So in the latest salvo in the grammar wars, Steven Pinker is taken to task by Nathan Heller in The New Yorker.  I read the whole thing and it made my head swim.  Here’s a taste:

This tendency to add complexity, ambiguity, and doubt is a troubling feature of Pinker’s rules. He fights pedantry with more pedantry. He doesn’t want to concede that the phrase “very unique” makes no sense (things are either unique or not), so he mounts an odd defense. Look at two snowflakes from far away, he says, and they no longer seem unique: “The concept ‘unique’ is meaningful only after you specify which qualities are of interest to you and which degree of resolution or grain size you’re applying.” If we did all that, we wouldn’t need the word.

You can read the rest at the link above if you dare (or care).  I’m just an old dog with no motivation to learn new grammar tricks.  So you can count on me firmly maintaining my position in the “descriptivism” school of grammar. I love the fact that there even is such a school.  Warms the cockles of my libertarian heart.

Hat Tip to Althouse.

Before…

…after

Shaving off the beard proved to be a royal pain in the ass.  Took about six razors because they kept getting jammed with hair.  I had tried to buy one of those old fashioned razors with the double edged blade.  Found the blades but no razor to put them in.  So I bought a cheap-ass set of disposables and hacked away.  The ‘stache ain’t right yet, but I lost interest.  Now it’s off to get a haircut…

Commenter Kevin asks if I would recommend the television series Justified and if so, why?  The first part is easy: I highly recommend the show.  As to the why, I really suck at writing reviews so I’ll just offer up my general impressions and the things I liked enough to keep me watching (26 episodes in 48 hours).  Of course I don’t have a life, but still.

You can get a pretty good synopsis of the show’s premise at the link above.  Basically, it’s the story of the exploits of a quick-on-the-draw U.S. Marshal based in rural Kentucky.  Think of Matt Dillon in the 21st century.  Timothy Olyphant (you probably remember him from Deadwood) is outstanding in the lead role as Raylan Givens.  In the category of things I like, consistently excellent acting from almost all the featured characters is pretty high on my list.

I have a pretty low tolerance for stupid so I find it difficult to find shows on TV that hold my interest.  The writing on Justified is witty and gritty.  There’s plenty of action to keep you entertained, but the writers also develop complex and believable characters that you can care about.  Even the bad guys.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a television series set in the South that didn’t rely on the tired old stupid redneck stereotypes.  Don’t get me wrong, the show is chock full of hillbillies, but lots of them are quite intelligent despite the way they talk.  Just like in real life.  I particularly like Boyd Crowder, Deputy Marshal Givens’ main antagonist.  The “uneducated” son of a coal miner and Harlan County’s crime boss sounds stupid until you listen to what he says–who’d expect a dumb hick to be quoting Walt Whitman?  I especially liked how the carpetbaggers from Detroit “misunderestimated” their adversary.  Wish YouTube had some decent clips I could share of some of those interactions.  Anyway, it’s just refreshing to see Southerners portrayed as other than caricatures.

Each season has it’s own story arc, which helps keep things fresh what with characters being killed off and new ones introduced.  I’ve found it all consistently entertaining and I think you will to.  Enjoy

According to this article in  Mail Online, “there is no such thing as a vaginal orgasm, a clitoral orgasm or even a G-spot  Instead, the umbrella term ‘female orgasm’ should be used, the study authors argue.”

Well, I guess it was just a matter of time until the political correctness virus invaded the sanctity of our bedrooms.  I’m no scientist but I have it on good authority that there are in fact three types of female orgasms.  An old girlfriend told me so.  Of course, I asked her to explain and here’s what told me.

First, you have the affirmative orgasm which sounds like this: oh yes! oh yes! oh yes!

And then there’s the religious orgasm: oh god! oh god! oh god!

“So, what’s the third type?” I asked her.

She laughed and said well that’s the fake orgasm–“oh John! oh John! oh John!”

I don’t miss that bitch at all.

One of my favorite Korea-centric blogs is back in business after experiencing technical difficulties these past several days.  I had similar issues with the same blog host last year (see here and here).  I hope GI Korea is able to find someone at blogs-about to assist with transferring his archives.

Anyway, if you link to ROKdrop, his new domain is ROKdrop.net.  The .com address wasn’t working for me at least.

Time will tell.

The future is coming on…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoQYw49saqc

This is kinda fun.  See if it works for you.

http://youtu.be/uMyNIYHa_Ko

Here’s a catchy little tune that may or may not have been inspired by my criminal butchering of the language here at LTG.

…everything put together sooner or later falls apart.

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” –Stephen King

Via Althouse comes this interesting post concerning the original grammar Nazi, Ben:Jonson.  I mean, he even had the cojones to criticize Shakespeare!  I guess it would be fair to say he wrote the definitive book on grammar.  Or at least the original.

Now, as regular readers well know when it comes to grammar I lean to Kelsey.  And given my libertarian tendencies I hold fast to my right to punctuate as I damn well please (provided of course than no one else gets hurt in the process).  Given my laissez faire attitude towards the conventions of proper written English one may wonder why I’ve chosen to blog on the topic.  The fact of the matter is that I couldn’t resist the temptation to use “A pause for two pricks” as the title for a post.

A grammar prick if there ever was one.

UPDATE:  It occurs to me that if you don’t click through to the Althouse link you’ll miss my joking reference which is: Jonson called the colon “a pause or two pricks”.  Now two pricks in a colon sounds mighty painful, but it does give one pause for thought.  Ok, I’ll stop now.

I’m talking comment spam here, not the meat by-product delicacy so popular here in Korea.

There was a time when spam comments were a real pain in the ass, so bad in fact that some bloggers just turned off commenting in despair. These days there are much better filters and other tools to defeat the spambots.  I rarely get any spam at all, and most of  that goes right into the moderation queue.  So I was mildly amused when this comment showed up at my Columbia Area Darts Association website:

Hi, i read your blog from time to time and i own a similar one and i was just curious if you get a lot of spam comments? If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much lately it's driving me mad so any assistance is very much appreciated.

Of course I clicked no hyperlinks nor did I otherwise respond but you do have to admire the creativity utilized in trying to trick me into doing so.  To what end I have no clue.

In an ongoing effort to be serve you, my reader(s), I on occasion look at my stat counter to try and discern the kind of posts folks are looking for when their Google searches lead them to LTG.

So, I see some guy in India put together this lovely string of words: “upskirt showing sanitary pad with bleeding”.  I couldn’t imagine what I had ever written that would have generated a hit for anything even remotely like that on my humble blog.  So I did some sleuthing and that pervert’s search was rewarded with this post about my recent medical checkup.

Ha ha, so sorry to disappoint but thems the breaks.

Let us pause now and lament the sad news that our common use of the comma may be contributing to it’s ultimate demise not because it is unnecessary unwanted or unloved but rather because we have used it ineptly improperly or not at all.  Or, so at least, says this article, although to be clear, I’m not taking a position regarding its veracity.

It may be a little late (years, misuse) to start caring about punctuation–but why now?  Because…I found this: to begin with. I just want to make a point, period, like this one.

Ha, that turned out to be a pretty lame attempt.  Read the link and you’ll see what I was trying to do.  I guess what impressed me was the craft and thought behind the punctuation these writers employed.  And that it was totally lost on me until now.

...what’s up with this?

The stuff of nightmares…

…and your misfortune.  I mean being stranded on a desert island is one thing, but having your rescue message found by the Big Hominid means you’re screwed for sure…

Sorry, Kevin. I couldn’t resist.