Dendroica cerulea Paruline azurée (femelle) / Cerulean Warbler (female) A vulnerable species in North America, the Cerulean Warbler finds shelter in the upper stratum of maple forests and mature leafy forests. Its range extends from the Outaouais to the Eastern Townships region and even fans out as far as the northeast United States, where its population [...]
Archive for June, 2009
The Birds of America
Posted in Birds of America, tagged 49, 50, 51 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Today’s Papers – June 25
Posted in Today's Papers, tagged June 25 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Governor kissed an Argentine (and he liked it) The New York Times and Los Angeles Times lead with Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina admitting that he has been having an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina, where he spent the last few days. Sanford’s confession in a rambling news conference ended the mystery [...]
Bleeping Expletives
Posted in On Language, tagged January 4 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Today we are going to deal with the media coverage of profanities, expletives, vulgarisms, obscenities, execrations, epithets and imprecations, nouns often lumped together by the Bluenose Generation as coarseness, crudeness, bawdiness, scatology or swearing. But roundheeled readers should stop smacking their lips and rubbing their hands because the deliberately shocking subject can be treated with [...]
Haircut
Posted in On Language, tagged January 11 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
“Haircut Politics Bad for Big Three,” headlined The Detroit News, as hometown automakers made financial sacrifices to get what the government resolutely terms a “rescue” and the rest of the world scornfully calls a “bailout.” The Asia Sentinel in Hong Kong headlined a lead article “Asia’s Top Tycoons Take a Haircut.” The metaphor, probably based [...]
Cramdown
Posted in On Language, tagged January 25 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
“Even the nickname for the legislation,” wrote Victoria McGrane in the Politico newspaper this month, “ — a cram down — sounds like trouble.” She described the bill being pushed by Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, a pal of the president and a power in the Democratic Senate, as akin to a “political hand grenade [...]
Name That Plunge
Posted in On Language, tagged February 1 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
On a day that the stock market indexes were down only a percentage point or so, a stockbroker friend said to me: “Been down so long it looks like up to me. Are we ever going to get out of the doldrums?” His plaintive observation was rich in literary-linguistic associations. “Been down so long . [...]
Fat Tail
Posted in On Language, tagged February 8 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
If you want to make an impression at a board meeting or a Congressional hearing these bearish days, make a harrumphing noise and employ the figure of speech now sweeping the economic world: “But what about the fat tail?” This is another way of asking “How come all you geniuses didn’t realize the risk you [...]
Hard Times
Posted in On Language, tagged February 22 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
“Lessons Learned From Hard Times Past” was a headline early this month in the business section of The Times; a week later, the gloomy phrase made the front page: “In Renewed Hard Times, New Deal Architecture Faces Bulldozer.” Next day, The Times’s national page got into the act with “Hard Times for Informal Home of [...]
Tranche
Posted in On Language, tagged March 1 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
In the 1949 movie “Battleground” — one of the best films of World War II that made stars out of a half-dozen male actors — a memorable interlude between the scenes of mayhem around Bastogne took place in a French country house. A beautiful young French woman was serving food to a couple of hungry, [...]
Pay-to-Play
Posted in On Language, tagged March 8 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
“Feds Interview Obama on ‘Pay-to-Play’ ” was the Washington Times headline last Christmas Eve, subheaded “Team’s Blagojevich review finds ‘nothing inappropriate’ ” in contacts between Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois and White House aides about the replacement for the Senate seat Barack Obama was vacating. That was about the suspected “sale” of the appointment by [...]
Animal Spirits
Posted in On Language, tagged March 15 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
“Hence, loathéd Melancholy,” commanded Milton in his 1631 poem “L’Allegro,” smiling “Mirth, admit me of thy crew.” That’s the spirit we need these days to dispel the fog bank of foggy banking, and not the poet’s contrary second thoughts beginning “Hence, vain deluding Joys.” On Aug. 21, 1954, stumping for Republican candidates at a midterm [...]
Fulsome
Posted in On Language, tagged March 22 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Because they are not privy to President Obama’s BlackBerry number, and because they can find my e-mail address printed invitingly at the bottom of this column, the legion of grammanatics — those stern prescriptivists living in syntax who make up the Gotcha! Gang — write to me with examples of presidential errors in English accompanied [...]
Orgasmic
Posted in On Language, tagged March 29 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
“Bipartisanship,” said Rush Limbaugh to an enthusiastic conservative conclave last month, “everybody seems to go orgasmic over the concept of bipartisanship.” Lest any in his enthusiastic audience be shocked, the broadcaster added, “Don’t worry — I checked with Fox, that word’s O.K.” The usage that he felt required such reassurance was not bipartisanship, a term [...]
Reset Button
Posted in On Language, tagged April 5 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Bemoaning “a dangerous drift in relations” between Russia and the NATO nations, Vice President Joe Biden told a conclave on security policy in Munich, “To paraphrase President Obama, it’s time to press the reset button.” At C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia less than two weeks later, on Feb. 19, Biden paraphrased again: “The president has made [...]
Socialism on the never-never
Posted in Economy and business, Politics on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Hard times on the streets of Caracas Grab the chicken while stocks last GLOBAL capitalism may be in crisis, but thanks to “21st-century socialism” Venezuela’s economy is “armour-plated” and the country’s poor have nothing to fear. That has been the message from Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, and his ministers in recent months. If anyone is [...]
Uncommon knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged June 15 2008 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
YOU MIGHT THINK that MBA students at MIT can easily deduce how much water is in a bathtub, based on the flow of water in and out. But you’d be wrong! Said bathtub is just one example of a “system” with “stocks” (e.g., water level) and “flows.” Other examples are greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, [...]
Uncommon knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged June 1 2008 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
BLONDES MAY OR may not have more fun, but it does look like they raise more money. An economist analyzed data from an experiment that recruited 23 women to knock on the doors of 955 households to raise money for a “Center for Natural Hazards Mitigation Research.” As part of the experiment, photos of the [...]
Uncommon knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged December 28 2008 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The ‘Daily Show’ effect A PROMINENT CRITICISM of the fake-news program “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” is that it is substituting for real news and promoting political apathy, especially among younger viewers. Not so, according to a recent analysis of polling data during the 2004 presidential primary season. Exposure to late-night comedy shows [...]
Uncommon knowledge
Posted in Uncommon knowledge, tagged May 18 2008 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
The Red Baron was lucky, unsportsmanlike conduct, and how hormones affect a woman’s choice of clothes. THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY, people have debated whether success is determined by luck or talent. A new analysis of the performance of the Red Baron in World War I offers an interesting addendum to this debate. The researchers began with [...]
Today’s papers – January 3
Posted in Today's Papers, tagged January 3 2009 on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
Brief Prospects for Guantanamo? The New York Times leads with expectations for the Obama administration’s upcoming Supreme Court brief on the legal status of a Guantanamo detainee. The document is the new president’s first occasion to disavow the Bush administration’s expansive use of executive power, but some legal scholars believe the dangerous nature the detainee [...]
Today’s papers – January 2
Posted in Today's Papers, tagged January 2 2009 on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Israel Kills Senior Hamas Leader The Washington Post leads with the continuing Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which killed a senior Hamas leader yesterday. It marked the first time in the nearly weeklong bombing campaign that a Hamas leader was targeted and came at a time when Israel continues to amass troops and tanks [...]
What To Say About Mark Sanford? Judging from his dramatic, rambling, and emotional press conference, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford needs all the help he can get. But if his supporters follow his example, Sanford may not get much sympathy after his confession of an extramarital affair. As a member of the U.S. House, where [...]
Today’s papers – January 1
Posted in Today's Papers, tagged January 1 on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
2008: Good Riddance The New York Times leads with news from Gaza, where nearly 400 people have been killed by the Israeli offensive since Saturday. Under mounting international pressure, Israel offered humanitarian aid to Gazans but did not agree to a 48-hour cease-fire, holding out for a promise from Hamas for a cessation of rocket [...]
We Hear the Whole Sanford Story — Way Too Much of it
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Sanford on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
I liked it better when it looked like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had gone all Henry David Thoreau on us. Now, it turns out, he went all…well, you can fill in the blank. John Ensign? John Edwards? David Vitter? There was, while it lasted, something attractive in the notion that the governor had gone [...]
Flutes Offer Clues to Stone-Age Music
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, History on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Nicholas J. Conard of the University of Tübingen, in Germany, showed a thin bird-bone flute carved some 35,000 years ago. At least 35,000 years ago, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of music filled a cave in what is now southwestern Germany, the same place and time early Homo sapiens were [...]
Witnesses report clashes around Iran’s parliament
Posted in Conflicts and wars, tagged Iran on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Witnesses say protesters and riot police are clashing in the streets around Iran’s parliament. Three witnesses tell The Associated Press that hundreds of protesters have gathered in a square next to the parliament building in defiance of government orders to halt demonstrations demanding a new presidential election. The witnesses say the police beat the protesters [...]
Obama and ‘Regulatory Capture’
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment, Politics on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
It’s time to take the quality of our watchdogs seriously. The reason why those who see economic regulations as akin to tyranny often win policy debates is because they have a fiery argument with visceral appeal. Those who try to sell the virtues of the supervisory state tend to favor the passive voice. They don’t [...]
Mahmoud’s Friends
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, Politics, tagged Iran on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Russia, Hamas, and the Turks, of all people. On one side of the barricades stand civilians and clerics, men and women of every age, who dream of a free Iran. On the other are the Revolutionary Guards, ruling Ayatollahs and their Basij henchmen who want to hand a fraudulent election to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Oh, and [...]
The Pursuit of John Yoo
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Next time the lawsuit may target Obama’s advisers. Here’s a political thought experiment: Imagine that terrorists stage an attack on U.S. soil in the next four years. In the recriminations afterward, Administration officials are sued by families of the victims for having advised in legal memos that Guantanamo be closed and that interrogations of al [...]
Barney the Underwriter
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Telling Fannie Mae to take more credit risk. Now there’s an idea. Back when the housing mania was taking off, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank famously said he wanted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to “roll the dice” in the name of affordable housing. That didn’t turn out so well, but Mr. Frank has since only [...]
