Found on the interweb: Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

This is nice.

A potpourri of stories: Guantanamo, racial injustice and -- the hyphen?

Just some of the things I have been reading these days.

The War on Terra: Omar Khadr turns 21 still in Guantanamo and Andrew Sullivan muses on a president who has lost the plot.

Technology: The UK slights Open Source, and they may regret it.

Language pedantry: The OED reveals the hyphen is an endangered character.

Racial fault lines in the US: The Jena Six and the Presidential candidate. (And in case you don't know who the Jena Six are, here is a backgrounder.)

Tragedy of the commons

Wikipedia: The tragedy of the commons is a class of social trap that involves a conflict over resources between individual interests and the common good. The term derives originally from a parable published by William Forster Lloyd in his 1833 book on population. It was then popularized and extended by Garrett Hardin in his 1968 Science essay "The Tragedy of the Commons". However, the theory itself is as old as Aristotle who said: "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it".

I have been accused by DH, who is very literate, fairly widely-read, and by no means ill-educated (although he is a university dropout, and he tends to zone out whenever a conversation takes a philosophical turn) of elitist language in using the phrase "tragedy of the commons" in my WWW article below. I would appreciate feedback on this, as I thought it was a fairly well-known concept but maybe I really do live in my own little ivory tower as my dear Mum always said. I have edited the article to place the possibly offending phrase in quotes.

Deborama's WWW Number 8 - Tilefish

Tilefish is a UK-based highly specialised shopping site - for Scrabble enthusiasts. Countdown fans also patronise (great Countdown word, that) the site.

I hope it IS just me; on the 2007 opening of Congress

I had to turn off Nancy Pelosi and her glibly triumphal speech. I'm sorry, I am not a good Democrat, it is true. (I'm not really a Democrat at all; it's just that they're less evil than the other guys.) I mean, first of all, the Dems as a rule are so self-congratulatory it's nauseating. All they did was win one measly midterm, and that barely by a gnat's crotchet, and to listen to them you would think they had stood on an asteroid and hove the straying earth back into orbit. But the really sad thing to me is the utterly fallen state of oratory skills and public demeanor.
This is how I heard the honourable Ms. Pelosi's speech, once I blanked out the content for the above reasons and others: A laboriously, prissily delivered sound bite, then rapturous applause. A brief interval of silence, basking in the glow. A second laboriously, prissily delivered sound bite, more rapturous applause. A third sound bite, slightly more shrill, and the applause, having barely died down, swells again. A moment to all catch our breaths and savour our righteousness. A very laboriously delivered sound bite that thinks it's a rhetorical master-stroke, followed by delirious applause and a group orgasm.
I can remember a time when the whole speech was delivered in its entirety before anyone would consider whether it was good enough to merit a little polite applause or a respectful standing ovation. The sort of newspeak cliche-fests we now have would not have been considered worthy. From what little of the actual words that leaked through into my aggrieved brain, I think the new Majority Leader's text was mainly feminism and its long-overdue rewards. Now if she actually does anything to advance the cause of women in her new position, I may retract my disgust a little, but I am not holding my breath. Because there was also some very realpolitikal waffle about Iraq in there too.

Deborama's WWW Number 6 - Beg the Question? Get it right!

Just in time for Wednesday, I was listening to a great programme about words on the radio (Radio 4's Word of Mouth) and amongst some other wonderful stuff about words that have appeared over the horizon this year just past (2006 that is) there was a snippet about the website for a society that I have always dreamed might exist yet never knew it did all along. The group to which I refer is begthequestion.info and their purpose in existence is to get people to stop using the term "begs the question" in a completely incorrect manner. In case you are one of the majority of - oh - at a guess, 99.76% of English-speakers who do this, I will let the experts set you straight, because frankly I am sick of trying:

To beg the question does not mean "to raise the question." (e.g. "It begs
the question, why is he so dumb?") This is a common error of usage made by those
who mistake the word "question" in the phrase to refer to a literal question.
Sadly, the error has grown more and more common with time, such that
even journalists, advertisers, and major mass media entities have fallen prey to
"BTQ Abuse."
While descriptivists and other such laissez-faire linguists are
content to allow the misconception to fall into the vernacular, it cannot be
denied that logic and philosophy stand to lose an important conceptual label
should the meaning of BTQ become diluted to the point that we must constantly
distinguish between the traditional usage and the erroneous "modern" usage. This
is why we fight.

OK, you ask, in your fog of confusion, what does it mean then? (Because chances are very, very, very high that you have never in your life heard it used correctly, unless you have taken a university-level course in logic or have very well-educated and pedantic parents, or both.) I am not in total agreement with the definition the website (yes, even the passionate are not quite precise enough for me) but the one provided by Wikipedia is quite up to scratch:

Begging the question in logic, also known as circular reasoning and by the Latin name petitio principii, is an informal fallacy found in many attempts at logical arguments. An argument which begs the question is one in which a premise presupposes the conclusion in some way. Such an argument is valid in the sense in which logicians use that term, yet provides no reason at all to believe its conclusion.

I will give my favourite example. In an episode of The Good Life, Margo Leadbetter is asked by Barbara Good why she hates pigs so much. She looks at Barbara in dumfounded astonishment and says "Because they are pigs!"

Crosswords

'Wordplay' is a hot new documentary about what most would consider a terribly uncool subject: crosswords. The work focuses on a man whose name is not so well-known to UK crossword fans, who feel utterly superior to American cruciverbailists but maybe should not; Will Shortz, the long-time crossword editor of the New York Times, deserves respect on both sides of the Atlantic.
Much of the superiority complex of the British solvers and setters is due to the fact that the quintissential British crossword is the cryptic, with "concise", "quick" or "easy" crosswords appearing in the more lowbrow publications and cheap puzzle magazines. In America, on the other hand, a very challenging "straight definition" style, with more closely packed crosses and very arcane words, is the standard fare of intellectuals, while cryptics can be found but are considered an eccentric variation. (Except for readers of the Nation magazine, which has featured a very excellent American-style cryptic since the 1800's.)

Funny little facts

Three of the top female British authors' names form the pattern AX, BY and XY : Zadie Smith, Monica Ali and Ali Smith.

A word of the day that came up this week forms a Highly Improbable Anagram with another little-known word that I just happened to know. The two words are : neoplasm and pleonasm.

Shelby Foote, Walker Percy and William Faulkner all hailed at various times from the same little Mississippi town - Greeneville.

More British humour at our expense

This from the BBC Four Tribe on tribe.net.
December 08, 2004 - 06:19 AM

The Americans Ball. Later Arrivals:
We welcome
Cybil Rights & her Irish cousin, Bill O'Rights
Closely followed by
Mr & Mrs Ho, & their daughter, Ida

December 08, 2004 - 06:55 AM

Re: The Americans Ball. Later Arrivals:
Looking replendant we have
Mr & Mrs Vanation & their daughter, Bertha

December 08, 2004 - 07:42 AM

Re: The Americans Ball. Later Arrivals:
Ah! Who's this? Is it not Mr and Mrs Bennet-I-Can't-Believe Theyve-Elected-that-Monkey-Again? Yes it is! And with them is their son, Gordon Bennet-I-Can't-Believe Theyve-Elected-that-Monkey-Again!

Colour-conscious but White-blind

Thanks, yet again. to tribe.net, i have discovered LiP Magazine and this excellent article about the racialisation of crime reporting and the hypocritical colour-blindness to crimes committed by an overwhelming majority of white perpetrators. This relates to something I have noticed since I was a little girl in the American South in the 1960s, although it sure didn't stop there: in everyday discourse, not just news reporting, white people are "people", white Americans have opinions that are called "American opinions" about black people and their problems, white girls are just girls but black girls are blacks who happen to be young and female. It goes on and on. Read this, it's really good, and whatever your colour it may open your eyes.

Spam redux

Today was another great day in my spam mailbox. I got "Microshit Money 2004 clearance" and "Lexy ladies waiting for you mushy". No kidding.

Another great quote from Fafblog

Fafblog! the whole worlds only source for Fafblog.: "Eleven States voted to Define Marriage tonight, says Lester Holt, and they have Defined it as a slow-moving, thick-skulled poison-spitting reptile that hates queers. America has spoken."

Don't you just love Spam?

No, not the strange pink meat-like substance. those anonymous, plaintive, almost poetically subject-lined missives that appear in your inbox, first in twos and threes, then in dozens, scores, maybe even hundreds. Today I got a particularly charming collection of subject-lines:
1Million People Anxiously Sending you $40 Each!
Permit bank rival for your credit
Save much on latest soft names
A Thinking of You Card for you (from Plumping G. Gustav)

Nous sommes desoles . .

que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas vote pour lui. Yahoo! News has a story about a laundry label with political panache. Very amusing; might come in handy for a trip to Quebec.

The Great American Man-Dog Marriage Panic

Put your coffee cup on the other side of the room and read this bit in The Village Voice by Richard Goldstein. Link found on Earl Bockenfeld's Radio Weblog.

Politics and the English Language

I just happened upon this really brilliant essay by Caroline Arnold, printed in the Kent-Ravenna Record Courier, about rat-kings, the media, war, toast buttered on the wrong side and talking to each other. This is as good as, and would indeed make a companion piece to, Orwell's Politics and the English Language. Or, alongside 1984's famous "Slavery is Freedom, War is Peace . . ." litany, put this from Arnold's essay: "popularity is goodness, conformity is loyalty, and money is value. . ."

British place names

An amusing quiz about British place names.

Some good quotes

From the Guardian Informer (a free e-mail newsletter) :
>>> QUOTATIONS OF THE DAY

"The kid sister of all battles" - the Chicago Sun Tribune on the
battle for Baghdad.

"I'm not sure, and that's why we need to talk to them about it." - The
foreign secretary, Jack Straw, is asked whether Syria has weapons of
mass destruction.

"I came here thinking I wouldn't need any Arabic at all - just 'Put
your hands up' and 'Put your weapons down.' They've been teaching me
how to talk to the thieves. Things like, 'You are lying, I'm not
stupid,' and 'If you steal, we will kill you.'" Marine Sgt Steven
Christopher in Baghdad on the local residents helping him to identify
and accost looters.

Ethnologue

Found another cool site. This shows languages of the world by country and various other statistics. It is called Ethnologue.