On the Quote du jour

Every now and then, someone will take issue with me on the Quote du jour ("Quote of the day" for those of you in Rio Linda). I think it should go without saying that in posting a quote, it does not necessarily represent the views of the staff or management of Proof Positive blog. (Except on Saturday when I quote myself!) Today, over on Twitter, on today's quote, for example, a commenter said, "How'd that work out for her?"
Obviously not well on the short term!
Just for your information, generally speaking, the criteria for choosing a quote of the day are as follows:

* Something that is obviously so true it bears repeating
* Something that is obviously so false it bears mocking
* The person speaking is important in relationship to what's being said
* Something thought provoking
* A colorful use of the Queen's English
* An economy of speech, profundity in small compass

Having said that, if you want to take issue with any given quote, bring it on! We're all about the discussion of ideas, and if you believe the author of the quote got it wrong, let's hear it! Just don't assume that the reason I posted it was because I am wholly in agreement with either the quote or the author. I have quoted Barack and Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and any number of other miscreants. In those cases, I just think it's important that you see it.

PETA Phishes for Phonics

PETA has decided to fight "speciesism" by trying to modify our language to exclude casual references to animals. Mock them if you will, but maybe they just didn't go far enough? Think of all the harmful things that can affect our health and well being. Obesity is a major cause of heart failure. What if we further modified our language to eliminate some of those references to foods that are harmful to us?

Instead of "That's the way the cookie crumbles", we go with "That's the way your 401K crumbles."

Instead of bemoaning the loss of a cookie, we mourn for a real loss of our retirement nest eggs.

How about instead of "You can't have your cake and eat it too", we substitute "You can't have your significant other and your paramour, too"

"Like taking candy from a baby" becomes "Like taking carbon credits from a gross polluter."

"Easy as pie" becomes "Easy as rewriting aphorisms to accommodate current nonsensical kooky fads."

Hmm. Cookies...cakes...candy...pies?

I'll finish this later. Right now I have a case of the munchies you just can't believe!

Dunkirk: A Movie Review, Sort Of

In Spring, a young man's fancy turns to not getting shot, not getting blown up, not drowning and just possibly, making it home alive. Late Spring, anyway. May of 1940. The coast of France. The beaches of Dunkirk.

Director Christopher Nolan is described by IMDB as "Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear storytelling". The movie Dunkirk is told from three points of view, and nonlinear is a good term for it. One point of view is from soldiers on the beach, another, that of a Spitfire pilot and the last, the civilian captain of one of the boats in the rescue flotilla.

The nonlinear aspect is off putting to some. In one scene you see from the cockpit of a Spitfire, pursuit of a German Messerschmidt about to attack some ships. Later in the film, from the point of view from the ship, you see a Messerschmidt about to attack, pursued by a Spitfire. Each layer adds to a fuller understanding of what is taking place, though it may not be obvious at first.

I'd known the story of Dunkirk since I was a lad, but I'd never realized its scope: four hundred thousand men, surrounded, with their backs against the sea, sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe. In a case of what may have been dueling bureaucracies, the Germans would not commit their tanks to finishing off the British army, along with their French and Belgian allies, and the British will not commit a sufficient number of Spitfires to fly cover, or destroyers to relocate the army, lest they be needed to protect the homefront.

Speaking of scope, the cinematography is tremendous and sweeping. The aerial dogfights are spectacular. The attention to historical accuracy was very good. For example the depiction of the Spitfire pilot hand pumping his landing gear was not uncommon, even in some American fighters of that era.

There have been several complaints about the movie, one from an Internet twit, who shall remain nameless, who said the movie "feels like an excuse for men to celebrate maleness". There is very little resembling machismo in this film. Just the historical account of 400,000 men trying to stay alive. Perhaps 50,000 to 70,000 of them didn't. They were bombed, strafed, torpedoed, many drowned. Those who survived, some were wounded, most watched their friends and complete strangers dying around them, wondering if any minute that fate might be theirs. Yet some extremely shallow twit person speaks of "celebrating maleness".

Still, this may not be the most stupid complaint. I hear some were chiding the movie for its "lack of diversity". Translation: a movie about an historical event where close to 100% were white males, there was not enough "diversity" in the casting. Funny. I didn't hear anyone complain there wasn't enough "diversity" on Wonder Woman's island of Themyscira, where there wasn't a man or transgendered woman in sight! They could have cast Caitlyn Jenner, in the role she was born to play, an Amazon with more upper body strength than the rest, kicking their butts from here to Sunday!
Nope. No men. No transgendered! 

Last, I heard a complaint that Churchill's role should have been bigger. (He wasn't in the movie at all!) One soldier returning home from Dunkirk did read an excerpt from one of Churchill's speeches about "fighting on the beaches", but that was about it. The movie wasn't about Churchill. It really wasn't about the war. In fact, there's hardly a German to be seen anywhere.

The movie isn't about heroism, writ large, but more of a quiet, resolute heroism. A calm determination to do what needs to be done, whatever the personal cost might be. Duty, not machismo.
The father who lost a son to the war resolutely determines that he will not let that happen to his fellow countrymen if he has anything to say about it. 

I will reluctantly have to add a fourth, but minor quibble myself. Putting on my Mr. Language Person hat, at the very start of the movie, they put up three statements, all beginning with "The enemy have...". I'm sorry, but shouldn't that be "the enemy has"? Or "the Germans have"? Enemy is a collective noun, like "herd". Even though there are many cattle, you say that the herd is here. Or our enemies are here. You would never say, "The herd are here", would you?

In spite of its brief grammatical lapse, and the unbearable whiteness of its cast /sarc, I recommend you see Dunkirk. It is a realistic glimpse into what may have been the turning point of WWII. Had the British army been wiped out at Dunkirk, there may never have been a D-Day.

I give it four out of five stars.

Weird Words to Help You Win at Scrabble

Because the Internet is nothing if not instructive, (and totally believable), I give you Mr. Language Person!

Thank you, thank you! It's great to be here again! Well, to be anywhere, actually. But I have a couple of new words to add to your vocabulary. (Eat your heart out, Bill O'Reilly!)

The first word I actually ran into on the Interwebs: Feorirling , which, contrary to public opinion is not a Swedish sex act! It was a coin that circulated in the Republic of Ireland between 1928 and 1962. It was equal in value to 1/960 of one Irish pound. (A feorirling for your thoughts??")

The second, was in an old volume of poetry:  Coign
As in,

"In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland..."

So I looked it up in the dictionary, which gave me the following translation:

archaic spelling of quoin.

Well! That certainly settled that! So then I had to look up quoin: 

a projecting corner or angle of a wall or building. (or maybe, a cliff!)

The next time you're playing Scrabble and end up with an extra G or Q, see if you can work one of these words into the game. People will marvel at your depth of knowledge...after you have the fun of seeing them incredulously challenging your word and getting schooled by you.

And if you ever find a feorirling at a coign of a building, wall or cliff, you'll know exactly how to describe it!

You're welcome!

Be Wary of What You Read on TV

I was listening to a presumably British newscaster telling us the President was wary of Saudi Arabia's military assistance. And I'm reading across the bottom of the screen that Washington is weary of Saudi Arabian operations. Generally, the crawl tends to be a summary of what the speaker is saying, so I backed up the live broadcast (thank you Xfinity!), turned on the Closed Captioning & ran it again. The CC person heard it the same way I did.

No big, but if I had to venture a guess, I'd say the unwary product of our government schools was either unfamiliar with the word "wary" or was unfamiliar with the lilt of the Queen's English when spoken by a native.

"I Think it’s Baked In" - Mr. Language Person

"I think it’s baked in"

-Charles Krauthammer

The great Charles Krauthammer succumbing to the latest trendy, overused turn of phrase: 'It’s baked in'.

I think I heard it the first time a week or two ago. Someone was discussing one of the candidates and said that this thing or that thing about the candidate was 'baked in'. It seemed rather clever, self evident... a different way of expressing the fact that something was 'part and parcel' of another. Not bad. Or, as some might say, "It's not a bug it's a feature!"

But then a second person used it. And another. And another. Until it seemed as if some pundit every hour on the hour was describing something inherent to some person or policy as 'baked in'. And then the mighty Krauthammer piles on! Actually, I was hoping to use the magical 'baked in' buzz phrase myself one day, but too late! It has already become a cliché. Let me be the first to pronounce it trite, if I'm not able to celebrate its passing.

Now I'm not one of those guys who call for certain words or phrases to be banned. This one is clever and deserves its place in the sun. Maybe above the Arctic Circle where the sun doesn't shine for six months?

All I'm asking for is a little restraint. If you use the phrase 'baked in' to describe something inherent in a person, place, or thing, mark it on your calendar, and three to six months from now, see if you can work it into the conversation again. Is that too much to ask?

Unless, of course, it's already baked into the language!

Quite the Shellacking...

One of the words most commonly used to describe the effect of the midterm elections on Democrats was "shellacking". And, although I knew exactly what was meant by it, I'd never stopped to wonder why shellacking had taken on the meaning of beating soundly and thoroughly.

So, I looked up the etymology of the word and the explanation seems simple enough...it's a pun!

Shellac was used to "finish" wood, pre-polyurethane. So, to be "shellacked" is to be "finished".

I like it!