Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, October 29, 2010.]

“‘What?’” is right.

Has the kitchen sneaked into the living room, or is it the other way around? (’Cause that is indeed the dang living room in the first panel, and that is indeed the dang front door.)

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts
The all-in-one room

“[A] great reality test”

The late Richard T. Gill, economist and opera singer:

“Performing is a great reality test. There’s no tenure in it and the feedback is much less complicated than you get in academia. When you go out on that stage, you put your life on the line.”

[Don’t miss Elaine Fine’s comment, in the, uh, comments.]

HTTPS Everywhere

If you use Firefox and log in to websites on open wireless networks, you should install the extension HTTPS Everywhere. The extension Firesheep will help you understand why (and leave you plenty scared).

As for Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari: the Electronic Frontier Foundation, developer of HTTPS Everywhere, has nothing available, at least not yet.

A “wheelchair dude” in our Macs

Our daughter Rachel brought to her family’s attention the item above, found in the digital version of the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus (1st edition), standard software on a Mac. When I read the sentence that caught Rachel’s eye — “I observed this wheelchair dude in the vestibule waiting for me” — I was baffled. I wrote back: This is in our computers?! Sure enough, it is. Our son Ben said I should write about it.

Apple’s not responsible for this sentence of course. Oxford University Press is. As Rachel discovered, the sentence has been noticed before, in the spirit of ha! and WTF. But there’s nothing, really, that’s funny here, aside perhaps from the incongruity of dude and vestibule appearing in the same sentence. As Rachel points out, the phrase “wheelchair dude” is the exact opposite of what’s called person-first language, phrasing that takes care not to equate a person with a condition. (Consider, for example, the difference between “He’s LD” and “He has a learning disability.”) Contra Wikipedia’s article on person-first language (written or revised by an expert in ax-grinding), that kind of care in language is hardly a matter of “politically correct linguistic prescriptivism.” It’s really no more than respectful common sense.

What were those Oxford dudes smoking?

*

August 21, 2012: Now I wonder if David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest helps to explain this sentence, which has disappeared from the Mac’s OATW. Infinite Jest is filled with men, dangerous men, in wheelchairs. I’m thinking in particular of a scene in the novel in which Rémy Marathe, posing as a survey-taker, sits in a hotel hallway and knocks on a door. The only vestibules in IJ though are found at the Enfield Tennis Academy. Is this “wheelchair dude” waiting for Hal Incandenza?

Wallace contributed a couple of dozen notes on usage to the OAWT, at least some of which are available in the Mac’s version of the thesaurus.

*
September 18, 2012: It turns out that this sentence has nothing to do with Infinite Jest. Here is an explanation from Judy Pearsall, Editorial Director, Dictionaries, at Oxford University Press:

In answer to your question, the original quote comes from a 1983 memoir called Hey Cabbie, by Thaddeus Logan. It appeared, as you point out, as an example of usage of the word ‘observe’ in the first edition of the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus. In the second and third editions the same sense is illustrated by two different quotations:

– every time he looked at her now, he observed something new
– other behavioral problems have been observed in our patient population

Oxford has the largest language programme in the world and we use real examples of use to illustrate how words are used in our dictionaries. Examples are selected for a range of reasons, including typicality of use, helpful illustration, and so on. We don’t aim to censor examples according to the view of the writer, political or otherwise. However, if an example is distracting because of unusual or colourful language, then it’s not really doing its job of illustrating the word in question, in this case ‘observe’. That’s why, when we reviewed it, we decided to change it.

She adds, “I like your hypothesis about DFW but the truth of it may be more prosaic.”

Is it ever. It didn’t occur to me that this sentence might have had a source. Had I thought to check Google Books, I would have found it:



Thanks to Erin McKean for forwarding my query, and thanks to Judy Pearsall for the explanation and for permission to quote it.

A related post
DFW, thesaurus entries

“THIS IS FUN”

From Life, July 21, 1941:


[Click for a larger view.]

Let’s read together. Yes, out loud:

There are enough troubles in this old world . . . enough chores . . . enough worries . . . enough things to frown about . . . What this country needs is more things to smile about.

Here’s one of those things — plump, homey, jolly looking sausage.

When a sausage smiles at you, you smile right back. When it’s on the table, noon or night, it makes the next joke laugh better, the time pass faster. You eat it because you like it, and you like it because it’s good.

Sausage products are good, wholesome meat foods, full of carefully selected meats expertly blended with delicate spices. Easy to serve as bread and easy to digest.

Sausage is a good source of the complete proteins and minerals of meat which your body does not store to any extent, hence are needed regularly.

And vitamins too — that good liver sausage (braunschweiger or liverwurst) is not only rich in the B vitamins but brings you vitamin A and vitamin D as well.

You’ve known liver sausage cold — now try it hot with bacon or grilled tomatoes.

Forget the troubles of the world — serve yourself some sausage — good liver sausage or friendly frankfurters; salami sausage or bologna, just so it’s sausage.

It’s a pleasure on a platter, pride of the picnic, center of a sandwich, and it’s a treasure in the refrigerator when you’re hunting for that midnight snack.

It’s friendly to look at. It’s friendlier to taste.

This is Sausage. This is Fun. This is Yours.

Those last three sentences are beautiful, no? I have a deep feeling for liverwurst, as I confessed in this post. But I must take issue with this one of this advertisement’s assertions: if and when a piece of liverwurst smiles at me, I will know that it’s time to ask for help — and not at a delicatessen counter.

Coming soon: fun

Coming later today soon: a 1940s advertisement for a product that promises fun, fun, fun for all. If anyone would like to play Twenty Questions in the comments, here are a couple three hints:

It’s not an alcoholic beverage.

It’s not a cigarette (or other tobacco product).

It may be enjoyed by adults and children.

Update, 9:32 p.m.: Questions are now piling up in the comments, so I’ll wait until tomorrow to reveal the ad. Ask away, if you dare!

Update: October 26, 12:18 p.m.: The mystery product is liverwurst, and it’s Gunther of Lexikaliker for the win. He guessed “sausage.” Thanks to everyone for playing.

[“A couple three”: that’s an Illinoism.]

The New York Times Subway Issue

The Subway in Pictures, 1917–2010, from a special Subway Issue of the New York Times.

Jane Austen’s punctuation

From the Guardian:

The truth universally acknowledged, that Jane Austen was one of the most pristine literary stylists of all time, has been exploded: her punctuation was erratic, her use of capital letters eclectic and her paragraph breaks often nonexistent.

The above passage, from the manuscript of Persuasion, makes me think of Emily Dickinson’s fascicles.

A related post
Strawberry stream of dialogue (From Emma, sounding like James Joyce)

“[S]omething to be tolerated”

John Dodig, a student at Connecticut College:

Our generation is wired and well connected — that’s not a bad thing. But we’re creeping toward a point where college life is more about being social and less about being intellectually engaged. The whole point of having a laptop in class should be to expand scholarship and increase efficiency, but I’ve found that they’re having the opposite effect. Strangely enough, classes have become something to be tolerated rather than the reason we’re here.

Read more:

A Look at Laptops in the Classroom (The College Voice)

(Found via University Diaries)

“Fonts” podcast

From Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge: “Fonts,” with Nicholson Baker, Matthew Carter, Kitty Burns Florey, Tobias Frere-Jones, Jonathan Hoefler, and Tracy Honn.

My favorite moment, Nicholson Baker’s comment on the Kindle: “I think that this machine was developed by people who weren’t really book people.”