Archive for the ‘Language’ Category

The Alter

Monday, November 29th, 2010

A Hundred Word Story.

Or maybe a One Thousand One Hundred word story, including the pic.

His toes gripped the smooth vine as he squeezed through the tunnel into the Temple. The priest waited at the entrance to the Alter; they bobbed to each other, dewlaps inflating in mutual respect.

He entered the impenetrable darkness.

There was a flash.

He found himself on a bony claw. Glancing back, he saw a black-hooded skull and froze in panic — but it only nodded and gently flicked its hand. He spread his wings to steady himself.

He had wings! Death forgotten, he launched into the air. He laughed, and a gout of flame burst from his mouth….

Click to see the Alter:
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Submitted to Laurence Simon’s Hundred Word Story topic, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.

I think these were supposed to be cautionary tales…but you know, sometimes it seems like a good idea, and it is!

The Philosophical Lexicon

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

“Founded by Daniel Dennett, the Philosophical Lexicon converts philosophers’ surnames into useful words (with often pointed definitions):”

  • rand, n. An angry tirade occasioned by mistaking philosophical disagreement for a personal attack and/or evidence of unspeakable moral corruption.
  • turing, v. To travel from one point to another in simple, discrete steps, without actually knowing where one is going, or why.
  • voltaire, n. A unit of enlightenment.

Ooh, yes, I’m definitely going to have start working some of these into the conversation.

Via Futility Closet.

Final Serial Commas

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

I’m a big fan of the rule that, when typing out a list, you should always use a comma after the penultimate item, right before the “and”.

Excellent counterexample here, from a print blurb for a documentary about Merle Haggard:

The documentary was filmed over three years. Among those interviewed were his two wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.

KOTOKO Princess Bride!

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

There is no explanation, or even excuse, for this:

Opening lines are an ear worm, bad ear worm. Have to give it to someone else.

Quote of the Day: Blinded by the Big Light

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

R. A. Lafferty on fanaticism, from And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire:

How is a person or a world unmade or unformed? First, by being deformed. And following the deforming is the collapsing. The tenuous balance is broken. Insanity is induced easily under the name of the higher sanity. Then the little candle that is in each head is blown out on the pretext that the great cosmic light can better be seen without it.

“The little candle that is in each head is blown out….”

My throat tightened up when I read this line. That is, without question, the best statement of what is happening to us, right now. all over the world, that I have ever read. Billy Beck calls it, quite rightly, The Endarkenment.

And Lafferty wrote it in 1972.

R. A. Lafferty, folks. You’ve probably never heard of him if you don’t read science fiction.

Your loss, and I’m sorry for you.

[via Protein Wisdom.]

In the Clash of Civilizations, a Jihadi Reformation Must Embrace Religious Freedom For All and Accept Assimilation into Secular Society If Even Moderates are to be Tolerated.

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Radical Whackjob Splodeydopes, of course, have the freedom to blow each other to hamburger, as long as they leave their cultural superiors out of it.

The Christian Science Monitor accepts the mantle of dhimmitude by publishing “10 terms not to use with Muslims.” Folks, if you value your religion at all, you will stop kissing the stinky butts that fart in your face while insisting that you moderate your freedom and accept assimilation into Muslim society.

Unbelievable.

Here are the words we must not use in order to avoid offending those who do not hesitate to offend us:

  1. The Clash of Civilizations
  2. Secular
  3. Assimilation
  4. Reformation
  5. Jihadi
  6. Moderate
  7. Interfaith (I agree on this one: it’s namby-pamby mush-mouth at its best.)
  8. Freedom
  9. Religious Freedom
  10. Tolerance

Listen up, you superstitious savages: It’s our language. It means whatever we say it means, and right now, it means sod off or get our collective shoe soles in your faces and up your butts.

“Freedom” means I get to believe what I want, and say what I want. Here’s what I believe, and I dare you to come and make me stop saying it:

There is no god, not even allah, and mohammed, may piss be upon him, was no prophet, but a raving psychopath and a child-raping mass-murder.

As always, it matters not if the above is true or not. I have the complete and perfect right to say it, even as you have the right to decide I’m an intolerant bigot. Fine. We’ll see who ends up wearing chains first.

Via Patterico, whose readers have contributed some fine comments.


This, on the heels of the United Nations’ “Human Rights Council” resolution demanding the suppression of speech “defaming” religion.

We pay your bills, U.N. scum, and you live in our house; that means we get to set the rules.

Oh, I’m sorry, was that rude? Ilya Somin, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, says it much more nicely, as well as pointing out that the HRC has been hijacked by the most repressive thugocracies on Earth.

Nuance Overload

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Japanese Guide Dogs trained in English:

This is because there’s quite a lot of difference between the way men and women speak in Japanese, with men tending to use the rougher command form of a word like “sit!” (suware! soo-wah-reh) while women would use the softer-sounding request form of the same verb (suwatte! su-wa-tte), potentially confusing the animal. It’s an interesting example of Japan’s language being too multi-layered and nuance-filled for its own good.

Via Chizumatic; Den Beste’s commenters are very informative as well. One noted that “Seeing Eye Dog” is a trade mark of a particular school; hence my reference to “guide dogs”.

QotD: Mistake of the Day (Pelosi)

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House (Fascist, CA), says that every month the Financial Ass RapeStimulus package is delayed, five hundred million Americans lose their jobs.

There are, in fact, only about 300 million Americans, total.


[Via Ace of Spades.]

And this ignorant, arrogant, thug presumes to be competent to rule you and I, to know better than we do how we should run our lives.

Oh, was that harsh? Tell me, please, shouldn’t she be ridiculed as thoroughly in the press as VP Quayle was for misspelling “potatoe”? (No matter he was relying on cue cards he was assured were correct). As Palin was for saying she could see Russia from her front porch (No matter what she really said was that “you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska”, which is absolutely true.) As Bush was for mispronouncing ‘nukular”?

As Obama was for declaring that there are 58 states in the Union (of which he had visited 57)? (Never mind that, outside the anti-socialist blogosphere, this was pretty much ignored.)

Oh wait, I’m sorry, I forgot we are all supposed to unify behind Our President, his Party, and the liars, thieves, and tax cheats he appoints to office. Nevermind, I’ll sit back down and shut back up again.

For Services to Literature

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

The best humorist extant is now styled Sir Terry Pratchett.

Regrettably, no sword is included in the box.

And by “best humorist”, I mean right up there with Benchley, Thurber, Perelman, that lot.

If you have not read at least three of his Discworld novels, you cannot count yourself literate.

If the reason you have not read even one of the Discworld novels is because it’s fantasy, then you’re a hopelessly blinkered snob.
.

Chelsea in Cairo: Pyramids and Horses

Friday, August 29th, 2008

Chelsea started to get out and about Cairo today, taking a horseback tour out to the Pyramids:

They are in a type of artificial desert with Cairo spreading out around them, the pictures I’m sure you all have seen are shot from a specific angle to make it seem like they are isolated in the middle of the desert.  It was still magical and amazing to see them rise up from behind a hill as we were riding out.

I won’t be taking horses out the next time though.  The horses are malnourished and are whipped to exhaustion everyday.

The area around the pyramids is abysmally poor.  You ride through alleys of huts with dirty barefoot children waving at you while their mothers try to sell you things like individual packets of Keenex.  Their is trash everywhere.

As bad as I felt for the horses, I suppose it is a way for the people there to make some type of living. I am still conflicted about the whole experience.

She took pictures, but felt they were too blurry to post.


Orientation:
Chelsea is attending the American University in Cairo, staying in one of the residence halls there.

Her classes will start Saturday, 06 September.

Google map I’ll try to maintain of places she goes to. So far, only AUC and the pyramids.

View Larger Map
[I've got to say, I hate the Google map interface when it comes to creating custom maps and passing links around. I very often cannot get the display I want. Let me know, then, if this link shows you something different than what I claim it does.]

Google map of the pyramids area, showing the very sharp demarcation between the desert and the irrigated urban area of Cairo.

View Larger Map
[Sorry, no. Google Maps is being a useless pile of rotting camel dung, and will not save the coordinates and zoom for the area I want to display. Why do these idiots make it so bloody hard to that? Why can't I find instructions on how to do that? OK, it's working now. What the hell?]

Cairo is UTC/GMT +2, seven hours ahead of Houston time, so when it is noon here, it’s seven p.m. there.

I am using Lingua-naut to look up basic Arabic phrases.