Category: General

stimulate this, congress

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

i like getting money as much as the next guy.

and a $600 check will certainly be welcome, and if/when i get my stimulus check from congress, i will put it toward a credit card balance.

but the idea that we have to send everyone checks to stimulate the economy is nonsense. you’d think it was an election year, the way that congress is nakedly pandering to the electorate.

perhaps stimulus is needed, although i maintain foresight and planning would have been better. but given this bunch of fools, that’s too much to ask. it was apparent to anyone with half a brain that the real estate runup was a bubble that would burst, just like the internet bubble and, indeed, tulip mania before it. wiser people than me could have figured out how to avoid all this, although i’m sure that most of the people who saw it coming were busy figuring ways to profit from the downturn.

i’m no financial genius, but even i knew better than to get one of these foolish interest-only balloon-payment mortgages. we got a thirty-year fixed mortgage for an apartment we could comfortably afford on just one of our salaries, in case anything drastic ever happened. and now i’m expected to smile while my tax dollars bail out idiots whose greed led them to buy more house than they could possibly afford, signing mortgages they now claim not to have understood. know what? you signed it. your decision. your fault. you pay the consequences, not me.

but i know that we live in a financially interconnected world, and if everything goes to hell i will be affected, and we’re all in this together, and what not. it’s offensive to me that our prosperity, and our financial rescue, will come at the hands of countries like china, who finances our debt while millions of their own people live in abject poverty. every time i buy something frivolous i don’t need, it comes directly from the blood of some poverty-stricken third-world person.

but, i’m comfortable, and it’s easy to ignore that, so i do, along with everyone else. when will the ultimate reckoning come? someday. i hope not in my lifetime. at some point, though, this country’s prosperity will come to a sudden, screeching halt, and it won’t be pretty.

in the meantime, we will stimulate the economy with $600 checks, plus $300 extra per child for the breeders. and now the retirees are complaining that they will be left out, so i’m sure someone will see to them as well.

michael kinsley and joe klein touch on this in their columns in time magazine this week. i especially like kinsley’s take, comparing the situation to a drunk’s bender:

I think we should sober up first. Plenty of people are still partying as if it were 2006. Right-wing radio talk shows are still dominated by ads for second mortgages. Every day’s mail still brings fat envelopes from companies begging to issue you a credit card. Every TV commercial that isn’t about some prescription drug for a disease you never heard of (but may well have, now that they mention it) seems to be for payday loans. Always borrow responsibly, they say. A little late for that.

Here’s a thought. Suppose we don’t go further into debt in the name of fiscal stimulus. Suppose we stop selling ourselves piece by piece to foreigners (and suppose we stop blaming the foreigners for problems of our own making). Suppose we use taxing and spending to show the world that we can behave responsibly, see how the world responds to that, and let the Federal Reserve Board supply the stimulus with lower interest rates. If we must have a fiscal stimulus, let’s make sure it’s not too enjoyable. Build some rapid transit; don’t give away any tax breaks.

joe klein comes to much the same conclusion. build some infrastucture. use the money to insulate buildings, make things more energy efficient, build mass transit. give us some energy independence, so we can perhaps avoid some of the troubles that got us where we are now. that’s too much vision to ask from our oilman president, of course, but we can dream.

in the meantime, i guess i’ll wait for my payola to arrive.

my florida friends and relatives: don’t vote for giuliani

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

it doesn’t look like he will win, and it looks like losing may knock him out of the race for president.

but, my fellow floridians, take it from a former floridian who lived in new york under giuliani for a time: you don’t want this guy as your president.

the new york times summed it up this morning:

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

if you are voting in the republican primary, and you want someone who will best defend this country from its enemies — pick anyone but this guy, who is in bed with many of our enemies for personal profit.

anyone.

please.

everyblock.com: this could get addictive

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

via gawker, i found out about this new site, everyblock.com, that aggregates information about your neighborhood from various sources.

right now, it’s only new york, chicago, and san francisco, but i could see this scaling up into national coverage.

there’s lots of great info about my neighborhood. i learned not to eat at tony and val’s pizza, at least not in the near term. i learned that we had 24 total crimes last week. i learned that some clueless yelptard trashed the riverdale garden, which we love.

this site gets priority bookmarking.

jonny greenwood and “popcorn superhet receiver”: no oscar for you

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

jonny greenwood’s score for “there will be blood”, which i discussed in my previous post, has been disqualified from consideration for an oscar this year.

when the nominations came out this morning and he wasn’t on the list, i assumed that he had just been overlooked for his amazing work, which was in my estimation not just the best score of the year, but one of the most effective film scores in my memory.

turns out that apparently people voted for him, as he was included on the academy’s reminder sheets that were mailed to voters over the past few weeks. but because his score included previously used music — some in the public domain, some from his own “popcorn superhet receiver” — the score was declared ineligible just a few days ago, and all the votes for the score were ignored. too late, of course, for any appeal.

boy is this crap. i’d be hopping mad if my vote was wasted because the academy couldn’t get their act together to make a timely ruling.

and i’m furious for jonny greenwood, whose amazing work deserved better treatment.

as did he.

popcorn superhet receiver

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

kirk and i saw “there will be blood” recently and came out raving about the score, which was by jonny greenwood of radiohead. i thought it was the best thing about the movie, daniel day-lewis included. kirk didn’t go that far, but that’s what makes the phone book.

so when i got a ny times email about the wordless music concert featuring jonny greenwood’s composition “popcorn superhet receiver”, i immediately got tickets.

and the associated article discussed his love of messiaen, a composer that kirk and i love.

sometimes, serendipitously, all signs point to yes.

last night’s concert was a marvel. the venue, an acoustically outstanding church, was filled to overflow capacity with an atypical crowd for orchestral music — lots of groovy williamsburg types who looked to be fleeing for the “l” train afterwards. what an attentive audience, though — much more attentive than the old folks normally attending these things. absolutely rapt, and appropriately so given the well-planned program. each of the three pieces built internally to different climaxes, as did the three pieces taken as a whole.

the first was “sinking of the titanic” by gavin bryars — based on the music that the band played as the boat sank, and interspersed with tape of survivors’ interviews and ambient noise. a bit somnambulant, but relaxing and engaging.

the second was “christian zeal and activity” by john adams. a bit more active musically, and this time the interspersed tape was jimmy swaggart preaching the story of the healing of the man with the withered hand. loved this, because it took me back to that great jimmy swaggart sample in “welcome to paradise” by front 242 (hey poor! you don’t have to be poor anymore! jesus is here!) this piece was shorter quiet sections that built to quick crescendos and repeated the theme.

the last piece was “popcorn superhet receiver”. i’ll excerpt the ny times review to explain:

Mr. Greenwood has described “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” named for a shortwave radio, as a study in white noise, the electronic whoosh you hear between radio stations. But it also contrasts old and new technologies: white noise is approximated by antique instruments made of wood, horsehair and catgut.

And where pure white noise is an undifferentiated hiss, Mr. Greenwood’s score, even at its most densely atonal, has a consistently alluring shimmer and embraces everything from lush vibrato, glissandos and sudden dynamic shifts to slowly rising chromatic themes. Toward the end his clusters give way to a prismatic full-orchestra pizzicato section: imagine the scherzo of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony on steroids, or acid, or both.

what he said.

all i know is that it was, for me, far and away the most engaging and exciting piece of the evening, mr. greenwood’s celebrity-ness notwithstanding. it had the feel of someone with unlimited talent being finally let loose to express himself in a new medium, to startlingly good effect. the whole evening had a “moment in history” feel, as if you had been in the audience for steve reich’s first performance or something.

i think this greenwood kid may have a future.

update: jonny greenwood is in the scott walker documentary. another artist we’ve discovered and love. this keeps getting weirder and more coincidental.

apple tv: i am [not] moved

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

lots of cool new stuff from apple. including an updated apple tv, which is the thing i’m most likely to buy, but i think the wallet is staying in the pocket for the short term. longer term, there’s a small possibility of an apple tv in my home.

» the apple tv can stream photos and music to your tv. i can do that with the wii and wii transfer.

» the apple tv can show me you tube videos on my tv. using the wii’s browser, i can watch you tube videos on my tv as well.

» the apple tv can feed me audio and video podcasts. i can’t do that on my tv, but i’m not sure i need to. i need to look at the video podcasts that are out there and see if they are compelling.

» the apple tv can let me buy tv shows and rent movies. the buy tv shows bit intrigues, but the rent movies part doesn’t. netflix is cheaper. you can rent hd movies using apple tv, but i’m not sure there’s enough of a visual difference between regular dvd quality and hd quality to make that a reason to shell out the apple tv bucks.

although the apple tv does make me pretty sure i’ll never buy a high definition/blu-ray dvd player. i would buy an apple tv first, i think, and just rent the hd movies if i for some reason just had to have high definition movies.

but i don’t think i do need them, especially since i’m viewing content on a 23″ lcd screen. and i know i can bittorrent shows and movies and encode them and transfer them and burn them and whatnot, but who the hell has time for that? and anyway, call me a nerd, but i like to keep it legal.

i am attracted by the slickness and the interface, though. although there’s much of the apple tv’s function that i can presently replicate, it has a cobbled-together feel and doesn’t work perfectly.

for a while, i thought i might like to get a mac mini to hook up to the tv, instead of the apple tv. but you can’t rent hd content using a computer, only the apple tv, because of the copy protection inherent in the hdmi connector which the computers don’t have. even though i don’t think i need hd content, i think you buy hardware looking forward, not back. i don’t want to lock myself into not being able to get hd content. so, it’s apple tv, or nothing.

with a caveat — my tv doesn’t have an hdmi connector, just a dvi connector. if i can’t rent hd content with the apple tv hooked up that way, it’s a non-starter. i’m not buying an apple tv and a new tv as well.

i’ll do the taxes (we might get a big hit this year), let the dust settle, let others be the guinea pigs, and then we’ll see.

this-and-that

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

» today is anniversary #8 with kirk. you can read all about it. love ya baby.

» next tuesday is the stevenote at macworld, which means lots of new apple stuff to potentially spend money on. in case you just stumbled here, i’m a big apple fan. what could get me to blow the dust off of my wallet? perhaps an updated 3g iphone — kirk could get the new one and i’d take his old one. perhaps something more useful than apple tv to hook up to the hdtv, since we don’t have cable tv. maybe it’s the whatever-they’ve-come-up-with-that-noone-has-thought-of. maybe the wallet stays intact.

» i’m starting to get more political again — i find myself going to more and more political news sites and blogs. i get geared up every election cycle, and this one promises to be no different. i’m sure to bore you with my mumblings and rantings, but i gotta be me. still liking that obama guy. but i may change my mind. maybe i’ll even vote republican this year. it could happen. you never know.

» via kottke, a great article by kevin smith about his new movie, “zach and miri make a porno”. anything by kevin smith is a must-see for me (chasing amy is on my top-ten favorite films of all time), but with a title like that i can hardly wait.

» have a great weekend! i mean it. no excuses.

hillary exhausts me

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

so against all odds, she won in new hampshire. by, shocking to me but also instructive, winning the blue-collar vote.

i still like obama, and frankly i like having hillary as my senator but i’m not sure about her as president. i really think we need a less partisan breath of fresh air. after 20 years of bush-clinton-bush, another clinton strikes me as a bit too dynastic. and i think hillary would be divisive, and stir up too much of the left-right-red state-blue state conflict. we’d spend four or eight more years with too much carping and not enough unity. and we’d all have to hear about vince foster again, and all that clinton baggage crap.

that said, i’d rather have hillary than any of the republicans. but that’s a real hobson’s choice.

my next task is this, though — all her blue-collar support intrigues me. i need to look deeper.

cherry blossoms

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

via kottke, a story about an artist whose project illustrates our disconnect with the terrorism that so many other countries live with every day.

from alyssa wright’s site:

The project starts in a backpack outfitted with a small microcontroller and a GPS unit. Recent news of bombings in Iraq are downloaded to the unit every night, and their relative location, to the center of the city, are superimposed on a map of Boston. If the wearer walks in a space in Boston that correlates to a site of violence in Baghdad, the backpack detonates and releases a compressed air cloud of confetti, looking like a mixture between smoke and shrapnel and the white blossoms of a cherry tree, completely engulfing the wearer. Each piece of confetti is inscribed with the name of a civilian who died in the war, and the circumstances of their death.

genius.

and everything art should be.

smell yo dick

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

reading the sunday new york times (which is huge and very sensibly comes on saturday to give you additional time to read it) i ran across a blurb about riskay, a rapper from bartow, florida.

my dad lived in bartow, so it caught my eye. also, riskay looks like a drag queen, so that caught my eye too.

anyway, of all places to learn about a new rapper, you’d think the new york times would come in last. but they were dead on target this time. she’s brilliant, and her big myspace-popular song is called “smell yo dick”. head over and listen…it’s fantastic on many levels. catchy tune, risque subject matter, slightly satirical, and boldly feminist in a reclamatory kind of way.

the times thinks she should clean up her act and try for mass radio play.

i think she’s fine the way she is.

still liking that obama guy

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

i haven’t weighed in on this as yet, but i’ve been keeping my eye on obama. i’m on his mailing list. liked his last book. and with his victory last night in the iowa caucuses, things are looking good for him.

from the article:

Mr. Obama’s victory in this overwhelmingly white state was a powerful answer to the question of whether America was prepared to vote for a black person for president. What was remarkable was the extent to which race was not a factor in this contest. Surveys of voters entering the caucuses also indicated that he had won the support of many independents, a development that his aides used to rebut suggestions from rivals that he could not win a general election. In addition, voters clearly rejected the argument that Mr. Obama does not have sufficient experience to take over the White House, a central point pressed by Mrs. Clinton.

that addresses two of my biggest concerns. i want a winner, and i want a leader. perhaps obama is both.

i’ll vote my conscience in the primaries…i always do. but it would be nice to see a democrat back in the white house.

keeping my eye on you, obama.

updated wordpress theme

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

just installed the 4.0 version of scott wallick’s plaintxtblog theme, which in layman’s terms is the file that makes this blog looks like it does. the change should be invisible to you, but the underlying functionality is better for me. i tweak it a bit to make it my own:

» i edit the styles.css file so that everything except the blog titles are in lowercase. pretentious, i know, but a queerspace.com tradition dating to 1998.

» i edit the header.php file to use the optimal title plugin (a better page title for the search engines) update: this plugin was deprecated and the functionality has been incorporated into wordpress. now all you have to do is make this change:

wp_title('»',TRUE,'right')

to the header.php file (take out the php the title at the end and the various slashes, so it looks like “post title » queerspace.com”)

to the style.css file add this to make the “search for” text go away:
.widget_search .screen-reader-text {
display:none;
}

» i delete the <meta name="description"> line so i can use the head meta description plugin (a better page description for the search engines). update: no longer necessary with plaintxt 4.6

now you know.

and now it’s in writing, so the next time i upgrade i’ll remember what to do.

and if you see anything odd or something i’ve forgotten, leave me a comment.

update: i also changed the way that the category dates display by editing “wp-includes/general-template.php” using a tip from wordpress.org. this is an edit to the wordpress files, not the theme, but as this post is serving as a repository for my edits, what the hell. also, updated the footer to include the creative commons license and other info. and also, edited “wp-includes/default-widgets.php” so that “select category” and “select month” are lowercase.

update: also, when you update your wordpress version, you should delete the readme.html file so that your wordpress version isn’t easily accessible.

thanksgiving plans

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

first of all, a day early, but i won’t be blogging tomorrow — happy thanksgiving!

our plans?

usually, they involve lots of yummy pennsylvania dutch starchiness when we visit kirk’s parents, but this year we’re staying home. kirk’s parents had a previous commitment (on thanksgiving? whatever.) and it’s our first year in our new apartment anyway. so instead of a food network thanksgiving, or a southern-ish-style thanksgiving, we’re having a martha stewart living thanksgiving. the turkey recipe from the november issue, to be specific. here’s what’s planned so far, with more probably to be added:

» brined turkey and stuffing, a la martha — we got a fresh turkey from our local farmer’s market, and we’re soaking it in a spiced brine for 24 hours prior to cooking. yummo, as rachael ray would say to martha if they weren’t blood enemies. the turkey will be stuffed with some kind of yummy stuffing, the details of which i can’t remember. the most important stuffing note, though, is that the recipe calls for the stuffing to be placed in cheesecloth before placing in the turkey. that way, you can take out the stuffing when the turkey is done, and cook the stuffing longer so you don’t get salmonella or whatever. this is a major victory for me. kirk always worried about the ill effects of stuffing a turkey, so he’d never let me put stuffing loose in the turkey. never mind that i lived my entire life doing it, and never died as a result. ah, compromise.

» organic green bean casserole — they had a display of organic fried onions and organic green beans and organic cream of mushroom soup at whole foods, and the concept of organic green bean casserole cracked me up so much that i had to buy it. maybe we can have organic jell-o salad for dessert, to complete the ’70s vibe.

» cranberry salad — my family historically makes the standard cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries. one bag cranberries, one cup sugar, one cup water. boil. kirk this year made his aunt marcia’s cranberry salad, which has nuts, and oranges, and chopped fresh cranberries, and sugar, and oysters, and chopped chives, and other stuff i’m forgetting. well, not really oysters and chopped chives. but it’s far too busy a recipe for me. and nonstandard thanksgiving fare to boot. and he made at least 18 pounds of it. i’m skeptical. we’ll see.

» cope’s corn — no thanksgiving would now be complete for me without it. see, i can change.

» potato filling — this is mashed potatoes with celery and onion and bread and 11 herbs and spices according to the colonel’s secret recipe. actually, kirk’s mother’s recipe. but it is yummy. i’ve adapted to this, as well. great comfort food.

» gravy — lotsa lotsa gravy. made from pan drippings and roux, the right way.

» steamed broccoli — there has to be something green, right? or i may open a can of mustard greens.

» pumpkin cheesecake — a bit of a twist on tradition, but one i can handle.

i think that’s it. i’m probably forgetting something. but you get the gist.

here’s hoping your thanksgiving is as blessed as ours will be.

our wii media center

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who needs an apple tv? not us.

we have a mac in our “home office”, which is in fact a shallow closet. elsewhere in the apartment, we have a wii, and we have the wii hooked up to the hdtv, and we have the wii hooked up to the home theater. and the mac and the wii are on the same network.

enter wii transfer.

for a $19 shareware fee, which i paid and so should you when you use shareware, this little program feeds music, movies, photos, and browser bookmarks from your mac to the wii’s internet browser. so if i want to listen to itunes music through the stereo, or watch a downloaded video file on the hdtv, or watch a slideshow of my iphoto pictures, i can now just fire up the wii, use the wii’s browser to pull up the content, and bob’s your uncle, as they say in paraguay. it installed easily with practically no configuration, and worked perfectly out of the box.

there are a couple of minor drawbacks. you can’t play purchased drm-encoded video, so all my wonder showzen episodes bought in itunes stay on the mac. and audio files don’t stream yet (they are copied over to the wii on the fly), so you run into wii memory issues with large audio files. no radioshift yet.

but those are very minor quibbles. quibbles i can put up with when spending $19 for wii transfer, as opposed to $299 or even $399 for an apple tv. we listened to itunes playlists all weekend.

great stuff.

unsolicited recommendation: homedecorators.com

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

for years, kirk and i just left our liquor bottles in a disorganized clump on the floor. with our holiday party coming up, we thought it might be nice to have a small liquor cabinet to put the bottles in, something that had a top that could double as a small dry bar.

so kirk found this lovely and well-priced corner cabinet at homedecorators.com, and he ordered it.

the website was well-organized and very informative, the ordering process was straightforward, and the shipping was expedient (delivered less than a week after the order was placed, good for such a large object).

we were especially pleased with the quality of the shipped product. it was partially assembled, and the pieces were clearly labeled, each with its own letter of the alphabet. the assembly directions were clear and literate, and it was fully together in about 20 painless minutes.

since our entire kitchen came from ikea, we are not strangers to furniture assembly. the homedecorators.com assembly experience was much better than the ikea experience, and considering how happy we were with ikea, that’s saying something. the parts were of superior quality. no pressboard, all hard wood, better hardware (bolts, screws, etc.).

for a price comparable to ikea, we got a higher-quality product and a better overall customer experience. we’ll be repeat customers with homedecorators.com, without a doubt.

your creation museum report

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via daring fireball, a tour of the creation museum, from just the right perspective.

here’s a sample:

Let me say this much: I have to admit admiration for the pure balls-out, high-octane creationism that’s on offer here. Not for the Creation Museum that mamby-pamby weak sauce known as “Intelligent Design,” which tries to slip God by as some random designer, who just sort of got the ball rolling by accident. Screw that, pal: The Creation Museum’s God is hands on! He made every one of those animals from the damn mud and he did it no earlier than 4004 BC, or thereabouts. It’s all there in the book, son, all you have to do is look.

i had to stop reading, because i was at work and in danger of laughing so hard i’d disturb the nearby cubedwellers.

this one’s a classic.

entertainment on strike

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

the world of entertainment is on strike. and how is it affecting me?

not much, i have to say. at least not directly.

first there’s the writer’s strike in hollywood. i guess that if you were a big tv watcher, you’d be upset about this. no new episodes of csi or lost or letterman or whatever, and all. but, having given up television (no cable tv, and our tv doesn’t have a tuner, so no over-the-air broadcasts either), i could care less. if the strike goes on long enough it could eventually affect the movies, and i’d care marginally more about that, but there are enough movies on netflix to last a lifetime. if they stopped making new movies tomorrow, i’d still never get to watch all the movies i’d like to see.

second strike is the stagehands on broadway. we don’t go to as many shows as we used to, so this doesn’t directly affect me in that sense. however, it definitely affects the economy of new york city, so in that sense i’m at least indirectly affected. but again, there are plenty of live entertainment options in new york — some broadway shows, off-broadway, off-off broadway, concerts, cabarets, and so on.

in general i support the concept of unions — we wouldn’t have much in the way of benefits and rights as workers if they hadn’t fought for them. and there are many jobs that i wouldn’t take unless there was a union to represent me. and when i taught school, i always belonged to the union — even though i agreed that they promoted and tolerated incompetence, i still saw the overall value in membership.

i think the writers have a valid point. everything’s going online, and if something they wrote is rebroadcast on the internet or sold via itunes, there should be some payment for that. of course, if the strike continues, there may not be much of an audience left for their product, given people’s limited and continually fracturing attention span. but they have a point, and they should press for a solution if they think the risk is worth it.

i don’t think it helps their image, though, to have big stars on the picket lines, and jay leno bringing them donuts, and so on. i’ll bet the vast majority of striking writers are middle class folks with middle class incomes, and all those big stars do is leave casual observers with the impression that all writers are wealthy people looking for even more wealth.

the broadway stagehands seem to me to have less of a point. i’ll be the first to admit that i’m not fully informed, but from what i can gather, one of their main demands is to retain the right to tell producers how many union members each show must hire.

i’m guessing that most people would think that an unreasonable demand. i know i do.

i’d love to have the contractual right to tell my company that they had to employ a set number of my co-workers. who wouldn’t? but that’s not reasonable. and while i’m sure greedy producers drive up the cost of broadway tickets, having to hire union employees regardless of actual need isn’t helping either.

for the sake of the economies of new york and los angeles, i hope both strikes are settled soon.

personally, though, i don’t care much either way.

update: with the broadway strike, what’s at issue is controlling how many workers are present at the load-in for the show (when all the sets, etc., are brought into the theater). i have less of a problem with that — i dont think the producers should be telling the union how many people that takes.

for the grammar nerd in you

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

via daring fireball: Philip B. Corbett, who oversees language issues for the [NY Times] newsroom, is answering readers’ questions this week.

this is by far my favorite NY Times article in recent memory. you may think that odd, given that i’m posting about it on a blog that has no capital letters, but it’s true.

update: here’s what mr. corbett says about the phrase “in recent memory”:

A small sample of other words and phrases that my colleagues and I have identified as overworked and deserving a bit of rest:

in recent memory — An almost meaningless phrase.

it’s a long article, and obviously i posted the link before reaching the end of it.

sometimes i just can’t win.