Word wars

Perhaps a former OED editor deleted words he considered too foreign and blamed others.

Blast from the past

Formerly amusing person Dennis Miller thinks he remembers Sacheen Littlefeather.

Thanx to The Sideshow.

Raymond Chandler's private dick

Ta-Nehisi Coates on why Philip Marlowe hated women.

Excellent revilement

Sometimes I feel that I should just link to everything blogged by Charles P. Pierce, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Amanda Marcotte (when she's not talking about eating vegetables). I am more continent than that, but here is Pierce in fine form, discussing the latest stream of consciousness from Maureen Dowd, who thinks it's a really nifty idea to do a compare-and-contrast on President Obama and Robert Griffin III, because they're kinda the same color.

Don't do as I do

The Cotton Club in the 1920s allowed black people on stage, but not in the audience. Now it's drag.

Recruiting inadvertent customers

Private prison company goes beyond supporting the war on some drugs to carrying out raids. Can you say "conflict of interest"?

Thanx to the Robert Anton Wilson group on Facebook.

Centuries of sf

Locus is doing a mega-poll on the best sf of the 20th & 21st centuries. (Vote here.) mckitterick offers a mega-resource.

"His big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle"

The Bad Sex Award doesn't even need E.L. James.

Thanx to matociquala