View from the north 40: Maybe we should just switch to using body language

I hate to make sweeping pronouncements about “This is what’s wrong with society … ,” but I see a deeply rooted problem with what I’ll call a modern language disconnect — people not using language others understand, people not putting in the effort to understand the words they are hearing and that old flimflam classic of using words in ways they weren’t intended in order to create confusion, perhaps act in malice.

As an example of the first of these, I give you the Eurasian elk.

The Eurasian elk is, in fact, a moose by any North American standard. Yes, I’m saying that even Canadians would look at a photo labeled “Eurasian elk” and they would cry moose even though people in their motherland of England would call the animal a European elk.

I mention this situation because U.S.-based news organization United Press International — UPI — published the April 26 article “Wandering elk spotted on roof of mall in Poland” with a photo of what is clearly an immature moose. I don’t care what Europeans and Asians have to say on the matter.

But, of course, I had to do research because, well, I’m me and I am compulsively driven to try to understand.

While I’m at this, I also feel the need to warn you that in Europe, the animal that looks like a North American elk is called a red deer.

It’s all kind of like how, after the American Revolution, England said, “We hate you so much we’re converting all our measurements to the imperial system,” and then United States of Americans immediately said, “We hate you so much more that we’re changing ours to the United States customary system.”

And our two allied countries are still so adamant about this split from our common origins that when 99.9% of the rest of the world switched to metric, England only half switched and the U.S. maybe one-quarter switched, if that.

Now international news sources write measurements with their home country written out (and the alternate measurement in parentheses): “It was 1 yard (.91 meters) long.”

Therefore, UPI should’ve written at the very least “Eurasian elk (moose),” if not the more anti-metrically correct “moose (Eurasian elk)” so you all wouldn’t have to sit through this.

And now we can move on to Reuters’ April 21 article “Scientists breed threatened Florida coral species in step toward reef restoration,” which made me laugh to think of scientists breeding coral like they’re breeding show dogs or labradoodles or something rather than the ocean’s version of cross-pollinating cucumbers or cactus plants.

Then I found out that coral are animals not plants. Let that sink in.

Coral are beautiful — though tragically anchored to one spot for the entirety of their lives — animal beings.

I watched a movie once in which someone broke off a piece of coral and took it with them. In retrospect I realize that the diver might as well have swum up to a crab and yanked a leg off it to take home for lunch.

If I had known, little unnamed coral animal, I would have gasped for you. I vow do better.

I mean, I won’t move close to a coast, get over my distrust of the ocean and learn to scuba dive to be near you, but in the future, if I see such mistreatment again, I will recoil in horror. You’re welcome, little ocean crustcicles.

Meanwhile in China, though, that country’s securities regulating body is cracking down on brokerage firms using feng shui to predict stock market trends.

You might recall that feng shui has been popularized as the art of furniture arrangement, but the ancient online tome Wikipedia describes it as a “Chinese traditional practice which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment.” It goes on to say that “more broadly, feng shui includes astronomical, astrological, architectural, cosmological, geographical, and topographical dimensions.”

This makes it only slightly less complicated than the Bible.

Reuters reported March 30 that some Chinese brokerage firms were sent warning letters from China Securities Regulatory Commission after they released reports in which they used aspects of feng shui such as the heavenly stems and earthly branches — think astrology of the weeks and months — and the Five Elements.

The article says the commission has a “zero tolerance” stance on this illegal behavior which, I assume the commission is saying, gives the investors a spiritual advantage in the stock market.

The article said that parts of the report “prompted wide market discussion.”

Are they saying this is like counting cards in Vegas, but by reading tea leaves?

Or did some math mystic stand there staring at the stock information board, like in a scene straight out of Hollywood, with lighted numbers harmonizing themselves in the air above his head until they feng shui’d themselves into a prediction of the future.

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I feel like I need to apologize to the language gods and the Chinese ancestors, but only after I ask them: If I win so much lottery money off the numbers in my fortune cookie that the bounty has to be weighed in metric tonnes, is it illegal to use the loot to save the reefs at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 ?