This week in my B&C blog:
November news and book review roundup. LINK/ARCHIVE

My latest B&C Corner:
A report from the National Communication Association convention here in Chicago.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/weblog/041129.html
posted by Nathan at 4:01 PM 0 comments

 
My latest Tribune language column has been postponed to accommodate an illustration; it's actually a longer feature on the controversial history of the name "Windy City." It should run either Friday or next Tuesday; stay tuned.

[The blog was looking a little blah, so I put up this pic as a way to say Happy December! more pics/animation]

Meanwhile, here's a brief I submitted, that didn't run, on haymaker:

Several reports of last week's Pacers-Pistons brawl made the participating pugilists sound like farmers, describing the punches exchanged by players and fans as "haymakers." Over half the results for "haymaker" on a Lexis-Nexis search of the past week refer either to the melee in Detroit or the South Carolina-Clemson football brawl the next day.

What's hay got to do with it? The Online Etymology Dictionary says "haymaker" was probably coined for the punch's "imitation of the wide swinging stroke of a scythe" (which was used to cut hay). According to the Dictionary of American Slang, published in 1967, it originated in boxing. The earliest available citation comes from the National Police Gazette in 1906, posted at www.phrases.org: "One of those ... fellows is going to get the 'haymaker' over on your jaw."

While you don't want to find yourself on the business end of a farm implement, you have less to fear from the analogous punch. Gilbert Odd's 1983 "Encyclopedia of Boxing" defines "haymaker" as "a swinging punch, ususally a right (left for a southpaw), which is inaccurately directed: a wild delivery that comes a long way and is usually used in desperation. It should be easy to avoid."

[Sources note that the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has
"haymaker" in the sense of "a hard swinging blow" dated back to 1902.]

From the OED:

1. A man or woman employed in making hay; esp. one engaged in
lifting, tossing, and spreading the hay after it is mown.

14.. Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker 582/36 Fenissa, a heymakere. 1528 MS. Acc.
St. John's Hosp., Canterb., For mete & drynk for the hay makers. 1590
GREENE Never too late (1600) 103 A womans smile is as good to a Louer,
as a sunshine day to a haymaker. 1770 WESLEY Jrnl. 28 July, A shower
brought all the haymakers home. 1853 LYTTON My Novel I. iii, For the
refreshment of the thirsty haymakers.

Inflections
• Tis the season: DTTW on door buster

n. a discounted item of limited quantity intended to bring customers into a store; a sale of such items; a loss-leader. Also attrib. Categories:
Advertising. Business. English.

Also see ESPN The Magazine on the roots of "boxing ring."

• LL on venti and other verbal concoctions of Starbucks:

[T]he Starbucksian marketeer who came up with the name was probably thinking of the Italian for "twenty". Or "winds", take your pick. Of course, the Italians would use the metric system, and 20 fluid ounces in metric is approximately 591.476 cc, but I don't think that cinque nove uno virgola quattro sette sei is going to make it as a product name. I guess you could round up and call it seicento.

• Ever notice how better can be ambiguous? I asked my wife how she was feeling, and she said, "I'm better." "All better?" I asked? No, but better, she had to explain. It made me realize better is idiomatic here; it really should be "best." After all, you wouldn't say "all stronger."

Update: It gets even crazier. An ad says, "With Nexium, you don't just feel better, you are better. And better is better."

• My sister gave me this notepad for my birthday a couple months ago, just took a picture of it with my new phonecam:




• I also asked my sister, a college student in Ontario, about this excerpt of native Canadian by Geoff Pullum:

"Cripes! Grade thirteen! Here's a loonie -- buy yourself a Coffee Crisp, eh?"

The approved translation is as follows.

"Man, the SAT's! Here's eighty-four cents — buy yourself a Snickers, OK?"

Lisa says: "That was entertaining. I would like to point out that I have never ever
heard the expression "Cripes" in Ontario (or anywhere else). Also, grade
thirteen and OAC's are not equivalent to SAT's. SAT's are tests, OAC's are
classes. They are more like AP courses."

• This adjective and noun phrase in the opening of this Slate's review isn't sitting right with me: "National Treasure, another Nic Cage-starring movie from blow-'em-up producer Jerry Bruckheimer..."

That may make sense--I'm not sure--but I think it's too awkward to be worth it. But I like "blow-'em-up producer." It's as good as the first phrase is bad.

• More from DTWW:

yard sale
n. in skiing or other snow-based sports, a fall or spill; a wipeout. [Perhaps from the appearance of "sporting goods spread out all over the
yard."] Categories: English. Slang. Sports. x

leitkultur
n. mainstream or guiding culture. [German leit 'leading (adj.); leader' +
kultur 'culture'] Categories: Germany. German. x

• I was moved to look up the etymologies of berserk (or beserk, as I thought it was spelled) and hubbub (or hubub, as I thought it was spelled)

berserk
Etymology: Old Norse berserkr, from bjorn bear + serkr shirt
1 : an ancient Scandinavian warrior frenzied in battle and held to be invulnerable
2 : one whose actions are recklessly defiant

hubbub
Etymology: perhaps of Irish origin; akin to Scottish Gaelic ub ub, interj. of contempt

• Etymologies can be deceiving. For example, when I read that feign came from the Latin "fingere," the verb for "shape" (since "feign" means to "fashion an impression or shape an image," as M-W says; figure, effigy, fiction, and figment are cognates), I assumed that this is where finger comes from, too, since we use fingers to give things shape. But it's just a coincidence. From OnEtDc:

finger:
O.E. fingor, from P.Gmc. *fingraz (cf. O.S. fingar, O.N. fingr, Du. vinger, Ger. Finger, Goth. figgrs), with no cognates outside Gmc.; perhaps connected with PIE *pengke, the root meaning "five."

From M-W:
feign \FAYN\ verb
1 : to give a false appearance of : induce as a false impression
2 : to assert as if true : pretend

"Feign" is all about faking it, but that hasn't always been so. In one of its earliest senses, "feign" meant "to fashion, form, or shape." That meaning is true to the term's Latin ancestor: the verb "fingere," which also means "to shape." The current senses of "feign" still retain the essence of the Latin source, since to feign something, such as surprise or an illness, requires one to fashion an impression or shape an image. Several other English words that trace to the same ancestor refer to things that are shaped with either the hands, as in "figure" and "effigy," or the imagination, as in "fiction" and "figment."

• I also wondered if ever was a cognate of aver and very. Nope. At least not at the level of Latin; maybe P.I.E. OnEtDc again:

ever
O.E. æfre, no cognates in any other Gmc. language; perhaps a contraction of a in feore, lit. "ever in life" (the expression a to fore is common in O.E. writings).
aver

aver
c.1380, from O.Fr. averer "verify," from V.L. *adverare "make true, prove to be true," from L. ad- "to" + verus "true"

very
c.1275, verray "true, real, genuine," later "actual, sheer" (c.1390), from Anglo-Fr. verrai, O.Fr. verai "true," from V.L. *veracus, from L. verax (gen. veracis) "truthful," from verus "true," from PIE *weros- (cf. O.E. wær "a compact," Ger. wahr "true"). Meaning "greatly, extremely" is first recorded 1448. Used as a pure intensive since M.E.

• From Michael Wittmer's new book on heaven and worldview (hey, that was my idea!)

Metaphysics ... entered our vocabulary by a fluke of history. The great philosopher Aristotle once gave a series of lectures on the nature of reality. Since these lectures on reality appeared on the shelf after his lectures on physics, one of his students began calling this branch of philosophy "metaphysics," meta being the Greek word for "after." Thus the term "metaphysics" simply means the study of reality.

• Previous column and inflections
posted by Nathan at 3:32 PM 0 comments

 
• Etymology Today from M-W: arduous\AHR-juh-wus\
1 a : hard to accomplish or achieve : difficult *b: marked by great labor or effort : strenuous
2 : hard to climb : steep

"To forgive is the most arduous pitch human nature can arrive at." When Richard Steele published that line in The Guardian in 1709, he was using "arduous" in what was apparently a fairly new way for English writers in his day: to imply that something was steep or lofty as well as difficult. Steele's use is one of the earliest documented in English for that meaning, but he didn't commit it to paper until almost 200 years after the first uses of the word in its "hard to accomplish" sense. Although the "difficult" sense is older, the "steep" sense is very true to the word's origins; "arduous" derives from the Latin "arduus," which means "high" or "steep."

• Previous E.T.

posted by Nathan at 3:31 PM 0 comments

 
And I thought life's big questions were supposed to be hard; all you have to do is click here for "33 Amazing Laws of Success and Prosperity" ...

... or bone up on your Encyclopedia Britannica, like this guy did.
posted by Nathan at 3:29 PM 0 comments

 
What Is This World Coming To deparment:

Paralypian accused of cheating
posted by Nathan at 3:27 PM 0 comments

 
headlines

New Social Security Plan Allows Workers To Put Portion Of Earnings On Favorite Team x

Office-Newsletter Editor Refuses To Back Down x

Childhood Friend Stops Writing After Two E-mails x
posted by Nathan at 3:25 PM 0 comments

 
My B&C blog is idle this week.

My latest Tribune language column:
On the word "co-family" as a replacement for "stepfamily."
temp link/perm.preview

I thought about starting the article with this Paul Reiser joke, but it didn't work out:

Comedian Paul Reiser once joked that there's a greeting card for every possible situation: "From the Three of Us to the Three of You," "From Some of Us to All of You," "From Both of Us to Nobody in Your Area."

[From Reiser's "Couplehood," p. 254:]
I once went up to the guy at the register and said, "You know, a friend of mine just got a job on the same day as his anniversary, and his dog just had puppies, but sadly his grandfather passed away that afternoon. Is there a card that might cover the whole thing?"

He said, "Sure. From the whole family, or just yourself?"

More from Wayne Glowka on euphemisms:

"Undertaker" sounded better than "gravedigger"; perhaps "funeral director" sounds better than "undertaker." "Grief specialist" sounds specious and
certainly more expensive. Whatever the case, there is still a body to
embalm and dispose of in some fashion in the midst of grieving relatives and
friends. When a co-mother tells her co-daughter to quit talking back, the sound of
this conversation will not be improved with the new terms.

Re: gypsy: Dictionary.com lists the American Heritage Dictionary's entry for "gypsy" as its primary definition, identifying gypsies as descendants of migrants from northern India who "have preserved elements of their traditional culture, including an itinerant existence and the Romany language." AHD's fourth entry for "gypsy" is "one inclined to a nomadic, unconventional way of life. A person who moves from place to place as required for employment."

Inflections
• ASD-L says the season's greetings of an ad for Virgin Mobil talks about Chrismahanukwanzakah

• An advisory at woodtv.com for Wednesday's storm predicted that "snow will continue to overspread southern lower Michigan this afternoon."

• Ad for some truck: "Roomier. Brawnier. Versatilier."

• One of Letterman's Top Ten Signs You're Watching A Bad Disaster Movie was ""Explosions" are just crew members shouting, "Pcchewwwww!"" Here's where I wish I knew the IPA, but that spelling doesn't sound much like the usual explosion noises I've made and hear people make. There's a K and an F in there, and some kind of an SH. I was going to try to spell it, but I can't.

• Is this the origin of queen meaning queer? Apparently nasty rumors surrounded King James (of the King James Bible). From Wikipedia: "When James inherited the English Throne in 1603, it was openly joked in London that Rex fuit Elizabeth: nunc est regina Jacobus (Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen)."

• The LRB looks up naughty URLs.

• LL on the excess politeness of writing "X was killed when the SUV he was driving hit a tree."

(Don't you just hate it when the SUV you're driving hits a tree?)

• Language and the Onion:

QUINTER, KS—Sophia Reed, 7, dominated Monday's Family Game Night, thanks in part to her inscrutable Uno face, family members reported. "She'd just sit as quiet as a church mouse, then hit me with a 'draw four wild card,'" said Leo Reed, Sophia's grandfather and Uno opponent.

• The Online Etymology Dictionary's plea for sponsors for certain pages is clever: "Sponsor 'peace'. Give your boyfriend 'lust.' Show your appreciation for 'candy.'"

• If the English subjunctive was dying, the Toronto Sun may have just yanked at its plug, says RC.



Speaking of which, I want to diagram the name of the song from Moulin Rouge that my wife and I danced to at our wedding: "Come What May." I can't figure out if "may" is a subjunctive; is it an auxiliary in a subjunctive construction? I hate my grammatical ignorance.

• ""everynow and then" gets about eight thousand hits" at Google, says ASD-L.

• From FT:

In their extended commentary the editors contend, and the collection demonstrates, that notoriously fissiparous evangelical enthusiasms are, in recent decades, converging in a creedal affirmation of the Great Tradition grounded in Scripture as authoritatively interpreted by the early fathers and councils of the Church.

M-W: fissiparous Etymology: Latin fissus, past participle of findere + English -parous
: tending to break up into parts : DIVISIVE

• "Oh well, right?" my wife said/asked me this morning. I thought that was interesting: using the interjection "oh well" to make the statement "it is not important," then asking me to confirm the statement. Or was she quoting it--"'Oh well,' right?"--as in, "'No pain, no gain,' right?" more

• QT on viz:

QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language (cont'd):

David Pinion, a Los Angeles reader, regarding QT's inclusion of "viz.," i.e., "videlicet," i.e., "it is permitted to see," on a list of commonly confused Latin abbreviations, viz. "i.e.," "e.g." and "viz.," writes:
"Wouldn't 'viz.' be more appropriately placed in the list of commonly confused Latin abbreviations that pertain to lists, i.e., 'i.e.' 'e.g.', 'viz.' and 'et al.'?"
We do seem to have a growing list, viz. "i.e.," "e.g." "viz.," "et al.," etc.

[earlier:]

QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language (cont'd):
J.T., a Milwaukee reader, regarding QT's referring to a common confusion between two Latin abbreviations, i.e., "e.g.," i.e., "exempli gratia," i.e., "for example," and "i.e.," i.e., "id est," i.e., "that is," messages:
"You forgot 'viz.' "
You are referring to "viz.," i.e., "videlicet," i.e., "it is permitted to see," which is not an abbreviation to be followed by an example, e.g., "e.g.," or by a restatement in different words, e.g., "i.e.," but by a complete list of whatever is being written about, e.g., three commonly confused Latin abbreviations, viz. "i.e.," "e.g." and "viz."
A cohort is a group, not a person, by the way.

• DTWW says says there's such a political slang term as if-by-whiskey speech: "southern US regionalism: a speech coming down emphatically on both sides on an issue."

From the days when any good southern politician had a speech of this sort at the ready, concerning his views on spiritus ferminti. Several such passages are of record, of which this is the best. Supposedly from a Mississippi legislator in 1958.

'You have asked me how I feel about whiskey; well, Brother, here's how I stand.

If by whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pits of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.

However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life's great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it.

This is my position, and as always, I refuse to be compromised on matters of principle.'

• Previous column and inflections
posted by Nathan at 1:27 PM 0 comments

 
• Etymology Today from M-W: purlieu\PERL-yoo\
1 : an outlying or adjacent district
2 plural : environs, neighborhood
3 : a frequently visited place : haunt
4 plural : confines, bounds

In medieval England if you were fortunate enough to acquire a new piece of land, you might hold a ceremony called a "perambulation," in which you would walk around and record the boundaries of your property in the presence of witnesses. If your land bordered a royal forest, there might be some confusion about where your land started and the royal forest ended. Luckily, the law said that if you performed a perambulation, you could gain at least some degree of ownership over disputed forest tracts, although your use of them would be restricted by forest laws and royals would probably still have the right to hunt on them. Such regained forest property was called a "purlewe" (or as it was later spelled, "purlieu"), which derives from the Anglo-French word for "perambulation."

• Previous E.T.
posted by Nathan at 1:26 PM 0 comments

 
More from the Sun-Times' QT column:

News Headline: "13-year-old boy charged with abducting exotic dancer."
They grow up so fast, don't they?

From the QT Archive of Knowledge:
*Thirty-two percent of the voters who supported John Kerry have visited Belgium at least once.
*Twenty-six women are older than the world's oldest man.

Supermarket Headline of the Month: "SUPERMARKET LOBSTERS ESCAPE TANK."

earlier:

S.S., a Chicago reader, writes:
"Because the past four years and the election have shown beyond any doubt that President Bush's supporters don't care what he does, but only what he is and says, he now has a rare opportunity to please all the people, if he does what his opponents want."
You know, it just might work.

posted by Nathan at 1:22 PM 0 comments

 
From a column I clipped by Michael Kelly, on why saying something well doesn't make it true:

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way? No, that is exactly wrong. Happy families are wildly, even eccentrically, diverse. But in every unhappy family, as any social worker can tell you, you will likely find the same dreary woes: dead love, physical or psychological brutality, alcoholism, infidelity, poverty.

posted by Nathan at 1:18 PM 0 comments

 
Newsweek's Jonathan Alter on Terrell Owens, Desperate Housewives, and hypocrisy:

First, the good news. If this had happened 20 years ago (and it could have; TV was full of sexual innuendo then, too), all the talk would have been about the interracial coupling of Sheridan and Owens. This time, the hottest of hot buttons in American history-the source of countless lynchings-caused barely a public peep.

posted by Nathan at 1:17 PM 0 comments

 
Wikipedia's Web


posted by Nathan at 1:11 PM 0 comments

 
headlines

White House Thanksgiving Turkey Detained Without Counsel x

FDA Okays Every Drug Pending Approval, Takes Rest Of Year Off x

Pabst Still Coasting On 1893 Blue Ribbon Win
posted by Nathan at 1:08 PM 0 comments

 
Happy Thanksgiving!

From my Thanksgiving post two years ago:

• The menu for the first Thanksgiving dinner included fish, venison, corn, squash, berries, and corn bread. There's no record that turkey was on the table.

• Benjamin Franklin, advocating the turkey as the national bird:

"The Turkey is in comparison a much ore respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America.... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."

More:
• In this morning's Sun-Times, QT spoils your Thanksgiving dinner:

Relish trays contain aflatoxins, benzaldehyde, quercetin glycosides and hydrogen peroxide.
Roast turkey contains heterocyclic amines.
Bread stuffing contains benzo(a)pyrene, furfural and sihydrazines.
Cranberry sauce contains furan derivatives.
Apple pie contains acetaldehyde.
Antacids contain aluminum.
Happy Thanksgiving!

QT also notes that as travelers clog airports today, security personnel are reportedly getting less modest when it comes to "patting down" passengers. "And remember," QT says, "even as you are being patted down, that, even at that moment, the Transportation Security Administration is allowing uninspected cargo onto your airplane."

Seriously, safe travels, all.

Update: from AHD at hmco.com:

turkey

The bird Meleagris gallopavo, commonly known as the turkey and familiar as the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving feast, is a native of the New World. It acquired the name of an Old World country as a result of two different mistakes. The name turkey, or turkey cock, was originally applied to an African bird now known as the guinea fowl (Numida meleagris), which at one time was believed to have originated in Turkey. When European settlers first saw the American turkey, they identified it with the guinea fowl and gave it the name turkey. There are many other examples of this sort of transference of old names to newly encountered species by speakers moving into a new area. In North America, for instance, the large thrush called a robin (Turdus migratorius) is an entirely different bird from the robin of the Old World (Erithacus rubecula), but they both have a breast of a reddish-orange color.

posted by Nathan at 3:09 PM 0 comments

 
This week in my B&C blog: On the decline of expository preaching, as politics and psychology dominate the pulpit. Also: Why Manhattan is good for the environment, the true story behind premium gas and fortune cookies, and more ... LINK/ARCHIVE

Skip to my language column
posted by Nathan at 9:16 PM 0 comments

 
My latest B&C Book of the Week:
Review of Autumn: A Spiritual Biography of the Season.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/bookwk/041115.html

I wanted to use the phrase "fiery folial finery," but I thought that would just be a pile of glop. More on autumn leaves here and here. Another brilliant picture here.
posted by Nathan at 9:12 PM 0 comments

 
My latest Det. Free Press op-ed:
Why I'm a "values voter" and went for Kerry.
http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/ebierm16_20041116.htm

• I got the 8 in 10 stat here, but Christianity Today has a much better breakdown of the "values voters" numbers here. (Also see Slate on why James Dobson must choose either church or state.)

• At the risk of making it look like I'm tooting my own horn (my wife will tell you I do enough of that after we eat at Chipotle), I wanted to pass along some of the e-mail responses I got as a way of exhorting fellow left-leaning Christians to keep the faith. I was stunned that of the over 40 e-mails I received, all but a half-dozen were positive (My favorite negative one was this: "I guess at our local paper in metro Detroit, we ran out of liberals to write columns so we are starting to recruit them from neighboring communities.")

Here are a few fellow bleeding hearts:

- I would like to tell you how heartening it is to know that there are Christians out there who think the same way as my family. After the elections, I did not want to go back to our church and be associated with people who limited their Christianity to 2 issues. It seems the whole country is full of them. I know God is sovereign and in control but I am struggling with the fact that an incompetent person is once again at the helm. ... Let's not stop praying for our country.

- Thank you for putting so simply ... what I have been feeling these many long months about the "Christian values" issue. Somehow it's all gotten twisted around. ... I am passing your article along to others who share my feelings. Regards, Another "2 in 10er"

- I myself am a Christian - attend church every Sunday and Wednesday and actively involved in other church activities- that voted for Kerry. I even felt like the black sheep among my fellow Christians, and questioned myself and prayed on this issue. To me the two big issues that swayed Christians are small issues and are being approached in the wrong way. ... I want to thank you for making me feel that as a Christian, that I did not neccesarly vote wrong when I voted for Kerry.

more

• Some of the negative responses I received said there was a contradiction between my points that values always affect voting but that church and state should be kept separate. I should have clarified that. The difference is this: the institutions of the church and the government should be kept apart (so James Dobson should not seek to be a power-broker in the Republican Party, as he is, and President Bush shouldn't be a figurehead for certain religious groups, as he seems to be). The church must speak truth to power without becoming part of that power. But individual citizens couldn't separate their values (whatever they are) from their voting if they tried.

• I was a little reluctant to publish this op-ed, since some consider it bad form for a journalist to disclose her voting preference (others appreciate it; but since a sizeable majority of those in mainstream media vote Democratic, there isn't much suspense to begin with). If I were a news reporter instead of a features writer, I might not have done it.

My reluctance came from the likelihood that some readers will now dismiss everything I write about anything, since they have successfuly identified me as a member of a vast left-wing conspiracy, an evil empire whose corruption of my cerebral capabilities is so complete that I am unable to put together a single sentence without submitting to it and extending its nefarious influence.

Meanwhile, those who agree with me may presume that I bat for their team and have abandoned any effort to locate wisdom among people with different views. They, too, are wrong.

If you think that either of the above is true, I despair of persuading you that my articles about language and other topics should be read in their own context and on their own merits, rather than as undercover dissemination of an agenda that will either degrade or transfigure America. So I leave it up to you.
posted by Nathan at 9:11 PM 0 comments

 
My latest Tribune language column:
On the fascinating history of the alphabet.
temp link/perm.preview

This was cut:

As a result, C has multiple personalities, changing sounds in the words “critic,” “dance,” “ocean,” “chain,” and “indict”). The letters M, B, and D are the easiest to say, so they're the first sounds out of the mouths of babies ("ma," "ba," and "da"). The sounds "er" and "sh" take them longer to learn.

Also see this chart on various world alphabets.

From the Plain English Campaign, 10/7

Last week we set you the puzzle of trying to work out the abbreviations in the following passage.

"The CoLP COG and the MPS wish to work together to create a DCPCU. The EIDU, in partnership with BDB has been assisting AC SCD with securing s93 or s25 PA funding from APACS and HO once approval has been given from HMC&E regarding the VAT issues."

The answer is as follows.

"The City of London Police Chief Officer Group and the Metropolitan Police Service Management Board wish to work together to create a Dedicated Cheque & Plastic Card Unit. The Events and Income Development Unit, in partnership with Bircham Dyson Bell has been assisting Assistant Commissioner Serious Crime Directorate with securing Section 93 or Section 25 Police Act funding from the Association of Payment and Clearing Services and the Home Office once approval has been given from Her Majesty's Custom & Excise regarding the Value Added Tax issues."

Inflections
• The Daily Show's Ed Helms described the Democracts as "feckless--devoid of feck." M-W: Scots, from feck effect, majority, from Middle English (Sc) fek, alteration of Middle English effect

• Another Comedy Central show, which is animated, is called "Drawn Together."

• A reader asked me about the word triennial. I had to look it up:

M-W:
1 : occurring or being done every three years (the triennial convention)
2 : consisting of or lasting for three years (a triennial contract)

AHD:
ADJECTIVE: 1. Occurring every third year. 2. Lasting three years.
NOUN: 1. A third anniversary. 2. A ceremony or celebration occurring
every three years.

So I advised that treat it like biannual/biennial:

biannual - twice a year
biennial - once every two years

triannual - three times a year
triennial - once every three years

• A CTA infomercial on Windy City TV (trust me, it was better than anything else in prime time last Wednesday after West Wing) referred to bus drivers as bus operators.
Who in the world--outside of CTA headquarters--actually calls them "bus operators"?

• From wordcrafter:

Vixen is one of extraordinarily few words beginning with v which comes from Old English, rather than a foreign tongue, typically French or Latin. (The only others are vane and vat.)
Also, though the names for this animal (a fox if male but a vixen if female) seem related, but why do they begin with different constants? Which led to the other, and why? The root of these oddities is the region dialects of southern England, where folk tend to pronounce an initial "unvoiced fricative" as a "voiced fricative". Putting that in ordinary terms, an s is pronounced z, and an f is pronounced v, at the start of a word. For example, the locals in Somerset will pronounce that name 'Zomerzet'. The word fat became vat, and the Germanic word fahne = flag became vane. In Old English, the feminine of fox was fyxe or fyxen, which the southern dialect converted to vixen. These three words are the only such bits of such dialect that have worked their ways into standard English.

• Two interesting words posted recently at DTWW (I especially love the second one):

king v. among graffiti artists, to (pervasively) paint one’s name or symbol (throughout an area); to own an area through tagging or bombing. link [Is this like checkers? "King me!"]

unass v. to dismount or disembark (a vehicle); to get off of (something); to unseat (someone); to leave (somewhere). link

• Nicholas Kristof quoted the following in a recent column:

"When a Texas governor, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, barred the teaching of foreign languages about 80 years ago, saying, 'If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for us.'"

ASD-L says there's no evidence for this quote, though there is for a related quote from a different person. more (at bottom of page)

• Previous column and inflections
posted by Nathan at 7:33 PM 0 comments

 
New Yorker moview review links I want to save: Anthony Lane on Wicker Park, Motorcycle Diaries, P.S., Enduring Love, and The Incredibles; David Denby on I Heart Huckabees, Vera Drake, Sideways, and Ray.
posted by Nathan at 7:24 PM 0 comments

 
10 so-called bright ideas from the London Guardian:

1. The Environmental IQ: profiling the impact of products
2. Hibernation Day: an international duvet day for the world
3. Fame Lottery: people get their 15 minutes, money goes to charity
4. A city/country house swap network to house everyone efficiently
5. Lottery entry slips to have a tick box for 10% to charity
6. A proportion of defence spending to tackle the causes of terrorism
7. Heavy parking fines (but only for persistent transgressors)
8. Charging the candidates for political apathy
9. A focused eco-tax on using animals in product marketing
10. Using cartoons to assess middle management problems
more ...

Also from the Guardian: superstitions of the British isles
posted by Nathan at 7:22 PM 0 comments

 
I hope lightning from heaven strikes whoever actually wrote about God's comeback in a headline about election and religion:

Religion plays new election role
God's comeback changes interplay between hopefuls
posted by Nathan at 7:20 PM 0 comments

 
Three years. I started this blog on November 14, 2001, as an intern at the Chicago Journal. So many links, so much ... junk, really, though I've tried to keep things substantive here. Of course, I've since started a blog at booksandculture.com, and so it's rather unseemly to ask people to read two blogs now. For that reason--and for the principle of it--I'm determined to do less blogging and more reading in the next 3 years.

It won't be easy. Addictions die gradually.
posted by Nathan at 7:16 PM 0 comments

 
The post to end all posts
Here lie links I don't want to lose but don't want to clog my bookmarks folder, either. They go to show that for all the compulsive instaneity of blogs, sometimes the most worthwhile links are to longer and older pieces of writing.

Skip this

• 2Blowhards on bestseller lists, Mozart's economics, and Frank Lloyd Wright

• Alfred Bierstadt paintings

• Archaelogy interview with Robin Lane Fox, classics scholar and advisor to the film Alexander.

• Atlantic Monthly on truth and articulation, the computer delusion, Annie Dillard on appalling fecundity, the Market as God, the moral state of marriage, the state of America in 1987, Guglielmo Ferrero in 1913 on the riddle of America, and David Brooks on democratic elitism

• The Australian on Shakespeare

• Banner of Truth archive; pedestrian lives and glorious destiny

• The BBC on a ride in the clouds of Eritrea

• Beliefnet on Science and Religion: The New Convergence; Gregg Easterbrook on secular humanism; Alan Wolfe on Rick Santorum.

• Blogistan Theology blog

• Books&Culture: C. Stephen Evans on Kierkegaard, jottings on back of movie poster

• Book Magazine on the lives of fiction writers

• Boston Globe on the no-kids movement

• Brain, Child on what motherhood does to you

• Brad DeLong review of Guns, Germs and Steel

• Brookings Review on Russia's geography and economics and trends in math

• BrothersJudd.com review of Nickel and Dimed

• Butterflies&Wheels on postmodernism and truth

• ByFaithOnline Paul in Athens; Do Not Be Conformed

• California State's Michael Foucault pages

• Calhoun Community College on Southern Literature and Culture

• Calvin College exhibit: Religious Observation within American Protestant Homes; Lewis Smedes obit and links

• Calvin Institute of Christian Worship on justice in worship and Neal Plantinga on Isaiah 60

• Calvin Theological Journal: John Bolt on common grace and civic good

• CBS News on online searches for classmates
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/05/60II/main552363.shtml

• Center of Theological Inquiry on Einstein and God (more here and here); Stanley Hauerwas on Bonhoeffer; Moltmann on Western values; N.T. Wright on Paul and Caesar

• Chicago Reader's Straight Dope column on butlers in whodunits, deja vu, the hiccups, the right to bear arms
and more

• Chicago Tribune on Dave Eggers, Julia Keller's Pulitzer

• Chimes on Grand Rapids sports

• Christian History on the Reformation and the sola scriptura principle, Calvin and missions

• Christianism bibliography; NT history

• Christianity Today on the definition of an evangelical, tradition vs Scripture, why not to imitate Christ, Robert Bellah and the sociology of religion, why God loves baseball, Philip Yancey on the need for gracious evangelicalism and holy sex

• Christian Science Monitor on how a bullet started a friendship in South Africa

• Christian Thinktank on the soul; women in Paul's epistles

• Chronicle of Higher Education on the economics of government help for the poor, the study of emotions, Shakespeare and pop culture, Is grad school a cult?

• Comment on the next neo-Calvinism; our civic ties; CCO Jubilee on Kupyer

• C.S. Lewis links index and book synopses; quotes from The Weight of Glory. More apologetics links

• Dead Poets Society script

• Debra Rienstra's Great With Child reviews

• Democracy in America text

• Detroit News on malls and 'lifestyle centers', Billy Sunday, more Detroit history

• DoHistory's Martha Ballard's diary

• The Economist on the homosexuality in the 19th century (more), review of The Earth: An Intimate History
on eBay

• Elliott Bay Booknotes on books on deserts, on indep bookstores (more)

• ESPN.com on athletes and video games

• FAA.gov on bird strikes and migration patterns

• First Things on the history of moral philosophy, Jane Austen and theology

• Flak on sports franchises and economic development

• Forbes on neuroscience and marketing

• Founders.org on evangelism and Calvinism

• Gadfly on a day in the life of a Parisian cafe

• Geoff Nunberg's timeline of the history of information

• G.K. Chesterton quotes

• Good Will Hunting script draft

• Globalization bibliography

• GreenwichMeanTime.com on the uses of GMT

• The Guardian Beethoven's lover, Google tricks, on Chekhov, reviews of Space Between Our Ears, Our Shadowed Present, Living With a Writer, Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life, Myths We Live By, Unbearable Lightness of Being

• Haddon Robinson sermons

• Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Suit (1837)

• Hornes.org on a Calvinist Christmas

• HUD on West Michigan regional activity

• Hudson Review on Ovid

• Human Nature Review on evolutionary psychology

• Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty

• James Lileks on political lumping and a day in his life

• John Ellis blog

• James Wood on John Updike, on beauty, on J.M. Coetzee

• Jonathan Harwell links

• Kalamazoo's historic buildings

• Lawrence Crowl on the naming of the months (more here, here, here, here, here, and here)

• LinksNorth.com on the history of Canada

• Linguistix on the relationship between knowledge and understanding

• The London Review of Books on Pattern Recognition, conjoined twins, the history of touch and power, the politics of sin in American history, Left Behind, and Terry Eagleton on The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

• Mad About You finale script

• Martin Marty on Christianity and Literature and Irony and Religion

• MaryLaine.com's neat new Net stuff

• Matrix review essays here, here and here

• Melbourne Age on sex in the suburbs

• Michigan History back issues

• Monty Python scripts

• NPR's Fresh Air interviews with Simpsons writers and actors

• The New Criterion on Hugh Kenner (more) and the role of the critic

• The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (contents)

• The New Republic: Richard Posner on Sherlock Holmes

• New York magazine Michael Wolff archive; David Denby on Wag the Dog

• New York Observer Jason Gay archive

• New York Review of Books on gays and genes, Mark Twain, history of masturbation, review of Nature via Nurture

• New York Times on its font change; series: six months in the life of a NYC classroom; how non-profits are benefiting from post-bust dot-com real estate vacancies; air passengers carrying on meals; strangers carpooling; cellphone towers in church steeples; writing students expecting hollywood offers; anniversary of NASDAQ peak; faith vs. reason; virtual museums; more on museums; the metaphors of football; A.O. Scott on the history of sex research; Peter Steinfels on Walter Rauschenbusch and the social gospel; review of Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps; review of James Wood's Book Against God

• New Yorker on traffic; the history of childhood; Tocqueville (more); Stanley and Livingstone; James Wood on God's Secretaries; scandals at the NY Times and CBS News (more); Roger Angell on the Red Sox' championship; Richard Wilbur's poetry; writer's block; Desperate Housewives; Nicholas Lemann on hatred of the media

• Nietzsche's second "Untimely Meditation," review

• Ohio U on agenda-setting and the media

• Oregon State's Daniel Taylor on Roman coins

• Oxford American back issues

• Religion-online.org link

• Philosophy Now on Charlie Brown as an existentialist

• Plus on why cars in the next lane go faster

• Policy Review author index; Martha Nussbaum and the cosmopolitan illusion; Mark Bowden on the transcontinental railroad; review of Elizabeth Cohen's A Consumer's Republic

• Poynter Institute on the New York Times Book Review

• Positionem on the Pruitt-Igoe projects

• Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation link

• Public Culture articles

• Raleigh News-Observer: Yanet Shimron on Stanley Hauerwas

• Reason on All Culture, All the Time

• Rebecca Mead on Sophie's World

• Read recently by Fernando Gouvêa

• Reformed Reading List by R. Scott Clark / more

• Religious Thought in the West bibliography

• Richard Rorty on fascism in postmodernism

• Robert Putnam on the Strange Disappearance of Civic America

• Salon: Anne Lamott archive; Confessions of a semi-successful author

• San Diego Union-Tribune on Detroit's Comerica Park

• San Jose State on Inductive vs Deductive reasoning

• Scientific American on The Brain in Love

• Seattle Post-Intelligencer: blog

• Seattle Times: Life today would seem a fantasy in 1900

• Slate on secular life ceremonies; media bias; review of A&E's 'Airline'; voice-over voices

• SNPP.com on The Simpsons as social satire

• Smithsonian on Rockwell Kent; the history of American transportation

• Sports Illustrated Steve Rushin archive/Cheatin' Hearts; sports smells; World Series archive

• Sports Night scripts

• Stanley Fish on academic administration

• Sydney Morning Herald on personal ads

• StretcherBearers.com review of Paul Tournier's Meaning of Persons

• San Francisco Chronicle on older bachelors

• This American Life Shoulda Been Dead

• TimPorter.com on the nature of journalism/more

• Tom Wolfe's Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died

• Touchstone: Alan Jacobs on the Apocalypse

• UR Chicago on keeping the faith

• USA Today on the 10 hardest things to do in sports, minorities becoming majority in more U.S. areas

• U of Virginia on The Puritan Tradition and American Memory

• Virginia Postrel on Dallas megachurches and other D Mag Spaces columns; consumption patterns in an experience economy

• The Washington Post on the burst of the baby boomer bubble; profile of Lloyd Nance, USDA grader; abuse of indigenous Saskatchewanians; a football team as the soul of a Montana town/review of The Meaning of Sports; More being treated for depression; ad placement in video games; Paul Theroux on The Writing Life; profile of John Updike; Jay Rosen on What Liberal Media?; newsless networks; the Google-ization of the world; ping-pong; Annapolis politics; Michael Kinsley on the future of capitalism

• Washington University course on Information Research Strategies in History

• WBUR's The Connection on Marshall McLuhan

• The Week on how Google and eBay conquered the world

• Washington Monthly on courtship

• Wired News on the sorry state of e-books; blogging Alzheimers patients
posted by Nathan at 7:10 PM 0 comments

 
Books I would read if I had nine lives:

• The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer

• History of Reading in the West by Chartier and Cavallo

• Conspicuous criticism : tradition, the individual, and culture in American social thought, from Veblen to Mills by Christopher Shannon (more)

• Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Dayby G.J. Whitrow

• Rome Is Love Spelled Backward: Enjoying Art and Architecture in the Eternal Cityby Judith Anne Testa

• Public Life in Renaissance Florence

• Taboo, Truth, and Religion: Selected Writings (Methodology and History in Anthropology , Vol 2) by Steiner et al.

• Medieval Civilization, 400-1500 by Jacques Le Goff

• Missing Persons: A Critique of the Social Sciences (Wildavsky Forum , No 1)
by Mary Douglas

• Is the Market Moral?: A Dialogue on Religion, Economics, and Justice (The Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion and Public Life) by Rebecca M. Blank and William McGurn (
also: The Mind and the Market)

• Anthropology of Media (Blackwell reader) by Askew et al.

• The National Gallery of Canada: Ideas, Art, Architecture by Douglas Ord

• Source Book of American Architecture: 500 Notable Buildings from the 10th Century to Present by G.E. Kidder Smith

• You Have to Pay for the Public Life: Selected Essays of Charles W. Moore

• Utopia and Reality: Modernity in Sweden 1900-1960 by Windenheim and Rudberg

• Amazon list: Reformation Theology

• The Greatest Stories Never Told by Rick Beyer

• Amazon list: books on Indiana

Added:
• History of Listening
• Intro to Italian Poetry
• Literary Book of Economics
• Simpsons and Society
• Writing Material : Readings from Plato to the Digital Age
posted by Nathan at 7:09 PM 0 comments

 
Now that this blog has veered in a linguistic direction (and now that I've outed myself as a Kerry voter--although I remain committed to looking for sense on both sides), it's time to retire this blog's slogan ...

Random Curiosity. Ideological Ambivalence. Purposeful Diversion.

... Aggrandizement:

"Thought-provoking ... worth viewing."
Chicago magazine online / more

... and "About" blurb:

About this blog:
My weblog is primarily my personal scrapbook for clipping articles and keeping track of story ideas. It is also meant to reflect three asssumptions and observations about the media: 1) The most important and interesting news is usually just below the media's radar. There is no such thing as a "news cycle" in the real world--only the constant daily drama of people's lives and the fascinating dynamics of culture.
more
2) Rather than ghettoizing news into sections, the media should promote and satisfy broad curiosity about the world, seeking to connect not with consumers in categories, but with readers in general.
3) The media must find the balance between personal voice and public responsibility. Newspapers are typically dry and lifeless, blogs are typically pointless personal or political bloviating. There is a place for personal analysis written with voice, so long as it is wise, balanced, and humbly provocative. more

Also, you can never have too many B&C banners:

posted by Nathan at 7:04 PM 0 comments

 
headlines

Ashcroft Loses Job To Mexican

Domineering Wife Specifically Said 'Chunk-Style' Pineapple

Local Life-Insurance Salesman A Catalog Of Horrific Sudden-Death Scenarios x

Opinion: What Happens At Yucca Mountain Stays At Yucca Mountain x
posted by Nathan at 6:56 PM 0 comments

 
This week in my B&C blog: A roundup of recent articles on philosophy and reason in America today, including the Sopranos-and-Philosophy craze. LINK/ARCHIVE
posted by Nathan at 2:49 PM 0 comments

 
My latest Tribune language column:
On a new kind of sentence fragment in TV newscasting: so-called "ing-lish." Plus: Overheard on Election Night; Tom Brokaw's pronunciation.

temp link/perm.preview

My closing line on "ing-lish" was cut:

For the viewer already dizzy from all the news crawls, instant online polls and ever-shrinking sound bites, it's getting harder to tell the difference between what has happened, what is happening, and what will or may happen in the future. These days, everything seems to be happening at once.

However, if you really dig grammar (God bless you!), you know that this line, and my line about "putting everything in the present," are regrettably misleading. Absolute phrases and gerunds have NO tense--they are non-finite, since they do not specify tense, agent, and number. There's a good, clear breakdown of this at I.G.O.E. My English professor's more thorough explanation is here. He adds a few common absolute phrases:
"all things considered, all other things being equal, God willing..."

This essay at News Lab and this PBS segment suggest the phenomenon has something to do with "dropping the verb," but in fact only the auxiliary verb ("is," "have been," etc.) is dropped; the verb remains in something resembling absolute form.

More on newsspeak here and on Election Night here. Transcript of CNN's 7 p.m. hour of Election Night here. The Seattle Times on how the media can get it right next time. And more Ratherisms.

I was really interested by David Gergen's "locust of lawyers." Here's more:
locusts

United Press International
October 15, 2004 Friday
HEADLINE: Analysis: Will lawyers decide the vote?
BYLINE: By MICHAEL KIRKLAND
Like a biblical plague of locusts, lawyers are gathering by the thousands at the call of the Democratic and Republican parties to handle voting-related court challenges both before and after the Nov. 2 presidential election.

Election Integrity At Stake
By George F. Will
Sunday, October 24, 2004;
Today's worry concerns a cloud of locust-like lawyers asserting novel theories that purport to demonstrate that sensible rules, such as requiring voters to have identification, are illegal, even unconstitutional. This locust litigation will erupt around any close election -- any not won beyond "the margin of litigation." link

CNN:
GERGEN: What the attorneys will be looking for is the same thing the monitors will be looking for. And both sides will have them out in force. As George Will called them, the locust of lawyers.

Inflections:

• Slogan of the Nader campaign, qtd in the Chi.Tribune: Bush and Kerry make me want to Ralph.

• "'Wal-Mart Republicans' is probably more accurate [than "Religious Right"], given that Bush's majority was built up in the same kinds of small communities where the world's largest retailer thrives." x

• "I have to admit that I am a little confused by all this talk of 'man date' by Republican leaders in the days since the election. I thought they were opposed to same-sex fooling around." x (more on mandate)

• This was from a rerun of either Seinfeld or Sex in the City, I forget which:

To boyfriend: "Here's the thing."
Bf: "Oh no, not the thing! I hate the thing."

• A word from WorldWideWords I want to save: sonofusion

• My wife spotted a flyer nailed to a phone pole that said "Found: Lost Cat." "It's not really lost anymore, is it?" she observed. On the other hand, the alternative is posting a flyer that says: "Found: Cat That Had Been Lost At The Time We Found It But As Of Its Finding Is No Longer Lost"

• Someone found this blog by doing a search for the architect of the "ifill tower." (I had posted a quote from the debate moderated by Gwen Ifill, and said something somewhere about a tower, so voila.) I wonder if that surname was originally someone's attempt to name their family after the famous landmark? I doubt it; the name is probably older than the tower.

• "If "The Incredibles" did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them," wrote the Tribune. This is approaching cliche territory, suggests a quick search for "If x did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him/her/them."

• Googling my name (everyone's entitled now and then), I found this post from a Lon Bierma, my relation to whom (if any) I don't know.

From: Lon Bierma
Subject: Words with Opposite Meanings
Sigmund Freud speculated that language may have first developed with one word representing both one thing and its opposite. He cited several examples but let's use the word 'day'. Day can be used to represent both day and night or only daylight. Picture two people without a language trying to communicate the meaning of day and night as they watched the sun rise or set. It is easy to see how one word would suffice. Freud also pointed out that when we hear a concrete word our minds immediately jump to its opposite. Try it on friends. When you say black the first word to come to their minds will be white. Same with up/down, hot/cold, etc.

• Previous column and inflections
posted by Nathan at 2:46 PM 0 comments

 
• Etymology Today from M-W: nexus \NEK-sus\
1 : connection, link; also : a causal link
2 : a connected group or series
3 : center, focus

"Nexus" is all about connections. The word comes from "nectere," a Latin verb meaning "to bind." A number of other English words are related to "nectere." The most obvious is "connect," but "annex" (meaning "to attach as an addition," or more specifically "to incorporate into a political domain") is related as well. When "nexus" came into English in the 17th century, it meant "connection." Eventually, it took on the additional meaning "connected series" (as in "a nexus of relationships"). In the past few decades it has taken a third meaning: "center" (as in "the trade nexus of the region"), perhaps from the notion that a point in the center of an arrangement serves to join together the objects that surround it.

• Previous E.T.
posted by Nathan at 2:41 PM 0 comments

 
Red and Blue America? Nope

-

From Slate:

George Bush is already proclaiming a mandate, for chrissakes. If the narrow margin of victory in this election had swung the other way, does anyone doubt for a moment that an army of Republican surrogates would have immediately fanned out to the shouting-head shows to argue, until they were collectively blue in the face, that the election of John Kerry was nothing more than a statistical fluke that certainly carried with it no greater meaning?

"I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals."
- George W. Bush, 11/4/04

Now that's conciliatory!

"How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?"

-headline in London's Daily Mirror.

It's not just the 59 million--we're all stupid, says Jason Keglowitz.

Not Quite 'Dewey Defeats Truman':

posted by Nathan at 2:35 PM 0 comments

 
'Tis the season--yes, already--for Christmas decorations. I did this brief for Chicago Tribune Magazine last year:

Q: ARE RETAILERS STILL PUTTING UP CHRISTMAS DISPLAYS EVER EARLIER?

A: We used to consider stores jumping the gun if they did it before Thanksgiving. Now they seem to start closer to Halloween. But there's little uniformity. Marshall Field's reports its holiday decorations went up chain-wide on the first weekend in November, a la the past 50 years. Bloomingdale's followed two weeks later, same as last year (but its New York flagship decorated a week later than in '02). Many Mag Mile mainstays waited until the Festival of Lights parade on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. And Nordstrom's brags that it waits untill the day after Thanksgiving.

Nationally, most stores started their holiday decorating on Nov. 1, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. "That's been pretty consistent for the past five years," said a spokesman. But Russell Salzman, president of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Assn., says the long-term trend has stores inching into October. "I'm sensing stores are looking to extend the holiday shopping season," he says. "Over the past 10 years, decorations have been going up earlier and coming down later." Longer or not, this holiday season is expected to bring a 5 percent jump in spending over last year, according to the National Retail Federation. That would lighten our wallets by more than $217 billion.
12/14/03

My column on Christmas Web sites
posted by Nathan at 2:30 PM 0 comments

 
"If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
-Yogi Berra
posted by Nathan at 2:24 PM 0 comments

 
Posted without comment...

For a leap of faith, that's the breaks

Devin Rose
Chicago Tribune
October 31, 2004

My aunt is finding her new church surprisingly entertaining. She recently told of a sermon that left the youth minister in stitches--literally.

Young and exuberant, he bounded across the stage of the sanctuary one Sunday with a gleam in his eye, preaching the power of faith.

"I have so much faith," he exclaimed, "that I know I would be OK if I were to leap into the congregation right now, because my brothers and sisters would catch me."

To prove his point, he leapt.

His brothers and sisters didn't catch him.

Instead, panicked by the body hurtling toward them, they parted like the Red Sea.

The young preacher emerged with cuts and a broken collarbone, and, surely, a touch of wounded pride.

But his faith was unshaken--as he told it later, God might be teaching him not to take himself too seriously.

posted by Nathan at 2:18 PM 0 comments

 
Is this true?

The wretches who roam around aimlessly in gangs and kill people by throwing stones from a highway bridge or setting fire to a child--whoever these people are--turn out this way not because they have been corrupted by computer "new-speak" (they don't even have access to a computer) but rather because they are excluded from the universe of literature, and from those places where, through education and discussion, they might be reached by a glimmer from the world of values that stems from and sends us back again to books. -Umberto Eco, On Literature

Last month was National Novel Writing Month. Yeah, like there aren't enough poorly written novels around.

Napoleon was, in writing, at least, quite the Romeo, according to the new book The Linguist and The Emperor:

I have awakened full of you. The memory of last night has given my senses no rest... Sweet and incomparable Josephine, what an effect you have on my heart! I sent you thousands of kisses---but don't kiss me. Your kisses sear my blood. p26

posted by Nathan at 1:56 PM 0 comments

 


David Flemming, Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. link
posted by Nathan at 1:52 PM 0 comments

 
G.K. Chesterton on journalism:

We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, “Mr. Wilkinson still safe” or “Mr. Jones, of Worthing, not dead yet.” link

posted by Nathan at 1:49 PM 0 comments

 
headlines

Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich x

Kerry Captures Bin Laden One Week Too Late x

Nation's Wildlife Fleeing To Canada

Self-Help Book Believes It Can Be A Bestseller Someday x

wdyt:
"Our nation may be bitterly divided, but at least our government can agree on being ultra-conservative."

"Now that the Republicans run Congress, the White House, and soon the Supreme Court, they'll just have to invent some new branches of government to dominate, as well."

"The fact that 48 percent of Americans voted for a boring placeholder like John Kerry is actually a really good sign for the Left."
posted by Nathan at 1:43 PM 0 comments