Definitions Can Be Tricky

Writing for BoingBoing, Xeni Jardin offers a post on BlackMetal for Dummies. An excerpt from her post illustrates the dangers of facile definitions--an object lesson for all young scholars:

"Musical characteristics include superfast guitars and shrieky, bummed-out vocals. Fashion characteristics include spiky shin guards, medieval accessories(swords, chains), and generous use of corpse paint.

"But as the comparative graphic above shows, identification can be tricky. At left, Dani from the band Cradle of Filth is wearing lots of corpse paint. He is Totally Black Metal. At right, Louie the pug -- who is owned by television news producer Jeremy Blacklow from a Certain News Network -- is not one bitBlack Metal, despite facial markings that strongly resemble corpse paint."

Half of Europeans Bilingual

According to an Associated Press article, a recent European Union poll shows that 50% of the citizens in Europe can speak a second language.

The country with the highest percentage of citizens who are able to "master a conversation in a second language" is Luxembourg, at 99%. Hungary came in at the bottom of the scale, with 29%.

In the United Sates, only 9% of the population is bilingual. According to a U.S. Senate resolution, 2005 is the "Year of Foreign Language Study."

Link

Jerred Metz Presentation

Jerred Metz read selections from his work The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand on Thursday evening, Sept. 23.

The reading was followed by an intense discussion and question and answer period. Even though Metz' book focuses on events which took place in 1939, a number of members of the audience had personal connections to Durand's saga: his escape from jail, flight, and the eventual deaths of six people--including Durand.

Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore

A recent New York Times science article on cursing shakes its head in bemusement at the current American political trend of penalizing obscenity on the air:

. . . researchers who study the evolution of language and the psychology of swearing say that they have no idea what mystic model of linguistic gentility the critics might have in mind. Cursing, they say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech, somevariant on comedian George Carlin's famous list of the seven dirty words that are not supposed to be uttered on radio or television.

In fact, the article says, "Some researchers are so impressed by the depth and power of strong language that they are using it as a peephole into the architecture of the brain, as a means of probing the tangled, cryptic bonds between the newer, 'higher' regions of the brain in charge of intellect, reason and planning, andthe older, more 'bestial' neural neighborhoods that give birth to our emotions."

Professor Kate Burridge at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, concludes, "People can feel very passionate about language . . . as though it were a cherished artifact that must be protected at all cost against the depravitiesof barbarians and lexical aliens."

43 Folders | Writing Sensible Email Messages

The number of people who don't understand basic email netiquette is truly appalling. But that's not what I'm here to rant about today.

I'm here to rave about Writing Sensible Email Messages from 43 Folders. The care with which you write your emails will save hassled recipients time and temper *and* will get you better responses.

In addition to writing a great Subject line, here's what else you need to do to write good email:

. . . don't bury the lede. Get the details and context packed into that first sentence or two whenever you can. Don't be afraid to write an actual “topic sentence” that clarifies a) what this is about, and b) what response or action you require of the recipient.

Since the Larry Tate meeting on Monday has been moved from the Whale Room, could you please make sure the Fishbowl has been reserved and that the caterer has been notified of the location change? Please IM me today by 5pm Pacific Time to verify.

This isn't the place to practice your stand-up act. Keep it pithy, and assume that no one will ever read more than the first sentence of anything you write. Making that first sentence strong and clear is easily the best way to interest your recipient in the second sentence and beyond.

Zen slap: An email auto-check set for every minute means 60 potential distractions every hour, or almost 500 per day. Look back at a week of your emails and ask yourself: how many distractions was that really worth? How much crucial, instantly actionable email did I receive to make it worth shifting my attention over 2000 times? --43 Folders, Quick Tips on Processing Your Email Inbox

Collective Nouns for Our Times

Last week, A.Word.A.Day featured collective nouns. Collective nouns are such as a skein of geese or a sounder of swine. In response, enthusiastic readers sent in hundreds of suggestions for new collective nouns--ones appropriate to our times. Here are some AWAD gleaned from the submissions:

An earful of iPod users. -Paul Kitching
A clique of photographers. -Lydia Ross
A scourge of evangelists. -David Scroder

A roll of tootsies. -Warren E. Wolfe
A whine of teenagers. -David Gasson
A cacophony of DJs. -Celeste Mulholland

A barf of bulimics. -Steph Selice
A sounder of politicians at pork barrel. -Tom Cradden
A surfeit of spammers. -Peter Moore

A gargle of word enthusiasts. -Preston Cox
A stonish of wonders. -Alan Williams
An overcharge of plumbers. -Murray Zangen

A bling of celebrities. -Lauren Weiner
A wanding of airport screeners. -Mike Edwards
A lunching of executives. -Pat Goodwin

A blather of bloggers. -Scott S. Zacher
A conjugation of grammarians. -Eric Marsh
A contingent of understudies. -Ben Yudkin

A flight of runaway brides. -Michelle Geissbuhler
A covey of highly effective people. -Esther Krieger
A pride of expectant fathers. -Pat Hutley

A lot of used car salesmen. -Owen Mahoney
A pinch of shoplifters. -Jim Vander Woude
A stupor of television viewers. -Rabbi Vander Cecil

A screech of American Idol contestants. -Dick Timberlake
A tax dodge of gin palaces. -Kate Page
An enthusiasm of AWAD subscribers. -Eleanor Jackson

The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand

Thursday, the 22nd, Jerred Metz will be giving a reading from his book The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand at 7:00 p. m. in FAB 70. The reading is the first in a series sponsored by the Northwest Writer's Series.

In 1939 Earl Durand, a native of Powell, focused national and international attention on northwest Wyoming. What began as a simple case of poaching eventually turned into an eleven day "crime spree," as the papers of the day called it, complete with jail break, shoot outs, kidnappings, a posse, and a bank robbery.

By the time it was over Powell was the center of a 1939 version of a media storm. To this day there is still considerable disagreement as to what motivated Durand. For some, Durand was something of a Robin Hood figure who willing shared the meat he poached with those who needed it. For others, he was an antisocial outcast who deserved his fate.

Metz' book is based on personal interviews with many of the central characters.

For more information on Durand's saga, see Rob Koelling's "Earl Durand" from First National Bank of Powell: The History of a Bank, a Community, and a Family

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1--Unmanned

Since 2002, DC Comics' Vertigo imprint has run a series of graphic novels titled Y: The Last Man. The fifth volume is out (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 5--Ring of Truth). The more exciting news, however, is that the first issue chapter is available for free on the DC Comics web site as a PDF download.

Y: The Last Man is a highly-rated graphic novel and science fiction series. SF author Cory Doctorow calls it a "must-read comic book/graphic novel series." Here's the basic premise of the series:

In the summer of 2002, a plague of unknown origin destroys every last sperm, fetus, and fully developed mammal with a Y chromosome - with the exception of amateur escape artist Yorick Brown and his surly male helper monkey Ampersand.

This "gendercide" instantaneously exterminates 48% of the global population, or approximately 29 billion men.

This is the world of Y - The Last Man

Writing Idea :: Eliminate "Throat Clearing"

Cory Doctorow, author and BoingBoing contributor, offers some good advice on writing: get rid of the throat-clearing and move your main idea from the end of your paper to the top of it:

"Here's a procedure that I almost always find useful for improving almost any kind of written composition -- a speech, an essay, an op-ed or a story. As a first pass, try cutting the first 10 percent (the 'throat clearing') then moving the last 30 percent (the payoff) to the beginning of the talk (don't bury your lede!). About 90 percent of the time when someone gives me a paper for review, I find that it can be improved through this algorithm.

"Weirdly, I almost always need someone else to point this out to me. I circulated a draft paper for comment this week, and it took Grad to remind me that I'd buried my lede and spent too much time throat-clearing. It turned out that he was completely right, but I didn't see it until it was pointed out to me."

Cool & Quirky :: bOingbOing

For the past five years, the bloggers at BoingBoing have been publishing the cool and quirky wonders of the web.

Now blogger Rich Burridge has gone through the BoingBoing archives and created lists of the coolest posts for each month of the blog's history. You can access the list via a chronological directory of monthly summaries or all the links in his BoingBoing category.