Fritinancy

June linkfest

A quick audiobook recommendation: I thoroughly enjoyed So Many Steves: Afternoons with Steve Martin, a series of conversations between Martin and his longtime friend the New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik. (Gopnik is everywhere, isn’t he? He was also “in conversation with” the fictional Lydia Tár in last year’s Tár.) Martin, who will turn 78 in August, has spent more than 60 years plying his various trades: magician, musician, comedian, actor, novelist, librettist. Gopnik elicits charming stories and surprising revelations, and gently nudges Martin toward a discussion of craft and motivation. The book—audio only, with some delightful banjo music—is available from Pushkin Industries and the usual online merchants. Or, if your public library supports the Libby app, you can borrow it free for three weeks. (By the way, the title is a twist on the E.E. Cummings poem “So Many Selves.” Martin is a big fan of Cummings, it turns out.)

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May linkfest

Fifty years ago this month, seven Chicago-area women were arrested and jailed on eleven counts of performing abortions and “conspiracy to commit abortion.“ They were members of a clandestine feminist network known as “Jane” that, for four years before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the US, helped women terminate their pregnancies. Their story—more relevant than ever, now that Roe’s protections are in imminent peril—is told in a new documentary, The Janes, that will premiere on HBO on June 8. But The Janes isn’t the first telling of the story. In 1995, a former Jane member, Laura Kaplan, published a history of the group, The Story of Jane: The Legendary Feminist Abortion Service. I read it a couple of weeks ago and recommend it to you. (I found it in my local public library.) Here’s a passage that could have been written today: “Women are being reduced, once again, to the incubators of future generations with total responsibility but no power. That is the same oppressive view that the women’s movement sought to challenge. It is not just abortion, but women’s power to control their destinies that is at stake.”

Related: My post about “choice.” And here’s Clyde Haberman’s 2018 “Retro Report” for the New York Times about Jane’s work in Chicago. Link has been de-paywalled.

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Word of the week: Cheersing

People have been cheerful since the 15th century and have cheered one another on for just about as long. But you may be surprised, as I was, to learn that we’ve been saying “Cheers!” as “a toast or salutation before drinking,” as the OED puts it, only since the 20th century, and relatively late in the century at that—the OED’s earliest citation is from the Sunday Times of Perth, Australia, September 14, 1930: “The brief toast of ‘Cheers, dears!’” We can also credit the Aussies with Cheers! as a parting salutation (“goodbye”), which they’ve been saying since 1937. The Brits, for their part, took to saying Cheers! to mean thanks by the mid-1970s, if not earlier, according to the OED blog. You can read more about British cheers on Lynne Murphy’s linguistics blog, Separated by a Common Language.

But drinking-salutation cheers as a verb? That was new to me until very recently.

Huge

The title of Diane Ravitch’s new book about American schools, Slaying Goliath, struck me right between the eyes. Hadn’t I seen something like it very recently?

 

 

Word of the week: Farmageddon

It’s a book! It’s a movie! It’s a brewery! (Two breweries, actually.) It’s an impending economic catastrophe, or maybe two catastrophes!

I spotted the economic-disaster farmageddon, a portmanteau of farm and Armageddon, in a tweet-reply to short-term Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci.

What gain? He's s failure by virtually all standards. We're in a manufacturing recession; and tariff infuced Farmageddon

— Jossy (@Unitedshashe) August 12, 2019

 

May linkfest

How to name a cocktail (and an etymology of cocktail). (Dictionary.com)

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From abactor to zythepsarist: a glossary of old occupations. (Family Researcher, via Suzanne Mantell)

A schrimpschonger was a craftsman who made scrimshaw items from the teeth of marine animals. (Photo source)

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January linkfest

You’re probably heard of babies named after brands: Porsche, Chanel, Armani, and, lest we forget, Tiffany. Now the Baby Name Wizard blog tells us about three baby names from the 1980s and 1990s that were inspired by TV advertising.

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On the other hand, you could name your offspring after a tech company or product. You wouldn’t be alone. (CNBC)

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It’s the last call for words of the year for 2018: Lynne Murphy pronounces “MSM” the US-to-UK WotY and “whilst” its UK-to-US equivalent. (I may have had something to do with the latter selection.) Over at his Not One-Off Britishisms blog, Ben Yagoda takes the measure of whilst.

What's your daddy?

Polldaddy is dead; long live Crowdsignal, its successor in the platform-agnostic poll- and survey-creation business. The service, which is owned by Wordpress, was silent on the reason for the recent name change, leaving us to wonder: Was daddy too patriarchal? Was the name likely to be confused with the unrelated GoDaddy*, the internet-domain registrar?

As long as we’re asking questions, what accounts for the plethora of DADDY brand names? There are 757 DADDY registrations in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database, from FROG DADDY (“men’s and women’s wearing apparel”) and CAT DADDY (“beds for household pets”) to THE SOUP DADDY (“soups, stews”), THE CANDLE DADDY (“candles”), TACO DADDY (“catering”), UNDERWEAR DADDY (“socks”), CHOCOLATE DADDY (“sunglasses”), WOLF DADDY (“reality-based television program”), and ICE DADDY (“electric air deodorizers for refrigerators”). Nearly a third of the registrations have been filed in the last two years. What accounts for the trend?

June linkfest

“The use of rainbows as logo design elements has fallen back almost to its pre-1970s level, while the use of rainbow colors in logos has taken off.” (Emblemetric)

Image via Emblemetric

 

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Remember tronc, possibly the worst corporate name ever? You can forget it now. (The Verge)

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After 27 years, Greece has finally agreed to the formal name of its northern neighbor, the Republic of North Macedonia. (BBC)

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This ad for Texas Congressional candidate Mary Jennings “MJ” Hegar sets a new standard for political advertising: It’s well written, brilliantly edited, and engaging.

Bullish

On a recent trip to Costco I bought a box of RXBAR protein bars, which contain several healthful ingredients, none of which, according to the package, is bullshit. Good to know!

 

 

From the RXBAR website:

Guys who are into CrossFit would never indulge in B.S.

 

As you probably know from my periodic appearances in Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, I’m constantly on the lookout for sweary brand names and slogans. When I saw “No B.S.” on the RXBAR box, I remembered a similarly frank promise made earlier this year by Everlane, the “radical transparency” retailer.