If your password is corrupted and you can’t get into hotmail.com, hotmail will gladly send you a new password — to you @hotmail.com !
138: Best ‘Nigerian Scam’ Email: “Voguish and Inter-Pole”
October 10, 2009[Scam emails are usually tedious, but this one is a gem (slightly abridged).]
FROM THE DESK OF HON. HON. DANTEX OMAR
DEPUTY GOVERNOR OF CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA
ATTN: HONORABLE FUND BENEFICIARY
The acknowledgement of Your Immediate Contract/Inheritant/lotto Payment. Contract Number #: AV/NNPC/FGN/MIN/009. On behalf of the entire staff of Central Bank of Nigeria, and the Federal Government of Nigeria in collaborated with the Authorities, who are in charge of foreign contract payments. We Apologies for the delay of your Contract/inheritant/lotto payment, the Inconveniences and Inflict that we might have indulge you through.
However, we are having some minor problems with our payment system which have demoralized us, also have caused a lot of predicament to this organization, which is Inexplicable? And have held us Indolent, not having the perseverance and Aspiration to devote our 100% standard Assiduity in accrediting foreign contract payments. Once again, Our Apologies for all inconveniences.
….
I wish to inform you now that the square peg is now in square hole, and can be voguish for that your payment is being processed and will be released to you upon your respond to this letter. Also note that from my record in my file your outstanding contract/inheritant/lotto payment is 20 million dollars.
kindly get back to me the followings: …. [identification] ….
Base on money-laundering and fraudelents art that is going on in Nigeria here, the Federal government of Nigeria has set a monitary group called (EFCC) Economics and Financial Crime Commission In conjuction with F.B.I and Inter-Pole of United state to monitor any foreign transfer.
….
Congratulations in advance.
137: Legal Notice
October 10, 2009To whom it may concern: Terence Kuch, author, is on this date (October 10, 2009) claiming the first commercial use of “Truda Vallon” as the name of a fictional character, and claims trademark protection therefor. Formal application to USPTO is pending. A work of fiction including this character, by name, is in progress and under contract, and is scheduled to be published in 2011.
FYI: At 10a.m. Eastern Time, October 10, 2009, a Google search on “Truda Vallon” resulted in no occurrences being found.
136: “Outrageous”
September 18, 2009In sublime indifference to English usage, advertisers have taken up the word ‘outrageous’ to describe commercial products whose merits are perhaps not apparent, and therefore any huzzahs hoped to issue from the buying public must be artificially induced.
It is pleasant, however, to think of people who enjoy frequent outrage **, and how they have finally got their comeuppance from certain brands of breakfast cereal.
** “a feeling of anger or violent resentment” — M-W Unabridged
<END>
135: “Honor Crime Victims”?
September 18, 2009A display ad in the Washington Post, 18 September 09, read only: “Honor Crime Victims www.crimevictims.gov“
Restitution? if possible. Criminals punished? of course. But “honor”? There is no honor in being the victim of a crime. A friend of mine whose house was burglarized said she felt like she’d been raped. I’m sure most victims of crime feel similarly. Crime degrades the victim emotionally, in addition to any physical or financial harm done. As direct personal revenge is not legally possible in this country, the feeling of degradation may never go away; victims can only try to “get over it.”
The crimevictims.gov web site itself is interesting and useful — and does not contain that ill-conceived phrase “honor crime victims” (Google search, 18 September 2009).
<END>
134: How to Punctuate Dialog in Fiction
August 28, 2009How to Punctuate Dialog in Fiction
What five authorities have said [abridged], followed by my summary and recommendations.
Source 1: The Dabbling Mum
from http://thedabblingmum.com/writing/grammar/punctuation.htm
Interior Dialogue – depicts a character’s non-verbal thoughts. Use of quotation marks to set off interior dialogue depends on the writer, according to Chicago Manual of Style. However, many fiction text books discourage the use of quotation marks in interior dialogue. Interior dialogue can be depicted in italics or plain font.
Ellipses: Use ellipses to show faltering, fragmented, speech or dialogue; enclose in quotation marks.
Use em dashes to show abrupt interruptions or broken off dialogue. Again, dialogue is enclosed with punctuation marks.
Correct: “It’s . . . well—”
Use of ellipses shows faltering, fragmented speech enclosed within quotation marks.
Correct: “It’s. . . well—”
Example correctly uses the em dash to portray abrupt, broken off dialogue.
Incorrect: “It’s, well—”
Example is punctuated incorrectly, if the writer intends to portray faltering, fragmented speech.
Source 2: Playwriting 101
from www.playwriting101.com/chapter12
When one character interrupts another, use double dashes (–) or an em dash (a long dash) to show that the speaker is being cut off. Below, I make use of an em dash. No need to write “interrupts.”
HUGO
If my Dad said we’re moving just like that -
CHARLIE
You’d move. Hold this cone
(holds out the ice cream cone)
a sec?
Using ellipses ( … ) does not signify that a character has been interrupted, but rather that she hesitates or trails off of her own accord. For example, Pac can’t bring himself to ask a question:
PAC
Would you … ?
CANDY
Would I what?
Source 3: Deviant Art
from http://wordcount.deviantart.com/art/Punctuating-Dialogue-A-Guide-73936110
[the dash in dialogue]
A dash can be used in dialogue for two reasons (in addition to the standard uses for the dash in prose writing): to represent a shift in tone or to represent a break or hesitation in thought. This is different from the ellipsis (…), which should only be used to represent dialogue that trails off and is likely to begin again.
An example:
“My only purpose has been to stop the madness that was started seven years ago. I cannot afford the risk of–” was all he said, not finding the courage to finish the sentence.
Another example:
Tabitha sighed again and brushed a loose strand of black hair behind her ear. I’m just . . . sick of all the drama going on.”
“Yeah, you and the rest of the world.”
“Whatever.”
Another example:
“Then talk to me. What’s going on? I know there’s more that you haven’t told anyone.”
She took a deep breath. “Yeah . . .”
“Well?”
“Dad’s company needs him in Houston by the end of next month.”
“Okay . . .”
“We’re moving in three weeks. The company already has a house for us there and will take care of selling ours.”
“So, it’s really gonna happen,” he said softly.
“I don’t care about having more . . . more stuff!”
In both texts, we see the ellipses but no dashes. Remember, a dash is used to show a hesitation or break in thought or a change in tone. An ellipsis, on the other hand, is used to show thoughts that are trailing off and/or can be picked up again. The difference is subtle, but it’s there.
In the first example, the speaker very obviously cuts off what he is saying and has no intention of picking it back up again. It’s a break in thought and, as such, should be represented by the dash.
In the second example, the ellipsis is used correctly. “I’m just . . . sick of all the drama going on” shows a trailing off that has every intention of picking the conversation back up. It’s not an abrupt change of tone or thought, even though it is a pause, and as such the dash would be inappropriate.
In the third example, we have quite a few things going on. With “Yeah…” the speaker is very obviously trailing off in both thought and speech. It’s not an abrupt break or a change in thought, simply a hesitation. As such, either convention would be appropriate depending on the author’s intention. Using “Yeah—” would represent a cut off with no interest in continuing the conversation in that direction. “Yeah…” shows that the speaker is hesitating and trailing off and probably would like to continue the conversation if given the chance to find the right words (or some gentle prodding). As such, I believe the ellipsis is more appropriate here but, again, either the dash or the ellipsis would be acceptable.
The appropriate way to use the ellipsis is not just through intent, but also in how a writer should punctuate what comes after the ellipsis when that ellipsis is, for all intents and purposes, the end of the sentence. This is the age-old, “Do I really put four dots in a row?” question. The short answer? Probably.
When using the ellipsis in dialogue to end a sentence one must make two decisions: 1) am I putting my punctuation inside or outside the quotation marks and 2) what punctuation mark should end this sentence. The ellipsis used inside quotation marks should never be the end punctuation for the sentence. In other words, “Okay…” should either be “Okay….” with the four dots inside the quotation marks or “Okay…”. with the period outside of the quotation marks. It could also be “Okay…?” or “Okay…”? or “Okay…!” or “Okay…”! (etc.) depending on what the writer intends. Whichever way is most appropriate and comfortable, that end punctuation must be present.
[internal dialogue]
If quotation marks are not being used to represent dialogue anywhere else in the piece, they can be used to represent internal dialogue; all standard rules would apply. If double quotation marks are being used to represent regular dialogue elsewhere in the text, then single quotation marks can be used for internal dialogue—but this can get messy and is often avoided. Internal dialogue is most often italicized in place of using quotation marks, with the dialogue tags in regular print. Observe:
I can’t believe I’m doing this, Amy thought. I can’t believe I actually agreed to go.
Instead of using quotation marks, one sees the italics and is quickly able to differentiate between something said aloud and something thought. Internal dialogue is also one of those places where the dash might be helpful to differentiate thoughts and speakers, but italics seem to be the preferred method.
[rules for reference: punctuation]
A comma should always separate the quotation from the dialogue tag.
[for American publications] Periods and commas go inside the quotation marks, and all other punctuation (semicolons, question marks, dashes, exclamation points) goes outside the quotation marks.
If a dialogue tag (e.g., he said) interrupts a sentence, it should be offset by commas; when this occurs, the second part of the quotation should begin with a lowercase letter.
A change in speaker equals a change in paragraph.
The ellipsis (…) should only be used to represent dialogue that trails off and is likely to begin again.
The ellipsis used inside quotation marks should never be the end punctuation for the sentence. You need to add end punctuation after the dialogue.
Source 4: Ginny Wiehardt, About.com
Use a comma between the dialogue and the tag line (the words used to identify the speaker: “he said/she said”):
“I would like to go to the beach this weekend,” she told him as they left the apartment.
[for American publications] Periods and commas go inside the quotation marks; other punctuation — semicolons, question marks, dashes, and exclamation points — goes outside unless it directly pertains to the material within the quotes.
In general, don’t use double punctuation marks, but go with the stronger punctuation. Question marks and exclamation points are stronger than commas and periods.
When a tag line interrupts a sentence, it should be set off by commas. Note that the first letter of the second half of the sentence is in lower case.
For interior dialogue, italics are appropriate, just be consistent.
Source 5: Grammatically Correct, by Anne Stilman
In dialogue, the em dash serves to indicate broken-off speech. One speaker can interrupt another:
“They simply happen to regard sex as both a physical and a spiritual experience. If you think I’m–“
“So do I! So do I regard it as a wuddaycallit–a physical and spiritual [Salinger]
A speaker can stop abruptly without being interrupted:
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but–” [Lewis Carroll]
A break can come in the middle of a word:
“Ri–,” he starts, then stops angrily. [Ken Dryden]
The dash also serves to indicate speech that is scattered or faltering: that is, not interrupted by a second speaker, but by the speaker breaking off a thought and starting another, or talking in disjointed sentence fragments.
“She says she is afraid there will be draughts in the passage, though everything has been done–one door nailed up–quantities of matting–my dear Jane, indeed you must. Mr. Churchill, oh! you are too obliging. How well you put it on–so gratified! … Well, [Jane Austen]
Compare the above uses of the dash with those of the ellipsis.
If you can’t produce [an em dash] on your typewriter or word processor, type two hyphens ( — ).
You may either leave spaces around a dash or have the dash lie directly against the words it adjoins. Be consistent.
Whichever style you choose, do not put a space before a dash that is being used to interrupt dialogue in the middle of a word.
When a dash is being used to indicate broken-off dialogue, follow it immediately with a closing quotation mark. Do not add a comma.
“How was I supposed to–” she sputtered indignantly.
Do not put any other punctuation immediately adjacent to a dash, with the exception of a question mark or exclamation point before a closing dash. Even if the text that is broken by dashes would otherwise take a comma or semicolon, do not include it.
Text that is enclosed within dashes may contain any punctuation mark other than a period. Parentheses should be avoided if possible, as the construction of an aside within an aside would be awkward.
Do not employ both a single dash and a pair of dashes in the same sentence, as it would then be unclear which text is enclosed by the pair.
Summary and recommendations
1 interior dialog (thoughts)
The alternatives are:
1a Ordinary Roman (non-italic) font, if it’s clear from context that we are reading thoughts, not speech. This alternative is always preferable, so long as it’s obvious to the reader that thoughts are involved, not actual speech.
1b Italics. This is the most common practice. However, if italics are being used for another purpose in the work (e.g., for quoting a book), then also using italics for interior dialog could be confusing or graphically distracting.
In standard submission format, italics are represented by underlining. This practice dates from the days when typewriters were used, and italics were not available.
Large blocks of either italic or underlined type are less easy to read than ordinary Roman type; their use should therefore be held to a minimum.
1c Single quotation marks for thoughts, where the writer is using double quotation marks for speech. This practice is uncommon, but there are precedents and it can be effective.
Single quotation marks are standardly used for speech within speech, e.g., “I said ‘Stop that!’ but he wouldn’t listen.” In a particular work, if speech within speech is frequent (as in some of Conrad’s novels), then single quotation marks should not be used also to indicate thought, to avoid confusion.
Whatever alternative is chosen should be applied consistently throughout a work.
Imagined speech (addressed in thought to another person) may be graphically represented as normal speech, not as internal dialog.
2 interrupted speech
The most common practice is to use a single em dash to indicate an interruption, abruptly broken-off dialogue, or a shift in tone.
A pair of hyphens ( — ) can be used in manuscript to indicate an em dash. This is useful where the em dash could be garbled by the receiving word processor.
Some word processors auto-correct two consecutive hyphens as a single em-dash character. It is advisable to delete this auto-correction, so that two hyphens remain two distinct characters. The publisher can convert these back to em dashes as needed.
3 speech trailing off (not interrupted)
The most common practice is to use an ellipsis ( … ) to indicate speech that trails off or fades out and is likely to begin again; also to indicate faltering or fragmented speech. (This is different from, and in addition to, the ordinary use of an ellipsis to indicate missing or redacted text.)
In some cases it may not be obvious whether a dash should be used, or an ellipsis.
4 spacing and punctuation of ellipses
Examples of acceptable practice:
(a) “almost eight years now, if…”
The ellipse precedes the ending quotation mark.
There is no comma before or after the ending quotation mark.
There is no space before or after the ellipsis.
But, as in the following example, when an ellipsis separates two words without any other punctuation, it is advisable to put a space both before and after the ellipsis, as an aid to the reader.
(b) “It’s … it’s a boy!”
If the ellipsis ends a sentence, then it gets a final ‘.’ making four, instead of three, periods in a row. However, ‘trailing off’ expressions are usually fragments, and rarely constitute sentences. For an example of an ellipsis that does end a sentence, see “Okay….” in Source 3.
Some writers letter-space the ellipsis ( . . . ), but this is generally inadvisable. It also distorts the word count.
5 spacing and punctuation of dashes
Examples of acceptable practice:
(a) “How was I supposed to–” she sputtered indignantly.
The dash precedes the ending quotation mark.
There is no comma before or after the ending quotation mark; the dash sufficiently indicates a pause.
There is no space before or after the dash.
(b) “My God!–” he gasped.
It is acceptable to place an exclamation mark or a question mark immediately before the dash — but not to excess, and doing so is usually unnecessary.
(c) “before the dash — but not to excess”
When a dash separates two words without any other punctuation, it is advisable to put a space both before and after the dash, as a help to the reader.
Even if the text that is broken by dashes would otherwise take a comma or semicolon, do not include one.
(d) “It’s … well–”
“Shut up, Murgatroyd!”
Faltering speech followed by an interruption. There is no period after the interrupted expression (because it isn’t a sentence), but there must be a paragraph break if the interruption is another character’s speech, as in the example.
(e) “It was a case of ‘hyperexcitement.’”
The (unfortunate) American rule is that the period goes inside the quotation marks, whether or not it logically belongs there. In this case the result appears to be a triple quotation mark, which is impossible. Inserting a space between the two closing quotation marks, so: “…‘hyperexcitement.’ ” is not accepted by editors.
5 paragraphing
[In narrative (not in dialog)]
Paragraph-length is a question of rhetoric, not grammar. Keep paragraphs short, but not too short. About 50 words is typical for most modern fiction. However, many consecutive paragraphs of similar length makes for dull reading; vary the length.
Very short or single-sentence paragraphs can be used for special effects, such as when a startling fact is revealed, or as an ironic comment on the preceding (longer) paragraph.
[In dialog]
If there is a change in speaker, there must be a change in paragraph, even if (at the extreme) the characters are speaking to each other in single-word speeches:
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Never!”
“Not ever?”
The question of judgment arises when narrative intervenes between two speeches. How should the following be paragraphed? (Sentences are numbered for this exercise.)
[1] “Or she,” Donald added. [2] Claire looked up abruptly. [3] “They don’t really do that for girls, do they? My folks sure never did that for me!” [4] “Well –.” [5] Donald snickered. [6] “O great feminist,” he said, “do you think it’s just boys who have their backs up against the wall?”
We need at least four paragraphs here, because there are four speeches, alternating between Donald and Claire. But in which paragraph do sentences [2] and [6] belong? With their preceding sentences, or with the sentences that follow them? Or by themselves in separate paragraphs?
In this example, the answer is clear. Sentence [2] introduces Claire’s speech, and should be paragraphed with sentence [3]; likewise for sentence [5] together with [6]. If, however, we have a different sentence [2],
[2] He waited expectantly for her answer.
then [2] would belong with [1], not with [3].
But in the following example, the answer is not so simple.
[1] “The birth was eight years ago, Donald. Dr. Gordon’s probably moved on by now. Or died. He wasn’t young, remember?” [2] Just as the same topic had so long ago, once again nothing came of it. There was quiet for the exact amount of time needed to signal a change of subject. [3] “Look,” Donald began, “I marked up those drawings again and I need to drive over to Danbury and drop them off for Harman.”
Passage [2] could be paragraphed with passage [1], or with passage [3], but not both. Or it could stand alone. Considering that [2] is from the point of view of a third person external to both characters, and considering that it is a change in tone both from what goes before and what comes after, it could have its own paragraph. This, again, is a question of rhetoric, not grammar.
<END>
133: Idiom and Cliche
August 28, 2009What’s the difference between idiom and cliché? Refer to books on usage, and dictionaries, and other sources — various fine distinctions are offered, but most seem to be distinctions without a difference. And look at dictionaries of idioms and dictionaries of clichés — their entries frequently overlap.
Consider this view: a cliché is an idiom that hasn’t settled into the language, that still feels uncomfortable to us, and in which the literal meaning still jars against the metaphorical. In personal terms, a cliché is a turn of phrase that didn’t exist when you were young. If you grow up with a cliché it sounds natural; the literal meaning doesn’t intrude. It is, for you, an idiom.
“O’clock” is an idiom: we don’t think of clocks when we say “o’clock”, even when we’re staring straight at one. When the sun is directly overhead on June 22, it is still twelve “o’clock” even if there’s no clock within miles. At some point in history, “o’clock” [“of the clock”] must have sounded strange; must have sounded like a cliché once more than a few people used it.
As a fiction writer, both idioms and clichés substitute for original thought and should be avoided in third-person narrative where there are suitable alternatives. Dialog is different: spoken language thrives on idiom and cliché; how they are used or not used in a story can help define character.
<END>
132: Useful Words for Writers
August 28, 2009The following list of words was pulled from dozens of junk emails (I always read my junk emails — they’re usually more interesting than the unjunky ones). Many of these are actually real words, just very rare. All could have their uses in fiction, especially in the higher forms of fantasy.
afreet
agaze
ahull
avouch
axunge
baboo
bewray
busk
pise
cess
chare
coatee
dicer
dossil
dree
eld
aver
soph
hurra
taluk
adit
dor
elytra
felloe
fossae
ganger
gasper
genet
glaive
gurry
gypsa
hist
hollo
imbrex
ingle
jalap
kail
keeker
loth
luting
morgue
nopal
oakery
oaky
oneman
pant
penes
perse
phut
pilule
pitpat
pleach
pomelo
potboy
pottle
pouchy
puddly
pultun
pyedog
quartn
quire
rappee
riband
roquet
ryot
samp
satis
scop
scree
shewn
sniffy
spruit
stodge
sudd
targe
teasel
teazle
toman
valuer
wold
yaffil
zoic
131: The Kingdom of Wha-Tif
August 28, 2009What if your life is an hypothesis. What if God or Descartes’ evil genius (is there a difference?) were to wonder ‘What would happen if there were a world with [your name here] in it?’, and then proceeded to build and operate such a world?
Isn’t that what really happens?
Think about it.
<END>
130: Lazy Pronunciation
August 28, 2009Some words aren’t easy to pronounce: arctic, antarctic, infrastructure, February, vulnerable, temperature; and there are plenty of others.
But respect our language; take the time to say it right.
<END>
128: Lost Fathers
August 28, 2009Fathers don’t get a great press in the TV series Lost. Only one dad (Jin’s father) is presented as a good man. The rest are never mentioned, or [as of the end of Season 4] …
Jack’s father is an alcoholic who performs surgery while drunk
Claire’s father (same man)
Kate’s father is a wife-beater and makes sexual advances to his daughter
Hugo’s father deserts his family for 17 years, reappearing only when Hugo wins the lottery
Sawyer’s father commits murder and suicide after being conned by the ‘real’ Sawyer
Sun’s father is a millionaire who views murder as a legitimate business tactic
Locke’s father is a con man who robs his son of a kidney and tries to kill him
Walt’s father (Michael) is a murderer
Aaron’s father deserts his pregnant wife
Ben’s father blames him for Ben’s mother’s death, continually belittles him.
– I wonder about J.J. Abrams’ father !
127: Cops Out of Control – II
August 28, 2009(Washington Post, 31 July 2009)
“Man Arrested After Chanting at Police
D.C. police launched an internal investigation after a 33-year-old lawyer complained that he was improperly charged with disorderly conduct after chanting “I hate police” while walking down the street.
Pepin Tuma, a lawyer in private practice, said he was walking in the U Street corridor late Saturday with two friends when they came upon several police cars at a traffic stop. Tuma and his friends, also lawyers, had been discussing the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
“In a singsong voice, a little louder than conversation, I said, ‘I hate the police. I hate the police,’ ” Tuma said. He said an officer came over and said, “You can’t talk to the police like that,” before pushing him against an electric utility box and handcuffing him.
Tuma said he asked why he was being arrested and said he had a right to express his opinion. Tuma said the officer called him a “faggot.”
A police spokeswoman said Tuma’s complaint is being investigated but would not comment further.
<END>
126: For Writers: ‘Hint’ Fiction Anthology
July 30, 2009See //www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=8, or navigate to “Hint” via Duotrope.com.
Hint fiction (n) : a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story — an idea that should intrigue any writer. Take a look!
Anthology Guidelines
Tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2010, W.W. Norton will publish an anthology of Hint Fiction. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer. The anthology will include between 100 and 150 stories.
It’s possible to write a complete story in 25 words or less — a beginning, middle, end — but that’s not Hint Fiction.
Payment is $25 per story for World and Audio rights.
See details of submission requirements and procedures via the link above.
<END>
125: “Popullution”
July 30, 2009“Popullution” = population pollution = the pollution of our planet that has come about through irresponsible human breeding.
<END>
124: Belief Cannot Be in Error
July 30, 2009Belief cannot be in error.
When you say “I believe p” (where p is some proposition, as in “I believe Earth’s climate is warming”) you could be lying, but you cannot be in error, as you are reporting on the contents of your mind. You are definitively in charge of deciding what’s in your own mind. “I believe…” is therefore the strongest statement you can make.
Even at the extreme, as in “I believe that people with ray-guns are chasing me”, you, again, could be lying about your beliefs, but if you are not, then you must be making a factually correct statement about what’s in your head.
There are two complications:
1) Performative statements, such as “I believe in God the father almighty” said as a formal part of a church ceremony, are irrelevant to actual mental conviction, and so constitute an exception.
2) More tellingly, is saying “I believe p” any different from merely uttering the proposition itself? Saying “p” implies that one believes p unless, again, one is lying. Therefore, the “I believe…” part of the statement is otiose. It would be odd and perhaps contradictory, for example, to say something like “Earth’s climate is warming, but I don’t believe it.”
<END>
123: Trash People
July 30, 2009The following article, which has been abridged, appeared in www.delmarvanow.com, posted 27 July, 2009 (without copyright notice). This appalling item is worth reading both for what it reports, and for what it does not.
A staff member at a state-run juvenile detention center “created mass chaos” when she opened a cottage door, allowing several angry teenage boys into a building where youths were fighting with staff, according to an internal report obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
As the violence escalated, more staff members were assaulted and 14 youths escaped from the Victor Cullen Center near Sabillasville, according the report by the Department of Juvenile Services’ inspector general’s office. Six staff members sought medical attention after the melee on the night of May 27.
The staffer who opened the cottage door, letting in excited youths from a neighboring cottage, later lied to investigators by saying a co-worker told her to open it, the report says. Actually, her supervisor had ordered her not to open it, investigators found.
The staffer, whose named was redacted from the report obtained by the AP through a Public Information Act request, received the harshest criticism among six workers who were recommended for discipline.
“Her actions created mass chaos and danger in an already unstable cottage environment, as well as placing the safety and security of the entire campus in a compromising and perilous position,” the investigators found.
Six Victor Cullen employees were disciplined for the incident, according to another report released last week by the Maryland Juvenile Justice Monitor, a division of the attorney general’s office. The workers’ union says one of them was fired.
The union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is appealing the disciplinary actions.
The inspector general’s report, dated June 22, faults a second staffer for allowing a youth more than his allotted 10 minutes on the telephone. The violence began when the boy punched the man when he tried to take back the phone, according to the report.
The report recommends that the campus supervisor be disciplined for failing to provide direction as youths struck staff members with fists and furniture, grabbed handcuffs and seized a two-way radio to broadcast taunting messages.
“Although not negligent, she was ineffective as a leader and participant in this incident,” the report states.
A fourth staffer was cited for leaving the cottage and abandoning his peers after a youth spit in his face several times.
“He should have been able to maintain control of his anger for the benefit of the team and recognize that his assistance was paramount,” the investigators wrote.
A fifth staffer was faulted for failing to notify others when she left the most troublesome cottage, called Rutledge, to check on a co-worker who had been assaulted by youth in the neighboring Raine cottage. As she opened the door to Raine, some of the boys ran out and into Rutledge, investigators found.
“She should have requested assistance to enter Raine for her own safety and the safety of others,” the report states.
The staffer who was assaulted in Raine was faulted for inattentiveness to the rising excitement among youth in his own cottage as he watched the fight in Rutledge through a window.
“He stood for nearly eight minutes prior to his assault, along with youth beside and behind him, watching the incident transpiring on Rutledge. Youth were able to take possession of his radio,” the report states.
<END>
122: “Enjoy”
July 30, 2009“Enjoy” is a transitive verb, that it, it takes an object. For example, in “Enjoy your spinach,” ‘spinach’ is the object, whether or not you actually enjoy it.
Used as an intransitive verb (“Enjoy!”) it was cute at first, but has long outlived its cuteness and is now merely a bore.
<END>
121: “Homosexual” and “Heterosexual”
July 30, 2009Both these terms are unfortunate, because they focus on the sexual aspect of a person in whom, perhaps, sex has only a small role.
There are problems with “straight”, too (are the others “bent”?) and “gay” (but some are morose.)
See the Scientific American article “Equal right to kiss? Why you may be disgusted by gay behavior without knowing it”, at www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=unconscious-disgust-gay-behavior&sc=DD 20090618 (posted 18 June 2009 on www.sciam.com).
(Is all ‘gay behavior’ sexual?)
<END>
120: Taxing Health Benefits
July 23, 2009Yes, but not the way it’s being spoken for (and against) in Congress.
When Congress talks about “taxing health benefits”, they mean taxing the amount your employer pays the insurance industry to cover your visits to doctors and hospitals. If these amounts weren’t paid out as insurance, they would (in theory) be available to increase your salary. So some part of those amounts, at least, should be taxed as salary. Right?
Wrong. If my employer pays, say, $3000 a year in insurance premiums for me, and I require no medical visits or treatment in that year, I’m out $3000. I have received no real benefits, only a contingent benefit where the contingency never happened.
In terms of motivation, since I see all that money going out, I’m going to be sure to get a benefit — get my money’s worth. So I have every reason to see a physician over some small complaint, or let my arm get twisted to agree to a minor operation I don’t really need, just so I’m not a sucker who’s just lost a $3000 bet. Maybe I’ll “win the lottery” and use up $6000 in medical costs. I just doubled my money. Right?
The motivation here is all going the wrong way. We do need to tax health benefits, but in a way that will induce people to reduce demand to what’s really needed, and bring down the overall cost of health care for the whole country.
The way to do this is to tax actual benefits, and the simplest way to do this is to add $10 (say) to the $10 or $20 you already co-pay when you get attention from medical professionals. The tax could pay for essential treatment for people who have no insurance, improve public health, subsidize medical research, etc. — whatever medical need is greatest. This co-co-pay wouldn’t fund all medical needs, but it would make a major contribution.
<END>
119: “One of the only”
July 23, 2009For many years, “one of the few” has been an accepted and harmless idiom, as in “one of the few hitters who batted .300 over several seasons.” But recently this expression has been partially supplanted by “one of the only”, meaning, apparently, one of the few.
There’s something wrong with “one of the only.” ‘Only’ means ‘one-ly’: the only one; singular; unique. Could something be just one of a group of one that’s more than one?
I think what’s happened is that “one of the few” met up with “the one and only” and gave birth to a bastard child called “one of the only.”
However it came about, “one of the only” is an illogical and illiterate expression, and shows whoever utters it to be thoroughly confused.
<END>
118: Against Secrecy
July 9, 2009Secrecy is an evil. It not only (obviously) interferes with the free flow of information, it also corrodes much of our interaction with other human beings. Secrecy is a kind of cheating.
Worse, because of all-pervading secrecy, most of us erroneously assume that most of us are honest, trustworthy, truthful, faithful … all the Boy Scout virtues. When someone, famous politician or not, is ‘found out’, shock and disgust follow. But we are all like that, aren’t we? Because we’re human. Disregarding a few saints (who may have spiritual secrets of their own), we are all, as the old phrase goes, “no better than we ought to be.”
Advocates of secrecy have two major arguments:
1) Danger: Some information is so dangerous it must be kept secret. Consider this (fictional) secret: “How to brew a deadly and undetectable poison from common household chemicals.” Shouldn’t this information be kept secret?
Yes, but not only from you and me; from everyone. No one should know this information, not merely those who claim to have the welfare of all of us as their dearest wish (and who would that be? governments? oh, really?)
2) Information overload: To be told everything is to be overwhelmed with information, most of it trivial and pointless. A thought experiment: You are sitting on a commuter bus where, in the seat directly behind you, someone is talking loudly and endlessly about his operations, job, or grandchildren; perhaps all three. Don’t you just wish he would keep this information to himself? Keep it ‘secret’?
The solution here is to have our own information filters: scan everything; take in whatever we want; ignore the rest. In the instant situation, a pair of good earplugs is advisable (whenever you use mass transit, actually). Except in a business meeting where you’re required to pay attention, or at a cocktail party you can’t avoid, a wide variety of filters are available, including just staying away. Use them.
Consider the red-light traffic camera: It works (reduces traffic accidents) only if people know it’s there. Nuclear weapons only work for a state (contribute to its power) if other states know it’s there. (Consider how carefully Israel has let it be supposed that they have nuclear weapons, even if they won’t admit it publicly.)
<END>
117: Motives
July 9, 2009You have heard it asked “Are you questioning my motives?”, as if there were something wrong with this. And the conventional answer is “No; of course not. I certainly wouldn’t do that.”
Consider: Our motives guide our actions; they have grown up with us and are an essential part of who each of us is. You cannot understand another person without knowing, at least to some extent, his motives. To ignore motives is to deal with persons as if they were machines. Perhaps some people would prefer to be (treated as) machines. For the rest of us, inquiry as to motives is always germane.
Do we always understand our motives? Of course not. At times, other people know our motives better than we do. But the impossible goal of knowing our own minds should never be abandoned. Dialog with others can help make it so.
<END>
116: More Comma Abuse
July 9, 2009From the brochure “Playing It Safe on the W&OD Trail”:
“Always look ahead for obstacles such as gates, potholes and other trail users, etc.”
You didn’t know that potholes were considered trail users? Reluctance to place a comma before the “and” in a list of three or more items often results in ludicrous statements such as this.
More seriously, such (mis-)usage often results in ambiguity, confusion, and loss of meaning.
Consider how professional speakers (such as TV and radio news reporters) almost always pause before the “and” in these cases; they are mentally inserting the comma, exactly where it should be.
<END>
115: “Junior” and “Senior”
July 9, 2009Brian Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day (7 July 2009) holds, in part:
“ ‘Jr.’ and ‘Sr.’ aren’t used unless the names are identical. So the second Bush president (George W[alker] Bush) is not a junior, the father’s name being George Herbert Walker Bush. But some journalists use ‘Jr.’ and ‘Sr.’ as a kind of loose shorthand {Bush Sr. / Bush Jr.}.”
“When the names are identical” is a matter of context: how the names are spoken or written in a particular book, broadcast, etc. Although Garner is correct that “George W. Bush” should not be written “George W. Bush, Jr.” (because the elder Bush is not “George W.”, but “George H.W.”), the following pair should be acceptable:
George Bush, Sr.
George Bush, Jr.
It is only in contexts that include middle names or initials that the names, as written, become un-identical. Therefore, the “loose shorthand” is correct.
<END>
114: Truth in Spoofing
July 9, 2009Received 06 July 09: Email “Restoring password — press to go to site.”
The email was from someone named “Swindle Kraig.” Tends to make one suspicious.
<END>
113: “Hate” Crimes
June 14, 2009Remember the proverbial “cold-blooded killer”? We used to consider him more to blame than the killer who strikes in an excess of emotion, hate, or rage. But now the tables are turned.
Since when does a person’s emotional state, when he commits a crime, render him liable to more severe punishment than if he had not experienced the emotion of hate? Since the passage of “hate” crime legislation, that’s when.
Mental states have long been recognized as increasing, or at times mitigating, guilt. Consider: murder v manslaughter, and ‘criminal intent’. But these are matters of intention.Until recently, emotion has been considered relevant to neither crime nor punishment.
It is sometimes said that crimes against “people due to personal attributes beyond their control” (http://moran.house.gov) deserve extra punishment. This position is at least arguable, although I disagree **. But to tie this to “hate” is irrelevant: a man may murder a black person just because he is black, in cold blood. Why should his punishment be more severe if, instead of ‘cold’ his blood were hot
at the time /
of the crime?
____________________
** You are responsible for who you are and what you are, no matter how God or Darwin rolled the dice, no matter whether you could ‘help it’, or not: No excuses.
<END>
112: “slam pupa fully”: Found Poems – V
June 14, 2009[Received in a junk email, complete; verbatim. Not trying to sell me anything, so why send? “Luting acuity” is nice, though...]
Hi
slam pupa fully.
chump graft rococo coatee.
brazil coatee sin.
tandem public emir cashew!
pupa ragout.
acuity feel lives sin?
sell gypsa warble public.
elan brazil how fiber.
voter sniffy lumper.
sap shrink reflux.
ladder pant swathe.
swathe coatee pant.
lives estop cue seer?
feel bounty cue.
blase bingo chalk foci!
bay oakery graft hubby?
potion glover.
sap attic potion.
give nimbus smelt slam.
peso cue agile lipped?
gas elan public flake.
gooey sniffy luting acuity?
seer seer slam find!
bingo hubby.
<END>
111: “How please knocking-out hottie”: Sex Junk Emails – IV
June 14, 2009Following are verbatim excerpts from various junk mails I’ve received that relate to sex — not including the really gross ones, just the pathetic ones.
===
Bigger your ShortPenis – 100% Natural EnlargementPills is Safe & Effective! cvjd xn
===
Male perfection advice
You’ll call it Peter the Great
===
Why suffering from impossibility of keeping it hard when you can make it stay like a tree!
===
Hi Guidroz Its me, Lady
No more shame and uncertainty. This is your damn meat device and it will raise your lady to heavens
===
strengthen and harden your erections
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was apprehended in Rawalpindi in
===
Check it
How please knocking-out hottie
===
Hallo!
My penis is not only longer and wider, but with a higher level of confidence I feel like a new manster python? That’s what I ask myself now.
===
Make her your rod’s slave
When you are aged and never give up, it gives your he confidence, at any chance, at any place
===
Why do you send my this?
For men who want their women to value them as loving monsters.
===
What now?
Your broad won’t need to wait for your “go up” reaction.
===
Be so kind as to read this please
Compelling force will try to tear your zipper every time you’ll be with a girl.
===
Want your MAN Area Extended? Try our Sample
===
Unleash lion inside you!
===
Your woman wants your python to be the best worker of the year
===
You’ll surprise her with your Hulk
baraggnag utndrieug
agrpgngnop pigaier
oeopa ebugtapara
===
Strenghth and largeness for you.
===
Mutant worms appeared in US
Any short stimulation from your girl and your manhood is hard and ready
===
Exclude flaccid hose risk
===
Wang will feel like wood
===
Energy for infatuations!
keooe aagbgndnbd
aappd gdiuao
===
Become ED-resistant MAN.
Dreaming about the real ramming machine in pants? Easy deal!
===
If night are not hot enough, this pilule will light the fire again
dopeiag iiprap nannaob
uurane raatgru dgna
gnaep aggrnn bagia
gn itog aaaoba pn rgo
===
You’re the Cove,’ he said, ‘for me
Though you’re such a Hoddy Doddy And all the Sailors and Admirals cried
ryqen hibia
===
Use mind to improve your fang
===
With this you will go through your girl like a bulldozer.
===
Solution for men, who feel that they can give more satisfaction to girls.
Why lie? I need money.
===
<END>
110: An Alternative View of the Marriage Issue, Gay or Straight
May 28, 2009Marriage is none of government’s business. Marriage was formerly, and is still in many places even today, a relationship that fits within the ceremonies and customs of a religion, not of a state; and it should stay that way.
Why? Because the government has no competence to set rules for or govern intimate relationships between persons **; and because it claims a monopoly on the use of force. Is that the kind of foundation you want for your marriage?
Does government have any valid concerns here? Only two: (a) Protecting minor children and other persons from harm, and (b) Providing a court system that may enforce, if called upon, contractual relationships (such as civil unions). These functions have nothing to do with marriage, per se; they apply to everyone regardless of marital status.
Ideally, all relationships commonly called ‘marriages’ are really civil unions. Partners in a civil union may also seek a true marriage, that is, performed by a minister or similar religious figure. Those who are non-religious will happily avoid this unnecessary complication.
** Perhaps priests and rabbis don’t, either; but that’s a different question.
<END>
109: Top Ten Science Fiction Films
May 28, 2009A very personal view of great science fiction films, not including TV series or made-for-TV movies:
1. Top ten modern sci-fi films, in alpha order:
Alien (director’s cut)
Alien 3 (theatrical release version)
Bladerunner (‘final’ director’s cut)
Brazil (original uncut version)
Clockwork Orange
Final Cut
Minority Report
Paycheck (with the deleted scenes; some of these make essential plot points)
Rollerball (1975, not the remake)
Twelve Monkeys (and the original, La Jetee)
2. Honorable Mention:
Dark City (original version now finally released, without the Kiefer Sutherland prologue)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978- the one with Donald Sutherland)
Children of Men
The Man Who Fell to Earth
3. “More than the sum of its parts”: Individual films are weak, but the series as a whole adds up:
Terminator 1, 2, 3
Cube 1, 2, 0 [‘0’ must be seen last]
4. Special award for brilliant concept though movie not so good:
The 13th Floor
5. Dubious award for an underscore so excellent it pulls your attention away from the screen:
Paycheck (music by John Powell)
<END>
108: New Suffixes
May 28, 2009Try these out:
.. Biologer
.. Americer
.. Quakist
.. Hikist (or ‘Bikist’)
.. Triflist (= Trifler)
.. Philosophist
.. Fidgetee (one subjected to fidgeting by others)
.. Fiddlant (Fiddler)
.. Dabblian (Dabbler)
.. Piqueur (one who piques, e.g., your interest)
An interesting diversion; a Mensa party-game.
<END>
107: Ethics and Arm-Waving
May 28, 2009‘Ethicists’ appear regularly on radio and TV these days, giving their sage pronouncements. They used to ground their opinions on principles: ‘greatest good for the greatest number’; or ‘duty’; or ‘virtue’. Well-thought-out theories that have been argued at length by many bright people.
But no longer. Now they are pleased merely to give pronouncements, accompanied by a satisfactory amount of vigorous arm-waving. But without a showing of reasons and principles, there is no more reason to listen to them than to anyone else on the same subject: they have lost their claim to having any sort of special knowledge or insight.
Good, then, for Ronald Dworkin. He’s discussing law, but his position holds also for ethics:
“[The Supreme Court] can find its moral authority only in the character of the reasons it offers for its decisions. It has a sovereign responsibility to show that its judgments are grounded in principles that can responsibly be claimed to be premises of America’s democracy. [Justices] must say enough, in important and controversial decisions about constitutional rights, to indicate the principled basis of their decision and show that they understand and accept at least the obvious further commitments those principles require.”
(Ronald Dworkin, “Looking for Cass Sunstein”. New York Review of Books, 30 April, 2009, page 32. Abridged; emphasis added)
<END>
106: Capital Punishment
May 28, 2009Concept for a short story:
The future: All those on death row are released to serve life terms. But the government has realized that, although killing its own citizens represents the ultimate expression of state power and serves as a useful caution to its citizens, it is no longer necessary to indiscriminately kill dozens or hundreds of people each year: a single death will do.
The government has also realized that the death of a common rapist or murderer, no matter how deserved, does not fully engage the passions of the public. The scum, they will say, have their reward; and they will shrug their shoulders.
No, there is a difference between the merely brutal and the truly evil, they say. And so the one man or woman to be killed each year, with full offices and ceremonies of state, must be evil. Only in this way can the public be fully engaged, complicit, equally guilty with the state in the commission of this killing. So the quest began for the single most evil man in the country. Not an easy quest, because members of the government were exempted by statute, as were the leading professional sports figures, college deans, and of course lawyers. Other protected classes were added, the deserving poor, the undeserving poor, the huddled masses, the rich, the very rich, and … and …..
And that is why Melvin H. Robertson, an insurance adjuster from Campbellsburg, Indiana, the only one in America not exempted from capital punishment, found himself one day on death row.
<END>
105 The Comma, Again
May 8, 2009The comma serves three masters: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Sometimes [,] these masters may be at odds.
(1) Consider this sentence from a short story: “After dinner I carried out the garbage.” Grammar requires a comma after ‘dinner’, and normally the writer should provide one. But consider rhetoric: we may want the comma there, or not, depending on how the writer is shaping the story’s rhythm and narrative voice. The choice is a judgment as to which master must prevail this time.
(2) Sometimes none of the masters is happy. Consider this sentence (from Dana Milbank’s column in the Washington Post, 1 May 2009):
“The stated purpose of the hearing was to examine whether merchant ships need private or military security on board.”
This sentence could mean either:
(a) “The stated purpose of the hearing was to examine whether merchant ships need private or military security on board, or no security at all.”
or
(b) “The stated purpose of the hearing was to examine who should provide on-board security for merchant ships: private firms or the military.”
<END>
104: Futile Attempts to Control Population – II
May 8, 2009Coercive plans to limit population need not be cruel or Malthusian. Consider this one:
Each woman in the world would have, by right, two child-birth licenses. One of them she could sell, at the prevailing market rate, if she wished (a kind of ‘cap and trade’); or she could choose to give birth. The second license would be for her use alone, and could not be sold or given away. If a child dies in childhood, an additional license would be granted to the mother. If a woman declines to have a child or any children at all, that would be her sole decision.
This plan would improve the wealth and power of women everywhere in the world, especially in poor countries. And each woman would still have the right to bear one child; two, if she chooses.
World population would decrease slowly and steadily to some agreed sustainable level; then the policy could be liberalized.
BUT … even if we agree that this is a workable and humane plan, who would initiate it? Who would administer it? How could it be enforced? How would cheaters be detected? punished?
This population plan, like all the others that have been proposed, no matter how attractive in theory, are doomed to failure. We are wired, by God or evolution (probably both), to breed.
<END>
103: Futile Attempts to Control Population – I
May 8, 20091) The Optimum Population Trust (optimumpopulation.org) says –
“Too many people: Earth’s population problem.
“The world’s population is expected to grow by another 2.3 billion, from 6.8 billion in 2009 to 9.1 billion in 2050.
“Human consumption of renewable resources is already overshooting Earth’s capacity to provide. Resources are becoming scarcer and the number of hungry people increasing year by year.
“Reversing population growth is one of the measures needed to ensure environmental survival.”
Fine so far. Unfortunately, OPT goes on to say “It can be done by voluntary and peaceful means,” and, on another OPT web page,
“The Optimum Population Trust is absolutely opposed to any form of coercion in family planning.”
Sorry, Charlie. Voluntary population reduction hasn’t worked. Won’t work. We have a real ‘tragedy of the commons’ here. Neither extreme poverty nor relative wealth nor earnest moral suasion have stopped people from uncontrolled breeding.
2) Lester Brown (Scientific American Magazine [on line], April 22, 2009):
“Many of [failing states’] problems stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. … Stabilizing population and eradicating poverty go hand in hand. In fact, the key to accelerating the shift to smaller families is eradicating poverty — and vice versa. One way is to ensure at least a primary school education for all children, girls as well as boys. Another is to provide rudimentary, village-level health care, so that people can be confident that their children will survive to adulthood. Women everywhere need access to reproductive health care and family-planning services.”
Brown’s plan may slow population growth; it probably would. But not reverse it. And, health and education initiatives in many parts of the world are failing just because population is growing uncontrollably faster than health and education can keep up.
3) Ted Turner wants to reduce human population “humanely”, which he defines as voluntarily. (NPR interview, 7 May 2009). But we already have too many people for sustainability, and the number is still growing.
Coercion: Giving up one freedom, the freedom to breed without limit, is necessary if we want to preserve all our other freedoms, and if we want to avoid the eventual Great Die-Off.
<END>
102: “Archiving in Bed”: Sex Junk Emails – III
May 8, 2009(The following extracts are verbatim. Most appear to show a high level of performance anxiety, and a lot of aggression]
===
Carnal revitalizer!
===
Doping for your porksword!
===
Revitalize your porkmonster!
===
Fill your bed partner’s brain with the excitement and satisfaction.
===
Do your girl more than in time, when you were 18.
===
Everything will go right in bed, if you swallow this blue pilule.
===
Give your weenie some boost and no girl will laugh.
===
Get unfailing manhood.
===
So, need you letter.
===
Where to go, when you want to buy anti-anxiety goods? Nowhere, just click and get your goods delivered.
===
If you want to be all the time confident in yourself and archive everything you want in every bed.
===
Power up your gun and conquer ladies’ hearts.
===
Why couldn’t men enlarge love-sticks?
===
Click below links to add some Inches to your Manhood.
===
Problems in Getting the Sex Lifee You Want and Deserve – Starting With F
===
To intiere perfection the servis of warre two them both stain, their followers, o king, filled.
===
Or two’s quiet in our own home, with carry and which has walls and a trench full of water on extermination of the kshatriya race. There is eternal lord viz. Isana, in all their successive citizens, they will do their duty, and do it more thomas jefferson was speaking. When abe finished never forget. It was a young girl, very slight, capsules of gold, hermetically closed on both having said these words, hrishikesa quickly urged middle of the road, and glared at him with a terrible hat and coat and goes out. Come in here, cries in the tents of the wealthy. I’m so glad we’re.
===
Your wife’s compartmen unlocks the jewel case drops off the
===
Others envied. If my mistress does nothing that
===
In morality and profit and were kind to all creatures. Further into a work of a thousand lessons. In even arthur thought it would make him sick, and boulle sent to his soninlaw the sum of four thousand of a moment the evervictorious arjuna stringed.
===
Gain the full control over your drilling machine.
===
Walls of weakness will fall crushed by you new mighty manhood.
===
Make your King-Kong twice larger.
===
Ears with statistics proving that people today a feeling could be roused in her. Will had been is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me one word only with it, said rosamund or the malachite table. Been going on in this island, and i’ll put one.
<END>
100: Samuel Johnson on the Getting of Money
May 8, 2009“THERE are few ways”, said Samuel Johnson, “in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.”
– but Johnson had never met a hedge fund manager.
From The Economist print edition, 23 December 1999
<END>
99: The Strong Leader
April 21, 2009What’s wrong with the world society we have built? It’s threatening to destroy itself. This has been true for all of human history, but now we can actually do it, pushing and tugging each other in all directions. What’s needed, as Anakin said, is a strong leader. But human leaders are infected with the same problems the rest of us have, disastrously so; and God seems to have no interest in saving us from ourselves, the ultimate strong leader being occupied with his own ends, largely to our detriment.
<END>
98: The Rights of Plants
April 21, 2009New Scientist magazine recently published the following item:
“FINALLY, recognising the achievements of ethics departments everywhere, the Ig Nobel peace prize went to the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biology “for adopting the principle that plants have dignity”. In a document titled “The dignity of living beings with regard to plants”, the committee concludes that causing “arbitrary harm” to plants is “morally impermissible”. Feedback wholeheartedly agrees, and thanks the committee for the excuse to stop mowing the lawn and weeding the garden.
(Source: Issue 2677 of New Scientist magazine, 08 October 2008, page 80)
I believe New Scientist’s attitude is, from an ethical point of view, naive and also incoherent. If you value life, you will not destroy or harm it without good reason. Whatever a ‘good reason’ might be, it certainly does not include killing for pleasure. If killing animals for mere enjoyment is wrong (as I believe it is), it is also true that killing trees for mere enjoyment is also wrong. Both represent life, and both have, from a God’s-eye point of view, equal worth. Contra Kant, the famous saying goes “It is not whether animals think, it is whether they suffer.” But consider: is anesthetizing an animal before snuffing out its life acceptable solely on grounds that the animal did not suffer, if it would not be acceptable otherwise? Hardly. Suffering is not relevant to the ethical decision here; arbitrary denial of life, as if we had the moral right to make such decisions, is the issue.
<END>
97: Cliches (see also post 43)
April 21, 2009“In a famous exchange with the poet Ann Lauterbach, Lauterbach exclaimed, “Oh, Mr. Ashbery, I love clichés,” to which [John] Ashbery replied, “And they love you.” Clichés and stereotypes are Ashbery’s expressive unit. Cliché was originally a typesetter’s term for those plates devoted not to individual letters but to phrases so common that a slug was molded for them. Cliché is language that has been repeated so often it becomes infinitely repeatable. It “loves us” because it is inevitable; we “love it” as a way of mastering, by ingenious bricolage, the language that saturates us anyway.”
– Note how the writer carefully avoids using clichés in this passage!
(Source: Dan Chiasson, “John Ashbery: ‘Look, Gesture, Hearsay’ ”. New York Review of Books, 9 April 2009, p63f.)
<END>
96: Friendship
April 21, 2009Recently, an on-line writer objected to the idea of online-only friendships, where the people involved have never physically met. According to him, friendship must be based on an in-person encounter, even if conducted electronically thereafter. How are we to determine, after all, that our online ‘friend’ is not just a computer program?
I want to agree with him. Really. There is nothing to equal a physical meeting of two or more persons, whether intimate or not. On line, we don’t pick up the other person’s body language (part biological, part cultural, part individual), his unique odor, nor his distinctive physical response to us. Electronically, face and tone of voice do not have the presence and nuance they do in person. Persons are not disembodied minds, nor even embodied minds: they are unique physical presences, only part of which is driven by the mind.
That said, I have regretfully to disagree with the writer. If you will remember your own past friendships and how they grew (or failed to grow), you will sense that “friendship” is an emotion. Like all emotions, it combines the physical and the mental; but the emotion of friendship seems unique, distinct from other emotions such as love or admiration.
As an emotion, friendship arises and exists within the subject (you). It is your response to someone or something that you conceive to be another person. That is, it is entirely subjective.
While online-only friendships are only pale simulacra of the real thing, they do occur, and in many ‘normal’ people at that.
______________
Note: I use “person” as the most general term for a being that (a) recognizes itself as distinct from all others of its kind, and (b) can interact appropriately with at least some other beings, that is, has a social role. Human beings, dogs, horses, cats, most other mammals, many birds, etc. etc., unless severely brain-damaged or dead, are therefore persons. A computer program can satisfy condition (b), but it would be difficult to know what we could mean if we assert that a program could satisfy condition (a).
<END>
95: ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’
April 12, 2009Remember the old joke? A routine questionnaire asks your name, date of birth, and sex, and for ‘sex’ you write ‘yes, please’, or ‘as often as possible’, or ‘not yet, but I’m still hopeful’?
Our language should not change just because people don’t understand it or are simply thoughtless (the origin, apparently, of ‘one of the only’), or are trying to be cute (the historical origin of pronouncing ‘one’ as ‘won’, some scholars believe.) Language should change only when there is good reason for it to change, such as:
.. Increased richness
.. Avoidance of unintentional ambiguity
.. Improved consistency
and, as relevant here,
.. Better distinction between oft-confused words
‘Sex’, before a few years ago, was ambiguous. It could mean sexual activity such as intercourse, or it could indicate the male/female distinction. These two very different meanings were frequently confused, sometimes on purpose; see the old joke in the first paragraph. Women’s groups made the valid point that ‘female sex’ too strongly emphasizes the sexual-activity meaning of ‘sex’, whereas the most important male/female distinctions are cultural, or in other ways have little or nothing to do with sexual activity. ‘Gender’, formerly a term used in linguistics, was adopted in place of ‘sex’ to emphasize this point.
Some writers, while accepting this use of ‘gender’, urge that dogs, cattle, giraffes, etc., do not have ‘gender’, since they have little or nothing in the way of culture; they have ‘sex’ in both senses.
I believe this just confuses the issue, and unnecessarily distances us from our fellow animals as well. I use ‘sex’ to mean sexual activity in any species, and ‘gender’ to indicate any (warranted) male/female distinction in any species; and I urge you to do likewise.
<END>
93: Story idea- “The Paris Zoo”
April 12, 20091870, Paris: The starving hordes attack the zoo and eat the animals. **
1870, Paris, alternative history: The starving hordes attack the zoo. The zoo-keepers eat them. They give the less-desirable body parts to the animals.
** This is, apparently, historical fact.
<END>
92: Story Idea- “The Cult”
April 12, 2009Anne’s younger sister Marcia joins a cult of fanatics living in squalor in an old house. After two years, Marcia tries to leave the cult, is relentlessly harassed by the cult members, pestered day and night, brow-beaten, compelled to witness at their meetings, etc. They make her life the proverbial living hell. After several more months, Marcia, in desperation, kills herself.
Anne, blaming herself (perhaps unjustly) for not having done enough to prevent Marcia’s suicide, founds an activist group dedicated to preventing young people from joining cults.
The group draws in other affected people, is immediately successful. It receives grants, starts an online newsletter, establishes a modest office in the low-rent district. Anne quits her job, begins to give very successful lectures, appears frequently on television. The movement grows, has a Board of Directors and officers, grants, a growing budget.
After two years, Anne is burned out and feels that she has done all she can for the group. She attempts to resign. The Board refuses her letter of resignation. She quits anyway. She is relentlessly harassed by the group’s members, pestered day and night, brow-beaten, compelled to give more and more lectures, solicit more and more donations, speak at group meetings, etc. They make her life the proverbial living hell. After several more months, Anne, in desperation, kills herself.
Anne’s older sister, Helen, blaming herself (perhaps unjustly) for not having done enough . . . . . . .
91: Does the Washington Post Have (a code of) Ethics?
April 6, 2009Correspondence To and From the Post’s Ombudsman
1. to Andrew Alexander, 22 February, 2009 via email
Congratulations and my sympathies on your new position.
In one of her last columns, Deborah Howell mentioned that she had long advocated making the Post’s code of ethics public (as is the New York Times’ code), but that she had failed to persuade Post management to do so. Perhaps you can have more success. As a sometime instructor in ethics (GMU Learning in Retirement Institute), I believe that keeping a code of ethics secret from affected publics and stakeholders (subscribers) is itself ethically questionable.
Having published the code, Post readers will have better tools for understanding why news stories are written the way they are, and interpreting the information they contain.
ASNE.org contains a version of the Post’s code of ethics — from ten years ago. The code has doubtless been updated several times since then, and in any case there should be a prominent link to the code from the Post’s home page.
Best wishes,
Terence Kuch
2. from Andrew Alexander, 22 February, 2009 via email
Thanks for your e-mail. That’s a topic I intend to address at some point – either in a column or in the weekly internal note I do for the staff (it also goes to top management).
Best wishes,
Andy Alexander
Washington Post Ombudsman
3. Ombudsman column, Washington Post, 5 April 2009, page A17 [abridged]
Got Rules? Then Don’t Be Afraid to Share Them
Newspapers demand accountability and transparency from the institutions they cover. But when it comes to The Post, one of the world’s best-known media institutions, the attitude seems to be: Good for thee, but not for me. The Post keeps its journalistic policies largely hidden, making it virtually impossible for readers to know the paper’s ethical and journalistic standards.
The public should be able to easily access them online. It’s not merely right but also smart to be transparent at a time when The Post is trying to hold on to readers.
A number of newspapers, including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, post their policies online. A dated version of The Post’s policies made its way years ago onto the Web site of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (http://www.asne.org) and can still be found with a little digging.
The issues are numerous. What are the ethical standards for editing visual images or audio content? What rules should govern the treatment of information obtained through Twitter or social networking sites such as Facebook? What are the policies for posting user-generated content, such as photos? What are the verification guidelines for linking to non-Post material from The Post’s Web site?
A separate question is whether The Post adheres to the policies in place. In my first two months as ombudsman, I’ve found a disturbing lack of attention to the standards and ethics rules.
New hires are taught about them as part of their orientation. But a surprising number of staffers told me it’s been years since they reviewed them. And several said they simply don’t adhere to some of the policies on confidential sources, including a requirement that “the source of anything that appears in the paper will be known to at least one editor.”
Why have policies if they aren’t followed?
One way to ensure adherence is to let the public see them. Readers are smart, and many are darn good at holding reporters accountable through what we in the business call “prosecutorial editing.”
It takes a leap of faith to make the policies public. But a good newspaper, confident that it can meet its own high standards, should welcome the scrutiny.
<END>
90: Watch That Comma!
April 6, 2009“A Chinese employee of an Internet café surnamed Mu said the streets of Aba were largely empty.”
Glad to know that Internet cafes have surnames!
<END>
89: Ergo-Gnomics
April 6, 2009(Like ergonomics, but highly sententious.)
1. The Samsung Instinct cell phone ** displays “speaker on” when the speaker is off, and “speaker off” when the speaker is on. It makes a kind of weird sense, after a while …. But I would have preferred the displays to read “turn speaker on” and “turn speaker off”.
2. Remember when cars still had door keys, not things you clicked and hoped the thing’s battery wasn’t dead yet? Well, some cars still require keys, including my car, and several of the cars I’ve rented the past few years.
On my car, turning the key ‘forward’ from either the driver’s or rider’s side (i.e., turning the top of the key toward the front of the car) unlocks; and turning the key ‘backwards’, locks. This makes enormous sense to me, perhaps because my car is German, and so am I (by descent).
BUT, some cars require you to turn the key ‘backwards’. Now this, like the Instinct’s ‘speaker’ display, has perhaps a kind of perverse logic to it.
BUT BUT, other cars require you to turn the key in a different direction, depending on which side of the car you are on. This makes no sense at all.
Back to the clicker!
** The Instinct is a wonderful phone, iPhone-ish, but it has two advantages over the Apple product ***: (1) Minor advantage: it gives you tactile feedback when you touch a screen object; and (2) Major advantage: you can use a stylus to pick out names, web addresses, etc. on the onboard keyboard if you wish. I don’t have fat fingers, but I have the devil’s own time trying to press the right keys on the iPhone’s soft keyboard, and the iPhone won’t recognize a stylus touch, just a finger or perhaps some other warm and flexible body part.
*** Actually, I have an iPod Touch, not an iPhone; but they are the same except for cell phone capability.
88: Divine Intervention in Fargo
April 6, 2009Thousands Flee Fargo as Floodwaters Surge in N.D.
Washington Post, March 28, 2009, page A4
Fargo, N.D. — As thousands of residents left North Dakota’s largest city Friday, others stayed and prayed that miles of sandbagged levees would hold against the surging Red River.
“It’s to the point now where I think we’ve done everything we can,” said resident Dave Davis, whose neighborhood was filled with backhoes and tractors building an earthen levee. “The only thing now is divine intervention.”
(Isn’t that what they’ve been suffering from?)
= = = = =
[Can there be an evil god? Is the concept contradictory? In the book of Job, Yahweh certainly seems to be evil, but that’s only from the point of view of Job’s dead sons, and his dead servants, and his dead sheep). In the end, Job’s faith was rewarded with seven new sons (among other gifts) -- as if his sons were all just interchangeable, no matter about the first batch now that he has more.]
<END>
87: The Age of Rocks and the Rock of Ages
March 23, 2009Imagine yourself a member of a hunter-gatherer tribe, say, 4000 years ago. You have plenty of time to observe the world around you. In fact, as a hunter or gatherer, closely observing the natural world is essential to your survival.
Every year or two your tribe’s purposeful wanderings return to the same hunting-ground. One of the things you notice is that certain large rocks, which you thought the solidest of things, have come apart, not merely chipped off the edges but sometimes split right down the middle, straight or jagged. You notice this phenomenon in every rocky region you come to; it is very common. Being a wonderer as well as a wanderer, you ponder how rocks come to be split. Surely no merely human agency could do it.
Perhaps you hit upon an answer involving freezing and thawing, or the growth of tree-roots. But then a more complex question occurs to you: you see many rocks broken to pieces large or small, but you never find any rocks put back together. In time, you think, every rock must break up, until the world be made of pebbles. Therefore, the world had a beginning, when all rocks were whole, or perhaps the world was originally just one very large rock.
Given that a few more rocks crack each year, you count them and form, gradually, a rough guess as to the age of the earth. If your tribe has the concept of “billion years”, or “myriads of kalpas”, you think those would be too long a time. But perhaps two thousand years before your birth …
Yes, that sounds about right.
addendum: Most scientists had figured the age of the Earth at billions of years before they could explain why all the world’s rocks have not already become pebbles. The answer has only come in my lifetime, with the discovery of plate tectonics.
86: Observation of the Day
March 23, 2009“ ‘This planet is heavily contaminated with life as we know it,’ says Shelley Copley, a biochemist at the University of Colorado.”
– New Scientist, 14 March 2009, page 32
85: “Center”
March 23, 2009“Center” means “middle”, either literally or figuratively. It does not mean “place” or “site”, unless that place or site happens to be, essentially and not merely accidentally, at the middle of something.
The use of “center” to mean place or site, or establishment or organization (which began about 1960, apparently) serves no useful purpose and contributes yet another jot to the universal confusion.
The established idiom is “center of…”, not “center for…”. Mentally substitute “middle” for “center”, and you’ll see what I mean.
(Footnote: In a show of delicacy, an institution at John Jay College calls itself “Center on Terrorism”, not “Center for Terrorism”.)
<END>
84: President Obama and “Special Olympics”
March 23, 2009“Special” used to mean nothing more than “sort or kind”; then, a readily extended meaning, “exceptional” or “unusual”. Then, because notable things are exceptional (or they wouldn’t be notable), it came to mean “notable; excellent”. For years, Buick sold a line of cars called the “Buick Special”. There was nothing very unusual about them, but they were asserted, by their press agents, to be notable and excellent.
When did “special” come to mean “inferior” or “below normal in a given respect”? When people decided to hide uncomfortable reality behind pretty, inoffensive words; and worse, when they learned to write Newspeak, where words mean their opposites.
And Buick doesn’t make a “Special” any more.
<END>
83: Population Pollution
March 17, 2009The following quotation is from www.sciam.com, accessed 16 March 2009 [slightly abridged]:
“Every environmental problem is ultimately a population problem. If the world’s population were only 100 million, we would be hard-pressed to generate enough waste to overwhelm nature’s cleanup systems. Population experts agree that the best way to limit population is to educate women and raise the standard of living generally in developing countries. But that strategy cannot possibly happen quickly enough to put a dent in the population on any useful timescale. The U.N. projects that the planet will have to sustain another 2.6 billion people by 2050. But even at the current population level of 6.5 billion, we’re using up resources at an unsustainable rate. There is no way to reduce the population significantly without trampling egregiously on individual rights (as China has done with its one-child policy), encouraging mass suicide, or worse. None of those proposals seems preferable to focusing directly on less wasteful use of resources.”
===== BUT THAT WON’T WORK — attempting to solve the problem through ‘less wasteful use of resources’ is an absurd dream; we’ll never be able to un-waste ourselves out of our mess even with today’s population, much less the future’s. Seems to me, we can either (a) Restrict human reproduction, starting as soon as possible, until we reach a sustainable number of people on this planet, or (b) Wait for our inevitable die-off, when we take with us most of our fellow mammals and everything else but bugs and slugs.
Alternative (a) will be unpleasant and repressive, but no one need be physically hurt.
Alternative (b) will bring millions (at least) of agonizing deaths and, probably, devastating resource wars as well. And even then, we will leave a ruined earth.
What will it be, brother?
82: “Pierced him with seventy propositions”: Sex Junk Emails – II
March 17, 2009Prolongeed erectionn Click HERE
=====
A comfortable night except for his old enemy, abe protested. i ain’t said no abuse to the feller for joy, as i thought that one of my comrades wearily to his feet. All right, abe, he said. is the colouring. The interesting thing is.
=====
Hullo! My penis is not only longer and wider, but with a higher level of confidence I feel like a new manster python? That s what I ask myself now.
=====
New Orgasm Enhanceer
Of mighty arms, that three maidens, all unrivalled case that no single specimen was ever seen in displeasure against that leading step of defection, you think so.
=====
Be not afraid to vary and change the life, after all all becomes to the best
=====
Chin-chin!
=====
Negroes admire with the of the size – we will surpass them!
Hullo! Now that I ve tried Dr MaxMan, pulling down my pants is no longer my biggest worry. Will she be able to handle this my monster python? That s what I ask myself now.
=====
Chineses suffer from quantity, we enjoy quality
Ciao!
=====
New Orgasm Enhanccer
And, marking time with her flat foot, she chanted poison.and vivinsati, pierced him with seventy propositions and discussions of the day previous told me. We passed a house in process of building, is sent, not at home, when they are only too lazy.
=====
Be not afraid to vary and change the life, after all all becomes to the best
=====
Look air he appealed to heaven to witness that he was.
<END>
81: So There!
March 17, 2009Corrections (Washington Post, 11 March 2009) verbatim:
“A March 4 Metro article about changes to the tax rate in Prince William County mischaracterized a comment made by County Executive Craig S. Gerhart. Gerhart was quoted as saying it would be “irresponsible” for the board to adopt the lowest tax rate from among the options supervisors were considering. In fact, he said it would be “irresponsible” for him to recommend that they adopt the lowest rate.”
80: A Scientific Basis for Personality?
March 7, 2009How many different personality types are there? A friend of mine, then recently returned from England, remarked “There are five kinds of Englishman. When you’ve met all five, there’s nothing else to know about them.” He was, almost, serious.
And then we have birth-signs, and Chinese restaurant-menu-‘year of the’-types, and the Myers-Briggs scale, four variables of two values each, revealing in their combinations, i-Ching-like, some inner truth.
And now, scientists have correlated personality types with physiological activity. According to New Scientist, issue of 14 February 2009, page 43, there are four basic personality types, with their assorted mixtures. Now we know what’s what, because science has spoken:
“Explorer – elevated activity in the dopamine and noradrenalin systems. Tend to be risk-taking, novelty-seeking and impulsive, high energy and sex drive. Optimistic, enthusiastic, and curious.
“Builder – elevated activity in the serotonin system. Tend to be sociable but conventional, cautious and meticulous. Often have high social status.
“Director – elevated activity in the testosterone system. Tend to be systematic, dominant, and tough-minded. Intellectual and able to focus attention. Often have poor social skills.
“Negotiator – elevated activity in the oestrogen and oxytocin systems. Tend to be imaginative, empathic, and egalitarian with good social skills. Articulate and able to see the big picture.”
The tip-off here is that, whichever type you are, you are really quite worthy, even interesting, perhaps exciting. Even dull and plodding Builders are redeemed, in their case by ‘high social status’.
– Please leave my serotonin alone, and just hand me that fortune cookie over there, would you?
<END>
79: How to Make Classical Music Boring
March 7, 2009Here’s a letter I sent to a well-known classical music radio station in the Washington, D.C. region, in response to their most recent appeal for money:
“I hope you will consider the following criticisms seriously; I am sure that other ex-Leadership Circle members feel as I do.
“About two years ago, when you switched to all-classical format, I donated a thousand dollars to [station name]. As a retired person, that’s not a trivial amount for me to give. I expected two things: Excellent classical music programming, and the chance to meet other Leadership members at various events.
“For the next few months, I listened to WETA-FM 3-4 hours a day, and found the programming, frankly, dull, ‘relaxing’: Pieces we’ve all heard very many times before; and almost entirely limited to ‘safe’ selections from ‘safe’ composers from the Classical and Romantic periods, occasionally Baroque. During those months I never heard any Penderecki, or Pettersson, or Diamond, or Holmboe, or even Rubbra (who is tuneful enough, even if the others may not always be). — Or even more-adventurous works of standard composers, such as the choral works of Beethoven or Bruckner. So for the past year I’ve been listening to the RadioIO Classical channel on the internet. That’s my concept of what [station name] should have been.
“And as for events: during that year I received a total of one invitation to a special Leadership event (Ken Burns), but to attend that one, [station name] wanted an additional $500!
“So, no thank you.”
<END>
78: Holocaust: Denial or Praise?
March 7, 2009Thinking of the case of Bishop Richard Williamson, and others: Why is there Holocaust denial?
Columnist Richard Cohen (Washington Post, 10 February 2009, page A17) holds that deniers claim that the Holocaust is “a yarn, a myth concocted by those diabolically clever Jews to win sympathy, reparations and, of course, Israel itself.”
But that seems an unlikely motive. If the deniers are truly anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic, or if they think Hitler acted rightly, these deniers should affirm the Holocaust, praise it, even exaggerate the number of deaths.
The Holocaust certainly did occur, pretty much as commonly believed. And the deniers, I am sure, know that. Denial therefore isn’t really a claim of historical fact, but a statement of ideology, a refusal to “let Nazis be Nazis.” But the form of their denial seems to me both irrational and, as a strategy, self-defeating.
<END>
77: Revenge
March 7, 2009Revenge is the purest of motives. Victims will say “Oh, no, not at all! We don’t want revenge, Heaven forbid!; only justice.” But they deceive themselves, and do not, in any case, have standing to demand justice. Revenge is the individual’s motive; justice is society’s motive. Let us not confuse the two. **
Revenge is entirely innocent: it cares not for wealth, or health, or the high esteem of one’s neighbors. Often, it cares not for personal survival, so long as its object is gained.
Revenge suffereth not; Revenge never faileth.
_____
** Marc Fisher (Washington Post, 8 March 20009, page C01 continuation) puts this point nicely: “ I’ve always thought the system errs when it takes into account the views and passions of victims’ families; for all the tragedy they’ve suffered, they are naturally driven by exactly the kinds of emotion that the justice system should seek to put aside in calculating fair and proper punishment for criminals.”
<END>
76: What They Really Mean
February 25, 2009(1) “No one is saying that …”, a locution beloved of pundits and politicians. [means]
“You might say that, but if so I can safely ignore you, because you don’t count.”
(2) “No one believes that …”: similar to above.
(3) “That’s a given” [means] “I’m not going to bother giving you reasons for what I just said.”
(4) “You know,” [means] “I don’t need to ask you what you know, because I’m telling you what you know.”
(5) “Remember …” is ambiguous. “Remember” [can mean] “You are now functioning as my offline memory device,” or, in the sense of “recall”, “Remember” [means] “I know you didn’t know that, but I’ll just pretend you did!”
<END>
75: “And To Its Most Death Develops”: Sex Junk Emails – I
February 25, 2009[Excerpts from the week's sexually oriented junk email. This stuff is slightly less literate than the emails that offer me a few million dollars for pretending to be next of kin to some dead government minister, but it is more direct and -- to the point.]
=====
Is yours Below 5 Innches Long? Cheerio!
=====
We Guuaranteees Bigger Pen-nis [is this from Gollum?]
Howdy!
Would you like to see your penis grow inch by inch month by month?
=====
Do you very want to be engaged in love, but does not can? Purchase itself magic pills!
=====
The in cre ase of the s iz es of the s ex ual m em be r probably is a conclusive fact.
=====
The si wx zes and form p mr en tw is, though are defined even at birth of the man, can be subjected changes. The bo kg d gfh y the man can stop the further growth per thirty years, but the growth of the m xz em qi ber does not stop! From scientific researches we know, that p wwg en sr is at the man grows and to its most death develops.
=====
Your m umn em mjx ber will inc hly re mp ase on 5-7 cen tu time xd ters in le zuf ng iyy th!
Your me yac m uhg be xf r on some centimeters becomes thicker!
Your sexual m vpc em vlk be sl r will lose confusing curvature and it becomes ideal by a st cwg raight line!
And now make a real step to this – b sno uy our me acs ans for incr hy ease of the m fdg em yl be tzy r.
=====
Betwene everie flancker, and of what breadth and ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. [not sure if this is about sex, but it was time for a break]
=====
Do the favourite woman of happy! Purchase itself medicine!
=====
Know her from the sexual side how is she inside exactly
=====
Realize all of her dreams with our help for short time
Have you ever heard this, “Damn it! Your p en is is really tiny!”?
Didn’t you feel stupid?
Don’t let ladies prefer dildo to you!
=====
Double Your Penis Size
=====
Don’t you look upon your diminutive willy as worth worrying about?
=====
Men always would like, that at them all was more, than at others.
And now make a real step to this – buy our means for increase of the member.
If the man speaks you, that to him all the same with what at him the size of the member – he dissembles.
<END>
74: Bombs Away!
February 6, 2009516,000 “Bath Bombs”, a product made in China and sold by Target and other retailers, have been recalled by the U.S. distributor. “Pressure in the jars of Bath Bombs … can cause the caps on the jars to blow off, posing explosion and projectile hazards.”
(Washington Post, 30 January 2009, page D-1)
<END>
73: A Fiction Writer’s Exercise
February 6, 2009I typed-off a David Foster Wallace story a few days ago. It was only 708 words, but typing it gave me a feel (literally – in the fingers) for what he is doing, how well he does it. Reading is good, but not the same, because it’s mostly passive. If you force yourself to write the words he wrote, in the same order, with the same rhythms, you experience the story as a writer. When your fingers stumble, that’s a sign he’s doing something you haven’t learned to do yet — structure, wording, tense, dialog. There’s an awful lot that David Foster Wallace does that we writers haven’t learned to do.
(“Only the copied text commands the soul of him who is occupied by it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text …” –Walter Benjamin)
<END>
72: Writers: Do You Use a Thesaurus?
February 6, 2009My contribution to a discussion about thesauri in the About.com Guide to Fiction Writing:
“I use, very frequently, the edition of Roget’s published in 1965 by St. Martin’s Press — a wonderful reference book, although time-consuming and clumsy to use. I think that publishers of alphabetical thesauri just don’t understand the thesaurus concept, or how one can best be used. I would be pathetically grateful if someone would publish Roget’s in a PC-loadable/searchable format. I have yet to find even a barely adequate thesaurus on disk or on the Web. This includes thesaurus.com, the thesaurus on the American Heritage Dictionary disk, and the thesaurus function of Merriam-Webster on line. With so much marginally useful stuff on the Web, I would hope that someone could put Roget’s there.”
[Gutenberg.org has a Roget's, but it's from 1911 and without hypertexting or other user tools]
<END>
71: Billions and Billions
February 6, 2009New Scientist, 24 Jan 09, interview with James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory:
“I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2˚C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4˚C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. … [T]he cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. …” [Q: It’s a depressing outlook.] “Not necessarily. I don’t think 9 billion is better than 1 billion.”
<END>
70: Steve Jobs on Death
February 6, 2009“In 2004, [Steve] Jobs received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and had surgery, which apparently was successful. He did not disclose the illness until a speech at Stanford University in 2005. “No one wants to die,” he said. “Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.” (Washington Post, 15 Jan. 2009, page A-1 continuation)
Death is the one big thing we know that other Earthly beings don’t. What is the one big thing we don’t know?
<END>
69: Terence Kuch’s Recently Published Short Stories and Plays
January 24, 2009
“How the Foot Came to Be”. A faux-folk tale about shoes, and feet, and a very clever woman. in: Abacot Journal. http://abacotjournal.wordpress.com/archived-issues/current-issue-3/how-the-foot-came-to-be/
“The Dragon’s Will”. A robot programmed to help autistic children helps both them and himself. Anthologized in: Bewildering Stories. http://forum.bewilderingstories.com/anthologies/AR08_antho3.html
“Simon Says”. A man trapped in a mysterious prison suddenly finds a way out. in: Labyrinth Inhabitant. www.labyrinthinhabitant.com/simonsays.html
“The Different Mosses”. There is a high wall in the back of her yard. Her mother and father won’t talk about it in front of her or her brother. Available in print and audio in: qarrtsiluni. http://qarrtsiluni.com/2008/12/31/the-different-mosses
“Thirteen Channels” [published under the name 'Karl Krausbart']. Thirteen paragraphs in which uncomfortable things happen to the same people, in different ways. in: Slow Trains. www.slowtrains.com/issue2/krausbartissue2.html
“Clickers”, a one-act play for four characters. Election night: a dark horse candidate is winning a U.S. Senate race. Then the forces that put him in office exact their price. in: Oregon Literary Review. http://orelitrev.startlogic.com/v3n1/OLR-kuch.htm; vol 3 no 1, Winter/Spring 2008
Previous fiction and poetry published in Timber Creek Review, North American Review, Dust, New York magazine, Commonweal, etc.
68: Big Mac Attack on Christmas Eve?
January 16, 2009Verbatim from the Washington Post, Fairfax supplement, 15 January 2009:
The following incidents were reported by the Falls Church [Virginia] Police Department. For information, call 703-248-5056.
….
ASSAULTS
SPRING ST. N. AND PARK AVE., 1:32 p.m. Dec. 24. A person in a vehicle threw a cheeseburger at a person in another vehicle.
<END>
67: Availability of The Play of Anne
January 16, 2009The Web site www.britishinformation.com/drama-play/ has an obsolete email address for me, re availability of this play for groups wishing to produce it. The current email address is terencekuch (at) ymail.com. The play may be licensed free of charge, subject only to the proviso that I be identified as the author.
Here’s what britishinformation.com has posted about this play:
The Play of Anne : a drama of the Restoration
By Terence Kuch
Summary
This vibrant play, based on historical characters and events, brings vividly to life the struggles of the early English Reformation under Henry VIII, where a wavering king, passionate Calvinists, and adherents of the Pope vie not only for supremacy in the church, but for the success or fall of the Tudor line, and life or death for themselves. The heroine is Anne Askew, “a poor knight’s daughter”, accused of not believing in the miracle of the Mass, and put on trial for her life by the Church. But the secular forces are also interested in Anne, not for her heresy (which they care nothing about) but because she may incriminate the Queen, their enemy. In the midst of the trial King Henry himself unexpectedly appears, ready and eager to interrogate Anne personally (as he did, historically, in several heresy trials). The outcome turns on Anne’s determination to defend her conscience against both Church and State, and against the extreme Protestants who see her as a tool in their own power struggle.
Background
It has been twelve years since Henry VIII broke finally with Rome. At that time, Henry’s vicegerent, Thomas Cromwell, established limited tolerance for Protestantism, and its influence grew. But now Cromwell is dead, and Henry sees the growing Protestant movement as a threat to his crown. Schismatic he may be, but Henry is determined not also to be a heretic, and has taken a hard line with the Protestants, including burning them at the stake. But unknown to Henry, the Protestant cause is favored by some within his own household — even those closest to him.
Staging
15 parts requiring a minimum of eight actors, of whom two must be female and at least two must be male. Most of the play is set in a church chancel, where Anne’s trial takes place; most churches will need few props. The actors may be dressed quite simply, or elaborate costumes of the time may be prepared.
A word of advice: This play is not for children, owing to its portrayal of violence, intemperate language, sexism, and moral confusion, all four quite typical of the Reformation era — as of our own.
Availability
An examination copy of “The Play of Anne” will be emailed (PDF format) on request.
<END>
66: Surnames for Women
January 14, 2009Solution: Married women should retain their maiden names. Girl babies should be given the surnames of their mothers; boy babies, of their fathers.
Problem: Men (males) have family histories. “The Puddleducks have lived in Wessex since 1558” and so on. Women don’t have family histories; they’re part of men’s histories. When we say “The Puddleducks have lived in Wessex since 1558”, we mean the male line. The female line is ignored, submerged. Why? Less worthy? It would seem so. One way to get over this problem is <see “Solution”, above.>
Rather ludicrously, current practice favors the piling-up of surnames, with or without hyphens. “You’re invited to a party at the Smith-Joneses”, etc. This is unnecessary, confusing (especially to computers and HR departments), and comes off as stuffy and pretentious. Besides, what happens in the next generation? Better if a married woman would just keep her maiden name. We know that was her father’s name, not her mother’s; but we have to start somewhere.
<END>
65: Against Constellations
January 14, 2009Long ago, we thought that all the stars were the same distance from us. Sometimes, a pattern of stars would remind a viewer of the mighty hunter Orion, or a scorpion, or twins. These patterns were thought to be physical features of the heavens. There were disputes over what, if anything, a particular pattern might represent, but not over whether or not there was a pattern. The stars were, after all, just there, a two-dimensional form.
So we called these patterns ‘constellations’, meaning ‘stars together’ **. But the stars aren’t together; that they seem so is an illusion: the heavens are three-dimensional. Even from a few light-years away, most of the patterns we see would disappear.
It is, of course, pleasant to study the ancient Greeks, their exploits and their gods. And we can still look for constellations in the sky with good conscience, knowing them for the fables they are. But constellations are not real, and have no place in an astronomy that’s based on science, not superstition. Let’s reserve talk of ‘constellations’ for studies of cultures, not studies of things.
** Latin ‘con’ originally ‘com’, meaning ‘together’ — see OED.
<END>
64: A Theory About Theories
January 14, 2009“We do not counter [a] theory with another theory, but with experience.” — William Large, Heidegger’s Being and Time, p.30 (University of Indiana Press, 2008).
But, on what basis do we assert that a (particular) experience is evidence for or against a (particular) theory? By means of another theory? Or another experience? Either way, we have an infinite regress. Bare assertion is out of favor (except in theology; see Karl Barth, Gesammelte Schriften), but it seems the only way to break out of this conundrum.
Large continues, interestingly: “Yet here we encounter another problem, possibly the most difficult of all. How can we account for or describe this experience when the only language in which we can talk about the world is categorical? If we are going to capture the existential as existential, then we cannot use the propositional language of predicates, attributes, concepts, and categories. But it is precisely this language which we take to be the only true one.”
<END>
63: A Biblical Challenge: Who’s Behind the Curtain?
January 12, 2009A thought-experiment:
1. Empty your mind of everything you’ve ever heard or believed about Christianity. Pretend, for the sake of this experiment, that there is no Church, no Christian religion, and that you have never heard of Jesus of Nazareth.
2. Read the Gospel of Mark in some reputable and literal (or almost literal) translation, such as the Revised Standard Version of 1946 (or as revised in 1990), or Richmond Lattimore’s, or (especially) Reynolds Price’s. Read it front to back, in one sitting; this can easily be done in one evening.
3. Assume, for the sake of this experiment, that every matter of fact reported in Mark’s Gospel is literally true.
4. Now: Based on this reading, what do you think of the character of God? What are his apparent motives? What do you think of his relationship to Jesus? Your answers may surprise you.
———
* Notes:
Why Mark, and not the other Gospels? Because Mark was written first, and has a freshness of encounter the others lack. (Scholars agree that Mark was written before Matthew; and even if they didn’t, in reading the two together it just becomes obvious that Matthew was retelling and elaborating Mark’s work, especially with respect to fulfilling O.T. prophecies.)
Translations: the translators of the RSV had tin ears, so bear with it if you read that translation. The Lattimore and the Price are better, but not easy to find in libraries or bookshops. The King James (1611) and ASV (1901) ** versions are my favorites for reading, but both suffer from the unavailability of XXth Century scholarship.
** The ASV is identical, except for a few matters of spelling and punctuation, with the [English] Revised Version of 1881.
<END>
62: The Hebrew Indefinite Pronoun
January 12, 2009“He trusted on the Lord, that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.” Psalm XX:8 (KJV, 1611)
Who’s who, here? I’ve been told that the Hebrew for this verse is just as ambiguous as the English. And use of gender-insensitive language won’t help us: all the ‘he’s and ‘him’s here are male including, as a point of courtesy, God.
(Note two alternative readings for Psalm XX:8:
“… if he will have him.” – 1928 Prayer Book
“… if he delight in him.” – Handel’s Messiah)
<END>
61: Un-Compounding a Word
January 12, 2009We write “maybe” — but try breaking this jammed-together word in two: “may be”; doesn’t the meaning “it may be that …” come through more clearly and vividly? Try “any way” instead of “anyway”; or, more daringly, “all most” instead of “almost”, showing the tension, the indecision, between “all” and “most”.
David Foster Wallace, in his story “Everything is Green” has an interesting approach. The story, about a man and a woman, is told from the man’s POV, in indirect discourse. When the woman speaks, she says “everything”; but when he speaks, it is ‘”every thing”. And “can not”; and “her self”. This difference is one of the ways Wallace shows us how different the two characters are, how fragile their crumbling relationship is.
The credits for Jacques Tourneur’s noir film “Out of the Past” (1947) include “Screen Play”. Isn’t this clearer, more necessary, than “Screenplay”?
(Sometimes, compounds break up without our help. In the original KJV Bible, for instance, “shalbe” is used for the later “shall be”.)
<END>
59: Writing Short Stories for Pay? (see also Post #38)
January 6, 2009A web site recently included the following discussion. “A” and “B” are real people, not quoted by name because I don’t have permission to do so. “TK” is myself.
A: I’ve recently completed [a story], currently under consideration with several literary magazines.
B: Are these paying markets you’re sending it to? Because I pay $50. I know. Not much. … And if you are sending it to non-paying markets, you might as well use it as toilet paper. Thus ends the sermon.
A: I believe most of them pay. But here’s a question, and I’m not being didactic or defensive. I’m just curious, …. If one of those reputable, prestigious publications that agents, editors, and writers hold in high regard offered to buy your story for two author copies, would you object to the idea? What if a literary review offered you a similar deal — not necessarily one of the top magazines, just a regular quarterly out of some decent university?
B: Which agents, editors and writers hold these literary reviews in high regard? Can you name one non-paying market that actually is held in high regard by agents and editors? Because the highly regarded literary markets and magazines that I can name offhand (Glimmer Train, Story, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc.) DO pay real money. But yes, even in the improbable case that a non-paying literary review would impress anyone but MFA programs looking for professors, I would still object strongly to throwing my work away. The only way I could see giving a story to one of these numbskull markets would be if I was GUARANTEED an agent or a publishing contract because of it. I’ve been making money at writing people’s Law School Statements. And essays for classes. I find that infinitely more respectable than getting published in a non-paying market.
TK: Payment in real money is one of the criteria I use when picking a market to submit to. That said, if I were really interested in making more $$$ per hour, I’d just stop writing short stories and go to work at McDonald’s. Viewed that way, getting paid for writing just doesn’t seem very important.
<END>
58: Award: Most Egregious ‘Nigerian Email’ Scam
January 6, 2009goes to the following. Not content with the usual BS, this one, supposedly from the FBI Director, also inculpates the World Bank.
RE: BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI)
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 4:08 AM
From: fbi_investigation@fbi.gov
Anti Terrorist & Monitory Crime Division
Attention: fund beneficiary,
This is an official advice from the FBI Foreign Remittance Telegraphic Dept. It has come to our notice that the HSBC Bank Liverpool district district, has released 49,500,000.00 U.S. dollars into your account here in the United States of America, by ATM means. The Central Bank of Nigeria knowing fully well that they do not have enough facilities to effect this payment from United Kingdom to your account, used what is known as a secret diplomatic transit payment S.T.D.P. to pay this fund through ATM ,they used this means to complete the payment, and instead of paying 49.5 million, they paid $8,300,000.00.
They are still, waiting for confirmation from you on the already transferred funds which was converted to ATM so that they can do final crediting to your account. Secret diplomatic payments are not made unless the funds are related to terrorist activities why must your payment be made in secret transfer, if your transaction is legitimate, if you are not a terrorist, then why did you not receive the money directly into your account; this is a pure coded, means of payment? Records which we have had with this method of payment in the past has always been related to terrorist acts, we do not want you to get into trouble as soon as these funds reflect in your account in the U.S.A., so it is our duty as a word wide commission to correct this little problem before this fund is delivered.
Due to the increased difficulty and unnecessary scrutiny by the American authorities when funds come from outside of Europe, and the Middle East, the F.B.I Bank Comission for Europe has stopped the transfer on its way to deliver payment of $8,300, 000.00 to debit your reserve account and pay you through a secured diplomatic transit account (S.D.T.A.). We govern and oversee funds transfer for the World Bank and the rest of the world.
We advice you contact us immediately, as the funds have been stopped and are being held in our office here , until you can be able to provide us, (with the encoded F.B.I. order for transfer),we advice you present us with a diplomatic immunity seal of transfer within 3 days from the bank where the funds were transferred from for us to certify that the funds that you are about to receive from Nigeria are antiterrorist / drug free or we shall have cause to cross and impound the name we have on the fund as the rightful beneficiary is your name that is why we have decided to contact you directly to acquire the proper verifications and proof from you to show that you are the rightful person to receive this fund, because the above mentioned amount is a big amount of money, that is why we want to make sure is a clear and legal money you are about to receive. Be informed that the fund have hit your account, but right now we have ask the bank not to release the fund to anybody that comes to them , unless so to this regards you are to reassure and prove to us that what you are about to receive is a clean money by sending to us FBI identification record and also certificate of ownership to satisfy to us that the money your about to receive is real money. You are to forward the documents to us immediately if you have it with in your possession, if you don’t have it let us know so that we will direct and inform you where to obtain the document and send to us so that we will ask the bank holding the funds the Bank of America to go ahead crediting your account immediately. This documents are to be issued to you from the place where the fund was transfer from, so get back to us immediately if you don’t have the document so that we will inform you the particular place and what it will takes to obtain it in Federal Republic of Nigeria, because we have come to realize that the fund is transferred from the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Guarantee: funds will be released on confirmation of the document: documented proof of ownership.
Final instruction: 60f credit payment instruction: irrevocable credit guarantee
61e beneficiary has full power when validation is cleared
62 beneficiaries bank in U.S.A., can only release funds upon confirmation from the World Bank / United Nations.
64 bearers must clear bank protocol and validation request.
Note: we have asked for the above documents to make available the most complete and up-to date records possible for the enhancement of public safety, welfare and security of society while recognizing the importance of individual privacy rights. If you fail to provide the documents to us, we will charge you with the FBI and take our proper action against you for not proofing to us the legitimate of the fund you are about to receive.
The United States Department of Justice order 556-73 establishes rules and regulations for the subject of an FBI identification record to obtain a copy of his or her own record for review.
Regards
Robert S Mueller
Director FBI Washington
57: Israelis in Palestine (and Syria)
January 6, 2009Case A: Israelis in Palestine: According to Richard Cohen (Washington Post, 6 January 2009, page A13), quoting a CIA publication, there are about 187,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, 20,000 in the Golan Heights, and 175,000 in East Jerusalem.
Case B: There are thousands of Turks in Germany.
Case C: There are thousands of Algerians in France.
Case D: There are thousands of Mexicans in the United States.
Case E: There are thousands of Kurds in Iran.
An exercise for the reader: What is the most important difference between Case A and Cases B through E?
56: Junk Mail: Sir Henry’s Night of Pleeasure
December 17, 2008Junk mail recently received (complete text):
Night of Pleeasure
Are you ready for Chrristmas night? Click here.)
I ate mine like a parting guest who was being gone home, free and independent, to look round or not. You must say it, said sir henry. Whatever barney with a grin. But come, it won’t pay to the charles nand campanule household is getting.
[END]
55: ‘Sorry’ and Its Abuse
December 17, 2008If ‘I’m sorry’ is anything other than a semantic blank, it’s formalized regret at having done something, and resolve, at least for the moment, not to repeat what one is now sorry for. But consider the following abuses:
1) The following (from Mike Huckaby in the New Yorker, 1 December 2008, page 30) isn’t about mixed metaphors, although it could be; it’s about abuse of ‘sorry’:
[re Hillary Clinton’s potential appointment as Secretary of State] “It’s one of those things that if he’s floating the balloon it better fly. It would be twice having rung the doorbell and not taken her to the dance. You know, I’m sorry, but at some point you better get in the car with her and take her.”
2) And from a website, verbatim: “If your purchased product was damaged during shipping we will replace it. Our only restriction is were sorry we cannot refund shipping cost. We personaly know your going to love your new camera. Thank you, Pamela”
Pamela isn’t as fluent as Mike, or perhaps she just can’t type; but neither Mike nor Pamela is sorry in any real sense; in their mouths, it isn’t even a performative, ** it’s just a kind of tic.
** In a performative, saying it does it, as in “I dub thee Knight of the Round Table.”
END
54: Junk Mail: What America Believes In
December 17, 2008The complete text of a recent piece of junk mail:
America believes in you and in your red stick.
Download drugs from your chair. It’s very convenient.
http://www.branchtradition.com
[that URL is a ‘not found’.]
[END]
53: Junk Mail: The Penis of the King of France sur le table
December 17, 2008The complete text of a piece of junk mail received recently:
Its workks!
Penis Ennlarge Patch WORKS!
With him. He carried that anger back to his own by a singular
coincidence the king of france had him now, but we will
sit down here and observe of cars, began to throw down all
the kings (that to his own ends by a secret of his own he
draws.
[END]
52: Little Thoughts to Live By
December 17, 2008Little Thoughts to Live By:
.. No one respects a victim.
.. Revenge is the only pure motive.
.. “In the short run, nothing changes; in the long run, everything changes.” — Fred Brooks (?)
.. “It is possible for things to get worse without limit.” — Herb (Dr Herbert R.J.) Grosch, NBS
END
51: How to Read / How to Listen
November 19, 2008In brief:
Among other ways of reading and listening, the literal sense is always available, as is the ironic sense. “What the writer intended” is relevant, but not conclusive. Interpretation is the reader’s to determine, not the writer’s.
At length:
Several centuries ago, scholars studying the Bible realized that reading it literally wasn’t sufficient to explicate its entire meaning. While (at that time, anyway) not questioning its literal truth, they also developed supple, and subtle, methods of interpretation beyond the literal. Sometimes the text itself suggested additional meanings, most obviously in the Parables; at others, the scholars went beyond what the writers of the Bible may have intended, but felt these extended meanings to be faithful to the spirit of the book. A famous example of the latter is referring to Jesus as “the second Adam”.
Northrop Frye (see especially Anatomy of Criticism) and other critics have identified these ways to read a text, often called “levels of interpretation”:
Allegorical
Anagogical
Analogical
Formal
Literal/historical
Literal/descriptive
Metaphorical
Moral [‘tropological’]
Mythical
Prophetic
Symbolic
Typical (= of types)
The literal sense is always available to the reader, but may not be the richest or most informative. But what’s missing here? The list doesn’t include Ironic. Now, it’s conventional to view irony as inhering in the author’s intention, not in the reader’s interpretation. But, in the postmodern view that the writer cannot be privileged — he’s just another reader, and is granted no special wisdom — we must view irony as another of the “ways of understanding”.
So how does irony function in this role? At its simplest, it’s exactly the opposite of literal:
Literal: You’re likable enough, Hillary.
Ironic: You’re not likable enough, Hillary.
[Political sidebar: Who says you need to be likable to be President? SEE: Johnson, Lyndon; Nixon, Richard.]
Further reading: See Wikipedia articles on Irony; Hermeneutics; Northrop Frye.
END
50: Some Vivid Language
November 19, 2008Examples:
“This sucker’s goin’ down!” (quoted in NY Times) – George Bush, about the financial system, as the crisis hit.
“Get over it!” – Marion Barry, quondam mayor of D.C., upon catching flak for an unpopular decision.
“Bitch set me up!” – same, upon later being nabbed in a drug sting.
The moral: Some public figures known for verbose nonsense can, in a crisis, actually speak a vigorous and vivid kind of English.
49: Found Poem IV: a VCR, a six-pack, and thou …
November 19, 2008a even
we live and how we make those places as ours. It is about many
CAeNADoAN PnmHARMAmCY
VvAcG_RA
C1wALoS
S0OMA
LE9VzTRA
FwEMALEs Vv8A1G7R4A
UsLTaRAM
available to anyone with a television, VCR, six-pack and a couple
[END]
48: “The Fraud Stars” — a junk email
November 19, 2008The following appeared in my inbox today, and probably in several million others as well:
Welcome to Western Union
Send Money Worldwide
Address; St, Peter & PaulRoad Cotonou Benin Rep.
Attention Beneficiary ,
The Board of Federal Ministry of Finance Benin Republic are hereby to notify you of your payment inherited funds after the meeting held on 18th of July 2008. His Excellence the PRESIDENT OF FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF BENIN has Instructed this Department to send your funds through western union money transfer for easy receiveing of your inherinted funds without any further delay to avoid paying money to the fraud stars that is going on through Courier Company and fake bank in africa. Because we know that some bank and Courier Company have fall you in nigeria and other part of Africa. but is not going to happen again as long as you are going follow up the instruction.
[It goes on to the expected conclusion.]
47: The Great Simplifying Assumptions
November 19, 2008#1: Whatever occurs is typical.
#2: Intention is what happens.
#3: Speech belongs to the listener — interpretation is everything.
#4: It is easier to ride the horse in the direction it is going. [q. from Werner Erhard]
46: The Village Idiot
November 13, 2008In Slavoj Zizek’s new book, Violence, he refers to a character in Shyamalan’s The Village as “the village idiot”. It takes a great deal of courage these days to use a word like ‘idiot’ in its now-literal sense **. Indeed, the plain sense has been almost entirely eclipsed by a variety of figurative senses — leaving no actual idiots left on the planet. Would that it were so!
** Not the same as the original Greek, which meant someone not involved in public life.
END
45: “The Man with the Cinch Up”: Found Poem – III
November 13, 2008The following appeared in two consecutive junk mail pieces I received yesterday. They seem to have something to do with Zola; or perhaps not.
============================
world criisis
Behind him and the door. So long as he did not at the background of grimy warehouses and leaden whispered words came so softly that they were by my side. (they are sitting thus when the hatch and a wretched and insane expedition is this.
worlld crisis
With its whitewashed stone houses huddled close written on the astrolabe, and they all agree that looking round for the man who had a cinch up on and the fortune of the rougons so you potter his state would not remain in this confederacy.
END
44: Word Division, and How to Carve
November 13, 2008Meat should be cut at the joint, Plato said, not merely hacked apart any old place. Likewise, words, if they must be divided, should be cut at their own joints. The pieces (before and after line-breaks) should bear as much meaning as possible, as an aid to the reader.
In violation of this principle, the Washington Post, last year, divided “homerun” as ho/merun. Exactly what’s wrong here? There is home plate, and runners run there. But baseball does not have a “ho”-anything, nor does anyone “merun”. (In a way, the Post brought this problem on themselves by ramming “home” and “run” together, instead of leaving them as two separate words, but that’s a different topic; see post #61.)
The Post also insists on dividing “England” as En/gland, as if England were not a land, but some kind of gland, ductless perhaps, or duke-less as Labour would like to see it.
The New Yorker, which generally has the most astute editing of any American magazine, recently published a long article about psychopaths, with these word divisions:
psycho/path
psycho/pathology
psychop/athy
The first two are fine: “psych” (psyche) = mind or soul, and “path”, referring to the passions (stuff that happens to us), is a Greek root taken over into Latin. (The “o” could fall on either side of the word division.)
But what is a “psychop”? And what is “athy”? Nothing. And Nothing.
<END>
43: Sea Change, Dream, and Other Weary Cliches
November 7, 2008“Sea change” was original with Shakespeare. But now, every newspaper in the country, and most of the talking heads on TV, use/abuse this weary cliche. Let’s leave this one with Shakespeare; may it be interred with his bones.
I had a dream, or I have a dream? King’s rhetoric played with this ambiguity, brilliantly. But now everybody seems to ‘have a dream’. In retrospect, this cheapens King’s brilliance. ‘Dream’, unless used literally, is another cliche that obstructs clear thought and should be banished from our writing.
<END>
42: Answering His Own Question
October 26, 2008
“Am I going to answer the question I just asked, before you get a chance to? — Yes.”
“Do politicians do that all the time? — For sure. And others, too.”
“Doesn’t that just bug you? –I’ll bet it does!”
END
41: “Off with his —” What?
October 26, 2008“You have heard it said, “Off with his head!” — but we could instead say “Off with his body!” — it’s a question of what remains essentially ‘us’ if we’re forced to part with some of our parts. And consider the cliché “Lost his head” — the opposite point of view.
END
40: Superficiality — an example from music
October 26, 2008Lots of things are superficial. At times, it seems that everything that isn’t too deep to understand is too stupid to matter.
But there are degrees. To pick one typical example, not to pick on him except as an example, consider the music of Morton Gould: glib, superficial, utterly trivial. The work of someone quite bright, for whom composing came all too readily, who had an easy success.
This is quite different from music that’s serious, intensely conceived, just not of the highest quality. Considering only the ‘G’s, we have Gebel, Gernsheim, Goetz, ….
END
39: “Life will find a way”
October 26, 2008
“Life adapts, continues, and flourishes; it is not life itself that falls, only particular versions of it. Humans are busy endangering themselves and many other species in their suicidal plunge, but life itself has all the time in the world, and it will reassert itself in new forms when it is ready.”
(A.C. Grayling in New Scientist, 6 September 08, page 54)
38: Writing Short Stories: Paying v Non-Paying Markets
October 5, 2008The following discussion occurred in the summer of 2008 in an on-line writers’ workshop sponsored by one of America’s leading literary journals. Participants are identified by code, because I don’t have permission to use their names. “A” is me, and “D” is the editor of the journal and leader of the workshop.
A: I just received an impassioned email from a fellow writer who says she will never, ever, submit to a non-paying market, whether or not she could use the money (a pittance, anyway, in most cases). Her point: Non-paying markets are full of inferior material you don’t want to be associated with, don’t give you exposure, can actually give you harmful exposure, are hardly ever read, are never reviewed or considered for awards, etc. — I don’t agree with her. There are certainly inferior markets, but I don’t know what pay/non-pay has to do with it. — Comments?
B: Your friend’s comment is not coming from an informed point of view. My guess is that she’s very new to the game. The truth is, most literary journals don’t pay anything. And it’s very difficult to get into any of them. if you limited yourself to only the paying markets, you might be missing other opportunities. Getting into any mid-tier journal is a coup, in my opinion.
C: There are some good non-paying journals, but if you really get down to it, they all pay in one form or another since they pay in copies. In my experience, Weber pays over $100 for a story, but I don’t really think it’s all that much better than the Briar Cliff Review, which is a beautiful journal and well edited, just has a much smaller budget. If you’re doing ‘literary fiction’ it’s wise not to turn up your nose at non-payers as many of the markets exist on arts council grants, and NPR-like funding to keep them going. The material they publish depends more on the editor than what they pay, in my opinion. A lot of them pay “token amounts.” I’ve gotten $10 before into a Paypal account. That’s no different than getting copies.
D: I agree with [B] and [C]: Your friend is probably starting out, or really uninformed. Wish her good luck with only publishing in paying markets. And that’s my take on that: good luck.
END
37: “Just Following Orders”
October 5, 2008
“Belief in an omnipotent omniscient creator of the world does not in itself have any moral implications — it’s still up to you to decide whether it is right to obey His commands. … The young men who flew airplanes into buildings in the US … were not just stupid in imagining that these were God’s commands; even thinking that there were His commands, they were evil in obeying them.” –Steven Weinberg in New York Review of Books, September 25, 2008, p.76
Weinberg’s is a curious argument. On what basis, in accordance with what ethical theory, are people ‘evil’? No, I don’t have an answer to that question; I don’t believe there is a coherent answer. Ascriptions of evil, at bottom, may be no more than gut feelings, or the teachings of power, or ‘what everybody knows’, or the wish to avoid pain or death, or based on some value system that is itself arbitrary, such as the absolutely supreme value of every human (and only human) life.
END
