Recently updated

From “Stalin as Linguist — II” Barrett Watten has been removed from teaching and advising at Wayne State University.

The ubiquitous warfighter

The word warfighter suddenly seems ubiquitous. Neither Merriam-Webster nor the OED has an entry yet. The American Heritage Dictionary gives these definitions:

1. A soldier, especially a US soldier who is engaged or has engaged in combat.

2. A person, especially a member of one of the US armed services deployed to an area of conflict, who is responsible for making decisions involving the use of military force.

Google’s Ngram Viewer has nothing for the word before 1971, with use sharply rising since 1988.

Here is an excerpt from William Treseder’s thoughts about the word. Treseder served in the United States Marines and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan:

Sometime in the mid 2000s, a strange new word started to get popular: “warfighter.” It catapulted out of obscurity from the military, quickly becoming the de facto label for all active-duty and reserve personnel. This word is seriously misleading; it presents the exact opposite of military reality at a time when Americans need to be questioning our role in global security more than ever before.

[“From the military”: a link to a Language Log post on the word’s origin.]

To my ear, warfighter has something of the sound of a kenning. As spoken by our president, it sounds like a sanction for war crimes. A service member belongs to a community with norms and values; a warfighter is an independent agent. A warfighter: so anything goes.

Pallet pencils

Making 1,000 pencils from pallet wood: a short video from Jackman Works.

Paul Jackman is ultra-adept at woodworking. But I think he’s less familiar with pencils. The question that begins the project: “Do people even use pencils anymore?” Heck, yeah.

But they don’t slam or throw their pencils around. That might crack the lead, leading to endless resharpening as new points break off, one after another. Remember Turkish Taffy?

Thanks, Ian, for letting me know about these pencils.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

[For slamming and throwing, see 7:44 and 8:06 in the video. Note that this project doesn’t really contradict the claim that no single person knows how to make a pencil. The materials and tools are of course the work of others.]

Projecting

Here, from Meghan Bogardus Corteza of EdTech, is a profile of the overhead projector of classrooms past. I remember these projectors from high school, in several ways:

I remember digging the markers that teachers used for writing on transparencies, in class, in real time. Corteza asks, “Who doesn’t remember the thrill of being allowed to write on the transparency with a dry-erase marker and seeing the results projected on the wall?” That would be me — because we never got to write on transparencies. Teachers only!

Were they really dry-erase markers? I think I remember grease pencils, with a rag to wipe the transparency clean.

I remember the tremendous heat that the projector threw off. And the blinding light from inside the machine.

I remember that some projectors were equipped with one long scrolling transparency: write, crank, write, crank. The erasing later on must have been a pain.

I can’t recall a projector ever in use in one of my college classes. (I do remember a slide projector in art history class.) As a professor, I would notice the overhead projector stashed on the wall convector, next to lost scarves and notebooks and a little box or two of spare bulbs. A sad, neglected projector in every classroom. But every once in a while, even in the age of document readers and PowerPoint, I’d enter a classroom to find a projector sitting on the instructor’s desk at the front of the room. Someone must have been making a presentation.

I made use of an overhead projector just once in my teaching career: when reading Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” I asked my students to write a short stanza about a way of seeing the projector that sat in the room. We put the stanzas together (in a chance sequence) to make what turned out to be a pretty wonderful poem. I wish I could find it now.

Thanks, Mike, for thinking about old tech and sending the link.

The vanishing hardware store

Worth reading: a New York Times opinion piece, “The Life and Death of the Local Hardware Store.” The killers: Amazon and high rent.

Our local hardware store — Ace — is an incredibly valuable resource. Ask a question: someone will know the answer. An air filter for a gas water-heater? No, manufacturers don’t sell them separately, only with the [whatever the expensive part is]. But here, here’s one that someone left last week. They bought the part but didn’t need the filter. How much? Just take it.

A related post
Harvey’s Hardware (Density!)

“O.K.,” “K,” “kk”

In The New York Times, a Q & A column about workplaces covers “kk,” which some younger people apparently prefer to “OK” or “K” in e-mail and texts.

The Q A-er, Caity Weaver, endorses kk:

You reply to an email with “O.K.”: For the briefest twinkling, I think “Rude.”

You reply to an email with “K”: For one terrible millisecond, I think (sobbing and feeling attacked), “He’s acting like he’s the only one who’s stressed out!”

You reply to an email with “kk”: I think “O.K.”

“Kk” is an ice-cold glass of blood: mostly neutral, slightly basic.

“An ice-cold glass of blood”? That’s a good thing? A MetaFilter thread is devoted to figuring out this brand-new metaphor. Someone there discovered Weaver’s tweeted explanation:

It’s ice cold because that’s my preferred drink temperature and when I wrote that down I thought it was funny — no other reason 🤪 And it’s blood because I wanted a glass of something that was slightly basic on the pH scale

I'm amused that a writer who appears so attuned to the damaging effects of one- and two-letter abbreviations is willing to use a metaphor that is, well, baffling — and blood-chilling!

“A nice hot cup of tea” or “a warm cup of cocoa” might be a better metaphor. (It would certainly taste better.) And the problems (or non-problems, I’d say) of “O.K.” and “K” could be avoided by making a keyboard shortcut to turn “OK” into the friendly, dowdy “Okeydoke.”

Capische?

One practical reason to avoid “kk”: the danger, especially on a phone, of accidentally adding a third “k.”

James Brown and Mutts

Today’s Mutts lets us know that Patrick McDonnell is a fan. The title panel for today’s strip is a bonus. Look here and here.

My dad turned me on to Mutts some years back. Thanks, Dad.

Related reading
More Mutts posts

Stooges as amigos

[The Stooges as Sondland, Perry, and Volker. Click for a larger view.]

The Three Stooges — Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Curly Howard — will star as Gordon Sondland, Rick Perry, and Kurt Volker in the forthcoming release The Three Amigos. Talk about straight out of Central Casting.

Gosh, I’d love it if this post were to become celebrated.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Brad Wilber, reminded me of what it was (sometimes) like to take a final exam: sit down; feel a bit 40-D, seven letters, “Put off”; dig in; and find everything falling into place.

I noticed suggestions of domestic life in today’s puzzle: 1-D, five letters, “Potpourri quality” and 18-A, eight letters, “What potpourri is meant to be” paired nicely. Note: meant to be. I suspect that Wilber is not a fan of that smelly stuff.

Another nice domestic touch: 34-D, nine letters, “Starting points in crocheting” and 35-D, nine letters, “Thick as thieves.”

Some clues I especially liked: 2-D, “Telenovela ‘Yikes,’” which started my solving. 21-D, five letters, “Bach-era dance,” whose answer I wouldn’t have known B.E. And 60-A, six letters, “Place for an ace” SLEEVE? No.

My favorite clue in today’s puzzle: 11-D, five letters, “Rattling adders.” Again and again, Newsday strikes the right note in its trickier clueing for common words, preferring concision to overly elaborate, farfetched cuteness. Yes, New York Times crossword, I’m looking at you.

One question: is 38-D, five letters, really a “Bogart foe in five films”? No.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

[B.E.: Before Elaine.]

“Hello? Is this 1973?”

In today’s Zippy, pay phones, postcards, and letters. The post title is Zippy speaking into a broken pay phone.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)