12 March 2009
Post 189
I'm in a hurry, but I collected these tidbits while I was scanning today so I could post them here. I have no time to comment on them, but I hope you see their value anyway. These are from various issues of THE INDEPENDENT in 1915:
10 March 2009
Post 188
Howdy.
So, I keep emailing myself the interesting things I come across while scanning articles, and I'm tired of them sitting in my Gmail inbox, so I'm posting them here.
First up, interesting surnames I've encountered: Popcorn, Raper, Wellborn.
Next, words that I encountered in the first 20 years of the 20th century that I assume I never would have encountered otherwise: concomitant, recrudescence, suffraget, mortifications, manufactory.
Now that that's out of the way, here's the really interesting stuff:
I thought that English spelling was standardized back around the time that the printing press was introduced to the British Isles, but I have found that that isn't exactly the case (though it's true for most things, I think). A magazine called The Independent used a lot of spellings in the early 1900s that nowadays would be considered wrong. The first I noticed were things like tho and thru, so I figured it was just some kind of spelling (like telegraphic syntax in newspaper headlines), but then I noticed that it wasn't just -ough sorts of words that were spelled differently. Here are all the ones I noticed:
tho, altho, thoro, thoroly, thorofares, thru, thruout
every one (used in a context where we would now use everyone)
surprize
My favorite spelling difference was the -t past tense. We still have it today in words like kept, but back in pre-WWI America, it was a lot wider spread. Here are words I found:
imprest, publisht, exprest, represt, drest, fixt, whipt, prest, wrapt, developt, equipt, trapt, mixt, discust, addrest, possest
Lest you think that this is some kind of ancient history, that the language is no longer changing because the rules are set, let me move us into a more recent time frame:
A few weeks ago, I was scanning articles from U.S. News and World Report in the 1980s (remember the Honda ad I posted?). I was shocked when I realized that USNWR didn't standardize its title capitalization until 1986. In the early '80s, the capitalization of words in article titles was totally arbitrary (for example, in an issue dated 15 July 1985, they printed an article called "TV: Does It Box In President in a Crisis?" Note that in is capitalized the first time but not the second time--isn't that crazy?? I find it fascinated that the first one gets capitalized by virtue of being an adverbial particle [I assume] and the second one is not capitalized because it's obviously a preposition. Amazing). But starting January 1986, the made a rule: just capitalize the first word unless you have a proper noun in the title (1986 titles include "How far will the price of gasoline drop—and how soon?" and "The new shape of Hollywood").
Cool, huh? Anybody? Anybody?
...nobody understands me....
Of more general interest, perhaps, are these quotes I lifted from various 1908 issues of The Independent:
"Into the office of District-Attorney Jerome there came one day a grief-bowed, broken-hearted old man." (Weird, weird, weird construction, I say.)
"He said little, being a dumb fellow by nature"
Have the United States Judges Adequate Salaries? (Article title. Would we ever write such an article these days?)
"That is what we need in fiction—more manual labor and less indecent mental dexterity." (Here here! Are you listening, Hollywood? I am talking to you!)
"There are the familiar roadside signs: 'Town limit. Motor vehicles limited to twelve miles an hour." Has any motor party ever taken such a warning seriously? The maximum placed by the inexperienced authorities is low, and no pretense of obeying is made.
"And what if violators are arrested? Some inconvenience, a few dollars' fine —and that is all, as a rule. It is part of the game. [...]
"It is certainly an absurd thing for the lawmakers to consume their gray matter in constructing statutes designed to prevent automobiles from going more than twenty miles an hour on the public roads, while at the same time and in the same jurisdiction manufacturers are permitted openly to - urge every one to buy their cars, war-ranted to maintain a speed of sixty miles an hour on those very roads!" (Hehe. We might say the same today, no? Are you listening, Ferrari? I am talking to you!)
And that's all I've got.
Don't you wish your job was cool like mine?
So, I keep emailing myself the interesting things I come across while scanning articles, and I'm tired of them sitting in my Gmail inbox, so I'm posting them here.
First up, interesting surnames I've encountered: Popcorn, Raper, Wellborn.
Next, words that I encountered in the first 20 years of the 20th century that I assume I never would have encountered otherwise: concomitant, recrudescence, suffraget, mortifications, manufactory.
Now that that's out of the way, here's the really interesting stuff:
I thought that English spelling was standardized back around the time that the printing press was introduced to the British Isles, but I have found that that isn't exactly the case (though it's true for most things, I think). A magazine called The Independent used a lot of spellings in the early 1900s that nowadays would be considered wrong. The first I noticed were things like tho and thru, so I figured it was just some kind of spelling (like telegraphic syntax in newspaper headlines), but then I noticed that it wasn't just -ough sorts of words that were spelled differently. Here are all the ones I noticed:
tho, altho, thoro, thoroly, thorofares, thru, thruout
every one (used in a context where we would now use everyone)
surprize
My favorite spelling difference was the -t past tense. We still have it today in words like kept, but back in pre-WWI America, it was a lot wider spread. Here are words I found:
imprest, publisht, exprest, represt, drest, fixt, whipt, prest, wrapt, developt, equipt, trapt, mixt, discust, addrest, possest
Lest you think that this is some kind of ancient history, that the language is no longer changing because the rules are set, let me move us into a more recent time frame:
A few weeks ago, I was scanning articles from U.S. News and World Report in the 1980s (remember the Honda ad I posted?). I was shocked when I realized that USNWR didn't standardize its title capitalization until 1986. In the early '80s, the capitalization of words in article titles was totally arbitrary (for example, in an issue dated 15 July 1985, they printed an article called "TV: Does It Box In President in a Crisis?" Note that in is capitalized the first time but not the second time--isn't that crazy?? I find it fascinated that the first one gets capitalized by virtue of being an adverbial particle [I assume] and the second one is not capitalized because it's obviously a preposition. Amazing). But starting January 1986, the made a rule: just capitalize the first word unless you have a proper noun in the title (1986 titles include "How far will the price of gasoline drop—and how soon?" and "The new shape of Hollywood").
Cool, huh? Anybody? Anybody?
...nobody understands me....
Of more general interest, perhaps, are these quotes I lifted from various 1908 issues of The Independent:
"Into the office of District-Attorney Jerome there came one day a grief-bowed, broken-hearted old man." (Weird, weird, weird construction, I say.)
"He said little, being a dumb fellow by nature"
Have the United States Judges Adequate Salaries? (Article title. Would we ever write such an article these days?)
"That is what we need in fiction—more manual labor and less indecent mental dexterity." (Here here! Are you listening, Hollywood? I am talking to you!)
"There are the familiar roadside signs: 'Town limit. Motor vehicles limited to twelve miles an hour." Has any motor party ever taken such a warning seriously? The maximum placed by the inexperienced authorities is low, and no pretense of obeying is made.
"And what if violators are arrested? Some inconvenience, a few dollars' fine —and that is all, as a rule. It is part of the game. [...]
"It is certainly an absurd thing for the lawmakers to consume their gray matter in constructing statutes designed to prevent automobiles from going more than twenty miles an hour on the public roads, while at the same time and in the same jurisdiction manufacturers are permitted openly to - urge every one to buy their cars, war-ranted to maintain a speed of sixty miles an hour on those very roads!" (Hehe. We might say the same today, no? Are you listening, Ferrari? I am talking to you!)
And that's all I've got.
Don't you wish your job was cool like mine?
04 March 2009
Post 187
I've always admired the brainwork accomplished by those who are good at the Kevin Bacon game, but I've never been able to join in because I don't know that I've ever actually seen a Kevin Bacon movie and I'm pretty terrible and remembering who's been in what anyway. But today I caught the vision of it as I played with some guys at work. Even though I'm still Kevin-Bacon retarded, I know enough to connect him to Tom Hanks in Apollo 13, and I know a few tricks that allow me to connect Tom Hanks to just about anybody--but only so long as nobody enforces a set number of degrees. I can now fully appreciate just how awesome it feels to make the connection between seemingly unrelated celebrities, which I never really got before.
The only reason I bring this up, though, is this chain I came up with (there is probably a shorter way, if any of you who a more movie savvy than I am want to undertake it, but this is good enough for me):
Kevin Bacon was in Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks, who was in Cast Away with Helen Hunt, who was in As Good as It Gets with Greg Kinnear, who was in Little Miss Sunshine with Alan Arkin, who was in Marly&Me with Owen Wilson, who was in Cars with Cheech Marin, who was in Oliver&Co. with--you guessed it!--Billy Joel.
The Seven Degrees of Billy Joel--now there's a game worth playing!
The only reason I bring this up, though, is this chain I came up with (there is probably a shorter way, if any of you who a more movie savvy than I am want to undertake it, but this is good enough for me):
Kevin Bacon was in Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks, who was in Cast Away with Helen Hunt, who was in As Good as It Gets with Greg Kinnear, who was in Little Miss Sunshine with Alan Arkin, who was in Marly&Me with Owen Wilson, who was in Cars with Cheech Marin, who was in Oliver&Co. with--you guessed it!--Billy Joel.
The Seven Degrees of Billy Joel--now there's a game worth playing!
Post 186
I've been thinking about habits lately, and I've decided that there's no such thing as a good habit. I can't think of one, at least. It seems like, once something becomes a habit, it can't be really good any more. I mean, I see it all the time in Mormon culture--even in my own life--that when, say, praying becomes a habit, you find yourself blessing the food when you're going to bed and praying by name for a prophet who died more than a year ago. When scripture study becomes a habit, it ceases to be study and is reduced to staring unseeingly at a word-covered page.
I suppose one might argue that something like exercise doesn't depend on ardent attention: if you get up every morning and go for a run, it'll do your heart some good regardless of how much you put your heart into it. [I intended that to be clever, but I think I missed my mark. Any suggestions on that?] But I disagree. If I set a goal to be able to do 100 push-ups in a go (ha! that'll be the day...), and I hop out of bed every morning and crank out some push-ups, I may very well see the day when I can do 100, but if, once I have achieved that goal, it becomes a habit for me to hop out of bed every morning and do 100 push-ups, then I cease to progress and merely maintain a new status quo. If I go out and habitually run every morning, my running will probably decrease in zeal over time until it is no sort of exercise at all.
I guess my biggest beef is with that motivational poster I see from time to time--something about thoughts becoming words becoming deeds becoming habits becoming destiny-defining character--because it's naught to me but a pretty little platitude, an emerald slippery-slide argument, charming fatalism. Furthermore, I've had a lot of thoughts that sublimated directly into actions without bothering to become words, and actions can similarly impact destiny without bothering to become habits or characteristics: just drive drousily one time and run over a young mother--you don't have to make a habit of it, you'll still go to jail.
And those are my thoughts for the day.
I suppose one might argue that something like exercise doesn't depend on ardent attention: if you get up every morning and go for a run, it'll do your heart some good regardless of how much you put your heart into it. [I intended that to be clever, but I think I missed my mark. Any suggestions on that?] But I disagree. If I set a goal to be able to do 100 push-ups in a go (ha! that'll be the day...), and I hop out of bed every morning and crank out some push-ups, I may very well see the day when I can do 100, but if, once I have achieved that goal, it becomes a habit for me to hop out of bed every morning and do 100 push-ups, then I cease to progress and merely maintain a new status quo. If I go out and habitually run every morning, my running will probably decrease in zeal over time until it is no sort of exercise at all.
I guess my biggest beef is with that motivational poster I see from time to time--something about thoughts becoming words becoming deeds becoming habits becoming destiny-defining character--because it's naught to me but a pretty little platitude, an emerald slippery-slide argument, charming fatalism. Furthermore, I've had a lot of thoughts that sublimated directly into actions without bothering to become words, and actions can similarly impact destiny without bothering to become habits or characteristics: just drive drousily one time and run over a young mother--you don't have to make a habit of it, you'll still go to jail.
And those are my thoughts for the day.
03 March 2009
Post 185
Bored? Do a Google Image search for 'carbage' and feel happy that you have better things to do with your time than some folks.
12 February 2009
10 February 2009
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