Loose Links (Thursday)
¶ La Petite Anglaise has discovered the reason why it is so hard for Anglophones to learn the genders of French words (or, by extension, Italian words, Spanish words, and so on). Her little girl is learning two languages simultaneously, and PA grasped that, to the child, the French for "mouth" is labouche.
¶ In case you're toying with the idea of reading the Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, perhaps you'd better know something about the author, Thomas E. Woods, first. Max Boot, of the Weekly Standard, checked out Mr Woods on the Internet, and discovered, among other things, that he is
a founding member of the League of the South. According to its website, the League "advocates the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic." As an interim step before this glorious goal is achieved, the League urges its members to "fly Confederate flags at your residence or business every day" and to "become as self-sufficient as possible"--"if possible, raise chickens and keep a cow to provide eggs and dairy products for your family and friends." The League also counsels "white Southerners" that they should not "give control over their civilization and its institutions to another race, whether it be native blacks or Hispanic immigrants."
That the Politically Incorrect Guide has appeared on the New York Times's best-seller list is more upsetting than anything in the Gannon/Guckert bag of tricks.
¶ Better get two: A French site reports on a new development: customizable keyboards. You program the keys according to your needs. Now, this would make typing my Turkish vocabulary lists a lot easier! But just imagine the catastrophe of becoming dependent on your very own idiosyncratic keyboard, which in the wonderful future you would carry around in your backpack so as to be able to work on any machine, and then dropping it onto the subway tracks.
¶ Memo to Rob Press:
No half measures. Next time you're in Incan-God mode, wear the robes, too. Is that a big soda in your hand, or a beaker of blood from ritual slaughter? Finding someone who knows how to keep fingers away from the lens would be good, too. In any case, welcome home
Comments
The Woods book: refuted by none other than the odious Weekly Standard, to boot! (Bad pun, sadly, intended.)
Custom keyboards: Yeah, that's a tricky game. I've always been tempted to switch to the supposedly far-more-efficient Dvorak keyboard, but then remember the nasty several days I always have switching back and forth between French and US keyboards. And, apart from the symbols, they're extremely similar - unlike US-querty and Dvorak.
Posted by: Max | February 17, 2005 11:52 AM
After reading the post on Thomas Woods, I took a look at the 'League of the South' web-site--it makes for most interesting reading (initially I was laughing, then I was appalled). Another that anyone interested in this subject might want to peruse is the 'Christian Exodus' site, which advocates a mass movement of Christians to South Carolina in order to build a critical mass to lead the charge in extricating that state from the US and making it its own sovereign Christian nation. But here's my question: what do these organizations plan to do about the influx of heathen Yankees? As we are building a house near Greenville, South Carolina, to which we expect to move (permanently) in the next six to eight months, we have spent quite a bit of time in the area the past year, and have met at least as many displaced northerners as native southerners (who, by the by, appear to have moved (or like us, be moving) south primarily for weather-related, rather than political, reasons).
Posted by: jkm | February 17, 2005 08:24 PM
After the week I've had, I could provide Rob with a number of people from whom I'd like to extract a cup of blood (or more!)
Posted by: Kathleen | February 18, 2005 11:28 AM
sorry, we're saving the beaker for RJ's blood, given his inconsiderate comments to poor, hapless traveling italian tourist photographers.... :)
Posted by: Rob | February 18, 2005 12:14 PM