Category Archives: Language & grammar

This time it’s a Machiavellian mis-quote.

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Machiavelli, The Prince, Ch. XVWhilst perusing the Net for some material for my book on Machiavelli, I came across this maxim: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”

It’s attributed on many, many sites to Machiavelli in his most famous work, The Prince.

Sounds pretty Machiavellian, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. Machiavelli never wrote those words.

Sun Tzu wrote that, “All warfare is based on deception.” (Book 1, 18), which is close. Sun Tzu went on to add in the next two lines (19 and 20),

“Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
“Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”

In The Art of War, Book 4, Machiavelli wrote, “It may also be well to do with cunning that which happened to Fabius Maximus at home,” which follows with the example of Fabius’ cunning use of cavalry to beguile an enemy encampment.

And in Book 7, he wrote, “Those who are besieged must also guard themselves from the deceit and cunning of the enemy, and, therefore, the besieged should not trust anything which they see the enemy doing continuously, but always believe they are being done by deceit, and can change to injure them.”

Neither quote is close to the one at the top.

In his History of Florence, Machiavelli wrote, “If you watch the ways of men you will see that those who obtain great wealth and power do so either by force or fraud, and having got them they conceal under some honest name the foulness of their deeds.” Close, but still no cigar.

In The Prince, Ch. 18, he wrote, “Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word.” Cunning is not used here as a counterpoint to force. I was sure Machiavelli never penned those words in The Prince.

In The Discourses, BK. II, Ch. 32, Machiavelli even described how deception was problematic when trying to capture a town:

“The capture of towns by stratagem combined with force is effected, as by the Romans at Palæopolis, through a secret understanding with some within the walls. Many attempts of this sort have been made, both by the Romans and by others, but few successfully, because the least hindrance disarranges the plan of action, and because such hindrances are very likely to occur.
“For either the plot is discovered before it can be carried out, as it readily may, whether from treachery on the part of those to whom it has been communicated, or from the difficulties which attend its inception, the preliminary arrangements having to be made with the enemy and with persons with whom it is not permitted, save under some pretext or other, to hold intercourse; or if it be not discovered while it is being contrived, a thousand difficulties will still be met with in its execution.”

Nowhere in any of the various translations I have does the phrase “Never to attempt to win by force what can be won by deception” appear.

In Book III, Chap. XL, titled “That Fraud is Fair in War,” Machiavelli writes,

“Although in all other affairs it be hateful to use fraud, in the operations of war it is praiseworthy and glorious; so that he who gets the better of his enemy by fraud, is as much extolled as he who prevails by force.”

And in Book II, Chapter XIII, titled, “That Men rise from humble to high Fortunes rather by Fraud than by Force:”

“We see, therefore, that the Romans, from the time they first began to extend their power, were not unfamiliar with the art of deceiving, an art always necessary for those who would mount to great heights from low beginnings; and which is the less to be condemned when, as in the case of the Romans, it is skilfully concealed.”

Which is the closest that I can come to that saying.

I’ve searched both online and through my printed copies of The Prince, Discourses and Art of War for the exact phrase. Nada.

It might be a from a translation of a work I don’t own (and I own many), but if so I would be hard pressed to figure where it should be found. Chapter XVIII of The Prince, is the only possibility I can imagine, but then it would change the message of the entire chapter. It doesn’t fit, at least as I read Machiavelli.

I believe it can be traced back to a 1982 article on disinformation by Edward Jay Epstein, in which he paraphrases Machiavelli but does not identify any source for the comment. In an email to me this week, Epstein himself suggested it may have been a paraphrase. And I suggest it comes as a paraphrase from The Discourses, not The Prince.

I chalk it up as another of the thousands of bad mis-quotes floating around online.

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It’s not an Apache blessing, it’s just a Hollywood script

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Not from an Apaches!“May the sun bring you new energy by day,” begins this saccharine saying that has enjoyed a continued life outside Facebook through the fridge magnet and huggable-puppies-and-kittens-on-posters and wedding planner industries.

It gets passed of as an “Apache blessing” or “Apache wedding blessing” on Facebook, usually with some hunk-ish Indian brave pictures beside the words or some faux-Indian animal fetish images.

The rest of the alleged “blessing” reads:

…May the moon softy restore you by night;
May the rain wash away your worries;
May the breeze blow new strength into your being;
May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.

I get all glassy-eyed-nauseous with such gooey sentiments, and feel like I should throw myself onto some aromatherapy, or reiki healing, or some other New Age folderol.

The quote is, however, pure Hollywood. According to a column in the New Yorker, May, 2007, it’s lifted straight from a 1950 film, Broken Arrow:

…what I was able to find was that the blessing seems to have entered the popular consciousness through “Broken Arrow,” which was—except for the wedding scene, the critics say—a very accurate depiction of the Apache people. A version of the blessing was also in the book that the movie was based on. The book was historical fiction, but the prayer was an invented part of the fiction.

It’s part of an interview with Rebecca Mead, who coined the term “traditionalesque” to refer to those instant “traditions” made from modern ideas and quotes, that are like Internet memes in that they spread rapidly through the culture, mostly through commercial efforts. As she notes, this faux “blessing” is in the book of almost every modern wedding planner, so it gets passed around over and over and over.

These fake quotes seem like something that should have been said by someone wiser, someone of another generation, even another culture, so we just assume they were, and repeat them without ever once stopping to verify the source. Or question our own wisdom. After all, if we like them, if they inspire us, and they turn out to be hoaxes (like so many are!), then it reflects on our own gullibility.

…there are a number of reasons that people might buy into invented traditions…”

It’s not that people are stupid or lazy – sure, some are, but by and large not most people. We are a society accustomed to instant gratification and looking up a source takes work – critical thinking, reasoning, research and investigation – we find that effort odious and onerous. We want immediate answers, immediate solutions, immediate wisdom. Looking something up interrupts that.

We’re also not comfortable confronting others who believe in the reliability of these sayings, so we don’t want to prove them wrong. Easier to agree that the saying is hugely inspirational and brightened our day, rather than tell a friend his or her favourite quote comes from a greeting card, not Gandhi, or Buddha, or an Apache warrior.

The Wikipedia entry for this “blessing” notes that,

It is not associated with any particular religion and indeed does not mention a deity or include a petition, only a wish. It has no known connection to the traditions of the Apache or any other Native American group.
It was written for the 1947 Western novel Blood Brother (novel) by Elliott Arnold. The blessing entered popular consciousness when it made its way into the film adaptation of the novel Broken Arrow, scripted by Albert Maltz. The Economist, citing Rebecca Mead’s book on American weddings, characterized it as “‘traditionalesque’, commerce disguised as tradition”.
The first line of the original poem was “Now for you there is no rain” and the last “Now, forever, forever, there is no loneliness”. Since 1950, there have since been several different versions of the poem. The film text begins “‘Now you will feel no rain” and ends “And may your days be good and long upon the earth.”

So the “Apache wedding blessing” under its many names and guises goes into the same trash heap as the many other Internet memes – bad or mis-attributed quotes – I’ve been debunking these past few years. And good riddance, too!

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So many bad quotes, so little time

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I was browsing through my blog posts today and found I have actually written about improperly attributed quotations on the Net nine times since I first started blogging back in March, 2005.

On my old Mumpsimus blog, I posted two pieces about these bad memes:

On this new blog, which I launched in mid_December, 2011, I have written seven pieces about bad Internet quotes, starting with the Slowly Dies piece, in January, 2012:

Mis-quoting SpockIt’s got so that every time I see some cutely-crafted poster with its quotation done in some artistic font, I have to start searching online to confirm the source. If only the people who designed such beautifully artistic images put a fraction of the work into confirming the source as they do in making their posters look pretty, I would not be so quick to challenge them.

Unless we use critical thinking, unless we use intellectual analysis and skepticism, unless we question, we are condemned to being fooled, to being cheated and being mislead.

Perhaps it’s become a small obsession for me. I’m not the only one who tries to correct these. I’ve mentioned the Quote Investigator and Wiki Quotes in previous posts. Today I found a piece about a popular quote mistakenly attributed to the Dalai Lama (ntweblog.blogspot.ca/2011/10/that-dalai-lama-quotation-and.html). That in turn led to a post about a quote mis-attributed to Albert Schweitzer (ntweblog.blogspot.ca/2007/08/jesus-creed-historical-jesus-series_17.html). Wiki Quotes has its list of popular mis-quotes (en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations), as does Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations). And more at Secular Perspectives (secularhumanist.blogspot.ca/2011/01/skeptically-fact-checking-quotes.html) from when comes the image above.

Why bother? Because people are posting and sharing wrong information without checking it first. If information is the currency of the 21st century, then what they’re posting is counterfeit coinage. It’s not simply a mistake; it’s devaluing real information. It contributes to the general dumbing-down of our society. And it underscores the terrible lack of critical thinking that pervades our culture. People are too willing to suspend belief, too willing to accept statements and comments at face value when they reinforce their own beliefs. Instead, they should be thinking, reasoning and above all, questioning.

For me, the words of the Buddhist Kalama Sutra (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalama_Sutta) should guide everyone’s online activity:

Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing, nor upon tradition, nor upon rumor, nor upon what is in a scripture, nor upon surmise, nor upon an axiom, nor upon specious reasoning, nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over, nor upon another’s seeming ability, nor upon the consideration, “The monk is our teacher.”
Kalamas, when you yourselves know: “These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,” enter on and abide in them.

Unless we use critical thinking, unless we use intellectual analysis and skepticism, unless we question, we are condemned to being fooled, to being cheated and being mislead.

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James Miles? Goethe? Sorry: this quote is from Malcolm Forbes

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Ice Age, not New Age, but the message is the sameAnother New Age quote showed up on Facebook today, one of those warn-n-fuzzy, touchy-feely sayings that either make you gag or go weak at the knees. This one is ascribed to James D. Miles. Miles was, according to answers.com (a site of dubious factuality and not terribly reliable at the best of timns), “…an associate professor of Psychology at Purdue University.” The author of this answer claimed Miles was “…quoting the German poet, novelist, playwright, scientist and philosopher Johann Wofgang von Goethe (1749-1832).”

Miles is, indeed, a professor at Purdue, or at least has been in the recent past. But the last part is incorrect, or rather the attribution to Goethe is. Here’s the quotation in question attributed to James D. Miles:

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

Miles isn’t found in Wiki Quotes, nor did I find the quotation buried under another author’s name. I did scan a few works of Goethe and checked my Bartlett’s, but none of which showed these lines. So I turned to a very reliable, no-nonsense source…

According to the Quote Investigator, the quote has been variously attributed to, “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Samuel Johnson, Ann Landers, Abigail Van Buren, Malcolm Forbes, James D. Miles, and Dan Reeves.”

One of those names is correct, but it isn’t James D. Miles. As QI notes:

The earliest instance of this saying that QI has located appeared in the popular newspaper column of Earl Wilson. He credited the well-known magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes in 1972 [EWMF]:
Remembered Quote: “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”—Malcolm S. Forbes.
In 1978 Forbes published a collection of his own quotations called “The Sayings of Chairman Malcolm” [SCMF]. This title was constructed as wordplay on the well-known doctrinal work “The Sayings of Chairman Mao” also called “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung” or “The Little Red Book”.

Internet quotesI’m glad there are reliable, factual sources like the Quote Investigator; people willing to put in the time and effort to help correct these mistakes. Still, I can’t help but feel the effort is wasted because the general public would rather feel good than be right.

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Does this really sound like Sitting Bull?

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Sitting BullAnother quote meme going around on the Internet claims to be from Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake), the famous Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux chief. A fascinating man in a difficult time. He was brave, intelligent and, from all accounts, wise. So when I read the quote below, I was torn. It’s a good comment, one that sounds like it should come from a wise man. But was that wise man really Sitting Bull?

Or perhaps these words are from someone else. There are many of these false quotations online, words that have been appropriated and mis-attributed by the many slow and lazy Web users who can’t be bothered to confirm the source. From Shakespeare to Einstein, I’ve found dozens of bad quotes that spread around the Net, becoming memes. But even if the words are wise, attributing them to the wrong person just contributes to the general dumbing down of everyone who reads them. So who actually said:

For us, warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another’s life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity.

This one is repeated by Native Americans and on native sites as well, so perhaps it has some validity, but none of them ascribe any source to it, either.

I have yet to find any source that shows when or where Sitting Bull actually said it. So until then, it remains classified as a bad meme and likely by someone else.

I suspect it’s more wishful thinking than accurate attribution. We want our cultural, folk and personal heroes to sound wise and inspiring, so we attribute to them something that we believe they would have, could have, or should have said, often without checking back to be sure they actually said it. And when we do it online, we create a meme that gets spread like those crazy emails about Microsoft promising us millions if we just forward it to everyone we know.

Somehow, in the New Age mythology, warriors have gone from armed and dangerous soldiers who killed their enemies, fought and defended their lands with their lives, to happy, wise folks helping old ladies cross the street.

Wikiquotes – a generally reliable source – has several quotations from Sitting Bull, properly attributed. This is not among them, and is not even among the many unsourced quotes it lists. The quote itself is not found anywhere on Wiki Quotes by any other author.

My printed sources offer no help. Neither the Oxford nor the Penguin dictionaries of quotations have anything from Sitting Bull. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (15th/125th anniversary edition) has a single statement Sitting Bull made that reads,

“What treaty have the Sioux made with the white man that we have broken? Not one. What treaty have the white man ever made with us that they have kept? Not one. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?… What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?”

The ellipses says that this is a partial quote and that some of the words have been left out. That, however, is the only printed sources I have for any Sitting Bull quotes. There are quotes attributed to Sitting Bull to be found in some of the older books (many published pre-1920) digitized in the Internet Archives. None of them I have found (yet) match the quotation at the top of this page. However, their accuracy is questionable since they mostly seem to be second- or third-hand. Here are two from one source I’ve culled:

“Do you not see that the whites on the reservation are afraid of you? Why do you pray to great Wakantanka to send the Saviour on earth and bring about a change when the remedy lies in your own hands? Be men, not children. You have a perfect right to dance upon your own reservation as much as you please, and you should exercise this right, even if you find it necessary to use your guns. Be brave, and the great and good Wakantanka will aid your arms. Be cowards, and he will be ashamed of you.”

God Almighty made me an Indian, and he did not make me an agency Indian, and I do not intend to be one.

Here’s a quote from another 19th century source:

This is not my doings nor these men’s. They are fighting because they were commanded to fight. We have killed their leader, let them go. I call on the Great Spirit to witness what I say. We did not want to fight. Long Hair sent us word that he was coming to fight us, and we had to defend ourselves and our wives and children. If this command had not been given we could have cut Reno’s command to pieces, as we did Custer’s. No warrior knew Custer in the fight. We did not know him, dead or alive. When the fight was over the chiefs gave orders- to look for the long-haired chief among the dead, but no chief with long hair could be found.

Whether these are actual quotes, or paraphrased by the 19th century writers to better suit their personal, biased views of the ‘primitive savages’ they wrote about, I have no way to ascertain. I expect the latter.

I personally suspect the source of the original quotation is another writer. Perhaps from one of Dan Millman’s “peaceful warrior” books or from one of Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan books. Both have written on warriors, and the end bit about “…the children, the future of humanity” seems more suited to the style of these writers than to the few actual quotations of Sitting Bull’s I’ve read.

A third option is the inspirational/spiritual writer Paul Coelho, possibly from the Manual of the Warrior of the Light (1997) or possibly his novel, The Valkyries. Coelho founded the Paulo Coelho Institute, which provides aid to children and elderly people with financial problems. Coelho wrote on his blog,

“To the warriors of light, there is no such thing as impossible love.
They don’t allow themselves to be intimidated by silence, or by rejection.
They know that – behind the icy mask people wear – there is a heart of fire.
That is why the warriors risk more than others.
They tirelessly seek love – even if this means hearing, many times over, the word ‘no’, returning home defeated, feeling rejected in body and soul.
Warriors don’t allow themselves to be discouraged. Without love, living has no meaning.”

Coelho, Castaneda and Millman all write in a similar New-Age style that is a lot more like the quotation in question than anything I’ve read that can be verified as being by Sitting Bull. Similar sentiments to this and the quotation in question are expressed in different wording on several martial arts/bushido, New Age and even gaming sites, as well. Somehow, in the New Age mythology, warriors have gone from armed and dangerous soldiers who killed their enemies, fought and defended their lands with their lives, to happy, wise folks helping old ladies cross the street. It’s not a sentiment I would ascribe to many military leaders. And Sitting Bull was certainly one of those.

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That’s not mass, it’s area. Poor science means bad reporting.

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It will come from space, be as massive as half a football field, have the explosive power to decimate hundreds of square miles of land and will hurtle perilously close to Earth.

Just some artist's impression of a burning rockI cringed when I read this paragraph in a QMI story published in the London Free Press recently, titled “Rock of Ages: Killer Asteroid Likely to Pass in 2013.” So many mistakes in so few words. But it might be a great start for a Roger Corman B-flick script.

Of course, “it” will come from space: “it” is an asteroid. Asteroids, says Wikipedia, are, “…a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun.” So it’s pretty obvious an asteroid can’t come from your basement, from the North Pole or from Ottawa.

“As massive as half a football field,” the writer declares. How massive is a football field? It isn’t massive at all. It has area, which is a measurement of its size in two dimensions, not mass. Mass, as Wikipedia says, has nothing to do with size: “In everyday usage, mass is often referred to as weight… In scientific use, however, the term weight refers to a different, yet related, property of matter. Weight is the gravitational force acting on a given body.”

Let’s get more technical, so we can be exact in our definition of mass: “…inertial mass, can be defined as a quantitative measure of an object’s resistance to the change of its speed.” An asteroid moving at an estimated 8.2 km/second certainly has inertial mass.

So many mistakes in so few words. But it might be a great start for a Roger Corman B-flick script.

Massive is an adjective that refers to mass, of course. So tell me, Terry Davidson, how you can measure the mass of a football field? What does a football field weigh? And is that an America, Canadian or Australian football field – because they are different sizes. The asteroid in question is estimated to be about 46m (150 feet) wide. But that doesn’t say anything about its mass which is also related to its density and speed.

Explosive power? Not really. Asteroids are not explosive, although impacts create explosions.

An explosion happens when the kinetic energy of the asteroid is converted to other forms of energy on impact. Until that moment, an asteroid does not have “explosive power,” just kinetic energy. Sometimes asteroids explode in the atmosphere as this one did over Indonesia, in 2009. But that’s a combination of rapid heat expansion, pressure and kinetic energy, not because the asteroid was “explosive.”

Decimate hundreds of square miles? Does the writer mean it will destroy every tenth square mile? The origin of decimate is Latin, and refers to a practice in the Roman Army of killing every tenth soldier as a form of punishment. Common usage means to “kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of (something),” and “drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something).” Decimate does not mean destroy everything.

It is called 2012-DA14, an asteroid that NASA scientists have been watching closely in anticipation of Feb. 15, 2013, when the mammoth piece of solid space rock will soar past the Earth a mere 24,000 kms from the planet’s surface. It will be passing even lower than the altitude at which many man-made satellites orbit.

Man-made. Bit of an anachronism, that term. I’m pretty sure there were also women working on some of those parts. I would have preferred “artificial” as a neutral adjective over the sexist “man-made.”

Mammoth? Compared to what? To a football field? It’s certainly bigger than the house Dorothy dropped on the Wicked Witch of the West, but compared to Ceres or Vesta? At 45-46m (150 feet), on the cosmic scale, it’s a pebble. It’s a fraction of the size of Asteroid 2005 YU55, which will whiz by Earth on November 8, about 319,000 kms away.

In fact 2012-DA14 is eerily similar to an asteroid that destroyed hundreds of square miles of forest in remote Siberia a little over a century ago.

“In fact”? Since nothing has ever been found of the Tunguska meteorite, and certainly no sample has ever been taken of 2012-DA14, how can they be compared? Where are the “facts” about either? Many scientists believe the Tunguska event was caused by a chunk of comet, or even a micro black hole, not an asteroid. No one even knows the size of the rock that caused Tunguska, although there are educated guesses. We can only guess at any possible similarities; not state facts.

Eerily? What’s eerie about similarities between pieces of material? Eerily means, “…inspiring inexplicable fear, dread, or uneasiness; strange and frightening; suggestive of the supernatural; mysterious.” What is supernatural about a natural piece of space rock? Why would some physical similarity – size is the only property that can be estimated for both – instill dread or fear? Is it a haunted asteroid? Being “haunted” requires imaginary creatures called ghosts, not science.

The rock that exploded over Siberia, did so at an estimated 5–10 kilometres (3–6 mi) above the Earth’s surface, and likely on an impact trajectory. Asteroid 2012-DA14 will pass us by at 2,400 to 4,800 times that distance, and will not be aimed at the planet’s surface. These two are as “eerily similar” as the distance from my home to my town hall – about a mile – is similar to the distance from my home to Vancouver (about 3,500 miles).

Killer Asteroid, the headline screams! Is it time to panic? Not in 2013. Although the headline suggests it’s “likely” to pass Earth in 2013, Asteroid 2012-DA14 has zero percent chance of hitting the planet. Zero. Zilch. It’s not likely to pass us: it WILL pass us by. There’s a huge difference between likely and won’t.

You actually get some real science at the tail end of the story, where the estimated speed, size and mass of the asteroid is indicated. That’s where it says risk to hit: 0. By which I assume that means zero percent or zero chances in whatever. Not likely: none. The real data isn’t from the story writer, however, but from Don Yeomans of NASA’s Near-Earth Objects Program.

Asteroid 2012-DA14?s next closest pass, in 2040, has a 1 in 80,000 chance of striking Earth. That’s lower odds than the chance of getting rich on the Antiques Road Show (1:60,000)! Frankly, probability suggests you’re more likely to win the lottery than to be hit by any meteorite.

2040 is the year the asteroid is “likely to pass” not 2013. It’s very, very, very likely to pass in 2040, with about 12 chances in a million to hit us. Until then, I won’t worry about it. But I will continue to worry about bad science in reporting.

~~~~~~
Davidson’s story at least has some science buried in the hyperbole. There are many on the Internet that are a LOT worse, although few are written by reporters and are mostly the work of oddballs. “Deadly asteroid 2012 DA14 bounds towards Earth out of the blue” reads one headline, admittedly from a site that has all sorts of claptrap, from aliens to UFOs to demons and various conspiracy theories. I’m happy that the fringe lunatics have a place to play online, but the writer is incorrect in saying, “NASA confirms the 60-meter (197-feet) asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, has a good chance of colliding with Earth in eleven months.” It has NO chance. None.

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That squiggle cost taxpayers HOW much?

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I read in the latest edition of the Collingwood Connection that: “Regional Tourist Organization 7 (is) now Bruce Grey Simcoe.” Were you even aware of Regional Tourist Organization 7 before that story? According to the Connection,

The organization announced its new brand and logo on Thursday at the Bear Estate in Collingwood. Bruce Grey Simcoe is one of 13 regional tourism organizations across the province.
Executive director Jeffery Schmidt said the group has been doing research and marketing over the past year in preparation for this announcement, as well as future initiatives.
He said creating the brand cost about $80,000 but the research over the past year has cost about $1.5 million.

Bruce Grey Simcoe and its squiggleMore than $1.5 million to change its name and produce a squiggle (“swoosh”) for a logo? It cost $80,000 to rename the organization from the bland, Borg-like “Regional Tourist Organization 7″ (RTO 7 to its friends, and the name the website still bears but it links to brucegreysimcoe.com/) to “Bruce Grey Simcoe.” $80,000 for that. And they forgot the commas, too. Now it reads like some English writer’s name. Eric Arthur Blair. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Mary Ann Evans. Bruce Grey Simcoe. Maybe commas would have cost too much money, so they eschewed correct punctuation to save taxpayers money.

Man, I’m in the wrong industry. Five minutes of shallow cogitation could produce that name. Let’s see… who does he organization service? Hmm. The website says, “Tourism Region 7 consists of Bruce County, Grey County and Simcoe County (see map).” The counties of Bruce, Grey and Simcoe. Wait a second, I have an idea, let’s call it…

Come on. That cost $80,00? I would have thrown in the commas for free, for $80,000.

Actually it seems to have cost taxpayers $1,580,000, because it took $1.5 million in “research and marketing in preparation for this announcement, as well as future initiatives.” What research? Doesn’t say. No pollster called me to ask my opinion of the new name, or whether three independent, proper names should be strung together without the right punctuation.

RTO7 is an independent, not-for-profit organization whose mission is to work collaboratively with tourism partners and stakeholders to enrich Region 7’s diverse tourism experiences and to sustain and grow visitation, investment and tourism receipts.

What exactly are “tourism receipts?” If a visitor shops at Wal Mart, is that a tourism receipt? How are they grown (do they need water and fertilizer)?

RTOs are funded by the province – which means by you, the taxpayer. And maybe you’ll pay twice: your local municipality may be asked to shell out money to belong to RTO 7. “It is up to each Regional Tourism Organization to determine if membership fees will be implemented,” says the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. I await their request to council.

Benefit of these expenditures to you, the taxpayer? Aside from keeping graphic design, research and marketing firms busy, that is? Benefit of another layer of bureaucracy? Sorry, I haven’t found any, but I’ll keep searching.

The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport website says,

Ontario is paving the way for a stronger, more competitive tourism industry. The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport is supporting Ontario’s tourism partners as they develop Regional Tourism Organizations in the province’s 13 new tourism regions. Each Regional Tourism Organization is independent, industry-led and not-for-profit. Each will be responsible for building and supporting competitive and sustainable tourism regions. And each will help attract more visitors, generate more economic activity, and create more jobs across the province.

How these organizations will pave the way for anything, let alone develop or build tourism, is not stated. Nor does it state how the MTCS supports its “tourism partners.” But the FAQ says:

Regional Tourism Organizations are independent, industry-led, not-for-profit organizations responsible for working with tourism partners to enhance and grow each region’s tourism products and marketing activities. The regional leadership and coordination they provide will help build and support competitive and sustainable tourism regions. As a result, each region will be better equipped to attract more visitors, generate more economic activity and create more jobs across the province.

Again, more bluster-speak, long on touchy-feely but short on details. How will they lead? Or build? It does say that, “Regional Tourism Organizations may pursue regional research for planning, coordination and performance measurement.” Which I suppose justifies spending $1.5 million to research a squiggle and three words. Okay, to be fair: six words if you count the tag line, “Always in Season.” That’s how much a word? No wonder they couldn’t afford the commas!

The new BGS/RTO 7 logo, says the Connection,

…features the names of the three counties with a swoosh above in blue, green, yellow and orange. The tag line is, Always in Season, representing the fact the region is a four-season destination.

The EB article called it a, “..swoosh that can either represent the topography changes between Lake Huron and Lake Simcoe, or the outline of the escarpment — with colours representing the water, the fall season, and the spectacular sunsets seen over Georgian Bay.”

I’m not a graphic artist, so perhaps my eye fails to see the beauty of what looks to me like a squiggle from a paint brush that wasn’t fully cleaned. Maybe I lack the eye to recognize metaphor. But I do recognize another layer being piled onto the tourism layer cake.

The official media release notes about the branding exercise,

“The goal of the process was to determine a name and identity for the region that demonstrates its uniqueness and tells consumers where we are, both geographically and spiritually,” said Bill Sullivan, the organization’s Director of Marketing. “We wanted to convey the essence of our authentic communities, natural environments and breadth of product, and the fact that visitors can expect different experiences each and every time they visit.”

Spiritually? Come on… we’re not the Vatican or Jerusalem, catering to religious tourists. I don’t think there’s even a single face of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich to be found in any of the three counties.

I could already tell you where we are geographically by looking at my GPS. Authentic? Yep, it’s an authentic county named Simcoe. Glad we got that sorted out (unless they mean a county authentically named Simcoe, in which case I get all rhetorical). Look, there’s an authentic county named Grey. And there’s an authentic squiggle… I mean, swoosh.

I’m not a graphic artist, so perhaps my eye fails to see the beauty of what looks to me like a squiggle from a paint brush that wasn’t fully cleaned. Maybe I lack the eye to recognize metaphor.

According to the Enterprise Bulletin, the RTO 7 held, “…town hall information sessions in Owen Sound, Collingwood and Barrie this week where the new consumer brand will be unveiled. Members of the public are invited to see how the brand will be rolled out in the coming months.”

Town hall sessions at what expense and why? To promote something to local consumers who ALREADY live in the area the RTO is supposed to be promoting? Sessions to inform people of what? A squiggle and a tag line? I assume tourism and hospitality businesses already know about these RTOs. Do you think the local consumer really cares, or even if he/she has ever heard of the organization? Who gets paid for these events, who claims mileage and expenses for these sessions?

Makes me wonder how much more this roll-out will cost taxpayers. The EB coverage gave us some idea that it might prove expensive:

RTO7 will be undertaking a ‘brand’ launch beginning in mid-March, complete with an in-region promotion contest encouraging local residents to submit photos and stories and “showcase their favourite places and experiences, and what makes (the region) such a great place to live and play,” said Schmidt.

Neither newspaper had anything in the way of substance about what the RTO will actually do, just that it was self-promoting its $1.58 million branding. And what happens with existing tourism associations like the GTTA?

The EB article continues:

“What we are unveiling at the session is a brand name, like a destination name for the area, as well as a logo and talking about how that will be introduced or rolled out through a promotion or marketing campaign,” said Jeff Schmidt, executive director of RTO 7, based in Thornbury.

“It’s like a consumer brand where people will be able to say, ‘Oh yeah, I know where that is.’”

Yeah. I can see people in Toronto talking over breakfast about what a good time they had on their weekend getaway to “Brucegreysimcoe.” Imagine all 13 RTOs marketing to the same Toronto consumers, too. After all, who else will they target?

For $1.58 million, I could send every consumer in the province a road map of Ontario with the three counties marked with circles, and probably save taxpayers $1 million. Imagine if all 13 of these groups follow RTO 7 and spend that much on tag lines and squiggles? That would cost taxpayers more than $20 million. And for what? Words and squiggles. Sorry: swooshes. That would come from the $65 million of tax dollars the province has budgeted as handouts support for RTOs. Imagine what local hospitals could do with that, instead. Probably waste it on MRI scanners or some other piece of medical hardware.

Hey, Don Drummond, I think you missed a big sinkhole in spending right here. The MTCS FAQ says,RTOS must “…sign a transfer payment agreement that holds them accountable to the Province for expenditure of taxpayer dollars and for growing tourism in the region.” I wonder if spending $1.58 million for “branding” and squiggles is considered “accountable.”

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