One of the comments below prompted the thought that this is a pretty good name for the notion, currently keeping many a liberal heart pumping, that if only the right set of buzzwords, metaphors, and slogans can be assembled, the scales will fall from the eyes of the masses and they’ll realize they’ve agreed with […]

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Since I mentioned Geoff Nunberg’s book Talking Right the other day, I noticed a weird amount of bloggy buzzing about a recent post in which Nunberg makes the slightly weird claim that the object-participle string of epithets trope (as in his subtitle, “How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-reading, […]

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Like Feministe, I’ve always found it a little odd to read nominal progressives in the blogosphere offering attacks like… well, I’ll just quote: Jeff Goldstein is a paste-eating ‘tard. Ann Coulter is an anorexic cunt with an Adam’s apple. Hey Michelle Malkin, me love you long time! Something else I’ve noticed, that may explain what’s […]

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So, this Chronicle of Higher Ed piece by Michael Kimmel on “guy lit” started off as a promising deflation of that curious genre of fiction—think High Fidelity or Indecision—populated by 30-something slacker manchildren who have bundles of witticisms where a personality is supposed to be. Or, rather, have nothing but personality—personas without persons behind them. […]

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Kieran Healy takes the piss out of the BBC for mixing up “flout” and “flaunt.” My favorite instance of this was an NPR event hosted by Ken Andersen with Doug Rushkoff and some other panelists whose identity I’ve since forgotten, at which the program enthusiastically promised that the discussants would “flaunt conventional wisdom.” Call it […]

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According to this glossary of Shakespearean terms, a malkin (it’s used in

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Courtesy of PowerLine: In fact, the MSM was so busy pointing its finger at President Bush that it largely missed the enormity of the federal relief effort. Update: Aww, someone else must have pointed it out; they’ve now changed it.

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So, if you’d asked me earlier today what speak and talk mean (in their verb forms), I probably would’ve said that, barring idiomatic constructions (you can talk someone into doing something, but not speak them into it) they’re pretty much exact synonyms. Or at any rate, I would’ve been hard pressed to articulate any difference […]

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I have vague memories of seeing a story sometime in the past 6 months or so about a search technology that picks up and analyzes genetic materials from stray cells as people walk through it, without ever physically touching the person. Does anyone know what I’m talking about? I’d be grateful if anyone else remembers […]

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As long as I’m taking shots at the National Review crowd, let me say that this attack by Armando at Daily Kos on one of their guys seems misplaced. NR‘s Ed Whelan wants to argue that the Constituion is “neutral” vis a vis abortion—by which he means that it leaves it to the states to […]

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