Mine sleeps in the other room, but boy, did I get bitched out when I came out

Mine also tries to wake the dog up to give him his shot. He's either not very bright or too smart (because he knows if the dog wakes up I'll get up to walk him as dog is elderly and I can't just ignore him if he thinks it's time to go out). They are all tyrants.

ION Diane Rehm drives me nuts but am too lazy to get up to turn off radio right now.

Revenge of the Language Nerds

Beleaguered linguists find witty champions in Far From the Madding Gerund.

David Foster Wallace once invented an organization called the "Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts" whose members boycott stores with signs reading "10 items or less." It was a joke (from the novel Infinite Jest), but it's not too far-fetched. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a book that took as its primary subject the misuse of various punctuation marks, became an international best seller a few years ago, and on bookstore shelves today it has plenty of company: Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English; The Grouchy Grammarian; The Dictionary of Disagreeable English; Lapsing Into a Comma, and so forth.

These books tend to be written by prescriptivists—people who would dictate how language should be used. Descriptivists—those who would describe how language is actually used—have rarely had such eloquent (or prolific) spokesmen. As a result, they're often ridiculed. Wallace, who himself is a somewhat militant grammarian, has argued that descriptivism is hopeless as a scientific endeavor: Using what people actually say and write to determine appropriate English usage is, he says, like writing an ethics textbook based on what people actually do. But descriptive linguists have finally found persuasive champions in Mark Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum, who have collected a series of essays from their blog Language Log into a new book, Far From the Madding Gerund.

My story about Eureka is up at [link] if any are interested.

You capitalised my name!

You capitalised my name!

Heh, I noticed that too.

Far From the Madding Gerund

Ha. I saw that a couple of days ago, and very carefully weighed the merits of posting a link vs not.

I decided not to risk it...

Help me think of something.

Umm... well....

Where's Juliana or Vortex or meara?

Just say "oh, I --" stop abruptly, smile enigmatically and say "nothing special" What their minds will come up with is FAR more exciting than anything you could actually do.

I don't know what this means:

very carefully weighed the merits of posting a link vs not.

It's good to see that we can count on the neocons to call for more war.

From William Kristol: The right response is renewed strength--in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.

But such a military strike would take a while to organize. In the meantime, perhaps President Bush can fly from the silly G8 summit in St. Petersburg--a summit that will most likely convey a message of moral confusion and political indecision--to Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us, against our common enemies. This is our war, too.

[link]

Peace, schmease.

Well, the "worth" includes real estate and retirement funds and stuff, but yeah -- that seems like upper middle class at the very least.

Even with those things -- a paid off house, a good retirement fund, and no big pile of debt is probably not the norm in the middle class.

Median net worth is about $100,000

[link]

10 to 50 times that probably is out of the range of middle class.