A golden shoe, a golden ball, and some not so golden pens

Whether the World Cup is “a mass quadrennial migration” ("Around South Africa, the Good, the Bad and Biltong" NYT 7/4) or rather a quadrennial mass migration, there is no doubt that the last four weeks were pretty intense. A true soccer fan may very well have forgotten all about time and become lost in tenses.
When after the semifinal the NYT considered Germany “A Global Force” (7/4), its sports writer tried to step into a pair of Argentinean cleats and imagine how “Messi will awake in the night and see those Germans closing in. More than anyone, he will see Schweinsteiger muscling in. And when even Messi became demoralized by the German strength, Schweinsteiger had a tick or two of his own.” Although the Argentinean as well as the German team had to discover how quickly visions of a golden future turn into miscalculations of the past, even in soccer-land the past happens long before the future begins. According to conventional logic then, Messi will awake at night because Schweinsteiger played on when Messi already was demoralized.
Between the past and the future lies the present as a transition between these two time periods. Transitions ensure that the change from one condition to another doesn’t occur abruptly. Whatever memorable experiences may be connected with the cup at the Cape, not “the abrupt transitions have been most indelible” but rather the abrupt changes between “watching a herd of 30 or more elephants in the sunshine a few hours before watching Luis Suárez score twice for Uruguay in the rain; watching youngsters play in the surf in the morning in Durban, then dodging hailstones in a winter jacket in Cape Town that night” (Reporter's Notebook, NYT 7/3).
Definitely indelible would be if indeed “Joachim Löw ...wore a periwinkle sweater to Maradona’s creased and shiny suit” ("Germany Routs Argentina" NYT 7/4). The two coaches may have exchanged some friendly - or not so friendly - glances; that they swapped clothes is, however, improbable.
Some commentators had trouble distinguishing Spain (singular) and the Spaniards (plural). UEFA.com claims that “Victorious Spain receive rapturous reception,” BBC reports that “Spain return to rapturous welcome,” and Reuters adds that “Spaniards turns out to welcome home heroes.” Back home, the Spanish team probably doesn't care about subject/verb agreements. The only thing that counts for the players is that their “hard-working team ethic enabled Spain to lift the FIFA World Cup ” (UEFA.com). They obviously lifted the golden cup onto a bus since Reuters declares that the fans came to “see Spain's World Cup heroes pass by with the trophy on an open-topped bus” (Reuters). While the Spaniards may have watched their heros with the trophy passing by on a bus, how this bus can be open and topped at the same time remains a riddle.
Another riddle is how Paul the Octopus could have foreseen all this, but his “antics have been ... adding yet another light-hearted and quirky twist to the great celebration of humanity that is the World Cup in South Africa” (Huffington Post 7/8). What a rapturous welcome for the cephalopod species into the species of homo sapiens.

A regular venti with room, please

Ruth Walker muses about the "real regular" and the "new normal" and how the word regular, which “means, fundamentally, following a rule,” has changed to “the deli-counter equivalent of … ‘default setting.’" According to Walker, “normal is another word to describe a 'default setting,' although it has just a whiff of the clinical about it (‘Is that really normal?’).” She goes on to explain the origin of the word regular as “rooted in the carpenter's rule” and normal derived from norma, "the Latin word for a carpenter's square.”
Regular and normal, both denoting that something is done according to a rule or a norm, seem rather exchangeable then. However, there is also the term "normal school," which originated from the French école normale, a model school with model classrooms in which student teachers could learn teaching practices. This idea of normal as a model rather than simply a rule corresponds with The Online Etymological Dictionary's suggestion that normal may be related to the Greek word gnomon, meaning one who knows.
Nothing clinical about that. Instead, it gives something normal quite an advantage over something regular. Every knucklehead can follow a rule and do a regular job. Doing a normal or model job, on the other hand, requires knowledge of how it’s done best. Maybe that’s why any barista at Starbucks emits a draught of boredom whenever I order a regular coffee instead of one of their normal “handcrafted beverages.”

Ubiquitous tautology

"In one of the more unforgettable moments [Could there be anything less unforgettable?], a … fresh language for the 21st-century dress popped up [Oh, those eloquent dresses!] and defined what being a woman is or can be: an android, a sex kitten, a dynamo, a robot, a flower of pleasure, an angel in the morning, a warrior, a nun, a Lolita, a Bond girl, a multi-ethnic poppy, a surrealist Puritan Mexican-American, a gay-retro variant of a French coquette.” As if this weren’t close enough to a linguistic atlas, the list (NYT 3/14/10) ends with “a butched-up Emma Peel,” which is – for anybody who remembers The Avengers – sort of a tautology - but still nothing compared to the “need to work out a common consensus” (NYT 5/9/10).
Saying the same thing twice is not exactly sparkling, but how about saying the same twelve times on the back of a roughly 5x8 Annie's Grahams box?

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Globally speaking

According to Jason DeParle, we can “pick any headline in the news, and between the lines, there is a chapter in the story of global migration.” This rather awkward sentence raises two questions: How can I find something “between the lines” of a “headline”? And what “chapter” am I supposed to find “in the story of global migration”? Of course, it is obvious that I am alerted to the fact that I could pick any news story and discover that it is somehow connected to global migration. Alas, it is the writer’s – often torturous – job to make a clear statement not the reader’s to sort it out.
Still, I took the author’s advice and two days later looked at some headlines. This is what I found: Efforts on Bicycling Also Attract Thieves and Effort Uses Dogs’ DNA to Track Their Abuser.

Dear New York Times,
there are no efforts on anything, and efforts don’t use anything either. Besides, although there may be efforts to promote bicycling that also attract thieves, and dogs’ DNA may be used in an effort to track their abusers, neither story included a line connecting it to global migration – unless some of the stolen bikes made it across the border.

Misspoken again

The present perfect (he has spoken) is used either to indicate that something which occurred at an unstated moment in the past is in some way related to the present or to express that something began in the past but still continues at the moment and, most likely, into the future. Thus, when Connecticut attorney general and Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal says, "I may have misspoken, I did misspeak on a few occasions...I regret that I misspoke," he is sending a rather ambiguous message. Although he admits that he “did misspeak,” indicating that this is an issue of the past, he also says that he “may have misspoken.” Does he simply concede that his having misspoken contributes to his present troubles, or can we infer that his misspeaking, although it began in the past, continues at present and will go on in the future?

The vuvuzela makes quite some noise

What is a symbol, and what is meaning? A symbol represents an idea, and the meaning of something is the idea which this something represents. Thus, if the vuvuzela is “a symbol for cultural meaning,” then it is the representation of the cultural idea that it represents. Alas, there is not much to be gained from such a circular argument. Anyway, the vuvuzela’s meaning is still in the making and “will ultimately be shaped by the surprisingly heated disagreement” between those who claim that it signifies South African soccer fandom and those who belong to the “vuluzela-as-annoying crowd.” Exactly because the latter’s aversion to the instrument “has galvanized everybody," the blasting plastic horn has become “a cultural object,” “a South African commodity” and a “cultural signifier.” Clear as mud, but what this horn supposedly signifies remains, unfortunately, pretty evanescent. Maybe, it is nothing more or less than a noisemaker, and such flatulent “philosophical” discourse is just as “slightly silly" as its object.

Kosher or not, that is the question

Something is not quite kosher, if “Uncle Sam [is] munching on a Hebrew National beef hot dog as a heavenly voice assures him it is free of the additives and byproducts present in lesser processed meats” ("Red, White and Kosher"). After all, the higher authority knows – among everything else – that Hebrew National franks are “made with the finest ingredients and contain no artificial flavors, no artificial colors, no by-products, and no fillers” (HN). They are kosher, or “fit to eat,” because they don’t contain all the artificial stuff “present in processed meats of lesser quality.” That's what makes all the difference between kosher and not so kosher. Still, only franks made of meat even less processed would perhaps be accepted by orthodox authorities - obviously the highest authorities - and earn the label glatt kosher.

Strange effects of the recession

Creativity is key, and Mr. Rosenberg, owner of a clothing store, proves it. He switched his line from women’s to kids’ clothes because parents may cut back on their own wants but not on their children’s. He has diversified and “even [does] clothes for prenatals now.” This seems hard to imagine since prenatal means “occurring or existing before birth” and refers to “the growth and development of a single-celled zygote formed by the combination of a sperm and an egg into a baby” (Medical Dictionary). However, as the article claims, “parents want their kids to be insulated from the recession,” and this evidently begins even before the child is born.
Yet, parents don’t stop at the outfit for their unborn. While they may spend less on Christmas, “back-to-school didn’t decline as much as other holidays,” according to the National Retail Federation. Has the recession deprived us of so many pleasures that we now consider the beginning of the new school year a holiday?
An important segment of back-to-school sales are clothes, and Mr. Rosenberg observed that in his store “Girls’ dresses have been explosive – 6 months to 8 years.” Well, this looks a lot like commercial litigations coming Mr. Rosenberg's way.

Divine intervention

The CBS series “Undercover Boss” rests on the “machina-manning deus” fantasy, wrote Alessandra Stanley in the NYT (4/11). According to her, this idea of gods or rulers mingling with regular (or small!) people to find out “how the other half live by living among them” is as old as humankind and a routine in mythology, literature and film.
The “machina-manning deus,” literally a god operating a machine, is an interesting pun on “deus ex machina,” an also well-worn device used by authors to solve an inextricable problem by a sudden and improbable intervention of a new character or object. Aristotle criticized the use of a deus-ex-machina, because a writer “ought always to seek what is either necessary or probable, so that it is either necessary or probable that a person of such-and-such a sort say or do things of the same sort, and it is either necessary or probable that this [incident] happen after that one.”
Thus, Stanley’s critique of “the way each episode ends with a pageant [sic] of seigniorial largesse — a $1,000 gift certificate, a family vacation — instead of a commitment to fair wages and safe working conditions” is not quite in synch with her terminology. The undercover boss is definitely not a deus-ex-machina, who solves a problem in unexpected ways, but rather a character much to Aristotle’s liking. After all, such “small acts of benevolence” (Stanley) are exactly the most probable things for the average boss to say or do.

A dubious case

NPR today reported on the Russian Spy Saga, pointing out that some experts are “dubious” about the evidence provided by the FBI. The anchorperson then transitioned to several interviews, wondering what those “dubious experts” think about the case. Dubious, when preceding a noun, means “probably not good, not honest, not true.” Thus the facts presented may indeed be dubious, but the experts who are dubious about them, i.e. not sure whether the facts are solid and trustworthy, are doubtful. If they were dubious experts, NPR would most likely not venture to interview them.

Cape Horn

What the Urban Dictionary defines as “a mind-numbing torture device made of cheap, brightly colored plastic,” has been the focus of harsh criticism. BBC and ESPN fear that it may drown out their commentators’ voices – which not necessarily must be a disadvantage. The advantages of a cheap device able to drown out others’ voices, on the other hand, are tremendous. YouTube, for example, “has added a button - in the form of a soccer ball - on its latest video player, allowing the sound of the [instrument] to play alongside any video being watched. The results can be hilarious; try watching a speech by any major politician drowned out by the relentless blasting of the plastic trumpet“ (Peace FM).
Soccer coaches blame it for degrading the performance of their team, suggesting that the French team did not refuse to listen to their coach; they simply were not able to hear him.
However, renowned ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey finds the instrument frustrating and fascinating at the same time. Although he regrets the fact that each one has the same pitch, B flat, he believes that varying its length could create different pitches and enable the user to blow in rhythmic patterns. (Remember the alphorn?) Tracey's theory has so far fallen on deaf ears, but he really shouldn’t be surprised since even the instrument’s self-anointed inventor Saddam Maake concedes that "It's bad for the ears" (Washington Post).
But what the heck is a vuvuzela? Well, a plastic trumpet used by soccer enthusiasts. Nobody knows the word’s origin for sure, but it might come from the Zulu word for 'making a loud noise'. Maybe the vuvuzela should be incorporated in the English vocabulary, functioning as a verb that describes the common act of giving a speech without really saying anything: The speaker has been vuvuzelaing for almost an hour.

And give us our daily apology

2010 may very well go down in history as the year of the apology. This week, we already had two: Congressman Barton's and General McChrystal's. Joe Barton really needed to apologize for his previous apologizing to BP in what can only be called a run-amok-sentence: "It is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown -- in this case a $20 billion shakedown -- with the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that's unprecedented in our nation's history, which has no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for our nation's future" (Huffington Post). Although he better had apologized for "anything I misconstrued this morning," he preferred to use the passive voice, implicating whomever for misconstruing his words: "If anything I have said this morning has been misconstrued to an opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction" (Politico). While Barton tried to wiggle his way out via the passive voice, McChrystal was "extending my sincerest apology for this profile" (McChrystal), i.e. for an article instead of for his own words. What both have in common is that they offend the audience's intelligence - which would be well worth another apology.

Augustness

August is vacation month, but Tony Hayward is vacationing early. He deserves watching his boat "Bob" participate in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race since this is - pitiably! - his “first break since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20,” said Robert Wine, a BP spokesman. After all, he is just “spending a few hours with his family at a weekend. I'm sure that everyone would understand that.” Perhaps everybody would, but will everybody understand?
Wine, according to the Huffington Post(6/19), also said that Hayward will be returning to the United States, though it's unclear when. Will he return, or would he?
Could it be that it will be August before he is back at the Gulf Coast? He then could mingle with American vacationers there, maybe even with the presidential family. After all, "Americans can help by continuing to visit the communities and beaches of the Gulf Coast." With few exceptions, Obama said at a May 27 press conference, "all of the Gulf's beaches are open. They are safe and they are clean." Asked whether the Obamas themselves will – or would – vacation somewhere along the Gulf this summer, Press Secretary Gibbs admitted that he has “not been involved in their August plans” (McClatchy Newspapers via WSJ).
Since spoken statements do not indicate which word the speaker would capitalize, Gibbs could have referred here to Obama’s august plans (from Latin augustus, meaning venerable, marked by majestic dignity or grandeur and, according to the Online Etymological Dictionary, probably orginally "consecrated by the augurs, with favorable auguries"). Gibbs, whom the LATimes dubbed a “human pinata,” then would have taken Nicholas Kristof obviously too literally, who announced today that We need a monarch!

So what?

Anad Giridharadas looks at “a verbal tic that mimics ‘well,’ ‘um’ or ‘like’ and is exceptionally fitting for the digital age,” the word so. According to Giridharadas, “it is widely believed that the recent ascendancy of ‘so’ began in Silicon Valley [since] ‘so’ suggested a kind of thinking that appealed to problem-solving software types: conversation as a logical, unidirectional process — if this, then that.” Alas, it seems difficult to “Follow my logic,” since a word that is similar to well or um can hardly be described as meaning “if this, then that.”
Yet, so is indeed overused and in fact one of those words to be avoided in writing. It can be used instead of also but only before modal or auxiliary verbs (Average salaries rose, but so did the cost of living). It is appropriate as a conjunction in combination with that (I set two alarm clocks so that I wouldn’t oversleep) to indicate that something is done to make something else possible. In informal settings, so can indicate emphasis as well as take the place of therefore. For instance, one might find Crogs "so 20th century!" but be an enthusiastic "wearer of the FiveFingers almost-shoes [who] can cite practical reasons for sporting monkey-suggestive gear in settings others find inappropriate: you’re supposed to ease into the switch from elaborately engineered athletic shoes, so tooling about the mall in performance footwear makes total sense” ("Bare Necessity" NYTmagazine 5/30/10). However, if used instead of therefore to link two independent clauses that could stand alone, so must be preceded by a semicolon – just as does therefore. Therefore, the sentence should read: “...you’re supposed to ease into the switch from elaborately engineered athletic shoes; so tooling about the mall in performance footwear makes total sense.”
To illustrate the overuse of so, Anad Giridharadas quotes SoS Hillary R. Clinton, saying that “So it’s not only because we believe that universal values support human rights being recognized and respected, but we also think that it’s in the best interest for economic growth and political stability. So we believe that.” The second sentence indeed uses so as a synonym of therefore - or in the logical sense of “if this, then that” while in the first sentence so means also .

Politics

Sentences like "I think this is exactly the right position - as a legal matter, as a policy matter, and as a political matter" (Elena Kagan) tend to puzzle me. What is the difference between a policy matter and a political matter?
Both words derive from Greek polis, meaning city, state. However, while a policy is "a way of doing something that has been officially agreed on and chosen by a political party," or "a particular principle one believes in and influences the person's decision making," political means anything "relating to the government, politics, and public affairs." Thus, a policy matter is a party matter while a political matter is anything that affects government and the public.
An other difference between a policy and a political matter becomes apparent when the second meaning of political is applied, namely "relating to the ways that different people have power within a group." It is the huge difference between a guiding principle that members of a party share and their way to gain, sustain and use power. Interestingly - but not surprisingly - enough, political has a pejorative connotation, implying that being political means "taking sides in party politics" (Online Etymological Dictionary). In other words, it is a euphemism for partisan and has little to do with a guiding principle but a lot with power.

Watz dis?

The prefix dis- usually implies that something is the reverse of something else (e.g. disorganized) or is excluded/taken away (e.g. displaced) or taken apart (e.g. dismantled); it adds a negative connotation to the root words organize/place/ mantel (= frame). But what about discern, which means to understand something – even so it is not easy to grasp – after thoroughly thinking about it? To understand something difficult is certainly a good thing.
Taking something apart, does not necessarily mean to destroy it. Looking at information and picking (cernere) it apart (dis) helps better to understand the whole picture. Similarly, taking (capere) a piece apart (dis) and learning it turns one into a real disciple who is in control (disciplined) of a particular area of knowledge, a discipline.
But even dis- in its meaning of taking something away can convert a root word into something positive. A discount, "counting away" a percentage and thus reducing the price, is nothing anybody would object. And to discover (to take away the cover) and to disentangle (to remove tangles) something makes life more interesting and easier.
A bit more complicated are the words to dispose, to be disposed, and one’s disposition. To dispose of something is quite clear. We take it away from its original position. Yet, putting things into a different position can also mean to sort and organize them, and if our mind is organized, we are disposed to behave in a particular way. Alas, to have a particular disposition or temperament can be a negative as well as quite a positive thing.
Whichever it is, the influence of alcohol will bring it to the fore if the old saying "in vino veritas" is true. If wine doesn't do the trick, maybe brandy, distilled from wine, will. To distill something means to reduce it to drops (stilla) and to get its essence. And when we distill information from a variety of sources, we will - with any luck - be less discombobulated and closer to the truth.

offside

In an article titled “World Cup robberies: Six tips for a safe visit to South Africa,” the Christian Science Monitor on June 9, 2010 offered some tips for anybody travelling to South Africa to watch the FIFA World Cup. A colon introduces either a list, an explanation, or a principle. Since “Six tips for a safe visit to South Africa” is neither a list nor a principle, the tips provided must be the explanation of the robberies. Well, Sherlock Holmes would say, there is “no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation.”
The reason for the CSM to compile these tips was an “armed robbery of three foreign journalists sent to cover the World Cup on Tuesday night – near the Portuguese team's base camp in Magaliesburg, north of Johannesburg.” Every soccer fan would be rather disappointed to hear that the World Cup is a one-night event. Moreover, if the cup were played at the Portuguese team's base camp, wouldn’t this give the Portuguese an unfair home advantage? Modifiers should be placed as close as possible to the modified element and the sentence be about "Tuesday night'sarmed robbery near the Portuguese team's base camp in Magaliesburg, north of Johannesburg, whose victims were three foreign journalists sent to cover the World Cup."
The first tip, not to “advertise that you are a stranger in town,” makes complete sense since “Criminals look for those who may seem fearful or unfamiliar with an area, or who may not know to take certain precautions, such as putting your wallet in your front pocket, rather than in the back pocket.” The only problem is that the writer apparently took Joyce Carol Oates's advice too literally, namely that every sentence deserves a comma after six words. In fact, the sentence above should not contain a single one.
Tip No.3 suggests to always “Travel in groups. There are areas that are safer than others in South Africa, as in any major city of the world. But you can still pay visits to historic monuments in South Africa – many of which are in older, urban areas – if you travel in a group organized by a tour operator recommended by your hotel.” It’s an astute observation that some areas are safer than other, but who would have thought that historic monuments are in older urban areas.

Kickoff

NPR asked why “In the United States, the game played almost exclusively with hands is called football and the game played almost exclusively with feet is called soccer.” Dan Courtemanche, spokesman of the Major League Soccer, answered that “the word goes back to the late 1800s. As schools in England set up the modern rules for football that version was called Association Football. Somehow, the -ssocia part of the word turned into socca, which turned into soccer.”
A query in the Online Etymological Dictionary yields an interesting detail. The suffix –er “is used to make jocular or familiar formations from common or proper names (soccer being one),” which suggests that this “jocular suffix” was attached to the syllable soc of the word association. That the word soccer was indeed used in a jocular way indicates a quote from the Westminster Gazette (1/7/1894), referring to “the rival attractions of ‘rugger’ and ‘socker’”(OED) and using quotation marks around both words to signal irony.
“So would Major League Soccer ever join the rest of world and call the game what makes perfect sense? ‘Never say never,’ said Courtemanche” (NPR).

On a footnote: As with “the 'whisky/whiskey' conundrum,” where “consistency with the rest of the drinking world outweighs internal consistency,” international consistency here suggests a shift from one foot to the other, using the foot to kick instead of to measure.

oil spell

(source: Christian Science Monitor 7/8/10)

Dashing!

Just like socks, dashes can come in singles and in pairs. And just like a single sock, a single dash is rather confounding, it being the harbinger of something surprising, an abrupt turn, a sudden digression, a mental leap.

If you need a suit, go to Men’s Wearhouse. If you need a bespoke suit — well, first a definition of bespeaking.

Alan Feuer slightly digresses to explain an essential term before he plunges into his subject — $ 5,000 suits.

"It means a garment has been made to your specifications, that it’s been spoken about,” said Bruce Cameron Clark, an Englishman in exile who for 15 years has indulged such speech at his custom suit shop — Bruce Cameron Clark, Bespoke Clothier — on Lexington Avenue and 71st Street. “A bespoke suit was created only for you. It has your name on it.”

A phrase that provides more information, an accessory of sorts, is slipped in between a pair of dashes instead of commas here to enhance clarity since the phrase — or rather the shop's name — itself already contains a comma.

In Mr. Clark’s case, those names have been impressively eclectic over the years… Sitting lankly in an armchair near the window, Mr. Clark recalled, “Elton John got married in one of my shirts” — it was a short-sleeved job, with white wing collars and a vertical stripe — “when he still thought he was straight.”

The pair of dashes here suits perfectly to set off the description of Elton John’s bespoke shirt. Appositive phrases, however, should – well, be phrases, not clauses. Thus, the writer should have omitted the two words “it was.”

Of course, the world has changed, sartorially speaking, since Mr. Clark arrived in New York in 1995, fresh from Savile Row and an apprenticeship with the legendary tailor Tommy Nutter (claim to fame: three of four Beatles wore Nutter suits on the cover of “Abbey Road”) — which perhaps is why Mr. Clark’s shop still seems so traditionally English.

An aside, a thought kind of socked away, is also preceded by a single dash. That Mr. Clark’s shop is so British is not an essential part of the main subject but the author's afterthought.

It is a small, bright, second-story parlor with hardwood floors, a full-length mirror and sample garments — a thorn-proof hunting jacket, for example — hanging from the walls. There is a cabinet case of fabrics: English cottons, Madras plaids. You would not be surprised to glance up from your reading copy of “A History of Men’s Fashion” to find a banker in a homburg — and behind him, Mick Jagger — at the door.

The pairs of dashes around “a thorn-proof hunting jacket, for example” and “and behind him,[sic!] Mick Jagger” provide the sheathing for a description and a parenthetical element respectively. The dashes emphasize the insertions, make them stand out more than a pair of commas would do.

This casual — ” he stopped before saying “scourge.” But, of course, he didn’t have to.

Feuer’s last dash shrouds a missing word. Similarly, a dash can stand for omitted letters, for example to disguise names or profanities (maybe somebody thinks that Mr. C— is a b— snob?). Note that no space is left between the remaining letter and the dash.

Cities on wheels

"As world leaders squabble over how to cut greenhouse gases, city hall is becoming the best hope for reducing heat-trapping emissions” because, as Bloomberg believes, “local officials can green-light eco-projects faster than national programs can be started.” Never mind that giving something the green light does not necessarily equal it's getting started soon. Everybody who once in a while walks around town knows that months can lie between a permission, for example, to fix a sideway (indicated by auspicious white marks sprayed around a crack) and the day it is indeed fixed.
According to Bloomberg, “From the freeways of Los Angeles to the canals of Amsterdam, cities are taking the lead in the fight to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.” Although Los Angeles's freeways and Amsterdam's canals are precariously dangling here, it is encouraging that from Los Angeles to Amsterdam, cities are taking the lead in the fight to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.
So, what’s going on in Los Angeles, the "city of freeways, smog, and -- bike lanes? That’s where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants to take his town.” Where, precisely, is the Mayor trying to take LA? Despite the ambiguous phrasing, one can assume that he wants to change the city from one defined by freeways and smog to a city lined by bike paths. But is this really “one of the less likely transformations in the global effort to cut carbon output”? If it’s less likely, then it’s not very likely to happen. But maybe it’s the least expected transformation? Still, whether it is truly part of a global effort to reduce emissions is doubtful since Michelle Mowery, senior coordinator for the city’s bike program, admits that “We have to make a change. We can’t fit any more cars in.” Sounds far less eco-conscious, doesn’t it?
While L.A. officials may do some double-think here, Frank Jensen, Copenhagen’s lord mayor, doesn’t even make much sense when he says that “We have a responsibility to our citizens to reduce emissions because so much carbon dioxide comes from cities.” Cities by themselves do not produce emissions. Their citizens do.
In order to stipulate more eco-friendly habits, London is especially creative. Its “government is also making 6,000 bikes available for the public to rent from this summer.” That summer offers bikes for rent is probably only possible in London with its proverbially dreary weather. The London summer really needs to do some marketing - whatever it takes.
Amsterdam, known as a bike city, doesn’t need to entice anybody to bike around town, but it tries to convince its residents that by cutting back “power use at peak times, their electricity bills could fall by up to 40 percent.” Amsterdam's residents most certainly hope that those fallen bills will land in their mailboxes rather sooner than later.
Not to be outdone, New York offers “tax breaks for solar panels.” Evidently, in New York even solar panels have to pay a tax. Yet, (in the wake of healtcare reform?) the city scrapped the idea to “to charge a congestion fee for drivers.” What a relief.
Back in L.A., cycling chief Mowery knows that “Los Angeles isn’t New York, but we’re getting there.” On bike, one would hope, although 2,500 miles is quite a ride.

Tempest in a you tube

While Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks, sees "late night as the next land of opportunity," (“Conan O’Brien Flips Channels, Lands at TBS" WSJ 4/13), Google and YouTube see “the living room as strategically important terrain” ("YouTube Wants You to Sit and Stay Awhile [sic]" NYT 5/30). All this sounds almost reminiscent of colonial times when "They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got" (Heart of Darkness). But what is to be got? Younger viewers since, according to the Wall Street Journal, "TBS's pitch to Mr. O'Brien focused on its younger average audience than the broadcast networks," which should read, "TBS focused on its audience, on average younger than the broadcast networks' (audience)."
So far, the average user spends five hours daily in front of the tube. In comparison, YouTube looks like the pauper beside the prince with only 15 minutes per day. To change this, The New York Times reports, YouTube is “looking at how to push users into passive-consumptive mode” by offering “long-form content” such as movies, shows and webisodes (which must be the equivalent of a series, maybe How I Met Your Mother Online? ). However, Randall Stross of the NYT finds ”an embarrassingly visible portion [of the selection] to be of a type that fails to be even entertainingly bad.” Stross backs up his judgment with critic Joe Queenan of The Guardian who inventoried (meaning he took inventory of) YouTube’s offers and concluded that “All sounds great. But they are not great. Not, not, not.” If they are not great, then they cannot have failed to be entertainingly bad, can they? They obviously failed to be entertainingly good. But why should they? After all, “One of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you’re dumb. This is all you can do. This is easy, and you’re the sort of person who really just wants to sit in a chair and have it easy” (David Foster Wallace).

cool

Ben Zimmer, who “sets the record straight on the ubiquitous” slang word cool, explains that its modern sense, “that is, in the ‘stylish’ or ‘admirable’ meaning popularized by the cool cats and chicks of the postwar era and exemplified by the all-purpose expression of appreciation or approval, ‘That’s cool’” has nothing to do with the word’s usage by writers and speakers from Abraham Lincoln to Zora Neale Hurston. He ends his investigation saying that “From our current vantage point, it’s easy to read older examples of cool as variations on the now-entrenched colloquial use. But for lovers of linguistic verisimilitude, that’s just uncool.”
As I learned from my students, all freshmen and clearly on top of colloquial “latter-day expressions,” cool is meanwhile totally uncool. What’s stylish or admirable now is chill, and one doesn’t stay cool anymore but chills it. Cool is just so 20th century, man!

Bad Pencraft

Strange news have been washing ashore like tar balls since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig. Tunku Varadarajan wrote in The Daily Beast that “The BP-engineered oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has us all in a state of national, environmental meltdown. This catastrophe, this ‘oil-ocaust,’ has oozed massively into the national consciousness like some ungovernable evil emerged from the ocean depths.” A flowery description, but neither did BP “engineer” (= to arrange by skillful, secret planning) the spill nor is it an oil-ocaust. The word Holocaust means "entirely (holo) burnt or destroyed (kaustos)." An oil-o-caust, therefore, would denote burnt (or maybe entirely burnt if the "o" stands for "holo") oil – something everybody most likely would prefer to the continuing outpour of crude oil into the Atlantic.
The Huffington Post reported that “The catastrophic explosion that caused an oil spill from a BP offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico has reached the shoreline early Friday morning.” An explosion does not ride the sea or walk the waters. The oil, however, will wash up on the shore as long as the leaking well continues to “pump more oil into the ocean indefinitely until the leak is plugged." Indefinitely or until the leak is plugged?
So far, it looks more like indefinitely since many attempts to plug the well have failed. Yet, Doug Suttles (!), BP's operating officer for exploration and production "wouldn’t say it has failed yet. What I would say is what we attempted to do last night didn’t work” ("New Setback in Containing Gulf Oil Spill," NYT 5/9). The difference between failing and not working may elude everybody else, but BP has a knack for subtleties. When in October 2009, after gas at a processing plant leaked, Representative Henry A. Waxman insisted that "'this incident could have caused an explosion.' Mr. Hayward [chief of BP] acknowledged that the gas leak could have been serious but insisted 'it wasn’t an incident'" ("Fast-Growing BP Also Has a Mounting List of Spills and Safety Lapses," NYT 5/9). Well, what was it then? An accident?
In the Gulf of Mexico, the situation might even get worse with the approaching hurricane season that, according to NPR “may encumber the oil spill.” Everything that has the potential of encumbering (= making it more difficult for something to develop) the spill would be great news indeed.
Right now, it seems pretty clear that this spill will “eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history — the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 — in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor. Ultimately, the spill could grow much larger than the Valdez because Gulf of Mexico wells typically hold many times more oil than a single tanker” (YahooNews). It’s not rocket science to figure out that only an event that grows much larger can eclipse another, preceding one. That the Deepwater Horizon spill has the potential to do so because a well holds more oil than a single tanker is another astounding observation. Not even BP is benighted enough to invest in an off-shore drilling enterprise that won’t yield more than one tanker load.

English Eccentrics and Eccentricities

A deliberate exaggeration like “My history teacher's so old, he lived through everything we've learned about ancient Greece” is a hyperbole. It is defined as being “used without the intent of literal persuasion” but of heightening effect or producing comic effect (A Handbook to Literature). Now, imagine a passenger on his way to meet his girlfriend but being stuck at an airport because of bad weather. He tweets his girlfriend that ‘Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!’ He is certainly guilty of using a hyperbole in its proper sense, i.e. without the intent of literally blowing up the airport. But what if law enforcement officials arrest the guy, question him for seven hours, confiscate his computers and mobile phone and fine him £1,000 because he was “sending a menacing message” ( tweetcrime )? Let's euphemistically call it a hyper-hyperbole.

Tailored to fit

The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes measurements anew every time he sees me, while all the rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them. George Bernard Shaw


Wearing a J. Peterman’s pale blue Sutton-Place-Dress is supposedly an outward expression of a woman’s regal behavior. “The clean lines. The crisp angles. The flowing steps. They bespeak a person who can run a neuroscience group or chair the library fund-raising committee.” To indicate is one meaning of to bespeak. According to the OED, the prefix be- , however, originally meant "about" as in behave (the ways one has about oneself). Thus, to bespeak something can also mean to talk about it, discuss it.
Its past participle, bespoke (=spoken about) is often used as an adjective, meaning custom made. Common in British English, it is recently used more frequently in the U.S. as well. There are BESPOKE CHOCOLATES and Bespoke Cycles. Silversea Cruiseline promises "Bespoke adventures off the beaten path," and visiting Paris, one should "[mill] about the 'Detox Corner' — the boutique — marveling at the bespoke all-natural products on sale" ("Going underground in a private Paris" NYT 3/28). If something is custom made, it is necessary for customer and manufacturer to have discussed the product's details and to have spoken about what is possible at which price. Hence a boutique where one can browse through bespoke products is a paradox. What is custom made cannot be off the shelf.
Even though a dress off the shelf may bespeak someone’s sophistication, a truly bespoke suit surely trumps it. Of course, it will cost more money as well as more time because "A client being fitted for a bespoke suit would have three or four fittings. We would take 20 to 25 direct measurements and we would look at their figuration" - unless the tailor is up to something else:

Chandler: Your tailor is a very bad man.
Joey: Frankie? What're you talking about?
Chandler: He took advantage of me.
Joey: No way! I've been going to that guy for 12 years.
Chandler: He said he was going to do my inseam and ran his hand up my leg, and then there was definite - cupping.
Joey: That's how they do pants. First they go up one side, they move it over, they go up the other side, they move it back, and then they do the rear. Isn't that how they measure pants?

Franken's bull

Senator Al Franken recently introduced the Student Non-Discrimination Act, a bill which "would prohibit discrimination based on actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. If [the bill is] signed into law, public schools that violate the statute could lose federal funding or be sued by victims" (MPR).
Asked why the bill only addresses bullying for sexual orientation, Franken had this to say:

Franken: Well, uh, we, you know, [bullying] - is illegal for so many reasons that--you know, race, religion, uh, national origin, disability, uh--I guess, I guess you can say that bullying--then it kind of depends on what you're talking about. If, you know, I guess kids have a right not to bully, but to basically, you know, tease each other about the stupidest things, but certainly not about those things...You know, "I don't like your taste in TV shows," or something like that--
Wurzer: What constitutes harassment under your bill, specifically?
Franken: Uh, I think that harassment and bullying is really, uh, it's one of these things that you know it when you see it.
Wurzer: Does--but does the bill outline anything specific?
Franken: I don't, uh, believe we have the language in it to define bullying, but maybe I do. I'm not--I'm not sure about that aspect of, of the bill. I know that it's, it's, it's defined the same way as it is for, um, race or for religion, or, um, the, uh, disability--the other reasons that are outlawed in, in--nationally. In other words, all these other things, uh, are, are national, uh, but not, uh, gay and lesbian.
Wurzer: How would a court determine that a school ignored harassment? Have you figured that out yet?
Franken: Uh, I think that they would just, uh, the facts of the case--I mean, that would be up to the court, and if the, um--you know, what I'm hoping is, is this'll start disappearing. Unfortunately, it's all too--it's almost sanctioned, as you can tell by the story in Anoka, by the schools, and I think that once we raise awareness about this, and have a law, that it'll, it'll, uh, bring down the incidence of this and make life a lot better for these kids.

Franken's argumentation could be deemed a logical fallacy could he be credited with logic. For example, the speaker diverts attention away from the fact in dispute rather than address it directly, which is called an irrelevant conclusion. Furthermore, his reasoning is circular since the statement that bullying comes in many shapes and sizes is simply repeated in different ways. Logial fallacy or not, the discourse is absurd.
There is a bill against bullying but it does not have the language in it to define bullying because bullying is just one of these things that you know when you see it. The bill is supposed to raise awareness about and bring down incidences of bullying. What an incident of bullying is, however, kind of depends on what you're talking about. Clear enough?
So, what is bullying? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the original meaning of this word is "sweetheart," applied to either sex, from Dutch boel or German buhle , meaning lover. In the 17th century, the word’s meaning changed from "fine fellow" to "blusterer" and "harasser of the weak." In 1706, bully was applied to a "protector of a prostitute," in other words a pimp. In 19th century America, however, the slang phrase bully for you! was again positive, referring to someone "worthy, jolly, admirable."
Adding such an etymological note as preamble to the Senator’s bill - just to add to the confusion - and the directive that "kids have a right not to bully" as an amendment could surely help the courts to determine whether they deal with an incident of bullying or not.

Washington's Magnumimity

The Washington Post reports on the “efforts by officials to flood city streets with latex.” Their problem, however, is not how to submerge the streets under a “thick, whitish liquid.” Their problem is that teenagers demand free Trojan Magnums instead of the cheapo by the name of Durex even though “Consumer Reports magazine said in a report last fall that Trojan and Durex, as well as the Lifestyles condoms …, both scored 100 percent in tests of ‘strength, reliability, leakage and package integrity.’" It is not clear which two out of the three may be the both scoring 100%, but let’s assume all three are working just fine.
Still, because teenagers don’t like to ask school nurses for one, “they [are] not taking advantage of the condoms at school.” Whether or not city officials indeed would like teenagers to take advantage of condoms at school, they leave no stone unturned “to support the regularization of condom use citywide.” Since to regularize something means “to make it legal or official” (Longman Advanced American Dictionary), condoms are now obviously legal in Washington D.C. Had John Edwards only known!
In New York, where the NYC Condom “hit the streets in 2007,” citizens who hit the sack using it decide via online polls even on the wrapper's design. Yet, “Despite the fancy packaging, [the city’s HIV/AIDS prevention and control] agency has received requests for ‘larger sizes’ and ‘extra thin’ condoms.” Even though government agencies indeed are often conspicuous for their fancy packaging (as this dangling modifier insinuates), what New Yorkers are asking for are larger and extra thin condoms because the offered product is not quite satisfying yet despite its fancy packaging. Surely, city officials will oblige because they want “everybody who is having a sexual relationship to do it with condoms [and try] to give them whichever condom will help them do that,” or rather they want everybody to have whichever overnight bag helps him avoid this.

Boom, boom, boom

Boom could be declared the word of the month. While BP tries to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with oil absorbent booms, whose polypropylene filler absorbs the oil but not water, the governor of Arizona
signed a law that supposedly will curb illegal immigration like a boom stretched across an entrance point, for example of a parking structure, to block access through a control point.
Of course, a boom can also mean a state of economic prosperity, a sudden opportunity to make money, in other words just what investors would prefer to the recent slump on Wall Street. Thus, May could be defined as a month of anit-boom.
According to the OED, the origin of boom meaning economic prosperity is unclear but may be related to the onomatopoetic word boom, describing a deep, loud, resonant sound as of thunder or “a distant cannon,” although an economic boom does refer “not so much to the sound as to the suddenness and rush with which it is accompanied.”
Since the OED also offers a definition of boom as “the effective launching of anything with éclat…upon public attention,” Professor George Rekers may painfully experience a twofold boom right now, the public attention to his private preferences and their inconsistency with his public teachings as well as the resonant sound of laughter at his assertion that he only shared with his travel assistant "the gospel of Jesus Christ … in three extended conversations.” Not only has Rekers' crusade against the gay community backfired with a loud boom, but his attempt to define his travel companion as a mere pageboy - or a boom, “part of equipment [such as a crane] that loads and unloads things,” has boomeranged on him.
And finally, in the NYT there is the debate over the boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964 at a time of rapid growth in population, whom Thomas Friedman in “Root Canal Politics” accuses to have eaten like locusts through the abundance their parents had created. Yet, according to Leonard Steinhorn, one boomer, Bill Clinton, "embraced boomers" and left office having accumulated a surplus, which another boomer, Georg W., squandered, proudly declaring himself an anti-boomer.

everything about something

One is a lonely number

Nobody says that anything are possible, that everything are up for grabs, or that nothing matter. Yet almost nobody finds it jarring when somebody says that everybody has the right to their own opinion or that we don’t know someone until we live with them.
And yet, something is inconsistent here. Indefinite pronouns indisputably take a singular verb. Consequently, each of these indefinite pronouns also requires a singular pronoun (he/his, she/her, it/its) and not the plural they/their. "What happened?" is the title of a recent NYT article (3/14/10). What happened indeed that "In Washington, it's never safe to take at face value someone who swears they don't want a job in the White House”?
Despite each, every, either/neither, everything/everybody/ everyone, something/somebody/someone, nothing/nobody/no one, anything/anybody/anyone implying an indefinite number of people or things, these indefinite pronouns are grammatically singular. It is, therefore, incorrect to refer to "someone who swears" as "they."
R. W. Burchfield, author of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, believes that

All such ‘non-grammatical’ constructions arise either because the notion of plurality resides in many of the indefinite pronouns or because of the absence in English of a common-gender third person singular pronoun (as distinct from his used to mean “his or her” or the clumsy use of his or her itself (779).

Yet, if indefinite pronouns indeed carried a notion of plurality, then a writer would not use a singular verb in the first place but instead talk about someone who swear.
To say that everybody has the right to his or her own opinion is not necessarily clumsy and neither is "Everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of his or her life online" instead of "Everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of their lives online" ("A Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline" NYT 5/9). In fact, his or her is in both cases appropriate since the sentences now clearly indicate that these facts and observations apply to both genders.
However, it can sometimes sound clumsy to use his or her to refer back to an indefinite pronoun; yet there are simple ways to avoid this without creating a “non-grammatical construction.”

In Washington, it's never safe to take at face value someone who swears they don't want a job in the White House (“What happened?” NYTmagazine 3/14/10).
Use plural antecedent: In Washington, it's never safe to take at face value all those (people) who swear they don’t want a job in the White House.
We don’t know someone until we live with them.
Rephrase: We don’t know someone until we live with this person.
If one wants their significant other to stay the night, they should run it by the roommates first (“Living as roommates without ruining the friendship” The Daily Aztec 5/10/10).
Eliminate the indefinite pronoun: Those/Roommates who want their significant other to stay the night, should run this idea by their roomies first.
Many people believe that the love one shares with their partner is enough to hold the relationship together (“How to stay together when thousands of miles apart” The Daily Aztec 5/10/10).
Here, the writer should simply stick with the original subject “Many people”: Many people believe that the love they share with their partner is enough to hold the relationship together.
While everybody should enjoy their experiences abroad, partners can remain loyal to each other by establishing reasonable boundaries (“How to stay...).
Rephrase: While everybody should enjoy the experiences a study abroad offers, partners can remain loyal to each other by establishing reasonable boundaries.
Don’t nag roommates: Everybody wants their independence (“Living as roommates...).
Rephrase: Don’t nag roommates. Just like you, they (= your roommates) want their independence.
Nobody should feel like a stranger in their own room or house (“Living as roommates...).
Alternate between she/he: Nobody should feel like a stranger in his own room or her own house.

Similarly, the word each is a pronoun that requires the singular because it refers to one of two or more things.
It helps when couples know what each other are going through (“Ways to work through depression together” The Daily Aztec 5/10/10).
Revised: It helps when each partner knows what the other is going through.

Finally, some sentences use they/their “because of the absence in English of a common-gender third person singular pronoun” (Burchfield). Again, this error can be avoided easily.
Encourage the depressed partner to see a therapist who can then recommend them to a psychiatrist if they need medical treatment. (“Ways to work through...).
Revised: Encourage the depressed partner to see a therapist who can then recommend a psychiatrist if medical treatment is needed.

Time Slip

To relate past experiences, a writer can choose the past tense or decide to tell the story in the present tense to add some immediacy and let the reader more directly participate in the action. Whatever the writer decides, however, he must be consistent.
It is possible to write a biographical piece in present tense and tell the reader that Jeff Bridges “comes into the movies in the 1970s.” However, the writer then cannot continue this sentence by referring to the 1970s as the time “when the battles over Vietnam were raging” ("The Dude Plumbs His Soul"/NYT 2/28). Both verbs (to come and to be) must be in the same tense, whether present tense to make the moment more immediate or past tense to indicate that the 1970s lie far behind us.
Danielle Pergament wrote down her own experiences while traveling through Tuscany. One of the local wine growers she met on the way was Mr. Brandli, who “speaks emphatically and at great, great length about the virtues of small farms. ‘Once you see firsthand how the food is made,’ he said, ‘it will taste different to you.’” He speaks cannot be followed by he said. Moreover, Mrs. Pergament clearly relates her experiences in the past tense, continuing, “As we were talking, half a dozen pigs, muddy and playful, came trotting up. These were the renowned cinta senese pigs, indigenous to Tuscany, named for the white belt around their bellies, and famously flavorful. Not that I could imagine eating one, once I saw how cute they were.” The last verb were, however, would need to be present tense since the cinta senese are cute in general, not just at the moment Mrs. Pergament saw them. General truths, however, are always expressed in present tense.
Therefore, that “Elliot Schrage, who oversees Facebook’s global communications and public policy strategy, said it was a good thing that young people are thinking about what they put online” is wrong. It is a good thing. Even in reported speech, general truths require the present tense, and it is a general truth that this heightened awareness is a sign of a growing responsibility for one’s “digital reputation” ("A Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline"/NYT 5/9).
Ms. Henry, a new union leader, also shows a sense of responsibility. “I feel this ominous responsibility to take the union to the next level,” Ms Henry … said in an interview in her office, which was filled with union and feminist posters ("New Union Leader Sees Group as More of a Political Powerhouse"/NYT 5/9). In fact, her office is filled with posters since they most likely were not put up just to impress the reporter and taken down as soon as the interview was over.
But back to Tuscany and Mrs. Pergament’s travels. After tasting Mr. Brandli’s wine, she “drove to Bagno Vignoni, a medieval village built on thermal waters from an aquifer and popular since the Roman empire. The town square is a giant pool fed by volcanically heated water bubbling from the depths, steaming in the winter air, and the village has its share of day spas that use the water. A hot bath isn’t so appealing during an August heat wave, but on a blustery day in December, it was perfect.” The details about the town are correctly stated in present tense since they are general truths, and so is the fact that a bath in steaming water is not appealing in August. But by the same token it is indeed perfect in December ("Tuscany without the crowd"/NYT 3/7).
A perfect companion to Italian wine is classical music. For Robert Sadin, the producer of "The Art of Love," "medieval music and Machaut in particular represent a time when classical music had not yet become classical music. There is a certain mood of intense pathos that you see in most classical-music performances, and Machaut doesn't have that. His music seemed more in touch with the way we live; it seemed very close." If there is a connection between Machaut’s music and the way we live (now), then the music seems in touch with our life and seems very close - unless the music actually seemed to be in touch with the way people lived in the Middle Ages ("Forsaking 'Authenticity'"/WSJ 3/30).

A very detailed overview on the use of tenses can be found here.

Our virtual world

vir•tu•al (adj.):
1. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name (American Heritage Dictionary); being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted: “a virtual dictator” (Merriam Webster); having most properties, the appearance, essence, or effect, of something without being that thing (Business dictionary).
2. Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination (American Heritage Dictionary); in philosophy defined as "that which is not real" but may display the salient qualities of the real (Wikipedia).
3. In Computer Science: Created, simulated, or carried on by means of a computer or computer network: virtual conversations in a chatroom. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Start looking for the word virtual, and it really is everywhere. And yet, it means only that something looks like the real thing without in fact being it. Even virtual conversations are not real conversations since they are carried out via computer networks whereas the word conversation in fact means “the spoken exchange of thoughts, opinions, and feelings” (American Heritage Dictionary) and derives from the Latin conversare, to live with, keep company.
In essence or effect though not in actual fact, “To clear the Broadway theater district at curtain time on Saturday night is …a virtual military operation” (Frank Rich in the NYT on 5/9/2010). What city officials had to do after the Times Square bomb threat so that “the crossroads of the world looked like a ghost town” might indeed have appeared to be a military operation without in fact being one.
A mix between a "product of the imagination" and "something created or carried on by means of a computer" is the "virtual ownership" of an art object that recently sold for around $ 6,000. The buyer's "ownership would be tentative: the technical innards of ‘A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter’ carr[y] a program that would relist the thing on eBay every week, forever. Indeed, the terms and conditions for submitting a bid clearly stipulated that the device must be connected to the Internet, constantly trying to resell itself at a higher price to someone else. ..Part of what [the buyer] Terence Spies found compelling about ‘A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter’ was how it encapsulated not simply the way people feel about the value of art specifically but also about value in general. ‘Things have become much more virtual and much more detached,’ he says.” “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” is created and carried on by means of a computer. At the same time, it also seems to be – or at least represents - a product of the imagination. The piece “kind of says something about the way people buy and sell things now,” [Spies] continues. “We live in a world where you can build a successful billion-dollar Silicon Valley company selling imaginary cows to people” (“Just Priceless”).
The same symbiosis of meanings is exemplified by one GPS-addict’s observation that “I slowly began to spend more time concentrating on the virtual streetscape than the real one.” The GPS's virtual streetscape is created by means of computers, yet it also sometimes is a mere illusion. After all, the author remembers that one time he found “a stream of cars headed straight at me on a one-lane street. … I could hear TomTom’s voice calmly demanding that I continue to drive the wrong way up the one-way street” (“Turn off GPS”).
But what is the DJIA’s “virtual freefall for about 15 minutes on Thursday” (WSJ 5/9)? Had it the “properties, appearance, essence, or effect, of [a freefall] without being that thing?” Was it “a product of the imagination?” Was it “created or simulated by means of a computer network?” Even though The Washington Post seems to believe the latter since "Computer programs designed to make lightning-fast decisions, based on complex mathematical rules, or algorithms, about what to buy and sell made massive trades without human input" (5/8/10), "Heads of the biggest U.S. trading venues could provide no clear reason for last week’s stock- market selloff in meetings today with the Securities and Exchange Commission" (Businessweek 5/10/10). Whatever its causes, the freefall was real, not virtual, as many investors certainly can attest.
Indeed, the word virtual is very often misused. Sentences like “A prototype version of ‘smart’ sunglasses that can allow wearers to instantly change the color of their lenses to virtually any hue of the rainbow” (Live Science 3/27/07), or “Earn cash back virtually everywhere you go” (American Express) use virtually simply to make a promise when in fact there is none. If anybody sued American Express because he did not earn 3% of his gas purchase at a filling stating in Timbuktu, American Express would most likely claim that it never said he in fact would earn cash everywhere. Similarly, “It’s virtually certain that the money could have been better spent” (The Daily Aztec 5/10), means nothing. Maybe it’s almost certain, but it’s certainly not really certain.
Similarly uncertain may be how effective virtual education is in which students communicate with the teacher via computer networks. Does it have “most properties, the appearance, and essence [of education] without being that thing”? Anyway, like many other schools, Memorial University attempts to “appeal to an ever-growing technologically savvy student population” and its “Centre for Career Development (CCD) went virtually everywhere this past year, introducing several online tools to help students and alumni find jobs.” The Centre certainly didn’t go anywhere. It simply went virtual in many of its pursuits, “From tweaking resumes and cover letters, to brushing up on interview skills and learning how to go about a job search, the CCD has taken its career advice online” (Memorial University website).

Visit some more examples of not so real things.

sub-'junc-tive

President Obama was scheduled to be in central New Jersey to talk about the economy, but he will not be in central New Jersey today. The trip, likely involving a factory tour, brief chat with workers and spoken remarks in front of assembled TV cameras, was quietly canceled over the weekend. With the evolving enormity of the Gulf oil spill becoming apparent, that already-announced midweek New Jersey trip now would look as if the President weren’t⁵ paying adequate attention to this real environmental crisis.
But the incident -- the actual story that didn’t happen -- is a great opportunity to speculate about it.
Like any of Obama's trips, even a cancelled one requires complex advance planning, for example that a factory tour route be scouted¹, usually with instructions to avoid places requiring that the president wear¹ a hardhat, which along with those goofy bike helmets, he does not like. But if everything goes well, no one will ever hear or see⁶ anything about the advance teams, which will be enroute to the president's next trip-stop before he's back in the White House.
If Obama were in New Jersey today, he would talk² with a few employees, who prior to the visit were cleared for immigration status and child support delinquencies. Were this trip taking place right now, top-notch sound equipment and lighting, risers for the TV cameras to see over any crowd and, most importantly, the proper backdrop for the president's remarks would ensure² its utter success. If the factory backdrop is ideal, immense (but silent) industrial equipment will impress but not distract⁶ viewers during the eight- or nine-second sound bite the prep teams hope to garner for their boss. Yet, even if everything is to their liking, the prep teams will still need⁶ to carry cans of women's hair spray, which dull the glaring sheen on those large banners often hanging over the stage.
It is crucial that the security team plan¹ only one travel route from the presidential aircraft to the plant. Safety requires that there be¹ at least two alternatives and that only those on a Secret Service radio frequency know which one will be taken. They then request that the local police department station¹ officers along the way.
Had the prep team known that this New Jersey trip wasn’t going to happen, lots of time and money would have been saved³. However, although going to Louisiana instead of New Jersey did absolutely nothing to stop the oil, advance the recovery or mitigate any damage beyond that potentially to the president's image if he hadn't gone ³, in the face of a natural disaster it was essential that he not make¹ Bush's mistakes, including his well-intentioned but strategically stupid flyover of New Orleans. (Adapted from the Los Angeles Times article “President Obama's non-visit to New Jersey”)


The subjunctive mood expresses what someone/something might be or do, should be or do, or must be or do, in other words what is contrary to fact. It is used to express a wish, a command, or a contingent or hypothetical event.

1. In clauses that express what one wants, hopes, or imagines happening/what needs to happen:
1.a. It is vital that the backdrop be ideal.
1.b. He demanded that his press secretary hold his temper.
1.c. It was essential that the trip be cancelled.
1.d. The set-up requires that the program be running smoothly.
1.e. The situation requires that BP not be let off the hook.
This structure using the infinitive of a verb (regardless whether the sentence is present or past tense) is used typically after verbs like ask, command, demand, insist, propose, recommend, request that and after expressions like it is desirable/essential/important/vital/necessary that

2. In if-clauses when they express that something is not possible/not true in the present:
2.a. If he were in New Jersey, he would talk about the economy.
2.b. If he had a double, he could be in both places at the same time.

3. In if-clauses when they express that something is not possible/not true in the past:
3.a. If I had known about the oil-spill, they would have planned things differently.

4. In sentences that express a wish:
4.a. I wish off shore drilling were less dangerous.

5. With as if/as though to express that something is not true/not possible:
5.a. They behave as if they were not responsible for the whole mess.
To express the hypothetical nature of the statements in 2-5, the verb forms are backshifted, i.e. a condition in the present is expressed through the verb in the past tense, a condition in the past through the verb in past perfect.

6. When an if-sentence, however, speculates about something that is possible or true in general, the normal tense is used.
6.a. If you don't use the subjunctive to speculate about a situation that is NOT possible, you will be completely misunderstood.