The Nutmeg of Consolidation

Prohibition was more of a theory than a practice in the City by the Bay, which flaunted the nation's temperance law whenever it could.

• To flaunt:  Showing off in ways to incite emotions from admiration to envy and occasionally defiance.
• To flout:  Openly disregard rule or convention.
• Flautist:  Flute player

• The Queen's accent.  (If they'd asked me, I could have told them that over time one's accent will get "filed down" by all those other accents washing over one.  I have tiny bits of many accents; fortunately most of those were diluted Northeastern/Middle Atlantic, so I don't sound strongly regional, but it bugs the hell out of some folks [OK, my younger cousins] that I "talk funny." They should have heard me when I was 8.)
• "Non-existent" countries.  Not fantasy.
• Myths that may be true, with worry about their transmission.
• BBC's take on Angry-Americans.

1. First, a bit crossposted from the other blog:
   
   Real Live Preacher, which I've been reading almost since its inception as a Salon blog (in fact, I think I still have that bookmark [yup!] in a folder of bookmarks), may be going away.
   

   
   i was a preacher for a long time and i did the best i could with it and i even liked preaching and thinking i was helping people
   i was real live preacher for a long time and i did the best i could with it and i even liked writing and i think i wrote some good things here
   but every thing has its season and if you dont know when that season is over you end up shrinking and becoming small and protective and boring so i have to say goodbye to real live preacher i have to shut this down

   
   He does not sound as though he's in a good place.



2. Via dumblr bumblr tumblr, a meditation on language and inclusion from what I misread as "gauchesister" (it's "gauchesinister"). Largely because I was thinking about how the meaning of the word "swipe" has changed within my lifetime. A taste:

   Changing language has an impact: using only first names or only family names, gender-neutral pronouns, or even just Ms as a title, can tease out fascinating reactions. Douglas Hofstadter’s Person Paper (an old favourite, and an exercise in analogy) shows that the extend to which English is gendered is quite disconcerting when revealed.

3. Not a surprise.



4. In memoriam:  Selma Al-Radi, archaelogist and restorer.

• Lilith Fair having problems. (Video, not captioned. 15 seconds of CBC News promo.  Gist:  The economy.  The ticket prices.  The marquee names not having recent hits.  The younger acts alienating the older audience.)
• "The real 'R' word is 'Respect'."  Dave's organization does the Toronto Pride Parade.
• Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast remembers a Mets game from '86, reminding me that since the days of Dennis Eckersley, our closers have largely worked for the opposing team.
• No Fourth of July is complete without Jimi Hendrix's rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner."

1. Canadian artist, iconic women, poetry. (Ignore the comments.)



2. The language lab that is New York.



3. Meditation on money and counterfeiture.



4. I just bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood. Damn, that hurts.

marina

trascendenza

I honestly can't think of any language I've ever heard that I thought sounded ugly. I just love all the uniquenesses of sound out there, the incredible amount of variations in how we can use our tongues and teeth and lips to create meaning.

The reason I feel queasy is that using those words, in that way, is an act that relies on underlying concepts that are terrible. It relies on the idea that gay people are gross and weird, that women are and ought to be weak and hurtable, and that rape is not a serious enough crime for you to shudder at the mention of it, although Lord knows when a woman actually uses the word “rape” to describe her own experience you will start finding reasons why she shouldn’t be allowed to do that because, you know, It Is A Serious Crime And Let’s Not Trivialize It and all that. The words don’t mean anything unless you’ve got that structure of thought underlying them; if this weren’t true, people could just pick up the word “gay” from a “that’s so gay” statement and replace it with any given word in the English language, to the same effect. Yet I cannot start randomly going “that’s so coriander” if I want you to know what I mean. The reason people work to limit women’s ability to use the word “rape,” the reason that people work to defend the ability of guys to use it in non-rape contexts, and the reason that these are frequently the same people, is that words have power, and give their users power. Naming something is a way of asserting that you have the ability to define it. So, yes: your language matters. It makes sense to fight about bad language, because language is one of the most fundamental ways we use our power.

• In New York's Chinese communities, Cantonese is fading and Mandarin is becoming the spoken language.

  Immigration reform in 1965 opened the door to a huge influx of Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong, and Cantonese became the dominant tongue. But since the 1990s, the vast majority of new Chinese immigrants have come from mainland China, especially Fujian Province, and tend to speak Mandarin along with their regional dialects.

• Echidne of the Snakes pokes at The Kanazawa Question. (Quote is from Part III.)

  It is hard to avoid the feeling that Satoshi Kanazawa really doesn't like women very much. Just try reading through his blog posts on Psychology Today without getting that feeling. Then try to think of reasons why Psychology Today lets him post without even comments.

• Pros and cons of running barefoot.