Look It Up if You Can

There was something I heard on Jeopardy the other day as a clue/answer but couldn't remember it.  For some reason it came to me while eating dinner on Saturday night: Phone books in Iceland are arranged alphabetically by first name. I kid you not. Ken Jennings and the research staff told us so the other night. I don't remember how that came out as a clue, but it did. Another something learned from Jeopardy.

The Icelanders use the first name first because the last name is basically their father's first name followed by -son-or dottir [daughter].

The phone book may contain the occupation of the person listed to add some distinction in finding a desired listing.

We of course alphabetize names by last name, first name, middle initial. The ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) It is a code where each individual bit represents a unique character. Whenever you're sorting something on your computer the computer is using the ASCII code to effect the alphabetization.

That of course doesn't seem to be how Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video guides were assembled. These books have become obsolete due to the IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base) listings on the Web, so therefore easily accessed on your phone.

Being an Old School person who rarely uses their phone for anything other than making calls, I still have two of Maltin's editions: a 2000 and 2014 edition.

I still consult the books, but am hugely frustrated when the movie's name contains a space or a punctuation mark. The title Let No Man Write My Epitaph  should follow Let Freedom Ring, but instead appears many listings after Lethal Weapon. Two pages after. Whatever sorting they use, they do not recognize the space (which does have an ASCII value—32) and render Let No Man to be Letnoman follow Lethal; letn comes after leth in their scheme. The value 32 precedes any ASCII value for a letter. (A is 65; small a 97). But, who fights with Maltin's unique alphabetizing these day, right?

There are a coterie of people in Nepal who all have Sherpa as their last name. I have no idea how their phone book is arranged. The youngster who just completed a climb on all of the 14 8,000+ meter peaks is Nima Rinji Sherpa. Sherpa is an ethnic group. All Sherpas are not directly related.

I've set my bathroom iPod to playback all listings alphabetically by artist. Since the iPod does not have a last name, first name format, the playback is strictly by the first name of the artist, or group. Frank Sinatra comes through with the Fs.

It is an interesting was to listen to the downloaded library.

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