On a helical staircase

I like this passage on purism in language use, from Follett’s Modern American Usage (1966):

Purism is another form of the pedantic. It singles out in the language of science and scholarship what is literal and minute, as pedantry does the abstract and long-winded. Purism haggles over trifles and refuses to know when errors and confusions no longer matter. We all understand what a spiral staircase is; the purist reminds us that a spiral lies flat in one plane, so that our staircase is properly a helix. But even if each of us has his own one or two pet pedantries, collectively we shall not go down the helical staircase. We shall continue to drink a cup of coffee aand assuredly not a cupful; we shall speak of captions below the text, though caption by a confused etymology suggests head; we shall refer to the proverbial man of straw, though he is not the subject of a proverb; we shall speak of being buttonholed by a bore and not buttonheld, from the supposedly correct buttonhold; we shall say it is no use when we speak, though we may want to write it is of no use; we shall certainly cross the bridge (but not till we come to it), instead of agonizing over the truth that it is the river that is crossed and not the bridge. And if the world, faced with a new and inspiriting phenomenon, wants to say outer space, we shall not affect to be puzzled on the plea that space cannot be inner or outer. If there is an outer darkness there can be an outer space, which we may even hope to visit.

Wilson Follett died with this book unfinished. Jacques Barzun and several other hands took up the work of revising and editing.

Thanksgiving 1920

[“Thanksgiving Spirit Cheers Thousands: Turkey and ‘All the Fixings’ Served in Homes, Hospitals and Prisons.” The New York Times, November 26, 1920. Click for a larger view.]

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it. May there be better days ahead.

Related reading
The one-cent coffee stands for poor New Yorkers (Ephemeral New York)

Heroes and villains

“Heroes don’t lie to the FBI about contacts they had with hostile foreign powers”: Representative Adam Schiff (D, California-18), a few minutes ago, commenting to CNN on Donald Trump*’s pardoning of Michael Flynn.

A message from NYC Health

[From the New York City Health Department. Found at Gothamist. Click for a larger view.]

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Words of the year From the Cambridge Dictionary, quarantine.

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

“That’s him!” I said. Because I would never say “That’s he!” But by him I didn’t mean the actor. I meant a character, one I’ve seen dozens of times. Only that wasn’t him — meaning the character. It was the actor who played him, an actor whose name I had to look up.

Do you recognize this face? I’m guessing that if you do, you, too, will need to look up the name. Leave your answer in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if needed.

*

One name I’ll rule out: he’s not Bill Macy, the actor who played Walter Findlay on Maude. No, not him.

*

Here’s a hint: this actor may be best known for dancing in a Brooklyn apartment.

*

Oh well: it’s been about four hours. I’ll reveal this actor’s name in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

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How to improve writing (no. 89) “Is it right to speak of a pair of twins ?”

“Look it up”

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is coming to network television, and The New York Times has an article about the appeal of the original series, with reflections from the people of Stars Hollow. Did you know that Lauren Graham (Rory Gilmore) and Scott Patterson (Luke Danes) gave up smoking to have wind enough to manage the show’s dialogue?

My favorite bit from the Times article:

Popular culture was the lifeblood of the series, and Rory and Lorelai’s conversations, speckled with rapid-fire allusions to bad television shows and great books and distant historical epochs, were the joyous center of the show, offering fans a utopian fantasy of familial love grounded in the deep appreciation of Cop Rock. A single episode might reference Nikolai Gogol, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, the punk band Agnostic Front, the Velvet Underground collaborator Nico, Fiddler on the Roof, David Hockney, and the Franco-Prussian War.

“There was going to be an Oscar Levant mention in there, and if you don’t know who he is, that’s OK! Look it up,” [the show’s creator Amy] Sherman-Palladino said.

Related reading
All OCA Gilmore Girls posts (Pinboard)

Meet H. Neil Matkin

Something to be thankful for: that you’re not teaching at Collin College, with H. Neil Matkin as your president. From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The news arrived on Friday, nested deep in an email that landed during a Faculty Council Zoom meeting. Only after someone had reached the 22nd paragraph did professors learn what had happened, and when they did, a few began to cry.

“To date, we are aware of one Collin College student who has passed away from complications from Covid-19 and, as of last week, one faculty member,” H. Neil Matkin, president of the community-college district in Texas, wrote. The student’s death had been reported in late October, but the announcement that a colleague had died came as a fresh blow. In the same paragraph, near the bottom of the email, Matkin also disclosed that a staff member was hospitalized.

All of it appeared in an email beneath the subject line “College Update & Happy Thanksgiving!”

One of Matkin’s talking points about COVID-19: “I have chosen to never live my life in fear.” Sounds familiar.

Here’s another example of Matkin in action.

Recently updated

Words of the year From Oxford Languages, many words.