Her admission that she wrote the twisted answers delivered by conservatives when interviewed on Fox News - and that she was proud that she was good at delivering what they wanted - startled and disgusted me. I know I can be naive, but I am struggling to understand how someone with integrity who is not starving can willingly and knowingly participate in that kind of work.
I will read/listen to the book to get the full story, out of fairness.
Hi everybody. I just put a new book (actually an old one) into my reading rotation. I can't even remember where I got it, but it was in my stack of books I mean to read. Title is 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘖𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘋𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦, second edition (1971), by Thomas Pyles. I''ll be reading a little at a time. I expect it's going to be a fun read for me, and I'll learn a bunch of stuff I always wondered about; even though I was an English major, we didn't get deeply into that area.
But right in Chapter 1 I noticed something that reminded me of our patroness, Edith "Edit" Burton. Could it be an ancestress of hers? Or possibly EB herself, slipping in and out of the time-space continuum as is her wont. (I especially appreciated the author's taking a swipe at self-designated authorities who get exercised about what they suppose are errors but really aren't, such as the split infinitive and ending a sentence with a preposition.)
"English has grown out of the usage of generations of well-born and well-bred persons many of whom could neither read nor write. In the late fifteenth century, William Caxton, obviously a highly literate man, used to submit his work to the Duchess of Burgundy (an English lady despite her French title), who 'oversawe and corrected' it. We have no information as to the speed and ease with which the Duchess read, but it is highly likly that she was considerably less literate than was Caxton himself. Yet to Caxton, the 'correctness' of the usage of a lady of the court was unassailable, whereas he would seem to have had little faith in what came naturally to him, a brilliant son of the bourgeousie. His standard of excellence was the usage of persons of good position--quite a different thing from our own servile obedience to the mandates of badly informed 'authorities' who, when not guided by their own prejudices, attempt to settle questions of usage by the same methods as those which were employed by Lowth and his followers in the eighteenth century."
(The author said Lowth was praised by contemporaries for showing "the grammatic inaccuracies that have escaped the pens of our most distinguished writers." This does, um, ignore the question of why the best writers supposedly are the worst when it comes to usage.)
I recognize some from Harry Potter. Scallywag's American cousin is much less charming, as usual. I wonder if there are any American expressions the Brits find more charming than their own.
Drizzle here. The grass will be thick and tall by the time it is dry enough to mow.
Yesterday was slow - we had 100 voters with two precincts in one location. But, as usual, the nation looks much healthier at precinct level.
The Brits are copious with the foul-language insults, but they were different from American ones. Even the non-harsh British ones are related to genitals and different sex practices. All the phrases having to do with “bugger” and “sod” are mild for their origins. Then there’s all the talk of “wanking” and “tossing.”
American curse words based around the rectum were relatively unfamiliar to the UK as recently as the early 1970s when an episode of the comedy “Fawlty Towers” was based on a caricatured American saying “bust your ass” which the title character Basil Fawlty couldn’t quite understand. I see in more modern Brit TV scripts the American-style cursing is very common now, likely because our cultural content overwhelms theirs in sheer quantity.
He tries to guess by saying tepidly “break your bottom?”
ETA: Another complicating factor was that the Brits distinguished between “ass” as in “donkey” and “arse” as in “hindquarters” quite commonly until more recently.
How can Monty Python not come to mind? My daughter bought me two coffee mugs over the years, one with Monty Python quotes and the other with Shakespearean insults. I have a good laugh with both.
Good morning. Another wet day making my grass grow.
Fun little pice on British insults, several of which (like “lummox,” “cad” and “ninny”) are also in American English. Then there is the inventive “toe rag.”
While waiting for the mothership, I checked out the Front Page, featuring a story on “Never Bidens,” Democratic supports and donor angered by Biden’s withholding weapons from Israel in response to IDF incursions into Rafah.
The mothership is reporting on Biden signing a law banning most Russian uranium imports, and on the state of nuclear power generally in the US< referring to a "renaissance".
Judging by the forecast, I’ve got an opportunity to mow everything tomorrow one last time, but otherwise I should spend every other waking hour building an ark.
One of the interesting things about that piece was the amount of money these super rich guys donate. "Cliff Asness [of Jonah Goldberg fame], a Republican donor who says he “spent well over seven figures” to support Trump’s primary opponent Nikki Haley ..."
In the first place, what does that even mean? Did he spend nine figures, hundreds of millions of dollars? But apart from that, did the money buy Mr. Asness whatever he was after? Maybe it did: primary voters are still picking Haley at about a 20% level, despite her no longer being in the race.
Note: When I say "buy," I'm saying Mr. Asness is spending all that money for some purpose important to himself, just as with his support of Jonah's Asness Chair at AEI. Is he buying a sense of being an important figure in national and world events? Is he buying a better chance at a continuing free economy? I don't know, but I wonder if he feels he got what he paid for.
That’s sums up my fundamental problem with the commonplace that The Rich (or Big Corporate Industry) spend money to influence public opinion by financing certain writers or researchers.
Money spent to promote a specific viewpoint would seem better used to hire a PR firm, law firm, or ad agency, not financing preferred writers or publications. But what do I know?
I encourage any wealthy sponsor out there willing to experiment to send me a couple million to change my opinion and advocate for stuff I don’t believe in. That’s really the only hope I see of laying this issue finally to rest.
"spend money to influence public opinion by financing certain writers or researchers"
Maybe they do. There was a scandal years ago - 20 years? 25? - when the Federal government was paying opinion columnists to push certain viewpoints, such as support of the "No Child Left Behind" act. The journalism persons insisted that the money didn't influence their writing, of course.
Anyway, whether rich individuals or corporations are spending money to influence writers or researchers is a separate question from whether the spending achieves its purpose.
I guess it’s sort of a chicken/egg problem. I would think someone who financed, say, “The Nation” magazine was already Marxist-inclined in many ways, and simply wanted to ensure the financial viability of the publication. I wouldn’t think a right-wing plutocrat would sponsor that magazine hoping to change its viewpoint 180 degrees, as if David Korn and Katrina vanden Heuvel would suddenly preach the Hayek gospel.
Today's special animal friend is the brown hyena, Parahyaena brunnea. It is also known as the strandwolf. One of four extant species of hyenas, the brown hyena belongs to the "more like a cat" Feliformia suborder, genetically, but they are very dog-looking. This is an example of "convergent evolution," or at least that's what zoologists think today. Brown hyenas live in southern Africa, including Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The largest population is found in the southern Kalahari Desert and the Namib coast.
Brown hyenas (both sexes) are about five feet long, with a tail about 12 inches, and a shoulder height of 30 inches. They typically weigh between 80 and 95 lbs. They are covered with long, thick, brown fur, with brown and white striped legs and a cream-colored ruff around the neck. Although smaller than the more common striped hyena, brown hyenas have a larger skull and more powerful jaws. Within five minutes of birth, a brown hyena can crack antelope leg bones!
As this video points out, the brown hyena is the rarest hyena species. They are considered Near Threatened by IUCN, and the total population is estimated at 4,000 to 10,000 individuals. (The broad range suggests they don't, actually, have much idea how many there are.) The main threat to the species is hunting: they are believed to kill livestock, when they are actually almost entirely scavengers. Although they kill a few small vertebrates and eat some eggs, non-carrion sources made up less than 5% of the diet of studied individuals. They are sometimes hunted by lions.
Brown hyenas live in family groups of 4 to 15 individuals of varying ages. They do not have a mating season. Females usually mate with nomadic, non-clan males, which promotes genetic diversity. Gestation is about 90 days, and the females give birth to 1 to 5 cubs in a den. The cubs nurse for up to a year and remain around the den until 18 months of age. All the group members help to bring food to the cubs. They are mature at about two years old, and lifespan is about 12 to 15 years.
Brown hyenas have an extraordinary sense of smell and can detect dead stuff at great distances. One unusual food source, also detected by smell, is the desert truffle, Kalaharituber pfeilii. This fungus produces its large fruiting body – over 4 inches across – just below the surface of the desert, where its growth causes cracks in the soil, releasing the scent. The truffles are also eaten by meerkats, baboons, foxes, and humans, including the indigenous Khoi-San people of the Kalahari.
I thought it must be a regionalism at first, like “owt” and “nowt” for “something” and “nothing”. The internet says it’s probably a Scottish play on words relating to Humpty Dumpty.
The Scots have lots and lots of words we don't ordinarily hear or read about.
I learned this by reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of time-travel-historical-romance novels. She does an incredible amount of research, and now people with knowledge come to her with info which she can use.
We could do better with fewer insults. Full stop on that.
I much prefer these insults to the crudity and vulgarity all too common these days.
https://baptistnews.com/article/pca-cancels-panel-discussion-after-uproar-over-david-french/
Update on the fluster over the participation of Mr. David French in a Presbyterian Church in America assembly.
Thanks for the update. What a mess.
Did you happen to see this article?
https://baptistnews.com/article/nancy-french-seeks-atonement-for-past-culture-warring-in-ghosted/
No, I hadn't seen that. I have the book reserved at the library and will get it some day.
Her admission that she wrote the twisted answers delivered by conservatives when interviewed on Fox News - and that she was proud that she was good at delivering what they wanted - startled and disgusted me. I know I can be naive, but I am struggling to understand how someone with integrity who is not starving can willingly and knowingly participate in that kind of work.
I will read/listen to the book to get the full story, out of fairness.
The first thing that comes to mind is that it was like writing for a scripted TV show: not real.
Hi everybody. I just put a new book (actually an old one) into my reading rotation. I can't even remember where I got it, but it was in my stack of books I mean to read. Title is 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘖𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘋𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦, second edition (1971), by Thomas Pyles. I''ll be reading a little at a time. I expect it's going to be a fun read for me, and I'll learn a bunch of stuff I always wondered about; even though I was an English major, we didn't get deeply into that area.
But right in Chapter 1 I noticed something that reminded me of our patroness, Edith "Edit" Burton. Could it be an ancestress of hers? Or possibly EB herself, slipping in and out of the time-space continuum as is her wont. (I especially appreciated the author's taking a swipe at self-designated authorities who get exercised about what they suppose are errors but really aren't, such as the split infinitive and ending a sentence with a preposition.)
"English has grown out of the usage of generations of well-born and well-bred persons many of whom could neither read nor write. In the late fifteenth century, William Caxton, obviously a highly literate man, used to submit his work to the Duchess of Burgundy (an English lady despite her French title), who 'oversawe and corrected' it. We have no information as to the speed and ease with which the Duchess read, but it is highly likly that she was considerably less literate than was Caxton himself. Yet to Caxton, the 'correctness' of the usage of a lady of the court was unassailable, whereas he would seem to have had little faith in what came naturally to him, a brilliant son of the bourgeousie. His standard of excellence was the usage of persons of good position--quite a different thing from our own servile obedience to the mandates of badly informed 'authorities' who, when not guided by their own prejudices, attempt to settle questions of usage by the same methods as those which were employed by Lowth and his followers in the eighteenth century."
(The author said Lowth was praised by contemporaries for showing "the grammatic inaccuracies that have escaped the pens of our most distinguished writers." This does, um, ignore the question of why the best writers supposedly are the worst when it comes to usage.)
Interesting. "Edit" burton slipping back hundreds of years?
As for grammatical "errors," I think it's silly to easily get upset and worry about what is proper to end a sentence with.
John McWhorter has a book about the development of English, too, and a series of lectures on the subject.
I'm completely unsurprised that Edit was a duchess.
I recognize some from Harry Potter. Scallywag's American cousin is much less charming, as usual. I wonder if there are any American expressions the Brits find more charming than their own.
Drizzle here. The grass will be thick and tall by the time it is dry enough to mow.
Yesterday was slow - we had 100 voters with two precincts in one location. But, as usual, the nation looks much healthier at precinct level.
The Brits are copious with the foul-language insults, but they were different from American ones. Even the non-harsh British ones are related to genitals and different sex practices. All the phrases having to do with “bugger” and “sod” are mild for their origins. Then there’s all the talk of “wanking” and “tossing.”
American curse words based around the rectum were relatively unfamiliar to the UK as recently as the early 1970s when an episode of the comedy “Fawlty Towers” was based on a caricatured American saying “bust your ass” which the title character Basil Fawlty couldn’t quite understand. I see in more modern Brit TV scripts the American-style cursing is very common now, likely because our cultural content overwhelms theirs in sheer quantity.
I always learn so much here! I can see Basil Fawlty trying to mentally put the pieces together to figure out "bust your ass."
He tries to guess by saying tepidly “break your bottom?”
ETA: Another complicating factor was that the Brits distinguished between “ass” as in “donkey” and “arse” as in “hindquarters” quite commonly until more recently.
Ah. I was thinking of the other definition of bust.
Right? Even the show’s writers weren’t fastidious enough about the American language to distinguish between “bust” and”kick” someone’s ass.
How can Monty Python not come to mind? My daughter bought me two coffee mugs over the years, one with Monty Python quotes and the other with Shakespearean insults. I have a good laugh with both.
Good morning. Another wet day making my grass grow.
Fun little pice on British insults, several of which (like “lummox,” “cad” and “ninny”) are also in American English. Then there is the inventive “toe rag.”
While waiting for the mothership, I checked out the Front Page, featuring a story on “Never Bidens,” Democratic supports and donor angered by Biden’s withholding weapons from Israel in response to IDF incursions into Rafah.
The mothership is reporting on Biden signing a law banning most Russian uranium imports, and on the state of nuclear power generally in the US< referring to a "renaissance".
Judging by the forecast, I’ve got an opportunity to mow everything tomorrow one last time, but otherwise I should spend every other waking hour building an ark.
One of the interesting things about that piece was the amount of money these super rich guys donate. "Cliff Asness [of Jonah Goldberg fame], a Republican donor who says he “spent well over seven figures” to support Trump’s primary opponent Nikki Haley ..."
In the first place, what does that even mean? Did he spend nine figures, hundreds of millions of dollars? But apart from that, did the money buy Mr. Asness whatever he was after? Maybe it did: primary voters are still picking Haley at about a 20% level, despite her no longer being in the race.
Note: When I say "buy," I'm saying Mr. Asness is spending all that money for some purpose important to himself, just as with his support of Jonah's Asness Chair at AEI. Is he buying a sense of being an important figure in national and world events? Is he buying a better chance at a continuing free economy? I don't know, but I wonder if he feels he got what he paid for.
That’s sums up my fundamental problem with the commonplace that The Rich (or Big Corporate Industry) spend money to influence public opinion by financing certain writers or researchers.
Money spent to promote a specific viewpoint would seem better used to hire a PR firm, law firm, or ad agency, not financing preferred writers or publications. But what do I know?
I encourage any wealthy sponsor out there willing to experiment to send me a couple million to change my opinion and advocate for stuff I don’t believe in. That’s really the only hope I see of laying this issue finally to rest.
"spend money to influence public opinion by financing certain writers or researchers"
Maybe they do. There was a scandal years ago - 20 years? 25? - when the Federal government was paying opinion columnists to push certain viewpoints, such as support of the "No Child Left Behind" act. The journalism persons insisted that the money didn't influence their writing, of course.
Anyway, whether rich individuals or corporations are spending money to influence writers or researchers is a separate question from whether the spending achieves its purpose.
I guess it’s sort of a chicken/egg problem. I would think someone who financed, say, “The Nation” magazine was already Marxist-inclined in many ways, and simply wanted to ensure the financial viability of the publication. I wouldn’t think a right-wing plutocrat would sponsor that magazine hoping to change its viewpoint 180 degrees, as if David Korn and Katrina vanden Heuvel would suddenly preach the Hayek gospel.
Today's special animal friend is the brown hyena, Parahyaena brunnea. It is also known as the strandwolf. One of four extant species of hyenas, the brown hyena belongs to the "more like a cat" Feliformia suborder, genetically, but they are very dog-looking. This is an example of "convergent evolution," or at least that's what zoologists think today. Brown hyenas live in southern Africa, including Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The largest population is found in the southern Kalahari Desert and the Namib coast.
Brown hyenas (both sexes) are about five feet long, with a tail about 12 inches, and a shoulder height of 30 inches. They typically weigh between 80 and 95 lbs. They are covered with long, thick, brown fur, with brown and white striped legs and a cream-colored ruff around the neck. Although smaller than the more common striped hyena, brown hyenas have a larger skull and more powerful jaws. Within five minutes of birth, a brown hyena can crack antelope leg bones!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrc4aOfu7aQ
As this video points out, the brown hyena is the rarest hyena species. They are considered Near Threatened by IUCN, and the total population is estimated at 4,000 to 10,000 individuals. (The broad range suggests they don't, actually, have much idea how many there are.) The main threat to the species is hunting: they are believed to kill livestock, when they are actually almost entirely scavengers. Although they kill a few small vertebrates and eat some eggs, non-carrion sources made up less than 5% of the diet of studied individuals. They are sometimes hunted by lions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjjpoSk6-8
Brown hyenas live in family groups of 4 to 15 individuals of varying ages. They do not have a mating season. Females usually mate with nomadic, non-clan males, which promotes genetic diversity. Gestation is about 90 days, and the females give birth to 1 to 5 cubs in a den. The cubs nurse for up to a year and remain around the den until 18 months of age. All the group members help to bring food to the cubs. They are mature at about two years old, and lifespan is about 12 to 15 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMMuZicNh04
Brown hyenas have an extraordinary sense of smell and can detect dead stuff at great distances. One unusual food source, also detected by smell, is the desert truffle, Kalaharituber pfeilii. This fungus produces its large fruiting body – over 4 inches across – just below the surface of the desert, where its growth causes cracks in the soil, releasing the scent. The truffles are also eaten by meerkats, baboons, foxes, and humans, including the indigenous Khoi-San people of the Kalahari.
"Strandwolf" has an air of wildlife nobility at odds with the adjectives usually applied to hyenas.
That's true. It has dignity, like Dire Wolf.
Although the Dire Rhea would have died of embarrassment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQcduEj8lxI
The Phorusrhacids got a better publicist and are now known as Terror Birds.
Stealing from the cheetahs was not popular among the bystanders! Way to keep yourselves off the charismatic wildlife rescue lists, guys.
I'm surprised that only 22% of respondents were unfamiliar with "numpty."
That was new to me.
I knew it at least from the British police procedural thriller “Happy Valley.” Lovely word!
It was new to me. I guess the British murder programs I watch are out of date on their slang.
I thought it must be a regionalism at first, like “owt” and “nowt” for “something” and “nothing”. The internet says it’s probably a Scottish play on words relating to Humpty Dumpty.
The Scots have lots and lots of words we don't ordinarily hear or read about.
I learned this by reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of time-travel-historical-romance novels. She does an incredible amount of research, and now people with knowledge come to her with info which she can use.
I would have guessed it originated in "numbskull," which was current in my youth.