Research before you write for life

Summary 

From Bloom's Instagram
""Finally dot it right!"

In "Orlando Bloom gets tattoo fixed: How to avoid mistakes in your ink" (2020), professional London tattooist strongly advises customers to not only do research to be sure that they are going to a competent tattooist, but also, because it can be difficult to correct errors, to do any necessary research on the tattoo that they want, especially if it is in a foreign language which is unknown to themselves and the tattooist. This was in response to a mistake in a tattoo that Orlando Bloom recently got. It was his son's name, but written in Morse code; Bloom only learned it was written incorrectly when people who had seen it on Instagram pointed out the mistake to the film star. Unlike some people's foreign-language tattoo mistakes, Blooms was easily corrected by adding the single missing dot.

____________________________________ 

Response 

Morse code machine from the Titanic

I don't usually read the entertainment sections of the BBC very carefully, but the Bloom story interested me because I have a few tattoos. As I read it the first time, I realised it was even more closely related to some of my own tattoo choices. There are no mistakes in any of mine, which are in two of the dead languages I studied at university, but as the report says, I've also heard of and seen some terrible mistakes when people have decided to get tattoos in languages that they do not know, most often Chinese. I don't know whether Morse code is still learned these days or not, but when I was in school, it was still commonly used for communication, although perhaps already on the way out. "... --- ..." is the only bit I can still remember: it is the Morse code version of the English letters SOS, which mean "Save our souls," an internationally known emergency signal. The last time I remember anyone using Morse code was in the film Titanic, which I watched last week on NetFlix: after the ship has struck the iceberg that sends it to the bottom of the ocean, the captain orders the wireless officer to send the distress signal in Morse code. I don't remember what the exact three-letter code was, but it wasn't SOS. I was a signal that meant they needed urgent help. And that reminds me that the first episode of the first series of the TV series Downton Abbey opens with a Morse code message being sent about the sinking of the Titanic, which begins the story of the aristocratic Cawley family in 1912. 

2,500-year-old couplet
from Lao Tzu (老子)

Happily, there are no mistakes in any of my tattoos. Tattoos have become very popular in the decades since I got mine last century. Many of my young nieces and nephews have tattoos now, and they are even popular among young professionals, but forty years ago, they did not have such a good reputation, althought that was starting to change in fashionable Sydney and elsewhere. Although I like tattoos, obviously, I dislike a lot of what people choose to get. I agree with the tattooist that the BBC spoke to: research before make up your mind forever, because tattoos last a very long time. But I would add that you should also think very carefully about how you might feel about your chosen ink in ten years, in twenty years and in fifty years. That's why I prefer words to images, and not some passing fad, like the words of a current pop song: most pop songs, however famous, do not last long before the next one comes along. No. all of my tattoos were written thousands of years ago, so they've stood the test of time. And I read both languages, so was able to both check that there were no mistakes in the artwork I designed myself for the tattooist, who only had to make sure she copied exactly what I gave her, and also that the meaning was also something I was likely to be happy with for a very long time. Several decades later, I've never regretted any of my tattoos. The same cannot be said of some of my friends, who got things that meant a lot to them at the time, but which have not aged at all well. 

I also liked the BBC article about Bloom's experience because it reminds us that research is essential. Just because we think something is right, reasonable or true, does not mean it is actually right, reasonable or true, even if a lot of other people agree. More research and critical review is always a good thing, no matter how old or socially popular a belief is. For example, many people, including most of my aunts and uncles, and perhaps cousins, think that in order to protect society, the law should ban the use of many popular drugs like marijuana, heroin, yaa baa, and so on, but they are wrong; the research shows that those unjust laws against the often stupid personal decisions of people actually worsen the harms that drugs cause to society. But you still get uninformed people saying that things like Thaksin's drug wars, which killed more than 2,000 people in Thailand, were good, and that many drugs should be illegal. A missing dot in a tattoo is not too serious, but 2,000 people killed because of false beliefs turned into bad government policy is deadly serious. Research, especially of things that are "common knowledge" is a very good thing. 
 

____________________________________ 

Question

What are other situations where research is a good idea?  

____________________________________ 

Reference

• Orlando Bloom gets tattoo fixed: How to avoid mistakes in your ink. (2020, February 20). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-51573095