Herb Roasted Chicken For Dinner

Tucson Weather Today

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I've been diddling with a poem idea that won't leave me alone. It begins:

The ubiquitous horde of artistic folk
who dwell in the town of Drivelville
applaud each launch
of peer-lauded spew
to snare their fair share of attention.

Dah, dah, dah, dah, da Dah . . .

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There is an interesting list offered on Arnold Zwicky's blog. It is, as Zwicky puts it, a partial inventory of postings on language rage, language peeving, word aversion, and word attraction on Language Log and this blog.

A short example is:

No free speech for spam rage

USA Today reports that when Charles Booher got mad at a Canadian company that spammed him, and threatened to shoot or torture them and send them anthrax unless they removed him from an e-mail list, Federal agents turned up at his home and arrested him. He's looking at five years in jail and a fine of a quarter of a million dollars.

The entire list is HERE.

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I read that it is insensitive to refer to another person as being an 'idiot' or 'lamebrain' or a 'retard' and that the proper and acceptable appellation for those afflicted with LD (learning disabilities) is 'neurologically different.'

If, unlike me, that subject interests you, then you might like to read some thoughts about LD in a short piece titled “Things not to say to LD people (or their parents)”at THIS LINK.

Or, if you are a writer or writer wannabe, you might like to read a Fictionaut article written by an adult with neurological differences...

Marty Castleberg

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Last Sunday I wrapped up my TV News stint by watching Meet The Press wherein Bob Schieffer hosted a discussion with four authors: Condoleeza Rice, Michael Lewis, Walter Isaacson, and Kathryn Stocket.

Whether or not I learned anything from the group is questionable, but I did enjoy the half-hour.

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I saw a YouTube video titled: disproving intelligent design with a mouse trap. Of course, there have been creationists who have used a mousetrap to prove intelligent design. Now, the mousetrap is being used to disprove it.

Disproving Intelligent Design with a mousetrap.

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Evolution is the non-random survival of randomly-produced variations.
--Something Surprising blog

Coming soon . . . Some Better Stuff

Tucson Weather Today

I woke up rather early this morning. The clock indicated the time as being 4:25. As soon as I had swung my feet over the side of the bed and turned on my bedside lamp, Eva came trotting in, her tail moving at a rapid rate and her head swinging to and fro in time with her tail. She's a good little puppy. Well... she's not a puppy anymore, and she's not so little either. But she's certainly a good canine companion.

. . .

In the 'comments' after a Language Log discussion regarding a passage in the newly published autobiography of Mark Twain on spelling, I read the following:

I share both Twain's gift for spelling and his disdain of it. It is trivially easy for me to spell words correctly because I find that if they are spelled any other way they "look wrong." I can't explain it better than that, but it's definitely a visual experience for me. If I am unable to say verbally how to spell something, all I need do is write down both the spellings that seem reasonable when I am thinking of the letters as sounds, creating images to compare. One of them will "look wrong," and if the other does not, then I have my correct spelling.

Now that's exactly how I have always determined the correct spelling of a troublesome word. When I 'see' the two words together in print, I can almost always recognize the one that is spelled correctly.

Never thought about that before.

By the way, I sometimes read the entire 'comments' section after a particularly intriguing Language Log posting -- they are often more interesting and more enlightening than the original post itself.

Language Log was where I first read about the "schwa" --
Imagine that: a seventy-one year old man who had never heard of that word.

schwa: the sound "uh." For example, the vowel sound heard at the beginning of the word alone;
A short indeterminate vowel, like that at the end of "sofa". By far the commonest vowel sound in English.

Isn't that interesting?

. . .

Another new word:
execrable
(EKS uh kruh buhl)
utterly detestable; abominable; abhorrent.
deplorable: of very poor quality or condition

I'm pretty sure this is a word I will avoid using. Of course it's a perfectly good word, but I just don't like the sound of it.


And yet another word I just learned today is apophasis, but I am not sure that I will be able to remember it.

apophasis
(uh POPH uh suhs)
mentioning something by saying it will not be mentioned
The phrases "not to mention her atrocious behavior" is an apophasis.

. . .

Christopher Hitchens writing in Slate says that Julian Assange The WikiLeaks founder is an unscrupulous megalomaniac with a political agenda.

This WikiLeaks thing is one of those seemingly significant events currently 'making history' of which I have no clear cut opinion. In my mind I am torn between a usually definite stance of 'all information should be available to everyone' and the belief that 'in time of war, full disclosure can be harmful.'

. . .

I have again reworked my novel's first revision of Chapter 1, heeding the sound advice from other writers. I deleted most of the reportedly excessive adjectives and adverbs. I removed some of the reportedly flowery references, "carven caves, etc." The result is disappointing. While I can see the obvious compositional improvement (more publishable) the new version seems flat and 'dull as dishwater.'

Perhaps instead of a revision, Chapter 1 needs a complete rewrite.

I'll have to give that some thought.

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"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune."
--Noam Chomsky

Blog? What's In A Name?

Have I described lately what this 'blog' of mine is meant to be? Well... what 'my blog' is, is: a repository for items that have caught my attention and that I feel it appropriate to reiterate that particular item herein. Or some thought or idea of my own is a subject I feel is interesting enough upon which to offer my own individual comments. And that's all it is.


For example: Why is precise language so important in The Law? Well, I read at Language Log the following:

Virginia law on passing a stopped school bus has been clear for 40 years. Here -- read it yourself: "A person is guilty of reckless driving who fails to stop, when approaching from any direction, any school bus which is stopped on any highway, private road or school driveway for the purpose of taking on or discharging children." Yes, drivers must stop a school bus which is, er, stopped. Wait. Is something missing there? Indeed. The preposition "at" was deleted in 1970 when the law was amended, the statute's history shows. And a man who zipped past a school bus, while it was picking up children with its lights flashing and stop sign extended, was found not guilty recently by a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge. "He can only be guilty if he failed to stop any school bus," Judge Marcus D. Williams said at the end of the brief trial of John G. Mendez, 45, of Woodbridge. "And there's no evidence he did."

Again, here is the link to this most interesting article.

. . .

A man that I respect who sometimes goes by the name 'Steve Harris' within an opinion piece, recently wrote: "Literacy sharpens the mind." I thought about that for a while. And I wonder if the statement is true.

If one defines literacy as simply 'the ability to read and write' as most dictionaries do, then I would question the statement. After all, a great many students graduate from high school with the basic ability to read and write, but they rarely do so. Their literacy has most probably not sharpened their minds.

But then I asked myself, 'What is the fullest meaning of the word, literacy?" And after a diligent search, I found:

"Literacy involves the integration of listening, speaking, reading, writing and critical thinking; it incorporates numeracy. It includes the cultural knowledge that enables the speaker, writer or reader to recognise and use language appropriate to different social situations. For an advanced technological society such as Australia, the goal is an active literacy which allows people to use language to enhance their capacity to think, create and question, in order to participate effectively in society.

Source: Australian Council for Adult Literacy, 1991.

Using that definition, then I would certainly agree with, and admire Steve's clear, direct, and deeply profound statement.

. . .

Ann Patchett said: "The way I write, I have a novel in my head for a long time that I think about, and in those months it is so beautiful, so incredibly profound . ... The novel in my imagination travels with me like a small lavender moth making loopy circles around my head." She said: "As soon as I start to put it on the page I kill it. It always breaks my heart. For me, the greatest challenge is to stick with the book I'm writing when what I want to do is hit the delete button."

That comes pretty close to describing my own often admitted dilemma.

. . .

On the Celcius temperature scale, water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100 degrees. That seems to me a most sensible method to express graduations of temperature. So, why then do we in the United States still cling to the more complex Fahrenheit scale, wherein water freezes at 32 degrees above zero and water boils at 212 degrees?

Outer ring is Fahrenheit, inner rink is Celcius

I could look up the reason, but I think that I prefer to remain in the dark on that subject.

. . .

New word --

numinous (NOO muh nuhs)
Numinous is from the Classical Latin numen and is an English adjective describing the power or presence of a divinity.

Someone defined it further, saying: It may be viewed as "the intense feeling of unknowingly knowing that there is something which cannot be seen." This "knowing" can "befall" or overcome a person at any time and in any place -- in a cathedral; next to a silent stream; on a lonely road; early in the morning or in the face of a beautiful sunset. Similarly, unpleasant or frightening scenes or experiences can lead to a sense of an unseen presence of ghosts, evil spirits or a general sense of the presence of evil. Visions or hallucinations of god, gods, the devil or devils can also happen.

One might say that numinous is a synonym for delusional.

Yes? No?

. . .

I can't remember whether or not I previously posted the link to my Facebook photo album featuring pictures of the dogs in my life. It's fairly recent and so is not yet filled, but it has a few captioned pictures. It's what I call my Eva Photo Album.

. . .

And, yes I am still working, every day, on revising my NaNoWriMo novel.

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Day 15 of NaNoWriMo

The halfway point. Day 15. I should have at the very least 25,000 words accumulated. But as of this morning I have only 17,950 words written for my November novel. Almost 8,000 words in arrears. Good Grief! Only 770 words by the end of last night, Day 15.

It's posted at:

http://www.genechambers.com/day-15.htm

. . .

I read an article in which scientists are proposing a one-way trip to Mars. Yep. As unbelievable as such a proposal would seem, it's true. You can read the article for yourself.

Here is the link: Click here.

. . .

The Poetry Collection website has some poems written by Marianne Moore. You might like them.

Marianne Moore (1887 - 1972)

(or you might not like them)

Here is an example:

The Past Is The Present
Written by Marianne Moore

If external action is effete
and rhyme is outmoded,
I shall revert to you,
Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class
the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse
He said - and I think I repeat his exact words -
"Hebrew poetry is prose
with a sort of heightened consciousness." Ecstasy affords
the occasion and expediency determines the form.

I have read all the poems presented on the above-linked web page and I do not understand any of them. The subjects and objects Marianne Moore writes about somehow fail to come to life in my imagination upon reading her words. The poems, in my opinion, are indecipherable... but still I read the words, mystified and yet strangely captivated.

Go figure.

. . .

I haven't heard (read) anything from my friend Anthony for the last few days. Hope he's okay.

. . .

Language Log is one of my favorite blogs, it being produced by Geoffrey Pullum and a few other knowledgeable linguists. In today's entry I read some interesting thoughts filed under Prescriptivist Poppycock, an article regarding books that give advice for writers. Below is the first paragraph:

"The problem with people who want to impose their linguistic tastes on others," says David Crystal, "is that they never do so consistently." I'm not so sure I agree that's the problem. Consistency isn't quite enough to excuse grammar fascism. I'd say the problem with people who want to impose their linguistic tastes on others by writing books on how to write is that they are so bad at it: though often they are good enough at writing (I have never said that E. B. White or George Orwell couldn't write), they actually don't know how they do what they do, and they are clueless about the grammar of the language in which they do it, and they offer recommendations on how you should write that are unfollowed, unfollowable, or utterly insane."

Professor Pullum rarely pulls his punches.

Maybe that's why I like his articles so much.

. . .

This NaNoWriMo thing seems to be having an unexpectedly positive effect on me. Even though I have lagged seriously behind in my word count, I have a good feeling about the end product, that being a full length novel when I finish, on time or not, for which I can then revise (and tinker, tinker, tinker with) to my heart's content. Most of the scenes I've written have potential. They will have to be connected together and additional scenes will have to be produced to enhance them.

Anyway, I think it will be beneficial to my eventual sense of well-being at that time when I finish the first draft of my novel.

What do I have to lose?

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"Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads."
--Marianne Moore