founders can control the board of directors and run operations as they wish. Of course, if they stray from their stated aims, they risk their donor base drying up.

From a personal tax point of view, an individual can claim up to 30% of her adjusted gross income (AGI) a year as donations to a private charity, whereas the limit is 50% for a public charity. If one gives more than those limits, the excess is rolled over to future tax years until it is used up, which means that the donor actually pays tax on all that excess in the year she donates it, and then gets the deductions in subsequent years.

[An interesting thing here is that you cannot escape the taxman. Say you win a million dollars in the lottery and you give it all to some public charity. As you can only claim half of that in the first year, you still have to pay taxes on the other $500,000, and you probably don't have that kind of money lying around. Then you get deductions over future years at 50% of your then AGI, which means you might never get the full benefit of the claim especially as the deduction is lost after some years. That is, "Use it or lose it!" Frankly, if you want to give the potentially large winnings of a lottery to a charity, buy the ticket in the charity's name instead.]

Operating vs. Non-Operating

The next basic question involves the level of control you want over the way in which your disbursements are spent. An operating NPO runs its own projects while a non-operating NPO partners with one or more other groups that do operate their own projects. Clearly running projects takes administration and bodies, and this is not for most family foundations including mine. That said there's nothing to stop a non-operating NPO from being involved in the projects it sponsors.

Going the 501(c)(3) Route

The US tax code has a subsection whose number really is 501(c)(3)! (There are other related sections worth knowing about, but for most NPOs this is the one to understand.) Most local NPOs do not have 501(c)(3) certification, which means that donations one gives to them—even by the founders of a private NPO— are not tax deductible.

Having this certification takes extra work (such as filing state and federal tax returns), but clearly it has benefits.

Making Disbursements

I mentioned earlier about the concern you might have with an uneven income. If I start an NPO, what if I can't donate the same amount of money every year or any at all? It's very important to understand the (very big) difference between the two main kinds of charitable fund raising:

• Each year, giving away everything you raise in that year
• Each year, giving away at least the legal minimum and investing the rest

Most community NPOs (think Parent-Teacher-Associations and local chapters of veterans and service organizations, such as Rotary and Lions) are in the first category. Perhaps they save some money for long-term/large projects, but for the most part, they disburse what they raise. That is, the amount they raise and give away is directly proportional to the skills of their fundraisers in that year.

According to US federal law, a 501(c)(3)-certified NPO is required to give away at least slightly less than 5% of its assets each year. The big win here is that an NPO can invest its income and disburse its assets over many years. Have a $100,000 windfall in appreciation of real estate or stocks? You can claim the tax deduction when you donate it, but the NPO can give away $5,000/year for at least the next 20 years (and more assuming the money is invested at a profit).

In this poor economic climate, the problem with investing an NPO's assets is the tradeoff between safety and return on investment. In my case, I worked hard for the money I donated, so I'm darn sure I do not want my NPO to risk it in some speculative way. As such, the assets go in Federal Government-secured instruments. However, the problem with that is they don't pay anywhere near 5% interest, which is what is needed to keep the NPO going "in perpetuity" without new funding. A second consideration is that the highest rates require locking in the investment for longer periods, perhaps up to five years. How then does the NPO pay for its 5%-minimum disbursements each year? The simplest formula is for the NPO to raise 5% in new donations each year, to cover those disbursements, but that can be problematic for a small, private NPO. That is, it requires an on-going donation stream. Of course, by staggering the maturity dates of investments, so funds become available for disbursement, this can be avoided.

By the way, here's an annoying thing I learned about US bank Certificates of Deposit (CDs). When you buy one, say $5,000 for five years, the bank never asks you how often you want interest paid. And in many cases, it seems that the buyer has no control. My NPO has had CDs that received interest every 1, 3, 6, 10, 11, or 12 months. The problem here is that a 501(c)(3) has to maintain a record of the average-monthly balance of its assets, and that is complicated if you have to find out the interest in a series of investments every month, and update your records. Having to do so once each year is best, but that might result in a slightly lower effective interest rate.

The Organizational Requirements

In my case, here are things I needed to do/create:

• Articles of Incorporation: An NPO is a legal entity that is a non-profit corporation in the state in which it will be based. To create a company, one needs these articles, which take only a page of text to describe. The articles contain things like a simple statement of the NPO's purpose, the initial corporate officers, the name and address of the corporation's registered agent, and what will happen to the assets of the corporation if it is disbanded. This gets your NPO a state corporate ID number, which you use to open bank accounts and such.
• A Charter: This has as much as you like to define the mission of the NPO. It can be a challenge to write, and it's most important if you are to convince others to donate to your cause. It's for the NPO's own use and is not a legal requirement.
• Bylaws: These detail the rules by which the NPO will operate. Who can be members of the corporation? What are the officer positions and how long can they serve? Can the board of directors charter a private jet to meet at a resort in the Caribbean? How are decisions made? It's for the NPO's own use and is not a legal requirement.
• Corporate Officers: You need at least a President and a Treasurer, who are different people.
• Board Members: You'll want a chair and at least one other director. [Board members can also be corporate officers.]
• 501(c)(3) Certification: This is optional.

It turns out that each of these things is not difficult or complicated even for small NPOs. But again, you are creating a business.

The startup costs involve less than a few hundred dollars, mostly in registration fees. Most importantly, you do not need to hire a lawyer or accountant to do the work.

Expenses and Tax Considerations

Regarding expenses, my NPO pays a state company registration fee and a tax preparation fee. [Eventually, I plan to prepare the 13-page tax return myself.] The few other costs (such as postage, computers, internet usage, and phone) are very small and are covered by me personally or via my consulting business.

While federal tax is payable on all income, donations are not considered income. As such, the only income my NPO has is interest on its investments, and the tax rate on that is quite low. No state income tax is payable in my state, Virginia. The county in which my NPO resides requires a business license whose fee is based on income. But as it also excludes interest income from that, the income is zero and so the tax is zero. The county also levies a personal property tax on furniture, equipment, and automobiles owned or leased by businesses, but as my NPO has no such property, it pays no such tax.

In my location, if an NPO invests some of its asset base in a business (such as real estate, a farm or ranch, or some other profit-generating scheme) rather than so-called cash investments, it would pay tax on the profits from those just like an ordinary company.

One of the rules imposed on a 501(c)(3) is that it must make available on demand by any member of the public a copy of its federal tax return for each of its last few years. That said, the names of donors need not be included in that copy.

On-Going Administration

In my NPO, we perform the following tasks:

1. Operate a checking account into which donations and interest are deposited and from which disbursements are made. However, on average, I keep no more than $500 there, as it is a non-interest-bearing account. (Yes, I could have an interest-bearing account, but that would require a much higher balance and all kinds of other rules and restrictions.)
2. Maintain in Quicken that checking account and various investment accounts.
3. Maintain a spreadsheet that tracks the average monthly asset balance (checking, savings, and investments).
4. Maintain a project activity log in a spreadsheet. This tracks all activities and events in chorological order and gives each a category from 5–6 options.
5. Produce board meeting minutes.

I mentioned earlier the possible need to get investment interest information on a regular basis. Another twist is that in the US, a company can declare its tax year to be any 12-month period that starts on the first day of some month. In my NPO's case, its business year does not match the calendar year. But all of the institutions in which the asset base is invested appear to be incapable of issuing annual statements for other than a calendar year! So when they send their statements to the taxman, of course they report a different amount of interest income than my NPO does on its tax return. C'est la vie!

Choosing Projects

It is all well and good to want to help some less fortunate person or group, but what is your process for deciding on who the recipients will be? If a friend/neighbor's house burns down, can/should your family-run NPO give him $X,000 to cover immediate basic costs? Maybe. But what if another friend/neighbor has an emergency and they hear about your previous donation? Are you obliged to help them as well?

Be careful to write a clear statement in advance as to the kinds of events and activities you will consider for disbursement and the criteria you will use if you have more applicants than you can service. For example, if you give away scholarships or support for overseas travel, it will look suspicious if only your children or grandchildren are eligible. For competitive awards, it is better to have an independent group of experts select the winners from among the applicants.

My NPO requires that for the most part, each director have a hands-on involvement in their projects. We also require status reports from recipient groups, so we can monitor things.

In the first few years, I had trouble giving away time and money. Most groups I contacted had no way to deal with someone phoning them offering resources. Either they were disorganized or the front line of contact was so remote from the founders' vision they simply were lost in the bureaucracy! It was quite sad. Eventually, I found a couple of projects that were not only worthy, but the people with whom I spoke were welcoming and came up with lists of ways in which to help in advance of our first face-to-face meeting.

I've rejected far more projects than I've accepted, and I'm a great believer in "tough love". In general, we're in the business of giving hand-ups, not hand-outs!

Here's an excerpt from my NPO's charter:

The Foundation is a private, family-directed, non-profit organization that provides funding to deserving individuals, organizations, and programs, while allowing recipients to maintain their dignity. Areas in which The Foundation may be involved include, but are not limited to, the following:

• <list deliberately removed>

Support for the following cannot or will not be considered:

• Any individual religion or religious organization's non-secular activities. [This is prohibited by the Articles of Incorporation.]
• Any political party, politician, or political candidate, holding or running for any local, state, or national elected office. [This is prohibited by the IRS and is explicitly stated in the Articles of Incorporation.]
• Any organization or individual that receives non-trivial funding from organized casino-style gambling games (such as slot machines, roulette wheels, and games involving cards or dice), that are run directly by, or directly for, that organization or individual. [However, organizations or individuals receiving trivial funding from small-scale social gaming such as Bingo, raffles, and the like, are not excluded by the above clause.]

Lessening the Administrative Burden

A lot of local NPOs simply spend what they raise each year, and they don't have board members with the interest and/or expertise in managing a business. They are also not 501(c)(3)-certified. It so happens, that a niche-market has grown up in the US that involves 501(c)(3)-certified NPOs that exist solely to provide a business umbrella for those local NPOs. For example, an NPO raises money and sends that along to its umbrella parent, which invests it. Usually the NPOs disburse all their money at the end of their business year, so the parent has to write out checks only once each year. Depending on the amount of money involved, the only fee the parent charges might be the interest on the money raised. And the parent may take care of most, if not all, of the federal, state, and local government paperwork. There are also entities called Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs).

Conclusion

If by the end of reading this essay, you are convinced that starting an NPO is not for you that's just fine with me. But at least I hope it has given you something to think about and some ideas on focusing your efforts. In particular, hopefully you can see that organized philanthropy is not just for the very rich. Whichever way you want to get involved in helping others, just do it, and thank you. Oh, and remember that you have to take good and long-lasting care of yourself before you can effectively take good and long-lasting care of others!

© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

We live in a world of symbols. Everywhere we go, we're surrounding by signs containing pictures. Now, many of us know that the symbol © means copyright, and that a faucet (tap, that is) marked red dispenses hot water while one marked blue gives cold water. Road signs indicate we should turn left or that a railroad crossing is ahead. Green traffic lights tell us to "go"; red lights tell us to maybe perhaps think about slowing down sometime soon; and yellow lights indicate "please ignore me; I'm just a holdover from the old days when drivers were responsible!"

According to Wiktionary, a symbol is "A character or glyph representing an idea, concept or object." Now who's to say which symbols represent what ideas, concepts, or objects? Of course, the mapping of symbols to meanings is simply a convention. In some cases, the symbol directly represents the object (as in a T-junction-ahead road sign) while in other cases there appears to be no such connection (think 8-sided Stop sign).

Of course, five different groups of reasonable people could easily come up with five different conventions for the same set of ideas or concepts. One obvious example of this is the diversity of writing systems. As to how one might write the English vowel sounds in other writing systems varies considerably, but no one approach is right; they are all just different conventions. Even the symbols used to represent the digits 0–9 are conventions and vary from one counting system to the next.

Many common signs truly are international. One such set is that containing a picture of a common object painted in black, on a white background, and inside a red circle with a red slash through it, which indicates that the indicated object or action is forbidden. Examples include, No Smoking Here, No Cameras Allowed, and No U-Turns Allowed. Now another common sign indicates No Parking, and although I know it as having an uppercase P in the center, I learned a valuable lesson about normal when I started travelling to Latin America. There, I kept seeing all these "forbidding" signs with an uppercase E. In that part of the world, the Spanish reflexive verb estacionarse means "to park". Hence the E instead of P. Another sign I see all over the world is WC (an abbreviation for water closet), to indicate a toilet.

In this essay, I'll discuss the non-alphanumeric symbol keys common to most typewriter and computer keyboards, I'll look at some symbols not available on a keyboard but needed in word processing, and I'll mention a few fields of learning having extensive sets of symbols. As usual, I'll be working in a USA-English context.

The QWERTY Keyboard

These days, the most common keyboard layout used in the English-speaking world is QWERTY, whose name comes from the first six letters in the top left corner, read left-to-right. [A far less common layout is Dvorak.] Let's look at the symbol keys on my PC's keyboard, going left-to-right and top-to-bottom, all of which have formal names, as shown:

• Tilde ~ — Not commonly used in general writing, although it can mean approximately. Used by certain programming languages.
• Grave Accent ` — Not common everyday use. Used by certain programming languages.
• Exclamation Mark ! — Also known as an exclamation point or bang. A common punctuation character, as in, "I did not have s*x with that woman!" [Prior to the introduction of domain addresses, email addresses contained bangs.] Used by certain programming languages.
• Commercial At @ — In days of yore, this was used when writing detailed receipts, as in "Three French Hens @ $4.25 each, Four Calling Birds @ $3.75 each, …". Nowadays, it's an integral part of any email address. However, almost every time I try to type it on a non-English keyboard, I have to figure out which three keys to press! [If you are truly desperate for something to do, following the link and read the section "Names in other languages".]
• Number Sign # — Also known as pound sign (US), hash (British Commonwealth), and octothorpe. For example, "I hugged a stranger on the #5 bus today." Unless you have had too much alcohol to drink, it really doesn't look like the musical sharp sign. On UK keyboards, this key usually has the pounds sterling symbol £; however, that is not why the US calls it a pound sign. Used by certain programming languages.
• Dollar Sign $ — Used primarily with dollar or peso currencies, and by certain programming languages.
• Percent Sign % — Indicates a percentage, as in, "2.5% of serial killers have programmed in the language C". Used by certain programming languages.
• Circumflex Accent ^ — Not common everyday use. Used by certain programming languages.
• Ampersand & — An abbreviated form of the word and, as in "The Duke & Duchess of Huckleberry are invited to a Royal Beheading at the Tower on Saturday; BYO". Used by certain programming languages.
• Asterisk * — Sometimes used to add emphasis to a word in email, as in, "You should **not** do that!", used as a replacement for some letters in offensive words, as in, "He's a R*p*bl*c*n", and used as a crude form of a bullet starting an item in a list. Used by certain programming languages to indicate multiplication. [Not to be confused with Asterix, "a French comic book series about ancient Gauls".]
• Left and Right Parenthesis () — Common punctuation characters, used in pairs to indicate an aside, and in arithmetic to group operations, as in (50 + 33) / (22 – 15). Used heavily by numerous programming languages.
• Low Line _ — Also known as an underscore. Used to underline words and phrases in the days of typewriters, as in, "The tooth fairy is not real", before bold, italic, and other highlighting facilities were available.
• Hyphen-Minus - — Its name says it all although when typeset, minus signs are often wider. See this link as well.
• Plus Sign + — Used to mean the obvious plus or as well as. (See example immediately below.)
• Equals Sign = — The mathematical symbol for equality, as in, "Obama + 4-more-years = Wonderful". Used heavily by numerous programming languages.
• Left and Right Square Bracket [] — Punctuation characters, used in pairs to indicate supplementary information. [Reviewer John is still working hard to educate me on the "correct" use of () and [].] Used heavily by certain programming languages.
• Left and Right Curly Bracket {} — Sometimes called braces (US) or squiggly brackets (UK). Not common in everyday use, but used heavily by certain programming languages.
• Vertical Line | — Also known as a vertical bar. Not common in everyday use, but used a lot in mathematics and computer science.
• Reverse Solidus \ — Better known as a backslash. Used in various internet contexts, and by certain programming languages.
• Colon : — A common punctuation character that introduces a list, as in, "The Model T Ford comes in any color you like: black, black, or black!" Also can introduce an appositive. (Yes, really, I read it in Wikipedia!) Formats times (as in 10:30 am). Used by certain programming languages. Not to be confused with a cucumber, which is a long, green vegetable, parts of which when eaten may well pass through your (other) colon.
• Semicolon ; — A punctuation character that most writers use incorrectly or not at all. Used heavily by certain programming languages.
• Quotation Mark " — Also known as a double quote. A common punctuation character used in pairs to show dialog or verbatim quotations, as in, "I have it on good authority that she is not better than she ought to be!" Down Under, we called them inverted commas. Used heavily by certain programming languages.
• Apostrophe ' — A common punctuation character often used to indicate the possessive case, as in "The President's shortsratings were sagging". When used as one of a pair, also known as a single quote. Allows one quotation inside another. Used heavily by certain programming languages.
• Less-Than Sign < — Its name says it all. Used heavily by certain programming languages.
• Greater-Than Sign > — Say no more! Used heavily by certain programming languages.
• Comma , — A common punctuation character that most writers (including moi) use in the wrong places. Always keep a box of them handy when writing, and sprinkle them liberally into your text, so the copy editors have something to do. Used heavily by certain programming languages.
• Full Stop . — Called that throughout much of the British Commonwealth, but in God's own country it's called a period. Used heavily by certain programming languages where it is sometimes called a dot.
• Question Mark ? — A common punctuation character that ends a question, as in, "Did you know that the Pope was a homosapien?" And who in the world dreamed up the alias eroteme?
• Solidus / — Say what? It's a slash, damn it! In the absence of a true division symbol (÷), it's sometimes used to mean division. Also used in fractions, in various internet contexts, and by numerous programming languages. A little-known Roman emperor who had the nasty habit of leaning on people. (Yes, I made up that last one!)
  [As astute reviewer John pointed out this may be confusing or misleading, if not incorrect. Here is my response: The Unicode Standard (see below) formally calls this keyboard character Solidus, and that character is used in everyday word processing and in writing computer programs in the manner that I mentioned. However, from a strict typesetting perspective, a slash (/) is different from the Fraction Slash (⁄) and the Division Slash (∕) symbols for which Unicode provides different representations, and which are not on keyboards. By the way, Unicode considers Solidus to be the same as virgule and the shilling mark, even though other conventions may disagree. If you click on the hyperlink at the beginning of this bullet, you'll see far more information about the use of slash-like characters than you probably care to know.]

I've noticed that some Western-European keyboards have a Currency Sign ¤ key. This is used as a generic currency symbol, typically when the actual one is not available. Also, Spanish keyboards have an Inverted Exclamation Mark ¡ (to start an exclamation), and an Inverted Question Mark ¿ (to start a question). What will they think of next?

The World of Wordprocessing

In my December 2011 essay, "Making Good-Looking Documents — Some tips on how to take advantage of a word processing program", I introduced some useful characters that are not ordinarily available on a keyboard. Some of these, and more, are discussed below:

• Em Dash — and En Dash – — Used to surround an aside and to separate a range of values, respectively.
• Copyright Sign © — The name says it all.
• Section Sign § — Simpler to read/write than the longer form "Section", "Chapter", or "Clause". Used in forward references, such as "(see §2.5)".
• Pilcrow ¶ — This copy-editing mark indicates a new paragraph. And since you asked, yes, there is a reverse pilcrow, which is, well, a pilcrow drawn in reverse!
• Degree Sign ° — Used to write temperatures and angular measures. A specific instance of the more general superscript (and subscript) notation.
• Horizontal Ellipses … — Meaning "etc.", "so forth and so on".
• Vulgar Fractions ¼, ½, ¾ — The name says it all.
• Currency Symbols £, ¥, €, ₨, ₩, etc. — The name says it all.
• Greek Letters α, β, θ, μ, π, etc. — Often used when writing about mathematics and physics.
• Dagger † and Double Dagger ‡ — Often used to mark footnotes to text or entries in tables.
• Per Mille Sign ‰ — Percent's sibling, whose units are one tenth of one percent; that is, 1/1000.
• Infinity ∞ — Used in mathematics and other fields, or to indicate how much money the US can borrow from China!

Emoticons

If you use email or instant messaging, the chances are high that you'll have seen and possibly used one or more emoticons (short for emotional icon). You know, those smiley faces, frowns, and other facial expressions. Now, some of these have been immortalized as standard symbols (see more here).

Other Fields having Symbols

The worlds of Mathematics and Logic have a large number of symbols. Another set is proofreaders' marks. Then topographic and cadastral map makers use marks to indicate contours, elevations, latitude and longitude, borders, rivers, roads, railways, bridges, dams, churches, ruins, parks, and so on. Your basic house plan uses symbols to indicate doors, windows, stovetop, sink, stairs, light fixtures, and power outlets, among other things. In my November 2012 essay, "English – Part 2: Pronunciation", I introduced some marks used to indicate pronunciation in English. And the list of fields goes on and on, including religion, the occult, astronomy, alchemy, chemistry, electrical, engineering, music, and hazard and safety.

The Unicode Standard

As personal computers became fixtures in everyday business and personal lives, a consortium was formed to define a set of glyphs that encompassed all the written symbols that are significant in modern business and communication, as well as in academia, including ancient Greek, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. The result was Unicode, which initially had a capacity of 65,535 unique values, and included lots of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean glyphs. Since then, that system has been extended to handle more than 1,000,000.

You name it, and that symbol is likely to be in Unicode, although I don't believe written Klingon made it despite attempts to include it. And despite its common use, a raised-middle finger doesn't seem to have made it either. Well to H**l with them if they can't take a joke! ;)

A list of Unicode characters is available here. However, a more manageable approach (complete with visual examples) is available here.

Conclusion

The web site www.symbols.com claims to be "The World's Largest Online Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms." As of this writing, this site "contains more than 1,600 articles about 2,500 Western signs, arranged into 54 groups according to their graphic characteristics." If you find yourself stuck indoors on a rainy day, take a look at some of these.

The mark ✓is well known. Having been raised in Australia (which is part of the British Commonwealth) I called this a tick, until, that is, I moved to the US, where I now call it a check or check mark. If you follow the link, you will learn that this mark has different meanings in different places including meaning NO!

If you have too much time on your hands, take a look at your word processor to see if it supports a Dingbats font. If so, take a look at the symbols available via that.

By the way, if you really want to end your sentence in style, do so with an interrobang.

I'll leave you with the following sign, which can be found on the mirror of my guest bathroom:

© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

[Due to limitations of the blog software, several symbols used in this essay don't render correctly when written as characters. As a result, in a few places I've inserted pictures of the original Word document formatting instead of the actual formatted text.]

During the past 35 years, I've looked at a number of languages, with a variety of writing systems. [See my July 2010 essay, "What is Normal? – Part 2: Writing Systems".] In more recent years, I've helped to teach English to speakers of other languages. It seems to me that while the grammar for English is simpler than for some other languages, pronunciation can be very difficult, especially in the absence of the diacritical marks present in other European languages. Yes, there are some rules, but there are many exceptions, which you simply have to learn by rote.

English is my native language, and I've been speaking it for some 57 years. Although I have known about pronunciation guides for some years, I'd never taken the time to understand them. Having now spent some time studying the topic, I have a good idea of their intent.

In this essay, I'll look at breaking words into syllables and the pronunciation of those syllables, adding some extra commentary as I go. However, I won't even try to provide complete coverage of the subject. Hopefully though, I'll give you enough information and links that you'll be able to find out more for yourself should you be so inclined. By the way, I'll be focusing on pronunciation of American English.

Breaking Words into Syllables

Each word consists of one or more syllables, each of which is a basic unit of speech that consists of a single sound. A syllable might consist of one to six or, perhaps, even more letters. The process of breaking a word into its constituent syllables is knows as syllabication. The typical way of indicating the syllables in a word is to separate them with a centered dot; for example:

• hat
• but·ton
• e·lec·tric
• in·ter·i·or
• en·thu·si·as·tic
• an·ti·dis·es·tab·lish·ment·ar·i·an·ism

[It is rumored that in parts of Texas, the word shit has at least four syllables, as in shi·i·i·it!]

[The Japanese writing systems hiragana and katakana do not use an alphabet, per se. Instead, they are syllabaries. That is, each character has a sound; there are no such things as an alphabet or letters. Is that normal? Again, see my July 2010 essay.]

The Notation for Vowels

Unfortunately, there are a number of different notation systems for English pronunciation, and some of them appear to be quite complicated. I settled on what I see as the simpler United States dictionary transcription system, which Wikipedia says is, "similar to those used by American Heritage, Merriam Webster, and Random House dictionaries".

For my essays, for definitions I usually refer to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, but for this series on English, I'm supplementing these with the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD).

For the most part, the sounds of consonants are straightforward; it's the vowel sounds—and combinations of vowels with consonants and other vowels—that cause confusion. As such, we'll start with those. (Each word is followed by its pronunciation in parentheses.)

Consider the AHD entry for man:

man (măn)

The pronunciation of the m and n are as expected, but what about the a? Specifically, how do we distinguish this a from other a-sounds, such as that in mane? AHD does this by putting a breve diacritical mark over the a to indicate the vowel has a short sound.

As you might expect, we distinguish different a-sounds by using different diacritical marks. For example:

mane, main, Maine (mān) — these are homophones

In this case, we use a macron to indicate a long sound.

Continuing on with the other vowels, we have the following examples:

met (mĕt)
meet, meat, mete (mēt) — more homophones

pin (pĭn)
pine (pīn)

not (nŏt)
note (nōt)

cub (kŭb)
cut (kŭt)

There is no long-u sound. (See cube and cute below regarding a "long-ooh".)

By the way, just how does one pronounce the word macron? AHD shows both mākrŏn and măkrŏn; it also shows that the 2^nd syllable can be -krən (see discussion of the schwa below). And as for breve, AHD shows that brĕv or brēv are equally acceptable.

There are more than two different a-sounds, so it should come as no surprise that there are more than two diacritical marks used in this pronunciation guide. For example:

man (măn)
main (mān)
car (kär)
care (kâr)
hair (hâr)

The two dots are called a diaeresis (or umlaut). The little up-arrow is called a circumflex. These marks can be used with other vowel sounds as well. For example:

pier, peer (pîr)
here, hear (hîr)
ear (îr)

for (fôr) — interestingly, AHD shows fore, four (fôr, fōr)
bought (bôt)
caught (kôt)
paw (pô)

herd, heard (hûrd)
bird (bûrd)
curd (kûrd)
word (wûrd)
firm (fûrm)
term (tûrm)
urn, earn (ûrn)

Consider the following heteronyms:

tear (târ) — to pull apart
tear (tîr) — the thing produced when one cries

There are a number of other o-sounds; for example:

boil (boil)
coin (koin)
moist (moist)
voice (vois)

our (our)
cloud (kloud)
snout (snout)

boot () — uses a double macron
cube ()
cute ()
true ()
soup ()

book () — uses a double breve
tour ()

broom (, )

A difference between American-English and other English dialects is the pronunciation of certain n-sounds. For examples:

news (, )
tune (, )

However, AHD permits both for American speakers.

Unless we're reading a dictionary, we won't see pronunciation-guide diacritical marks (or syllable-separating centered dots for that matter). However, occasionally we might come across some of those marks used in ordinary English-language typesetting. The diaeresis is one example. Consider the following words:

naïve
Noël

In these cases, the vowel with the diaeresis is pronounced separately from the preceding vowel; that is, the two vowels do not make a diphthong.

[Note carefully that some of these diacritical marks have entirely different meanings when used in writing other languages. For example, German allows an umlaut on its a, o, and u, while French allows a circumflex on its e.]

The Notation for Consonants

According to the literature, the following consonants each have only one pronunciation: b, d, f, j, k, l, m, p, r, t, v, w, y, and z. However, one exception I've noted is that the d in schedule is pronounced j.

For the most part, the letter c sounds like k, but sometimes s. The combination ch is treated separately. For example:

cat (kăt)

face (fās)
cent (sĕnt)

catch (kăch)
check (chĕk)

scheme (skēm) — not the usual ch-sound

In American English, schedule is pronounced without the h, while in British English, that word is pronounced without the c.

The letter g has its own sound, but sometimes is pronounced j. For example:

gag (găg)
gauge (gāj)
sponge (spŭnj)
gem (jĕm)

high (hī) — an exception

The letter h has its own sound except in the combination wh (or th, ch, and sh). For example:

hat (hăt)
host (hōst)

where (hwâr, wâr)
when (hwĕn, wĕn)
which (hwĭch, wĭch)
while (hwīl, wīl)

The letter n has its own sound except in the combination ng. For example:

ran (răn)
rang (răng)

change (chānj) — here the ng is treated as nj

The letter q has no sound of its own; it uses that for k. For example:

quack (kwăk)
quite (kwīt)
queue ()
plaque (plăk)

The letter s has its own sound except in the combination sh. For example:

since (sĭns)
stone (stōn)

cash, cache (kăsh)
shine (shīn)

The letter t has its own sound except in the combination th. For example:

tent (tĕnt)

thin (thĭn)
three (thrē)

this (thĭs) — a slightly different th-sound

The letter x is usually pronounced ks, but sometimes z (as in words prefixed with xeno and xylo). For example:

box (bŏks)
mixed (mĭkst)

Unpronounced Letters

English has many words with letters that are not voiced. Here are some examples:

halve (hăv, häv)
scent (sĕnt)
knot (nŏt)
whole (hōl)
hour (our)
ghost (gōst)

Multisyllabic Words

Thus far, we've looked only at words containing one syllable. When a word has multiple syllables the possibility exists for stress (or emphasis) to be placed on one syllable over another. For example, in the word con·tro·ver·sy, people disagree as to whether the stress goes on the first or the second syllable. (AHD says "the first".)

Consider the following examples:

go·ing (gō′ĭng)
pret·ty (prĭt′ē)
em·brace (ĕm-brās′)
bot·tle·brush (bŏt′l-brŭsh′)

The end of a syllable is indicated by the presence of a stress (prime) character (′), a hyphen-minus (-), or the end of the word. The stress indicators apply to the syllable that immediately precedes them.

[Some treatments of pronunciation define both a primary and a secondary stress character. I have used only one.]

The Humble Schwa

A common symbol seen in pronunciation guides is the schwa (shwä), written as ə, an upside-down-and-reversed, lowercase e. According to Wikipedia, it's "an unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages" and "is the most common vowel sound" in English. Here are some examples of its use:

doz·en (duz′ən)
cir·cus (sûr′kəs)
i·tem (ī′təm)
gal·lop (găl′əp)
po·ta·to (pə-tā′tō)

The "zh" Sound

The final sound is zh. Here are some examples:

tel·e·vi·sion (tĕl′ə-vĭzh′ən)
pleas·ure (plĕzh′ər)
ga·rage (gə-räzh′)

The Many Faces of "ough"

This letter combination has one of the most diverse sets of different pronunciations. For example:

chough (chŭf)
plough (plou)
slough (sl, slou)
though (thō)
bought (bôt)
cough (kôf, kŏf)

Conclusion

After a year in the US (in Chicago), I moved to northern Virginia, some 22 miles (40 kms) west of the National capital, Washington DC. Back then, the main road to my city was Route 7. Using my Australian English knowledge, I dared to pronounced route as rt, for which I not only received grief, but there were people who claimed to have no idea what I was talking about. The locals pronounced it the same as the word rout. Since then, I've met many American speakers who use one or the other forms, and AHD blesses both. To those who insist its pronounced rout, I point them to the famous American highway Route 66, which I've only ever heard pronounced as rt.

This essay concentrates on American English, but not all Americans speak alike. And for some words it is quite acceptable to have more than one pronunciation. Rules are good, but if there is one thing we can say for sure about English is there are almost always exceptions to the rules. And since there are no pronunciation police (yet) here in the US, regardless of what the rules are, for those of us trying to understand Americans when they speak, we need to be ready for variations. (Now whether they have anything worth listening to is another matter altogether!)

Now and again, I'm exposed to news and business reports on a BBC TV channel. The pronunciation of the following words by its newsreaders and reporters compared with those from the US always jump out at me:

Iraq (is it ĭ·răk, ĭ·räk, or ī·răk?)
The Finnish technology company Nokia

Oh, and by the way, never put the em-fä′sĭs on the wrong sĭl-ä′bəl, and when pronouncing things don't forget to use your dental fricatives!

© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

In the first part, I covered the Constitution and the Executive Branch (Presidency, Vice Presidency, and Cabinet). In this second part, I'll cover the Legislative Branch (Senate and House), Presidential Succession, the Judicial Branch (primarily the Supreme Court), the flag, and Third Parties and Independents.

The Legislative Branch – Congress

The US Congress is the legislative branch of government, and it consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. [Although these are occasionally referred to as the upper and lower house, respectively, that is rare, and can give a misleading impression as to the roles of each when compared with a parliamentary system in which the upper house is often a house of review.]

Members are now chosen by direct election (initially, senators were elected by their state legislature).

For the most part, the Senate and House have equal powers. However, only the Senate can ratify a treaty or approve presidential appointments (such as ambassadors, cabinet members, and Federal judges). [As one not-quite-so-well-written high school student wrote, "The President of the United States, in having foreign affairs, has to have the consent of the Senate". It's not clear that President Clinton had such consent, but then again his affairs might have been entirely domestic!] Only the House can initiate a revenue-raising bill. When a President is impeached, charges are brought by the House, whose members act as the prosecution, while the members of the Senate act as the jury. (The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides over the trial.)

Although only Congress has the power to declare war or to sustain a military action, as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, the President can commit the military for up to 90 days without congressional approval. Unless such commitment seems flawed in a major way, most Senators and Representatives will support the President's action, as they don't want to be seen to be "letting the troops down" once they have been committed, even if privately they disagree with the decision. [Note that the Korean and Vietnam "wars" were not declared wars.]

As I suggested earlier, not all Federal employees come under the Executive Branch. For example, the following organizations support the Legislative Branch: Library of Congress (the library with the world's largest collection, and perhaps surprisingly, from which one cannot borrow a book [they can, however, be read on-site by the public, but otherwise are resources available to Congress]), the Congressional Research Service, and the Congressional Budget Office.

A term of Congress runs two years, starting on January 3 of odd-numbered years, and is divided into two 1-year sessions. (Other or special sessions are called from time to time.)

The Senate

Members of the Senate are called—TA DA—senators.

According to the Constitution, each state—regardless of population—has two senators, making 100 senators in all. The Federal Capital, Washington DC, is not represented (and neither are other US territories, such as Puerto Rico). Each senator is elected to a 6-year term, with one third of the 100 senators' terms expiring every congressional term. The 6-year terms of any state's two senators are never the same. There are no Senate Districts; both senators in a state represent that whole state. The idea behind a 6-year term is to allow senators to weather the storm over a longer period, especially if they make unpopular decisions. (Public furor based on their votes can well and truly die down before they are next up for election.)

The VP is the ex officio President of the Senate, and can only vote to break a tie. (For a list of such votes, press here.) However, to run the Senate on a day-to-day basis, the Senate elects a President pro tempore, who is third in line to the President.

The Constitution requires that a senator be at least 30 years old, have been a citizen of the US for at least the past nine years, and be an inhabitant of the state in which they run at the time of their election. (Hilary Clinton moved to New York State, so she could run for senator there.)

Obama (#44), Nixon (#37), LBJ (#36), Kennedy (#35), and Truman (#33) were recent Presidents who served in the Senate.

The House of Representatives

Members of the House of Representatives are called representatives, congressmen, or congresswomen.

The Constitution does not speak to the size of the House, but it clearly was intended that states with larger populations have more Representatives. Also, each state must have at least one Representative. Currently, due to their small populations, seven states have only one, in which case, the whole state is their district; they are Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. California, the most populous state currently has 53 Representatives.

As the population grew, the House was expanded until around 1913 when it was frozen at 435 members. In years divisible by 10, a national census is taken and the allocation of seats by state is adjusted as a result of population migration. In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as the 49^th and 50^th states, respectively, and each got one new Representative, making the total 437, temporarily. However, the next year's census reduced that back to 435, resulting in two seats being taken away from other states.

While the Federal Capital, Washington DC, has a Delegate in the House, unlike Representatives she cannot vote on the main floor. Each Representative is elected to a 2-year term, with all 435 Representatives' terms expiring every congressional term. As such, they have to spend a lot more time in their home Districts appeasing their constituents. In fact, soon after they get elected, they start working on getting reelected! [Unfortunately, due a number of factors, most incumbents get reelected.]

The House is led by the Speaker, who is second in line to the President. [It is most interesting to note that the Constitution does not require the Speaker actually to be an elected member of the House he or she will lead! However, all Speakers thus far have been elected representatives. Nor does the Speaker have to be of the majority party in the House.]

The boundaries of Districts in each state are controlled by that state and are purely based on political power. In my humble opinion, that mechanism has been, and continues to be, widely abused, with redistricting often being based on ethnic, income, and partisan political factors. (The process of deciding boundaries is called Gerrymandering, named for Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry who had his 15 minutes of fame back in 1812.)

The Constitution requires that a Representative be at least 25 years old, have been a citizen of the US for the past seven years, and be an inhabitant of the state (but not necessarily the District) they represent.

Bush Sr. (#41), Ford (#40), Nixon (#37), and LBJ (#36) were recent Presidents who served in the House.

Getting a Law Passed

For a law to pass, it must be approved by the Senate, the House, and not be vetoed by the President. (The President can sign or not sign a bill. A Presidential veto can be overridden, however. For an interesting complication, see pocket veto.) [When similar bills pass the Senate and House, a Conference Committee irons out their differences.] Even if a law gets past all that, it can still be overturned—possible many years later—by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional. For example, even if the Senate, House, and President all agree to ban almost all personal ownership of handguns, the resulting law would almost certainly be struck down by the Supreme Court based on the Constitution's 2^nd Amendment rights that "Protects an individual's right to bear arms". For such a law to survive, the Constitution would have to be changed, and—by design—that is a much harder job than just making a Federal law.

Presidential Succession

If a President, dies or resigns while in office, who takes over? Well, the obvious answer is, "The VP". But what if the VP cannot take over? The Presidential line of succession is addressed in the Constitution and in Amendments 20 and 25. The bottom line is that the VP comes first, followed by the Speaker of the House, then the President pro tempore of the Senate, and then the Cabinet heads in order of the creation of their Department (with State coming first). [Despite his extensive experience at playing President on a long-running TV show, rumors that Martin Sheen comes next cannot been verified.]

With 15 Cabinet Departments currently, that provides for 18 backup Presidents, which sounds like a lot. However, each January, the President makes his annual State of the Union address in which he reports on the current condition of the country, and outlines his legislative agenda and national priorities for the next year. This event takes place in the House of Representatives. Present are the President, the Vice President, the Cabinet, all 435 members of the House, all 100 members of the Senate, and all 9 Justices of the Supreme Court, unless, of course, they have a note from their Mom excusing them! Basically, the entire US Government leadership is under the same roof at the same time! So, what if a catastrophic event wiped out that whole group? [If you have never seen the movie King Ralph, I highly recommend it.] Fortunately, one Cabinet Secretary agrees to stay (hopefully far) away from that event, so there is someone left to take charge. That said if he/she becomes the new President he/she can't appoint a new VP, any Cabinet members or Supreme Court judges until the Senate and/or House gets repopulated. [The replacement of vacated House and Senate seats is handled by each State's Constitution.]

Note that the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate might not be from the same party as the President. And some Presidents appoint Cabinet Secretaries who are not from their party.

[During the weeks I wrote and revised this essay, I watched all 28 episodes of the 2^nd season of the popular TV series 24, which starred Kiefer Sutherland. When the President calls off an attack on three middle-east nations, the VP calls a meeting of the Cabinet to try and get them to vote that the President is unfit and should be relieved. This possibility is in fact provided for by the 25^th Amendment.]

The Judicial Branch

The Constitution requires that there be one court called the Supreme Court, which is atop a Federal Court system. Congress is empowered to create additional subordinate courts and structures as part of the federal court system. Like the Legislative Branch, the Judicial Branch has its own set of civil servants to administer its operations, separate from the Executive Branch. Most Federal judges are appointed for life and can only be removed by impeachment. [Some have been imprisoned, but continued to draw their salary!]

The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of the US is the highest court in the land and its decisions are final; there is no mechanism to appeal any of its decisions. Its job is to interpret the US Constitution when asked to do so. It currently consists of the Chief Justice—who heads the Judicial Branch—and eight Associate Justices (all of whom are naked under those flowing black robes).

Of course, the Founding Fathers had no inkling of the changes technology and evolved thinking has wrought since the Constitution was written, so determining how this document should be applied to such modern-day questions as animal and human cloning, genetic modification, and conducting business on the internet, for example, could be seen as a stretch. In that regard, there are two camps of Justices: the Big-Endians and the Little Endians. Just kidding, OK! After all, this is a pretty dry subject! Actually, there are the more conservative Strict Constructionists who argue one must apply the plain meaning of the actual words as written by the Founding Fathers, and the Judicial Activists who take into account political, historical, scientific, and personal issues when interpreting the present-day meaning of the words in the Constitution. This distinction becomes important when a vacancy occurs, and the sitting President gets to nominate a replacement supposedly "reasonably aligned with his thinking". However, the Senate has to approve. While only 12 nominees have been rejected, many more nominees have been withdrawn when it was clear they had no real chance of getting Senate approval.

[I remember well in 1987 when Reagan nominated Robert Bork. That created a firestorm. I went off to Europe for some weeks during which time I was out of contact with US news. On my return, I learned that not only had Bork's nomination been voted down, Reagan then picked Douglas Ginsburg, who very quickly admitted he'd smoked some marijuana while a professor at Harvard. Eventually, Anthony Kennedy was nominated and accepted.]

The Constitution sets no qualifications whatsoever for service as a Supreme Court Justice. Bush Jr. (whom I prefer to call, "Bush the very much lessor") nominated a lawyer who had also served as White House counsel, but who had never been a judge. Under much protest, he withdrew her name. Interestingly, Chief Justice Earl Warren, who some say was the most powerful jurist in U.S. history, was never a judge until he became Chief Justice.

The Chief Justice need not have been an Associate Justice prior. Indeed, the sitting Chief, John Roberts, came straight in to the top spot, at the grand old age of 50! So, barring any accidents, illness, or his running off with Associate Justice/Hot Babe Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we can expect to have him occupy that seat for a long time.

The Flag

As it exists today, the US flag consists of 13 alternating red and white stripes and 50 5-pointed white stars on a blue background. The stripes represent the original 13 colonies that became the first states, and the 50 stars represent the 50 states.

Back at the beginning of the country, the flag had only 13 stars and 13 stripes. A few years later, two more states joined the union, so two more stars and two more stripes were added, and that was the flag that flew during the War of 1812 when the Brits made an unfriendly visit, and the national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner", was inspired. Later yet, five more states were added, but some smart person at the now-defunct Department of Forward Thinking suggested that adding a stripe for each new state then and later would give rise to some awfully thin stripes [especially if we took over all of Canada as well. Oops, I didn't mean to let that slip!], so they went back to 13, and just kept increasing the number of stars.

Now there are rules and protocols about proper flag usage and disposal, but, unfortunately, these are not widely promoted nor followed. I often see flags flying—even at official buildings and facilities—in inclement weather, in the dark, or in a torn state, all of which are prohibited. I especially remember the days immediately following 9/11 when people attached small flags to the roofs of their cars, so they could flutter freely in the wind at 70 miles per hour. Of course, many of them quickly became tattered although their owners kept flying them. "Yeah; let's wave the flag while disrespecting it!" As for my flag, it hangs loosely on the wall of the main entrance inside my house, in a well-lit, dry, calm place.

Third Parties and Independents

Unlike numerous other democracies, the US seems to have fewer third party and independent candidates. Certainly, we've had Senators and Representatives change parties or leave a party to become independent, and we've had them elected as independents. I am not aware of any Constitutional obstacles to third party and independent candidates running and being elected and even holding the balance of power in either or both the Senate and House. However, having them hold the Presidency is another matter altogether.

As it happens, the President is not elected directly by the people. Yes, the people vote, but once that voting has been counted, there is one final step needed before a result can be ratified, and that involves the Electoral College. There are 538 Electoral College delegate votes (435 [the number of Representatives] + 100 [the number of Senators] + 3 for Washington DC [per the 23^rd Amendment]), and becoming President requires a simple majority, 270, to win. In all but two (less-populous) states, it's "winner-takes-all-delegates". For example, the most-populous state, California, currently has 55 delegates, and whoever wins the popular vote in that state gets all 55. (In the two other states, delegates are pro-rated based on the popular vote.) So for a third party or independent candidate to win the Presidency, he/she would have to get on the ballot in at least all the most populous states, and win many of those states. And to be sure, that has been tried, and it likely will be tried again. But even if such a candidate became President, he/she would still need the consent of the Senate and House to get any legislation passed.

To be clear, regardless of the number of candidates in the general Presidential election, the one with the most votes—even if that count is fewer than 50%—is the winner, so long as they get the most electoral votes. (For example, in 1992, Bill Clinton won with 43% of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes, Bush Sr. got 37.5% of the popular vote and 168 electoral votes, while third-party candidate Ross Perot got 18.9% of the popular vote, but no electoral votes, as he did not win any states.)

In other countries, third parties are often seen as partners in coalition governments, and when one or more such partners leave the coalition, the government can collapse with a general election being called. There is no such thing as a coalition government, per se, in the US system; however, the President and the majorities of the Senate and House could come from different parties.

[I have never tried to understand fully the Electoral College system, and I think it's a mystery to a lot of people. And every time we get close to a Presidential election, the debate about whether that mechanism is still relevant raises its head.]

Conclusion

I've implied several times that the National Capital did not have full representation in Congress, so let me explain that here. Prior to 1961, when the 23rd Amendment was ratified, citizens of voting age living in Washington, D.C. could not vote for President or Vice President, as DC is not a U.S. state. Now while that amendment did not make DC a state, it treats it like one for Presidential election purposes by giving it three electoral college delegates, two for the Senators it would have, and one for the single Representative. That said, DC still does not have any representation in the Senate at all, and its lone delegate in the House cannot vote except in subcommittees. To that end, DC auto license plates contain the phrase, "Taxation without representation", which harks back to one of the main complaints colonists had against the British, and that led to the Revolutionary War. So why doesn't DC become a state. That has been tried and it will, no doubt, be tried again. But one main obstacle is that DC is solidly aligned with the Democratic Party. And having two new Democratic members in the Senate could very easily allow the Democrats to control that in a tight election, whereas the winning margin in the House is usually not just by one or two seats. So from the Republican Party viewpoint, they don't want to admit three guaranteed new Democrats to Congress unless the party has a way of offsetting that. [In this regard, when Democratic Hawaii and Republican Alaska were admitted as new states in 1959, they countered each other.]

The number of terms a President may serve is limited as are those for Governors of many states, but that is not the case for Senators or Representatives. What do you think about term limits?

Among others, my birth country, Australia, makes voting compulsory, and fines citizens who do not vote. The claim there is that voting is one's civic duty. On most days, I'd just as soon ignore those who chose not to participate, but on others, well maybe I see the point.

For a humorous read about Microsoft's "reported" acquisition of the US Government as a wholly owned subsidiary, click here.

Recently, I was reading a book called Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults upon our Language, by Richard Lederer. One entry appropriate to this essay is, "Senators are chosen as committee chairmen on the basis of senility." Now while that might have been true in a few instances, the writer/speaker probably meant seniority instead.

© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

[If you are an American, you might find this useful as a refresher course, especially with the up-coming Presidential election. If you are not "of the Stars and Stripes faith", perhaps this will help you understand some of that "awful American news that keeps on invading your TV set and newspapers!" For those of you living in countries where you get only 1–2 months' notice of a general election, be thankful.]

I was born in and lived in Australia for 25 years, but I know very little about its political system. I've now lived in the US for 33 years, and I'm a US citizen. (See my April 2010 essay "The Road to US Citizenship".) Along the way, I've become very interested in the US Constitution, I've read quite a bit about US Presidents, and I've followed closely the deliberations of the US Supreme Court.

Over the years, I've researched many civics-related questions and picked up lots of trivia. In this 2-part essay, I'll share with you some of what I've learned. In this first part, I'll cover the Constitution and the best-known bits of the Executive Branch (Presidency, Vice Presidency, and Cabinet). In the second part, I'll cover the Legislative Branch (Senate and House), Presidential Succession, the Judicial Branch (primarily the Supreme Court), the flag, and Third Parties and Independents.

The Constitution

The US Constitution is the supreme law of the United States. It was drafted by a group of very able and interesting men (who happened to be white and generally more affluent and more educated than most Americans were), and was adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, late in 1787. Several years later, it became law when it was ratified by a sufficient number of states. [It is important to mention that not all state delegates appointed to the Constitutional Convention actually attended, and not all those who attended actually approved/signed the result. Rhode Island did not even send any delegates (probably because they were too busy taking care of their chickens!) It is also worth noting that the first governing document, the Articles of Confederation, which preceded the constitution, left a lot to be desired. Even the Americans don't always get it right the first time!]

To Americans, their Constitution is the bedrock of society. Imagine their surprise then when they learn that some countries do not have a written constitution. (Can you say The United Kingdom?) And they are also quite puzzled when they hear of some failed country setting about writing yet another new constitution. [Can you say Banana Republic?]

As for me, I don't find it all surprising that the US Constitution and Congressional model have been adopted or adapted by more than a few countries. For the most part, I much prefer it over the wide-spread Parliamentary system under which I grew up. [Yes, I'm grown up, but as some of you know firsthand, I don't always act like it.]

The basic thrust of the Constitution was to "establish the rules and separate powers of the three branches of the federal government: a legislature, the bicameral Congress; an executive branch led by the President; and a federal judiciary headed by the Supreme Court." Also, it assigns the powers not explicitly given to the Federal Government, to the individual states.

The Constitution can be amended, and, remarkably, in its 225-year history only 27 amendments have been approved (and one of those, the 18^th, was negated by another, the 21^st, the respective creation and subsequent repeal of Prohibition).

Although many good ideas were proposed for the Constitution, it was decided to adopt it in an incomplete form, and then add more things soon after through amendments, the first 10 of which are known as The Bill of Rights. Although these 10 amendments were soon ratified, the original package approved by Congress and submitted for ratification contained 12. Of the two that didn't "make the cut" way back when, one of them finally received support from enough states to become the 27^th Amendment, adopted in 1992, a mere 203 years after it was submitted! So what was this monumental change? If Congress gives itself a pay raise, that raise cannot take effect until the next (2-year) Congressional term. [Three quarters of the states are required to ratify an amendment, and as time went on, more states joined the union, so it required more states to ratify the amendment.] The other amendment that didn't "make the cut" is still waiting to be ratified, although that is unlikely to ever happen. This one has to do with making rules regarding representation in the House of Representatives. (While the Constitution spells out representation for the Senate [each state gets two senators], it does not do so for the House [where the number of representatives is based on population].)

Most amendments were proposed without an expiration date, leading to the 203-year wait mentioned above. However, this changed starting in 1917 when an expiration date was first used. Since then, two amendments have expired without being ratified: The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), 1972, and The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment, 1978.

For my US Citizenship test, I had to remember the answers to about 100 questions, some 10 of which I'd be asked at my in-person interview. And while I was also given the answers in advance, one question and answer was far more complex than all the other others, namely:

Question: Name the amendments that guarantee or address voting rights.

Answer: 15^th (non-white males get the vote), 19^th (women get the vote), 24^th (state laws allowing poll taxes cannot be applied to Federal elections), and 26^th (lowering the voting age from 21 to 18).

[Even in my old age, I can easily remember the purpose of each, but I sure don't remember their numbers!]

Remember that the states get to keep all the rights not explicitly given to the Federal Government by the Constitution. And some states had laws to prevent certain categories of people from voting. However, the 24^th amendment prohibits such laws from being applied to Federal elections; that is, for President, Vice President, Senator, and Representative. [Other amendments prohibit other restrictions to voting.]

The Executive Branch

Through his cabinet secretaries, the President oversees almost all so-called civil servants and military personnel. In general, it is accepted that the Vice President is part of the Executive Branch; however, he is also President of the Senate, which is part of the Legislative Branch.

The Presidency

The President of the United States heads the executive branch.

According to the Constitution, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

[At this stage, we pause for a moment of silence during which we reflect on the shortsightedness of the Founding Fathers by their disallowing moi to become President because of a lack of natural bornedness! What were they thinking? It's probably just as well, as "President Rex" sounds a bit odd given that Rex is Latin for King!]

You may have read how back before the 2008 election (and even before this coming one) some people questioned whether Barack Obama was a natural born Citizen. This also happened, but to a lesser extent, to his opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone, and the question was whether or not that was formally part of the US to make him a citizen. Interestingly, McCain's predecessor as senator, Barry Goldwater, was born in the Arizona Territory, before it became a state. And that raised a similar question back when he ran for President.

The President is elected to a 4-year term, and, originally, the Constitution placed no limits on the number of terms that could be served. The first President, George Washington, thought that two terms was enough and that set the precedent. However, Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) changed all that when he was elected to four successive terms starting in 1933. (He died early in his 4^th term, and it has since been discovered that there was a long history of death in his family!) This "carrying on like a monarch" upset enough people that the 22^nd Amendment was created and ratified to limit the presidency to two terms, where a term is defined as "more than two years". So, if a president dies in office and has less than two years left on his term, the vice president who serves that remaining time can also serve two full terms of his own. However, FDR died leaving more than two years, but the amendment exempted the then current president, Harry Truman, so he was not term-limited. (In any event, he ran and served for only one full term of his own.)

George Washington was President number 1 and Barack Obama is President number 44; however, there have only been 43 Presidents. That's because Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms and is number 22 and 24. [Senate President pro tempore David Rice Atchison's tombstone states that he was President for a day. President-elect Zachary Taylor (#12) refused to be inaugurated on a Sunday leaving the presidency technically vacant from noon on Saturday, March 3, 1849 when outgoing President Polk's (#11) term ended, until Monday, March 5 at noon when Taylor was sworn in.]

Sometime after the US was created, Congress determined that the election for President (and Vice President) takes place on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of years that are an exact multiple of 4 (as in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and so on). After being elected, the President-elect has a transition period during which to "get organized" and to start nominating his cabinet members and many other appointees. George Washington (#1) took office on April 30, 1789 (having been elected on February 4 of that year). Presidents from John Adams (#2) on took office on March 4, until Dwight Eisenhower (#34), who took office on January 20. Currently, the transition period is about 10 weeks (3 in November, 4 in December, and 3 in January), which is not a lot to get ready to "hit the ground running" for the leader for the free world. [In many (most?) countries a new leader takes office within days or weeks of being elected giving them next to no time to get ready.] Nowadays, the Presidential Inauguration takes place on the steps of The Capitol in Washington at noon, Eastern Standard Time, January 20.

Four Presidents were assassinated while in office: Lincoln (#16), Garfield (#20), McKinley (#25), and Kennedy (#35). Four Presidents died of natural causes while in office: Wm. Harrison (#9), Taylor (#12), Harding (#29), and F.D. Roosevelt (#32). One President resigned: Nixon (#37). Five died in their first term with Harrison lasting only a month. Wilson (#28) suffered a stroke during his second term that paralyzed his left side and blinded him in his left eye. Historians generally agree that his wife Edith and his chief of staff conspired to keep the extent of his incapacity secret and ran the government on his behalf. This situation was one of the big reasons for the 25^th Amendment's handling of Presidential incapacity.

The states in which the most Presidents were born are: Virginia (8), Ohio (7), and Massachusetts and New York (each 4). 25 Presidents were lawyers.

Andrew Johnson (#17) was the first president to be impeached. Clinton (#42) was the second. Both were found not guilty. Impeachment proceedings were begun against Nixon (#37); however, he resigned before they were completed. [According to Wikipedia, 'At the Philadelphia Convention, Benjamin Franklin noted that, historically, the removal of "obnoxious" chief executives had been accomplished by assassination. Franklin suggested that a proceduralized mechanism for removal—impeachment—would be preferable.']

Kennedy (#35) was the first Catholic president. Ford (#38) was the first non-elected Vice President and the first non-elected President. Bush Jr. (#43) was the winner of the first election resolved by the Supreme Court. Obama (#44) was the first non-white president.

Taft (#27) was the last to have a cow at the White House and the first to have automobiles there. Coolidge (#30) had nine hours of sleep a night plus 2–4-hour naps in the afternoons. Hoover (#31) was the first to donate his salary to charity. F.D. Roosevelt (#32) was the first to appear on TV, and the first to visit an overseas war zone. Eisenhower (#34) served in both World Wars and was the first with a pilot's license. Kennedy (#35) won a Pulitzer Prize. Ford (#38) survived two assassination attempts by women. Carter (#39) was the first to be born in a hospital, the first to be sworn in using his nickname, Jimmy, and the first to send his mother on a diplomatic mission. (After the start of the Iran Hostage Crisis, she [Ms. Lillian] proposed putting a bounty on Ayatollah Khomeini's head!) Reagan (#40) was the first to have headed a labor union, the first to have been divorced, and the oldest (nearly 70 at his inauguration).

Four presidents have received the Nobel Peace Prize: Teddy Roosevelt (#26) in 1906, Wilson (#28) in 1919, Carter (#39) in 2002, and Obama (#44) in 2009.

Most common-use US banknotes have pictures of Presidents: $1 [Washington (#1)], $2 [Jefferson (#3)], $5 [Lincoln (#16)], $20 [Jackson (#7)], and $50 [Grant (#18)]. [The non-President ones are $10 (Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasurer and the man who invented the National Debt, perhaps the most successful modern invention ever!) and $100 (Benjamin Franklin).]

Everyone knows that the President is protected by the Secret Service, but such protective duty didn't start until 1902 after President McKinley (#25) was the third one to be assassinated. [Until then, these agents' primary job was to catch counterfeiters of US currency.]

A well-known fact is that the Presidential Retreat is called Camp David. This is located some 60 miles northwest of Washington DC, in the state of Maryland. It took on that role during FDR's time. It received its current name from Eisenhower, whose father and grandson were both named David. The President gets to this hideaway on a helicopter called Marine One. He uses Air Force One to fly longer distances (and to take his best friends golfing) and his limo is often referred to as The Beast. Of course, the President and his family live in the White House, which is right next door to the Federal Treasury building, making it very convenient when he needs to use his ATM card to get small amounts of cash to pay for a pizza delivery, or to withdraw a billion or two for petty cash!

The Vice Presidency

Like the President, the Vice President (VP) must be a natural-born U.S. citizen, be at least 35 years old, and have resided in the US at least 14 years. The 12^th amendment to the Constitution requires that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States".

The 20^th amendment requires that the Vice President's term of office begin at noon, Eastern Standard Time, on January 20 of the year following the election. This date marks the beginning of a 4-year term. The President and Vice President run on the same ticket; that is, they run together as a package.

Throughout US history, the role of the Vice President has largely been small and ceremonial. Texan John Nance Garner (known affectionately by some as Cactus Jack), who served as FDR's Vice President from 1933 to 1941, claimed that the Vice Presidency "isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss."

As you may know Bush Sr., Reagan's VP and then President 41, served as a navy torpedo bomber pilot in WWII, during which he was shot down and had to use his parachute. While in office, he vowed he would make another parachute jump, but this time it would be voluntarily. And he did, several times. A variant of the story goes like this: George is being readied for his jump and his instructor is refreshing his memory. "Sir, this is the cord for your primary chute." "Yes, I remember that." "If that fails to open, you pull this cord, which opens your auxiliary chute." "Right, but what's this third cord for?" "Well sir, if your primary and auxiliary chutes fail to open, you pull this one and it sounds a bell in the Vice President's office telling him to get ready to attend a state funeral!" After all, attending such funerals was and still is one of the VP's main tasks.

Initially, on the death of the President there was doubt as to whether the VP would become the new President or merely an acting President. This was resolved in 1841 on the death of Wm. Harrison when his VP, John Tyler, "declared it so".

Listen up now all you US Civics Experts; it's Question Time: When President Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963, his VP, L.B. Johnson (#36) was sworn in by a federal judge on Air Force One. Who served the remainder of the 1961–1965 term as Johnson's VP? Now, I've posed this question to many Americans, and I have gotten a whole host of answers, but only two people have gotten it right thus far. It's a trick question! The answer is that he had no VP. Yep, that's right; the Constitution made no provision for filling a vacant VP slot. And this was the 8^th time the sitting VP has stepped up to fill a vacant presidency, and therefore the 8^th time he had no VP!

The 25^th Amendment was drafted and ratified to clarify succession. Section 2 states, "Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress." The first Vice President selected by this method was Gerald Ford, who took office after VP Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973. Then when Nixon resigned as President, Ford became the first unelected President; and he nominated Nelson Rockefeller as his VP.

14 Vice Presidents went on to become President although not all inherited the mantle of their immediate predecessor. Richard Nixon is the only non-sitting Vice President to be elected President, as well as the only person to be elected President and Vice President twice each.

The VP is also President of the US Senate, where he has two jobs: to vote in the event of a deadlock and to preside over and certify the official vote count of the U.S. Electoral College.

Prior to 1974, the VP had to find his own place to live while in Washington DC. Finally, an official residence was provided at Number One Observatory Circle, but it was not occupied for another three years until VP Mondale moved in.

Bush Sr.'s VP, Dan Quayle, was so inept that someone started a website that was dedicated to his gaffes, of which there were many. He demonstrated on national TV that a VP need not know how to spell. And in advance of an up-coming trip to Latin America, he lamented not having paid more attention in his Latin classes at school! I can honestly say that the embarrassing spectacle of his term was what started me thinking about becoming a citizen, so I could vote.

The Cabinet

Unlike in a parliamentary system in which cabinet members are elected politicians, the members of the Cabinet of the United States are nominated by the President and approved by the Senate, and serve at the pleasure of the President. Each heads his/her corresponding government department. There are currently 15 cabinet members and all have the title "Secretary of xxx" except for Justice, which is headed by the Attorney General. [Defense is a cabinet department and under that, there exists subordinate military departments for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, along with a whole slew of defense-related agencies.]

There are a number of cabinet-level officers, which includes the VP, the White House Chief of Staff, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the ambassador to the UN. From time to time, departments are created, disbanded, or renamed. Homeland Security, the most recent—and likely the biggest–was created in the aftermath of 9/11. The first President, George Washington, had a Cabinet of four: State, Treasury, War, and Attorney General. [The War department later became Defense.]

The "Department of Dirty Tricks" (that is, the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]) is not a cabinet department. In fact, it really doesn't exist except in movies.

A detailed list of all the cabinet members of all the Presidents can be found here.

In general, it seems that being a Cabinet Secretary is not a good launching pad for higher office. Hoover (#31) was the most recent Cabinet member (Commerce) to have become President, way back in 1929. Taft (#27) did it all! He was Teddy Roosevelt's War Secretary; then he was President, and, finally, he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. [Grossly overweight, Taft got stuck in the White House bathtub the first time he used it.]

Stay tuned for Part 2, y'all!

© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

We all know how to count. How do we count? Well, we just "know" how; there probably are some rules but most of us have long forgotten them.

In so-called "primitive" civilizations, they had (and perhaps still have) symbols for no more than the numbers 1, 2, and many. Didn't they ever need to count things, and, if so, how did they do it? The answer is, "They used tally sticks", which, as Wikipedia states, "… was an ancient memory aid device to record and document numbers, quantities, or even messages". Basically, the first time a shepherd let his sheep out to pasture, he carved a notch in a stick for each sheep that passed him. Then when he brought them back home again, he checked that he had one for each notch. [Tally sticks are not to be confused with tally marks.]

Now the Roman numeral system has been around for a while, if fact, since the Romans; hmm, funny about that! And while you might have amused yourself on occasion when trying to decipher the vintage of a movie copyright, if you've ever tried to do arithmetic using that system, you'll soon see why it didn't take off. Besides, you needed different symbols for the digit 1 in the numbers 1, 10, 100, 1000, and so on. Fortunately, the idea of place-value notation came along in the 5^th century. But even then we didn't get a symbol for the idea of zero for another 100 years. [I well remember observing a heated discussion some 25 years ago between people who thought zero was special while others thought it "was just another point on the number line".]

For quite a few centuries now, the predominant number system has been one based on the number 10; hence the term decimal, from the Latin decimus. We'll look at that number system later, along with number systems in general. The system most of us use now has the digits 0–9, which are referred to as Arabic numerals or, more correctly, Hindu-Arabic numerals.

Things You Might be Taking for Granted

When writing large numbers, we often talk of having thousands separators, as in 1,234,567, which many Europeans would write as 1.234.567 or even 1 234 567, where the space separators are non-breaking spaces. (For a discussion of decimal comma see the March 2010 essay, "What is Normal? – Part 1: Getting Started".) But life is not like a box of chocolates, and some people group their digits in twos or threes, or combinations thereof. (Is that normal?)

Then there is the issue of how to write negative values. In some contexts, people use a preceding minus sign. In others, they enclose the number in parentheses, while in others they might use a DB prefix of suffix to indicate a financial debit (with CR being used to indicate a credit).

The digits in numbers are written left-to-right in decreasing position value, right? So if what we commonly use are referred to as Arabic digits and Arabic is written right-to-left, how does one write a multi-digit number in Arabic? Although I'd learned the answer to that question some time ago, it wasn't until I actually edited in Microsoft's Word some Arabic text containing numbers, that I fully appreciated it. Yes, the text is written right-to-left, but within that text, numbers are written left-to-right. Now while a word-processor can handle that by dynamically inserting extra digits to the right as they are typed, that is not true with handwriting. That is, when writing such text by hand, one needs to leave sufficient space for the whole number to the left of the previously written text, and then proceed to write the digits left-to-right.

When English speakers speak multi-digit numbers, they do so in the order the digits are written. That is, 57 is said "fifty seven" with each word separate. But that's not necessarily how the Germans do it; to them, 57 is written and pronounced as one word, "siebenundfünfzig", which literally is "seven and fifty". And yes, Germans like to write a large number a single very long word. For example, 3,526 (or 3.526 using their period thousands-separator) is written as "dreitausendfünfhundertsechsundzwanzig". That makes for interesting problems when breaking such long words across lines when typesetting. And what's with the French word for 80? I'm referring to "quatre-vingts", which literally is "four twenties". Sacré bleu!

The Decimal Number System

Let's look more formally at the decimal number system, the one we use every day, for things like prices, street addresses, and telephone numbers.

Consider the number 12,458. (The comma here represents the thousands separator, but as we know, that is not universal.) We all "know" that number represents the value twelve thousand four hundred and fifty eight. How do we know that? Well for starters, the decimal number system has 10 distinct symbols, the digits 0–9. Decimal numbers are written such that the value of a digit is based on its position within that number. For example, the digit 5 can represent five, fifty, or five hundred. (This is different from some other number systems such as those developed by the Romans and Japanese.) Let's break down the decimal number 12,458 into its parts, as follows:

The digits, starting from the right-most one going left, are referred to as the ones digit, the tens digit, the hundreds digit, the thousands digit, the ten thousands digit, and so on, for obvious reasons.

Consider the following example in which we add two numbers together:

When two digits are added, the result may be larger than one digit, in which case, we carry 1 to the next column to the left. For example, 6 + 8 = 14, so we carry 1 and put down 4. The next column to the left now becomes 4 + 7 + 1 = 12, the 1 is carried and the 2 is put down. And so the process is repeated. With subtraction, when we subtract one digit from another we may have to borrow 1 instead of carrying it. For example:

Whether we realize it or not, we need to know 400 rules to do basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of two decimal digits. We simply have to remember them! And even though we can take a few shortcuts (3 + 4 is equivalent to 4 + 3, for example) there are still a lot of rules.

If we were to build a machine to perform these basic arithmetic operations, it would have to know all these rules. It would also need a way to represent each of the 10 digits. Mechanically, this is possible; an old-style automobile mileage odometer is one example. However, representing 10 different states makes the machine more complicated/expensive. This is particularly so if the machine is based on magnetic, electrical, or electronic properties, as are modern computers.

The decimal number system is based on the number 10. The numbers we normally write then are base-10 numbers. We can write such numbers with the base explicitly shown. For example, the number 123 can be written formally with a decimal base using the notation 123₁₀, where the base is shown as a subscript. In ordinary usage, the subscript is omitted because the writer means "base-10 number system" and most readers know only that number system. However, other number systems are in common use in computing, as we shall see below.

For the most part, people other than computer programmers and engineers, and mathematicians can ignore number systems other than base-10.

The Binary Number System

The rules we have seen for writing base-10 numbers can be applied to numbers of any arbitrary base. In fact, it's really the other way around; the base-10 system is a specific instance of the general number system idea.

To have a number system with base B, we simply need to pick B unique symbols, assign distinct values to them, and specify their value order. Therefore, to have a base-2 (or binary) number system, we need two symbols; 0 and 1 are used where 0 is less than 1. Here are some base-10 numbers and their base-2 equivalents, with the latter written in parentheses: 0 (0₂), 1 (1₂), 2 (10₂), 3 (11₂), 4 (100₂), 5 (101₂), 6 (110₂), 7 (111₂), 8 (1000₂), 9 (1001₂), 10 (1010₂), 100 (1100100₂), 1,000 (1111101000₂), 10,000 (10011100010000₂), 100,000 (11000011010100000₂), and 1,000,000 (11110100001001000000₂).

The larger the number system base (or radix), the bigger the number that can be expressed with a given number of digit positions. Conversely, the smaller the radix, the more digit positions are required to express a given number. Since 2 is the smallest possible radix, it produces the most unwieldy numbers, as shown in the examples above.

Numbers written in binary can get verbose, but they have one very important property: The number of rules needed to perform arithmetic operations on them is very small compared to the base-10 system. For example, in addition, we have 0 + 0, 0 + 1, 1 + 0, and 1 + 1, with only the last one producing a carry.

If we were to build a machine to perform these basic arithmetic operations, it would have to know only a few rules. It would also need a way to represent each of the two digits. This is easy, regardless of whether the machine is mechanical, magnetic, electrical, or electronic, so much so, that modern computers deal directly with base-2 numbers.

We've all heard the word bit. Just what is a bit? The term bit comes from the words binary digit. The longer term is cumbersome; while we can say that a given number can be represented in 16 binary digits, it's much easier to say it can be represented in 16 bits. An 8-bit computer processes values eight bits at a time while a 16-bit computer can manipulate 16 bits at a time. From this, we can reasonably assume that a 64-bit computer is more capable in some sense than a 32-bit computer, a 16-bit computer, and an 8-bit computer, in that order.

The Hexadecimal Number System

After decimal, the most commonly used number system these days is hexadecimal (or hex for short). As its name implies, it has a base of 16 and, therefore, needs 16 symbols. The symbols used are 0–9 and A–F where A–F have the values 10–15, respectively. Lowercase a–f can be used instead of A–F, and upper- and lowercase letters can be mixed in the same number. If you think a number containing letters looks silly, remember in the hexadecimal system A–F are digits. Just take a mental step back and remember that the assignment of symbols to meanings (as with letters and digits) is simply a convention.

Here are some base-10 numbers and their base-16 equivalents, with the latter written in parentheses: 0 (0₁₆), 1 (1₁₆), 2 (2₁₆), 3 (3₁₆), 4 (4₁₆), 5 (5₁₆), 6 (6₁₆), 7 (7₁₆), 8 (8₁₆), 9 (9₁₆), 10 (A₁₆), 100 (64₁₆), 1,000 (3E8₁₆), 10,000 (2710₁₆), 100,000 (186A0₁₆), and 1,000,000 (F4240₁₆).

Mere mortals generally don't have to understand the hexadecimal number system, but if you have ever configured a wireless device to the internet using a password or access key, you may have found yourself entering a "secret code" that looks something like 4749D8B754. That's because these things are often required to be hexadecimal numbers. [I've also seen screens full of hexadecimal numbers scrolling or frozen on malfunctioning airport flight displays and even once on an in-flight screen when the video system was being reinitialized.]

Other Number Systems

There are an infinite number of number systems; pick a base, chose the corresponding number of distinct symbols, and, voila, you have a new number system. However, you might have difficulty convincing others to use it.

Now you don't have to be a computer or math nerd to deal with number systems other than decimal, although it does help. Back in the really old days (even before your parents were born, as in the 3^rd millennium BCE), the Sumerians used the sexagesimal number system, which had a base of 60. They very generously passed that along to the Babylonians. Clearly, back then, counting on one's fingers was not possible! There are traces of this concept with us today. For example, in our time system, there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. And when looking at latitude or longitude on a globe, there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in a degree.

Another culture that was very advanced with respect to math and science was the Maya. Their number system used base twenty (vigesimal).

While an understanding of alternate number systems and computer-based arithmetic is not necessary for most computer programming tasks, without such knowledge programmers cannot exploit certain kinds of hardware or programming languages, or understand some of the principles on which modern computing is based.

Back in the old days of computing (1970s and earlier) many of us programmers had to be familiar with the octal number system, which has base 8. As you might expect, the digits in that system are 0–7. [I really do miss the DEC PDP-11!]

To read more than you probably want to know about number systems, click here.

Conclusion

With respect to numbers and counting I do have a pet peeve, namely, the misuse of number when digit is meant. The number 123 contains three digits, 1, 2, and 3. It does not contain three numbers! That is, a number consists of one or more digits. A number cannot contain another number. So use the terms correctly or Mr. and Mrs. Spank will have to make a trip to bottyland! [That's a famous quote from QEI's nanny in an episode of the second series of Black Adder.]

We all know about percentages, and are used to seeing signs like "Sale, 50% off!" But did you know that percent had a sibling, per mil? A per mil is a tenth of a percent or one part per thousand, and is written using the symbol ‰. Now let's see who's the first to post a comment about seeing this symbol in a publication.

A number of companies sell calculators that allow numbers to be entered and displayed in various bases. I've been a fan of HP scientific and programmable calculators since 1970, and I own an HP-16C. This calculator supports binary, octal, decimal, and hexadecimal modes of operation; allows ones- or twos-complement or unsigned representation; has bit-manipulation operations; and supports word sizes up to 64 bits. It's so reliable I can always count on it!

© 2012 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

Some years ago, I read an article in an airline's in-flight magazine. The article was all about Vacation Deficit Disorder (VDD), and it was very cleverly written, especially as many of the things that "ail" society just have to have 3-letter abbreviations or acronyms.

I started my working life in Australia, so was introduced to leisure time through that culture (which, by the way, uses the term holiday rather than vacation). And now that I've been living in the US for 32 years, I can compare the two systems, at least as much as they existed during my time in each. Along the way, I've spent quite a bit of time in other countries, but only as a visitor.

Vacation Time

After three years in private industry where I worked a 40-hour week, in 1973. I started a job with the South Australian State civil service. There, I worked five days a week, Monday through Friday, for 7½ hours each day, for a total of 37½ hours/week. Everyone, regardless of years of service, got four weeks of vacation time per year, a good number of public holidays, and, of course, sick days.

Around that time, a major row erupted with regard to holiday pay for people who worked the night shift in a variety of skilled trades. If I remember correctly, workers on night shift were paid 17½% extra over the day-shift folks. What happened was that one or more unions demanded that these workers get their normal pay while they were on vacation, even though they weren't holidaying on night shift. Now the labor unions were very strong in Australia back then [pretty much all of them were affiliated under one massive umbrella], and the demand was granted. However, the really strange aspect was that not only did the night-shift workers get it, so too did the day shift and everyone else as well! Yes, even I got it. So, whenever we took time off, we got paid 17½% extra for doing absolutely nothing. What a country!

[Speaking of civil servants and "doing nothing", a civil servant gets home from work and his wife asks him what he did that day. "Nothing", he replied. "And what will you do tomorrow?" she asked. "Nothing", he said. When she asked, "But didn't you do that all day today?" he replied, "Oh yes, but I didn't get finished!"]

Flexitime

Around 1975, the state government added an interesting twist to the workday by allowing a flexible-working-hours system to be used in many agencies and departments. In my case, we had an electronic time clock that recorded time in 1/100ths of an hour. Each participant had a plastic keycard that one inserted into one's slot when one arrived at work, and that one removed when one left for lunch or to go home. The day was broken into morning and afternoon with each having a core period. For the morning, that was 10:00–12:00, and for the afternoon, it was 14:00–16:00. The idea was that ordinarily, employees would be expected to be at their desks during the core periods, for meetings or to handle phone calls from fellow employees, other agencies, and the public.

One could start work at any time 08:00–10:00, and could stop work 16:00–18:00. (The clocks did not operate before 08:00 or after 18:00, so if one had to be working outside those hours, one got one's supervisor to authorize a manual adjustment.) One had to take a lunch break of 30–120 minutes during 12:00–14:00. So the shortest day one could work was the four core hours, and the longest was 9½ hours.

At the end of each 4-week period, each participant had to have worked 140–160 hours (4x37½=150), which meant one could have a credit or debit of up to 10 hours. By accumulating time, one could take off up to two half days or one whole day per month.

The important thing about the whole program is that within reason and consent of supervisors and coworkers on group projects, employees had the ability to manage their work and personal time. For example, they could come late (or early) and miss peak-hour traffic, attend meetings with their child's teacher, take their car to a garage for repairs, or schedule health-related appointments. And in summer time when daylight savings time was in effect, they could leave at 4 pm and go to the beach or play 18 holes of golf every weekday afternoon. What a system!

[At the time, I had a supervisor who knew down to the second—I kid you not—the time it took for him to pack his things, take off and hang up his lab coat, and put his hand on the doorknob to leave exactly as the second hand on the clock passed 5 pm. When flexitime arrived, he no longer knew when it was time to quit, and it took him quite some getting used to.]

Several years later—by which time I'd moved to a different government department—being the entrepreneur, I proposed to my boss a private extension of the basic plan, which he authorized. My group had its own minicomputer, and every Friday after lunch, we disabled all users, and the machine spent 3–4 hours dedicated to backing up all its data to magnetic tape. This meant that for 10% of each week, all staff in that group were without their applications, and that seemed wasteful. I proposed that every Friday I start work after lunch and work until 9 pm, and that we'd only disable the users around 5:30 pm. That way, users had the computer the whole week and only one person (me) was unable to use the system for those few hours.

Long-Service Leave

A system that existed in Australia well before I got into the work force was long service leave. Basically, it was a reward system for loyalty to the employer/company. For each year an employee worked for a given employer, she was credited with nine calendar days over and above her annual vacation. However, she could not use that time until after working there for 10 years. By that time, she had accumulated 90 calendar days; that is, 3 months. From that point on, the employee negotiated with the employer as to how much of that time she could take off and when. For example, some employees took it all off at the same time, others took 180 days at half pay, while others took a week or two off here and there. After 15 years of service, the employee accrued 15 days/year, which when taken with the four weeks of vacation gave six weeks off per year. [In 2011, this option was under threat from the Government, but was retained following protests from unions.]

People who quit their jobs before qualifying to take any long service leave, but yet having worked at least seven years, were paid out the amount accrued. Some employees were allowed to carry forward large amounts of annual vacation and/or long-service leave enabling them to retire early (possibly by several years). In the case of my wife, she was a student at a state teachers college for three years during which time she not only paid no tuition fees, she received a living allowance. As such, she was considered to be on the payroll of the state Department of Education, so those three years actually counted towards her long-service leave. What a country!

Welcome to the "Real World", America!

Imagine my surprise when I started work in the US. What a primitive country (he says, tongue in cheek)! I worked a 40-hour week, got two weeks off a year with no shift-penalty loading, and no long-service leave. And as my first Easter approached, there I was making plans for my 4-day long-weekend when my colleagues said, "What are you talking about? There are no public holidays at Easter in the US." Say what? This great Christian-founded country has no holidays on one of the two biggest Christian events; how can that be? [Australians have both the Good Friday before and Easter Monday after, off work. It's a time of huge sporting events and, sadly, many horrific road accidents.]

Over the years, I met many people who only got one week of vacation in each of their first few years at an entry-level job, and I don't recall knowing anyone who got more than three weeks. One exception was teachers, but then they either didn't get paid during their long summer break, or they arranged to get paid all year, but at a reduced salary each month.

And then there were the people who never even used all their vacation, and their employers had a "use it or lose it" policy. I noted with interest too that some employers allocated four weeks of vacation and sick pay combined per year, and if one didn't get sick, one could use those days as personal time.

Over the years, I've hosted many guests from Europe, and oftentimes I'd held receptions for them, so they could meet my friends and neighbors. Inevitably, someone would ask my guest, "And how long are you visited the US?" To which my guest would reply, "Three weeks". "My, that's a lot of time off!" "No, not really; I still have three more weeks to take later in the year."

Setting My Own Rules

Some 28 years ago, I went into business for myself, and right from the start one of my main goals was to take as much time off as I could afford. And except for a period five years ago when I worked more than fulltime on a major project, I've had at least three months off each year and in some years six months (mostly taken days or weeks at a time). My other main goal was to never hire any employees, which made it much easier to take time off.

The rationale for these goals was to enjoy myself as I went along and to travel while I was younger and in better physical condition to enjoy adventures. And with the advent of the internet, I can easily run my business from remote places while traveling for personal purposes.

Working from Home

One of the biggest non-productive periods of many workers' lives is the time they spend commuting. In my general area, it is not uncommon for people to spend 2–3 hours each business day getting to/from work. And all too often, they are stressed out by that experience alone.

From the very beginning of my business, I've worked from home. However, from time to time, I did (and still do) have to conform to the real world. For example, when I taught seminars, I had to work my clients' hours, and when I attend conferences and standards meetings, I have to work local business hours. Fortunately, these days, such events are few and far between.

Of course, telecommuting is not for everyone, even if it is a viable option. Some employees need the discipline of an office environment and the camaraderie of having real rather than virtual co-workers.

[15+ years ago, I told someone that I'd just cut my commute by 90%, and they were pleased for me, until that is I told them I'd moved my office from the basement up two floors next to my bedroom. It was about then they suggested that my parents were unmarried!]

Conclusion

Not everyone has the flexibility that I have enjoyed, but if you don't propose some workable scenarios and ask your employer what options exist, you'll never know. Perhaps working four 10-hour days each week and having a 3-day weekend every week or working from home one day a week is doable.

As far as I can see, many people look at personal time as that time left over after work and other "essential" things have been done. You might try looking at it from the other direction. That is, I'd like to have this much time off, and to do that here's how my work would have to fit in. Obviously, you need to work enough to "pay the rent", but it really is a matter of priorities and not confusing your needs with your wants!

So why did I leave such a great system like that in Australia? Well, as they say, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence". Besides, I didn't fully appreciate what I had until some years after I had moved away. And after five years, I had plenty of flexibility due to my being self-employed.

Oh, don't forget to have your VDD vaccination!