Boxes of the Mind

I just finished watching (h/t Jeff Li) the documentary film "Stanley Kubrick's Boxes", made by Jon Ronson for Channel 4 [UK] and released in 2008. I was captivated by it.

Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.

–Stanley Kubrick, DGA D.W. Griffith Award acceptance speech, 1998, quoted in "Stanley Kubrick's Boxes".

Here's how IMDb introduces the film:

A few years after his death, the widow of Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) asks Jon Ronson to look through the contents of about 1,000 boxes of meticulously sorted materials Kubrick left. Ronson finds that most contain materials reflecting work Kubrick did after the release of "Barry Lindon " in 1975, when Kubrick's film output slowed down. Ronson finds audition tapes for "Full Metal Jacket," photographs to find the right hat for "Clockwork Orange" or the right doorway for "Eyes Wide Shut" — thousands of details that went into Kubrick's meticulous approach. Ransom believes that the boxes show "the rhythm of genius." Interviews with family, staff, and friends are included. Written by

That's right as far as it goes, but these boxes — not so much what they contain but because there are boxes filled with these details — have quite a story to tell about Kubrick and, I think, offer a lot of insight into why it took ever longer between his films and why he stopped making films largely because his obsessive attention to details overwhelmed his ability to find material to make into a film that would satisfy him.

That's my interpretation (at the moment) of course. You might like to watch some of it yourself and decide. On YouTube it's in 5 parts; here's part 1.

Perry v Schwarzenegger: Closing Arguments Arrive

Closing arguments in Perry v Schwarzenegger, the much-watched trial in the District Courtroom of Judge Vaughn Walker, are due to be heard tomorrow, Wednesday, 16 June 2010.

It has many of us anxious with anticipation; we know how empty the arguments of the anti-marriage-equality groups are; we know how much trouble they had finding any credible witnesses; we know that the few witnesses they did find ended up supporting the case for marriage equality by the end of cross examination. We know many things. We even can hope for a positive, hard-hitting argument from Judge Walker, although there's no promise.

And so there's much business today trying to read between the lines of the questions Judge Walker issued to defendants and plaintiffs that they should address in closing arguments. If you want a quick review and summary of the background and what we know, here's a good link:

To lay people like me, the federal Prop 8 case seems to boil down to the constitutional rights of gays as a group of historically disadvantaged people versus the political will of “the people” based on their religious beliefs.

[Karen Ocamb, "Brief Guide to the Federal Prop 8 Trial Closing Arguments", LGBT POV, 15 June 2010.]

Gullibility's Price

From Bob Park's What's New for 11 June 2010:

1. FAKE BOMB DETECTOR: THE HIGH COST OF IGNORANCE.
According to a story in The Independent (UK) on Tuesday, the investigation into the sale of fake bomb detectors has been expanded to a number of firms in the UK. It seemed comical fourteen years ago when we learned that golfers were buying fraudulent golf-ball finders (WN 12 Jan 96). The Quadro Tracker was nothing but an "antenna" mounted on a pistol-grip with a swivel that was free to rotate 360°. An almost imperceptible deviation of the swivel from horizontal would cause the antenna to rotate under the force of gravity to its lowest point. To a credulous observer it might seem to be controlled by some mysterious external force. Quadro soon began marketing them to law enforcement agencies and the Department of Defense for $995 each to search for drugs and weapons. It failed a simple scientific test. Sandia National Labs took one apart and found it contained no internal parts. The FBI shut Quadro down and arrested its officers (WN 26 Jan 96). However, the device soon reappeared in the UK as the ADE 651, sold by ATSC for prices as high as $48,000. At least 1,500 were sold to the government of Iraq as bomb detectors at a cost of millions of dollars, as WN reported in January (WN 29 Jan 2010). The fake bomb detectors have reportedly contributed to hundreds of bomb deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, including British and American troops.

2. MAGICAL THINKING: DOWSING IS NOT ILLEGAL IN THE US OR THE UK.
In spite of the heinous nature of the ATSC crime, it may be difficult to
obtain a conviction. The defense of those charged with selling fake bomb detectors will be that they believe the devices work. Their defense will point to the hundreds or thousands of people who openly market their services to dowse for water or other substances. Sometimes called water-witching, dowsing is said to rely on supernatural influence over the muscles of the person holding a willow fork or an ADE 651. Dowsing doesn't always work, but what does? The prosecution will find itself hip deep in arguments over how an ADE 651 differs from prayer. Magical thinking will be with us until children are taught that observable effects result only from physical causes. It must be taught at the time they are learning their first language.

H.R.Clinton on Tax Distribution

When I read this I was reminded of a report we watched recently–from a few decades ago–that reported that Swedes were the "happiest" people in the world, because of / despite their much higher tax rate and their solid commitment to a social-welfare state.

“The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues’’ that confront the United States and other nations, “whether it is individual, corporate, whatever the taxation forms are.”

Then she offered up an example. “Brazil has the highest tax-to-G.D.P. rate in the Western hemisphere. And guess what? It’s growing like crazy. The rich are getting richer, but they are pulling people out of poverty. There is a certain formula there that used to work for us until we abandoned it — to our regret, in my opinion. My view is that you have to get many countries to increase their public revenues.”

[Hillary Rodham Clinton, in remarks at the Brookings Institution on 26 May 2010; quoted in David E. Sanger, "Clinton Muses About Taxing the Rich", New York Times, 27 May 2010.]

p.s. Saying that this situation obtains during this "unusual" period of high unemployment may be politically expedient if one wished to restructure the current tax-rate scheme, but I expect it's true even in "normal" times.

Proclaiming LGBT Pride Month

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release         May 28, 2010
Presidential Proclamation–Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month

As Americans, it is our birthright that all people are created equal and deserve the same rights, privileges, and opportunities. Since our earliest days of independence, our Nation has striven to fulfill that promise. An important chapter in our great, unfinished story is the movement for fairness and equality on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This month, as we recognize the immeasurable contributions of LGBT Americans, we renew our commitment to the struggle for equal rights for LGBT Americans and to ending prejudice and injustice wherever it exists.

LGBT Americans have enriched and strengthened the fabric of our national life. From business leaders and professors to athletes and first responders, LGBT individuals have achieved success and prominence in every discipline. They are our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, and our friends and neighbors. Across my Administration, openly LGBT employees are serving at every level. Thanks to those who came before us the brave men and women who marched, stood up to injustice, and brought change through acts of compassion or defiance we have made enormous progress and continue to strive for a more perfect union.

My Administration has advanced our journey by signing into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which strengthens Federal protections against crimes based on gender identity or sexual orientation. We renewed the Ryan White CARE Act, which provides life saving medical services and support to Americans living with HIV/AIDS, and finally eliminated the HIV entry ban. I also signed a Presidential Memorandum directing hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds to give LGBT patients the compassion and security they deserve in their time of need, including the ability to choose someone other than an immediate family member to visit them and make medical decisions.

In other areas, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a series of proposals to ensure core housing programs are open to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. HUD also announced the first ever national study of discrimination against members of the LGBT community in the rental and sale of housing. Additionally, the Department of Health and Human Services has created a National Resource Center for LGBT Elders.

Much work remains to fulfill our Nation's promise of equal justice under law for LGBT Americans. That is why we must give committed gay couples the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple, and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. We must protect the rights of LGBT families by securing their adoption rights, ending employment discrimination against LGBT Americans, and ensuring Federal employees receive equal benefits. We must create safer schools so all our children may learn in a supportive environment. I am also committed to ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" so patriotic LGBT Americans can serve openly in our military, and I am working with the Congress and our military leadership to accomplish that goal.

As we honor the LGBT Americans who have given so much to our Nation, let us remember that if one of us is unable to realize full equality, we all fall short of our founding principles. Our Nation draws its strength from our diversity, with each of us contributing to the greater whole. By affirming these rights and values, each American benefits from the further advancement of liberty and justice for all.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2010 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month by fighting prejudice and discrimination in their own lives and everywhere it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-eighth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA

[source]

Scheffler: An Embarrassment to Iowa

What is it that makes some Republicans so angry all the time? It must be taxing to spend all of one's time and effort opposing change that one knows is going to happen anyway. Is it really that gratifying just to slow things down and gum up the works?

Iowa’s Republican National Committeeman sent an e-mail this week to a gay member of his party who is considering a run for president and told him he would work overtime to ensure that his campaign aspirations are aborted.

“You and the radical homosexual community want to harass supporters of REAL marriage,” Steve Scheffler wrote in an e-mail to Fred Karger, a longtime civil rights advocate in California who is gay and has announced he is running for president [as a Republican]. “. . . I will work overtime to help ensure that your political aspirations are aborted right here in Iowa.”

Karger, the founder of Californians Against Hate, said he is shocked that one of Iowa’s highest-ranking members of his party would express such disdain.

[Jason Clayworth, "Iowa GOP committeeman to gay candidate: I’ll sink you", DesMoinesRegister.com, 27 May 2010.]

Chandler on Speed Limits

A few nights ago Isaac and I had a treat and watched the film "Double Indemnity" again–our second time, although Isaac claims not to remember the first. I remembered liking it but I'd forgotten just how good I thought it was. You'll recall that this is Billy Wilder's trend-setting film noir, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson. (More on the movie.) Here they are at a tense moment late in the film.

Stanwyck in her cheap blond wig was fabulous, of course, as the cheap gold digger who manipulated Fred MacMurray into killing her husband. MacMurray was surprising in this role but he did it remarkably. However, I think it was Robinson–not playing a gangster!–who was the most brilliant in his role.

But what I really enjoyed was the dialog. There are a few characteristics that cause me to look favorably on a movie but the biggest one might be the dialog. I like talky movies, especially when the talk is this good.

The screenplay credit goes to Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, and you know most of the dialog came from the mind of Chandler. The first time I watched the film I'm sure it was because I was in my Chandler phase and had just learned that he had written the screenplay. Chandler's books were amazing to me–such style, such wit, such dialog! Ah, to be able to write like that.

And so, what prompted this little note was listening again to this famous scene between Stanwyck and MacMurray early on, soon after they've met. Chandler scintillates and Stanwyck and MacMurray rise admirably to the occasion:

Phyllis: There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Walter: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I'd say around ninety.
Walter: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Walter: Suppose it doesn't take.
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Walter: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder.
Walter: That tears it.

Oh heck, let's watch that bit of scene while we're here:

[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]

Sushi Portraits

A few days ago I read an article by Mark Bitman in the New York Times ("For Sushi at Home, Skip the Fish", 4 May 2010). It was interesting enough, had good ideas, and talked about making rice for sushi. All good.

But all I wanted to do here was to show two of the photographs that accompanied the article, because I thought they were quite lovely, and the sushi looked good, too.

This first one is a nice plate of various bits of vegetable sushi (Credit: Rebecca McAlpin for The New York Times; source)

This second one is an assemble-your-own-sushi kit with lots of lovely and tasty looking tops available (Credit: Rebecca McAlpin for The New York Times; source).

Amis on Morality

Secularism contains no warrant for action. One can afford to be crude about this. When Islamists crash passenger planes into buildings, or hack off the head of hostages, they shout, "God is great!" When secularists do that kind of thing, what do they shout?

[Martin Amis, from The Second Plane; quoted by Richard Dawkins, "I Am Offended", YouTube.com, 8 October 2008; via Mike Tidmus.]

Dawkins' point was this: when followers of a religion–any religion–commit atrocities in the name of their god, they and their supporters feel righteous and good, and that is morally wrong. The chain of implications that refute, say, the frequently touted claim (touted by the aforementioned self-righteous fundamentalist religious) that religion is the primary source of human morality is obvious.

Dawkins, in his presentation, added that one reviewer of Amis' book had answered this rhetorical question this way: "They shout 'Heil Hitler!' ", which is quite laughable for at least two reasons. First, of course, is that Hitler described himself as a christian doing his god's work, and most of his followers would have said the same. Second, it doesn't reflect well on the reviewer that he seems to have confused Nazi Germany with the officially atheist Socialist Soviet Union.

Ah well, the self-righteous have more important things to get correct, apparently, than historical facts.

Such a Gay Day

• This is the International Day Against Homophobia; I like the fact that it's referred to as "IDAHO", a name not usually associated with diversity. Speaking of IDAHO, I just learned in my reading today about the origins of the Russet-Burbank variety of potato.
• This is also the day when marriage equality arrived in Massachusetts, six years ago. It leaves me wondering just how long it takes for the sky to fall and for civilization to collapse. Perhaps it depends on how big the state is.
• Odd. The Hawaii Legislature passed a bill establishing civil marriage, equally accessible to all, gay and straight alike. That's not so odd. The governor of Hawaii says that when she reads it, it sounds like the equivalent of "marriage" but without the word "marriage". What's odd is the number of opponents of marriage equality who fretfully plead "Please, please, give the gays anything but don't call it 'marriage'!"
• Poor Elena Kagan: she played softball and her haircut is butch. I think all those straight Republican men keep demanding to know her L-status because they're turned on by the idea of hot justice-on-justice action.
• George Rekers: the ultra-closeted homophobe gift who keeps on giving. How many more conservative policies and idées fixes can he thoroughly discredit before he finally shuts up? He's been even more useful as a gay-equality spokesperson than Ted Haggard or Carrie Prejean.
• I say, isn't that James Inhofe a card for insisting that the congress shouldn't repeal DADT because soldiers won't fight for the guy in the next foxhole if they know he's gay? Aside from the fact that foxholes are not really current warfaring technology and that the Freudian symbolism might not be what he was looking for, I think this rather insults the presumed motivations and integrity of America's service members.

Miss Analyst Regrets

Call me perverse if you like, but when some link someplace showed me this headline

Sony Tumbles After Forecasts Miss Analyst Estimates

[from Bloomberg Business Week, 13 May 2010]

I read it with the sense that would be implied by punctuating it thus: "Sony Tumbles After Forecasts, Miss Analyst Estimates".

I found myself wondering who was this Miss Analyst? I was rather disappointed when I realized that she existed only in my imagination.

Grilled-Cheese Sandwiches

I just read a blog posting somewhere (I don't think there's a reason to single it out specifically) that wanted to talk about grilled-cheese sandwiches. Alas, they ended up talking about some unrecognizable food-from-Mars made with hearty textured artisanal breads made of grains with unpronounceable names and–worse!–insisted on a big block of "real" cheese, banning anything with the word "process" in it.

Wrong! The only grilled-cheese sandwich that truly satisfies, really, really deep down, is made with soft, white bread and American pasteurized process cheese-food product. (I love saying it in conversation, ever since I practiced and mastered "American pasteurized process cheese-food product".)

First, the APPC-FP. I was one of those kids who didn't like "real" cheese; it tasted like spoiled milk to me. Imagine that! I was in graduate school before I tasted a "real" cheese that I actually liked. You'll get no prize for guessing that it was Brie. Yumm! Since then there are a number of cheeses that I've come to enjoy or to be able to eat without serious displeasure.

Nevertheless, I still like the taste of APPC-FP, particularly in a grilled-cheese sandwich. Now, I'm not making a bid here for "authenticity" or some such silliness. I can enjoy the fancy-pants grilled-cheese with artisanal bread and some hearty cheeses inside. But, if I am craving grilled-cheese, it's grilled-cheese with APPC-FP that I'm craving.

Made with soft, white bread, please. Yes, this was the bread of my childhood and I liked it then. How fun was it squishing it into a ball! I still like it. I've tried to enjoy all sorts of heartier breads once I grew up and some aren't bad and they have their places, but for grilled-cheese I want soft white bread.

I was thinking (briefly) about this the other day. It's less the soft-white bread itself, in a way, but the way that it toasts. Soft, white bread makes exquisitely delicate toast, golden and crispy on the outside, light, airy, melt-in-the-mouth soft inside.

Coupled with the APPC-FP and pan-fried in some butter until the outside is all golden crisp and the inside is all melty and mildly cheesy–it's a culinary masterpiece.

Granderson on "Gay Uncle Toms"

The gay and lesbian community has plenty of Uncle Toms trying to blow us up from inside, but what we don't have is our own word or phrase to identify them. Some call them "closet cases," but there is a difference between someone who is unwilling to live openly and honestly, and someone who takes that a step further and hurts those who do.

People in the closet warrant a level of sympathy because we all know how difficult it can be to embrace one's truth. And I do not believe in outing people who are simply living in hiding. But I do believe in revealing the identities of these gay Uncle Toms.

People like Rekers, a Baptist minister who was paid to testify against gay adoption and travel the globe preaching that therapy can "cure" gay people, do not deserve the same sympathy given to those who are afraid of losing their jobs. Not when they consciously morph from being victims of homophobia to attack dogs eating their young.

[from LZ Granderson, "Closeted anti-gays are the enemy within", cnn.com, 13 May 2010; via Joe.My.God.]

Free Depending on Payment

This morning, at Starbucks, I went up to the counter to get a coffee refill. As I handed the barista my cup, I removed the lid as that is often their request. She takes my cup and promptly throws it away. She then gets a new cup and "refills" my coffee, though I'm not technically sure it can be called a refill since it's in a new cup. Either way, it's only 54 cents as opposed to $1.87, and free when I pay with my Starbucks card.

[Yisrael Campbell, 'What's Wrong With Starbucks Is Also What's Wrong With America', Huffington Post, 11 May 2010.]

The bold is mine, of course.

Sometimes I'm trying to read a little article, maybe just looking at the beginning to see whether I'm going to read the rest, when I get hung up on something that I just can't get past, so that it becomes yet another something that I never finished reading.

Maybe it's my fault with old-fashioned, curmudgeonly literal thinking or something, but I can't understand^* "…it's free when I pay with my Starbucks card."

If she used her designated cash card to "pay" for the refill, it was free, in which case no monetary units changed accounts, no recognized financial transaction took place, and I can perceive no way in which the designated cash card was "used", suggesting that the designated cash card was not "used", in which case she would have had to pay the $1.87 cash "refill" price, for which she might have then been able to "use" the designated cash card.

Or something.
———-
^* As it turns out I'm not even bothered by the question that troubles the author, whether it can be considered a "refill" if a new cup is used; I'm happy to accept "refilling" as a process that can be somewhat flexible in what goes where.

Prunus 'First Lady'

A few weeks ago (28 March 2010, actually) we took an afternoon to visit the US National Arboretum, happily not at all far from our house. Daffodils in our neighborhood were blooming so we thought to see the Arboretum's collection. They were going full tilt and we enjoyed them very much.

I was also delighted to discover that the Arboretum's collection of cherry trees was blooming as well, so we took the self-guided tour and evaluated all of them as potential adoptees for our garden.

They all were beautiful and each had its attractive characteristics: bark, flower color, shape, size, etc. But one in particular caught our attention: Prunus 'First Lady'. Here's Isaac standing near it (but not quite so near as it looks; there's a slope and the tree is actually some 15 feet away):

The tree is known for its very upright habit, which is what drew our attention. Well, that and the remarkable dark-red-wine color of its flowers, also a notable characteristic.

I have since learned interesting facts.

The U.S. National Arboretum has an ongoing breeding program aimed at developing new cultivars of ornamental cherry with disease and pest resistance, tolerance to environmental stresses, and superior ornamental characteristics. Here we report the first two flowering cherry selections, Prunus 'Dream Catcher' and 'First Lady' released from the flowering cherry breeding program at the U.S. National Arboretum. […] Prunus 'First Lady' was selected for its strongly upright, almost columnar growth habit, dark pink to near red semi-pendulous single flowers, and glossy dark, green foliage. It has reached a height of 25.5 feet and a crown spread of 13.5 feet after 20 years of growth in Washington, D.C. Flowers open in late March in Washington, D.C. at approximately the same time as Prunus 'Okame'.

[source: USDA]

Elsewhere (source) I also learned that Prunus 'First Lady' was "developed by Donald Egolf of the USDA by hybridizing Prunus 'Okame' with P. campanulate in 1982. One seedling proved outstanding and was selected for further evaluation in 1988."

'First Lady' was named and released in 2003, an introduction of the U.S. National Arboretum. The official release date was 7 August 2003, as I learned from a lovely summary brochure by the Arboretum for its introduction.

What an enticing plant this would be! But, how often have I noted specific cultivar varieties on view at the Arboretum thinking to add them to our garden only to find that they are obscure, expensive, or impossible to find? Well, this story has a happier ending.

A couple of weeks ago, again for spending a few tranquil hours after lunch, we stopped in at the Arboretum only to find that the "Friends of the National Arboretum" were having their annual plant sale. Without any particular expectations but always in the mood for new plants, we stopped in.

By golly, nearly the first thing we saw was a single potted specimen of Prunus 'First Lady'! Happily, it was also at a very attractive price. We grabbed that pot without further thought and chortled at our impossibly good luck. (We also found two fine examples of Vitex agnus-castus 'Mississippi Blues' that completes another gardening plan, but that's another story.)

And that's how it is that we now have a currently four-foot tall specimen of Prunus 'First Lady" planted prominently in our front lawn, and we're very pleased to have it there.

Bad Analogies

At the moment there are at least two tools of language and writing whose abuse puzzles and irritates me substantially, perhaps out of proportion to logic, but there you go.

One is stupid puns, by which I mean a punning word drawn against its will into a sentence because it might sound somewhat like another word but which resulting pun introduces no new meaning or hidden humor into the utterance. Stupid puns are, of course, much beloved of newspaper headline writers. Now, many people tend to express with groans their opinion that any pun is a stupid pun but I disagree. Good puns can add needed levity at the same time they do the work of poetic metaphors, adding simultaneous layers of meaning and understanding to a subject.

The second problem area: stupid, unthinking analogies. These are similes hastily grabbed by unthinking writers and speakers who feel the need to be literary and take hold of any passing analogy with the barest superficial similarity to their subject. Unfortunately, although the analogous thing might be the right size, or shape, or color, or taste, it doesn't operate in any way or shape that lends any meaning to the subject being analogized. (Perhaps you see the similarity to the stupid pun, so perhaps there's really only one larger concept involved in this peeve of mine.)

Or worse, the analogous properties are wrong or inverted, leading the reader into confusion and wandering away from reading the text while trying to puzzle out the perplexities of the faulty analogy. The following was the first sentence of a piece I never finished reading.

Hollywood heavy hitters often weigh prestige on a bathroom scale – which may explain why movers and shakers are constantly chasing the latest in trendy diets.

[Susan Campos, "Hollywood Scales it Down", Huffington Post, 5 May 2010.]

How interesting. Prestige is treated as a physical object, a substance with mass that can be measured on a bathroom scale, perhaps at the same time as the vain "heavy hitter"–heavy with more prestige as indicated by a higher reading on the scale, no doubt–weighs himherself to check on just how heavy hisher hitting currently is.

Alas, it turned out that the interest of the author of the subject analogy was interested in those "heavy" hitters' claimed obsession with diets. Thus, further exposition makes plain that prestige, if it is to be weighed on the bathroom scale, is more associated with something having negative weight, or buoyancy, for the "heavy hitter" because less weight is more attractive, or something like that. As I said I didn't read any further; with so much confusion in the first sentence I didn't have high hopes for more clarity and insight from further reading.

Sometimes I think that perhaps a license should be required to use literary devices.

A Minuscule Pullum Miscellany

Oh, dear. Again and again and again, American professors with absolutely no background in English grammar insist that their 21st-century college students should study this unpleasantly dogmatic little work, written by men born in the 19th century. But the dictats given in The Elements of Style range from the redundant to the insane. Anyone who read the book again and again and again, and took its edicts literally, would do disastrous damage to their writing.

Most of those who dip into it come out with some signs of a nervous cluelessness about grammar: they get edgy around adverbs and prepositions and instances of the verb be, without exactly knowing why they feel like that, or what they should do about it.

I am quite convinced that The Elements of Style harms students more than it helps them. Yet the Google search term {Strunk White "Elements of Style" site:harvard.edu} calls up nearly ninety hits. Replacing harvard.edu by mit.edu yields more, about 140. At Princeton it's 23. At Stanford it's about 95. The finest universities in America continue to insist that this awful little compilation of century-old peevery is an important accessory for today's literate student. It isn't. The difference between carrying around The Elements of Style in your backpack and carrying around a slide rule is that slide rules gave accurate answers.

[excerpt from Geoffrey K. Pullum, "Worthless grammar edicts from Harvard", Language Log, 29 April 2010.]

For a manifestoish posting by Mr. Pullum on his campaign to dethrone Strunk & White's little book from its populist throne of prescriptivist strictures, I suggest: Geoffrey K. Pullum, "The campaign begins, at Brown", Language Log, 7 April 2010.]

Now, while on the subject of Geoffrey K. Pullum, I make bold enough to post an entire piece from Greg Ross' Futility Closet ("History Denied", 2 April 2010) that I have been waiting to share; I think the moment has arrived.

In 1997, University of Edinburgh linguistics professor Geoffrey K. Pullum submitted the following letter to the Economist:

‘Connections needed’ (March 15) reports that Russia’s Transneft pipeline operator is not able to separate crude flows from different oil fields: ‘they all come out swirled into a single bland blend.’ This is quite true. And worse yet, the characterless, light-colored mix thus produced is concocted blindly, without quality oversight, surely a grave mistake. In fact, I do not recall ever encountering a blinder blander blonder blender blunder.

It “would have been a true first in natural language text,” Pullum wrote, “a grammatical and meaningful sequence of five consecutive words in a natural context that are differentiated from each other by just a single character.” Alas, the Economist chose not to print it.

The Answer Is: All of the Above

It probably won't surprise you to learn that I found this animated "quiz show" about contradictions in the bible rather amusing (not to mention how the winner was determined and what his prize was). Actually, I laughed audibly. I also quite liked the voice of the quiz-show host; is it someone I should recognize?

[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]

(via Joe.My.God — thanks!)

SPLC on AZ's New Anti-Hispanic Law

Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law was written by a lawyer at the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an anti-immigrant hate group since 2007. The law, a recipe for racial profiling, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. (See statement by SPLC Legal Director Mary Bauer.)

Kris Kobach, the author of the Arizona law and a lawyer at FAIR’s Immigration Reform Law Institute, has been the prime mover behind numerous ordinances that seek to punish those who aid and abet “illegal aliens,” including laws adopted in Farmer’s Branch, Texas, and Hazelton, Pa.

The laws have not done well and have cost some localities immense sums of money to defend. Recently, the city of Albertville, Ala., refused to work with Kobach on just such an ordinance, reportedly because of the high legal costs incurred by these other communities.

Before joining FAIR, Kobach served as U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s top immigration adviser. He then moved on to take charge of Department of Justice efforts to tighten border security after the 9/11 attacks. There, he developed a program — the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System — that called for close monitoring of men from Arab and Muslim nations, even legal U.S. residents. The program collapsed due to complaints of racial profiling and discrimination.

[excerpt from "Hate Group Lawyer Drafted Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law", Southern Poverty Law Center, 28 April 2010.]

Lesbians Biblically Approved

So I'm reading a short news item (here) in which I leaned that the Westboro Baptist "Church" plans to picket Constance McMillen's graduation because they hate lesbians because their god hates lesbians, for which they cite the following "justification" from their book of rules:

Thou shall not lie with mankind, as with womankind, it is abomination.

I find that I'm bothered by its application to lesbians. Either the directive is intended only for men, in which case it doesn't apply to lesbians, or it's directed at women also, in which case they're pretty definitely instructed to avoid men and lie with women (in the traditional interpretation).

The only conclusion I can draw is that lesbians are a particular favorite, being given positive instructions and all.

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