Qatar protests, 30 zeroes & babymoon with bae
KOCHI: ‘New’ is probably the smallest word in English that can excite one. Anything new triggers emotions in most people curiosity, hope, happiness, worry, fear. A new day, a new book, a new idea, a new toy, a new discovery, a new virus...
Even new forms of protest, as we are seeing at and around the Qatar World Cup. Artists Andrei Molodkin (Russia) and Jens Galschiøt (Denmark) are the latest newsmakers, with their works of art protesting alleged human rights violations by Qatar and Fifa.
Andrei's work is “an alternative World Cup trophy which slowly fills with crude oil, highlighting the ‘crude truth’ about alleged corruption at football’s governing body, Fifa,” the Art Newspaper notes.
“The work of art is on sale for $150m, the figure allegedly received by Fifa bosses over a 24-year period,” says Adnrei.
“Over 6,500 migrant workers have died in the construction of Qatar’s World Cup stadiums. Fifa bosses knew about the human rights of workers in Qatar, for them, oil money is more important than blood.”
Jens, meanwhile, has designed a “necklace consisting of 6,500 minuscule skulls, one for each migrant worker that has died in Qatar”.
In Qatar, besides the beautiful game, intense discussions have been raging protests by teams on various issues such as LGBTQIA+ rights, human rights, and women’s rights.
Denmark’s “toned down” and “all-black” uniforms have been trending. “We don’t wish to be visible during a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives,” the team’s sportswear brand wrote on Instagram.
Many described the grim, black jerseys as a sign of “mourning”. And they have emerged as one of the bestselling jerseys across the globe this season.
The Iranian team faced a 6-2 drubbing against England. But the men scored well by refusing to sing the Iranian national anthem ahead of the match, in solidarity with women protesting the brutal hijab crackdown back home.
That reminds me of the maverick Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s maxim: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Extolled by many as one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Ludwig’s works revolved mostly around logic, mind, and language.
Notably, Ludwig is considered the father of new-gen emojis, which UK-based linguist and writer Gavin Lucas describes as “the fastest-growing language of all time” in the book The Story of Emoji.
In 1938, during a lecture on aesthetics at Cambridge, Ludwig remarked: “If I were a good draughtsman, I could convey an innumerable number of expressions by four strokes.”
According to his students, he added: “Such words as ‘pompous’ and ‘stately’ could be expressed by faces. Doing this, our descriptions would be much more flexible and varied than they are as expressed by adjectives.”
Ludwig is also known for putting forth the concept of “language games”, which is described as “concrete social activities that crucially involve the use of specific forms of language” and “the countless ways in which language is actually used in human interaction”.
Ludwig saw beyond the literal meanings and implications of words. “A new word,” he believed, “is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.”
That brings us to some new terms that are being globally discussed. The recently held 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures in Paris saw the International System of Units welcome four new members: “ronna (R) and quetta (Q) for the largest numbers, and ronto (r) and quecto (q) for the smallest”.
The prefixes are defined as follows:
Ronna — 27 zeroes after the first digit
Quetta — 30 zeroes after the first digit
Ronto — 27 zeroes after the decimal point
Quecto — 30 zeroes after the decimal point
The head of metrology at UK’s National Physical Laboratory, Richard Brown, explains: “If we think about mass... the Earth weighs approximately six ronnagrams (six followed by 27 zeroes). Jupiter, that’s about two quettagrams (two followed by 30 zeroes).”
Reports note that, earlier, the largest prefix was yotta, or 24 zeroes after the first digit. So now, the “Sun can be said to be about 2,000 quettagrams rather than 2,000,000,000 yottagrams”, according to an NPR article.
In the end, an “electron’s mass can be said to be about 1 rontogram rather than 0.001 yoctograms”. Previously, yocto (y) was the smallest prefix earlier, denoting 24 zeroes after the decimal point.
In a media statement, the National Physical Laboratory said: “The change was largely driven by the growing requirements of data science and digital storage, which is already using prefixes at the top of the existing range (yottabytes (24 zeroes) and zettabytes (21 zeroes)....”
In 2018, the International Data Corporation had estimated that the total amount of data generated on earth would go up to 175 zettabytes by 2025.
Phew! That was some heavy stuff, eh?
Okay, time for me to lighten up, and what better way than some Scrabble. Wish you a week of new ideas ahead.
Here are some picks from the 500 new words added to the Scrabble dictionary.
Bae: “person who one loves”, derived from babe
Zonkey: “a hybrid between a zebra and a donkey”
Dumpster: “a large container for trash”
Ambigram: “a word that forms another word when viewed another way (think of mom, wow)”
Embiggen: “to enlarge”
Deepfake: “an image or audio that has been altered to misrepresent someone’s words or actions”
Amirite: “Am I right? (informal)”
Adorbs: “cute or adorable.”
Subtweet: “(on Twitter) a post that refers to a particular user without directly mentioning them, typically as a form of furtive mockery or criticism”
Matcha: “powdered green tea leaves, dissolved in hot water to make tea or used as a flavouring”
Hangry: “irritable or angry because of hunger”
Folx: “Folks, used especially to explicitly signal the inclusion of groups commonly marginalized”
Stan: “slang, often disparaging: an extremely or excessively enthusiastic and devoted fan”
Grawlix: “a series of typographical symbols (such as $#!) used in text as a replacement for profanity”
Aro: short-form of aromantic, which means “having little or no romantic feeling toward others; experiencing little or no romantic desire or attraction”
Jedi: “a person who shows extraordinary skill or expertise in a specified field or endeavour”
Babymoon: “a relaxing or romantic holiday taken by parents-to-be before their baby is born” or “a period of time after birth of a baby during which new parents can focus on establishing a bond with their child”