Pre and de

There is an endless war between the prescriptivists, who think that Rules are the most important thing, and descriptivists, who think that language is a great place for majority vote. Between this Scylla and Charybdis, there are those of us who want language to be a good tool, flexible and not encumbered by ancient strictures, but precise where it has to be: disinterested and literally are excellent words as long as they mean what they mean, and not what a lot of people would vote for.

I thought I saw hope in Lingua France, an attack on "zombie rules" that picked up good old split infinitive & terminal preposition and approved nothing worse than the mildly annoying "bored of," until it got to the tenth and last, accepting "try and," a usage almost Republican in its stupidity. You don't do two things--try and do--you try to do something. That's almost as bad as the "horrible little oven mitt"* saying "There is no try."

*Thank you, David Brin

National Coming Out Day

To those who have taken this day to come out as gay, lesbian, bi, or trans, I offer my best wishes that you get to do so at as little cost (in all ways) as possible, my admiration, and my thanks for helping make the world I live in a less stupid one.

To those who think, as I do, that Coming Out Day can include all the forms of sexuality that can offend people whose business it is none of, I direct your attention to my userinfo if you did not already know that I am part of a happy, long-lasting, committed three-person tuple.

Facebook does it again

Wolf! Wolf! Maybe this time Facebook really is attacking our privacy even more. Yes, Facebook is removing the option to be unsearchable by name. Snopes.com agrees.

Selectivity

LAPD teaches its LAPDogs to make subtle discriminations.

Thanx to bart_calendar

Adding to the Gohmert pile

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX--are we surprised?) says John McCain supported al-Qaeda.