Culture
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Language Corner — July 30, 2012 03:00 PM
Bell curves
Lots of “ring” words
“You must be a ringer,” the journalism instructor told the student, who insisted that, though he had many years of experience in other jobs, he had never been a journalist. “I admit I had to look that term up,” the student said later.” I wasn’t sure if it calling me a ringer was a compliment or an insult.”
Compliment,...
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Reality Check — July 30, 2012 06:50 AM
Viral before the Internet
Things spread, but the content, often documentary, was darker and weirder
Was there viral documentary film and video before the Internets? You bet. As Kliph Nesteroff wrote recently in The Awl, viralness or “virality” as he calls it, was around long before the Nyan cat.
Lots of documentary footage circulated and had an impact way before the Web through now-dead media: mimeographs, public access cable, and videotapes. As Nesteroff puts it,...
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Full-Court Press — July 25, 2012 02:35 PM
Sacred cows
The Penn State story offers a glimpse of the problems with league- and team-owned broadcast operations
Full-Court Press is a periodic column about the coverage of sports.
On July 12, a report prepared by former FBI Director Louis Freeh at the behest of Penn State University slammed the school for covering up former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual predation of children, and demolished Joe Paterno’s reputation in the process. Freeh delivered the crux of his...
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Language Corner — July 23, 2012 03:00 PM
Memorializing
What to call those piles of flowers
Bob Kamman, a regular correspondent, writes:
When unexpected deaths occur that are newsworthy, what often happens is that people leave flowers, cards and other tangibles near the location of the event. So it’s not surprising that within 24 hours of the Aurora shooting, there are news reports of ‘makeshift memorials.’
Continue readingThey’re never just memorials. They are always makeshift memorials.So I...
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Language Corner — July 17, 2012 03:00 PM
En-gendered
Terms for sexual identity
Dealing with gender identity these days is a tricky business. And while we prefer to use “sex” to describe biological and procreative characteristics, “gender” has become the more common term to describe identity.
A photo caption in The New York Times highlights the situation: A woman writing about her college experience said: “I used to say freshwoman until I was...
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Reality Check — July 16, 2012 06:50 AM
Vimeo: AuteurTube
YouTube can make amateurs rich, but the video pros are congregating elsewhere
The Times mag the other week noticed that amateur star “YouTubers” could make six figures through the site’s comedy channels.
But people filming verite vignettes or shooting true tales professionally are probably posting on Vimeo. What's Vimeo, you say? It’s is a video-sharing company where users upload their film work, all in high definition, in a player without advertising. There...
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Language Corner — July 9, 2012 03:00 PM
Sentimental journey
Evaluating a ‘journeyman’
The article’s headline promised a story “on the life of a journeyman musician.” It discussed a man who has been around a while and plays many instruments, saying he “makes great music, skillfully rendered pop-rock.”
Another article called a player “the future of American soccer,” saying “he was considered a ‘journeyman’ when coming to San Jose during the 2009 season....
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Language Corner — July 3, 2012 06:50 AM
Your choice
Alternating between alternatives
Cities that have hard winters have no “alternative” and must repair roads in the summer. And when they do, they need to provide motorists with “alternate” routes.
That sentence illustrates the difference between “alternative” and “alternate.”
The two words can sometimes “alternate” places with each other. Knowing the nuance each brings, however, can make a sentence more precise, or less.
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Critical Eye — July 2, 2012 03:02 PM
Q&A: Confront and Conceal author David Sanger
“There’s nothing ‘childish’ about raising issues of great public import”
Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power | By David E. Sanger | Crown | 476 pages, $28.00
Every White House keeps secrets, especially when it comes to national security. It’s the job of the press to learn those secrets and reveal them, unless—and it’s a big unless—the press is convinced that doing so will...
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Reality Check — July 2, 2012 07:00 AM
Push Girls transcends its genre
Viewers might come for the drama, but they'll stay for the realness that seeps through
In her new column, Reality Check, Alissa Quart delves into all things documentary.
The new Sundance Channel reality-show Push Girls, about four paralyzed women, is unexpectedly riveting. It's also unseemly.
It’s the story of four friends in Hollywood who have been paralyzed from the neck or waist down by accidents or illness. They all try—and mostly succeed—to live independently despite...
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Critical Eye — June 29, 2012 06:50 AM
How the US captured the real 9/11 mastermind
Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer take us deep inside the hunt for KSM
The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed | By Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer | Little, Brown and Company | 368 pages, $27.99
Terry McDermott’s Perfect Soldiers, released in 2005, did not get the attention it deserved. At the time, it was the most complete biography available of the 9/11...
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Critical Eye — June 28, 2012 06:50 AM
Edward Luce charts America’s decline
Is the United States past its prime?
Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent | By Edward Luce | Atlantic Monthly Press | 291 pages, $26.00
Is America in decline? Almost since America established its hegemony over the rest of the world in the aftermath of World War II we’ve been worried about this question. The recent proliferation of books about the diminution of...
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Critical Eye — June 27, 2012 06:50 AM
America’s forgotten war
Historian Troy Bickham revisits the War of 1812
The Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812 | By Troy Bickham | Oxford University Press | 325 pages, $34.95
If any large-scale war in American history has been forgotten, it is the War of 1812. The war between Britain and the United States lasted three years and claimed the lives of 15,000...
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Language Corner — June 25, 2012 03:00 PM
Par for the course
Putting golf terms in context
Let’s say you’ve just arrived from another planet, with a mastery of English, but little exposure to the popular sport known as golf. So you don’t understand why one golfer would hit a “banana ball” and end up with a “bogey,” while another used a “chicken stick” and ended up with an “eagle.”
Like most sports, golf has a...
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Language Corner — June 19, 2012 06:50 AM
Digging in
The etymology of a “clawback”
“Jamie Dimon: JPMorgan Will Likely Claw Back Pay From Responsible Executives,” the headline said. Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, was telling the Senate Banking Committee that the firm would probably seek to reclaim some pay and bonuses from those involved in the firm’s $2 billion trading loss.
What a wonderful image: bankers digging in their “claws” to wrest bundles of cash...
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Critical Eye — June 13, 2012 06:50 AM
Douglas Brinkley talks Cronkite
An interview with the legendary newsman’s biographer
In Cronkite, his hefty new biography, author and historian Douglas Brinkley tackles the “most trusted man in America,” as newsman Walter Cronkite was known for decades. Cronkite, born in Missouri in 1916, cut his teeth as a World War II wire-service reporter and was anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. Millions of viewers watched him report,...
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Language Corner — June 11, 2012 03:02 PM
Out of range
Everything from 1 to z
We love to “range.” When describing a new shopping mall, for example, an article might say: “It has everything from a roller coaster for the kiddies to high-end boutiques for fashionistas.” The “from” and “to” implies a “range,” and a range implies that “everything” will be along that line. But the only thing the roller coaster and boutique have in...
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Language Corner — June 5, 2012 06:50 AM
Empty pockets
A phrase with several meanings
Max Crittenden posted on Language Corner’s Facebook page:
I’m seeing some peculiar usage (misuse, to my mind) of the phrase “out of pocket”. “My housekeeper has injured her leg and will be out of pocket for a while.” “Sorry, I’ve been out of pocket and haven’t gotten to your request.” Is anyone else noticing this? To me, “out of pocket”...
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Critical Eye — June 4, 2012 06:50 AM
Trashed
Trying to get honest about America’s garbage problem
Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash | By Edward Humes | Avery | 288 pages, $27.00
Humans have always produced garbage. Archeologists use trash debris to help them understand past civilizations. The rubbish people leave behind is often much more honest than their written records, which are often more about their aspirations than how they actually lived.
American remains...
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Language Corner — May 31, 2012 06:50 AM
Language Corner
Basis Points
“On a case-by-case basis.” “On a regular basis.” “On an urgent basis.”
Each of those base expressions, from The Associated Press Stylebook, no less, can be said differently, more fluidly: “Case by case.” “Regularly.” “Daily.”
There’s nothing grammatically wrong with those “on a (whatever) basis” phrases, except that they’re wordy. Or, as Bryan A. Garner puts it in his Modern...
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