The Oxford Comma, etc.

Jeff Weintraub asks, "Why it is vitally necessary to prevent the extinction of the final serial comma?"

I always insert the final serial comma. As do most Americans. It just makes more sense to me.

Jeff Weintraub is a social & political theorist, political sociologist, and democratic socialist who currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. (Also an Affiliated Professor with the University of Haifa in Israel & an opponent of academic blacklists.) And, more importantly, he is a blogspot blogger, like me.

(ha ha)

. . .

"The Dead Sea Scrolls will soon be available online!" screams an ecstatic Glen Beck in an exciting, seemingly portentous Fox News announcement.

To the TV screen I say, "So what?" What is the specific significance of that?"

Then comes a deluge of fatuous evangelical nonsense. So I switched over to CNN. For about five minutes; then I turned off the TV and went into the game room and climbed onto the stationary bike and worked out for a while.

I'm not a complete dummy.

. . .

A woman advertised in church that she was seeking a white, female, Christian, roommate and was then notified that she was breaking the law by putting this in a print ad -- this was broadcast on Fox News, on Kelly's Law, 10/25/2010 -- here is the link in case anyone reading this is even remotely interested.

. . .

Below is an outdoor Halloween decoration I observed and snapped during one of my late Autumn daily walks in East Tucson.

Happy Halloween

. . .

On my desk beside my computer monitor sits a small bowl of snacks, raisins, mixed nuts, and dried tropical fruits. Healthy? Who knows? Darned good tasting, though.

Mixed Nuts, Raisins, & Tropical Mix Dried Fruit

. . .

The Washington Post headline announces: The tea party warns of a New Elite. They're right.

Intriguing.

Exactly who is this New Elite? Am I one of them, by some chance? I suppose I should mosey on over there and have me a look-see.

__________

I stumbled across a glossary, a useful list of botanical/medical words that could prove useful to a writer.

One word I learned from browsing the list was, for example:

Gleet: A urethral discharge, either of mucus or pus; commonly seen in the chronic form of gonorrheal urethritis.


This word might be a valuable addition to my vocabulary, eventually. One never can tell.

. . .

I recently discovered a delicious snack -- just what a guy with an addictive personality like mine needs.

Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips

In a compostable bag

Mmmmmmmm... Good!

Bet you can't eat just one.

. . .

Yesterday morning while listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, I read an interesting piece by Tim O'Brien in the Atlantic titled Telling Tales. Here is a brief excerpt:

The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination. To vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or sequences of events, is the hard-lifting, heavy-duty, day-by-day, unending labor of a fiction writer.

The link is:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/08/telling-tails/7533/

This is an informative article by the author of "What They Carried" and could be of much value to anyone who wishes to improve his (or her, of course) chances of writing and publishing fiction.

. . .

Do Christians really believe that God watches over and protects those who believe in him? Think about it. Watch the following short YouTube video, then think some more about it. Just use you head, and simply think about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m12mZiiaWuw&feature=player_embedded

. . .

This morning I read the following rather startling statement: Because Genghis Khan fathered so many children over such a huge expanse of land, a few years ago a team of geneticists did a DNA study and concluded that about 16 million men alive today are descendants of Genghis Khan — about half a percent of the male population.

Genghis Khan

Well. I must say that I find that to be beyond the ken of my belief. What kind of 'study' could produce such a conclusion? Were each one of those 16,000,000 individual men, these descendants, given a personal DNA test? If not, then the results are probably based on what is termed educated guesswork. No, I have little or no faith in such studies.