Tautologies are not a superior form of logic

Tiger is back at the Augusta Masters Tournament, and “Ticket brokers aim to buy, sell,” which is what brokers normally do. But with ticket prices of $ 5,500, unauthorized ticket sellers see the opportunity of their lifetime to secure their share of the deal. The risks of being caught scalping seem fairly negligible since the Richmond County Sheriff’s office promises that its deputies “will be heavily enforcing the illegal sale of tickets.” That's reassuring, especially for those golf enthusiasts who desperately want to get one of “the highly coveted badges [which] are among the most sought-after in sports.” Aren't highly coveted items usually the most sought-after? Maybe not in Augusta, where “The golf fans that want to be there for the golf are already there or not there” (The Augusta Chronicle 4/1/10!).

The military's confusion about where they are when it comes to gay and straight Marines housing together cannot simply be attributed to April Fool's Day. While Marine Commandant Conway wants "to preserve the right of a Marine that thinks he or she wouldn’t want to do that – and that’s the overwhelming number of people that say they wouldn’t like to do so” (CNN.com), another official is concerned that "If those of us who are in favor of retaining the current policy do not speak up, there is no chance to retain the current policy." Duh? Yet, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff diplomatically tries to smooth over the controversy. “‘There's an opportunity in this process for everyone from junior to senior’ to have an opportunity to comment, Mullen said” (Huffington Post). An opportunity for an opportunity to comment is indeed a rare opportunity.

Time will tell who in the military will retain his position and who eventually will have to show the same willingness as Robert Ebert “to rescind reviews of movies he’s changed his mind about” (The Daily Beast). The five million dollar question is why anybody - Ebert, Roeper, Mullen or Conway - would have to rescind unless he changed his mind in the first place.

The NYT, too, offers stimulating food for thought when reporting on Mr. Obama’s obligations to first “host a much needed summit meeting on the need to better secure nuclear material from terrorists (“New Think and Old Weapons” 2/28) and second “galvanize the nation [and] articulate a substantive belief system [since] without a powerful vision to knit together his vision of America's future, he comes off as a doctrinaire Democrat” (“The State of the Union Is Comatose” 1/31). A summit (which actually is a meeting) meeting needed because of a need and a vision to knit together a vision? Now, that’s comatose.

Here is an excellent clip of Stephen Frye on tautologies, conciseness and other interesting language issues.

Foolish News

In Kyoto lies traces of cookie origins (The Standard 7/4/2008). Do the traces lie in Kyoto or did somebody find cookie crumbs in some particularly Kyotoan lies?

Made in China ... well, that depends on who you ask (MailTribune 6/22/08) - or rather whom you ask.

Education Should Accompany Prostate Screening, New Guidelines Say (Los Angeles Times 3/ 4). This must be part of the sweeping education reform.

Lawmakers Blamed for Gay Marriage Law (Washington Times 3/4). That’s like blaming GM for making cars.

Hopefully, GM's cars are better designed than its plots: GM Shelves Plans to Kill Two-Thirds of Its Cadillac Dealers (USA Today Web site 3/18).

Mexico Tourism Suffers as Gangs Rain on Spring Break (Bloomberg 3/18). Does it rain gangs in Mexico like cats and dogs in the U.S.?

Shop Girls, Shop Boys, Shop Shoes, Shop this look (crewcut website). It is amazing what money can buy.

What's in a pronoun?

“It's not often mentioned, some don't even see it as a problem, but women, in this country, are not represented in politics in anywhere near the numbers they make up in the population.” Despite such lamenting the scarcity of women running for political office, when women do run, they are referred to as former executive officers who run for governor, almost as if the fact that indeed a woman may occupy the office needs to be downplayed. Is this political correctness downgrading or upgrading?
"English is mercifully free of gender," says Bill Bryson in the mother tongue - mercifully, because English speakers do not have to worry about particular articles (such as der/die/das in German or le/la in French) to indicate a noun’s gender. Yet, English has many words that clearly signify gender. A bachelor is an unmarried male; his counterpart is a spinster. Although my politically correct computer alerts me here that spinster should be replaced with unmarried woman, it (or is my computer so picky because it is a she?) has no objections against my using the word bachelor. Neither does my computer find fault with the words ballerina or lioness, yet dismisses heroine and actress as gender-specific language that should be avoided. Gender specifications apparently are only acceptable when they carry a positive connotation, emphasize a favorable characteristic like the unusual strength of a lioness and the outstanding elegance of a ballerina, or the adorable – and upgrading - independence of a bachelor compared to the deplorable – and downgrading - loneliness of a spinster.
In many cases, nouns that denote a person are preferably “bisexual” (or “transsexual”?). One is a hero or an actor regardless of gender, and the only indicator of gender is the personal pronoun used to refer to that person: Was the actor praised for his performance, or was the hero risking her life?
Yet, despite the increasing use of gender-neutral nouns to describe a person, we still sometimes apply poetic gender to objects, phenomena or plants in an attempt to bestow them with human (can I still use the word human?) qualities. Usually, when objects, phenomena or plants are considered big, strong, active, they are referred to as he, while small, weak, gentle or passive items are given a feminine pronoun, as exemplified in one of Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales where “the Oak-tree understood and felt sad, for he was very fond of the little nightingale who built her nest in his branches.”
Heaven, time, death, summer, winter, autumn, thus often are assigned the masculine pronoun. However, nature and spring, both considered life giving and clearly far from being passive, are feminine, and so are poetry, sculpture, astronomy, and art. The feminine gender here probably echoes the mythological goddesses Gaia and Demeter and the muses, who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. Similarly, planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter are masculine or feminine according to the gender of their mythological namesakes. Thus, the sun is a he while the moon is a she because the Greek sun god was Helios (or Sol in Roman mythology) and the moon goddess Selene (or Luna in Roman mythology). The explanation that such gender attribution reflects the sun actively giving and the moon passively receiving light fails to account for the opposite casting in Norse mythology, where Sol was the sun goddess and Mani the moon god, wherefore in German the sun is a she and the moon a he.
So far, gender attribution to objects can be explained rationally. But why are ships, boats, cars and other means of transportation often referred to as she? Some claim that this is a sign of affection, or emotive coloring, others believe that it “expresses the relationship between a man and his tools since it is mostly found in men’s speech” (Brazeniene, "Stylistic Use of English Gender"). Now, here is something for feminists to be more concerned about than about the use of stewardess instead of flight attendant. Why should the female gender be used for tools of all things? (Here is some interesting stuff about humans and their tools.) If one considers stewardess as downgrading or woman driver as an insulting epithet, then the use of she to refer to let's say a wrench is even more downgrading and insulting. Just take an ad for a Toshiba laptop(!) that encourages the user to “open ‘er up.”
“Open ‘er up” might just as well be the battle cry of those who want the Catholic Church to be more transparent, especially regarding the increasing number of abuse cases. On Vatican Radio, Rev. Frederico Lombardi stated that “The way in which the church deals with it is crucial for her moral credibility.” Indeed, the Catholic Church is a she although traditionally women play rather minor roles in her system. This is similar to countries, which are it when they are treated as a geographical unit but she when they are viewed as a political enity – yes, Canada, too, where politicians right now fight over making the nation's anthem gender neutral by rephrasing the line "True patriot love in all thy sons' command." Maybe women who get on a ticket should consider those linguists who believe that the feminine gender is a sign of an affectionate attitude, forget about political correctness, and campaign as business women who run for governoresse.

Nation of Enablers

Health care reform is still a fount of questions, some truly askable, some rather unlistenable. Is the bill a yesable proposition or at least a testable one? Do some states have the right to make certain points editable and thus more favorable for them? Are some passages earmarkable or accessorizable - with some pork of all things? Opponents find the bill gapable and now brood over details that may be challengable to make the entire bill disassemblable. It’s all an only too relatable experience for many who remember other upsettable attempts to reform health care.

Meanwhile, Mississippi has taken an approach as warrantable as it is applaudable. Mississippi lawmakers, however, focus on the edible part of health care rather than on the editable. Usually not easily alarmable, they decided to do something about the state’s obesity rate of 32.8%. In a truly astonishable and bipartisan competition, they try to lose as many pounds as sheddable of their combined surplus fat. One Democrat who “started at ‘well over 300 pounds,’ though he declined to give a specific number, has dropped 73 pounds – about one-fifth of his entire weight.” It is easily decodable that he started at 365 pounds and thus is still unyiffably (sexually unattractive) close to his starting weight although he claims that his daughter finds him “getting sexier by the day.”

Foreseeably enough, Mississippi lawmakers are not chargeable for their fitness program. “Corporate sponsors are picking up the tab,” which is acceptable according to the state’s ethic rules.

Participants even have changed their eating habits, finding out that chicken is not only fryable but also grillable, that vegetables are metabolizable and that desserts are avertable. The prize for the winner of the contest is indeed covetable: a marble trophy in the shape of the state of Mississippi ("Fighting fat in the land of sweet tea, fried food").


“Yes. We can.” Ergo, new adjectives mushroom, using the suffix –able to indicate that something can be done. In most cases these coinages are not only awkward but also unnecessary: Questions that are askable are simply truly worth asking; those that are unlistenable are probably off the mark; editable passages are open to revision; accessorizable items can be amended; one may brood over how to challenge certain details; and many who remember other failed attempts can relate to this experience; etc.
Most of the adjectives used in the above passage can be found on a long list of more or less usable adjectives with the suffix –able.

-able (adjective suffix, usually in a passive sense
1. indicating possibility
movable: something is possible to be moved
salable: something can be sold
2. indicating obligation
payable: something must be payed
taxable: something must be taxed
3. indicating accordance
fashionable: in accordance with fashion
4. expressing capacity or worthiness
honorable: something is worth to be honored
• -ible is used with words derived from Latin and sometimes with words whose root ends in a soft c or g: tangible from tangere = to touch.
• When adjectives derive from verbs that require a preposition, the preposition is dropped: reliable (somebody who can be “relied on”)
• Adjectives derived from verbs ending in unstressed -ate drop this suffix: communicate → communicable