Month: January 2012

Some are calling Scott Stevens the Danny MacAskill of snowboarding:

"The issues in the election are Obamacare and debt. Focusing on them massively favors the GOP … except that Romneycare is the building block for Obamacare and, far from admitting error, Mitt has doubled down. As readers will see, I believe his federalism defense of Romneycare is fatuous. The Massachusetts program is indefensible. By nominating someone who vigorously defends it, I am very worried that we are giving away our best rationale for deposing the president and dispiriting the base whose enthusiasm is vital," – Andrew McCarthy, torture enthusiast, NRO.

The age-old problem of gender-neutral pronouns isn't so age-old:

[P]rior to the 19th century, "they" was commonly—and uncontroversially—used as a generic singular pronoun. Grammarians were the ones who inserted the generic "he" into English about 200 years ago in an effort to improve the language.

[Author Ann Bodine] is skeptical that such logical improvements are either improvements or logical. She points out that although "they" does not agree with a singular, gender-neutral referent by the single feature of number, "he" also does not agree with its singular, gender-neutral referent by the single feature of gender. "A non-sexist ‘correction,’?" she writes, "would have been to advocate ‘he or she,’ but rather than encourage this usage the grammarians actually tried to eradicate it also, claiming ‘he or she’ is ‘clumsy,’ ‘pedantic,’ or ‘unnecessary.’ Significantly, they never attacked terms such as ‘one or more’ or ‘person or persons,’ although the plural logically includes the singular more than the masculine includes the feminine."

From an interview with the artist, Pierre Gonnord:

The people I decide to meet and photograph are often from traditional cultures and their relationship to the camera is very special, for reason of faith and social origins… They have had little experience with portraiture and have an immense respect for the images. Pictures often mark important events – birth, first communion, marriage, and death. Photography still remains for them a ritual in which one gives a lot; it takes the soul on the road.

More portraits here.

(Image: Pierre Gonnord, Senen, 2009. Courtesy Pierre Gonnord/ Hasted Kraeutler, New York, and Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid.)

Natalie Wolchover explains that it is the "standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly":

Traditional English, whether spoken in the British Isles or the American colonies, was largely "rhotic." Rhotic speakers pronounce the "R" sound in such words as "hard" and "winter," while non-rhotic speakers do not. Today, however, non-rhotic speech is common throughout most of Britain. For example, most modern Brits would tell you it's been a "hahd wintuh." It was around the time of the American Revolution that non-rhotic speech came into use among the upper class in southern England, in and around London. According to John Algeo in "The Cambridge History of the English Language," this shift occurred because people of low birth rank who had become wealthy during the Industrial Revolution were seeking ways to distinguish themselves from other commoners; they cultivated the prestigious non-rhotic pronunciation in order to demonstrate their new upper-class status.

Belle Waring reflects on an eight-month period where her daughter Violet, a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan, chose to cut her hair short, dress like a boy, and only answer to the name Calvin:

John and I talked about it, of course. We thought, maybe she’s a baby dyke, or a budding trans person, or just really loves Calvin and Hobbes, or something else. There didn’t seem any harm in it. It was clearly centered on Calvin the character, at least at first, but later seemed to be more generally that she was a boy. … It is interesting that Calvin’s biggest supporter was her older sister, who began calling her Calvin immediately, and demanded that I buy her boy’s underwear the way she wanted, and so on. Violet is still very insistent that she never wants to develop breasts. (Her sister, at 11, is just barely beginning to do so.) I don’t know how she’ll feel when that starts to happen. Maybe she will go back to being Calvin; maybe not.

(Larger version of the above cartoon, along with 24 other "Great Calvin and Hobbes Strips," here.)

That's the word from Tony Perkins, via Sam Feist and  Weigel, from the evangelical pow-wow yesterday. There was a "strong consensus" for Santorum over Gingrich and Perry. But it could well be too late, as Santorum slides and Ron Paul passes him on the way up. Both are now tied in South Carolina – at around 15 percent in the poll of polls there in the RCP poll of polls. TPM has Paul ahead by five.

The big surprise for me in this is Ron Paul's remarkable strength in South Carolina. My gut tells me it's driven by military types, who share the view of many active duty soldiers that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were idiotic. But the evangelical machers' embrace of Santorum could now help Romney. If it halts Santorum's slide, it may also halt Gingrich's and Paul's rise, allowing Romney to claim a bigger victory.

I have a feeling – just that – that if Romney doesn't win this state, the whole thing blows open again.

The US has begun to take steps to protect itself in case Israel unilaterally opens up a new World War III. These are not good omens:

Tehran crossed at least one of Israel's "red lines" earlier this month when it announced it had begun enriching uranium at the Fordow underground nuclear facility near the holy city of Qom.

The planned closing of Israel's nuclear plant near Dimona this month, which was reported in Israeli media, sounded alarms in Washington, where officials feared it meant Israel was repositioning its own nuclear assets to safeguard them against a potential Iranian counterstrike.

Despite the close relationship between the U.S. and Israel, U.S. officials have consistently puzzled over Israeli intentions. "It's hard to know what's bluster and what's not with the Israelis," said a former U.S. official.

It's never a good thing when an ally bluffs an ally. But when the consequences could be this grave, it calls into question whether it is an ally at all.

A beautiful short film "based on an archival sound recording taken from the 1945 Linguaphone series 'English Pronunciation – A practical handbook for the foreign learner':

Christopher Ryan counters Rick's recent rhetoric:

Santorum has argued that contraception is morally wrong because, "It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." But human beings happily experience, witness, imagine, and lament a cornicopia of erotic encounters that couldn’t possibly result in conception. Leaving aside the many "perversions" happily practiced by humans the world over, the human female is available even for Vatican-approved missionary position intercourse—at least theoretically—when she’s menstruating, already pregnant, post-menopausal, or otherwise precluded from conceiving. Is this, too, an abomination? …

It’s the nature of the human beast. For Homo sapiens, sex is primarily about establishing and maintaining relationships—relationships often characterized by love, or at least affection. Reproduction is a by-product of human sexual behavior, not its primary purpose.