Here's something I wish my boss would read. Our corporate house style is incredibly un-stylish.

Sometimes I rebel by putting internal documents in Helvetica instead of Arial.

[thanks to G for the link]

So I'm not at all chuffed with the concept of "working for a living". And it seems that the best way to avoid working for a living is to be independently wealthy, which one accomplishes through some combination of living below one's means and witchcraft. Or marrying rich. As plans for marrying rich have stalled while I work through my classist antipathy towards the upper crust, I've decided to practice witchcraft, aided by an occasional series of book reviews.

Investing With Your Values was written with a nervous reader in mind. Nervous about sacrificing financial interests on the altar of social responsibility, nervous about whether or not socially responsible investment can actually make a difference, nervous about investing and personal finance generally. I was evidently not the intended audience.
(more...)

Even former French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn has a blog. Socialisme et democratie à gauche, hoorah! But of course the most immediately interesting thing is the complete indecision over formalities in the comment sections:

Il serait intéressant pour toi (on se tutoie sur les blogs Dominique) que tu rencontre d'autres personnes que Mr Lo�c Le Meur pour t'aider à comprendre le fonctionnement de cette nouvelle génération d'outils dont font partie les "blogs".

[It would be interesting for you (one uses the informal "you" in blogs, Dominique) to meet persons other than M L-le-M to help you understand the workings of this new generation of tools, to which blogs belong.]

vs.

J'utilise le vous, mais si un jour, vos réponses utilisent le tutoiement, je me permettrai de vous tutoyer, selon la tradition des blogs.

[I use the formal, but if one day your responses are informal, I will allow myself to use "tu" as is the tradition with blogs.]

The rest of the comments are all over the map, using either "vous" or "tu" without explanation. DSK himself has not weighed in on the matter, and continues to use the obviously-plural "vous" for his audience. I don't read enough (i.e., any) French blogs to know how it normally works, but the addition of an old and highly distinguished person to the (presumably) intimate bloggy-culture seems to have thrown the French for a loop. Not my problem, as I have nothing to add to the discussion anyway.

Surely someone has already written a comprehensive, cross-cultural discussion of (in)formal modes of address on blogs? And surely a clued-in reader can point me to it?

Dr. Seuss meets Ole and Lena jokes:

I would not eat them on a raid,
I would not eat them with a maid,
I would not eat them on a trip,
I would not eat them on my ship.
I do not like lutefisk and yams.
I do not like them, Sven I am.

Surely there must be a more authentic Scandinavian foodstuff that rhymes with "am"? I can't imagine that the Vikings would have had much access to yams, as most varieties don't do well in the cold. Dioscorea batatas is hardy to USDA Zone 5, though, and southern Sweden is Zone 7, which strikes me as utterly ridiculous but I guess a bit of Viking yam-cultivation would not have been entirely out of the climatological question. History is another matter; decent references on the history of yams are not forthcoming, but check out the completely unrelated sweet potato for kicks.

I have in front of me a Map of Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas and it's Subdivisions and Improvements - emphasis mine, but the apostrophe belongs to A.C. Pillsbury, civil engineer, August 2020.

Historical perspective for my your next apostrophe rant, free of charge.

Scroll to the bottom for the Sonnet to Foraminifera:

In what deep chasm did your live form dwell;
And when you thought, what did you think of truth?

Three points for nerdy subject matter, no bonus for the occasionally strained iambic pentameter, and minus five for an inappropriate description of foram shapes as "trilobitic". "Sealed in glass" is also suspect.
Total score: -2.

Was Congress really expecting a serious court challenge based on the distinction between "ass hole" the two-word phrase, and "asshole" the compound word? They're given distinct entries in the
list of words you can't broadcast. I'm surprised the bill didn't also address the smart-alecky use of indifferently enunciated arse-based equivalents. Some Representative's aide is clearly shirking his or her thesaurus-work.

Swear-list compiler, have you no patriotism?

(props to G, who also has a nice picture of a monkey for us)

1. Shirky: The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview - a vivid vituperation of something I would have been vituperating for years, if I hadn't been ignoring it entirely. On the other hand, it's probably better to just ignore the vituperating, too, as Computer Socialized Pretentiousness may be catching. I was bored halfway down the page.
2. The Art and Science of Feng Shui - it appears that decorating is a zero-sum game for Peter and I; we have exactly opposite sets of astrologically determined auspicious directions. Pictures of pine trees may or may not help with this (pine trees are wily Chi-eaters!) but is a picture of a joshua tree the same as a picture of a pine tree? Also, I can't figure out whether Mt. Wilson is shaped like a dragon, or a person putting on his clothes, or an upside-down boat.
3. Photographing Your Flowers, by John Patrick Roche - Billing his work as a "practical guide for indoor and outdoor use", M. Roche begins with reference to Aristotle and goes on to insist that amateur garden photographers must develop a firm handle on botany, as well as basic composition in black and white, before mucking about with toys. There follow a very many rules, nearly enough to build a photo-judging Roche-bot, which I think would be a fun project.

Neal Stephenson jumped the shark on page 277. Over the moon and into some stable orbit, where a group of hasty sketches in an imitation Baroque tin can go round and round with the Bludgeon of Science History Hindsight. One wonders how many revolutions they can handle before the main character (whose thoughts and feelings are told at a slowly-increasing remove) is completely squished, leaving only a Foil for Progress.

Stilted dialogue on the philosophical standing of computing-machines has its place, in the opening scenes of historical-crossover Alan Turing / Captain Kirk homoerotic fan fiction. If Isaac Newton and Mary Sue Daniel Waterhouse aren't having sex in 50 pages, though, I will attempt to hollow out the rest of the book for use as a very nerdy drug'n'gun cache.

Joe Jonah Euclid was (and possibly still is) an endearing type of delusional nutter, who posted his flyers around the Caltech campus my freshman and sophomore years. I haven't seen any fresh material in quite some time; but whilst cleaning out my file-box I came upon this one. Spelling is preserved, formatting is attempted. It seems to speak to important issues of our time, as well as the tail end of the dot-com boom when it was written.

Joe Jonah Euclid                  2020 2020
	
Please Consider the hypothetical possibality that
the Internet is better than the Cosmic Consciousness.
Both provide communications at a distance and
any number of people can join in at any time.
	
It does not matter IF we Debate this.
It does not matter IF people have the wrong opinion.
	
It ONLY matters IF it is TRUE.     Long Term.
	
The younger generation will mostly Learn the Internet.
When they Hear Of   the Cosmic Consciousness, it is not better.
Because the Internet Equally Well provides the Communications.
	
Thru some Years, there is a smaller and smaller number of people
Practicing the Cosmic Consciousness.
One Day   they let up a little bit, and then
Society has Fewer Bizarre Disastors & Senseless Crimes.
There are research programs to Monitor this fine grain.