Saturday, August 03, 2002

Words of wisdom Julian Burnside writes in this month's Vocabula Review about a 1996 Australian judicial opinion, unfortunately unpublished, which addressed charges that the defendant, a police officer, had shown disrespect to his subordinates by using offensive language on the job.  The opinion provides some level-headed comments about one of our language's most widely used words.  Some excerpts: "Fuck" is an interesting word, linguistically speaking. It has the virtues of brevity, adaptability, expressiveness, and is understood universally. It has a huge number of synonyms, ranging from coy euphemisms to acceptable jocular equivalents to coarse vulgarities.                                                                   *  *  * It is interesting to reflect on the social process that results in a (nearly) universal activity having no convenient and polite verbal tag to denote it: the activity becomes very inconvenient to discuss, and so it is not discussed, at least in Polite Society.                                                                   *  *  * Looked at solely as a lexical unit, "fuck" is a very good, sturdy, versatile, and descriptive word. If our social masters could reconcile themselves to the idea that sex is a legitimate part of human existence and is here to stay, it may be that "fuck" will eventually be accepted in polite use. NOTE: The link provided above is part of the archive available only to paying subscribers.  (This link bypasses the front door; use it to look at the article before deciding to subscribe.  Thanks to the editor of Vocabula for pointing out this alternative, which can be found via a link on the very fine Arts and Letters Daily site.) The subscription price for access to the Vocabula Review, which is published monthly and consists of several articles, is $4.95 per year, which opens the way for an entirely different discussion on the proper way to make money on the internet.  The cut to the chase: these folks have it just right. 8:37:38 PM    comment [] Hardware convergence AlphaSmart will soon be releasing Dana, a new product category located somewhere between a notebook computer and a PalmPilot, sporting a  near-full-sized keyboard and running the PalmOS.  Projected price: $400. 4:13:42 PM    comment [] Daily web entertainment A dose of the fractured English on Pravda's "fun" page (alternative link) is always entertaining.  An example: Fish likes listening to Eminem Mark Elmer from Birmingham says that as soon as he started fishing to the music of Eminem, he caught much more fish than he did before. The fisherman said he did not know, how to explain that – either fish liked Eminem’s voice, or it was its reaction to the rap tempo of his music, but the fact is – Elmer has more fish now without changing his usual place of fishing. In this connection the National British federation of fishermen offered scientists to conduct a special research. The results were astounding: fish is attracted with Eminem’s music indeed! The main thing is not to turn the music too loud,: the result will be totally different in this case. And we will link to, but not quote, the entry regarding a woman's recently-filed lawsuit against Delta Airlines. 11:08:08 AM    comment [] New weblog technology The DailyPundit site, based on Moveable Type, has an innovation I have not seen on any other weblog: reader comments are displayed inline, with yellow background, rather than being hidden on a separate page.  This one variation makes the use of comments much more attractive as a part of the interactivity process - if they are not allowed to get out of hand.   10:56:05 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2002 Franco Castalone. Last update: 9/1/2002; 7:11:02 PM.