no small matter

My wife and I agree on nearly every matter of consequence, so our bitterest feuds are always about trivia. Last night we argued (discussed, debated) the accepted plural of the proper noun "Adidas." Consider the following sentences:

"I wore my Adidas because my Nikes were consumed by mold."

"I wore my Adidases because my Nikes were consumed by mold."

She argued that common usage supported the former; I argued that grammatical propriety supported the latter. Alas, we were stuck in the car, with no Google to guide us. When we arrived home, what was the first thing we did?

That's right.

Our research ended up meandering through some interesting and unexpected areas. First, we discovered that I was somewhat right; in published documents, "Adidases" is the preferred plural, while the vernacular favors "Adidas." However, trademark regulations say that both are out-of-bounds.

NEVER modify a trademark to the plural form. Instead, change the generic word from singular to plural.

EXAMPLES:

1. tic tac candies, NOT tic tacs
2. OREO cookies, NOT OREOS

Furthermore, we discovered that the warring bastions of the British press disagree over the proper capitalization of "adidas." The Guardian:

company names
use names the companies use themselves, except in cases where they adopt typographical or other devices that, in effect, turn them into logos
So: Adidas, not adidas; BhS (no italicised h); Live TV (not L!ve TV); Toys R Us (do not attempt to turn the R backwards); Yahoo! is OK

But contrast The Times:

adidas (l/c) policy is now to allow companies the styles they wish to follow. See AXA, BUPA, easyJet etc

Confounding expectations, the politically conservative Times is linguistically progressive, while its liberal twin stands against the changing tides of usage.

Now, a challenge: is there a word in the English language that ends in -as and is both singular and plural? (If you say "maracas," you're wrong; the singular is "maraca.")

just a phone call away

This clever (but nasty) hoax shows that no one--not the MSM, not bloggers, not anyone--is immune from poor fact-checking. (Update: I note that the now-broken link has been replaced by this explanation.)

(Thanks to Matt Welch.)

final answer

Adding to my series of short posts, here's one of the funniest Onion articles ever, compliments of someone clearly breaking copyright laws.

"dead meat to God"

Maybe Paul Krugman is on to something.

mum's the word

I was going to write about Terri Schiavo, and then I said to myself, shut up.

facts are stupid things

Jeers for the next person who claims that "judicial activism" is ruining the country, or that "unelected judges" threaten the Republic.

exactly

Morgaine of What She Said:

The point she's making is that "there's no such thing as Women's Writing". There's just writing. Some of it is good, some bad, some brilliant, and none of that is determined by the writer's gender. Half the women on the net have taken that crazy test to see whether their writing is "male" or "female" and most score male. Apparently, it has something to do with complete sentences and accurate punctuation, and nothing at all to do with plumbing or a second X chromosome.

Wouldn't it be nice to just be a writer, without being shoved into a subset with an assumption of inferiority? To be judged by the work, and only the work? To write about one's own experience without apologizing for it? To express a complete range of emotion and imagination without being told that those should be limited by a cultural norm? To write whatever comes to mind without worrying about the comfort level of anyone who might read it?

Trying to get across the same point, I challenged my juniors to identify writing samples by gender. The results were hilarious for their sheer, confident wrongness. "If that's by a woman, I just don't know what to say," said one of my female students. "Women just don't use that expression."

The supposedly male phrase? "The thing is."

Tell that to Barbara Cooper. Or danah boyd. Or Allison Keiley. Or Susanne Denham. Or Jennifer Squires.

and one more thing

Just when I thought I'd read every opinion there was to read about Terri Schiavo, along came Ed Brayton.

kept "alive"

After all the heartache of the Terri Schiavo tragedy, what are we to make of this?

Thursday night, the medical examiner told KOMO 4 News that Puckett had been pronounced dead. But confusion reigned when it turned out Puckett was still alive Friday morning.

But now officials say Puckett's being kept alive to preserve his organs. He's on life support at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia.

In a statement issued late Friday, Jeremy's father said:"...There has been some confusion in the last 24 hours as to the status of his condition. This is because it has taken some time to coordinate the extensive donation of all of his organs. It has been necessary to artificially support his organs to keep them viable for donation..."

wherein I claim the mantle of Nostradamus

And now for a trivial diversion.

My "olympia northwest" NCAA bracket is in the top 5% on ESPN, number 141169 out of millions. Seriously. I can't believe it.

My secret? I take only five minutes, no more, to construct it, proving the essential wisdom of intuition. (Thank you, Malcolm Gladwell.)

I picked UNC, Michigan State (take that, Dick!), Kentucky, Louisville, Arizona, and Illinois, and, like everyone else, missed Wisconsin and West Virginia.

Looking into my hazy plastic orb, I foresee Illinois, Louisville, UNC, and Kentucky.

Kentucky beats Illinois in a close championship. Dick Vitale, are you paying attention?

Update: As of 9:08 p.m. Pacific, I have moved up to the 98th percentile, ranked #43776, thanks to teeth-gnashing comebacks by Illinois and Louisville--the best basketball action this year. Until tomorrow.

area curmudgeon deals crank

Social Security just doesn't cut it. And yes, posting $10,000 for bail is an immediate admission of guilt.

life imitating art imitating art imitating life

The Smoking Gun has found a troubling animation by Jeff Weise, the teenager who, including himself, killed ten and wounded seven during Monday's rampage at a Minnesota high school.

In a brief bio accompanying his Flash animations, Weise described himself as "nothin but a Native American teenage-stoner-industrialist," whose favorite movies included "Dawn of the Dead," "Thunderheart," and "Elephant," director Gus Van Sant's 2003 film about a Columbine-style school shooting (on his MSN profile page, Weise actually included an "Elephant" movie still showing two teenage characters--dressed in camouflage and carrying duffle bags containing weapons--heading for a school door).

tales of PubMed

The juniors have finished Artemio Cruz, and discovered (well, some of them discovered it, others were told) that Cruz's constant babblings about doubles and twins really refer to the twin brother he never knew, the twin that was stillborn after him.

But what if the twin had been inside him, hidden, dying without ever having been born? Sound far-fetched, even impossible? You might be surprised.

There is no limit to the weirdness of human development.

from the mouths of dweebs

If I didn't spend most of my social life shepherding students to debate tournaments, I'd probably... well... blog more. (I've never had much of a social life; when I was in high school, I was the one being shepherded.) This past and present weekends have been spent at the University of Puget Sound, surrounded by adolescent nerd angst and nerd angst denial--teenage debaters, and their slightly older college peers.

Today, for about two hours, I watched Student Congress, and there were enough moments of stultifying ignorance to fill an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. A few favorites:

• The kid who said that we ought to outlaw gay adoptions because "those children who are diagnosed with homophobia won't be able to handle not knowing which is the mommy and which is the daddy."
• "And in the Kashmiri town of Maflablalala Flaballa... whatever..."
• The argument that teenagers shouldn't vote because they're not eligible for the draft. Just like women... hey... maybe they shouldn't vote either...

More tomorrow, I'm sure.

Update: Perhaps because I was parliamentarian and didn't have to actually listen to speeches, Saturday didn't contain nearly as much idiocy. Except for one gem: "If we put an embargo on India, we'll inevitably have another World War II... um... I guess that would be World War III."

how much egg fits on a single face?

I mean, really?

The list of alleged felon voters compiled in Dino Rossi's legal challenge to the governor's election mistakenly includes people tried as juveniles who never lost their right to vote.

A spokeswoman for Rossi acknowledged last night that perhaps hundreds of the 1,135 people on the list are there improperly because of juvenile cases.

Mary Lane said Rossi attorneys and researchers will review the names and remove anyone found to be on the list only because of a juvenile offense.

"It could very well be that people we have on our list didn't have their voting rights taken away," Lane said of the juvenile cases.

That's it. Gregoire's in for sure. For reals. No, really, this time we're serious.

epigram central

Epigrams are atoms of thought.

Writing is atrophy of the intellect.

Words are the ivy of the mind.

An epigram is a dull pencil.

To write for another is to plant birdseed.

Laughter is the music of money.

Aging makes the conscience tangible.

Envy is the smallest particle in the cosmos.



Today's exercise in my junior-level classes involves creating and discussing epigrams, especially in the context of The Death of Artemio Cruz, famed for the maxim, "Memory is satisfied desire."

Choose and discuss. Or add your own.

Meta-Test Raises Standards

JIM ANDERSON

CORRUGATED TIMES-DISPATCH

NEW YORK -- The College Board today announced the release of a new test that measures a student's ability to take standardized tests. Called the Standardized Test of Aptitude for Testing, or STAT, the new assessment allows test prep companies to target students likely to perform poorly on other metrics.

"The time for such a test is long overdue," noted Marisol Hernandez, director of public relations for Kaplan. "We can no longer rely on students' own perceptions of potential failure. It's better that they know with precision and confidence that they need remediation."

Jonas Underwood, president of Fight Against College Testing, disagreed. "Biases are littered throughout this new moneymaking scam for the testmakers and test preppers," he said. "They'll laugh all the way to the bank. And they'll drive there in those new hybrid SUVs."

High school students have begun to feel the pinch of added testing. "Whatever it takes," said Amaria Gorney, a sophomore at Rockefeller Central High. "I'd sell a kidney to get a perfect STAT score."


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sample Question on the new STAT

When using a #2 pencil, you should make your mark __________

a) heavy and dark b) hot and heavy c) dark and stormy d) all of the above

[correct answer: (a)]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am so smart. S-M-R-T.

Reason enough to spend gobs of cash on a college degree?

and you thought you were original

Try this meme on for size.

Take the last sentence of your last post and Google it, as an exact phrase if you can, and see what comes up.

I thought my previous last line ("I wish I weren't you") was a clever turn of phrase until I saw who used it before me.

The morning dew laid scattered across the frozen ground. The night had been bleak and cold. The clouds had done their job

The town was called New Angeles. It was a technical wonder. Even though this was the 21st century, the town was in 1983 condition. It was an ancient foundation, and made of beautiful brick. Being early in the morning, 6:12 last time he looked, people were just waking up. He stood in front of the bar.

James Lom was his name. He stood at the door. He was a Bounty Hunter, and a good one too. His fame had spread a few problems. Some bounties hired an assassin who would try too kill him. He'd end up killing both the assassin and the bounty, and getting both rewards. Another problem was his reputation would make a bounty flee the continent. Most the time he still caught them.

His current bounty was Peter Zalanski, a ruthless computer thief. James was the best bounty hunter known, but Peter didn't care. He was in that bar.

I can't continue--it hurts. Read the whole thing here. Even the title is bad: "Till The Day Till All Are One."

[this is not a title]

Your belching is not speech.

Your perspective is too narrow; your concerns, too broad.

You are obviously brilliant.

Your logic hiccups from false premise to invalid conclusion.

The barrel is full of fish, but you've managed to hit the barrel.

You have enviable amounts of free time.

You are a gnat, a mosquito, a tsetse fly, Erebomyia exalloptera.

A field goal is no touchdown, no matter how far you kick it.

You expect the moon to howl back.

Your words are a limp balloon, impossible to enjoy, impossible to puncture.

I wish I weren't you.