| Usage Police |
[September 05, 2008 @ 12:05pm] |
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Here is a wonderful website on English usage. I discovered it by accident while trying to determine why so many people spell "yay" "yea," and how they thought that would be pronounced. (Turns out even though "yea" looks like "yeah" with a dropped letter, it is a word in itself, meaning yes, opposite of nay, and pronounced to rhyme. What people usually mean by it, though, is "yay," opposite of boo, pronounced as spelled, and expressing pleasure.)
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| Oil |
[September 04, 2008 @ 7:09am] |
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Our former garbage man in ND struck oil on his property so is not driving the garbage truck anymore. I am so very pleased for him. How cool is that?
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| Yay |
[September 03, 2008 @ 10:59am] |
The truck, it turns out, is in pretty good condition, fit to drive back to ND, so not only will I have a car when I'm there and my honey is here (a handy thing when the nearest grocery store is thirty miles away), but we'll be better able to take one or two things with us instead of having to wait for the movers to bring all. This will be particularly nice in the interval between our arrival and that of the movers, which should be only days but could be a matter of weeks, depending on one thing and another.
Have I mentioned we own too much stuff? Mostly files, books, and hobby/craft tools and materials. Surely we could do without a few of these things.
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| Science Debate 2008 |
[September 03, 2008 @ 7:11am] |
This is so much more important than the usual shallow nonsense they're asked. I'm much impressed with Obama's answers on the topics about which I know enough to judge; and it looks to me as though he's specific and knowledgeable on all the topics. (It would be so nice to have an intelligent and educated person in the office of the president of the usa!)
I will be interested to see McCain's answers when he gives them.
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| Baby Pictures |
[August 31, 2008 @ 4:32pm] |
I wonder whether there's anything to be made of the plethora of childhood photos of Barack Obama that litter articles about him? I don't believe I've ever seen so many childhood photos of a presidential candidate. As far as I'm aware, we're not being treated to similar ones of John McCain. (Some of the young Viet Nam hero, yes, but none on his tricycle.)
Of course this could be because, being less interested in McCain, I've read fewer articles and missed the ones that contain the photos. Or perhaps it's just that Obama was more photographed than McCain; being the younger of the two, he was raised at a time when cameras were more readily available to all.
But I can't help wondering whether there's some deep significance; whether we're meant to make something of all these photos. Are we to like Obama more because we see that he had a childhood? Or less, because we can tell how recent it was? Or perhaps something more subtle, about race or status or something?
Maybe it's a conspiracy.
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| Back to Back |
[August 28, 2008 @ 1:16pm] |
I am pleased to discover, in Lapsing Into a Comma by Bill Walsh, corroboration for my belief that it is not necessary to compound the noun version of a compound adjective. He bases it in part on pronunciation: in the sentence "I'm having a backyard barbecue in my back yard," it's easy to hear (if it's spoken aloud) the difference in emphasis between adjective and noun. The emphasis is on the first syllable of the compound "backyard," but equal on the two words of the noun "back yard." The same is true of backseat and back seat, makeover and make over, start-up and start up, etc.
I have permitted copy editors to mush together the two words of my nouns on occasion: the one I remember most clearly was when I spoke of someone in the back seat (which the c.e. changed to backseat) of a car; that was the first time I'd ever seen anyone compound the noun, and as a quick glance at my then-new dictionary seemed to establish that it was now correct, I let it stand.
But although it's now had even more years to settle into even more dictionaries, I'd argue the point these days. Complaisance can be taken too far. Yes, it's a backseat driver. But he's sitting in the back seat.
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| "Shade" |
[August 26, 2008 @ 7:11pm] |
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Those of you who don't read Eat Our Brains may be unaware that Tor.com has published Steven Gould's short story "Shade" on the Web for our reading pleasure. Check it out. It's delightful.
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| Cars |
[August 26, 2008 @ 10:58am] |
It turns out that the little red car, which I bought in ND for $150 and which had been running very well indeed till we got here, but needed many repairs to make it fit for registration in this state (which requires more of its cars than ND does) has, while it sat waiting for repairs or a return to ND, turned to junk.
Alas, at this point the repairs would be far beyond its worth, even though it gets excellent gas mileage. Not only does it still need a catalytic converter and other such items for registration here, but during the year of its enforced rest its rubber parts have developed dry rot and its oil leaks have increased beyond all that is reasonable. Moreover, the repair person is not at all sure that he could get any replacement parts for it even if he tried to repair it.
It is to sigh. I did like that little red car; and it's not at all clear that the pickup (which gets half the red car's gas mileage) is any more fit to drive to ND than the car is. Next we'll have to take it in to the garage to see. And I guess the Red Cross will receive a gift of the red car, for whatever good it will do them.
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| Thinking Out Loud |
[August 26, 2008 @ 8:29am] |
It is often said that "clinging" or "craving" is the source of all suffering, and that a cessation of clinging or craving will bring about a cessation of suffering. Unfortunately, this is often heard as a recommendation against involvement, and a suggestion that detachment will end suffering.
Well, and perhaps it will: so will death.
A more auspicious solution, however, might be to remain engaged in life, but to cease wishing it were different. Which I realize is another suggestion open to misinterpretation. I don't mean "don't struggle against bad stuff." What happens to you may be a god's choice, but what you do about it is yours. You can rail and complain and cling to your unhappiness, or you can accept what's happened and work from there. Clinging to what you wish had happened, or what you hope will happen, or who's to blame, or what your expectations were, prevents you from working with what is.
To accept reality is not to approve of it. You need not like what's happened, you only need to stop clinging to your dislike, which is based entirely in "might-have-been" and thus blocks you from the present moment. (For which, read: "...from your life.")
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| WoW |
[August 25, 2008 @ 7:22pm] |
I had such a lovely time playing WoW over the last year. It sparked my imagination as nothing else has for a long time, and was more engrossing than most of the recent fiction I've tried. But alas, I've come to the end of the parts I like. I have three characters at level 70, one in his sixties, and a bunch between twenty and fifty, and I've done all the quests too many times now. ( tl;dr )
But it sure was fun while it lasted.
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| Not a Litter Box |
[August 12, 2008 @ 10:41am] |
Our elder cat Pilikia occasionally uses something other than a litter box as a litter box. This seems to have nothing to do with the cleanliness of existing litter boxes, or with anything else that I can identify. She has used printers, kitty beds, throw rugs, empty boxes, and most recently, my unwashable zabuton-substitute cushion. Which I guess will teach me not to leave my meditation cushions out when I'm not meditating. [sigh] I'll have to try to make a zabuton. (They're much too expensive to buy.) But not till after we move, I think. I can make do with temporary ankle-protectors (a folded towel, maybe) till then.
What I don't understand is why Pilikia does this. She's not even choosing things that are in any way similar to either litter boxes or the sort of place a cat usually chooses who is allowed outdoors. I don't believe she ever did it before she was ten or so, and I cannot find any contributing factor. Unless it's a very odd protest of the existence of our other cat, the ubiquitous Lulu who is her arch-enemy; but as she did try to ruin a printer in this way before Lu came to live with us, I don't think it's that. She's not ill, and although she is remarkably stupid for a cat, she's not a drooling idiot: she knows what and where the litter box is.
Oh, well. There's nothing to be done about it that I can see, except discourage her from the furniture and hope for the best. Who knows what's going on in her tiny mind? I certainly don't.
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| Utilizing Comprise |
[August 05, 2008 @ 6:54am] |
"Utilize" is now rarely used to mean anything other than "use" (once it meant "to make do with something not intended for the purpose"). Soon "use" may drop right out of the language, since why keep a nickel word when there's a five-dollar one for the purpose? Of course now there's no single word that means "to make do with something not intended for the purpose"; but hey, when we want to say we employed something in the use for which it was intended, we can sound edumacated.
"Comprise" was more difficult to start with, so it's less amazing that it's come to be used with the following "of" that was not so long ago included in its meaning. What really puzzles me about "comprise" is why people use it at all. "Utilize" I can see: it's three syllables to replace one, and what could be better than that? But "comprise" is two syllables to replace...well, two, usually.
Maybe I'm prejudiced because I never could keep a grip on the proper use of "comprise," so I mind its loss less.
1. The USA comprises 50 states.
2. Fifty states comprise the USA.
Say what? Both are correct? But...wait....
(Of course that just means it's a one-word synonym for "is made up of" or "make up," which really isn't all that odd; but still.)
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| Discourse |
[July 29, 2008 @ 1:13pm] |
I find it unfortunate that so many of today's youth seem to believe that "suck it up" is a useful contribution to a conversation. It is, often, a conversation-stopper, and I suppose if that's what they're after, then it is useful to them, but it's very disturbing to me. Have they been consistently told by their elders that any suggestion contrary to the status quo is a QQ to which the appropriate response is "suck it up"? If not, where do they get this idea?
The conversation that just brought it to my attention was on a WoW forum, where somebody was suggesting to Blizzard that it might be nice to provide additional methods of grinding rep with a certain faction, since the available method really only works for children or retirees: people with huge blocks of time to devote to it. Players who must fit WoW into their daily lives in one- or two-hour blocks simply can't do it. This seems to me a valid suggestion, and it was being discussed reasonably (or at least with varying degrees of contention but no open hostility) among players, till along came a brat who said, roughly, "Suck it up. If you really want [that item] you'll quit QQing and do what you have to, to get it."
That pretty much stopped the conversation, right there. A couple of people jumped onto the hostility-wagon, rudenesses were compounded, and although the OP was polite and disarming, the discussion was done. I met much the same response the one time I posted a suggestion on the Blizz suggestion-forum; but I don't think the belief that rudeness is an appropriate response to polite suggestions is at all limited to game-players, or even to children. It seems to me common, at least in the US, to discredit ideas not by addressing the facts but by discrediting the person who presents them. It's disheartening, and I can't help wondering how it developed.
And perhaps more important, whether there's any hope of an eventual return to civil and rational discussion. (I suppose that would depend on an eventual return to the concept of education, and that's a whole 'nother subject.)
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| Intelligent Disagreement |
[July 18, 2008 @ 7:16am] |
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Here is a wonderful letter by a librarian to a patron who objected to a children's book. It is written with wisdom, insight, and respect that could be an example to us all, whenever we disagree with anyone on any matter. (It's also an excellent response to people who think children's books on the subject of gay marriage should not be readily available to children.)
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| Visitors |
[July 05, 2008 @ 8:57am] |
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A neighbor just drove over to let me know that he saw a bear go from his yard into ours. "A big one, too." Poor, lost bear. I don't see it, but there's plenty of room for even a big bear to hide among the trees and underbrush at the edge of the property. Still, perhaps it's made its way back up the hill toward wilderness. I hope so, for its sake. It will be Teh Enemy, down here among the furless.
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| Strident |
[June 22, 2008 @ 2:41pm] |
I forget just where, but somewhere I read an article about Hillary Clinton's acknowledgment of defeat and her subsequent behavior, which the article called "strident." It struck me that the comment was indicative of exactly why she lost. Never mind anyone's politics: the media almost never talked about their politics. And really, the fact that she was carrying Bill's baggage from the start as well as her own hadn't nearly as much to do with her defeat as the pervading attitude that makes it reasonable to refer to her behavior as "strident."
When was that last time you heard that word applied to a heterosexual male?
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| One-Line Religions |
[June 20, 2008 @ 8:40am] |
In the course of a novel-writing career, one frequently is obliged to describe an entire novel in one punchy sentence. "The accidental release of a bio-warfare virus will destroy life as we know it if Bo-Bo cannot convince his band of chimps to risk everything in a mad scientific gamble to save his species." Or, "This is Die Hard in Fantasyland with a talking donkey in the Bruce Willis role."
It is perhaps this bit of my personal experience that provoked me, when a dear friend asked me about my religion, to begin trying to find one-line descriptions of the world's religions. The thing is, such a description necessarily depends for brevity on certain shared references that must come from outside the religion if it is to make sense to strangers to the religion. For example, my friend, a Lutheran, gave a brief sentence to describe her religion, and it relied so heavily on references understood only to Christians that it made no sense to me. All I remember is that it was something about a trinity.
In her place I might have said, "Christianity is based on the premise that a loving god produced a son and then sacrificed (or permitted the sacrifice of) him so that any who believed in him as the son of the god might enjoy eternal benefits." Which may be wrong, but makes reasonable sense to me and is I hope not offensive. Any religion may look like superstition to those outside it, but all should be condensible to something comprehensible.
I don't do particularly well at it, though. For Buddhism the best I've been able to come up with is that the Buddha was a man who discovered a way to freedom from the suffering inherent in this world and was willing to try to show the way to others when asked. That doesn't even touch on what exactly that "way" is, but like references to the Christian trinity, everything I can think of that does address it tends to make sense only in the context of more information unavailable to most non-Buddhists. (Of course anyone can become a scholar of any religion without following it; but as most don't, I blithely disregard scholars.)
Even if you accept those descriptions, that's only two religions. Anybody else have any others? Or better versions of these two?
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| Say What? |
[June 11, 2008 @ 7:31am] |
Is it wrong of me to feel that the fellow who wrote Newsweek's article on Louise Bourgeois's retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York went too far when he referred to the Guggenheim's "viscerally appropriate spiral ramps"? It sounds a trifle overwrought to me. I mean, it's not like he was reviewing the Guggenheim itself.
Perhaps the problem is that I am largely unimpressed with Bourgeois. (Bad me.)
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