A small communications tip: when there is a substantial change in your organization, or even in the way your organization describes things, you should probably go through your existing documents–especially those you’ve made available on a public web site–to ensure they’re in agreement with your current situation and terms. I know communications people are often busy and that this could be considered a low-priority item, but you should get to it if you can. Preferably before, say, a year has gone by.

For example, when you elminate all your regional health authorities in 2008, you might want to have a look at a pandemic plan that assigns responsibilities to the RHAs. Else, your plan doesn’t look that reassuring to people reading it during a pandemic in 2009.

I’m just sayin’.

I think enough of us do this already, without Arby’s making the situation worse.

A guest post from the Dread Pirate Clown Shoes is below.

Most writers assume that descriptive language–that is, accurate descriptive language used by someone with a decent command of language in general–is helpful in creating understanding. If I’ve done a good job of describing something, such as a chair or a door, the reader should have a pretty good idea what that object looks like. Given a selection of dissimilar chairs, the reader ought to be able to pick out the chair I described.

That’s fine for doors and chairs, but what about things that can’t be put in a police line-up? Obviously writers believe they can describe those things, too. Emotions, ideas, sensations… we can put words to them and others, drawing on common experience, will understand.

That said, it’s notoriously difficult for people to describe some of those non-physical things. Doctors, in particular, struggle with patients’ descriptions of sensations. Sometimes the problem is that a patient won’t get descriptive, and sometimes there’s a language barrier. Sometimes the richness of language is a problem. If your medical textbook says a pain is throbbing and a patient calls it pulsing, will you recognize that as being the same kind of pain? Then there are the people who are mistaken about what words mean, and the words that can mean several things. Sometimes I have trouble believing that anyone can effectively describe anything to anyone.

I’m thinking about this because, a few weeks ago, I ran across an entertaining piece of writing called the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Reportedly the work of an entomologst by the name of Justin Schmidt, this is a list of his perceptions upon being stung by a variety of bees, ants, and wasps. The Wikipedia entry about this index provides a number of examples of Schmidt’s descriptive writing:

1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
4.0 Tarantula hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

That’s remarkably vivid language, particularly for a purportedly scientific document. I’m particularly surprised to see synesthesia, which I’m assuming he didn’t actually experience. I think he’s just exercising metaphor. I may have to email him and ask.

Anyway, he’s produced a fascinating document, not least because he’s actually been stung by all of these animals. Remember, the above list is just an excerpt. The final list is said to have over 70 items. Did Schmidt get stung in the line of duty, working as an entomologist? Did he go out of his way to get stung, in order to complete his list? If he couldn’t get the wording right, did he go back for another sting? And, once he’d been stung by, say, 30 animals, did he simply make up his mind to collect the whole set?

Does getting stung by over 70 insects, some of which cause severe pain, lead to a mindset where you would describe pain as being like “W.C. Fields putting out a cigar on your tongue”? Also, does anyone really know what it feels like to drop a running hair dryer into their bubble bath? I suspect few people who have been through that are around to talk about it. Really, if you’re trying to help people understand an experience they haven’t had, don’t you want to compare it with an experience they probably have had? 

Here’s my question for you–do these descriptions help you imagine what his pain was like? Have you actually been stung by any of these animals and, if so, do you agree with Schmidt’s description?

For my part, I’ve been stung by what I think was a yellowjacket and I agree that it was a burning pain. I don’t recall any irreverence, aside from my dad thinking it was sort of funny. In fairness to my dad, I stepped on the wasp, and it was kind of a funny way to get stung.

Current Bedside Reading: Will Shortz ed., New York Times Think Outside the Box Crosswords
Commentary: Not really reading material, I know, the the title is gag-inducing, but it’s what I’ve been looking at before bed for the past week. I’m not sure this makes up for that horrible title, but the puzzles really are a great deal of fun.

My iPod Is Singing: “Please don’t lower your standards for me.”

You know what I miss most about being in school? It’s not the optionality of going to class (some classes, anyway.) It’s not spending time with my classmates, or learning things, or wearing jeans every day, or getting a paper back with a good mark and a really nice message. Those things are all good, sure, but what I miss most is notes.

Not taking notes on a lecture. Lord, no. The other kind of notes. The kind you pass across a table or under your desk. I still have notes from university and even from high school, and they’re great. Lively. Creative. Funny. It seems we all saved our best work for crumpled pieces of looseleaf with messages and word games and cartoons scrawled on every inch of both sides. Which may explain why none of us are making 30-million-dollar films or heading major corporations or finding cures for diseases today.

In an Intro to Philosophy course at the U of S (which I attended for a year before going to Ryerson), a small group of us spent our time trying to prove impossible things to each other using deviously fucked-up logic. Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast was the name of that game, and it included the classics, “1=0″  and “the population of the universe is zero.”

In grade 11 GeoTrig, I had a competition with a friend at the next table. We took turns writing down the most uninteresting comments we could think of. I believe I won with “They have a new slide show at Batoche,” though I’m also pretty proud of “I have a 25-cent A&W coupon in my purse, but it has expired.” My friend’s “my shoelaces are looped in the wrong holes” contribution was also brilliant.

I spent a fairly long class at Ryerson working, with friends, on a list of songs that mentioned every year in the 20th century. So, Summer of `69 (Goddamned Bryan fucking Adams. Fuck him, by the way.) would give you 1969. Patricia the Stripper would give you 1924 and 1999 would give you 1999 and, you know, so on. Try it. More to the point, try it without the internet. Let me know when you’re done. You can reach me at the old age home on the moon.

In the photo albums in my basement where I keep this sort of thing, I have a sketch of me as I’d look with a hamster head, drawn by a guy who went on to win a daytime Emmy. I have a rebus about flicking snot at the wall, sent to me during a Model UN event. I have the lyrics to Stand translated into French, and a drawing I made of a tuxedo-wearing shark with a microphone and Brylcreemed hair, labeled “Condricthyes Ricardo.” (Okay, I was/am a dork… but, for the record, my marks in both French and Biology were excellent. Also, Demitri Martin makes a living out of that kind of thing, so nyeh.)

I don’t know if kids pass paper notes anymore or if they’re playing these games via text messages. I know they do memes online, as do people my own age, and that’s similar. It doesn’t matter, really, whether it’s online or on paper… except that paper notes involve a little more drawing and underlining and arrows and generally making a weird zine page. Etiher way, though, the tradition continues.

Do you have fond memories of note-passing from your school days? (Yes, I’m aware that, for some of you, these are your school days.) What were your best efforts?

Current Bedside Reading: George W. Barlow, The Cichlid Fishes: Nature’s Grand Experiment in Evolution  
Commentary: Three mentions of Oscars in the whole book? That’s it? THREE? My friend Abe has been neglected.

My iPod Is Singing: “When you come empty-handed, it’s him you’re unworthy of.”