Causal pants

Causal Pants, Anyone?

I’m almost certain that the copy writer for the advertisement accompanying this post planned to use the word “casual” as an adjective and simply overlooked the transposition of letters in the middle of the word. I, however, could not avoid noticing.

Then I searched the Internet for “causal pants” and I found nearly 300,000 entries. Try it yourself.

Anyway, anyone else got a fav transposition of letters in a word that leads to another, intriguingly connected word?

Read ‘Hyperbole and a Half’

Over on Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh has some marvelous stuff. She tickles my fancy with irreverent commentaries spiced with quick cartoons. Here’s a brief list of some of my recent faves:

• A report about her not death experience;
• A lampoon of the misspelling of the phrase ‘a lot’;
• Her saga about the death of the Easter Bunny

She’s so ‘ffin’ good she has a store! And, she’s very productive. She’s so ‘ffin’ good she has a store! Bookmark this: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/.

Mr Deity returns

As one or two of the two or three regular readers know, I’m impressed by the Mr. Deity shorts. Well, after a delay following the second season, the third season is available. I recommend it.

Books Behind Bars comes back

Last month after officials with the Virginia corrections department blocked Books Behind Bars, the Charlottesville non-profit organization that sends books to inmates, from conducting its activities in Virginia prisons, things looked pretty grim for the venerable program supported by local bookstore owner Kay Allison. Citing concerns about contraband (a CD and paperclips) slipping into prisons with the books sent to prisoners by Books Behind Bars and demands on corrections staff to manage the prison end of the program, corrections officials refused to permit the organization to accept any more books that BBB sent in response to requests for them by prisoners.

Books Behind Bars coverage

It’s good to see additional coverage of Kay Allison’s Books Behind Bars popping up around the Internet:

• Local TV reporter Jennifer Black had a segment in her Jennifer’s Heroes series called “Kay Allison and Books Behind Bars“;
• Shelf Awareness ran a segment called “Cool Idea of the Day: Books Behind Bars” that’s appears to be based on the TV coverage;
• Over on CvilleWords, Elizabeth picked up that coverage and re-posted a bit of it (check the comments);
• Reporting in the Christian Science Monitor, Marjorie Kehe covered BBB with a link back to Ms. Black’s piece (which coverage was apparently picked up by USA Today).

Here’s a snippet from the Quest Institute’s site. It explains the ways that people can help support the project.

Making a Difference – You Can Help

The success of Books Behind Bars depends on support from our community.

Volunteers are needed to:

» Donate gently used books

» Read letters by prisoners and match donated books with ones they have requested.

» Organize and shelve books in our library.

» Hold a book drive or postage fundraiser with your work, church, or civic group.

» Help with the Annual Bike & Bake Valentine’s Day fundraiser.

Many people in prison have little or no contact with family or friends. Becoming a pen pal would give support and encouragement to those who would welcome the opportunity to correspond with someone.

Help with a quote

I’m hoping a literate (or even an illiterate) person somewhere can tell me who said something like this:

We need more talk about poems and less talk about poets and poetry.

I may not have the quote exactly right, but that’s the sense of it. I’ve searched extensively, but unsuccessfully. I remember that Henri Coulette mentioned the idea in class one night. In my fuzzy memory, I thought W. D. Snodgrass (or “S. S. Gardons”) might have said it, but I am not sure.

Where have all the thoughtful folks gone?

What sometimes passes for discourse these days (witness the ersatz discussion of Judge Sotomayor’s nomination) is not much compared to what one used to be able to hear. Witness, for example, Dick Cavett’s conversation with Jonathan Miller, which one may watch by jumping over to Mr. Cavett’s blog entry, Why Can’t we all Talk Like This?

Beard face off

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Adam Tschorn posted an entry to a blog that had a title that made me smile: “Bearded & Tschorn: USA dominates World Beard and Moustache Championships.” Actually, as one who used to wear a beard that sometimes got longish (~6-7 cm), I was interested in the topic otherwise, but I liked the word play in the title.

Link to Mr. Tschorn’s entry. Also catch a couple of his other entries about the event here, here, and here. Meanwhile, check the World Whisker and Moustache Association, WhiskerClub, BeardTeamUSA (where there’s also a page showing different styles of facial hair), the World of Beards, and (of course) the Wikipedia entry with links to other entries on styles and to the World Beard and Moustache Championship).

Fractally wrong

What a great turn of phrase!

fractal wrongness

The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person’s worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person’s worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

Debating with a person who is fractally wrong leads to infinite regress, as every refutation you make of that person’s opinions will lead to a rejoinder, full of half-truths, leaps of logic, and outright lies, that requires just as much refutation to debunk as the first one. It is as impossible to convince a fractally wrong person of anything as it is to walk around the edge of the Mandelbrot set in finite time.

If you ever get embroiled in a discussion with a fractally wrong person on the Internet–in mailing lists, newsgroups, or website forums–your best bet is to say your piece once and ignore any replies, thus saving yourself time.

Flashes of the electrons to Liz Ditz back to Normal is Overrated then all the way back to Keunwoo Lee’s Lexicon 2, with side signals to Dr. Goodword’s Language Blog, the Urban Dictionary, and Fractally Wrong (marvelous favicon!).

Cramer is a transitive verb

In my post 15 March 2009, I suggested that Jon Stewart should “cramer” some people from AIG. “Cramer” is a transitive verb that refers to the manner in which Mr. Stewart overwhelmingly demonstrated the wrongness of the putative reporting about financial matters by Jim Cramer and, in Mr. Stewart’s view, the entire CNBC broadcasting group.

Here are some possible synonyms for the verb “cramer”:

• eviscerate;
• expose;
• catch dead to rights;
• make say “uncle”

Mr. Cramer may be a smart guy, but that interview looked like a battle of wits with one party unarmed.

I’d be glad to entertain others. Drop ‘em in the comments. Here’s a link to the earlier post where I first used “cramer” as a verb.