Salon Des Geeks

Kiri alerted me to the extremely geeky-fun and addictive site Save the Words. As Kiri said, “someone went to a lot of trouble to set this up.” Check out and enjoy!

I was reading this blog entry from Dick Cavett about Palin’s abuse of language:

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/the-wild-wordsmith-of-wasilla/?em

It mostly made me feel ill, but I really liked the postscript, which introduced me to the word `Lagniappe’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagniappe

Fun!

I thought you grammar mavens might like an exercise:

http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/red-pencils-ready/

Probably too easy for y’all, but I like the notion of using specific examples from the Times’ own pages.

So, I bought a bunch of romance books online today.
I know what you’re probably thinking, and let me assure you, they are NOT particularly trashy — instead, they’re erudite and well researched.
(more…)

“An Assault on Hawaii. On Grammar Too.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/books/24masl.html

The New York Times Director of Copy Desks answers questions about copy editing.

I especially like 1990’s ; ’90s ; 1990s divide. In the font my browser uses this is confusing, because the zero looks very much like a lower case oh. I must say that I tend to use DVD’s not DVDs. I think that this is usually because for the acronyms I deal with on a daily basis, appending an ess would be significant. For example, ACE’s and ACEs’s need to be differentiated. Perhaps I should choose more carefully.

So in a NYT’s article discussing Southern Methodist Universities selection as a finalist for the Bush Presidential Library I came across the following:

What’s more, Southern Methodist [University] stands to lose prestige and donor support if it were to fail in its bid for the [G.W. Bush Presidential] library at this stage… Both the interim provost and the president of the Faculty Senate cautioned “outsiders” not to mistake vigorous academic debate for widespread opposition.

It struck me as a reflection of the Bush Doctrine. Asking observers not to confuse debate with widespread opposition. Or the more pernicious meta-argument: do not debate lest it be interpreted as widespread opposition. Regardless, I have a new euphemism.

This quote from today’s NYT’s hinges around the word however neatly bridging the reasonable statement, and reasonable quotation from the Constitution. The by line was “By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN O’NEIL.”

General Hayden defended the program’s constitutionality. He said the lower, “reasonable belief” standard conformed to the wording of the Fourth Amendment, asserting that it does not mention probable cause, but instead forbids “unreasonable” searches and seizures.

“The constitutional standard is reasonable,” he said. “I am convinced that we are lawful, because what it is we’re doing is reasonable,” he said.

The Fourth Amendment, however, reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

An interesting word from the pages of The Economist:

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/autarky

The context was:

Mr [Hugo] Chavez[, President of Venezuela,] champions “endogenous development” for his country. Albeit inadvertantly, that is starting to look like autarky.