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Word of the Day

cupidity (noun) Excessive desire, especially for wealth; covetousness or avarice. [Middle English cupidite, from Old French, from Latin cupiditas, from cupidus, desiring, from cupere, to desire.]*

“So what do you do?”

“I’m a writer.”

Sloan didn’t know why he admitted it. Usually he told women he was a graphic designer—the sort of job that practically guarantees a second date. But then he saw the cupidity in Frederica’s eyes.

“A writer?” She said breathlessly, moving in closer. “Tell me more.”

N.B. No, this has nothing to do with yesterday’s post. I just happened to come across the (apparently misspelled) adjectival form of cupidity this morning in a delightful account of the “not-so-unlikely friendship” between Vladimir Nabokov and William F. Buckley, Jr.

*American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000).

Stop! Grammar Time!

With apologies to the missus, who professed to be “oogling” something this morning,* the correct word is ogle, pronounced oh-guhl.

I bring this up because ogle is already a bit…problematic, shall we say? According to my copy of the OED, it means to eye “amorously, admiringly, or lecherously.” There’s a lot of daylight between those words, so I’m not entirely sure how one can safely use ogle in a sentence without at least the tiniest possibility of creating misunderstanding.

Merriam-Webster even goes so far as to suggest that ogle could mean “greedy or interested attention,” e.g. “Courtney ogled the breakfast burrito.” But I for one would choose another verb.

*Not me. I swear.

Fight! Fight!

“Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,” said Wallace Sayre, “because the stakes are so low.” If he were still around today—Sayre died in 1972—he’d probably see in the latest Grammys kerfuffle even more evidence for what came to be known as Sayre’s law.

Don’t get me wrong: Jon Batiste’s “Movement 11′” is absolutely not a classical composition. Check it out for yourself:

But how could anyone say—with a straight face, anyway—that “this jeopardises the credibility of the Grammy awards”? They’ve a been a joke for years. Led Zeppelin, who produced arguably the greatest four-album run in rock history, was nominated only once (for Best New Artist, which they lost to Crosby, Stills & Nash). Meanwhile Skrillex—Skrillex!—has won eight freaking Grammys. I mean, everyone knows how bad they are at this, right?

So, yeah. Awarding Best Classical Composition to Batiste would be dumb. But it wouldn’t be the dumbest thing the Recording Academy has done. Not by a long shot.

[sad trombone]

Color me shocked: Everything we in the West think we know about China’s famed Shaolin Temple dates all the way back to…the 1970s. And we have the TV show Kung Fu to thank for that.

What’s more, the former school for Secular Disciples “licenses its name to anything and everything, even including instant noodles, coffee, take-out foods, tea, car tires, beer, and cigarettes, pulling in untold volumes of cash.”

Can I admit to being a little disappointed? I generally dig Brian Dunning’s work over at Skeptoid—particularly when he’s calling B.S. on questionable legislation or Gwyneth Paltrow’s “nonsense products”—but I sometimes feel like the cold, hard light of truth, when he’s shining it on cool stuff like aliens and pyramids and the Great Kentucky Meat Shower, makes the world a little less interesting and mysterious.

As a college friend of mine used to say, “If ignorance is bliss, then stupidity must be ecstasy.”

Miscellany

Spokane: “We’ll try to get the city plowed in three days.” Montréal: “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Somehow I missed this film when it was released 25 years ago; I watched it with the missus over the weekend and was utterly transfixed. (What? You want a recommendation for something a little newer? Fine. The Last Duel is likewise excellent.)

Now this is a recipe I can get behind.

Tyler Cowen defends an album that shouldn’t need defending, but, well…here we are. (Obligatory old-man-yells-at-cloud comment: In 1966 alone, we saw the release of Pet Sounds, Blonde on Blonde, Revolver, AftermathSunshine Superman, Freak Out!, and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. What the hell’s happened to pop music?)

Brooklyn in the 1970s.

A Capital Offense

While my official title is “senior copywriter,” part of my job involves editing or proofreading others’ words—work that has done little to restore my hope in the American education system.

The worst offense—by far—is random capitalization. It’s bad, folks. I see people writing things like “The Company saw a 3% increase in revenue last year,” and “I earned a BS in Mathematics,” and “CK is President of the local chapter of the Donnie and Marie Fan Club.” (For the record, it’s company, mathematics, and president.)

Look, I understand that all the rules—and all the exceptions to all those rules—can be a little daunting. So just remember this one: Proper nouns (particular people, places, or things) are capitalized. Common nouns aren’t. That’s it.

So:

Courtney traveled to San Diego via Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner.

In this example, Courtney is a particular person who went to a particular place aboard a particular company’s particular conveyance (note that names of ships, trains, aircraft, and the like are usually italicized).

Swap all those proper nouns with common nouns, though, and you’ll get something like:

The woman took the train south.

See the difference? When it’s just a rando hitching a ride, the only thing you capitalize is the first word in the sentence.

If you find yourself questioning whether it’s a common or a proper noun, ask yourself if it’s the name of something or just the thing itself. If it’s the former, capitalize away. If not, don’t you dare hit that “shift” button.

“The Interstate’s Forgotten Code”

Feeling lost? Don’t know which way is up? Needing some direction in your life?

Here are all the answers for you road warriors out there who unthinkingly head out on America’s interstates and highways, never questioning who numbered them and why.

Of course there’s a plan. And of course it makes sense—until it doesn’t. So maybe don’t toss your GPS just yet…

“A True Symbol of Uncompromising Craftsmanship”

With nothing but a steady hand and a squirrel-hair brush, Mark Court does what no one else can. And when you consider that he’s doing it on cars that start at more than $300,000, his one-of-a-kind skill is even more remarkable.

So there really IS a difference…

Big surprise: Deviations in word prevalence scores between men and women “tend to follow gender differences in interests (games, weapons, and technical matters for males; food, clothing, and flowers for females).” And the gaps are significant.

But when I actually look at the table itself, it’s…a little unsettling. I was familiar with 16 of the 20 words known better by males; 14 of the 20 known better by females.

There can be only two explanations for this. Either I’m not as manly as I’ve been led to believe, or my superhuman brain has given me powers well beyond those of normal men.

Pretty sure we all know what the answer is.

Quote of the Day

Werner Herzog: “Mankind’s problems started the moment humans abandoned a nomadic existence, became sedentary, and began building permanent settlements.”

Note: If you’ve already seen all of Herzog’s films—and even if you haven’t—do yourself a favor and get a copy of his book Of Walking in Ice.

Note on the previous note: If you’re wondering who’s behind the sublime music in those films, it’s Popol Vuh. Start with In den Gärten Pharaos (1971).

Miscellany

Ever wanted to hear The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English? Today’s your lucky day.

Wikitrivia! My best streak is 20. Beat that—no cheating—and I’ll write something nice about you on this very blog.

The “graveyard of ideas” that is TED.

Wondering what to get that special someone for Valentine’s Day? How’s about a horny teddy bear?

And finally, what I’ve been reading lately.

Billionaires Gonna Billionaire

Cause…and effect.

That’s it. That’s the post. I was gonna write something snarky about how you can’t even get free two-day shipping with Prime anymore,* but really—what’s the point? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

*Seriously, I complained about this recently, and the customer service hack told me that the time it takes for the robot to pick my order and get it ready for shipping doesn’t count.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your words…”

Behold the World Loanword Database!

Coming to us from the fine folks at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, WOLD “provides vocabularies…of 41 languages from around the world, with comprehensive information about the loanword status of each word. It allows users to find loanwords, source words and donor languages in each of the 41 languages, but also makes it easy to compare loanwords across languages.”

Guess I’ve got my evening sorted, then.

Poetry Break

THE OCEAN
Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Ocean has its silent caves,
Deep, quiet, and alone;
Though there be fury on the waves,
Beneath them there is none.

The awful spirits of the deep
Hold their communion there;
And there are those for whom we weep,
The young, the bright, the fair.

Calmly the wearied seamen rest
Beneath their own blue sea.
The ocean solitudes are blest,
For there is purity.

The earth has guilt, the earth has care,
Unquiet are its graves;
But peaceful sleep is ever there,
Beneath the dark blue waves.

Never Forget

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, chosen to commemorate the date—January 27, 1945—that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Coincidentally, I started Claude Lanzmann’s monumental Shoah last weekend. I’m not gonna lie: The nine-hour documentary, released in 1985, is hard to watch. But since the reward is participating in “one of the most important cinematic works of all time,” it’s well worth the emotional effort.

I can’t recommended this film highly enough. Purchase it on Blu-Ray or DVD here; streaming and renting options are available on Amazon, YouTube, Apple TV, et al.

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