This week in my B&C blog:
Why the United States is mostly purple. Plus: desperate house-husbands, the first World Trade Center terrorist attack, death and the med student, and more ... LINK/ARCHIVE

My latest Tribune language column:
Why "he or she" and "hir" are inferior solutions to the problem of epicene singular pronouns.
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• From Commentary:

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.

M-W:Etymology: Middle English contumelie, from Middle French, from Latin contumelia
: harsh language or treatment arising from haughtiness and contempt; also : an instance of such language or treatment

This week in my B&C blog:
Things scientists and psychologists believe despite lack of proof. Plus: the battle over windmills in Spain; why groups make good decisions; a 12-year-old prodigy composer; Louisa May Alcott's forgotten father, and more ... LINK/ARCHIVE

My latest Tribune language column:
On the religious rhetoric of presidential inaugural addresses.
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• Here's a brain-burner for you: is this participle apt?

Sign on telephone pole: "Found: Lost Cat"

• LL on twat.

• From an American friend in Kenya:

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.

Our pastor asked recently, in an anecdote about the cold weather:

"How was this part of the country settled in the first place? ... It's incredible to me that people chose to live here."

Later, she quoted a member who told her about reading over his diaries from years past:

"The discouraging thing about reading over my journal is discovering just how the same I am."

Here's something you don't read every day, from the Trib 12/26:

A YMCA director has been fired and overnight rentals of Chicago's 16 YMCA centers have been forbidden after a children's early-morning swim meet overlapped with an overnight transgender fashion show, a YMCA spokesman said Saturday.

Number-crunching from The Week:

- The day after President Bush was re-elected, American visitors to Canada's main immigration site jumped from an average of 20,000 to over 115,000. AP

- About 4,000 shoulder-fired missiles, which terrorists could use to shoot down airplanes, are missing in Iraq. Wash.Post

- Parents earning more than $70,000 now spend an average of $324,000 to raise a child to age 18. Food alone costs $47,467. New Yorker

This week in my B&C blog:
Why civilizations collapse, according to the author of Guns, Germs and Steel. Plus: Green Book Studies in Libya, Sister Helen Prejean's latest book on the death penalty, marketplaces in 19th-century America, Dave Barry on how to heal the red state-blue state divide, and more ... LINK/ARCHIVE

My latest Tribune language column:
On the Year of Languages.
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For more on the YOL see Ambassador Michael Lemmon's address here.

Seen at DTWW:

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.

From the NYT:

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.

That's right: what should concern us in this time of unspeakable tragedy is the career paths of these opportunistic anchors who make more in one minute than most of the tsunami's victims made in their lifetime.

I have an op-ed in the works in response to Brian Williams' appearance on The Daily Show. Here's a link.

I'm cynical about cynicism. So was LBJ:

"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM." Lyndon B. Johnson