Coruscation

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" 50 years ago, Thomas Kuhn spent virtually the rest of his career defending -- often in vain -- its key ideas. At least, this is the story David Weinberger tells in an article on Kuhn at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Perhaps the most vexing problem Kuhn faced, according to Weinberger, is how to account for scientific progress, when concepts like paradigm shift and incommensurability seem to suggest that "progress" is at best problematic, or worse, impossible. Weinberger attributes much of the trouble to Kuhn's distaste for a straightforward correspondance theory of truth, and thinks abandoning one concept of truth means "we need another idea of what truth is and how we can ascertain if we're progressing closer to it."

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Think for a second about the atomic bomb. There's a big, just gigantic, technological change. But when did it happen? We can argue that the "speed of change" was really slow until July 16, 1945, when the first atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico--the speed of change was super-fast on that particular day. This would be silly. So we have to average out the "speed of change" somehow. But over what timescale? So many industrial inputs (precision machining, computing and the like) and basic scientific insights (being able to calculate the likelihood that a neutron hitting an atomic nucleus will cause it to split in two) went into building the bomb that it's unclear where to start.

The claim that some forms of knowledge are fundamentally resistant to quantification (memorably described as a "bitch-goddess" by Carl Bridenbaugh in this essay) is anathema to policymakers today, who've emerged from business schools and management consultancies convinced that Excel macros will let them give reality to the shadows on the walls of Plato's cave.

How MBA-speak is hurting the scientific academy.
From: Konstantin Kakaes |Posted Tuesday, April 3, 2012

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Watchers of the bilingual soccer channel GolTV are treated weekly to the cockeyed enthusiasm of the British commentator Ray Hudson. A blog, Hudsonia, was inspired by his ability to "coin phrases that defy both logic and belief" and by his unending quest to "invent a new language in English."

In Hudson's words, Hernandez has "chameleon eyes" and is as "slippery as an eel covered in Vaseline" and plays with the predatory appetite of a "zombie hunter looking for a Twinkie." Somehow, out of incomprehension comes clarity. Even poetry.

Robert Lalasz, the editor of the Web site Must Read Soccer, has assembled Hudson's verbal improvisations into verse, the way others previously did for the Yankees broadcaster Phil Rizzuto. One of the poems, "He Doesn't Live There," opened this article.

Here is another:

"Neither With Net nor Trident"

The genius, the genius of
Football
In our modern-day life
Utterly
Unpredictable
He doesn't know
What he's going to do
So how the hell
Do the defenders
You cannot contain him
With a net
Or a trident
He's got pace
He's got power
He's got vision
Technique!
And he's got
Finishing power
His cup
Runneth over ...
Magnificent Messi
Wild man
He doth bestride the Earth
Like a Colossus

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The basic concepts behind this model are:

Complementarity. In much the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, Mitt Romney is both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the situation (Fig. 1). It is not that he is one or the other; it is not that he is one and then the other. He is both at the same time.

Probability. Mitt Romney's political viewpoints can be expressed only in terms of likelihood, not certainty. While some views are obviously far less likely than others, no view can be thought of as absolutely impossible. Thus, for instance, there is at any given moment a nonzero chance that Mitt Romney supports child slavery.

Uncertainty. Frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney's current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the "principle uncertainty principle."

Entanglement. It doesn't matter whether it's a proton, neutron or Mormon: the act of observing cannot be separated from the outcome of the observation. By asking Mitt Romney how he feels about an issue, you unavoidably affect how he feels about it. More precisely, Mitt Romney will feel every possible way about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker.

Noncausality. The Romney campaign often violates, and even reverses, the law of cause and effect. For example, ordinarily the cause of getting the most votes leads to the effect of being considered the most electable candidate. But in the case of Mitt Romney, the cause of being considered the most electable candidate actually produces the effect of getting the most votes.

Duality. Many conservatives believe the existence of Mitt Romney allows for the possibility of the spontaneous creation of an "anti-Romney" (Fig. 2) that leaps into existence and annihilates Mitt Romney. (However, the science behind this is somewhat suspect, as it is financed by Rick Santorum, for whom science itself is suspect.)

What does all this bode for the general election? By this point it won't surprise you to learn the answer is, "We don't know." Because according to the latest theories, the "Mitt Romney" who seems poised to be the Republican nominee is but one of countless Mitt Romneys, each occupying his own cosmos, each supporting a different platform, each being compared to a different beloved children's toy but all of them equally real, all of them equally valid and all of them running for president at the same time, in their own alternative Romnealities, somewhere in the vast Romniverse.

And all of them losing to Barack Obama.

David Javerbaum is the author of "The Last Testament: A Memoir by God."

Continue reading "Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney" »

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Ms. Handler is working on an offer for Pine River Stables in St. Clair, Mich., a place she has never been to. It is the stables' first deal on Groupon: $18 for a one-hour ride for two people, half the regular price.

It takes Ms. Handler about 50 minutes to assemble the write-up, which is a few straightforward paragraphs explaining the details with the occasional gag as sweetener (The stables are closed "on Wednesdays, in the event of bad weather and on Horse Christmas.") She puts off writing the first sentences, the ones that are supposed to seduce every Groupon subscriber in Detroit -- either to go horseback riding or at least keep reading Groupon's e-mails.

Still stumped, she browses an online thesaurus. She studies the Pine River Web site for the umpteenth time. She wishes she lived in a world without horses.

Her fingers flick on the keyboard. "Without horses," she writes, "Polo shirts would be branded with monkeys and Paul Revere would have been forced to ride on a Segway. Celebrate our hoofed counterparts with today's Groupon. ..."

Good enough. She moves the copy along to the fact-checking department.

Like many others at Groupon, the 23-year-old Ms. Handler comes from an arts background. At the University of Michigan, she studied English and global media studies, wrote TV reviews for the student paper and short stories for fun.

Groupon shuns being thought of as a marketer or, worse, an ad agency, promoting cheap pizza or sushi for anyone who wants to hire it. The hope instead is that its users will eventually perceive it as an impartial guide to a city or a neighborhood, somewhat in the manner of the local paper's weekend section. With more than 400 writers and editors, Groupon's domestic editorial staff is on the verge of eclipsing the big name across the Chicago River, The Chicago Tribune.

BUSINESS DAY
Funny or Die: Groupon's Fate Hinges on Words
By DAVID STREITFELD
Published: May 28, 2011
The e-mail marketer hopes that its staff of 400 writers and editors will keep it one step ahead of its discounting competitors on the Web.

Continue reading "Groupon hired arts majors" »

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Wordnik, which has raised $12.8 million in venture financing, plans to use its vast database of words and word associations at the site and in many business partnerships to be announced this year, said Joe Hyrkin, the president and C.E.O.

The products will be similar to recommendation engines, but more powerful, he said. If you like a particular book, for example, Wordnik can recommend a similar one based on its understanding of words used to describe the book, he said.

"We're not just using tags and descriptors," he said. "Our system understands and identifies matches at a concept level."

The company is already providing many other word-based services, including one used on the Web site of The Times to define words in articles. Wordnik is also providing a financial glossary for SmartMoney.com.

Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, who talks about language on "Fresh Air," the NPR program, appreciates Wordnik's breadth. "There's a lot of useful information here," he said. (He has also written commentaries on language for The Times.)

But he thinks that hands-on lexicographers could fine-tune the entries.

"The idea that you can pull lexicographers out of the loop and have an algorithm to mediate between me and the English language is goofy," he said. "Without hand citations done by trained people, you get a mess."

To illustrate his point, he noted flaws in a number of Wordnik's definitions. The first definition of "davenport," for instance, in three of the fives sources used by Wordnik is a kind of small writing desk. "It hasn't meant that since Grandma was a girl," he said.

People use a dictionary to find out what is correct, and what is incorrect, he said. "If I were a journalist looking to see if a word was being used correctly," he said, "I wouldn't put my eggs in the Wordnik basket."

Continue reading "Wordnik super dictionary 2" »

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Yet studies suggest that "uh" and "um" play an active role in how we learn language and communicate. A University of Rochester lab published a paper this spring showing that kids over 2 were more likely to pay attention to an unfamiliar object if the speaker said "uh" before stating its name. Presumably, this tactic gives children a leg up on parsing an adult's speech. Take the example of the mother who says to her child, "No, that wasn't the telephone, honey. That was the, uh, timer." The "uh" indicates that there's a word coming up that might be new and unfamiliar, so extra attention is required.

-- Michael Erard / Slate

Continue reading "Um, ah, have I got your attention now ?" »

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!= is not equal, and ! is not. ?! Dubious move, NYT.

Classic style manuals generally decree that exclamation points be used sparingly. "But e-mails seemed from the start to require different punctuation," said Lynne Truss, the author of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation." "As if by common consent, people turned to the ellipsis and the exclamation point. There must have been a reason for this. My theory is that both of these marks are ways of trying to keep the attention of the reader. One of them says, 'Don't go away, I haven't finished, don't go, don't go,' while the other says, 'Listen! I'm talking to you!' "

"Since the advent of e-mail, I have personally started all my messages with a yell," she said. "Instead of 'Dear George,' I write, 'George!' My belief is that when we read a printed page, we engage an inner ear, which follows the sense, the voice and the music in a linear way. We sort of listen to the writer. Whereas on a computer screen, we tend to pick out bits of information and link them for ourselves. The exclamation point is a natural reaction to this: Writers are shouting to be heard."

Unsurprisingly, the literati are particularly sensitive to, or particularly defensive about, the use of the exclamation point. "I'm definitely guilty of abusing it in e-mails," said Jennifer Egan, whose book "A Visit From the Goon Squad" won this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction. And she notes a curious rebound effect: "The more exclamation points you use, the more you need to use in order create an impression of exclamation."

"I have long tried to swear off them," said Peter Godwin, whose book "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa" detailed life in his native Zimbabwe. "I think they are the literary equivalent of canned applause. I hate the way they jostle you, and the way they prescribe, 'Dear reader, be amazed!' And while we're on the subject, there's the '?!' one-two combo. I suppose it is trying to say, 'My question is jokey,' or 'I'm embarrassed to ask it in the first place.' "

Diana Abu-Jaber, author of the memoir "The Language of Baklava," indulges in a prodigious use of exclamation points, with a chaser of self-flagellation. "It's sort of ironic and damning, considering what a total literary snob I fancy myself," she said. "It might have something to do with my new life of texting 20-year-old baby sitters. I think there's also a connection to having a non-native-speaker parent -- that whole thing of shouting to be heard."

A sense of punctuation may be imprinted in childhood, the way the Inuit heroine Smilla has a "sense of snow" in Peter Hoeg's novel "Smilla's Sense of Snow." "I think I first got interested in the exclamation point while watching the old Batman TV show as a kid. Kablam! Kapow!" said Meg Wolitzer, whose most recent novel is "The Uncoupling." "In a way, the cartoon aspect of this emphatic spatter of punctuation has stayed with me. I still feel a little uneasy when I use it, although I sometimes do use it because it feels appropriately sprightly."

"There's a case to be made that the exclamation point is the adverb of punctuation; if you have to put it in, then maybe the sentence didn't do its job," she said. "Then again, I'm also highly uneasy about ever using italics. If the exclamation point is the adverb of punctuation, then italics are the Ambien of typography. I guess my only rule is to use the exclamation point sparingly, like adverbs, italics and cortisone cream."

Walter Kirn, author of "Up in the Air," sees no reason to curb his enthusiasm. "The text message and the exclamation point are made for each other, and I'm glad they finally found each other," he said. "They're both one-note forms of communication, without music, without connotation and atmosphere, but they do have their uses."

"To me, there's no more shame in filling text messages with exclamation points," he added, "three at a time, if necessary, than there is in using strings of expletives while arguing politics at an Irish pub."

Continue reading "Punctuation ~=, !=, /=, =/=, or <> uninformed by compsci or chess " »

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What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness
The decline and fall of American English, and stuff

I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in her yard. "And he was like, you know, 'Helloooo, what are you looking at?' and stuff, and I'm like, you know, 'Can I, like, pick you up?,' and he goes, like, 'Brrrp brrrp brrrp,' and I'm like, you know, 'Whoa, that is so wow!' " She rambled on, speaking in self-quotations, sound effects, and other vocabulary substitutes, punctuating her sentences with facial tics and lateral eye shifts. All the while, however, she never said anything specific about her encounter with the squirrel.

Uh-oh. It was a classic case of Vagueness, the linguistic virus that infected spoken language in the late twentieth century. Squirrel Woman sounded like a high school junior, but she appeared to be in her mid-forties, old enough to have been an early carrier of the contagion. She might even have been a college intern in the days when Vagueness emerged from the shadows of slang and mounted an all-out assault on American English.

-- CLARK WHELTON

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Cliches: example, Tis the season.
Copydesk reads words and language.

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BP's board is expected on Monday to name an American, Robert Dudley, as its chief executive, replacing Tony Hayward, whose repeated stumbles during the company's three-month oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico alienated federal and state officials as well as residents of the Gulf Coast.

keep in mind that this isn't exactly a model example of accountability. Hayward isn't being canned because of BP's poor safety record, which had been established long before the disaster in the Gulf.

Instead, Hayward is being canned because BP thinks he wasn't a good spokesman. In other words, BP thinks their problems have more to do with the nationality of their CEO than the consequences of their corporate policies. And with their new pick, selecting a long-time BP insider to replace Hayward, BP is signaling that they have no real intention of changing anything about how they do business. The only thing they want to change is the accent. But even if this move does end up helping BP's shareholders in the short-term, it won't make anybody safer or more secure, and it won't help stop their next disaster. It's an image move, having nothing to do with substance.

-- Jed Lewison

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There is more room for distraction in golf, which is less reactive and more reflective than sports like football or tennis. The best players' minds are like the bags toted by their caddies. They have lots of compartments, tuck away personal matters before a round and collect them afterward the way they do their watches and wallets.

Paul Goydos, who lost to Sergio García in a playoff here in 2008 and is tied for 15th entering the final round, said, "I think most golfers, regardless of what's going on in their lives, have to be able to compartmentalize."

Continue reading "Literally compartmentalize" »

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This is a post about a single line in a recent article in the New York Times: Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right.... Reporter David Barstow spent five months--five months!--reporting and researching the Tea Party phenomenon.
Based not on a subjective assessment of the Tea Party's viability or his opinion of its desirability but only on facts he knows about the state of politics and government since Obama's election, is there any substantial likelihood of a tyranny replacing the American republic in the near future?

I think it's obvious....that the answers are "no." For if the answers were "yes" it would have been a huge story! No fair description of the current situation, nothing in what the Washington bureau and investigative staff of the New York Times has picked up from its reporting, would support a characterization like "impending tyranny."

In a word, the Times editors and Barstow know this narrative is nuts, but something stops them from saying so-- despite the fact that they must have spent over $100,000 on this one story. And whatever that thing is, it's not the reluctance to voice an opinion in the news columns, but a reluctance to report a fact in the news columns, the fact that the "narrative of impending tyranny" is ungrounded in any observable reality, even though the sense of grievance within the Tea Party movement is truly felt and politically consequential.

My claim: We have come upon something interfering with political journalism's "sense of reality" as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin called it (see section 5.1) And I think I have a term for the confusing factor: a quest for innocence in reportage and dispute description. Innocence, meaning a determination not to be implicated, enlisted, or seen by the public as involved. That's what created the pattern I've called "regression to a phony mean." That's what motivated the rise of he said, she said reporting.

-- Jay Rosen

Continue reading "He said, she said reporting due to 'Regression to a phony mean' " »

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Language skill of the day: Accuse your opponent of not 'connecting the dots':

Speculation about terrorist plots based on limited information is a fool's game. We know very little about Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempts on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 yesterday, though there are some pretty obvious questions about how he got materials on board, how dangerous they were, and what his associations may be.

Responsible federal officials will wait to get a more detailed picture before popping off in the media, making reckless accusations. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R) of Michigan, inexplicably the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has not yet been briefed on yesterday's incident, but that hasn't stopped him from trying to exploit the Abdulmutallab matter to score some cheap partisan points.

"It's not surprising," U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Holland Republican, said of the alleged terrorist attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit. ... "People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration," Hoekstra said.

#6 in the language series, How to argue (when facts and logic are against you)

Continue reading "How to argue 6: not 'connecting the dots', by Hoekstra" »

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Might people start bracing or fleeing from dreaded future changes ? No according to washingtonmonthly / Steve Benen.

But Boehner nevertheless hasn't lost his unmitigated gall confidence, and has an op-ed in the Washington Post today about how right he is about the economy.

I was actually curious to see what he'd come up with. After all, just over the last two weeks, Boehner has blamed job losses on policies that don't exist yet, and rejected the idea of a jobs bill as "repulsive." Boehner hosted an "economic roundtable" last week with a bunch of former Bush aides, so maybe he's come up with something specific to offer by now.

While the Republican from Ohio says the decrease in the unemployment rate is encouraging, he says "anyone who views today's report as cause for celebration is out of touch with the American people, especially when Washington Democrats' policies -- whether it's a government takeover of health care, a national energy tax, or 'card check' -- are already costing jobs and will pile even more debt on our kids and grandkids."

How to argue, the series, in Language.

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hecession: recession where male incident unemployment overhsaddows female unemployment.

Progressive take and spin on the econonomic scene:

As women's job losses mount, some women--especially unmarried women--are facing an increasingly grim job market. Unmarried women have much higher unemployment than married women. In October, 10.3 percent of unmarried women age 20 and over (3.3 million) and 5.7 percent of married women (2.1 million) were unemployed (see figure below; all data by marital status is not seasonally adjusted). Although unmarried women represent less than half (46.5 percent) of all women workers, they account for 6 in 10 (60.8 percent) of women workers who are unemployed. The situation is worse for unmarried women who head families, most of whom are single mothers, who now have an unemployment rate of 12.6 percent, 2.4 percentage points above the national average.

Question not asked: are married women more likely to drift into and out of the laborforce, given job prospects or lack thereof ?

Continue reading "Progressive polemics take on the 'he'-cession" »

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Mr Wyatt Gallery has a Photography Gallery.

Notably, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to Trinidad and Tobago.

-- another example of the Dennis the Dentist naming rule.

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Suspected of sending children to an out-of-distrct school, state collected a surveillance report and the family's telephone billing records.

"As far as I'm concerned, they're within their rights to scrutinize all applications, but the way they went about it was totally unwarranted.

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The law also prohibits advertising that products carry a lower health risk than traditional cigarettes without F.D.A. approval, a provision aimed at ensuring that such claims are scientifically valid not only for individual smokers but also for the population as a whole, including nonsmokers who might be enticed to smoke if they thought a cigarette was low-risk.

Continue reading "Are safer smokes safer ?" »

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Leon F. Seltzer, a clinical psychologist who has written extensively on this subject, differentiates between criticism and feedback. In a blog he writes for Psychology Today, he notes that:

¶Criticism is judgmental and accusatory. It can involve labeling, lecturing, moralizing and even ridiculing. Feedback focuses on providing concrete information to motivate the recipient to reconsider his or her behavior.

¶Criticism involves making negative assumptions about the other person's motives. Feedback reacts not to intent but the actual result of the behavior.

¶Criticism, poorly given, often includes advice, commands and ultimatums, making the person receiving it feel defensive and angry -- and undermines any benefits. Feedback, on the other hand, looks less at how the person should change, but tries to prompt a discussion about the benefits of change.

This last point is one that Darren Gurney, a high school teacher in New Rochelle, N.Y., has thought a lot about. Mr. Gurney also coaches high school and college baseball teams and runs a summer baseball camp that my sons love. He has found that one of the most effective ways to criticize a player is not to tell him what he did wrong, but ask him to analyze what he thinks he could have done better.

Continue reading "Criticism is judgmental and accusatory. Feedback focuses on providing concrete information to motivate" »

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The popularity of the term "green shoots" shows the kind of social epidemic underlying our changing thinking. The phrase was propelled in Britain by Shriti Vadera, the business minister, in January, and mutated into a more contagious form after Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, used it on "60 Minutes" on March 15.

The news media didn't need to change the term for different cultures around the world. With nothing more than a quick translation -- brotes verdes, pousses vertes, grüne Sprösslinge, etc. -- it is now recognized as a symbol of a revival coming soon.

All of this suggests that a social epidemic is supporting renewed confidence. This confidence can keep growing by contagion, as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, and we may see the markets and the economy recover further.

Continue reading "verdes Vadera, green shoots, he scores" »

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Death Panels are Fiction, The case for, Part I

Right now, the charge that's gaining the most traction is the claim that health care reform will create "death panels" (in Sarah Palin's words) that will shuffle the elderly and others off to an early grave. It's a complete fabrication, of course. The provision requiring that Medicare pay for voluntary end-of-life counseling was introduced by Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican -- yes, Republican -- of Georgia, who says that it's "nuts" to claim that it has anything to do with euthanasia.

And not long ago, some of the most enthusiastic peddlers of the euthanasia smear, including Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, and Mrs. Palin herself, were all for "advance directives" for medical care in the event that you are incapacitated or comatose. That's exactly what was being proposed -- and has now, in the face of all the hysteria, been dropped from the bill.

Yet the smear continues to spread. And as the example of Mr. Gingrich shows, it's not a fringe phenomenon: Senior G.O.P. figures, including so-called moderates, have endorsed the lie.

Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is one of these supposed moderates

The case for, Part II

Painting the Giacometti-esque Emanuel as a creepy Dr. Death, Palin attacked him on her Facebook page a week ago, complaining that his "Orwellian thinking" could lead to a "death panel" with bureaucrats deciding whether to pull the plug on less hardy Americans. Never mind that Palin herself had endorsed some of the same end-of-life counseling she now depicts as putting Grandma down.

As the Democratic National Committee pointed out, Palin put out a 2008 proclamation for Healthcare Decisions Day "to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care ... and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions."

Consistency was long ago sent to a death panel in Palin world.

Part III:

The controversy over "death panels" is just the most extreme manifestation of this debate. Obviously, the Democratic plans wouldn't euthanize your grandmother. But they might limit the procedures that her Medicare will pay for. And conservative lawmakers are using this inconvenient truth to paint the Democrats as enemies of Grandma.

Continue reading "Death Panel non-fiction" »

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Just begging for a correction:

The pharmacists like to slice and dice our country into red pills and blue pills: red pills for Republicans, blue pills for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We get an awesome high on the blue pill, and we don't like federal agents poking around our stash of red pills.

We deal to the little league some blue pills, and, yes, we've got some gay friends hopped up on red pills.

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Wordnik promises to be a super dictionary, with web search driven updates of how words are used (But what does it mean to say the tool is used once per month ?) .

Better filtering tha UrbanDictionary, better page layout than most web dictionaries.

Update 2009 July 19: now with more context

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Some good arguing on healthcare.

Luntz also wrote: "Healthcare quality = 'getting the treatment you need, when you need it.' That is how Americans define quality, and so should you. The key opportunity here is that this commitment goes beyond what the Democrats can offer. Their plan will deny people treatments they need and make them wait to get the treatments they can actually receive. This is more than just rationing. To most Americans, rationing suggests limits or shortages -- for others. But personalizing it -- 'delaying your tests and denying your treatment' -- is the concept most likely to change the most minds in your favor" [emphasis in original].

On its "Talking Points" page, congressional Republicans similarly stated that Democrats would deny access to medical care and treatments, claiming, "The Democrats' government-takeover of health care will deny access to medical care and life-saving treatments."

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Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent's simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to.

Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies blogs on the Corner

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The most astonishing change concerns the ending of boys' names. In 1880, most boys' names ended in the letters E, N, D and S. In 1956, the chart of final letters looked pretty much the same, with more names ending in Y. Today's chart looks nothing like the charts of the past century. In 2006, a huge (and I mean huge) percentage of boys' names ended in the letter N. Or as Wattenberg put it, "Ladies and gentlemen, that is a baby-naming revolution."

Wattenberg observes a new formality sweeping nursery schools. Thirty years ago there would have been a lot of Nicks, Toms and Bills on the playground. Now they are Nicholas, Thomas and William. In 1898, the name Dewey had its moment (you should be able to figure out why). Today, antique-sounding names are in vogue: Hannah, Abigail, Madeline, Caleb and Oliver.

In the late 19th century, parents sometimes named their kids after prestigious jobs, like King, Lawyer, Author and Admiral. Now, children are more likely to bear the names of obsolete proletarian professions, Cooper, Carter, Tyler and Mason.

Wattenberg uses her blog to raise vital questions, such as should you give your child an unusual name that is Googleable, or a conventional one that is harder to track? But what's most striking is the sheer variability of the trends she describes.

Naming fashion doesn't just move a little. It swings back and forth. People who haven't spent a nanosecond thinking about the letter K get swept up in a social contagion and suddenly they've got a Keisha and a Kody. They may think they're making an individual statement, but in fact their choices are shaped by the networks around them.

Furthermore, if you just looked at names, you would conclude that American culture once had a definable core -- signified by all those Anglo names like Mary, Robert, John and William. But over the past few decades, that Anglo core is harder to find. In the world of niche naming, there is no clearly identifiable mainstream.

Continue reading "Dennis the dentist, 3" »

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Can you park here now ?

Posted in NY transit language.

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The New York Times looks at the impact of gathering at Sundance to watch environmental films.

Still, a stroll here this week down Main Street -- where a dozen idling trucks were unloading supplies and equipment, while an oversize band bus, with trailer in tow, spewed fumes outside a soon-to-be-busy party site -- framed the obvious quandary: how can you cram some 46,000 people, roughly equivalent to a fifth of Hollywood's total work force, into a pretty little mountain town without contributing mightily to the problems your films hope to solve?

...

Utility officials said there was no way to determine how much extra wattage was being poured into the valley for the festival's spotlights and the strings of colored bulbs lining Park City's streets. "Pinpointing use for one city," said Margaret Oler, an information officer with Pacificorp, which provides power to the area, "can be pretty difficult."

Most electrical implements, bulbs included, have power consumption in Watts printed right on them.

MOVIES
The Films Are Green, but Is Sundance?
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: January 17, 2009
This year's Sundance Film Festival has a schedule that's greener than Fifth Avenue on St. Patrick's Day, but what's the environmental impact of the festival itself?

Continue reading "Environmental impact of environmental events" »

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New York is city of excitement and dream-making. Nice American Agency introduce this girl to many nice and sexy American men of wholesome goodness with upper east side doorman buildings. One day, the girl goes to drink with George, a business man of hedgefunds who is getting in on bottom floors and is also liking of back doors. She is so nervous before date, she does the bronze of herself twice in tanning booth. Ha ha! Is not matter, George likes very much what he sees and offers her highest of compliments, she is like the Barbie Doll that is come to life!

Precis.

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Mathew Yglesias gets some attention this week.

What makes Matt worth noting ?

He's mildly ingratiating, sometimes merely diplomatic; and he shows the education and writing ability to articulate the practical consensus of his readers.

On the downside, he moves is blog every six months, to the American Prospect, Tapped, Atlantic, to ThinkProgress; maybe he should just park it on Xanga.

Continue reading "Mathew Yglesias" »

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Looking at upper-middle-class homes, Lareau describes a parenting style that many of us ridicule but do not renounce. This involves enrolling kids in large numbers of adult-supervised activities and driving them from place to place. Parents are deeply involved in all aspects of their children's lives. They make concerted efforts to provide learning experiences.

Home life involves a lot of talk and verbal jousting. Parents tend to reason with their children, not give them orders. They present "choices" and then subtly influence the decisions their kids make. Kids feel free to pass judgment on adults, express themselves and even tell their siblings they hate them when they're angry.

The pace is exhausting. Fights about homework can be titanic. But children raised in this way know how to navigate the world of organized institutions. They know how to talk casually with adults, how to use words to shape how people view them, how to perform before audiences and look people in the eye to make a good first impression.

Working-class child-rearing is different, Lareau writes. In these homes, there tends to be a much starker boundary between the adult world and the children's world. Parents think that the cares of adulthood will come soon enough and that children should be left alone to organize their own playtime. When a girl asks her mother to help her build a dollhouse out of boxes, the mother says no, "casually and without guilt," because playtime is deemed to be inconsequential -- a child's sphere, not an adult's.

Lareau says working-class children seem more relaxed and vibrant, and have more intimate contact with their extended families. "Whining, which was pervasive in middle-class homes, was rare in working-class and poor ones," she writes.

But these children were not as well prepared for the world of organizations and adulthood. There was much less talk in the working-class homes. Parents were more likely to issue brusque orders, not give explanations. Children, like their parents, were easily intimidated by and pushed around by verbally dexterous teachers and doctors. Middle-class kids felt entitled to individual treatment when entering the wider world, but working-class kids felt constrained and tongue-tied.

David Brooks

Continue reading "Today's rich don't exploit the poor they just outcompete them." »

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Modern folklore holds that Eskimos have a huge number of words related to snow, but it's just not true--they use no more such words than we do. Still, the factoid continues to spin off phrases on the general format of "If Eskimos have N words for snow, X have Y words for Z." For example, a 2003 article in The Economist declared, "If Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, Germans have as many words for bureaucracy." On his blog, Agoraphilia, Glen Whitman coined a snappy name for the category to which this formula belongs: the snowclone. Of course, he was punning on the snow cone, which is shaved ice flavored with syrup and carried in a paper cone. Other bloggers have since identified more members of this lexicographic species, and one of them, Erin Stevenson O'Connor, is compiling them at at http://snowclones.org.

Many snowclones are firmly entrenched in mainstream culture. For example, I'm not an X, but I play one on TV has been around for more than 20 years. It comes from a 1986 ad for Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup, in which an actor said, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV."

Links: Snow Clones.

Continue reading "Snowclones idiom warehouse" »

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"Kent Hance was a down-home boy, real homey, and George W. wasn't homey like Kent," recalled Johnnye Davis, a Republican leader in Odessa. "He didn't come across to the voters as well as Kent did, with the little jokes that Kent told."

While Mr. Bush now is sometimes mocked for an ignorance of policy details, back then people thought he had the opposite problem: a tendency to drop references in his speeches that baffled audiences, like a discussion of anti-inflationary economic policy.

"He was quick, a bit too quick, so that people didn't always get it," Mrs. Davis said. "He was so darn intelligent that a lot of what he said went over people's heads. He's learned to explain things a little better since then."

Another problem was that while Mr. Bush never really had a clear campaign strategy, Mr. Hance did: he focused his campaign on emphasizing local ties and on casting Mr. Bush as a carpet-bagger from the East. One of Mr. Hance's most effective radio spots was this one, read by an announcer:

"In 1961, when Kent Hance graduated from Dimmitt High School in the 19th congressional district, his opponent George W. Bush was attending Andover Academy in Massachusetts. In 1965, when Kent Hance graduated from Texas Tech, his opponent was at Yale University. And while Kent Hance graduated from University of Texas Law School, his opponent" -- the announcer's voice plunged -- "get this, folks, was attending Harvard. We don't need someone from the Northeast telling us what our problems are."

Continue reading "Bush in 1978: before playing country cowboy" »

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The laid-back, noncompetitive and bohemian ambience of these new coffee shops has, paradoxically, limited them almost entirely to the very neighborhoods that welcome those qualities: Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and Williamsburg and Park Slope in Brooklyn.

Like flames, paradoxically limited to fires ? More in words and language.

Continue reading "Paradoxically ?" »

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The definition of middle class is in flux. Many try to quantify and specify it in income terms.

Here's Charles Gibson of ABC (Via Paul Krugman): suggested that $200,000 a year was a middle-class income.

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Conservatives believe that once you name something as evil, there's no further explanation. (Either it can't be explained, because evil is an irreducible mystery, or there's just no point in explaining it.)

Liberals believe that once you explain something, it can't be named as evil. (Because true understanding banishes the mysteriousness that makes something hateful.)

[ Via unfogged ]

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"When you are crying foul in a presidential campaign, it usually
means you are losing."

-- Mr. Chris Lehane, the Democratic operative, pronounced himself
delighted that the McCain campaign was feeling victimized.

How to argue (without facts or logic), the series.

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Yglesias' argument is emphatically about a practical,
politically feasible Democratic foreign policy, and not
about seizing the quasi-pacifist moral high ground.

-- CC@unfogged.

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Many patients point to another problem with chronic fatigue syndrome:
the name itself, which they say trivializes their condition and has
discouraged researchers, drug companies and government agencies
from taking it seriously. Many patients prefer the older British term,
myalgic encephalomyelitis, which means “muscle pain with inflammation
of the brain and spinal chord,” or a more generic term, myalgic
encephalopathy.

Continue reading "Myalgic Encephalopathy is the new yuppie flu" »

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Virgin mobile's copywriters phone it in.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘Murray Hill’ and ‘Rule’ used in the
same sentence before,” he said. “The copywriters certainly
deserve some credit for this. It’s not that easy to go from
bashing Sutton Place to selling prepaid phone service in
less than 50 words.”

-- John Reardon.

Brownstoner
BedStuy Blog

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You are doing what you accuse older feminists of doing
-- declaring your views unassailable simply because you
have them.

They say,"You weren't there,"
You say, "You aren't here."

Okay, but you still have to make your case -- plenty of
young women, including young feminists, don't share
your POV. Your real beef with Ariel Levy, for example,
is not that she's too old and out of it to understand
young women (she's only in her early thirties).

It's that you don't agree with her view that today's
sexual culture (girls gone wild, hooking up etc) is
basically exploitation and exhibitionism packaged
as feminism. I'm not saying she's right or wrong,
I'm just saying that "Female Chauvinist Pigs" presents
an actual argument, not a mindless ignorant diss
of young women by some old fussbudget who
knows little about them.

Katha Pollitt, in response to The Feminist Sorority.

How to argue (without facts or logic), the series.

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We, we are assessing the alternatives. The other guys,
they are divided and squabbling.

Continue reading "Squabbling vs assessing the alternatives" »

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Separatedbyacommonlanguage compare US English to British English.

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On how Freedom became central to the Republican party's
campaign for word domination.

Nunberg notes there are lots of metaphors for the state
—a ship adrift, an actor on the world stage, a city on a
hill, a house with crumbling foundations—and there is
simply no reason to think one of them structures our
political thought. We should all thank Nunberg for
suggesting that there is no thread, metaphorical or
logical, that runs through the contingently evolving
packages of partisan commitment.

-- WW

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urbandictionary is looking good.

Collaborative nature compels user contributions
and feedback, thumbsupping or thumbsdowning
competing definitions on clarity, detail, and
plausibility (for the zero information set) or
accuracy (for those in the know.

The freshness of the content poses a challenge
o the traditional dictionary.

Its information architecture lists adjacent and
related words, and offers endless serendipity.

Example: garaigo.

Continue reading "Urban Dictionary" »

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Dictionary with completion as you type, by ObjectGraph.
-- updates.

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How to argue without facts or logic:

The Casey campaign has portrayed Mr. Santorum as far
too close to the K Street lobbying community and far
too devoted to a national conservative agenda.

Too close: how is this measured ?
K street: what is this, why is it 'bad' ?

"At some point, he began to spend a lot more time on
Washington politics and Republican Party politics and
ideology than on Pennsylvania's priorities," Mr. Casey
said. "In a nutshell, he's gone Washington."

Washington politics. How are these irrelevant ?
National issues. How are these issues not material ?
Ideology. Why is his ideology bad ?

Continue reading "How to argue, part 1" »

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Not a fight between left and right, a fight about
how politics should be conducted. On the one
hand are the ...

Update: for the 'How to argue...' file
How to introduce evidence you don't have:
So these days, for example, one hears that Lieberman is a

Continue reading "Bobo's two types: purity vs pragma" »

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Sommelier smackdown, amused by guy who conflates
take-out and take-in outcall and incall.

Blackpepper nuances' that `explode on the back palate
supported by fine grained tannins and long plum and spice
aftertaste'.

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LEET Sp3k via Boing.

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When neighbors return, after having moved out temporarily to
have one of these steroid palaces built for them, I'm at a loss
for what to say.

Nice house seems insincere.

Where the hell did you get the money ?
would be aggressive and intrusive.

But it seems as if you should say something, right?
I want to say,

Why ? or,

You expecting quintuplets ?

I settle for

Looks like it's really coming along.

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George W Bush, comforter.

BUSH: When I saw TV reporters interviewing people
who were screaming for help. It looked the scenes
looked chaotic and desperate. And I realized that our
government was could have done a better job of
comforting people.

Americans should find comfort in knowing that millions
of their fellow citizens are working every day to ensure
our security at every level -- federal, state, county, municipal.

The more people learn about the port deal and the
government's scrutiny of it, the more they'll be comforted.

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It's a tough job, making broadcasts filled with canned fluff and
hours-old taped packages seem up-to-date. So, starting way
back in the nineties, I chronicled the practice at NBC NIghtly
News of inserting the word "tonight" into the copy more than
a dozen times per broadcast. My theory: it made the newscast
seem more newsy.

Now comes Marvin Block, who deconstructs a recent Anderson
Cooper script to find similar topical weaseling afoot.
At this moment, this is what's going on, tonight.

Continue reading "Tonight, it's happening live !" »

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Stick to your knitting means continue to do what you have always done
instead of trying to do something you know very little about.

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hanzi smatter or hanzis matter ?
Proofreads tatoos, ex post.

勢 (power; force; tendency) and 夢 (dream).

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Rhetorica Network offers analysis and commentary about the rhetoric,
propaganda, and spin of journalism and politics, including analysis of
presidential speeches and election campaigns. [*]

Shows that the Show ME state is still home to touchstones of
journalism since Network.

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Proposition 79 would use the purchasing power of the State of
California to negotiate the best price for up to ten million
Californians, who now pay more than anybody else in the world
for prescription drugs.

* Prop. 78 is completely voluntary for drug companies: they
are free to choose whether or not to offer discounts.

* Prop. 79 has an enforcement mechanism. If a drug company
refuses to provide discounts, the state can shift business away
from that company and buy more from other drug companies that
offer discounts.

Above is from the so-called Better California campaign site for
Prop 79 *.

Klingian Question of the Day:
What is preventing buyers from comparison shopping
between drug companies, either now or under Prop 78 ?

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What exactly is an “Information Architect” or “Information Architecture” ?

Explain it in 10 words or less. And then, take all the words you
need to explain the difference between an information architect and
a designer (not an artist, but a designer).

-- 37signals

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Well, you know, you have to remember that in every war, a battle plan
doesn't survive first contact with the enemy. This is in history. Why?
Because the enemy has a brain and they're constantly adapting, so we're
constantly adapting. Every time there's an adaptation, someone says,
"Oh, there's a mistake." It isn't a mistake. It's just reality. ...

-- Donald Rumsfeld

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Essay:The Secret That Didn't Reach Washington's Lips
By Sally Quinn

No. I did not know who Deep Throat was. And no. I never asked
my husband, Ben Bradlee. Why not? For several reasons. I have too much
pride, to begin with. I knew perfectly well Ben wouldn't tell me and I
didn't want to be refused. Secondly, I . . . how shall I say this? ...
have a big mouth. It would have been a huge responsibility to know.
It was also clear that if somebody else spilled the beans, fingers
would be pointed at me.

Continue reading "Deep Throat unknown to Big Mouth" »

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It's not that writers in this country don't have their work
judged on literary merit; it's that we are not judged exclusively on
these grounds. The writer's biography is also examined, his or her
stats plugged into an authenticity equation to determine, once and for
all, how real the work is. There are many reasons why this is
self-defeating, and many reasons why we should not play along. When we
should be judged on the basis of our ability to imagine worlds and
empathize with our characters, we are instead reduced to merely
representing that which we must surely know firsthand. When we allow
ourselves to be praised for "being authentic," when we traffic in
biography, we are complicit in our own disenfranchisement: Suddenly we
are dismissed as serious artists. It's no longer art; it's reportage
and facsimile. It's real.
-- Peruvian guy

Continue reading "traffic in disenfranchisement" »

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Dinner with a friend has not always been so fraught. Before women
were considered men's equals, some gender historians say, men routinely
confided in and sought advice from one another in ways they did not
do with women, even their wives. Then, these scholars say, two
things changed during the last century: an increased public awareness
of homosexuality created a stigma around male intimacy, and at the
same time women began encroaching on traditionally male spheres,
causing men to become more defensive about notions of masculinity.
-- 8.

And so, man date joins the lexicon.

Continue reading "Man Date" »

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