Category: Words

Financial websites get some great headlines sometimes. A few years back the now-defunct Green magazine (URL now hosting John Deere enthusiasts) had one titled “Young Dumb and Full of QCOM.” But today’s Motley Fool article about the Glenmorangie distillery is priceless: Scotch: Not Just For Breakfast Anymore.

There’s also a more serious article about outsourcing and economic risk and the elections and although it’s OK it’s not great. Outsourcing isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s bad if you assume that there is a static amount of wealth in the world, and that every job created in India takes one away from an American. But the fact is, that’s just not true. Outsourcing will be difficult, and it will result in the loss of jobs in America. But it will also lead to the most efficient allocation of resources. Cost pressure is pressure to outsource. Combine that with a socially generated pressure to outsource slowly and to increase standards of living and worker and environmental protection in the target countries, and you’ll get a higher standard of living for the world, not just for Americans.

Nobody I know is against globalization. Not really. They might say it, but the fact is they all want an iPod and a well-made inexpensive car and a bottle of Shiraz from Australia and Belgian chocolates and Chilean out-of-season strawberries. Who doesn’t? Those are nice things. They are globalization.

Gelwan at Follow Me Here posts a link to Kos quoting an important historical figure about “the big lie” (a term we’ve seen a lot of in relation to the Swift Boat Vets ad, a perfect example of the Bush team’s baldfaced style), and challenges us to guess who it is. As a statement, it could definitely describe our current election, except that it talks about “the masses” and “nations” in ways that place it firmly in the mid-to-early 20th century.

It sounds a little like Orwell, who’s always been one to go on about lies and truth (Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia….), but it’s too contemptuous of the “common people.” I thought Mencken, because he’s always been snide about the little guy, but it turned out to be Hitler.

It’s not clear what putative lies and liars are referred to in that passage, but I can tell you this: once HItler comes into it, all useful debate has ceased. So, best to look at that statement as long as you can before thinking about who said it, because once you start in on what’s implied by the choice of source material, you’re lost in rhetoric and noise.

I’ve seen this before, and you may have too, but it’s brilliant: Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness. Not merely bad docs, but genuinely weird docs.

On the subject of strange or hilarious commercial speech (Honestly there’s a tangential connection here) I want to share Fafblog’s review of the Dunkin’ Donuts MooLatte, a beverage whose name Slate derided as sounding too much like the word “mulatto.”

(As readers ought to know, but may not, “mulatto” is considered somewhat disrespectful, (although not as bad as other racial slurs, which I will not even allude to) and is therefore deprecated in favor of the more accurate biracial or multiracial (I don’t know if you can use hyphens in there or not, but I suspect that’s a grammar, rather than sensitivity, issue. I think multi-ethnic gets the hyphen, though.))

Anyway, Fafblog says:

Fafblog… looks forward to the day when all ethnically-dubious desserts are judged by the tastiness of their character an not by the way they seem to judge the color of people’s skin. We can only hope this comes in time to exhonerate such fallen treats as the Jewlato, the Hispana Split, an the Wopsicle.

(I hope that’s funny.)

First, Observer.com notes that the NYT and the Boston Globe (because they are the same company) have, as an option in their XMS online expense reporting tool, a line for money spent on “Gunmen,” right after “Facilitators” and before “Internet.” Apparently they’re removing that, presumably replacing it with “Bodyguards.” My company uses XMS as well, but we don’t get those options in our expense list. Hotel, Internet, Meals, Travel… that’s about it, really. I guess there’s “Other” but you really have to explain that one. Putting in “I had to hire a bodyguard to protect me from the software pirates” just wouldn’t cut it. Still, I think I’d look cool surrounded by a dark-suited entourage.

Brilliant article in Slate about racism, which you should just read.

Apparently, innovative punishments for children are considered a “bizarre practice.” I wasn’t smacked around as a child, but I got spanked more than once, and as I recall, I deserved the heck out of it. Putting a drop or two of hot sauce on the tongue doesn’t seem to be that bad a punishment for, say, swearing. Probably better for them than soap. I’d be afraid of turning them into picky eaters, though, which in my opinion is far worse than sassing.

Dana, my friend and confidant, a Bowlie member and knower of much about Belle and Sebastian (whom I quoted previously), explains just what on earth that song is about:

There’s a lot of disagreement about what an arab strap is. As far as I can figure from what I’ve read, the etymology comes from restraining devices used on horses (Arabian horses, thus the name) during mating; the original Arab Strap was probably something like a cock ring. As such, there are cock rings out there called Arab Straps, but since there’s all this confusion about what one is, there are also strap-on dildos out there referred to as Arab Straps.

The song “The Boy With The Arab Strap” might be interpreted as being about a guy with some interesting taste in sex toys, but it’s also been interpreted as a dis on the singer of the band Arab Strap, which used to be on the same record label as Belle and Sebastian. I don’t know much about the rivalry, but you could probably find more info about it online.

We all know you’re soft cause we’ve all seen you dancing.
We all know you’re hard cause we’ve all seen you drinking
from noon until noon again
to the boy with the filthy laugh
the boy with the Arab Strap.

I’m on vacation. I’m lost without a task list. I’m lost in a foreign city. It’s so California I can barely comprehend what people are saying.

Note on the expansion of slang into acceptable usage into respectable journalism: a recent NYT article about the post-release success of the movie “The Big Lebowski” used the word grok without explanation in a non-computer-related sense.

… A must read for chick lit fans, subscribers to US Weekly, and anyone with an ounce of curiosity about Hollywood. Wow, I’ll be sure to miss that one.

On this side of the river, there’s not much going on conventionwise. Bookdwarf went to see Al Franken talk, and spotted the Clinton ladies at Noir, and shook hands with Madeline Allbright. But the traffic hasn’t been bad– apparently everyone who could just got out of town.

The convention does provide corroborating evidence for an idea suggested by a New Yorker profile several months ago: Barack Obama is the next great hope for this country. That, my friend, is a speech. Plus, what a name!

What is it with advice columns this week? They seem to have started giving joke advice. Dan Savage, of course, is not known for being sincere, but telling someone “use staples to keep condoms on” is probably the most sarcastic piece of advice he’s ever given. But even the normally earnest New York Times Ethicist
column is getting weird:

I work in the United States Senate. Recently we had to evacuate the building, and some senators were pushing their way past others. Is it all right for an elected representative to supersede others in exiting the building?
Anonymous, Washington

As I misconstrue the customs of our great deliberative body, senators are to proceed in order of seniority when fleeing danger and trampling their slow-footed constituents before them.