Names

I ran across an article in my local Bastion of Literary Truth (they have a flashy website, though) today -- it was essentially shameless promotion for a book which recently came out called Eat This, Not That. The article in the paper had some troubling "examples" from the book, such as the following, which i reproduce here verbatim:

>> Dairy Queen's banana split has 530 calories and 12 grams of fat compared to Baskin-Robbins' version, which packs 1,030 calories and 39 grams of fat.
From experience, i know that this must depend on (1) the varieties of ice cream used in the banana split, (2) the quantity of ice cream used, and (3) the quantity and varieties of toppings added. So unless Dairy Queen has made a major breakthrough in ice cream technology, i think the take-home message ought to be that Baskin Robbins' banana splits are larger and more delicious on average than Dairy Queen's, and if you wish to cut back on the calories and fat involved, you ought to share it with a friend, or better yet, a date (because if you try to share the Dairy Queen version, there won't be enough to satisfy your craving for sweet, banana and ice cream goodness).

And, although i haven't read the book, i can see from the cover art that it falls into the same trap. Comparing a Big Mac to a Whopper may seem like a fair comparison, but just because they're both "burgers" does not make them the same thing.
Wikipedia (i can't fathom why this information is encyclopedic, but i'm glad it made the cut) lists the following ingredients for each. I organized them to be easier to compare.

Big Mac: Two 1.6 oz (45.4 g)(total 3.2 oz, 90.8 g) beef patties, iceberg lettuce, American cheese, pickles, onion, special McDonald's "Mac" sauce (a Thousand Island dressing variant), three part sesame seed bun.
Whopper (with cheese): One 4 oz (113.4 g) beef patty, lettuce, American cheese, pickles, tomato, raw sliced onion, ketchup, mayonnaise, sesame seed bun.

If you're wondering what Thousand Island dressing is made of, let me tell you a little secret -- it's ketchup and mayonnaise...which makes the two burgers identical, except for two things. One, the Big Mac doesn't have a tomato slice, which in the grand scheme of the comparison is rather insignificant. Two, the total beef patty quotient (bpq) of the Whopper is 25% larger than the Big Mac. It does, admittedly, sport 40% more calories and 62% more fat, but you're also getting MORE FOOD. The squashed down picture of the Whopper on the cover is clearly designed to disguise this fact. Now, you may point out that the conclusion still holds -- the Big Mac is still less fattening per calorie than the Whopper. But caloric quantity is a piss-poor measure of food's healthiness. Would you believe that a single serving of pasta without any sauce packs an astounding 200 calories? And a normal plate of pasta at most restaurants can have TWO to THREE servings, pushing that number to SIX HUNDRED CALORIES?!?

Well, you'd better believe it. Because when you consider that the FDA's recommended 2000 calorie diet often gets compacted into three meals, you have to average at least 650+ calories per meal. That's a low estimate, too, because you're likely eating less for breakfast. That said, calories aren't bad for you. What matters is "empty calories", that is, calories which do not provide any satiety. The satiety index is a measure of this phenomenon, and i've linked to one of many sites listing the values of some common foods.

I'm getting sidetracked in my attempt to make a point. If you're going to compare things, you need to be sure to compare salient details. Fat per pound of burger would be a step in the right direction. It's just not good enough to assume that because both are "burgers" or "banana splits" that they're identical in all ways.

It's the same thing with architecture (wow! he finally brought it back to the topic of the blog!). I sat in on a review of a student's project recently, and the harshest criticism of it was that she described it as a tower, whereas "a tower has to have at least 20 stories". First off, there are no definitions of 'tower' that state this, that i can find. In the context of ants, a blade of grass is a tower. In the middle of a low, sprawling city, i think 15 stories can squeeze its way into being called a tower. It always depends on the context.

But naming schemes affect more than just how we define a building. The aforementioned "tower" is of course not at all comparable to, say, the Sears Tower. As such, it would be abhorrent to try to compare their carbon footprints, whatever that even means. The 15 story tower is clearly going to win (at least, it had better). Calling both "towers" doesn't do them justice. When it's important to specify, it's important to specify, circular though that statement may sound.

Or, if you want to capture elements of the Arts and Crafts movement like in the previous post, make sure you know more than its name. Most people are too busy to investigate every claim they run across, so some are erroneously ignored and other erroneously accepted. When it's in hard print and advertised by your newspaper, enough people are going to accept it on blind faith that it becomes problematic.

So maybe this has been a long winded way to say "don't believe everything you read in a book." Still, you should believe everything i say in this blog. More importantly, don't be dishonest about your arguments. In the long run, it's bad for everybody.