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The Hersch

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Everything posted by The Hersch

  1. The Hersch
    Holy Jesus, I thought when I started with "wouldn't it be funny" it would be obvious that what followed -- an imaginary misguided grammar nazi making the ridiculous claim that it should be "fewer than 10 years old" -- was to be taken as a joke. That as many as two people started arguing with the imaginary nazi tells me I don't tell jokes so good. But still, a man goes to the doctor. The doctor says "I've got some bad news and some worse news." "Oh my goodness," says the man, "what's the bad news?" The doctor says "You've only got 24 hours to live." The man reels a bit and then asks the doctor what's the worse news. The doctor says "I was supposed to tell you yesterday."
  2. The Hersch
    I love how you've replaced the flawed nazi of my imagining with a more nearly perfect nazi of your own. Your argument by analogy with a language that makes no grammatical distinction between "less" and "fewer" elevates this whole topic to pure comedy gold.
  3. The Hersch
    Forgive me for veering wildly off topic, but wouldn't it be funny if a grammar nazi swooped in and insisted it should be "fewer than 10 years old"?
  4. The Hersch
    I guess I must be really special. I'm afraid it's still the same. At the forum level there's a little notice that says "you cannot start a new topic" and then at the thread level a notice that says "you cannot reply to this topic"....and there is no reply box, and no "quote" button at the bottom of each comment.
  5. The Hersch
    I have unhappy memories of traveling through Kinston on my way from Wilson to my dog's groomer in New Bern during my Babylonian Captivity. I hope you're not having dinner at Parker's barbecue in Wilson. I wouldn't wish that on my dearest foe.
  6. The Hersch
    Flaky white doom. Meteorologists are tweeting phrases like flaky white doom.
  7. The Hersch
    I find that the entire History forum, including the subforum Current Events, is closed to replies and to starting a new topic. I did not use the "view new content" function.
  8. The Hersch
    Known variously as Look on Yonder's Wall, Look over Yonder Wall. Which of these is greater than another?
  9. The Hersch
    I have a few rules for Americans in France: Always begin any interaction with a greeting. "Bonjour monsieur", "Bon soir madame", whatever. It might not always be called for, but it's never unwelcome, and often just blurting out what you want, even in French, comes across as rude. No matter how little French you speak, you can always say "s'il vous plait" and "merci". They go a long way. Keep in mind that the French generally love Americans if you meet them 1/100th of the way. Don't wear shorts, unless you're a child or are at the beach. Keeping Lucy in mind, don't order escargots and then complain to the waiter that there are snails on your plate, and don't then ask for ketchup or pay the bill with counterfeit money.
  10. The Hersch
    Gray and grey are not the best example of American versus British spelling, since both forms are quite commonly found on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps defense and defence? The notes on the spelling of gray/grey in the OED are extensive and fascinating. This is just an excerpt:
  11. The Hersch
    Possibly interesting personal factoid: My great-uncle Sam was president of the Monon Railroad (1847-1971), which features in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I believe he was the last president, and oversaw the merger of the Monon with the much larger Louisville and Nashville Railroad in 1971. --- The Monon Railroad (DonRocks)
  12. The Hersch
    How do you turn ravioli into tortellini?
  13. The Hersch
    I don't know squat about music theory and obviously can't address your question. But Leonard Bernstein was wonderful.
  14. The Hersch
    Don, I specifically said that nobody is asking Muslims at large to apologize for terrorist actions, contra the original essayist. Nor did I suggest that all Muslim-Americans are being accused of responsibility for acts of terrorism. What I referred to, and I thought fairly carefully, although I guess I was wrong, was the notion that Muslims generally, and especially American Muslims, have a responsibility for the terrorists who act in the name of Islam; not that they are responsible for the acts of terrorism themselves, but are somehow especially and uniquely responsible for reining them in, for denouncing them, for defeating them. And I can name people who make such assertions: Hillary Clinton, for one ("The first line of defense against radicalization is in the Muslim-American community"). Barack Obama for another. What do you think President Obama meant to convey when he said the following? He's saying "good" Muslims must take the responsibility for purging Islam of "bad" Muslims, an idea I find preposterous, in the first place, and odious and condescending towards a billion people to boot. And again, it wasn't the "good" Muslims who were responsible for the rise of Daesh and al Qaeda, it was the considered policies of the United States government and its complaisant allies (and a long string of Western colonial policies before them).
  15. The Hersch
    I think the original essay by Rana Elmir is badly expressed in that she conflates condemnation with apology, and indeed, a call for apology from the Islamic community at large for the transgressions of the violent extremists doesn't figure prominently in any of the public dialogue on this issue. Aside from that, though, I think she's pretty much right. Asking the ordinary, peaceful, decent follower of Islam to somehow take responsibility for the violent extremists who perpetrate horrific crimes ostensibly in the name of Islam is monstrously unfair, and something we don't ask of other groups. Do we insist that peaceful, liberal American Jews take responsibility for the heinous atrocities routinely perpetrated by the State of Israel as currently governed? This endowment of peaceful Muslims with special responsibility for the worst excesses of their ostensible co-religionists is particularly rich coming from Americans, whose decidedly non-Islamic governments of the last fifty years managed to create the current Iranian regime, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Daesh through deliberate, specific policy choices, and were then shocked, shocked! at the result.
  16. The Hersch
    Is this true across all modern makes and models? If so, you've changed my life! Thanks!
  17. The Hersch
    It's encouraging to learn that I have a lot of distinguished company in my dislike of the new exterior signage at the Renwick.
  18. The Hersch
    I have improvised a rack using chopsticks stacked on the bottom of a pan in a sort of tic-tac-toe configuration. If you have a bunch of chopsticks (cheap wooden ones) you might give it a try.
  19. The Hersch
    Your summary of my suggestion (not quite hypothesis) isn't quite what I meant, although it's probably true to some extent. My main point was that the idea of a correspondence between Greek and Roman deities was constructed via later analysis rather than existing innately within the two traditions. But there was certainly a lot of communication between Greeks and Italians. Greeks established settlements in many parts of the Italy and Sicily; you can visit some of the ruins, such as Paestum, south of Naples, founded somewhere about 600 BCE. (I've been, and had a fabulous pizza at a little tourist shack near the ruins.) Southern Italy and Sicily were even known as Magna Graecia. Later, of course, the Roman Empire came to encompass Greece and the rest of the Mediterranean world (and a lot more), but it was Greek and not Latin that was spoken in most of the eastern regions of the Empire, and also in southern Italy and Sicily. I don't know much of anything about the Trojans, but remember that the Trojan prince Aeneas escaped from the wreckage of Troy and went on to found Rome, in one origin myth.
  20. The Hersch
    I've been wondering and speculating about this very subject for decades, but never put much effort into learning about it. It has long seemed to me probable that the "counterpart" relationship of Greek and Roman deities amounts to a sort of reification of a relationship that is more one of analogues. That is, "Mars is like Ares" gets transformed into "Mars is the Roman name for Ares". This Wikipedia article is apposite.
  21. The Hersch
    Interesting that the Grande Chartreuse was forcibly closed and the order expelled by the government of the Third Republic in 1901 (under a law that suppressed the pro-monarchy wealthy religious orders generally), and only re-established by the Vichy government in 1940. I had no idea until I followed your links, Don.
  22. The Hersch
    If you change "consistently" to "sometimes" I'd say you're right.
  23. The Hersch
    Again, I really offer no judgment on the guilt or innocence of Mr. Pistorius. It does seem odd and wrong, though, for a more-or-less common-law country to have no trial by jury, and for an appeals court to be empowered to replace the trial court's verdict with a conviction for a more serious crime without a retrial of the facts. Ah well, foreigners have foreign ways.
  24. The Hersch
    Great question, Don! It is not, however, the "only" definition when most of the people who use the term don't use it that way. The OED defines "Western Hemisphere" thus: That is, generally, the Western Hemisphere is the part that includes the Americas. More specifically, for folks like you, it can mean the half west of the prime meridian to 180 degrees longitude. The fact that virtually nobody uses the term that way says something about the definition, not about the people speaking their native language. If you have access to the OED, you can see that there's no citation for the more specific meaning before 2004. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines Western Hemisphere thus (and only thus): which I'd wager good money is the way at least 95% of English-speakers use the term.
  25. The Hersch
    I haven't been recently enough to have any useful dining suggestions, but anyone who visits Bamberg should see the cathedral there. One of the most interesting churches anywhere. Also, Rauchbier.
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