Parvum Opus 270 ~ Foi Grace

PARVUM OPUS

Number 270

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FOI GRACE

Talking to my French student about the metaphorical uses of body parts, I said I thought I’d read that in French, the liver was supposed to be the seat of some admirable quality of mind or character. But he said this was a confusion between “foie” meaning liver and “foi” meaning faith. I was relieved since I am never aware of my liver and I’m not sure where it is.

EZRATHON

From marathoner Ezra Sykes:

Marathon training continues as I progress through my own kind of March Madness. I'm injury free, and I still love running, both of which are good signs. Firstly, I want to thank everyone who has made a contribution to the charity for which I am running, MSPCC. Between family, friends, coworkers and strangers (well, not anymore), I have already raised $4,000! I am so appreciative of all you have done to support MSPCC and my running endeavors. Secondly, I am asking everyone who has not yet donated to consider it. The deadline is April 1, 2008, so time is running out! As you know, my goal is to raise $5,000. Donating is easy…Just go to http://www.firstgiving.com/ezrasykes to make a contribution. As an added incentive to donate, I am offering my CD Juvenile by Design as a thank-you gift. It's a seven-song album of children's music that friend David Brodie and I wrote and recorded. It's a great gift for any of the young ones in your life. If you would like multiple copies, I’d be happy to accommodate you. If you'd like me to mail you copies, just make sure I have your address. For more information about the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC), visit http://www.mspcc.org/. Thanks so much for any support you can provide!

JOHN ADAMS

Do watch the new series, John Adams, on HBO. It’s very good. Even if you missed the beginning on Sunday, those episodes will probably be repeated. The author of the best selling biography, David McCullough, even likes the series. Some people are put off by Adams because of the Alien and Sedition Act and maybe one or two other missteps, but on the whole he was a very great man. In the movie he tells his wife that people need a strong government because so many of them are barbaric, and when you see a mob tarring and feathering a man, you have to agree. Not that Americans are worse than any other people. Adams was also scrupulously fair-minded, and successfully defended the British soldiers who fired into a mob in Boston (the Boston Massacre). But he was adamantly determined to create an independent United States out of the colonies.

ALL CLEAR

Melvyn Bragg on doing a photo shoot for BBC’s In Our Time radio program:

The most memorable direction was “I want you to look pensive. Just clear your mind.”

OBAMA’S SPEECH

Bob O. asked if Obama’s speech had changed my opinion of him. I wasn’t moved, flanked as he was by eight large American flags after he’s made an issue of not wearing a lapel flag. Here’s a sketchy outline in reply to Bob, whom I answered at length because I agree with him that this is an important election. We’ll call it an exercise in rhetorical analysis.

Naturally, if I liked Obama’s politics, I’d like his speech better, but I’ve had a bias against him ever since the remarks he made immediately following the Virginia Tech massacre, comparing that violence to the verbal “violence” of Don Imus’s insulting joke about the black girls on a championship basketball game. (How about the verbal violence of the Duke rape case?) This told me that Obama is all about race, even at a funeral, and he’s all about making political hay even out of deaths which had nothing to do with race.

||| Some have said that Wright’s rants were “out of context” and Obama said about himself that he’s like a projection screen on which different people can project different ideas. Am I going to believe them or my lying ears? Obama doesn’t want Wright to be judged by his most extreme statements, but a number of black TV commentators as well as parishioners exiting Wright’s church said his viewpoint is typical in many black churches and black Americans generally.

||| ... but America and white people in general are to be judged by their worst moments. Speaking for myself, I didn’t do the things Wright is angry about, my ancestors weren’t slave owners, and I haven’t profited noticeably by being white.

||| Slavery is long over, and the Civil Rights movement was pretty successful, even though every racist thought has not been eliminated from every white ~ or every black ~ mind. While many black people in this country are successful, the black community on the whole seems to be in worse shape than it was before the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, largely because of the break-up of the family, drugs, and gangs. Dave DaBee (who also likes Obama) referred me to a speech by Bill Cosby on the subject, which I think is more honest than and much superior to anything I’ve heard from Jeremiah Wright or Barack Obama. Cosby said, “We’re raising our own ingrown immigrants.”

||| Anyone who’s still getting exercised about slavery should turn his attention to the slavery that exists all over the world today, instead of worrying about petty verbal insults. If Wright could follow his black family history back far enough, he might find that some of his ancestors had been stolen and sold by other ancestors or related tribes, which is worse than being bought and sold by strangers. (By the way, the New York Times reported that more black Africans have voluntarily immigrated to the U.S. than were brought here through slavery.)

||| Obama compared the ranting racist Wright to his grandmother, who said she was sometimes afraid of black men on the street. Find me any woman, black or white, who is not afraid in certain circumstances of being alone on the street with certain black ~ or white ~ men, particularly young guys who dress like gangsters or hip-hoppers ~ not older men with ties and briefcases. Even Jesse Jackson said the same thing. As Christopher Hitchens said, here’s a politician who pretty literally sold his grandmother.

||| Obama said he could not disown Wright any more than he could disown the black community. His loyalty is a virtue. But is he saying that all black people think the same? Or is he saying that he is disowning his white half?

||| Obama had first claimed ignorance of Wright’s views ~ after knowing him for more than 20 years ~ before claiming knowledge.

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely ~ just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

I haven’t been to any church with a minister who sounds like Wright, and I wouldn’t be a member of one. The erring ministers and priests know when they’ve done something contrary to their teachings, but what Wright thinks and teaches is wrong. “Christian values” ought to be enough for a church; why a church with “black values”? What are “white values”?

“Fierce critic” means Obama thinks America and the current administration are actively evil, i.e. responsible for 9/11, creating AIDS to commit genocide (though it’s most prevalent among gays), putting crack into the black community, and more. At least Obama blamed Muslim atrocities on the Muslims who commit them.

“Controversial” means hateful to whites and about whites ~ for example, Obama’s own mother, if she were alive, though perhaps she’d agree with Wright’s worldview. Controversial apparently doesn’t mean disputed by black people.

||| Obama blames the past for current black poverty, but most people of any color who are at least comfortable today are so because of their work, not because of inherited wealth, as he claims. Obama said on self-help:

Ironically, this quintessentially American ~ and yes, conservative ~ notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

Wright didn’t notice that society has changed a lot. That doesn’t mean that everyone will succeed, especially those who blame the past and other people for their failures. But it’s a waste of time to demand that “society” or everyone in it must be perfect or that everyone will like everyone else in order for everyone to succeed. It’s not going to happen. The Bible teaches us to help the poor, but Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you.”

||| On education:

... by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.

Education is not about money. My parents went to one-room schools and came out better educated than many high school grads today. They grew up poor but did not become criminals when they moved to the city. Everybody can get books from a library, but they have to learn to read and they have to like reading, and home influence is essential. “Ladders of opportunity” have been provided to Obama and his wife, and to the current generation. What’s he talking about?

||| On health insurance:

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care.

This doesn’t even make sense. Those lines are people who are getting health care in the Emergency Room, free, because they don’t have insurance. Who’s paying for it? Everyone else. Which is exactly what he, and Clinton, want anyway.

His wind-up with the story about a girl named Ashley could be read differently. She made a sacrifice when her mother was ill. It’s not that I wouldn’t want her mother to have necessary medical care. But wasn’t it a good thing that this girl took the opportunity to sacrifice herself? This is the Christian message.

||| Obama’s picture on the current Rolling Stone cover has him virtually surrounded with a halo. Many people think it would be good for us to have a black president. I think so too, but not this one. He’s a slick politician but lacks depth; he’s more like a clever adolescent, dancing around the truth. He’s not being honest when he says he’s going to transcend race. If he really did transcend race, people like Wright would contemptuously call him a “Negro”, as he calls black people with a different point of view. Obama could have chosen, as Tiger Woods did, not to identify with one race, as only one part of himself. But he didn’t, and he chose Jeremiah Wright. Do you think, as some say, that blacks cannot be racist, only those in power (i.e. whites) can be racist? Or is Obama simply naïve, as Dave DaBee suggested? He’s too old to be that naïve, and who wants a naïve president?

To read:

The Roots of Black Anger, IBD Editorial

Obama So Far: Better As Icon Than President, Thomas Sowell

A Bound Man, Shelby Steele (Steele also has a white mother and black father.)

______________________________________________

Discussing language, education, journalism, culture, and more, Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. 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 2008. 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.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

NEW SHOP: Scot Tartans (custom orders available).

T-SHIRTS AND OTHER STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

"Flash in the Pants"

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

"If you build it they won't come"

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag

"I am here" T-shirt

"Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"

"I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron

Plus kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, coffee mugs, beer stein, and more!

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".

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.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus 269 ~ VIP RIP, RIP VIP

PARVUM OPUS

Number 269

______________________________

VIP RIP, RIP VIP

Naturally the feature of the Eliot Spitzer soap opera that caught my attention was the name of the prostitute service he used: Emperors Club VIP. I don't think he wanted illicit sex, he doesn't have the look of a sensual man to me; I think he had to pay someone thousands of dollars to call him Emperor. Compare the new trend in tea shops in Japan: women-only clientele can go to Butler Clubs where well-groomed young men wait on them politely and call them Princess. How much more modest their requirements. Unlike an emperor, or governor of New York, a princess has no actual power, she just expects to be treated wonderfully at lunch.

I might also note the oxymoronic nature of the commercial sex field: "gentlemen's" clubs and "high class" call girls.

LOOKING FOR A FEW GOOD PEDIATECHS

Cynthia L. passed on this anecdote from a newsletter she received, which I've abbreviated slightly:

About 10 years ago I worked in a large chain bookstore. I was standing in the Science and Computers section when [a customer] approached, looking for books on a particular topic.

"Excuse me," he said. "Where can I find books about pediaphiles?"

Hmm, I thought. He's looking for books about people who are sexually attracted to children. Well that could be in psychology, or true crime maybe. "What kind of book are you looking for?" I asked.

"Just a general book."

"Well, are you interested in the psychology of pediaphiles? Or case studies?"

With obvious confusion on his face, he said, "I guess I'm trying to find out how they're made."

"Well, I think that would be psychology. Let me look in the computer and see what we have," I replied, catching on that we were somehow miscommunicating something, but unsure what that might be.

"I don't think it would be psychology," he said, "I think it would be here in the computer section."

"Books on pediaphiles?"

"Yeah."

"Um."

"Do you even know what a pediaphile is?" he asked, obviously thinking I'm an idiot.

"Well, I thought so."

"It stands for Portable Document Format. It's what you use when you want to e-mail a document and retain the formatting."

"Oh! PDF file! I thought you were asking for ~ never mind. Yes, we have books on PDF files."

And I haven't been able to look at a PDF attachment the same way since.

TAKE IT OUTSIDE

Quoted by Dennis Miller: stinking outside the box. A worthy and timely play on the tired phrase that is supposed to suggest fresh, creative thinking. Sometimes things aren't worthwhile to think about merely because they haven't been thought before. Newness itself is no guarantee of value.

ANCIENT VOICES

New technology is salvaging delicate aged recordings, which can help to preserve extinct languages.

And now you can hear Thomas Edison's 1890 recording of Tennyson reciting part of his poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

MY OWN PRIVATE NEWS WIRE

It's a cliché to say that I learn from my students, but I have learned a lot. These items are worth passing on.

My Chinese student joined the Communist party in China only so he could get a better job and promotions, but after leaving his job as a surgeon to work in an American medical equipment company, he's not sure if he's still a party member, since he stopped going to meetings. (A former student from Germany was originally from Poland, where it was also necessary to join the Communist party (this was some years back) in order to advance in one's career. He chose not to join and eventually left for Germany.) My current Chinese student is the one who asked if it's against the law to make fun of the president here. (He calls the president "Little Bush".) He also asked me if I knew what happened in 1989 in Tiananmen Square. I said everyone in the world knew about that. He was stunned when I showed him some clips on youtube.com. He said no reports are available in China, and the government says that anything the citizens might read or see is not true. If he takes any books or videos on Tiananmen Square back to China, he'll be in trouble.

Or how about Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez closed down the country's oldest TV network. My current Venezuelan student (I've had many) says that Chavez instituted daylight savings time ~ but he moved the clocks one-half hour. Is this dictating outside the box, Fred asked? Also, though Chavez has pushed Venezuelan doctors (and teachers) out of jobs by importing poorly trained counterparts from Cuba, the public hospitals have insufficient or no equipment now (where did it go?). No public hospital would accept my student's uncle's pregnant housekeeper when she went into labor, so he took her to a private hospital at his own expense. My student had to buy milk, eggs, and meat on the black market because price controls, along with the confiscation of private farms which placed them in the hands of incompetent landless people, have emptied grocery store shelves.

IDEOLOGY

After William Buckley died, I looked him up on youtube; I hadn't really ever watched his TV program, Firing Line. I found a good interview with a British academic named Kenneth Minogue on ideology (search Buckley Minogue at youtube.com; the discussion is divided into six parts). Ideology is one of those words I thought I understood, but like progressive, I didn't know its history. I thought it just meant any system of intellectualized political beliefs, but it rather specifically originated with Karl Marx and refers to his theories, which explain every aspect of life. As an example, one ideological subset, extreme theoretical feminism, which has borrowed heavily from Marxism, interprets just about everything in terms of male domination and oppression. Any personal interpretation of reality must give way to the theory. For instance, a cigar is never just a cigar, it's a symbol of patriarchal and/or capitalist hegemony.

You can also find Buckley interviewing Noam Chomsky, but the most entertaining one is when he lost his temper at Gore Vidal.

OBAMA AMERICA

The audacity of disappointed hopes ~ more stuff I don't like about Obama.* Isn't Michelle Obama proud of having her salary tripled two months after Barack Obama became senator? Jeremiah Wright, Obama's minister for more than 20 years, preached Godd amn** America in at least one of his sermons. Most unsuitable for a Christian. I've heard there are white people in Trinity United Church, which doesn't surprise me***, but it's peculiar that Obama can listen to so much hatred of white people when his mother was white. There's some kind of pathology there. I think this church might focus on the present abuses in Sudan, and the past abuses of black Africans enslaving each other, before damning the new and improved United States, which, speaking of change, has changed. Obama ought to read "The Man Without a Country". (According to Wikipedia, a new movie based on the story will come out this year.)

*Essential everlasting disclaimer: No, it's not because he's black, at least half black, because I can think of a few black men I would gladly vote for. Too bad they're not running.

**Which I divide improperly in hopes of evading spam filters.

***Check out an article by David Mamet, the playwright, in The Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal." That's his joke, not my language, of course. And don't omit to read the comments. By the way, after reading comments on Mamet's article and on various blogs, I want to thank my readers for being smart, sensible, and civil, even when disagreeing.

Parvum Opus 268 ~ Nomenclatter

PARVUM OPUS

Number 268

March 6, 2008

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TOM SWIFTIES

I just taught Fred the Tom Swifties game, named after a series of boys' novels by Edward L. Stratemeyer about Tom Swift, whose dialogue was always marked with adverbs, as in, "Tom said jokingly." In the game, you add a punning adverb to a "he said" tag. For example, "I think my pH balance is off," he said acidly. A really clever one from the Fun with Words site linked above is, "Elvis is dead," said Tom expressly. It took me a minute to get that one.

I read once that John F. Kennedy liked to play this game with his friends.

NAMING ART

This week the Frazz cartoon had a funny storyline on Wednesday and Thursday about naming artwork. A school kid tells Frazz she needs to think of a name for her painting:

Girl: It was a horse until my coughing fit. Now it's abstract art.

Frazz: And you think the right title will save it. Are you thinking a poetic title, an ironic title, or a controversial title?

Girl: I had no idea art was this complicated.

Frazz: I.e., a good grade, a good price or a good deal of attention?

Jef Mallett, the cartoonist, must have read Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word.

NOMENCLATTER

Before the recent Ohio primary, a local radio host named Bill Cunningham was asked to warm up the crowd at a McCain rally, and ended up in a squabble with McCain because Cunningham called Obama "Barack Hussein Obama". Which is his name, but it's not considered polite to mention it. Actually, Cunningham uses people's middle names rather often, but in this instance he may have been name-calling intentionally. Cunningham likes to provoke people, and he provoked McCain into apologizing for him, upon which Cunningham said he was going to throw his vote to Clinton. Cunningham kind of looks like Alfred E. Neuman, anyway, so no one cares. But he's smarter than he's given credit for. He gave up lawyering when he learned that one of his former clients, whom he'd gotten off for murder, was actually guilty.

STATE OF FEAR

I just finished listening to a book on CD, State of Fear by Michael Crichton, about eco-terrorism, eco-money, and eco-politics. As literature, it's so-so, but it's entertaining, full of hair-raising escapes (including one unfortunate cannibal victim), and Crichton did three years of research on the science. His appendices are well worth reading even if you don't care to read the entire lengthy novel. I didn't realize the organization called ELF in the book is real: Earth Liberation Front.

We've chatted about climate change before in PO. Though I'm all for tidying up and finding alternate sources of energy, for various reasons, I don't think we're doomed, while others who do nevertheless aren't giving up their cars and so on. You might want to check out The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change held this week in New York.

I think we could all agree that there's money and political goals on both sides of the debate. Mark Steyn wrote,

Take Mayer Hillman, senior fellow at the Policy Studies Institute in London and big-shot eco-panjandrum. "When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it," he said recently. "This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not." David Suzuki, Canadian eco-messiah, is cool with that: he recently called for politicians who disagree with him on "climate change" to be thrown in jail.

All this because of computer weather projections. My French student actually wouldn't agree that the science fiction catastrophe movie The Day After Tomorrow is fantasy. (I haven't seen the movie but am confused by the plot description ~ the disasters are all about the beginning of a new ice age.) When he told me people with old cars that emit more carbon dioxide have to pay higher taxes in France, I said, "Why not tax bigger people more than smaller ones? Bigger people use more oxygen and emit more carbon dioxide." He liked that idea, but then I outweigh him.

Meanwhile, Weather Channel founder John Coleman may sue Al Gore.

ENDLESS EDITING

||| In the produce department, an extra small variety of fruit is called a "personal watermelon". No thanks. I have my boundaries.

||| A sign in a semi-gated condo community: "No street parking community." Why isn't it simply "No street parking"? The shorter a street sign is, the better. And safer. Anyway, it's one of those "communities" where no one really knows anyone else.

||| From Dennis Prager: "I've done this since I'm very young" instead of "since I was very young". Prager himself has commented on this. I think it may be a carry-over from Yiddish.

||| In PO 266 I entered, "...took home well more than minimum wage." I was pleased to find that Evan Jenkins has written about this "mangled idiom" in the online Columbia Journalism Review.

EDUCATION

You may have read the story about Harvard providing restricted gym hours for Muslim women students. This is a private university and they can do what they want, but I wonder that these very strict students did not choose to attend religious schools, as do many very orthodox Jews and Christians who want a controlled educational environment. A Muslim woman at Harvard said it's only right that the majority compromise for a minority. Huh? What have Muslim students been doing in the last many decades they've been in the U.S.? Does anyone remember them requesting special accommodation before 9/11? Coincidence? Perhaps.

You might remember a similar flap in the same locale, when Professor Mary Daly at Boston College refused to let men attend some of her classes. At least it seems similar to me: ideological bullying, administrative caving.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON POLITICS

How scientific ideas get made: Some researchers say that your vote is affected or even determined by your genetic makeup. Forget rational thought. According to New York University psychology professor David Amodio, liberals use a part of the brain that makes them more responsive to different ideas. "More liberal people tend to be able to deal with pros and cons of decisions, and as they get more conservative, people like to focus on one side of the story," Amodio said.

But what happens when people change from one mode to another over the course of a lifetime? And what are the "different" ideas?

For instance, like many people, I was taught a traditional (say conservative) view of history in grade school, and more or less traditional morality at home. Then, like many people, I went to college and adopted "new" (liberal to radical) ideas whole hog. And like many people, years of experience led me to reevaluate the old and the new, and I got nuancy as the "old" ideas took on a new complexity. So I've looked at clouds from both sides now, as Judy Collins sang.

And what happens to the brain of someone from a very lefty environment (say, the old Soviet Union or Cuba) who encounters the West?

Furthermore, there are any number of "different" ideas that would shut my brain down entirely. Necrophilia, for instance. Of course that's not an entirely new idea.

Amodio is attaching biased interpretations to his data. His own language is slanted and judgmental, not scientifically objective. For instance, I'll bet he does not consider that a passionate belief in coming climate-change disaster caused by human carbon emissions is focused on only one side of the story ("The debate is over!" ~ Al Gore), although those believers are usually what we call liberal.

REQUEST

My older son is getting married in Scotland in September, and would like to find a formal black Eisenhower jacket, size XL, to wear with his kilt. The only one he's found so far costs more than $300, I think. So if anyone knows of any good sources for a more reasonably priced jacket, let me know. (I already suggested getting one custom made or dying an olive drab jacket black.)

______________________________________________

Discussing language, education, journalism, culture, and more, Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. 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 2008. 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.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

NEW SHOP: Scot Tartans (custom orders available).

T-SHIRTS AND OTHER STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

"Flash in the Pants"

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

"If you build it they won't come"

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag

"I am here" T-shirt

"Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"

"I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron

Plus kids' things, mouse pad, teddy bear, coffee mugs, beer stein, and more!

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".

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.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus 267 ~ Nuancy

PARVUM OPUS

Number 267

______________________________________________

WINNING NEOLOGISMS

Thanks to Jes M. for this:

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologisms, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. The winners are:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
15. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

ANTIQUELOGISMS

I was thinking that there must be a lot of people who use the word "windfall" without knowing its literal meaning: fruit blown onto the ground, that is, something you don't have to work for. "Low-hanging fruit" is clearer but the meaning isn't quite the same, it doesn't have the sense of an unexpected gift. There are lots of idioms that grew out of experience and farm life and old technology that are unfamiliar to us now.

And how about this one: Since the UK is now giving welfare payouts to Muslims with more than one wife (though they haven't yet legalized polygamous marriages performed in-country), will one's "better half" change to better third, or fourth, or fifth, and so on. Thanx and a tip of the PO hat to Mark Steyn for that one. Steyn also called John Kerry a "nuancy boy". I do not believe, however, that he thinks Kerry is truly a nuanced thinker. I doubt if he thinks Kerry is homosexual either, as in British slang, "nancy boy". He probably meant Kerry isn't completely straightforward. One of the things I like about Steyn is the way he pronounces Obama and tacos: Obama rhymes with Alabama, and tacos sounds like tackos.

By the way, I have a French student who has an automatic antipathy to all religion, which he considers "old" and therefore useless and obsolete thinking (though he's attracted to old American Indian traditional life and customs). Since he's a chef, I've brought to class newspaper columns by The Amish Cook, Lovina Eicher, and explained who the Amish are, but he's kind of hostile about them. He objects to their withdrawal from modern life and compared them with radical Muslims. The Amish, of course, don't try to convert or kill people. But my student likes Lovina's name because it sounds like "love" so maybe he'll soften up toward the Amish, from Lovina's recipes and stories of Amish family life. The Amish were one of those groups who came to America to escape religious persecution in Europe.

LESS IS BIG

From a TV bio: "On the screen, my father, Gary Cooper, was often a man of little words." Here's a situation where you really mustn't confuse little (for measurables) with few (for countables). Cooper was known as a taciturn character in movies but "little words" sounds like his words were, well, small, and also unimportant, rather than not very many.

MYKE

From Mike Sykes:

I once had a boss whom I constantly itched to correct for "between you and I", you may recall that the bard himself once slipped up in The Merchant of Venice.

Yes, I think we discussed that in PO a couple of years back when the Al Pacino movie came out.

"Myself" is a difficult one; reflexive it may be, and while I tend to agree with you I've seen examples by plenty of people who might be expected to take care with their English use it where not strictly appropriate. Actually Fowler (as usual!) puts it about right, i.e. agrees with us.

... a variant possessive formation such as "the Smith children" (rather than "the Smiths'
children")...

Surely one always refers to children as, e.g., "the Marshall girls and the Sykes boys, ..." (not to mention The History Boys). My wife is one of the Cooke sisters, even though none of their names is now Cooke.
And we oldies remember the Marshall plan, and there are Rhodes scholarships. But no rules, surely, only practices, sometimes I suspect based on nothing more than euphony: consider the Victorian era vs the Roosevelt era.
Which calls to mind the various ways in which we form adjectives from names: Dickensian, Shavian, Pinteresque, Mancunian, Liverpudlian, Oxonian, Glaswegian, Florentine. While some others are impossible, e.g. Ashby-de-la-Zouch (about which there seems to be some difference of opinion between the Town Council and tourist boards on the one hand and both Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey on the other, as to whether or not it should be hyphenated, while Google Earth doesn't even capitalize the 'Z').

You can't top Liverpudlian. But however did Glaswegian come from Glasgow? Or does it?

(By the way, here's a pretty good discussion of adjective strings, the avoidance of, in Professional Writing Style.)

SLAPPED WITH A SUIT

Go to Dilbert on 2/25/08 and 2/26 for a mini-mini-series about a guy being slapped with a suit. Literally. His own actual suit off his body.

YOU SAY, I SAY

You say diviss-ive, I say di-visive. Or at least some people say divissive, as from division; I say di-visive, as from divide. The sound clip on yourdictionary.com has di-visive (long i) but gives both pronunciations in the spelled-out pronunciation guide, as well as an alternative Z sound for the S, which would sound funny to me.

By the way, I saw a publication called "Alternatives for Seniors". I thought it meant there's an alternative to being a senior. But the only alternative is being dead. No, it was merely a compendium of various retirement facilities and services for old people. A list of things to choose from is not the same as alternatives. A complete list is an alternative to nothing at all. A menu is not a list of "alternatives" to something else. Think of "alternate" or "substitute" when you use "alternative", and then maybe you won't use it.

Parvum Opus 266 ~ Giving Grammar Its Due

PARVUM OPUS

Number 266

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DON'T BE GRY

First of all, it's RICH Lederer. So sorry. I should remember that, as Rich is so much more a Rich than the other nickname. Also, Rich sent his disquisition on the -gry riddle. He suggests counting the angels on the head of a pin instead of wasting your time on the -gry perplex, but I suggest reading his article.

THE SEMICOLON GETS ITS DUE

Dave DaBee wrote: "My goodness, look what's at the top of the Times Most Emailed list: "Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location." Leave it to Noam Chomsky to use the semicolon story to take a wholly unrelated political jab.

Dave's blog also linked to an interesting article about misleading statistics by Stephen Jay Gould. You remember Mark Twain's remark that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I, MYSELF, AND ME

Just a reminder that it's incorrect -- though I wouldn't say ungrammatical -- to put yourself first as the subject of a sentence when there's another subject, as in: "I and my wife went to New York" instead of "My wife and I went to New York." Maybe it's just impolite. And never, never think that the objective case should be the nominative just because the first person comes second, that is, "The folks visited my wife and I." Neither do you substitute the reflexive: "The folks visited my wife and myself." But, I've never run across a rule for who goes first in the objective case. It seems OK to say, "The folks visited me and my wife." But maybe it's not OK or even impolite. Is there a rule?

FROM HERE AND THERE

• "They accorded themselves as we would wish them to." (Referring to the US Naval ships meeting Iranian threats.) Should have been "conducted themselves", or possibly the speaker had a vague memory of "acquitted themselves".
• "It's very simplistic in design." "Simplistic" does not mean "simple", it means unrealistically simple or oversimplified. This is another case of straining for extra refinement in language by using the longer word, which in this case is the wrong word.
• "Chimerism is a very unresearched phenomenon." Compare "very little researched" or possibly "under-researched". Do researchers themselves ever use this clunky construction?
• "Heart-rendering" (from the president of the Illinois university where a shooter killed several people). Should be "heart-rending" (tearing), unless you're talking about meat processing.
• "Congraduations". And it was not for a graduation. Could be a cute greeting card, though.
• The clue for "propaganda" in a crossword puzzle book was "misinformation". Propaganda is not necessarily misinformation. Related to "propagate", it more or less means public relations.
• "Took home well more than minimum wage." We can say "well over minimum wage" or "considerably more than".

POLITICAL HOOHAH OF THE WEEK

Michelle Obama said that today is the first time in her adult life she's been really proud of her country. I'd say her vision has been blinkered. Of course she's younger than I am so she doesn't remember the huge and fairly rapid changes in civil rights for black people and women's rights that happened in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. But even today I can think of a lot of things to be proud of, not just the fact that a black man has a good shot at being president. Apparently Michelle Obama is not proud of Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, etc. And what about Oprah? She immediately said that she didn't mean what everyone thought she meant after she said it at least twice. Even if, as she quickly backtracked, she meant only American political life, there's already been a lot of "change". But also within her adult life, here are just a few things to appreciate:

• The other night one of my Chinese students asked me if making jokes about the president is allowed here. It's not only allowed, it's practically a requirement for some people.
• This is the country that millions of people risk their lives to get into illegally.
• What's considered poverty here is wealth in many parts of the world. How many "poor" people have food, shelter, clothing, a car, bottled water along with clean, safe tap water, too much entertainment, and all kinds of electronic gadgets? These would have meant comfort and even luxury in my grandparents' era.
• The best army in the world is now all volunteer.
• We have possibly the best free library system in the world.
• It may not have been Al Gore, but someone or many someones in this country created the Internet.
• We can be proud that it's possible to take our freedoms for granted. But we shouldn't be proud of taking them for granted.

POSSESSIVES

Regarding Down vs. Down's Syndrome: Mike Sykes noted other examples of this kind of variant: Alzheimer's disease, Alzheimer disease, Alzheimer's; Parkinson's disease. And:

Outside the realm of medical matters, I notice the Wikipedia entry on Planck's constant is consistently inconsistent, or perhaps, to be more charitable, one might say even-handed. It refers also to Dirac's constant. In contrast, while the article on Maxwell's equations is consistently apostrophised, that on the Maxwell relations is almost wholly unapostrophised.
I thought perhaps Newton's laws might have survived this (to me) strange practice, but googling for "the newton laws" produced nearly 1000 hits (though Google doesn't search only for the exact quoted string*) against 260,000 for "newton's laws".

There are also physical phenomena that I have never known to be apostrophised, such as the Heaviside and Appleton layers, the Humboldt current. But it's surprising what google turns up.
I wonder how the differences originated.

I browsed around in Wikipedia under apostrophe, genitive, and possessive (including the Saxon possessive!) but didn't find anything specifically applicable, though I remember reading somewhere, sometime about a variant possessive formation such as "the Smith children" (rather than "the Smiths' children"), but I don't remember what it's called.

(*Doesn't Google look for the exact search string if it's between quotation marks?)

TECH TREK

A couple of people sent me advice about correcting the technical problems in formatting PO in e-mail. I've started out with something simpler this time, composing PO within Gmail instead of cutting and pasting from Word, which is what I did for a long time (and in Yahoo mail before that), but something changed and it wasn't me. I think this might work.

Parvum Opus 265 ~ PO of Pallor

PARVUM OPUS

Number 265

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GRRRRY

Bill R. sent a cartoon about a trick riddle that you’ve probably heard before, quizzing you about words that end in -gry. Here’s a link to the cartoon. (I won’t try to e-mail it because some readers might have images blocked by their spam filters.) The punchline is great: “Communicating badly and then acting smug when you’re misunderstood is not cleverness.”

ZOUNDS!

Zounds! by Mark Dunn about interjections, “zounds” being an old variant of “His wounds” (or “God’s wounds”). Dunn says it’s from “Christ’s wounds” but that might have become “soonds”, wouldn’t it, because of the ess sound.

Under “honest injun” he suggests that the potential for ethnic offense might come from this spelling of “Indian” (rather than from assuming Indians are dishonest, though it could mean they’re honest, couldn’t it?). So why is the normal looseness and elision of American pronunciation more offensive than the very careful pronunciation of every letter? The “dia” spelling can become a J sound, as happened permanently with Cajun (from Arcadian). Of course we know what happened with the loose Southern and British pronunciation of Negro, but I doubt if every such usage was always intended to be malicious.

The entry for “hello” says that we might be saying “Ahoy!” when we answer the phone today if Alexander Graham Bell had had his way, and it was actually used for a while in the world’s first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. Feel free to try it out.

IF GOLDILOCKS AND NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN HAD A SON

Thomas Dalrymple called the “present archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams” a cross between Goldilocks and Neville Chamberlain. Note “present” and note the lower-case “archbishop” (although that may be a matter of British stylistic usage). Dalrymple sees vague language and sloppy thinking in Williams’ lecture before the Royal Courts of Justice. Williams is a clever fellow without doubt. But it is not possible to accept two conflicting laws. For instance, a man in Dallas recently killed his two teenage daughters for behaving like normal American girls. He has disappeared, probably protected by fellow Muslims here or abroad. What he did is acceptable in many Muslim countries ~ “honor killings”. According to Western law, there is no such thing. Furthermore, this is not the Western idea of honor, which is honor within oneself, not from someone else’s behavior. Why should we accept this “communal standard” in the name of tolerance? Dalrymple wrote, “There is only one word for a society in which such discourse can pass for intellectual subtlety and sophistication, and lead to career advancement: decadent.”

Regarding the re-naming of you-know-what terrorism, Mike Sykes wrote:

The term "anti-Muslim terrorists" seems to me absurd, in that we don't usually use "anti" in that sense (do we?): they're not opposing Islam, rather they're arguably contravening Islamic teaching. It would be more accurate to call it counter-productive terrorism. If only there was an organisation we could refer to from which we could derive a more convenient word than Al-Qaedaists. The IRA were much more considerate in that respect.

Yes, the problem is that we don’t have just one terrorist organization or just one country to refer to. The only unifying theme is, in fact, Islam, and, in fact, very likely Koranic teaching, even if all Muslims are not performing these acts. Someone recently said that we’ve just stepped into an ancient Islamic civil war. True enough, Sunnis and Shiites have been killing each other for centuries, but they like to expand their field when possible. It’s in the book.

PERSONS OF PALLOR

A couple of smart blogs about PC names from Minding the Campus:

The bit about "Asian" being useless is hilarious as well as true because it is precisely the PC crowd who foisted that useless word on the rest of us. "Oriental" as the man-in-the-streets catch-all for Chinese/Japanese/Korean fell into disfavor. Same for the traditionally technically correct "Mongoloid".* It was the PC idiots who decided to lump these peoples in with the Indo-Europeans of "southwest Asia" (i.e. the ME) and India. "Asian" is even more of a useless stretch than monolithic "African", which as we all know is usually shorthand for "sub-Saharan African", IOW "black".

Thus part of my complaint about “African-American” ~ it always means black, not Arab or Egyptian or South American Boer or whatever.

I quibble with commenter Orlando Ray's statement that "Americans of European decent* cannot be diverse, unless they are gay." Being gay is not enough to render you diverse if you are of European decent. Volunteering legal services to a Gay and Lesbian (oops, Lesbian and Gay) organization in the early 1990's, I was required to attend a diversity training session where the facilitator, a black woman, basically berated the group of volunteer lawyers for being almost entirely male and white. But one can fight fire. At another Lesbian and Gay lawyers' meeting addressed by city council candidates, a white Lesbian and a gay Hispanic who relentlessly referred to persons of pallor as "Anglos", I was able to do an AZZA. "As a person of Irish decent, I am deeply offended by your referring to me as an Anglo." We are all victims here.

*He may be decent but he meant descent. Let us remember that “diverse” ONLY means “different”. By the way, why did the writer have to reverse “gay and lesbian”? Is it ladies first? Love the AZZA: “As a this or that” ~ almost always followed by a proclamation of offense.

INSURANCE IS NOT THE SAME AS CARE

Someone pointed out that we must distinguish between health care and health insurance. Maybe 15% of Americans don’t have health insurance. This doesn’t mean they don’t have health care. When I had a lot of medical tests a couple of years ago, without insurance, the billing administrator at the hospital told me, “Don’t tell anyone I said so, but if you were an illegal immigrant you wouldn’t get a bill.” I got all the care I needed, maybe more, plus the bills. Rarely is anyone turned away from urgent care because of money. The best suggestion I ever heard about health care came from a Canadian physician (I’m not sure but it may be Dr. David Gratzer), who isn’t a fan of the Canadian system. He recommended that we buy insurance only for major medical expenses, which would make insurance pretty cheap. Ordinary medical expenses should be paid out of pocket. Makes sense to me.

3:10 TO YUMA

Movie comparison: Recently I watched both the old (1957) and the new (2007) versions of the western 3:10 to Yuma. Warning: This contains spoilers for both movies. Both were good movies, but much of the plot was changed. Can you guess what would be changed in 50 years? That is, what of significance, never mind the color and the expensive effects in the new movie. Both have a charming villain who exhibits a trace of humanity despite being a cold-blooded murderer. Both have a honest rancher who takes on the dangerous job of escorting the criminal to a train bound for prison, because the rancher is desperate for money; he is willing to risk his life for his family. But added in the new movie: the faithful wife is angry at her husband for not being more forceful in the face of drought and greedy neighbors; their older teenage son is typical of modern sons in that he is contemptuous of his father for not being more forceful and successful; the rancher’s game leg was incurred when he was running away from a fight during the Civil War. And finally, though he behaves heroically, in the end he gets killed. Is this necessarily more “real” than the softer humanity of 1957? In the old movie, the rancher perseveres and survives. Virtue prevailed. Were the audiences of 1957 ~ not long out of World War II, where right prevailed ~ less realistic about life than the new director and writer, who were born in the 1960s, and unlikely to have been to war?

COREX

||| Dick Lederer of verbivore.com wrote: Just to be helpful, it's "Down Syndrome," not "Downs Syndrome." I’m sure I’ve made this mistake before in PO. Why can’t I remember it? It is named after Dr. John Langdon Down, which would justify the Down’s form, and Wikipedia says the British form is Down’s, but for some reason Down Syndrome is correct in the U.S.. Some of you may remember when the disorder was called Mongolism*, because the people who have it have almond-shapes eyes.

||| I wrote who’s when I should have written whose last week.

Parvum Opus 264 ~The Uncommon Reader

PARVUM OPUS

Number 264

______________________________________________

THE UNCOMMON READER

The PO is a day late because one has what one’s doctor called the crud. Not pneumonia, not quite bronchitis, but definitely lung crud. Meanwhile, one has just read The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, an entertaining little fiction (120 pages) in which Queen Elizabeth suddenly discovers the pleasures of reading books, to everyone’s consternation, becoming so enamored of reading that she decides to abdicate. In the book, she always refers to herself as “one” instead of “I”. One expected royalty to use the editorial “we”, which creates an anonymous, distant authority; but one is pretty remote and authoritative too. One wonders if she actually speaks that way. She also observes that in her time, Buckingham Palace staff went from Servants to Personnel to Human Resources. If anyone ought to be able to have servants, it should be a queen.

If I were the Queen, I would do something about the Archbishop of Canterbury. He says England must accept at least some aspects of sharia law. Why does he think he can, or want to, wipe out centuries of English Common Law? I’d haul him off to the Tower of London. Apparently England now gives welfare benefits to people with multiple wives, and polygamy is of course illegal for non-Muslims.

Meanwhile around the world, Jihadists recently used women with Downs Syndrome as “suicide” bombers. Moderate Muslims all over the world offered moments of silent protest. Days, actually.

What else happened this week on the language scene:

Mark Steyn wrote:

My favorite headline of the year so far comes from The Daily Mail in Britain: "Government Renames Islamic Terrorism As 'Anti-Islamic Activity' To Woo Muslims."

Well, it is, of course. But why “woo”? I think the wooing is on the wrong foot here.

Regarding Steyn’s legal troubles, here’s a brief Canadian TV panel discussion on freedom of speech, which surprisingly is not a given in Canada’s constitution. And check out freemarksteyn.com.

Meanwhile back at the ranch:

Last week, Mohammed Khan, the imam of the Islamic Center of Des Moines, led the opening prayer in the Iowa legislature at the request of Iowa State Representative Ako Abdul-Samad, a former Iowa school board member who has worked as a counselor in the Iowa prison system, and has questionable associations with Islamic extremists. In his four-minute prayer before the Iowa legislative session, Khan made a plea for “victory over those who disbelieve” and “protection from the Great Satan.”

In case you aren’t quite sure, “those who disbelieve” are all non-Muslims, and “the Great Satan” is the United States. Let’s see, wasn’t there an Iowa primary recently?

THE RACE RACE

Bill Clinton is still getting trashed for comparing Obama’s campaign to Jesse Jackson’s failed campaign some years ago, because this implies that Obama is running merely as a blackchurchblack “values” and who’s magazine lauded Louis Farrakhan. Also, Obama’s wife said in a speech that he was faced with the threat of being shot every time he goes to a gas station, which somehow she made a racial issue, though that’s no more true of him than it is of any politician or indeed any of us. Depending on the neighborhood. Further, Obama introduced race into a speech he made after last year’s massacre at Virginia Tech. After decrying the violence, he compared the shootings to the “violence” of Don Imus making an insulting racial joke on radio. I’m not buying him as a “uniter”. Read Shelby Steele’s new book about him, A Bound Man (only 134 pages). (In her review of this book, a Dr. Helen Smith blogged, oddly: “Obama ~ and quite a few sexual minorities ~ have a problem.” How many sexual minorities are there? I guess I lost count.) candidate. People on both sides of the campaign are shocked, shocked. I guess it would have been more tactful to compare him to some other failed Democratic candidate. However, primary voting reports say that Obama carries most black voters (although of course many whites are voting for him also). Are they voting for him solely on the issues? It’s questionable. For one thing, Obama’s views are almost identical to Hillary’s (except he has an even more liberal voting record). For another, even if he doesn’t bring up race, he doesn’t have to; he belongs to a that’s all about

Lest you think I’m only picking on Dems, I noted the flap between McCain and Romney, when McCain intentionally confused “timetable” (for leaving Iraq) with “benchmarks” (which aren’t locked into a timetable), but the story didn’t stick with me. I find the race issue more colorful, if you will. Though I was taking an interested look at Obama when he first appeared on the scene, that post-massacre speech turned me right off.

If you want to keep track of campaign lies, check out factcheck.org. It looks like a pretty even-handed site. And, read Silly Talk by Walter Williams, a diatribe on political dishonesty, plus sloppy speech habits in general.

ORWELL LIVES

John Leo in City Journal:

“In order to enhance diversity, it was necessary to suppress it,” Walter Olson writes at Overlawyered.com,

Those who forget the past tense are doomed to sound silly

||| 20-ish guy to friends: Talk about sweat ~ I never swat so much in my life! (From Overheard in New York.)

||| Supermarket cashier: I was actually valedictorian in high school, and I wore four-inch heels to graduation. And surprise, surprise ~ I falled. (From Overheard in New York.)

||| Guy to friend: If the Yankees win the first two, it'll be a swept. (From Overheard in New York.)

Counterfeit coinages

||| Paint department clerk to customer: Do you want interior or outerior? (From Overheard in New York.)

||| Bimbette: Oh my god, I was dramatized! I couldn't even look at him. (From Overheard in New York.)

||| Dennis Miller made up an almost real word, “recompensation”, compounded of recompense and compensation, which are very close in definition, but usually aren’t used interchangeably. You can be compensated for work, while you might receive recompense for an injury sustained on the job.

||| Super Bowl commentary: “It all comes down to the differentio of pass completions [between Eli Manning and Tom Brady].” This sounds like an almost Shakespearean coinage combining difference or differential and ratio.

best name of the superbowl

Plaxico Burress.

ON THE LINKS

||| What American accent do you have? Take a short quiz to identify it. I have a Midland accent (which is also known as the Ohio River Valley accent), what we consider neutral in the U.S. To test the quiz, I retook it trying on the best Boston or East Coast accent I could manage, and sure enough it identified the accent as Northeastern.

||| The Phrase Finder is pretty good source of the origin of over 1,200 English expressions, including lists of phrases that originated in the Bible or in Shakespeare.

LEARNER, NOT LEARNED

Dave DaBee’s Blog had an interesting quote from Eric Hoffer:

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who survive, while the 'learned' find themselves fully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

Of course I think much important learning is timeless, but Dave is thinking of the latest medical knowledge that saved his life.

MSPCC

Reader Ezra Sykes reminds us that he’s still training for the Boston Marathon, to raise money for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC). So far, he’s raised more than $3,200 of his $5,000 goal, and offers his CD Juvenile by Design as a thank-you gift. Go to http://www.firstgiving.com/ezrasykes to make a contribution. Or make your check out to "MSPCC" and send it to him at 44 Nonantum Street, Brighton, MA 02135.

WHEN AUTOMATION GOES WRONG

It has been noted that the date on last week’s PO was wrong. I have a code to automatically insert the current date, but all by itself, when I wasn’t looking, it went wrong. Since the whole point of an automatic field code is not to have to think about it, I guess it has to go.