SYDNEY, Australia - A pulsing heart of red lights shone from Sydney’s Harbor Bridge early Sunday as tens of thousands watched fireworks ushering in the new year. Revelers around the world began partying, visited places of worship and gathered with family to welcome 2006. AP
The IVR ("Interactive Voice Response") Cheat Sheet: a simple list of the keypad numbers you have to press in order to reach an actual human being when you call the customer service line of different companies and government agencies. ...
America First 800-999-3961 0 or say "member services"
American Express 800-528-4800 0 repeatedly
American Funds 800-421-0180 Press 0.
AMSouth Bank 800-267-6884 When the recording starts, press 111-0000. This is seven digits, like a phone number.
more...
About the Collection...
This online, edited collection explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog communities. Such a project requires a multidisciplinary approach, and contributions represent perspectives from Rhetoric, Communication, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Education, among others.
Power Surge: Writing-Rhetoric Studies, Blogs, and Embedded Whiteness
Kathleen Ethel Welch, University of Oklahoma
Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture
Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman, University of Minnesota
Geography of the Blogosphere: Representing the Culture, Ecology and Community of Weblogs
Nicholas Packwood, Wilfrid Laurier University
The arrival of Amarantine, currently No. 10 on the Billboard album chart, is a reminder that Enya is one of the savviest operators in the music business and, well, an original. Twenty years ago, no one dreamed that there would be a huge audience for an ethereal female vocalist singing pseudo-classical airs with misty mystical overtones—-and Enya remains the genre's only practitioner. No one has even tried to imitate her.
For centuries, the tusk of the narwhal has fascinated and baffled. ... Scientists have long tried to explain why a stocky whale that lives in arctic waters, feeding on cod and other creatures that flourish amid the pack ice, should wield such a long tusk. The theories about how the narwhal uses the tusk have included breaking ice, spearing fish, piercing ships, transmitting sound, shedding excess body heat, poking the seabed for food, wooing females, defending baby narwhals and establishing dominance in social hierarchies. But a team of scientists from Harvard and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has now made a startling discovery: the tusk, it turns out, forms a sensory organ of exceptional size and sensitivity, making the living appendage one of the planet's most remarkable, and one that in some ways outdoes its own mythology. NY Times
Recent New Yorker cartoons: 
John Wilson and his magazine (disclosure: my former part-time employer) embody the kind of writing he speaks of in the last line here--the kind that appeals to "a diverse band of intellectually curious readers...":It's fashionable to speak of "academic" writing with reflexive disdain. Certainly many books that proceed from the university presses merit such dismissiveness. But others are first-rate, and among these are many that deserve to be noticed not only by scholars within a particular academic sub-field but also by a wide and diverse band of intellectually curious readers both inside and outside the groves of academe.
More from NPR (whose picture this is; lawyers, stand down), including a video clip of the opening scene.
For whatever reason, the only three movies I think I've seen more than 5 times are Sound of Music, Field of Dreams, and Dave. Maybe also Hot Shots Part Deux.
Thank you, capitalist, corporate, conservative America, for a high standard of living in the world, for the best health care in the world, and for being able to sleep at night
Cities are collective works of art, and New Orleans is one of America's masterpieces -- a delectable multicultural gumbo whose value is only more pronounced in a nation where the same stores, banks and malls make every place feel like every other place.
For that reason alone, the much-hyped "should we rebuild New Orleans?" debate is preposterous. Of course we should save New Orleans. To abandon it would be like Italy abandoning Venice. Besides, anybody who sets foot in this town knows that the best parts of New Orleans don't need to be rebuilt. They're still there.
You could hold a Mardi Gras parade tomorrow in the bone-dry French Quarter. The modern office towers and hotels of the central business district, graceless though they are, remain standing, poised to resume their role as hubs of commerce. Some of the city's extraordinary neighborhoods, such as the Garden District, with its white-columned antebellum mansions, came through the storm with little more than downed trees.
As so often with Kees, the most needling line is the plainest: “I did not know them then.” What a fine balance it strikes, implying both “my childhood was happy, since you ask, kept away from such mortal things,” and also, “how little I knew of the world—a world we ought to know—and of the damage it can wreak.” ...
More than half the poems falter and fail, either because they try too hard (“Can you hear the worthless morning’s mirth?”) or because they lunge disastrously at the surreal (“Impromptu unicorns enact ballets, / Applauded by bourgeoisie in negligée”). Still more of them are so profoundly in hock to the work of Kees’s masters that they barely evince any vital signs of their own. The wistful imperative of “Put on your hat, put on your gloves. / But there isn’t any love, there isn’t any love” could be issued only by someone whose bedside table creaked with too much Auden and MacNeice, while the debt to Eliot collapses into blatant homage... continued...
[Kahn] explains that “despite a widespread belief to the contrary, objective studies indicate that even though the amount of human tragedy would be greatly increased in the postwar world, the increase would not preclude normal and happy lives for the majority of survivors and their descendants.” For many readers, this has seemed pathologically insensitive. But these readers are missing Kahn’s point. His point is that unless Americans really do believe that nuclear war is survivable, and survivable under conditions that, although hardly desirable, are acceptable and manageable, then deterrence has no meaning. You can’t advertise your readiness to initiate a nuclear exchange if you are unwilling to accept the consequences.
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About the only original thing I've heard or read about the latest Pat Robertson eruption is by my former Chimes colleague Brian Bork. Quoth he:
In my estimation, Pat Robertson is just the "tails" side of a coin whose "head" is the portrait of a Paris Hilton. They are essentially similar pieces of cultural effluvia: both are famous, but no one can really concieve the reason why, both demand an undue amount of cognitive energy because of their ubiquitous cultural presence, both have achieved notoriety via visual media. ... Both also seem to espouse their own peculiar and bat-shit insane brand of morality - morality that few among us can identify with, but nevertheless seem enamoured by it all.
My latest Tribune column:
My latest Tribune column:To be sure, George W. Bush was hated. He had been the object of a startling amount of contumely during his first term of office, a phenomenon that had already occasioned much comment in the public prints.
I had a few interesting language notes from Kenya I thought you might enjoy. First, most educated Kenyans speak excellent English but they can be rather lazy about it, for example they tend to conjugate all past tense verbs with the -ed ending. So something was not 'brought' to you, it was "bringed" to you. There have also been some unique…word shifts. When you ask what they had (have-ed) for breakfast they might respond “A slice of loaf.” At the end of a student chapel the speaker had everyone give a high five and say, “keep the loose.” And my favorite is one from the ‘native’ Kiswahili language, mostly because this one pulls at some cultural strings: when you ask someone how they are doing there are only two responses, and both mean good. You MUST respond in the affirmative. You often hear people complain about how Americans just say “I’m fine,” and don’t tell the truth when they may be having a rather bad day. But here, you MUST say you’re fine…so how are you doing today? I’m good, my Grandma died, I failed my test, and my goats ran away.
babymoon
n. a planned period of calm spent together by a just-born baby and its
parents; occasionally, time spent by parents without their baby. [Sheila
Kitzinger claims to have coined the word.] Categories: English.
But the parade of broadcast journalists - the well known and the up and coming - that has been dispatched to South Asia during the last two weeks to cover the aftermath of the tsunami represents more than an extraordinary response to an unfathomable catastrophe halfway around the world. The tsunami also struck at a critically important moment in the careers of three star anchors - Brian Williams of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN - who each traveled to the region to lead hours of coverage last week.
3. Weird Words: Janus-faced
Having two contrasting aspects.
The name of the Roman god Janus comes from Latin "ianua", an
entrance gate. He was the god of doorways and gateways; as doors
can be passed in either direction, he came to represent both the
past and the future. Because of that, his image was of a man with
two faces, looking both forwards and backwards. The Romans always
put Janus first in prayers, because in particular he symbolised
beginnings. But he could also represent success or failure,
especially in war. He was the god of January, whose name comes from
him (in Latin "Januarius (mensis)", the month of Janus), which had
become the first month of the Roman calendar probably some time in
the second century BCE. A person who is "Janus-faced" has two
contrasting aspects and in particular is two-faced or deceitful.
Israel Zangwill wrote a century ago that "Life is Janus-faced, and
the humourist invests his characters with a double mask; they stand
for comedy as well as for tragedy." A "Janus-faced word" is a
contronym, a word like "cleave" that has two opposing meanings.
-From WW Words/more
janitor
A holiday for janitors ought to take place in January, for the two words are linked. In Latin, ianus was the word for "archway, gateway, or covered passage" and also for the god of gates, doorways, and beginnings in general. As many schoolchildren know, our month January - a month of beginnings - is named for the god. Latin ianitor, the source of our word janitor and ultimately also from ianus, meant "doorkeeper or gatekeeper." Probably because ianitor was common in Latin records and documents, it was adopted into English, first being recorded in the sense "doorkeeper" around 1567 in a Scots text. In an early quotation Saint Peter is called "the Janitor of heaven." The term can still mean "doorkeeper," but in Scots usage janitor also referred to a minor school official. Apparently this position at times involved maintenance duties and doorkeeping, but the maintenance duties took over the more exalted tasks, giving us the position of janitor as we know it today.
QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language
(cont'd):
News Item: ". . . widespread commercialization is
literally just around the corner. . . ."
News Item: ". . . more tough times are literally just
around the corner. . . ."
News Item: ". . . an eruption is literally just around
the corner. . . ."
News Item: ". . . with a session of the Georgia
General Assembly literally just around the corner. . .."
Be careful next time you walk down the street.
Why all the celebratory stories every January about which baby was born first in the calendar year? The coolest baby--the one entitled to the most huzzahs upfront -- is the last one born before the clock strikes 12 the night of Dec. 31. That baby gives his parents a tax deduction for all of last year even though he was in the womb for all but the last few minutes of it.
Yes, ma'am? Right here, this lady. No--she! Yes--right--second row [pointing]. Next to the guy in the blue shirt, holding her left hand up. It's a he--sorry about that. Gotta be careful. I'm very sorry. Go ahead! I'm--excuse me--I'm very sorry. Go--ah--I--a thousand apologies--go ahead. George H.W. Bush
"The Catcher in the Rye" is now, you'll be told just
about anywhere you ask, an "American classic," right
up there with the book that was published the
following year, Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and
the Sea." They are two of the most durable and beloved
books in American literature and, by any reasonable
critical standard, two of the worst.
