Year: 2018

The relaxing side of the Arenal Volcano

Volcanoes are generally considered rather scary, unsafe places. There was that whole Pompeii incident, of course, and Mt. St. Helens, as well as numerous more-recent examples. Any sensible person knows that you don’t want to be anywhere near a volcano when it erupts, and that volcanoes have the nasty habit of erupting at unpredictable and very inconvenient times. Nevertheless, dozens of active volcanoes around the world have become major tourist destinations (and indeed, I’ve visited more than one myself). PR types minimize the danger, of course (“Over 27 months without a tourist fatality!”), and, statistically speaking, the odds do indeed favor a safe visit. But many thousands of tourists take the risk because volcanoes are so strange and interesting. Most of us know volcanoes only from stories that are set in faraway places and therefore have a mythological character; seeing an active volcano in person seems a little bit like seeing a unicorn—something that doesn’t seem like it could really exist.

In central Costa Rica, the Arenal Volcano offers the quintessential volcano tourism experience. Practically the entire economy of the nearby town of La Fortuna is based on tourism. There are hotels, lodges, restaurants, tours, hikes, and activities of every description that cater to people who make the long drive to the area in the hope of hearing the rumble and catching a glimpse of spewing smoke, ash, and steam from Arenal. But by far the most famous (and most expensive) attraction besides the volcano itself is Tabacón Hot Springs, part of the Tabacón Grand Spa Thermal Resort.

Forgotten But Not Gone

Tabacón was once a tiny, quaint village nestled at the base of Arenal Peak. The mountain had been a volcano once, yes, but it hadn’t erupted since 1525 so its history was effectively forgotten. In 1968, a class of schoolchildren in Tabacón was given the assignment of drawing a picture of their town. When one child labeled the mountain “Arenal Volcano,” the teacher marked it wrong: “Arenal Peak is not a volcano, it’s just a mountain.” A few days later, the mountain erupted. The entire village of Tabacón and the nearby town of Pueblo Nuevo were wiped out, destroyed by ash and hot gases. Although many of the town’s residents fled when the rumbling began, 78 people died.

But after the shock of the tragedy wore off and volcanic activity mostly settled down, the volcano turned into a tourist attraction, eventually becoming one of the top destinations in Costa Rica. Such was the popularity of the volcano that enterprising developers decided to erect an elaborate resort on the site of the former town of Tabacón, and that is now the epicenter of tourism for the area.

Over the next four decades, there were several other significant eruptions and a few fatalities. A major eruption in 1998 forced the evacuation of nearby hotels, and lava came rolling down the hill as close as 500 feet (about 150 meters) from the resort. In between these major events, Arenal remained quite active, with minor eruptions many times a day. By day there were puffs of smoke accompanying the menacing rumbles, and on a clear night you could see orange streaks running down from the peak. All this merely enhanced the site’s appeal as a tourist destination. Since 2010, Arenal has been mostly quiet, with only occasional activity, though of course that could change at any moment. The lack of potentially deadly volcanic activity has knocked Tabacón down a bit on the list of most popular attractions in Costa Rica, but there’s still much to recommend it.

Tabacón now consists of two sites: a hotel with famously expensive views of the volcano, and the expansive hot springs and spa complex across the road and around the corner. The term “hot springs” is not strictly accurate, as the source of the water is an underground river, but the water is heated naturally by the volcano so the net effect is the same. The water is channeled into a series of interconnected pools where, because the hot water is mixed with cold water in varying proportions, the temperature ranges from briskly cold to 105°F (41°C). Signs next to each pool indicate its temperature, though I can say from experience that some 41° pools are hotter than others.

Caution: Water May Be Hot

The pools themselves, some of which include waterfalls you can sit under for a natural massage, were for the most part constructed from local stone in such a way as to look quite natural. I realized just how natural they were the first time I stepped in one. The bottom was littered with large, slippery, irregularly shaped stones. It was sometimes quite difficult to move around without slipping, tripping, or stubbing a toe. Then I began to notice there were very few handrails, no signs urging caution, and no requirement that guests sign a release form before using the hot springs. I laughed to myself when I realized that such a place could never exist in the United States; it would be either regulated or sued out of existence in a week. That made me enjoy the experience all the more—a place where adults were given credit for some common sense, where simple pleasures could be appreciated without a generic, artificially sterile environment. Imagine that.

The grounds where the hot springs are located are meticulously manicured but still appear to have been carved out of a little corner of rain forest, which in fact they were. It gives you a sort of “Jurassic Park” feeling—a controlled slice of a wild environment. And despite the large numbers of tourists, it is a wonderfully relaxing place.

Float Me a Loan?

I had just one disappointment: a much-hyped warm pool with a swim-up bar. I had never been to one before and that sounded like great fun. Contrary to what was stated in our guide book, the swim-up bar accepted only cash. (Granted, this was quite a few years ago, and things may have changed since then.) If I may say so, a cash-only swim-up bar is about the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of. Once you get to the bar and figure out you can’t pay for anything, you have to get out of the pool, go back to the locker room, get some cash, return to the pool and wade out to the bar carefully, holding bills so they don’t get wet—and with nowhere to put your change. After all that aggravation, you’re going to want a very large piña colada to settle your nerves. Fortunately, those are easily obtained.

After a long day of trekking through the hot, humid rain forest, there’s nothing like a nice relaxing soak in a hot, humid spa. No, really. Strangely enough, the hot water actually feels very refreshing, especially in the evening. We didn’t plan far enough ahead to get reservations for a room at Tabacón—which is just as well since we got a better deal and a great view at another lodge down the road (the Arenal Observatory Lodge)—but day passes are available for a modest fee, and often included as part of other tour/adventure packages. When Arenal is not busy devastating the countryside, it’s often clouded in, so you may travel halfway across the country and find there’s nothing to see. The hot springs themselves are still worth the trip, but all the same, I suggest watching your step on those wet rocks.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on July 18, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on September 6, 2004.

I’m an omnivore, although for a variety of largely practical reasons I mostly eat pretty low on the food chain. I could imagine being a lacto-ovo-vegetarian (that is, someone who eats plant products plus dairy and eggs, but no animal flesh), with a single exception: bacon. Sure, serve me up a veggie patty instead of beef and tofu in place of chicken, but there’s no non-pork product that can satisfy my hankering for bacon. Today’s not the only “holiday” that celebrates bacon in some form, but I’m happy for any excuse to indulge.

Image credit: By Lara604 from Seattle, WA (Perfect bacon slices) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The right word (for “the right word”)

Don’t bother looking it up in the dictionary. The word aproposism isn’t there yet; I coined it back in 2003 and it has been used in the wild by (checks notes) approximately zero other people since then. But it had to be done. English is full of words that mean “the wrong word” in one sense or another: misnomer, malapropism, solecism, hyperbole, oxymoron, and so on, not to mention related concepts like misunderstanding, misconception, and misapprehension. This must show that English speakers value an apt choice of words and dislike an inappropriate choice. And yet, where is the word in English that refers to a choice of expression that’s just right? There isn’t one. Or wasn’t, until I came up with it.

There is, of course, the expression mot juste, which (per Merriam-Webster) does in fact mean “the exactly right word or phrasing.” Problem solved, right? Well, no. The phrase is French, and although it appears in many English dictionaries, it’s not terribly common—and it’s typically italicized (as I’ve done here) to denote that it’s a not-yet-fully-integrated foreign term. It’s also a two-word phrase, not a single word; and being French, it doesn’t follow the usual English pronunciation rules. In short: no, sorry, that won’t do at all. (For the sake of completeness, I’ll also mention another two-word French phrase you’ll find in your English dictionary: bon mot (“good word”), which refers to a clever remark or a witticism—but here, we’re not concerned with cleverness so much as appropriateness.) English ought to have a word that refers to a good choice of wording and that (whatever etymological roots it may have) at least sounds like the rest of the language.

You Don’t Say…

The need for this word arose when I was researching some well-known misnomers and malapropisms. I noticed that, amusingly enough, sometimes malapropisms were mistakenly referred to as misnomers, and vice versa. A misnomer, by the way, is an inappropriate name for something or someone, whereas a malapropism is the (often humorous) misuse of a word due to its similarity in sound to another word. So, for example, you might say that “correctional facility” is a misnomer if you believe behavioral correction does not occur there; similarly, “atom” is a misnomer for a unit of matter that can in fact be subdivided further. But if you say “purposefully” when you mean “purposely” or “disinterested” when you mean “uninterested,” that is a malapropism.

One website I looked at referred to the misuse of “healthful” to mean “healthy” as a misnomer, but that’s incorrect. An adjective cannot be a misnomer. The usage in question was a malapropism, as was the use of the term “misnomer” in place of “malapropism”! (As long as I’m coining terms, I’ll call this particular blunder a recursive malapropism.)

In any case, good writers would naturally want to avoid such mistakes, but how does one refer succinctly to a felicitous word choice? If I want to say, “I’ve chosen the correct word to mean ‘the wrong word,’” what sort of an activity have I thus performed? Or how can I describe the word so chosen? In either case, the correct term can only be aproposism.

Is It Apropos?

Careful readers may wonder why I didn’t use the shorter apropism, i.e., malapropism without the “mal-.” Three reasons: first, “apropism” is etymologically indefensible; second, aproposism is easier to remember because it contains “apropos” (appropriate); and third, aproposism is harder to pronounce—everyone likes a good tongue twister.

The reason “apropism” is etymologically indefensible is that the word “malapropism” itself has a rather dubious pedigree. The term was not derived directly from French, as you might suspect. Instead, it comes from the name of a character—Mrs. Malaprop—in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 comedy The Rivals. Mrs. Malaprop’s lines were peppered with verbal blunders, and the name was supposed to be a joke for those who knew some French—a catchy shortening of “malapropos,” which means “inopportunely.” Malapropos, in turn, is a combination of mal (“bad”) + à (“to”) + propos (“purpose”). All that to say: the pos in aproposism serves to tie the word more directly into its French roots, rather than basing it on a comedic English corruption of a French term.

That said, here’s my official definition:

aproposism (ə ˈpräp ə ˌsiz əm), n. [Fr. à propos, to the purpose < L. ad, to + propositus, pp. of proponere, propound + -ism < M.E. -isme < O.Fr. < L. -ismus < Gr. -ismos, nominative suffix]

1. The act of choosing a felicitous word or phrase.
2. A word or phrase so used.

So there you have it. Never again must you wonder about the right word for “the right word.”

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on October 29, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on December 19, 2004.

If you had asked me an hour ago what the term “pepper pot” refers to, I could only have hazarded a guess, and that guess would have been wrong. To the best of my recollection, I have never seen, smelled, or tasted a pepper pot, but now at least I know what it is. It’s a stew! In fact, a variety of stews go by that name (or a similar one). The type of pepper pot we’re celebrating today—Philadelphia pepper pot—was originally made with beef tripe, vegetables, and various seasonings (prominently featuring pepper). Legend has it that this stew was concocted and served for the first time on this date in 1777—at Valley Forge, where George Washington’s troops were spending the winter—and that it was named after the city where Washington resided. There are several good reasons not to take that legend at face value, however. There’s also another type of pepperpot (this one, you’ll note, without a space between the words) that is customarily served around this time of year—Guyanese pepperpot. Here’s one recipe for a classic (non-Guyanese) pepper pot. You’ll notice that it doesn’t include tripe, which has sort of fallen out of favor in North America (though some of my European friends love it). As for the Pepper Potts of Marvel comics fame, well, that’s a nickname. Her real first name is Virginia. Yes, seriously.

Image credit: John Lewis Krimmel [Public domain]

A stone’s throw from the cutting edge

As regular readers of Interesting Thing of the Day know, I’m not what you’d call a sports enthusiast. Only on the rarest and most unusual occasions can I be persuaded to watch a sporting event, and even less often do I participate. This is partly because I’m not a very competitive person myself—and in general, I don’t like being around those who are. This attitude extends (again, only with occasional and very particular exceptions) even to board games, card games, and the like. They just don’t do anything for me. I’d rather have a conversation, or read a book, or go for a jog (as long as it’s not a race).

On the other hand, I do frequently need to make binary decisions, especially of the “which-one-of-us-gets-to-perform-the-unpleasant-task” variety. If my wife and I are trying to determine which one of us will take out the garbage, do the laundry, feed the cat, or whatever, we will sometimes employ the time-honored method of using a binary random number generator (a coin toss). Other times, we resort to playing “rock, paper, scissors,” an ostensibly random decision-making technique at which I invariably lose.

Let’s Rock

For the benefit of those few readers who may not be familiar with this game, two players simultaneously form their hands into one of three configurations: “rock” (a fist), “paper” (fingers flat), or “scissors” (first two fingers in a V shape). Each shape “wins” against one other—scissors wins against paper (“scissors cut paper”), rock wins against scissors (“rock dulls (or crushes) scissors”), and paper wins against rock (“paper covers rock”). If both players make the same choice, it’s a draw and the procedure is repeated. Variations on this game have appeared under many different names in countries around the world; some precursors to “rock, paper, scissors” are thought to date back to 200 BCE.

Now I discover that all this time I’ve been unwittingly participating in a sport. Incredible but true: an amazing number of people around the world take part in entirely serious competitions of “rock, paper, scissors” (or RPS, as it is known in the lingo)—with prizes ranging in value from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are local, regional, national, and international Rock Paper Scissors tournaments, a The World Rock Paper Scissors Association (based in Ottawa, Ontario), and even multiple books on RPS strategy.

We Will Rock You

Strategy? Yes indeed. That’s the whole point of the competition—RPS is not truly random. For one thing, many players follow patterns (either consciously or unconsciously). For another, skilled competitors can look for subtle clues to what their opponent’s next “throw” will be and counter by altering their own throw at the last moment. Likewise, there is a whole range of miscues one can learn to perform in order to fake out an opponent or even bias them toward selecting a particular throw. (You can learn about many of these things in The Rock Paper Scissors Handbook by Wyatt Baldwin, president of the The World Rock Paper Scissors Association, or in The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide by Douglas and Graham Walker, leaders of the World RPS Society (which appears to be much less active these days).

Professional competitors must come to an agreement about the number of “primes” they will use (primes being the preliminary arm movements used to synchronize the throws); for the World Rock Paper Scissors Association, there are three—the actual move is shown on the fourth movement. In some competitions, the allowable hand configurations are also prescribed in detail—for example, “paper” must always be horizontal, not vertical like a handshake. And of course, players must be careful to form their chosen hand symbol before the arm reaches the 90° point. In tournament play, a referee verifies that players abide by the rules and arbitrates disputes.

At an RPS tournament, players usually compete in a series of elimination rounds. Each match consists of two sets of three games each. Match winners advance to the next round; losers are out of the entire competition. Some RPS tournaments attract thousands of participants, and a few—with large prizes and lots of publicity—have even been broadcast on ESPN.

I can’t decide whether I like the idea of RPS tournaments or not. On the plus side, the game’s got simplicity going for it, and a high wackiness quotient. It’s also less violent than, say, football or hockey, and perhaps the least time-consuming sport I can think of. On the minus side, calling it a “sport” in the first place stretches the meaning of the term considerably. (Come to think of it, maybe that’s a plus.) More importantly, the revelation that it’s not really random at all makes it less attractive as a means of settling a disagreement. I can live with the arbitrary decision of a coin toss, but I hate to think my ability to weasel out of doing dishes depends on my skill in faking “rock” to trick my wife into throwing “paper,” only to switch to “scissors” just before my arm reaches level. Given the choice, I’ll pick housework over sports any day.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on March 11, 2005.

Image credit: Enzoklop [CC BY-SA 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons