U.S. troop fatalities in Iraq (March 2003-February 28, 2007):
3,166For Iraqi Security Force and civilian fatalities in Iraq, estimates range from
30,000 (March 2003-December 2005, Bush administration)to
650,000 (March 2003-November 2006, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health)An interactive timeline is available from National Public Radio:
The Toll of War
On teaching at a middle school in Brooklyn:
JoAnn Rintel Abreu, 40, an English and social studies teacher at Seth Low, graduated with a masters' degree in English literature, the "bare minimum" teaching requirements and glorious visions of turning high school students on to Shakespeare and Chaucer. She was offered a middle school job first.
Now, after 16 years at Seth Low, Mrs. Abreu takes great satisfaction in trying to figure out how to reach adolescents. The rewards come with breakthrough moments, like when a sullen eighth grader who rarely does his homework handed in a bitterly descriptive, beautifully written memoir about his father's new girlfriend, "the witch."
"Middle school is like Scotch," she reflected in the teachers' lounge one afternoon. "At first you try to get it down. Then you get used to it. Then it's all you order."
For Teachers, Middle School Is Test of Wills (New York Times)
If I were paranoid, I would be certain that Roz Chast is drawing me. Again and again, this glasses-wearing, bearded guy appears in her work. Here he's a psychiatrist floating in an inner tube:
And here he's passing as an academic:
[Detail from "Emergency Session," New Yorker cover, August 7 and 14, 2006.]
Wait a minute: she is drawing me.
[Detail from "How to Bail Out EuroDisney," New Yorker, December 28, 1992]
By Roz Chast: Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978-2006 (Amazon)
A passage from "Ithaca," the catechism episode of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922):
What considerations rendered departure desirable?Happy Saint Patrick's Day.
The attractive character of certain localities in Ireland and abroad, as represented in general geographical maps of polychrome design or in special ordnance survey charts by employment of scale numerals and hachures.
In Ireland?
The cliffs of Moher, the windy wilds of Connemara, lough Neagh with submerged petrified city, the Giant's Causeway, Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary, the islands of Aran, the pastures of royal Meath, Brigid's elm in Kildare, the Queen's Island shipyard in Belfast, the Salmon Leap, the lakes of Killarney.
To mark the release of the film Helvetica ("a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture"), Extensis ("professional font management") is sponsoring a font-related haiku contest. My entry:
In ink, on paper,
words, letters, echo, quarrel:
"Sans serif!" "Serif!"
A description of Bailey Fountain, which stands in Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza, near the entrance to Prospect Park, from an essay by James Agee, "Brooklyn Is: Southeast of the Island: Travel Notes," rejected by Fortune magazine in 1939 and published by Esquire in 1968. In 2005 the essay was published as a slender hardcover by Fordham University Press. I noticed and bought it in a bookstore a few days ago.
From a way down Flatbush Avenue it suggests that cloven flame which spoke with Dante in hell but by a nearer view, it is a man and a nude woman in bronze, and their plump child, eager for the Park, and it represents the beauty and stability of Brooklyn, and of human, family life. The man and wife stand back to back, in the classical posture of domestic sleep. It is a thoroughly vulgar and sincere piece of work, and once one gets beyond the esthete's sometimes myopic scorn, is the infallibly appropriate creation of the whole heart of Brooklyn. Michelangelo would have done much less well.
Closeup of Bailey Fountain (Flickr)According to the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, the male and female figures represent Wisdom and Felicity. Not a bad way to imagine a human partnership. For more on the history of Bailey Fountain:
More photographs by Paul Kostro (Flickr)
Bailey Fountain (NYC Department of Parks and Recreation)
The National Philharmonic of Russia is on its first United States tour, with piano soloist Olga Kern. If you live in or near a city where the NPR and Kern are performing, try to get tickets. You won't be disappointed -- if, that is, you can get tickets.
My wife Elaine and I heard the NPR and Kern last night at the University of Illinois' Krannert Center in an all-Russian program: Shostakovich's Festive Overture, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 in D minor. I went to be a good guy and pick up some Husband Points. But I soon figured out that I was listening to one of the most exciting, thrilling performances I'd ever heard.
Elaine's review of the concert (Musical Assumptions)
National Philharmornic of Russia Begins Debut U.S. Tour (Playbill)
Olga Kern plays Rachmaninoff (not with the NPR) (YouTube)
Jacqueline R. Griffith's dissertation abtract itself appears to be partly plagiarized.
Helen B. Mason (1995):
The implications are that institutional investors prefer firms that approve stock splits. These investors either encourage stock split behavior or have the ability to identify firms with stock split characteristics in the pre-split period or both.Jacqueline R. Griffith (2001):
The implications are that institutional investors prefer firms that approve stock splits. These investors either encourage stock split behavior or have the ability to identify firms with stock split characteristics in the pre-split period or both.Helen B. Mason (1995):
Results of regression, ANOVA, ANCOVA, and correlation analyses indicate a positive relationship between split behavior and level of institutional ownership.Jacqueline R. Griffith (2001):
Results of ANOVA, regression, and correlation analysis indicate a positive relationship between institutional ownership and stock split behavior.(Passages taken from Dissertation Abstracts Online.)
Father-daughter plagiarism accusations, in today's New York Times:
Jacqueline R. Griffith seemed to be flourishing as a tenured assistant professor in economics and finance at Kean University in New Jersey -- that is, until another member of her department accused her of having plagiarized sizable portions of her doctoral dissertation.My favorite sentence from this article:
Déjà vu? Flash back to 1982, when her father, Claude Jonnard, a business school professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, also in New Jersey, was accused of copying government documents in a book under his own name, without citing any of them.
Asked in a telephone interview whether she had copied her dissertation, Ms. Griffith said, "I don’t believe so," adding, "But let me call you back."Don't overlook the article's sidebar, which compares passages from a 1995 dissertation by Helen B. Mason and Griffith's 2001 dissertation (or better, the 2001 dissertation that bears Griffith's name). The Times is careful to note that spelling and punctuation have not been changed:
The purpose of the research is to identify and explain the relationship between institutional investor ownership and firm stock splitting behavior. (Helen B. Mason, 1995)
The purpose of the research is to identify and explain the relationship between institutional investor ownership, firm stock splitting behavior and market price changes do to dividend increases. (Jacqueline R. Griffith, 2001)
In a Charge of Plagiarism, an Echo of a Father’s Case (New York Times)
[A note to the visiting reader: There's nothing idiosyncratic or unusual about making a distinction between "If I were" and "If I was." Countless speakers and writers make this distinction, and explanations of it can be found in numerous writing handbooks (the kind of book usually used in a college writing class). I've tried to make an explanation of the distinction that's engaging and memorable. Happy reading and writing.]
A reader asked in an e-mail if I could explain when to use "if I were" and "if I was." Here are some examples to make the difference clear:
"If I were" (the past subjunctive) is appropriate in stating conditions that are contrary to fact:
If I were a bell, I'd go ding dong ding dong ding. (Frank Loesser)Each of the above sentences states a condition that is not the case: I'm not a bell, not a carpenter, not a rich man.
If I were a carpenter and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway? (Tim Hardin)
If I were a rich man, [yadda, yadda, yadda]. (Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock)
Was I rude? I'm not sure that I really was. But if I was rude, I'm sorry.The was/were distinction can be tricky to get right. In that last sample sentence, was somehow sounds wrong to me, and if I were doing something other than writing this post, I'd probably choose were or recast the sentence:
If I was to train as a carpenter, I would get to wear safety goggles.
If I train as a carpenter, I will get to wear safety goggles.Why did I write "if I were doing something other than writing this post"? Because the condition stated is contrary to fact: I am writing this post.
If I were you, here's what I'd do:Update, July 17, 2011:
I'd stick to me my whole life through,
If I were you. (Buddy Bernier and Robert D. Emmerich)
Difficulties do arise, however, from making the unwarranted assumption that if always introduces a condition that is contrary to fact and thus should always be followed by a subjunctive. If may introduce clauses of supposition or concession, as well as conditions that are not true or are hypothetical, and in such clauses the verb is usually in the indicative, not the subjunctive, mood.A sample sentence from The Careful Writer: “The Egyptian declared that if there was more trouble the U.A.R. would ‘exterminate Israel.’”
Remember, just because the modal verb would appears in the main clause, this doesn’t mean that the verb in the if-clause must be in the subjunctive if the content of that clause is not presupposed to be false: If I was (not were) to accept their offer — which I’m still considering — I would have to start the new job on May 2.The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style (2005) makes the same point, with a different sample sentence. Both AH volumes point out that many people dispense with any distinction between if I was and if I were. If I were you though, I wouldn’t go along with them.
If I train as a carpenter, I will get to wear safety goggles.Reader, the choice is yours.
