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Author Archives: John
How to change the WordPress admin area text field/edit post font
After upgrading to WordPress version 3.3.1 recently, I was puzzled and frustrated to find that the text in the text area/entry field where you type the content of each post (the Add New Post page or /wp-admin/post-new.php) looked funky, awkward, … Continue reading
No, in fact, languages don’t want that
Because they are incapable of wanting anything. Earlier I remarked that Geoffrey Pullum, Ph.D., professional linguist, ardent descriptivist, and language blagger extraordinaire surely didn’t really think this but wrote it in Language Log posts for rhetorical effect: that languages want … Continue reading
Posted in Language
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Web fonts
I’ve been a little bit giddy over the last couple days at my discovery that the fonts used on my website are not limited to the fonts I have or others are likely to have on their computers. Rather, a … Continue reading
Posted in Blagging, Writing
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On correctness, ambiguity, and precision in language
In the linguistics blagosphere last week, prescriptivists got all indignant because some British company I’d never heard of, Waterstone’s, dropped the apostrophe from its name, and descriptivists got all agitated at the prescriptivists for making undue proclamations about correctness, rules, … Continue reading
Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble
It’s not hard to find people, especially book lovers, who lament the downfall of brick-and-mortar bookstores thanks to the rise to dominance of Amazon.com. I could say “online retailers”, but let’s face it: it’s only Amazon. Barnes & Noble has … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Life
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“Times” and “folds”
Bill Walsh is absolutely, completely, 100%, unequivocally, and in all other ways right in his position on the meanings of “times” and “fold” in his recent disagreement that is as much mathematical as it is semantic. If I start with … Continue reading
Posted in Grammar, Language
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Young American female vowel shift
In a recent post about a different topic, Bill Walsh mentions some annoying vowel shifts exhibited by young-ish American females. These mainly involve changing the short e to the short u sound, so that “desk”, “test”, and “better” become “dusk”, … Continue reading
Posted in Language
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Observations from our Christmas road trip
Kathy and I recently drove from Ann Arbor to Atlanta for Christmas, from Atlanta to Tampa to visit her grandmother, and from Tampa back to Michigan with an overnight layover in my parents’ house in Atlanta again. The trip between … Continue reading
Posted in Life
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Stupid NFL
Between these two NFC quarterbacks, the first of which played in a more difficult division and finished with a 10–6 record, and the second of which finished 9–7 to win his shitty division, which one would be more deserving of … Continue reading
Posted in Morans, Sports
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Overhaul college football overtime!
The college football overtime format is pretty stupid. It’s not as bad as the sudden-death NFL overtime format, but seriously. Both teams start in field goal range? It makes scoring way too easy. The teams should have to mount an … Continue reading
Posted in Morans, Sports
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Kristen Bell was Uda Bengt?!
I was shocked and amazed to find out recently that Kristen Bell, best known as Veronica Mars, also played Uda Bengt in Rob Thomas’s other show, Party Down. I had known Kristen Bell played Veronica Mars for several years, from … Continue reading
Posted in Career, Entertainment, Life
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Sentences I like
I was told I was a good writer from a young age, and throughout school, including writing grants and a co-first-author manuscript in graduate school, I always felt I had a knack for writing. I never took English after 12th … Continue reading
Posted in Writing
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English grammar guides that prescribe the inclusion of the Oxford (serial) comma
Growing up privileged with the instruction that a comma should be placed after each item (except the last) in a series of three or more items (i.e., before the and, or, or occasionally nor), and continuing to observe how much … Continue reading
Posted in Grammar
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Tim Andrews on the lottery
On August 11, 2011 on the Regular Guys show, Tim Andrews struck ad-lib comedy gold yet again in his impersonation of Curtis Washington giving Larry advice on how to win at the Georgia lottery and the Powerball. The sad and … Continue reading
Posted in Entertainment, Humor
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Soccer is an inherently inferior sport
I just watched the United States women’s World Cup soccer team blow two leads against Japan and then lose in penalty kicks for the 2011 world championship. Bob Ley and everyone else covering it for ESPN were quick to point … Continue reading
Posted in Sports
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Tim Andrews impersonates Michael McDonald
Tim Andrews is clearly the best Regular Guy because of his sense of humor, his internet and geek culture savvy, and his voice impersonations. One of my favorites is Michael McDonald. I’m not sure why I like that impersonation so … Continue reading
Posted in Entertainment, Humor
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How do radio stations build the seven-second delay back up?
My favorite radio show, the Regular Guys in Atlanta, has mentioned the need to “build back up” their 7-second delay after a caller has said something profane that needed to be dumped. This pretty much has only come up during … Continue reading
Posted in Technology
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Buffy vs. Edward
As someone who recently finished all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Netflix (and am almost finished with Angel), I got a kick out of this mashup of scenes from Buffy mixed with scenes from Twilight. It is … Continue reading
Posted in Entertainment, Freakin' sweet
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Batting gloves
A surprising proportion of people who play slow-pitch softball wear batting gloves, but I definitely prefer not to. This is in contrast to my younger, baseball-playing days, when I usually wore two batting gloves. I don’t remember exactly why; I … Continue reading
Posted in Sports
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The en dash vs. the hyphen: examples for more precise English usage
You can tell there’s something wrong with me when I have a favorite punctuation mark. It’s the en dash, the bastard middle child between the hyphen and em dash (the familiar “dash”: —), but it can provide oh-so-much clarity and … Continue reading
Posted in Grammar, Writing
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