Saturday, November 08, 2003
Cheesy Jesus Marketing Watch: Jesus teething ring at www.productsforbaby.com. "It gives other people a good visual about your beliefs and is a good testimonial as a gift to new parents." I think Mary herself would have rejected this kitsch were it presented to her at the manger. More from my B&C blog on tacky Christian marketing (second item)
• Etymology Today from M-W: diluvial \duh-LOO-vee-ul
: of, relating to, or brought about by a flood
Late Latin "diluvialis" means "flood." It's from "diluere" ("to wash away") and ultimately from "lavere" ("to wash"). English "diluvial" and its variant "diluvian" initially referred to the Biblical Flood. Geologists, archaeologists, fossilists, and the like used the words, beginning back in the mid-1600s, to mark a distinct geological turning point associated with the Flood. They also used "antediluvian" and "postdiluvian" to describe the periods before and after the Flood. It wasn't until the 1800s that people started using "diluvial" for floods and flooding in general. American educator and essayist Caroline M. Kirkland, one early user of this sense, wrote, "Much of our soil is said to be diluvial — the wash of the great ocean lakes as they overflowed towards the south," in her essay Forest Life in 1850.
• Previous E.T.
: of, relating to, or brought about by a flood
Late Latin "diluvialis" means "flood." It's from "diluere" ("to wash away") and ultimately from "lavere" ("to wash"). English "diluvial" and its variant "diluvian" initially referred to the Biblical Flood. Geologists, archaeologists, fossilists, and the like used the words, beginning back in the mid-1600s, to mark a distinct geological turning point associated with the Flood. They also used "antediluvian" and "postdiluvian" to describe the periods before and after the Flood. It wasn't until the 1800s that people started using "diluvial" for floods and flooding in general. American educator and essayist Caroline M. Kirkland, one early user of this sense, wrote, "Much of our soil is said to be diluvial — the wash of the great ocean lakes as they overflowed towards the south," in her essay Forest Life in 1850.
• Previous E.T.
Friday, November 07, 2003
• Number of the Day: 200,000
Average annual income, in dollars, of readers of the Wall Street Journal.
-New Yorker
-Previous number
Average annual income, in dollars, of readers of the Wall Street Journal.
-New Yorker
-Previous number
• Thought of the Day: babies and idealism
There's something about holding a newborn baby--not just seeing her picture or watching a Pampers ad, but actually holding a tiny human creature--that makes you less socially idealistic and more personally idealistic. They say anyone who isn't a Democrat at age 20 has no heart and anyone who isn't a Republican at age 40 has no brains, and now I understand that a little bit better. I held my new nephew this week (I'm his only uncle), fit his tiny form into my folded arms, felt his warmth, watched him squirm to get comfortable, considered the alternating traquility and turmoil of his face (depending on his wakefulness and gas). These are the moments in which the Questions of the World, urgent but abstract as a college student, suddenly fade, and the world seems more centered on this person, on your caretaking, and the house you now hope to be a sanctuary you both. You start thinking less about Solving the World's Problems and more about keeping those problems the hell away from this fragile young life. You're less worried about "changing things for the better" than changing diapers. Suddenly the bleeding heart liberal in me started acknowledging the allure of the rhetoric of the right, the get-tough-on-crime and get-government-off-your-back bumper stickers that place isolated survival and individual advancement over utpoian notions of a social, shared public life. You instantly care a little bit less about the inequalities of the education system and the lack of opportunities for the nation's disadvantaged youth than you do about this child's education and opportunities. I could imagine this already, and this was my nephew, not my son. I remember reading a Slate reporter a year or two ago who said that having a child made him borderline misanthropic--presuming the worst about strangers while out in public with his young son, not just protective but nearly paranoid. I'm still 24 and, down deep, fervently idealistic. I'm not saying I endorse all these thoughts. I'm just saying you're more prone to have them go through your head when you hold a baby, and I guess that says something about human nature, not to mention the success of the Republican Party.
• Related: Why families are, economically speaking, good for society, from the New Yorker
• Previous Thought: Free as a bird in flight?
There's something about holding a newborn baby--not just seeing her picture or watching a Pampers ad, but actually holding a tiny human creature--that makes you less socially idealistic and more personally idealistic. They say anyone who isn't a Democrat at age 20 has no heart and anyone who isn't a Republican at age 40 has no brains, and now I understand that a little bit better. I held my new nephew this week (I'm his only uncle), fit his tiny form into my folded arms, felt his warmth, watched him squirm to get comfortable, considered the alternating traquility and turmoil of his face (depending on his wakefulness and gas). These are the moments in which the Questions of the World, urgent but abstract as a college student, suddenly fade, and the world seems more centered on this person, on your caretaking, and the house you now hope to be a sanctuary you both. You start thinking less about Solving the World's Problems and more about keeping those problems the hell away from this fragile young life. You're less worried about "changing things for the better" than changing diapers. Suddenly the bleeding heart liberal in me started acknowledging the allure of the rhetoric of the right, the get-tough-on-crime and get-government-off-your-back bumper stickers that place isolated survival and individual advancement over utpoian notions of a social, shared public life. You instantly care a little bit less about the inequalities of the education system and the lack of opportunities for the nation's disadvantaged youth than you do about this child's education and opportunities. I could imagine this already, and this was my nephew, not my son. I remember reading a Slate reporter a year or two ago who said that having a child made him borderline misanthropic--presuming the worst about strangers while out in public with his young son, not just protective but nearly paranoid. I'm still 24 and, down deep, fervently idealistic. I'm not saying I endorse all these thoughts. I'm just saying you're more prone to have them go through your head when you hold a baby, and I guess that says something about human nature, not to mention the success of the Republican Party.
• Related: Why families are, economically speaking, good for society, from the New Yorker
• Previous Thought: Free as a bird in flight?
Monday, November 03, 2003
This week in my B&C blog:
October news roundup: a month of spectacles, from the California recall to Siegfried and Roy's untamed tiger to the world record for M&M's eaten with chopsticks. Postcard from my friend Cathy Guiles in Huntsville. And my October book review roundup: titles on Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, Italy, Hawthorne, Toni Morrison, Samuel Morse, the Detroit auto industry, Gary Larson's "The Far Side," and more ... LINK/ARCHIVE
October news roundup: a month of spectacles, from the California recall to Siegfried and Roy's untamed tiger to the world record for M&M's eaten with chopsticks. Postcard from my friend Cathy Guiles in Huntsville. And my October book review roundup: titles on Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, Italy, Hawthorne, Toni Morrison, Samuel Morse, the Detroit auto industry, Gary Larson's "The Far Side," and more ... LINK/ARCHIVE
My latest Tribune story:
A sidebar for the Sunday Magazine on the endurance of mom-and-pop pharmacies in the age of Walgreens.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/magazine/chi-0311020280nov02,1,3810238.story
-My Tribune archive
A sidebar for the Sunday Magazine on the endurance of mom-and-pop pharmacies in the age of Walgreens.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/magazine/chi-0311020280nov02,1,3810238.story
Every street does seem to sprout a new Walgreens, CVS or Osco. But it turns out that mom & pop pharmacies are hanging in there after bottoming out eight years ago, when only 20,000 U.S. indies remained of 40,000 in the 1970s. "Since the mid-1990s, the independent pharmacies that survived the shakeout have been pretty much holding their own," says Dr. David Zgarrick of Midwestern University's Chicago College of Pharmacy. "Their number has stayed constant or even increased slightly." Today, there are 230 indies in Chicago, 700 statewide. Compare to Walgreens' 122 in the city and 228 in the burbs (the Deerfield chain opens new stores around the U.S. at a rate of 8 to 9 a week) and CVS's 50. All are scrambling to meet spiraling demand for medications, double that of 1991. Boomers get more RX's, doctors are replacing hospital stays with meds and more folks seek "lifestyle drugs" for everything from allergy to sex. Most go to mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart, mail-order houses or the chains. But Michael Patton, of the Illinois Pharmacists' Assn., says indies still count: "An independent pharmacist fills a consultancy role--not just filling prescriptions, but talking about a drug regimen with a customer."
-My Tribune archive
• Number of the Day: 500,000
Dollars spent per year by Shaquille O'Neal on private jet travel, necessitated by the inconvenience and crowds commercial flight would involve.
-USA Today
-Previous number
Dollars spent per year by Shaquille O'Neal on private jet travel, necessitated by the inconvenience and crowds commercial flight would involve.
-USA Today
-Previous number
• Thought of the Day: Free as a bird?
Is flying still synonymous with freedom? Through the ages, the poets and children inside us all have mused about "the tent of blue" (in Oscar Wilde's words), the celestial canvas draped over the world, and longed to join the birds and explore this majestic expanse. When the Wright Brothers first loosed humans' bonds to Earth, and when Apollo astronauts later linked us to the moon, flight still served as a waking dream, a living poem, an ethereal visit to the front lobby of God's throne room. Preparing for my first airplane flight today since September 11, 2001, I was reading this article from Wired yesterday in a Best Business Writing anthology, a fascinating feature on "200 day" people (indicating the number of days they fly per year) and other very-frequent fliers. (The story conspicuously predates September 11 and the apparently related decline in air travel.) These travelers are mostly ambitious and creative business people, but after a while most of them grow numb from so much time spent in airplanes and airports, in cramped cabins, breathing stale air, eating bland food, watching blander movies, suffering aching loneliness. One traveler identifies the surest signs of frequent fliers: "The pallid complexion, red watery eyes, deeply furrowed brow, the look of hunger for home, for edible food and a sleepable bed." As I read, I could feel the weariness in the joints of these travelers, and I was struck by the irony that this quasi-catatonic state couldn't be farther from the soul-liberating dream of flight as conceived by the poets, the Wright Brothers, and the rest. How is it that racing through the clouds in a massive machine has become such a tedious chore? We may look no farther than the soul-less environs of airports or the workaholism of frequent fliers, or at the less-examined factor how fit the human body is for conditions of flight. But tonight, this once-a-year flier will cherish the bird's-eye view of the skies and the world below.
• Previous Thought: Are historians inherently nostalgic?
Is flying still synonymous with freedom? Through the ages, the poets and children inside us all have mused about "the tent of blue" (in Oscar Wilde's words), the celestial canvas draped over the world, and longed to join the birds and explore this majestic expanse. When the Wright Brothers first loosed humans' bonds to Earth, and when Apollo astronauts later linked us to the moon, flight still served as a waking dream, a living poem, an ethereal visit to the front lobby of God's throne room. Preparing for my first airplane flight today since September 11, 2001, I was reading this article from Wired yesterday in a Best Business Writing anthology, a fascinating feature on "200 day" people (indicating the number of days they fly per year) and other very-frequent fliers. (The story conspicuously predates September 11 and the apparently related decline in air travel.) These travelers are mostly ambitious and creative business people, but after a while most of them grow numb from so much time spent in airplanes and airports, in cramped cabins, breathing stale air, eating bland food, watching blander movies, suffering aching loneliness. One traveler identifies the surest signs of frequent fliers: "The pallid complexion, red watery eyes, deeply furrowed brow, the look of hunger for home, for edible food and a sleepable bed." As I read, I could feel the weariness in the joints of these travelers, and I was struck by the irony that this quasi-catatonic state couldn't be farther from the soul-liberating dream of flight as conceived by the poets, the Wright Brothers, and the rest. How is it that racing through the clouds in a massive machine has become such a tedious chore? We may look no farther than the soul-less environs of airports or the workaholism of frequent fliers, or at the less-examined factor how fit the human body is for conditions of flight. But tonight, this once-a-year flier will cherish the bird's-eye view of the skies and the world below.
• Previous Thought: Are historians inherently nostalgic?
I panicked when I realized I forgot to tape the CBS 75th anniversary special last night, then breathed a sigh of relief when my dad said he did. Caught the tail end of the special; not sure if it was an adequate historical record worth saving for posterity, or if the abbreviated, hyperbole-laced presentations of memorable programs are too superficial to merit museum piece status.
• Etymology Today from M-W: impugn \im-PYOON\
: to assail by words or arguments
: oppose or attack as false or lacking integrity
When you impugn, you hazard repugnant pugnacity. More simply put, you risk insulting someone to the point where he or she wants to sock you. The belligerent implications of "impugn" are to be expected in a word that derives from the Latin verb "pugnare," which means "to fight." In its earliest known English uses in the 1300s, "impugn" could refer to a physical attack (as in "the troops impugned the city") as well as to figurative assaults involving verbal contradiction or dispute. Over time, though, the sense of physical battling has become obsolete and the "calling into question" sense has predominated. As you might expect, the ancestors of "impugn" also gave English other fighting words, including "repugnant" and "pugnacious."
• Previous E.T.
: to assail by words or arguments
: oppose or attack as false or lacking integrity
When you impugn, you hazard repugnant pugnacity. More simply put, you risk insulting someone to the point where he or she wants to sock you. The belligerent implications of "impugn" are to be expected in a word that derives from the Latin verb "pugnare," which means "to fight." In its earliest known English uses in the 1300s, "impugn" could refer to a physical attack (as in "the troops impugned the city") as well as to figurative assaults involving verbal contradiction or dispute. Over time, though, the sense of physical battling has become obsolete and the "calling into question" sense has predominated. As you might expect, the ancestors of "impugn" also gave English other fighting words, including "repugnant" and "pugnacious."
• Previous E.T.
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