Word Salad's topics - tribe.net

WordSalad elsewhere, and beyond.....

2008-05-09T14:07:29Z

Within mine own website, WordSalad has a wiki: http://www.xradiograph.com/wrottings/WordSalad/WordSalad

It's a part of the larger text-devoted wiki http://www.xradiograph.com/wrottings/

It's currently locked-down for editing by yours truly, but I'm looking into authenticating others. If you're interested in contributing to WordSalad, drop me a line!

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

a pox on potter( no spoilers)

2008-05-09T14:06:57Z

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/07/harry_potters_big_con_is_the_p.html

It is time to make a stand against Harry Potter. A futile stand, no death or glory involved: just popping my head over the trenches so it can be mowed off by the vast, unstoppable juggernaut of popular acclaim before I have begun to open my mouth.

Firstly: if you're going to buy her book, don't buy it for half price at a supermarket. As an example of a world gone mad, you couldn't do much better than this: a writer whose sales have actually fulfilled a publisher's wildest dreams is indirectly responsible for large-scale misery among independent bookstores. This is not JK Rowling's fault. It's a consequence of the deregulation of the book market.

Tesco, say, sells the new Potter for about the same price as two tins of beans, in the hope that the mug(gle)s who do so will be convinced that everything in the shop must be marvellous value. Meanwhile, Mrs Betty Cardigan who runs the Lovely Bookshop Round the Corner has to grit her teeth and lose money every time she sells a copy if she is to compete, without being able to sell toilet paper or sushi to make up the difference. If you must buy the book, go to Mrs Cardigan's and, even if it is at a discount, insist on paying full price.

But whether you should buy the book at all is another matter. For I have come, with some regret, to this conclusion: their style is toxic. And this is Rowling's fault. I know that I am anticipating what the style of the latest book will be in advance of actually seeing it, but really, I don't think I'm going out on a limb here. Of course, if she has turned into a first-class writer with her forthcoming Potter book, I will happily, no, joyously, eat my words.

But until then, we have to swallow hers. And for all that she is gifted enough in devising popular scenarios, the words on the page are flat. I think it was Verlaine who said that he could never write a novel because he would have to write, at some point, something like "the count walked into the drawing-room" - not a scruple that can have bothered JK Rowling, who is happy enough writing the most pedestrian descriptive prose.

Here, from page 324 of The Order of the Phoenix, to give you a typical example, are six consecutive descriptions of the way people speak. "...said Snape maliciously," "... said Harry furiously", " ... he said glumly", "... said Hermione severely", "... said Ron indignantly", " ... said Hermione loftily". Do I need to explain why that is such second-rate writing?

If I do, then that means you're one of the many adults who don't have a problem with the retreat into infantilism that your willing immersion in the Potter books represents. It doesn't make you a bad or silly person. But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is, then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English language are largely lost.

This is the kind of prose that reasonably intelligent nine-year-olds consider pretty hot stuff, if they're producing it themselves; for a highly-educated woman like Rowling to knock out the same kind of material is, shall we say, somewhat disappointing.

Children exposed to this kind of writing aren't learning anything new about words, or being stretched in any way; as Harold Bloom said, they're not going to be inspired to go off and read the Alice books, or any other enduring classic.

People go hoopla because they're delighted that Rowling has got children reading books - big, fat books without pictures at that. Can't argue with that: and maybe they will learn something about sheer reading stamina in the process. But it's all too easy.

The popular writer whose style is most similar is, it suddenly occurs to me, Jeffrey Archer (all those dead adverbs). All that paper, all those trees felled, all those words ... surely Rowling could have chosen some better ones, or put them together in a more exciting way?

She has, in her grasp, the power to galvanise minds instead of reeling out cliché after cliché. Will The Deathly Hallows do this? I hope so. But I fear not.

posted in Word Salad - 4 replies

what? (I'm lost)

2008-04-15T12:54:16Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcatQSyRK6c

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

I "LOVE" this site

2008-02-08T19:15:19Z

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

this town needs an enema

2007-07-26T17:31:06Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004725.html

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

tornado alley

2007-07-24T18:47:44Z

http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/index.htm

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expletive deleted

2007-06-30T00:11:38Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_expletives

posted in Word Salad - 26 replies

elsewhere

2007-06-05T17:47:45Z

http://www.xradiograph.com/wrottings/WordSalad

it all started here.

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

sequencer

2007-06-02T03:17:12Z

http://weblogs.csmonitor.com/verbal_energy/2007/05/index.html#entry-33940428

This whole question was the focus of the Tip of the Week from the newsletter Copy Editor a couple of weeks ago. A reader had written in: "I deal with a lot of non-native English speakers, and a question frequently arises as to what order to use for a string of adjectives or adverbs. We (editors) know to say '21 large green tables' but why not 'green large 21 tables'? or '21 green large tables'? Is there a rule for this?" Wendalyn Nichols, editor of Copy Editor, responded, "There is indeed a standard order for adjectives, and you’ll find it described in dictionaries and textbooks for learners of English as a second language."

Ms. Nichols reproduced a version of a chart showing a hierarchy of modifiers: determiner, quality, size, age, color, origin, material. She gives some examples: a colorful new silk scarf; that silver Japanese car. I've just been looking over a couple of other such charts, and I find that the hierarchy they list goes like this:

Opinion :: size :: age :: shape :: color :: origin :: material :: purpose.

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

McPressure on the McDictionary

2007-05-27T10:55:24Z

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/a-redefining-moment-for-mcdonalds/

McDonald’s has opened a campaign in Britain to pressure the Oxford English Dictionary to redefine “McJobs” in a more positive light.

The currently published definition — “an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector” — is “out of date, out of touch with reality and most importantly, it is insulting to those talented, committed, hard-working people who serve the public every day,” a company executive, David Fairhurst, was quoted in The Financial Times as saying. (His title at the company, evidently, is “chief people officer,” which hasn’t made it into the O.E.D. yet.)

McDonalds tried this kind of campaign once before, against Merriam Webster in 2003, without success.

The word itself can be traced all the way back to a 1986 article in the Washington Post, and reached an even wider audience through Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel “Generation X.”

The Telegraph discerned another motive besides definitional accuracy in “linking indignation with brand promotion.” The campaign shapes up as an “opportunity to win public sympathy and support, and show they are good employers at the same time,” a marketing expert said.

A recent salvo in the campaign, in fact, adds yet another a new word to the McLexicon: “McProspects – over half of our executive team started in our restaurants. Not bad for a McJob.”

Stephen Smoliar of The Rehearsal Studio pointed out that the strategy targeting the dictionary folks may be exactly backwards:

People do not take the O.E.D. definition for “McJob” as the meaning of the word because the O.E.D. has sanctioned it; the O.E.D. published the definition because that is consistent with how people are using the word. If McDonald’s wants that definition changed, they should be paying closer attention to what the English-speaking public thinks about them.

That may be why the company has also started a campaign aimed at public opinion, including a petition that is being circulated in 40 British cities for signatures, the Telegraph reported. It also commissioned a survey of 1,000 people, two-thirds of whom said they agreed that the definition was “outdated.” Slightly fewer people said that they would be insulted if the word was applied to them.

A London Times writer joked that the company may actually end up adding McWords to the dictionary like “McPedant, McKilljoy and McSense-of-humour-failure.”

All in good fun, but most news articles on the subject have thankfully steered clear of such McWordplay, which is better suited for the comments of blog posts such as this one. Ladies and gentlemen, step up to the plate, point to the bleachers like Babe Ruth, and hit this McMeatball out of the park.

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

you can't even count on Latin for consistency these days

2007-04-27T00:52:09Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004416.html

posted in Word Salad - 3 replies

Deconstruction & Indeterminacy

2007-03-18T17:24:20Z

AND THE LAW: http://volokh.com/posts/1173846427.shtml

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

Simlish & Internationization

2007-03-12T17:23:41Z

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000813.html

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

be vewwy quiet; I'm hunting adverbs!

2007-03-06T21:56:50Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004271.html

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

alpha order

2007-03-03T06:58:02Z

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/070302.html

Dear Cecil:

I saw this as a joke somewhere, but it got me wondering what the answer was. Why is the alphabet in that order? Who decided A was the first letter, B was the second, and so on? — Eric S., via e-mail

Cecil replies:

You missed the point of the joke, sport. Let's take it from the top: Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order? Ignoring the smart-ass element, we may restate this as: Why is the alphabet in any (never mind some particular) prescribed order? Obvious (to me) answer: to make it easier for kids to memorize. It's working, too. Notwithstanding its inscrutable origins, ABC order as we know it now has survived more or less intact for upwards of 3,000 years.

The alphabet used in English, and with some variations in most other European languages, comes from Semitic speakers who adapted it from Egyptian hieroglyphics about 4,000 years ago. The rudiments of modern alphabetic order first appeared about 600 years later in Syria. With minor changes in letter order at each step, the alphabet passed from the Semites (including the Canaanites, Hebrews, and Phoenicians) to the Greeks to the Etruscans to the forebears of the Romans to us. As for the identity of the sage who first ordered it, and why that order, your guess is as good as mine.

There's no obvious reason ABC is better than any other order. The dominant script of Ethiopia is related to our alphabet but uses a different order, likewise rooted in antiquity, based partly on letter shape. The more closely related Arabic script descends from an early alphabet having the same basic order as ours, but the letters have been partially rearranged according to shape and sound. The letters in the Irish writing system ogham, some of which were named after trees, began B, L, F. The Germanic runic script known as futhark is named after its first six letters ("th" represents one of them).

The roots of ABC order are found in the cuneiform script of Ugaritic, the Semitic language of an ancient city in Syria. The letter shapes of this script aren't obviously related to our alphabet's direct ancestors, but the alphabetic order from a 14th-century BC inscription is virtually identical to later Hebrew and Phoenician letter lists, and the letter names are related.

A Greek borrowed the 22 Phoenician letters around 800 BC — I say "a Greek" because idiosyncratic errors suggest one absentminded genius botched the job. Among other mistakes, he got several sibilant letters mixed up, and by the time things calmed down S and Z were the wrong shape and S was out of order. The same joker, or one who followed closely, gave exclusively vowel sounds to four letters theretofore primarily consonantal: ancestors of A, E, I, and O. Later Greeks added letters to the end, two of which interest us: chi, ancestral X, which over time acquired our modern "ks" sound; and upsilon, ancestral U, which was probably a vowel variant of the semivowel wau, since dropped from the Greek alphabet but ancestral to F.

The Etruscans borrowed the Greek alphabet about 700 BC. They retained the letter order but dispensed with the Semitic-derived letter names, which is why we say "ay, bee," not "alpha, beta." (British zed, from zeta, is a holdout.)

Latin borrowed the Etruscan alphabet about 600 BC. The Etruscans had no G sound and thus no corresponding letter, so eventually Latin G evolved from C — fittingly, because Etruscan C (pronounced "k") had come from the Greek gamma (pronounced "g" as in, well, gamma). Rather than sitting next to its sib, G took slot seven, replacing underutilized Z. Centuries later Z came back to transliterate Greek zeta and Y was introduced to represent upsilon. As newbies, Y and Z had to sit in the back.

The modern English alphabet is the 23-letter Latin assortment with three additions hastened by the invention of movable type. W starts showing up in English letter lists in the 16th century, replacing the previous literal double U (or V) that denoted our current W sound. Naturally it was placed next to the then-undifferentiated U/V. The I/J and U/V cleavages came later — though the different shapes had existed for centuries, they weren't considered distinct letters in English until around 1700.

So the roots of ABC order trace back to 14th-century BC Ugaritic. But why that order? Scholars don't know, but that hasn't stopped them from pulling wild guesses out of their urtexts. There's some slight, possibly coincidental correspondence between the meanings of the Semitic names of adjacent letters — for example, the yod-kaph-lamed sequence, meaning "hand, palm, cattle prod." Other explanations involve astrology, Sumerian musical scales, and divine intervention; one knucklehead even proposed that the Phoenicians named and ordered their letters after the days of the month in the Mayan calendar. Damn foolishness, all of it. The point isn't what order the alphabet is in, but that it's in order at all.

—CECIL ADAMS

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

generators

2007-03-02T16:12:29Z

an incomplete exhaustive list

ebay feedback generator:
http://thesurrealist.co.uk/feedback?who=seller&quality=on&speed=on&packing=on&rating=on&maxlen=80&mood=indifferent&vocab=frivolous

posted in Word Salad - 9 replies

mixed messages clothing

2007-01-31T21:44:25Z

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/3Messages

o o o !

Your t-shirt can say one thing, while your sweatshirt says another, and together, they combine to say something entirely different. With a clever choice of words and the flip of a zipper, you can tune your message to suit your mood.

The components are simple and inexpensive: iron-on letters, a t-shirt and a sweatshirt.

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

around the house

2007-01-24T20:08:10Z

http://origin.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_5036511

Woman ordered to remove words from home
It's not about the content of the messages, city commission says, but violations of city codes
By Aaron Kinney, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
Article Last Updated:01/18/2007 08:34:33 AM PST
SAN MATEO — The Community Improvement Commission ordered a Shoreview resident Wednesday to remove cryptic messages written on her home or face as much as $5,000 in fines.

Estrella Benevides, 46, has until Feb. 14 to erase the painted script from her home in the 1800 block of Cottage Grove Avenue, which has been covered with an inscrutable text containing biblical references, conspiracy theories and glimpses into a painful personal history.

The commission ruled that Benevides will be fined $50 for every day following Feb. 14 that her roof, garage and windows remain covered with the messages, up to a limit of $5,000. The commission also imposed an administrative fee of $1,829.

Benevides vowed not to remove the messages, which she believes come from God, and to fight the commission's decision, citing her First Amendment rights to free speech. Commissioners said the problem wasn't constitutional.

"We're not complaining about what you're discussing in your signs," Commissioner Nonie Tremaine told Benevides. "We're discussing the size of your signs."

City codes prevent residents of single-family homes from writing on their roofs or posting signs larger than 6 square feet in size, though informal exceptions are made for Christmas displays.

Benevides' home is almost completely blanketed in words, which combine to warn in part of a worldwide conspiracy that employs mind-control to oppress the poor. Benevides began painting the messages on her home sometime in 2005.

In a letter she submitted to the commission, Benevides wrote that the government is persecuting her because she "discovered that they are using witchcraft and technology against the people who are not aware of and who are not part of this mafia group."

Benevides told the commission that she writes the messages on her home as a plea for help in her attempt to regain custody of her 4-year-old son, who lives in Hayward with his father. Benevides lost custody of the child after she began acting erratically in 2005, according to court documents.

Benevides also claims her son has beenabused by both his father and government agents.

"I don't have any other way to tell what these people is doing," said Benevides, who was born in Nicaragua and moved to the U.S. in 1987. She has two other sons, both in their 20s, who also live in the Bay Area.

Robert Muehlbauer, the city's director of neighborhood improvement and housing, said he sympathizes with Benevides' distress, but the Community Improvement Commission was not the right venue for child-custody issues.

Commissioner Charlie Drechsler said Benevides' "ardent and zealous" exercise of her right to free speech was negatively affecting her neighbors.

"I wish you could tell us what you're going to do to rectify these violations," Drechsler said.

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

who wrote that?

2007-01-22T23:52:02Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004076.html

is it translated, or written by a native or non-native speaker? if so, what's their original language? Russian? Castillian? some South-East Asian lanugage?

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

user manuals and engrish

2007-01-10T21:11:21Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004027.html

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

Nov shmoz ka pop?

2007-01-08T03:47:24Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004015.html

According to this website, Nov shmoz ka pop? comes from Gene Ahern's strip The Squirrel Cage:

The protagonist of The Squirrel Cage (which was first seen on Sunday, June 21, 1936) was a little hitchhiker referred to only as "The Little Hitchhiker". He had a long, white beard, wore an enormous tam on his head, and covered his body with a black smock or overcoat (the beard got in the way of knowing for sure)...

The little hitchhiker would get into strange little adventures by standing beside the road, his thumb out, uttering phrases in some incomprehensible language, a few of which were translated but most not. The most frequent of them, "Nov shmoz ka pop?" (never translated), etched itself into the American consciousness to the point where, to this very day, many people still wonder how that silly thing ever got into their heads.

Notary Sojac were the words on a sign that hung on the wall in the Smokey Stover strip (1935-1973). From the Wikipedia page:

Smokey Stover was a comic strip written and drawn by Bill Holman from March 10, 1935 until he retired in 1973. It was distributed through the Chicago Tribune and was the longest lasting of the comic strips of the "screwball comedy" genre.

The strip featured Smokey the firefighter, in his two-wheeled fire truck called "The Foomobile", fire chief Cash U. Nutt, and his wife Cookie, with her question-mark pompadour. Odd bits of philosophy, and recurrent signs carrying bizarre phrases such as "Notary Sojac" and "1506 Nix Nix" were featured in the strip. (Holman described the phrase "Notary Sojac" as Gaelic for "horsecrap" and as Gaelic for "Merry Christmas".)

"Foo" was one of these recurring nonsense words and was taken up by World War II's "Foo Fighters". Foo may have been inspired by the French word for fire, feu, but Holman never gave a straight answer as to the origin.

Nize baby comes from Milt Gross's Gross Exaggerations

"Gross Exaggerations" began as an illustrated column in the New York World. What made it unique, besides Gross' homespun drawing style, was the use of phonetic dialect in the dialogue. The dialect was based on that of Jewish immigrants who were struggling to make themselves understood in a new language.

"Hollo! Hoperator! Hollo! Who's dere by de shvitzbud? I vant Haudabon--hate--vun--ho--fife. Hate! HATE! Vun, two, tree, fur, fife, seex, savan, HATE!"

The column featured the dialogues between stereotypical Jewish mothers conversing out the windows of their tenement. First Floor and Second Floor were the indications of who was speaking, with an occasional interjection from Third Floor. On the Fourth Floor, there's a baby. So not only were the columns about life in New York, they occasionally strayed into what could only be considered Fractured Fairy Tales told to entertain the "nize baby." One might be "Nize ferry-tail from Elledin witt de wanderful lemp", another "from Jack witt de binn stuck."...

Nize Baby was published in book form in 1926 to immediate success.

Banana Oil was another Milt Gross strip, also from the 20s. Gross might be the source of this expression as slang meaning 'nonsense; insincere or insane talk or behaviour' (OED); the strip did appear before the OED's first cite, from Wodehouse in 1927.

Jeep comes from Elzie Crisler Segal's strip Thimble Theatre (first published in 1919), which eventually became Popeye. From the Wikipedia page for Popeye:

Other regular characters in the strip were J. Wellington Wimpy, a moocher and a hamburger lover who would "gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today"; George W. Geezil, a local cobbler who speaks in a heavily affected accent and habitually attempted to murder or wish death upon Wimpy; Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's belligerent and woman-hating father; and Eugene the Jeep, a yellow, vaguely dog-like animal from Africa with magical powers.

According to the OED, the vehicle name jeep comes from "general purpose", "prob. influenced by the name 'Eugene the Jeep', a creature of amazing resource and power, first introduced into the cartoon strip 'Popeye' on 16 March 1936".

Potrzebie comes from Mad magazine. It even has its own Wikipedia page:

Potrzebie is a Polish word popularized by its non sequitur use as a running gag in the early issues of Mad not long after the comic book began in 1952. The word is pronounced "pot-SCHEB-yeh" in Polish and is a declined form of the noun "potrzeba" (which means "need"), but in "English" it was purportedly pronounced "PAH-tur-zee-bee" or "POT-ra-zee-bee." Its Eastern European feel was a perfect fit for the New York Jewish style of the magazine.

Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman spotted the word printed in the Polish language section of a multi-languaged "Instructions for Use" sheet accompanying a bottle of aspirin, and Kurtzman, who was fascinated with unusual words and Yiddishisms, decided it would make an appropriate but meaningless background gag. After cutting the word out of the instruction sheet, he made copies and used rubber cement to paste "Potrzebie" randomly into the middle of Mad satires.

Not yet in the OED.

Mad was also responsible for axolotl (the name of a salamander-like reptile) as a nonsense reference and ferschlugginer (adapted from Yiddish) as a sort of all-purpose modifier of negative affect. Ferschlugginer hasn't made it into the OED yet; axolotl, of course, is there, but without a reference to Mad.

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

lingo

2006-12-27T21:45:04Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003948.html

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

k-street

2006-11-19T17:55:03Z

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_262b.html

Why is there an I Street and a K Street but no J Street in Washington, D.C.?

18-Aug-1989

Dear Cecil:

Why is there an I Street and a K Street but no J Street in Washington, D.C.? At least one other federally spawned burg, Anchorage, Alaska, uses a similar street-naming scheme also lacking J. My daughter claimed the streets were named before the invention of Js, but recanted that theory upon reaching junior high school. --John Beard, Arlington, Virginia

Dear John:

That's what you get for subjecting her to higher education--her first guess was a lot closer to the mark than her second. J is a late addition to the alphabet, having initially been introduced as an alternative form of I. It began to be used to signify our modern consonant J around 1600, but the two letters continued to be used interchangeably for years thereafter, e.g., jngeniously, ieweller. As late as 1820 some dictionaries still weren't alphabetizing I and J words separately.

D.C. planner Pierre L'Enfant undoubtedly didn't include a J Street because he considered I and J basically the same letter. (It certainly wasn't because he disliked the statesman John Jay, as legend has it.) A similar confusion attended the letters U and V, which were also used interchangeably. The D.C. plan included both U and V streets, but using capital V to indicate both U and V on buildings (e.g., VNITED STATES POST OFFICE) survived until the 1930s, no doubt in imitation of such classical inscriptions as IVLIVS CAESAR.

FROM THE TEEMING MILLIONS

Dear Cecil:

Your item on the letters I and J, U and V was not the last word (and no doubt what I have to add won't be either). J and V were the consonantal forms of I and U, respectively (e.g., as in "juventus"). V in Latin was pronounced like W in English, and J was pronounced like Y in English. --Stewart Colten, Arlington, Virginia

Cecil replies:

Sorry, Stewart. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, U and V were used "without clear distinction in value, each of them being used to denote either the vowel u or the consonant v. The practice with regard to the employment of the two forms varied considerably, but the general tendency was to write v initially and u in other positions, regardless of phonetic considerations." The story with I and J is more complex, but the OED lists many instances of J being used as a vowel.

--CECIL ADAMS

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

Bob

2006-11-04T00:04:05Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_pYYff7qP0&eurl=

I, man, am regal -- a German am I
Never odd or even
If I had a hi-fi
Madam, I'm Adam
Too hot to hoot
No lemons, no melon
Too bad I hid a boot
Lisa Bonet ate no basil
Warsaw was raw
Was it a car or a cat I saw?

Rise to vote, sir
Do geese see God?
"Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod
Rats live on no evil star
Won't lovers revolt now?
Race fast, safe car
Pa's a sap
Ma is as selfless as I am
May a moody baby doom a yam?

Ah Satan sees Natasha
No devil lived on
Lonely Tylenol
Not a banana baton
No "x" in "Nixon"
O, stone, be not so
O Geronimo, no minor ego
"Naomi", I moan
"A Toyota's a Toyota"
A dog, a panic in a pagoda

Oh, no! Don Ho!
Nurse, I spy gypsies -- run!
Senile felines
Now I see bees I won
UFO tofu
We panic in a pew
Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo
God! A red nugget! A fat egg under a dog!
Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog

---------

best of all, it's a Mr. Zimmerman parody. wheee!

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

tillie's punctuated analogy

2006-11-03T20:28:27Z

http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001792.html

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

all those, uh, uh, letters, uh

2006-11-02T18:37:16Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003724.html

November 01, 2006
Is there coded language in the House?

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post (see here) believes that if or when the Democrats gain leadership of the House of Representatives, it would be a bad idea for the incoming Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to appoint Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida to head the House Intelligence Committee. Hastings has the seniority to take over that role but Marcus points out that he has a serious blot on his record, because in 1988 he was impeached and removed from his office as a Federal judge.

So what does this have to do with linguistics? And why comment on it on Language Log? Because linguistic analysis played a role in Hastings' impeachment process and Marcus, who covered this event for the Post, still recalls the salient factors, as follows:

"The evidence against Hastings is circumstantial, but it's too much to explain away: A suspicious pattern of telephone calls between Hastings and Borders at key moments in the case; Borders' apparent insider knowledge of developments in the criminal case; Hastings' appearance at a Miami hotel, as promised by Borders as a signal that the judge agreed to a payoff; a cryptic telephone conversation between the two men that appears to be a coded discussion of the bribe arrangement."

So what is this cryptic conversation that leads Marcus to say:

"I don't worry that as chairman he'd suddenly be for sale: If he could be entrusted with national security secrets as a committee member, why not as chairman? But this is no ordinary crime, and Intelligence is no ordinary committee."

It all began in 1981, when a DC lawyer, William Borders, and Judge Hastings were involved in a criminal extortion proceeding. Borders was convicted but Hastings was acquitted. Months later, the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice was not convinced of Hastings' innocense and it started its own lengthy investigation of the matter. At issue were several intercepted telephone calls between Borders and Hastings. To the Subcommittee, the conversations looked like coded messages but they couldn't figure out how to prove this. In 1988 they called on me to analyze the conversations with the sole purpose of answering the question about whether or not they indeed contained some kind of code.

The main focus was on one very short conversation between the two men. The ostensible topic was the judge's plan to write support letters for Hemphill Pride, a South Carolina attorney who had run afoul of the law and was now trying to reverse his disbarment. The government believed that Hastings and Borders were involved in a plot to extort money from a man they believed to be Frank Romano but who was actually an undercover agent using the name, Rico. Borders assured Rico that he could get a judge to provide a favorable sentencing report if Rico would ante up $50,000. The government further believed that part of this money was to go to Judge Hastings. No linguistic analysis of the conversations were made at the trial.

My task was to discover whether the conversation was actually in code. But first, let's look at what they actually said to each other in this short, 19 line conversation:

Phone ringing:

(1) B: Yes, my brother.

(2) H: Hey, my man.

(3) B: Uh-huh.

(4) H: I've drafted all those, uh, uh, letters, uh, for Hemp.

(5) B: Uh-huh.

(6) H: And everything's okay. The only thing I was concerned with was, did you hear if, uh, did you hear from him after we talked?

(7) B: Yeah.

(8) H: Oh, okay.

(9) B: Uh-huh.

(10) H: Alright then.

(11) B: See, I had, I talked to him and he, he wrote some things down for me.

(12) H: I understand.

(13) B: And then I was supposed to go back and get some more things.

(14) H: Alright. I understand. Well, then, there's no great big problem at all. I'll, I'll see to it that, uh, I communicate with him. I'll send the stuff off to Columbia in the morning.

(15) B: Okay.

(16) H: Okay.

(17) B: Right.

(18) H: Bye bye.

(19) B: Bye.

If this was a code, it certainly wasn't a total, obvious code. That is, it wasn't the type that cryptologists deal with where the intent of the coding is to be so unclear that the message can't be deciphered by outsiders to the code. Such codes look like codes and strive to be impossible for outsiders to understand.

Nor was it the usual partial and obvious code, where ludicrous nouns and verbs substitute for the intended meaning, similar to the ones Oliver North described in his 1989 book, Taking the Stand: "If these conditions are acceptable to the banana, then oranges are ready to proceed."(p. 143).

If Hastings and Borders were using a code here, it was a partial and disguised code, one in which words were carefully selected to make it appear to anyone who should happen to intercept it that the participants are talking about one thing while, in reality, they are talking about something very different. In his Encyclopedia of Language David Crystal cites such a code used in a murder case in India: "Go clean the bowl" was used to man "Prepare the grave."

In partial and disguised codes both participants must understand the code, which must be relevant to real life situations, be plausible, be specific, be consistent, and they generallly require more confirmation of mutual understanding than we find in everyday conversation. So the question was whether this type of code was being used here.

Lines 1 and 2 appear to be a standard greeting routine between two friends but in line 3 Borders gives a feedback marker, "uh-huh," that suggests a willingness to give up his turn of talk immediately. Oddly, there is no request to Hastings about why he is calling such as "What's up?" or "What's on your mind?" Nor did Borders seize the opportunity to assert his own agenda, such as "I'm glad you called because..."

In line 5, Hastings explains that he's drafted those letters for Hemp, to which Borders says only "uh-huh," accomplishing no more that giving up his turn again. Note that Hastings used the pause filler, "uh," three times in line 5. Pause fillers can accomplish at least three things: to prevent interruption, to provide assurance that more is coming, or to struggle to find the right word to use. In hastily constructed codes, one expects speakers to struggle to find the word that accomplishes the code. These pause fillers tend to occur in exactly those places where the potential code word is to follow:

(4) uh, uh letters

(4) uh, for Hemp

(6) uh, you hear from him

(14) uh, I communicate with him

In lines 6 through 10, Hastings asks if Borders has heard from "him" after they last talked. Since "him" is not specified, we can assume that they both understand who this is. Borders says "Yeah," but oddly does not report what he heard from "him." Nor does Hastings pursue this, offering only "Oh, okay," to which Borders says "Uh-huh," and Hastings says, "Alright then." This odd exchange appears to signal that complete information has been given when it has not--unless "did you hear from" is code for "did you get X," for which the rest of the exchange would have been appropriate.

Borders makes his first substantive contribution to the conversation in line 11: "See I had, I talked to him and he, he wrote some things down for me." Note the care with which he constructs this sentence, including a false start and pronoun repetition at the points where a code word could be expected. This gives the appearance of Borders' struggle to not slip into uncoded talk along with his effort to remember the code consistently. Hastings' response, "I understand," serves as a confirmation of truth or the existence of facts presented by Borders. It's curious why Borders' sentence would require confirmation of undersanding unless it is a code for something else. Hastings' "I understand" can relate only to the "he wrote things down part of the sentence," since it had already been established that Borders had heard from "him." Even so, writing some things down is hardly monumental enough to require confirmation of understanding. On the other hand, it is appropriate as a confirmation of the potential coded meaning of something else.

Lines 13 to 15 continue the odd sounding dialogue. Borders had already referred to "things" that someone had written down and now he elaborates a bit, saying that he was supposed to go back and get some more "things." if "more things" are things to say in the support letter for Hemp, one might expect it to be said differently, such as, "He couldn't think of everything you should say so he'll think about it more and get back to me." In any case, although it may be appropriate to write "things" down, it is odd to say that one will go back and get more things. Such wording can work nicely, however, for a different (coded) meaning of "things." Note also Hastings' false starts and pause filler in line 14, again in front of potential code words.

Other issues also point to the use of a partial, disguised and hastily constructed code here. For example, one would expect Borders to have said that Hemp wanted him to "come back" for more things rather than "go back." One also wonders why Hastings said that there was "no great problem" in a context where going back to get more things was allegedly benign. This suggests that there may have truly been a big problem about something else. And why, after Borders has said that he was supposed to go back and get more things (line 13), does Hastings change the plan so abruptly on line 14, saying that he will communicate with Hemp himself? Borders' response to this change in plan was only a mild, "Okay." Finallly, Hastings' change in the procedure includes, "I'll send the stuff to Columbia in the morning," more consistent with sending something other than a support letter.

The crucial expressions used here appear to be "letters," "wrote some things down," "get some more things," "I'll communicate," and "send the stuff," all easily translatable to other meanings. Apparently "things" had morphed into "stuff" by the end of the conversation. This gives evidence of a hastily constructed, partiallly disguised code in which the participants intended their meaning to look like support letters for Hemphill Pride. Interestingly, Pride informed me personally that he never requested such letters and that as far as he knew, none existed. At his impeachment hearing, Hastings claimed that the style of speech he used in this conversation was his typical mode of talk. But comparison of this conversation with the others in evidence showed none of these features that look very much like code.

Rep. Hastings is a congenial man who is generally well liked and thought to be competent. He has served in the House of Representatives since 1992 and has enough seniority to head the House Intelligence Committee. Marcus doesn't think it's a good idea to appoint him to that post, largely because of this 19 line conversation. She may have a point.
Posted by Roger Shuy at November 1, 2006 07:04 PM

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

when is a noun not a noun™?

2006-10-30T14:50:23Z

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/do-you-google.html

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nonlinear state machines &c

2006-10-30T13:22:18Z

http://nonlinearpoetry.blogspot.com/

hrm. these hit close to home

http://www.xradiograph.com/GalleryOne/images.01/x-marks-the-spotts.htm

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I cry easily.

2006-10-09T06:27:14Z

I'll admit I split bananas,
Take Easter eggs and make them dye.
But I never harmed an onion
So why should they make me cry?

Once I saw a salad dressing.
My face got radish, my oh my.
But I never harmed an onion
So why should they make me cry?

Potatoes I've mashed, and berries I've crushed,
I've made an artichoke, and that's not all.
I've also whipped cream, and beaten an egg.
Yes, I've even made a melon ball.

Of all the things above, I'm guilty.
If punished I would know just why.
But I never harmed an onion
So why should they make me cry?
Oh why should they make me cry?

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

salad language crackdown

2006-10-06T23:21:04Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003643.html

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

buffalo

2006-09-22T20:32:28Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

Capt. Haddock

2006-09-15T15:23:25Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exclamations_used_by_Captain_Haddock

posted in Word Salad - 0 replies

it's not just good for you, it's goodylicious!

2006-09-05T13:18:37Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003543.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003546.html

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morphology satisfies you

2006-08-29T21:54:39Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003514.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003515.html

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

words you can't say on Verizon

2006-08-14T15:28:22Z

http://www.valleywag.com/tech/verizon/83-words-you-cant-say-on-verizon-wireless-193699.php

look at the section between "j" and "k"

anal
ass
bastard
beatoff
bitch
BJ
cameljockey
chink
circlejerk
clit
cock
coolie
coon
cornhole
cum
cunt
dago
deepthroating
dickhead
dickwad
dildo
dyke
eatme
fag
faggot
fellatio
fisting
fleshflute
fleshpopsicle
fornicate
fuck
fudgepacking
gangbang
genital
getlaid
gobtheknob
goldenshower
gook
hairpie
hardon
homo
honkey
jerkoff
jewboy
jizz
5
kike
lesbo
limey
manloaf
masturbate
muffdiver
nigger
nutsack
paki
panface
poontang
pubic
pussy
queef
queer
raghead
rimjob
rubyredbag
scrotum
shit
sitonmyface
sixtynine
slag
slant
sodomize
spankthemonkey
spearchucker
spic
spooge
teabagging
testicles
twat
vagina
wetback
whackoff
whipitout
whiteswallow
wop

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Who died and VPAST X Y?

2006-08-07T18:50:58Z

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003416.html

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Do not use if you have ever had an allergic reaction to this product or any of its ingredients.

2006-07-10T13:36:02Z

http://theworld.com/~emg/2006_07_02_blog_archive.html#115224962876232787

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spam cited/sighted

2006-05-24T12:57:57Z

http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/best_spam_ever/

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words are for the birds

2006-05-10T01:02:46Z

The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour.

He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do.

N'kisi's remarkable abilities, which are said to include telepathy, feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine.

N'kisi is believed to be one of the most advanced users of human language in the animal world.

About 100 words are needed for half of all reading in English, so if N'kisi could read he would be able to cope with a wide range of material.

He uses words in context, with past, present and future tenses, and is often inventive.

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: "You got to put this bird on the camera."

Dr Goodall says N'kisi's verbal fireworks are an "outstanding example of interspecies communication".

In an experiment, the bird and his owner were put in separate rooms and filmed as the artist opened random envelopes containing picture cards.

Analysis showed the parrot had used appropriate keywords three times more often than would be likely by chance.

This was despite the researchers discounting responses like "What ya doing on the phone?" when N'kisi saw a card of a man with a telephone, and "Can I give you a hug?" with one of a couple embracing.

Professor Donald Broom, of the University of Cambridge's School of Veterinary Medicine, said: "The more we look at the cognitive abilities of animals, the more advanced they appear, and the biggest leap of all has been with parrots."

Alison Hales, of the World Parrot Trust, told BBC News Online: "N'kisi's amazing vocabulary and sense of humour should make everyone who has a pet parrot consider whether they are meeting its needs.

"They may not be able to ask directly, but parrots are long-lived, and a bit of research now could mean an improved quality of life for years."

http://www.impactlab.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=8106&mode=&order=0&thold=0

posted in Word Salad - 4 replies

a series

2006-05-01T13:06:02Z

of translators for those who must translate

http://www.whoohoo.co.uk/main.asp?topic=translator&pageid=cockney&siteurl=http://www.nakedtranslations.com&string=

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

code obsfucator

2006-04-25T21:37:39Z

naming conventions for variables, etc. that you want to remain confusing.

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/unmainnaming.html

bad tips for programmers, godo tips for people writing pseudo-gibberish

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constructed languages

2006-03-06T15:00:44Z

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/49775

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ASCII art (editors)

2006-01-30T19:14:06Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascii_art this should be self-explanatory

http://www.jave.de/ -- JAVA-based workhorse, with animations, image-conversion tools and great Figlet capability
http://www.ludd.luth.se/~vk/q/ada/aaafaq.htm -- FAQ
http://www.figlet.org/figlet-man.html - standalone Figlet creator
http://studenten.freepage.de/cgi-bin/feets/freepage_ext/41030x030A/rewrite/meph/ascii/editor/_index.htm - ASCII editor, looks like it has some nice features not found in JaVE
http://www.aroundmidnight.demon.co.uk/asciiart/ascani.htm - animation editor

NB: I have only worked with JaVE

posted in Word Salad - 1 reply

alphabet pal

2006-01-26T15:02:26Z

http://stijl.blogspot.com/2006/01/fun-with-alphabet-pal-if-it-hadnt-been.html

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