Bone head?

Reader question:

Please explain “bone head” in this: “He makes bone head decisions, as all players do sometimes.”

My comments:

First off, bone head refers to a stupid person, in a figurative way.

In this quote, the speaker, a coach perhaps, explains that “He” often makes stupid plays which make people scratch their head, like, what is he thinking?

And, perhaps in defending him, the speaker concedes, adding that all players make mistakes from time to time.

The latter judgment is absolutely true, by the way. No truer words are said. All of us make mistakes.

Or, to err is human, as the saying goes.

Anyways, what makes him stand out is perhaps “he” makes mistakes more often and because his mistakes are more foolish and alarming.

Anyways, that’s what “bone head” suggests.

A bone head is someone who has a head that is, literally, all bones.

All bones, that is, no brain.

We Chinese sometimes call someone who appears slow thinking a wood head. In Britain, they call such a person a blockhead, meaning, similarly, that he has a head that resembles a block of wood. In America, they call him a bone head, or bonehead (one word).

Nobody has a head that is consisted of bones only, of course. So this expression is not to be taken literally and must be interpreted in the figurative sense.

In the figurative sense, a bone head is someone who makes silly, stupid and foolish decisions. Likewise, those decisions are considered bonehead decisions.

Also, those decisions, like the person who makes them, can be described as bone-headed.

Brainless, in other words.

Not very smart.

I mean, not smart at all.

All right, here are media examples:

1. The latest issue I have with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is his ill-advised support of a plan to close the prison on Rikers Island.

Under the leadership of former Corrections Commissioner Bernie Kerik, Rikers had nearly twice the number of inmates as it does now and it ran relatively smoothly. Under de Blasio, the system is run by an outsider whose last job was in Maine and who lacks the management experience to run a big city jail system.

I also find it extremely ironic and moronic that the mayor who did away with the successful practice of closing failing schools and opening smaller schools in their place would agree to a plan to close a failing prison and open smaller jails all across the city.

His bone-headed plan goes hand-in-hand with his decision to offer every criminal a job upon their release from prison. Something I’m sure every City College graduate would love to have.

The real solution for the problems at Rikers Island would be to hire an experienced manager to whip the place into shape.

Unfortunately, lack of management experience has plagued the de Blasio administration from day one. New York City really cannot afford another four years of mismanagement.

- Lew’s View: Don’t close Rikers Island, by Lew Leone, Fox5.com, April 13, 2017.

2. An American tourist is facing a lengthy prison sentence after a vacation to Turks and Caicos took a drastic turn.

40-year-old Ryan Watson was arrested on April 11 and is now stuck in Turks and Caicos following the ‘accidental’ error.

It all kicked off when he and his wide Valerie attempted to make their return to the United States after a family vacation to the Turks and Caicos Islands.

However, Watson was accused of being in possession of hunting ammo in his carry-on bag, something he claims was an accident and was not done on purpose.

The Transportation Security Administration dictates that firearms must be unloaded and that both the weapon and its ammunition must be included in your checked baggage and cannot be carried on you as you fly.

Upon getting flagged by TSA as he attempted to return home, Watson says he had left the hunting ammunition in his carry-on from a previous trip.

Unfortunately for him, not only was it illegal to travel with said ammo in your carry-on luggage, but the possession of guns and ammunition is highly illegal on the Turks Islands, meaning Watson was in strict violation of the law.

Watson spoke to NBC News ahead of his first court hearing: “I recognized [the ammunition] and thought, ‘what a bonehead mistake. I had no idea that those were in there’.”

Both Ryan and his wife, Valerie, were arrested and put in jail for several days, separated from their two kids who remained in Oklahoma City, the family’s hometown.

While Valerie was allowed to return home with her charges being dropped after 11 days, Ryan was not treated as kindly.

Instead, Ryan will now be subject to a criminal trial in which he could go to prison for up to 12 years.

“When I heard that, I immediately was terrified,” Valerie said in regards to the potential sentence. “We can’t be in prison for 12 years, we have kids at home.”

“We were trying to pack board shorts and flip flops,” Valerie added. “Packing ammunition was not at all our intent.”

- Tourist faces 12 years in jail after making ‘innocent mistake’ at airport on holiday, UNILAD.com, April 24, 2024.

3. US President Donald Trump has some well-known nemeses: illegal immigrants, low-flow showers and last, but definitely not least, the head of the US central bank.

Elevated by Trump to lead the Federal Reserve starting in 2018, Jerome Powell almost immediately found himself under fire – described on social media as a bonehead and questioned about reports that the president wanted him gone.

But however uncomfortable Powell might have been then, his position has only gotten worse.

Not only is he overseeing an economy where the risk of recession is rapidly rising, Trump has been flirting publicly with his removal, writing on social media last week: “Powell's termination cannot come fast enough!”

Coming at a time when Trump has pushed to expand presidential power, while cowing political opponents and ploughing past judicial efforts to check his action, it has raised alarm that he is more serious about, and might be more able to, exert control over the Fed than during his first term.

The tensions cooled this week, when Trump, a day after a market slide that some analysts tied to the comments, denied to reporters that he ever had any intention of firing Powell.

It came amid other hints of de-escalation in Trump’s economic rhetoric as his policies, especially trade tariffs, have faced rising political and business backlash.

But Trump did not offer much assurance that he would limit his interventions at the Fed, maintaining his right to have a view and noting that he might call Powell to discuss his concerns about the bank’s interest rate policy.

…

Trump is hardly the first politician to cast the bank as a scapegoat at a moment of economic turmoil – or to press for lower interest rates.

Nor is he alone in his criticism of Powell, who infamously initially dismissed post-pandemic price inflation as “transitory” and has been faulted for being too focused on backward-looking data.

Trump’s pressure on the bank, however, breaks with Washington tradition in recent decades of presidential deference to the Fed.

It has drawn comparisons to former President Richard Nixon, who pushed his Fed chairman to loosen its policies ahead of the 1972 election, moves later blamed for feeding the high-inflation, low-growth “stagflationary” dynamic of that decade.

The idea that Trump could exert control over the Fed elicits horror among many economists, who say history is littered with examples of countries where political interference at central banks led to spiralling prices and economic ruin.

- Why Trump keeps attacking the US central bank, BBC.com, April 26, 2025.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）