Thursday, May 27, 2010

Parvum Opus 370: POCast

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

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’Tude Dude

Recent license plate spotting:

BADITUD

Eggplants and Cliff Apes

Here are two insults new to me.

  • From Will Smith in the movie Enemy of the State: “Eggplant”. I though it was a variant on Oreo – black on the outside, white on the inside. Except that eggplants are deep purple. I’m no doctor, but that would suggest a health problem to me. Anyway, Will Smith was talking to an Italian, and Fred says he learned from an Army buddy that this is an Italian word for Negro: mulignana.
  • From a railroad security officer who recounted the story of a horrific murder to Fred. The crime took place in Kentucky, and in court the officer heard someone call the killers, “Damn hillbillies!” He answered, “I’m a hillbilly. Those are cliff apes.”

Graphic

Referring to an unwelcome transmittal of revealing photos via phone, web, or something: “He posted graphic images.” Are there images that are not graphic? I don’t know when this happened, but “graphic” has taken on the sense of revealing or extreme or even obscene, but of course the original sense has to do with writing or pictures or graphs. The word has lost precision.

Bad

A good little selection of bad poetry is to be found on Seamus Cooney’s web site. I favor “Nature’s Cook” by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. We studied her in a graduate class on 17th century British women writers. Nature’s Cook, by the way, is Death. The poem is not for the squeamish.

Drummers

Charlie Farrow, another Brit with access to the great Oxford English Dictionary (she sent links but not being a subscriber I can’t log in), quoted a lot of OED material about “drummers”, but there’s still no indication that salesmen ever really used drums. Charlie says army recruiters used drums and the term was then applied to salesmen.

The drummers were scary kind of guys; not only did they rouse the sensibilities of the young and impressionable to patriotism via drum (and fife) and blood curdling tales or heroism, (in the Navy this task was performed by the press gangs), but they also applied the cat-o-nine tails.

Interestingly, a reference from the 1883 Fisheries Exhib. Catal. (ed. 4) 160 tells us that fish too can be drummed up:

The fish are drummed up by striking two shells...together.

DaBees

Dave DaBee was of the same opinion as Fred about the gym trainer saying “no problem” about the … problem.



Re "no problem" -- my guess is she was saying "You don't need to apologize for pointing it out." I'm not interested in commenting more on the warped state of mind that would lead to that, but I bet it's right.

Dave also wrote about “alleged”:

Re alleged: Another fuzzy thinking thing -- when a person is murdered, there's no "alleged" about the event. An individual might be called alleged until convicted, but our dopey editors seem to think they have to say alleged about the event itself.

Good distinction. And he correctly predicted that his mom would respond to CMPN.

Anne DaBee wrote:

Rhonda -- have you noticed that I usually respond to your less intellectual postings? Here I go again.

Actually Anne always has a lot of pertinent and worthwhile stuff to add when I complain about the state of education. Anyway, she sent these:

Re Redneck's Readin' Test: Many, many years ago there was a similar "exercise", as follows.

AB, C D Goldfish?

L, M N O Goldfish

O S A R 2 CMPN

Perhaps there was more -- my aging mind has forgotten things far more important!

And re Job Titles:

A woman, renewing her driver's license, was asked by the clerk behind the counter to state her occupation. After a moment's hesitation, the busy mother of 4, who was tired of having to enter "housewife" on such forms, told the clerk she was a Research Associate in the field of Child Development and Human Relations.

Obviously impressed by such a grand title, the clerk asked, "Just what do you do in your field of work?"

The applicant replied, "I do continuing research, in the laboratory and in the field. I'm working for my Masters and already have 4 credits. Of course, the job is the most demanding in the Humanities, and I often work 14 hours a day, but the job is more challenging than most and the rewards are more about satisfaction than money."

Long story shorter, her Child Development Program staff consisted of:

Lab assistants, ages 13, 7, and 3, and an experimental model, 6 months old.

This obviously makes Grandmothers Senior Research Associates, Great Grandmothers Executive Senior Research Associates, Aunts Assistant Research Associates, etc.

And for all those years, I thought I was "just" a Mom.

I love the “experimental model”!

I would have enjoyed growing up in the DaBee household.

(Note: Fred adds: O G I C U R P N. Y R U P N 2?)

Pedcast

The language school I work for requires instructors to fill out daily reports called something like “pedagogical forms” on all classes. One day I sent mine in and called it a “pedcast” and my supervisor was so taken with the word, he has been using it ever since. I feel that I’ve contributed something to the world. But only people who know both “pedagogical” and “podcast” will be amused. It’s not quite logical, anyway. “Podcast” has to do with broadcasting, which originally meant sowing (casting) seeds broadly over a field. The pod is the I-Pod, which allows you to load all kinds of music and audio onto your tiny pod. All that history behind pedcast! Anyway, the pedcast does not strew information widely, it funnels information narrowly to the company.

Caveman Scrabble

Dennis Miller said he and his son play Caveman Scrabble, wherein they make nonsense words like “bumshee” but the kick is in making up the definitions, like “that’s the cudgel you use to gouge out the T-rex’s eyes to make a nice pumice cream”. Sounds like a good game.

Facebook Plant

From someone’s Facebook post:

[She] is a bit squicked by mosquito trying to bite her while mating. Call her a prude, she was never much into mixing food and sex.

Never heard of “squicked” but maybe it’s a combination of icky and squeamish? And who’s mating here, the mosquito or the squicked?

Fredism

Fred said after seeing a TV personality in person:

When you see them on TV they look more famous than they do in real life.”

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

I don’t know if I will switch to a bi-weekly (every other week, not twice a week) PO schedule this summer or not. I’m not any busier than before but my writing energy is perhaps slightly drained by too much Facebook time. A Facebook friend of a friend of a friend wrote:

I like you Rhonda, but don't RUIN things. If someone has a helpful piece of advice for someone else, don't downgrade generosity. Don't EVER do that Rhonda. You tend to be the ANTI-magician- you want to take the magic out of everything. i have been posting some really helpful tips for people, and you vist my wall just to downgrade them to mundanity when they are actually good tips. that PIS*ES me off. Do not steal my fire because life is stealing enough of it. JUST BE SUPPORTIVE AND PROMOTING.to downgrade them to mundanity when they are actually good tips. that PISSES me off. Do not steal my fire because life is stealing enough of it. JUST BE SUPPORTIVE AND PROMOTING.t to downgrade them to mundanity when they are actually good tips. that PISSES me off. Do not steal my fire because life is stealing enough of it. JUST BE SUPPORTIVE AND PROMOTING.

(Sic, except asterisk added as a spam filter evader.) What did I write to trigger this anguished response? The guy posted some clever and useful tech advice about a Facebook bug. I added my own solution, which was simpler, with no comment favorable or otherwise about his, which was more ingenious but more complex. Thus the anti-magic. I guess. I thought it was just an info exchange. (And I didn’t visit his wall -- if you know how Facebook works -- people’s messages just appear on your own page and you can respond or not.)

Then there’s the troll who entered comments on “Working America” below. A troll is such a ubiquitous Web creature that Wikipedia has a lengthy history and explanation of the type, among others. This particular troll, who calls himself Meatbrain (the “brain” part is hyperbole), pops up here and there on the Web and accuses people of willfully lying. I only respond to him for the sake of the other readers.

The Dalai Lama says he's a marxist

Monday, May 24, 2010

As much as one hates to use political labels, one knows how to complete this sentence: "A ------- is...

Working America wants your signature

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Working America is sending people door to door in Cincinnati, handing out literature and asking people to sign up....

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ONLINE PUBS

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Amazon now has a downloadable Kindle reader so you don’t have to spend hundreds on the little handheld device. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

* The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

* A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

* The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

* Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

* Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

* Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

* Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

* Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

NEW PRODUCTS in CafePress:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears at http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video and music clips of great blues man Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue". And listen to Judy Joy Jones’s interview with Sonny.

PEACE MISSION INDIA blogs the progress of Pastor Roy Jacob’s mission to build churches in India. Now 79, Pastor Roy (who is an Indian) has built 10 churches, and has a girls’ school to rescue girls from the mountains and jungles who otherwise might be married off as children or perhaps sold.

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2;

"Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Parvum Opus 369: Transgressive Gravitas

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

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The Latest in Spam Stylings

Spammers are running words together (as in the following) to get by spam filters:

GirlsLikeAuthorsBecauseTheyMakeUse ofBig words duringSex”

I picked this example because of the literary sensibility, of course.

This spammer also uses an old technique of throwing in random quotes from some unknown source to throw off the filters, so you get a short spurt of intriguing prose before clicking on the link (which I did not):

The idiots rousted me out of bed before daylight. There's nothing wrong at all in being born out of that room.

……

Seven years ago he had her raised as a zombie. As if answering her query, the tiger raised a paw.

Did Drummers Drum?

I’ve heard it in old movies and read it in books: traveling salesmen used to be called drummers. We still say “drumming up business” but I can’t find any source of the word “drummers”. I always imagined traveling salesmen used to beat a drum to attract attention, but can’t find a history. Anybody know?

Shakespeare

More on Shakespeare, it can’t hurt:

Shakespeare’s innovative vocabulary

Book titles from Shakespeare

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare ? — a book I’m currently reading, by James Shapiro. Professor Shapiro thinks it was Shakespeare, but in this book he discusses when and why the question arose in the first place. (I think it was Shakespeare too.)

Jane Austen

More on Jane Austen, you can’t have too much:

Humorist Fran Lebowitz talks seriously about Jane Austen and about reading (it’s on YouTube), and she is excellent as always and mainly correct. Not so sure about her point on irony, which is indeed lacking in optimism, but I think she confuses Austen’s Christian sense of sin with pessimism. Why, by the way, has Lebowitz not published any books for years?

Problem

The other day I encountered a malfunctioning weight machine at the gym and informed a young women working there, telling her I’d tried to insert the weight pin in several slots but it wouldn’t go in.

“No problem,” she said.

“Yes, problem,” I answered.

I presume that she meant well at the same time that she didn’t mean anything.

“No problem” wasn’t a reasonable response to my explanation of what I’d done (and she wasn’t responding to the broken machine, which was a problem). Did she think I was apologizing? Was it the usual substitute for “You’re welcome”? I wasn’t thanking her.

Reportedly

Recent headlines in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

It’s a newspaper. Isn’t everything in there reported? How else would they have anything to write about? We’re used to criminals and crimes being “alleged” but there’s a sort of legal excuse for that. All those reportedlys make the paper sound as if it’s passing on a little gossip and the reporters have no way of finding or confirming any believable facts for us. I hope this doesn’t presage a move to ironic headline writing.

Feeling Drowsy

A TV ad for an allergy drug features a young child asking for something that won’t make him feel “drowsy”. Do your kids say that? Don’t little kids always say “sleepy”? Maybe the children of drug manufacturers and ad writers say they feel drowsy.

EB Mike

Mike Sykes wrote regarding the subjunctive “be” (as in “He be trippin’”):

I've heard "be" used for all persons, singular and plural, though usually only in humorous contexts, such as comedy sketches. Given that OBE means "Order of the British Empire", I remember:

E B OBE, E B. B E? I, E B.

Which in turn reminds me of this.

… “this” being more examples of the same in a comedy routine. I heard some of that a long time ago, but all I can remember is: C M P N. It had something to do with ducks, I think. The memory is a mysterious thing. Anyway, I found something along the same line called Redneck Readin’ Test.

Nontact

A typo from a spam mailing:

nontact me

I think we should adopt this as a new antonym for contact: “Please nontact me.”

No, Really

A blogger posted this about new job titles in the Tempe Arizona school district. No joke, I actually found a job ad online for #1.

Dear Beloved Readers,

From the state that begat the governor who begat the catchy phrase, "Overseas Contingency Operation," we are now blessed with the following job titles -- see if you can translate: 1) Transporter of Learners, 2) Director of First Impressions, 3) Director of Human Capital and 4) Executive Director of Exceptional Customer Experiences. Okay, so you quickly figured out that number 1 is a school bus driver and that number 3 is the old head of personnel. Number 2 is actually number 1's boss. As for number 4? No clue....and it doesn't matter. It is dumb no matter what it means. These are actual titles for jobs in a school district in Arizona -- a wealthy one, by the way. Since tax dollars fund schools, we the people paid for the study, paid for the new signs, paid for new badges and new letterhead. I wonder if the Recipient Population of Brilliance and Inspiration will be any smarter now.

Yours Sincerely,

S.E.'s Mom

School districts now have customers? Raising kids is hard enough. I wouldn’t want my kids to go to schools in Tempe. Or learning centres or whatever they call them.

Transgressive

I thought I wrote about this some years ago but I can’t find it in PO, but there’s more to know now anyway. Alan Sokal wrote "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" and published it in Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996). The article is a parody of incomprehensible post-modernism, and was even more outrageous because it supposedly “deconstructed” physics, but it was accepted by Social Text in all innocence. (Their web site does not carry issues that old.)

Since then, the article has spawned a massive amount of commentary (last updated May 4). Sokal wrote a book about it, Beyond the Hoax. His article was discussed in many intellectual journals. You can even listen to Sokal talk briefly on the scientific method on YouTube. Can’t agree with him on religion (his idea of “evidence” is limited, important to science but it does not cover all the varieties of human experience, knowledge, and thought), but he pulled a clever piece of wool over the post-modernists’ even fuzzier eyeballs.

I’m waiting for a mathematician to publish an article on post-modernist math, and explain why 2+2=4 should not be privileged over 2+2=5 or even 2+2=3.

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Boycotting Arizona is absurd

Thursday, May 13, 2010

What's the deal with all the boycotts of Arizona by other states and cities such as Los Angeles? Aside from the...

Hitler Youth Group: Coming to a university near you?

Thursday, May 13, 2010

The Muslim Student Association at UC San Diego has a Hitler Youth Week. That may not be surprising, unfortunately,...

U.S. citizens can be enemy combatants

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The latest terrorist-jihadist attack on New York, luckily botched, has people talking again about how carefully the...

Ocean-front house of Gore

Friday, May 7, 2010

Al Gore bought a new $8,875,000 house in California. That's almost $9 million of carbon footprint. We already...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Amazon now has a downloadable Kindle reader so you don’t have to spend hundreds on the little handheld device. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

* The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

* A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

* The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

* Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

* Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

* Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

* Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

* Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

NEW PRODUCTS in CafePress:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Parvum Opus 368: Jamais Arriere

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

The unannounced two-week hiatus of Parvum Opus was unplanned and kind of unaccountable. Call it a combination of another computer crash and low energy. But I’m back in the saddle, and if I’ve overlooked any interesting commentary you might have sent, I apologize.

Don’t Let the Media Be Your Guide

>>> From an old copy of Mental Floss (if you want the exact issue, e-mail me), explaining Thomas Jefferson’s habit of shaking hands:

When Jefferson became president, he never wanted to be confused as a king.

It should have been “confused with a king” or “confused with kings” or “mistaken for a king” or any number of other possibilities. As is, it sounds as if he was a king and didn’t want to be confused. Prepositions can be tricky even for native English speakers.

>>> On TV :

I'm a little bit in the rears.

No, I didn’t mishear it, and it should have been “in arrears” (behind in paying the bills). The clan motto of the Douglas side of my family, by the way, is Jamais Arriere — Never Behind — but I don’t think it referred to bills.

>>> Ad for reality TV programming:

Not reality, actuality

I’m not sure what the difference is supposed to be, but it reminds me of a former loathed professor who talked about “Engaging in life, not just living!”, or possibly it was vice versa.

The Naming of Food

A Facebook conversation (not mine):

Iline came home this afternoon with six Rhode Island Red Chicks. Allie calls them "chicklets" and "chicklings". She was singing to them too. She'll want to give them all names, but you dont give a name to some thing you plan on eating. Aint I right?

My grandma had names for baby chicks. She called them "bitties" while they were fluffy. Then, when they got feathers, she called them "duties". I don't know why, but I am sure she had a reason.

I'd call them Chicken noodle, Chicken dumplin, Chicken potpie, Chicken soup, Chicken casserole and fried Chicken!! LOL

At the moment they would have to be called chicken nuggets. That is about the size of them.

The stuff designated as food on our farm never got a name.

I would name them all supper

Call them southern fried.

My daughter has found a few a her girls dead in the past few weeks and it has tore her out of the frame. I told her to stop giving them names and it won't hurt as much. We use ours for the eggs, can be used as meat birds but not as good.

This passage makes me want to move to the country. I been tore out of the frame lately, and it might could help.

Dangling

President O said in a speech:

Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out one way or another we get pulled into them.

Listen to the sound clip and decide if “Whether we like it or not” modifies “we remain a dominant military superpower” or “we get pulled into them” which some post-speech apologists would like to maintain. There’s a big difference in intent and attitude if it modifies one or the other. Since the phrase leads the sentence, it’s most likely and most natural that it modifies the fact that we remain a dominant military superpower, so it sounds as if he doesn’t like that. If it modifies the second half of the sentence, it’s a dangling modifier. But you have to listen with your own ears.

Text Wrap Wrap-Up

Back to the problem of lines of text covering an entire screen, which makes it harder to read online. Last time I explained how to work with this, but let me add that if text on a web page is already set in a column format, the text lines don’t re-wrap when you narrow the window. Mike Sykes added this to the text reading problem:

And in case, like me, you find the mouse a bit fiddly:

· Hit - a little menu appears at top left of the window

· If "Size" is greyed-out, hit R - this will restore your window to its specified size.

· Otherwise, hit S (for size); then use the arrow keys to make the window the size you want.

· Hit (don't forget this, or you may wonder why nothing seems to work).
One of my gripes with Windows is that there are often too many ways of killing the cat, as in this case. You can also maximize or restore a window by double-clicking on the coloured title bar at the top, but you can't minimize, move, or resize it.

In some cases, the paragraphs will be chopped off instead of re-wrapping with new line breaks. This has to do with poor formatting and there’s not much you can do about that, other than try to slide the screen left or right.

Which is what happens at:

Don't believe everything you see at Tea Parties

and what you call "sliding the screen" is usually called "scrolling* the window" (the screen is the whole of the display area). You could well argue that it could equally well be called "panning", as with a camera, but it isn't - well not much. …

I can assure you that, in my many years of experience, this is standard practice. Sadly, it has the serious disadvantage that it can take a long time, sometimes years, to stumble across the easiest way to do something. For example, I'd been using Windows for some years before I came across the way to auto-adjust the width of all the columns in Windows Explorer (and various other places) is to hit ; that X, C and V are the easiest way to cut, copy and paste; that right-clicking (or hitting the context menu key) often avoids the need to go through menus.

(*I knew it was scrolling. In either case, the words refer to a physical action which only appears to occur on the screen.) Mike was sort of griping too about the fact that there is usually more than way way to do things in Word, but that gives you better odds of figuring out something by chance. The English language is difficult because there’s more than one way to say things, but this is why it is a useful language, nuanced and complex.

Mike also replied to: “You have to give him a lot of latitude.” My question was, why not longitude?

The meaning "Breadth, width" is Late Middle English and predated the navigational sense.

Lend Me A Loan

Dea Robertson asked about lend/loan:

A person on Face Book corrected my wife on using the word lend instead of loan. She asked, “Will you loan me your fish?” The player replied, “You mean will you lend me your fish?” I believe the second instance is probably incorrect. … I’d thought I’d ask you (in case it was something you could also use in O.P.), what’s an expert’s take on it?

Generally we use lend as the verb and loan as the noun. However, dict.org gives an example of loan as a verb dating back to 1644, and that usage is even older according to Quick and Dirty Tips. There's may be some difference in British and U.S. usage too. If you want to avoid geek criticism, even if the geeks are are wrong, use lend as the verb. But your wife ought to forward this note to her friend. Your wife was not wrong, and her friend wasn’t so right.

Changes in Latitudes

Dan Erslan replied to, "At the equator, the lines of latitude are spread apart to their maximum."

Your navigation dissertation was accurate except for the preceding quote. Latitude in this sentence should have actually been longitude. By the way, as a side note of possible interest, longitude is pronounced with a hard G in Canada. Every time I hear it, it makes my skin crawl.

Right. I can’t keep the terms straight unless I have a globe in front of my face. Lines of latitude, also called parallels, are horizontal lines. Longitude, also called meridians, run pole to pole and are furthest apart at the equator.

Crazy Burger King

Bill Roberts responded to the “crazy” Burger King ad:

I grew up in a small town in the 1950s and 1960s, and we had a village idiot—hulking-but-flabby guy name of Ray, who always had a massive carbuncle on the back of his neck. No matter where you were in town, he would eventually wander past. He was always greeted with a pleasant hello and a smile, even by teenagers—he was “part of the landscape”—but no-one tried to converse with him, even about the weather, since a hello or grunt was his most profound utterance. The town watched out for him—drivers would stop when they saw him approach a crosswalk; people would ask him where he was going (they knew where he lived) and redirect him toward home if he were too far off course. Different times…

Couldn’t call him the village idiot today even in the interests of truth, although you can vilify perfectly ordinary people who have different political opinions.

Ohio's Third Frontier may be a third rail

Monday, May 3, 2010

On the ballot May 4 is Issue 1, more money for Ohio's Third Frontier. If you've never heard of it, you...

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ONLINE PUBS

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

* The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

* A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

* The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

* Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

* Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

* Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

* Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

* Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

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Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

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