"The non-inflammatory antonym for 'libertarian' that you're looking for may be dirigiste."

Noted. (I had used the admittedly inflammatory "fascist.")

The OED defines "dirigisme" as "The policy of state direction and control in economic and social matters." Here are the examples, going back only to 1951:

1951 Archivum Linguisticum 3 220 Linguistic dirigisme, standards of correctness in a constantly evolving language.
1952 V. A. Demant Relig. & Decline of Capitalism iv. 94 These are but a few of the reasons for the increasing dirigisme of economic life on the part of the state.
1957 Times 26 Feb. 4/3 Their [Sinn Fein] programme is a strange amalgam of bombast, Chauvinism, and dirigism.
1967 New Scientist 9 Nov. 329/1 He warned his listeners against ‘too much dirigism’, reminding them of the USSR where crude political interference had forced men into politically neutral fields....

And for the adjective:

1957   Economist 12 Oct. 16/2   The French hope that the new community will pursue a ‘dirigiste’, or at least a Keynesian policy regulating and guiding investment on a European scale, and ensuring that the Germans do not upset the whole scheme by deflating too much.

I don't know. I'm feeling inflamed.

As long as I've got the old OED open — sorry I can't link to it — let's check out "fascist":

One of a body of Italian nationalists, which was organized in 1919 to oppose communism in Italy, and, as the partito nazionale fascista, under the leadership of Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), controlled that country from 1922 to 1943; also transf. applied to the members of similar organizations in other countries. Also, a person having Fascist sympathies or convictions; (loosely) a person of right-wing authoritarian views. Hence as adj., of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Fascism or Fascists.

The examples that go beyond the original reference to a self-proclaimed fascists seem to begin around 1960:

1960   S. M. Lipset Political Man v. 133   Fascist ideology, though antiliberal in its glorification of the state, has been similar to liberalism in its opposition to big business, trade-unions, and the socialist state....
1961   H. Thomas Spanish Civil War viii. 71   The Socialists..were described by [Communist] party jargon as ‘social fascists’.
1963   Times 27 Mar. 10/2   As the main body of demonstrators began to move away,..screams of ‘Fascist pigs’ and ‘Gestapoism’ continued.
1969   Times 17 Nov. 10/4   Taunts of ‘Sieg Heil’, ‘Fascists’, and the occasional smoke bomb from youthful demonstrators were bound to invite trouble.

The OED also notes a "Draft additions December 2005" definition:
depreciative. In extended use (with preceding modifying word): a person who advocates a particular viewpoint or practice in a manner perceived as intolerant or authoritarian. Cf. Fascism n. Additions, health fascist n. at health n. Additions. Recorded earliest in body fascist..."

1978   Business Week (Nexis) 22 May 10   Psychotherapy-as-recreation..has contributed in no small way to the kindred plagues of jogging and vegetarianism that are now so thoroughly disrupting wholesome social intercourse across our land. An acquaintance aptly dismisses such folk as ‘body fascists’.
1987   Courier-Mail (Brisbane) (Nexis) 10 Sept.,   Members of the NCC have been dubbed ‘green fascists’.
1997   Canad. Lawyer Jan. 46/2   It'll be fun to see what happens when the tobacco fascists run headlong into the human rights fascists.
1999   Independent 24 Mar. ii. 1/2   Now a half-naked male swigging Diet Coke and being ogled by stenographers in horn-rim specs is just as likely to upset gender fascists.

So it's like "soup nazi." Looking up "Nazi":

2... b. hyperbolically. A person who is perceived to be authoritarian, autocratic, or inflexible; one who seeks to impose his or her views upon others. Usu. derogatory.

1982   P. J. O'Rourke in Inquiry 15 Mar. 8/3   The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods.
1995   Independent 3 Nov. (Suppl.) 8/2   According to Hutchins, current fitness theory is peddled by ‘nazis’. Aerobics Nazis.
2000   Minx Aug. 71/2,   I learned to be more open and not such a Nazi in the studio.

Interesting use of "usu." When is it not derogatory to call someone a Nazi?

"Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop"... "God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis"...

"How Tea Cosies Changed the World"... "How to Sharpen Pencils"... "Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts"... "Was Hitler ILL?..."

I'm going to recommend "How to Sharpen Pencils," which actually has a subtitle, so it's "How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants."

You're probably thinking what's the point?, but go to the link and check out the table of contents. I, for one am pleased to see a separate chapter on the wall-mounted, hand-crank pencil sharpener (though as long-time readers of this blog know, my personal "wall-mounted" pencil sharpener is mounted on a horizontal surface, so I'm concerned about whether the author recognizes that what he terms "wall-mounted" can indeed be rotated for attachment to a shelf or table-top)).

Also, there's an appendix: "Wines That Taste Like Pencils."

(And by the way, Hitler was not mentally ill and therefore fully responsible for his actions, according to"Was Hitler ILL?: A Final Diagnosis.")

(And here's "God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis." Excerpt (displaying fact-filled but awkward prose): "The classical Roman term for penis was mentula, which one might think had a certain resonance equating as it does to 'little mind.' But eighteenth-century wordsmiths preferred the idiomatic penis, meaning tail, not just to mentula but to the most popular Roman slang of gladius, or sword — which as vagina meant sheath or scabbard, fitted nicely.")

"Republican senator John McCain is still raising questions and hackles."

Hackles again! Can't get enough hackles in the big media... when the topic is Republicans.

A few days ago, the NYT lit into Ted Cruz: "Texas Senator Goes on Attack and Raises Bipartisan Hackles." And now, it's John McCain who's ruffling the feathers of big media, whose meme is The GOP died. So, whenever a Republican Senator is anything by docile and deferential, the Death-of-the-GOP meme must be swapped out long enough to discipline the outlier. The standard message is: Nobody likes you. Metaphor of choice: Hackles. You're raising hackles.

Here's my meme for that media discipline: When they say hackles, I say hacks.
The article with the headline quoted in this post title is at The Washington Post. Here's some of the text:

The 76-year-old will be 80 when he is again up for reelection in Arizona in 2016. “I have seen a number of occasions around here where people have stayed too long,” McCain said during a recent interview in his Russell Senate Building office. “I have seen people who were real giants in this institution deteriorate, and unfortunately, we remember them at the end.”

Endings matter in politics. If McCain is approaching the exit, this term could determine how he will be remembered. (“In the way people think of him,” former GOP Arizona senator Jon Kyl said, “in the near term, it matters a great deal.”)

Right now, like it or not, the five-term senator is stuck in “get off my lawn” territory, lashing out at his friend-turned-foe Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary; incessantly tugging at what McCain is convinced is a coverup of the September attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya; lambasting the president; and railing against indiscriminate defense cuts. If hard-core conservatives feel burned by McCain’s resurgent reform spirit, the media that he once called his “base” have essentially written him off as an angry and sour loser who once went through a maverick phase but has, in the words of “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, gone on a “seven-year quest to negate every good thing he’d ever done.”

Wow. That's heavy-handed! They're saying: The GOP is supposed to be dead, and you're at the grave's edge, old man. Old, old man. You look old. Old men when the say what they mean and they say it with passion seem like they're saying "get off my lawn." Har harr. Old man! You're going to die soon.

You don't have to be a genius to extract the bias and see the real message: McCain is effective.

By the way, the hackles article about Cruz depicted him as too young — hadn't been around long enough to be speaking with intensity and passion. 

Hacks!

ADDED: I deleted a line that was in this post for a couple minutes: "by the way, hackles are not feathers." I based that on what I'd read — quickly — in the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary when I wrote the "hackles" post about Cruz:

The hackles of a cock are erected when he is angry; hence with the hackles up, said also of a dog on the point of fighting when the hairs at the top of the neck stand up or of a hound when near the fox and on the point of killing him, also transf. of a man when aroused. Hence hackles is sometimes put for hair, whiskers, etc.

I pictured the cock's comb, but reading more of the OED entry "hackle," I see:

The long shining feathers on the neck of certain birds, as the domestic cock, peacock, pigeon, etc. Also, the feathers on the saddle of a cock. a cock of a different hackle, an opponent of a different character.

"I don’t endorse the argument of the philosopher John Rawls that no one is entitled to a high income because..."

"... even characteristics that we think internal rather than external to a person, like IQ and leadership skills and athletic skills and energy and good health, are ultimately the product of luck. Therefore, Rawls argued, no one should be allowed to keep more of his earnings than necessary to 'incentivize' him to exert himself in a way that will maximize the social product."

So says Richard Posner. His objection is:

That treats people like the cells of an animal’s body, or the ants in an ant heap. Rather my point is that, to the extent reducing income inequality increases overall social welfare, there is a case for programs, financed by the well to do, that increase overall welfare by more than the cost of the programs. There is no reason to think that the cost would impose a crushing burden on the well to do, a result that would be objectionable quite apart from the costs in diminished incentives, and related costs such as tax avoidance and emigration.

Chew on that. I was distracted by "ant heap." Who says "ant heap" rather than "ant hill"?  I'm more the literary type than the economic. But speaking of departmentalization of each of us having our various skills and predilections, whether inborn or cultivated, my searching for the answer to my heap/hill question brought me quickly to this Robert Frost poem, "Departmental":

An ant on the tablecloth
Ran into a dormant moth
Of many times his size.
He showed not the least surprise.
His business wasn't with such.
He gave it scarcely a touch,
And was off on his duty run.
Yet if he encountered one
Of the hive's enquiry squad
Whose work is to find out God
And the nature of time and space,
He would put him onto the case.
Ants are a curious race;
One crossing with hurried tread
The body of one of their dead
Isn't given a moment's arrest-
Seems not even impressed.
But he no doubt reports to any
With whom he crosses antennae,
And they no doubt report
To the higher-up at court.
Then word goes forth in Formic:
"Death's come to Jerry McCormic,
Our selfless forager Jerry.
Will the special Janizary
Whose office it is to bury
The dead of the commissary
Go bring him home to his people.
Lay him in state on a sepal.
Wrap him for shroud in a petal.
Embalm him with ichor of nettle.
This is the word of your Queen."
And presently on the scene
Appears a solemn mortician;
And taking formal position,
With feelers calmly atwiddle,
Seizes the dead by the middle,
And heaving him high in air,
Carries him out of there.
No one stands round to stare.
It is nobody else's affair
It couldn't be called ungentle
But how thoroughly departmental

Put that in your Rawlsian/Posnerian analysis.

New York's "rape is rape" bill.

The New York penal code only uses the word "rape" for forced vaginal penetration. Crimes involving anal and oral penetration are punished just as severely, but the statutory name for the crime is "sexual assault."  There's a current effort in the NY legislature to extend the term "rape" to all 3 forms of forced penetration. This effort arose out of a case involving a victim named Lydia Cuomo (who is not related to the NY governor, Andrew Cuomo).

Lydia Cuomo... said the difference in terminology can lead to a rape victim’s attacker being convicted of a crime other than rape — as happened in her case last year. She said such an outcome makes it harder for the victim to heal.

The word "rape" conveys more emotional meaning than "sexual assault," which is the supposedly modern terminology found in the Model Penal Code. It's like changing from "murder" to "homicide." But whether you prefer the old words that convey our culture's deep moral condemnation or the new bureaucratic style that organizes everything into a big catalog, pick one approach and stick to it. It's terrible to say to a woman who was raped 3 ways — as Cuomo was — that only the vaginal penetration is — for official purposes — called "rape." In Cuomo's case, the jury failed to convict on the rape charge but convicted on the sexual assault charges, conveyed the unintended but outrageous message that she was not raped.

Now that the problem is plainly exposed, you'd think the fix is simple:

Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas (D-Queens) submitted the “rape is rape” bill...

Hours after Lydia Cuomo and Simotas held a press conference last week, a co-sponsor of the bill, state Sen. Catharine Young (R-Cattaraugus County), withdrew her support and filed an alternative measure. Young’s bill is backed by prosecutors across the state, who fear the change Lydia Cuomo is seeking could make it both harder to convict rapists and more difficult for judges to apply sentences consecutively, thereby maximizing prison time.

Young’s alternative would no longer require that penetration of any sort be proven for a rape conviction. Prosecutors instead would have to meet a less onerous standard of vaginal contact, which is the same threshold used for criminal sexual act.

The suddenly obvious need for one thing creates the momentum to try to get other things. The will to legislate is unleashed and the prosecutor's wish list pops out.

Woman writing lengthily for The Atlantic doesn't seem to know the word "underpants."

Sarah Fentem goes on at bizarre length about how much she dislikes the word "panties." After extensive blah blah blah, she gets to this:

So what word could be used instead? Personally, I've always just called my bottom unmentionables "underwear." My sister, though, disagrees. "Underwear" is no dice, she says, because women have two types of underwear (bras and panties)—and how will you know which ones are being referred to?

Another friend of mine has suggested the terms "top undies" and "bottom undies," but I don't see that particular strategy catching on, either....

It's well-documented that women are ahead of the curve when it comes to linguistic ingenuity....

Oh, yeah, women... they're so verbally proficient that they don't know the word "underpants."

"Was the problem that had no name possibly the lack of Wi-Fi?"

Noreen Malone gets a grip on what Betty Friedan — on behalf of suburban women in general — was bellyaching about in "The Feminine Mystique." She's responding to a piece by Emily Bazelon, which we talked about in a long comments thread yesterday. Malone says:

I grew up with a whip-smart mom who stayed at home with us, and so I always approach discussions like these with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, alert to any slights whatsoever against the choices and life mission of someone I so love and admire — even if I don’t plan to make precisely the same ones. But more of it is probably generational. For recession-scarred twentysomethings, staying at home or taking menial jobs is involuntary, but not because social mores dictate that women can’t achieve: It’s because so few of us, regardless of gender, have gotten hired at jobs Friedan might consider fulfilling...

I’m sure Betty wouldn’t be happy to see all the expensively educated young women of Brooklyn, where I live, spending their free time taking floral-arranging classes and knitting and fussily setting up their living rooms just so....

What's so wrong about paying close attention to the details of the beauty of your environment? Fussy... there's a word. When is intense, attentive work deemed fussy? This is a word that has long been used against women and against gay men. Is a person supposed to be interested in something other than what he or she finds interesting? Why? Who says what the proper foci of interest are in this world? Some people are more sensitive to the visual specifics of their environment. It's not as if the people who aren't spend their lives plumbing the meaning of the universe. Perhaps the interior decorator is closer to the core of what truly matters than the corporate lawyer. 

Now, I've derailed onto the subject of the word "fussy." I just had a long conversation with Meade about his associations with the word. Knowing nothing of the context in which I'd encountered the word, he associated it with objects — specifically drawings and handmade pottery — that are inferior because they have been overworked. I prompted him to think of calling a person fussy, and he said "a baby." Time to check the Oxford English Dictionary (which I can't link to). The first meaning applies to "persons, their habits and actions": "Fond of fuss, moving and acting with fuss; habitually busy about trifles." Examples:

1831  T. Moore Mem. (1854) VI. 201   Lucky for him that he is so little of an irritable or fussy nature.
1850   Fraser's Mag. 41 163   She is fussy and fidgetty (if there be such words).

The third meaning relates to things: "Of dress, etc.: Full of petty details. Also, in dressmaking language, without depreciatory implication; With many flounces, puffs, pleats, etc."

1858   J. G. Holland Titcomb's Lett. i. 92   Let every garment be well fitted.. fussy in no point....
1896   Westm. Gaz. 7 May 3/1   The fussy sunshade is much beflounced with lace-edged chiffon.

Flounces, puffs... Hear the homophobic echoes. Anyway, the etymology of fussy is obvious. It's just a -y added to fuss. What's the etymology of fuss?

Perhaps echoic of the sound of something sputtering or bubbling, or expressive of the action of ‘puffing and blowing’. 

The 2 oldest examples for fuss:

1701   G. Farquhar Sir Harry Wildair iii. i. 21   Ah! I hate these Congregation-women. There's such a fuss and such a clutter about their Devotion.
c1730   Ld. Lansdowne Wild Boar's Def. in Wks. (1732) I. 140   With your Humanity you keep a Fuss; But are in truth worse brutes than all of us.

And now, I am fully off track, looking for the full text of Lord Landsdowne's very cool poem "The Wild Boar's Defense," which I'm going to type out in full, because I'm only seeing images of book pages and I want to make it more available. The wild boar wants to be free:

A boar, who had enjoy'd a happy reign
For many a year, and fed on many a man,
Call'd to account, softening his savage eyes,
Thus suppliant pleads his cause before he dies:

"For what am I condemned? My crime's no more
To eat a man than yours to eat a boar.
We seek not you, but take what chance provides,
Nature and mere necessity our guides:
You murder us in sport, then dish us up
For drunken feasts, a relish for the cup.
We lengthen not our meals: but you much feast;
Gorge till your bellies burst — pray who's the beast?
With your humanity you keep a fuss,
But are in truth worse brutes than all of us.
We prey not on our kind; but you, dear brother,
Most beastly of all beasts, devour each other:
Kings worry kings, neighbour with neighbour strives,
Fathers and sons, friends, brothers, husbands, wives,
By fraud or force, by poison, sword, or gun,
Destroy each other, every mother's son!"

My Wi-Fi took me there, in my unfussy riffing this morning. I suppose I could tie it all up somehow. Husbands, wives... destroy each other.

Who's the beast?

"[T]he pantheon of hungry young men who have moved to Washington and shape-shifted, whether consciously or not..."

"... into something that’s more palatable to the city’s establishment. The blogger who, in 2008, tweeted, 'fuck tim russert. fuck him with a spiky acid-tipped dick,' now styles himself as the evenhanded, empirically driven adult in a room of squabbling, stubborn children. Even his critique of Washington, grounded in data and charts and graphs, is establishment to the core: This place, he says, is not like it used to be."

From "Ezra Klein: The Wise Boy/A tale of striving and success in modern-day Washington," by Julia Ioffe (in the redesigned New Republic). I'm not sure what to make of this long, long piece about Klein, but this is a funny picture to publish:



That's just a photoshoot misfire that ought to have been deleted instantly. To select it to illustrate the article is practically to announce: This is a hit piece.

I pointed out that, in spite of his loathing of being subjected to the journalistic gaze, he had agreed to be profiled not only by me, but also by New York magazine—simultaneously. The “people above me” he said, “seem to think it’s a good idea.” It would bring in readership, and Klein felt it would be “hypocritical” not to cooperate with the press when he, the press, was constantly asking people to cooperate with him. It was almost too meta to bear. “You’re sitting there taking notes and recording while I’m sitting here taking notes and recording,” he said. “It’s a peculiar situation!”...

Klein later told me that he found our exchange “slightly threatening.”

“Don’t take it personally,” one of Klein’s friends explained. “He didn’t get this far being casual about his image management.”

Oh, good lord, this thing has me sympathizing with Ezra Klein! Ridiculous.

By the way, a pantheon is "a temple dedicated to all the gods." (OED.) The figurative meaning is: "The group of people or things most revered by an individual, nation, profession, etc.; a group of people particularly respected, famous, or otherwise significant in some capacity; a set of things having acknowledged value or importance." It doesn't make sense to talk about "the pantheon of hungry young men." Either they hungry or they are in the pantheon. The ambitious young strivers are not the gods.

(Are there hungry gods?)

"He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room."

There's today's sentence from "The Great Gatsby," in the long-running Althouse blog show called The "Gatsby" Project.

Where do we go with this one? Must we dither over the old hobby-horse "literally"? Did Gatsby literally glow? Was he heated to the point of incandescence? I'd say that F. Scott Fitzgerald continually uses metaphor, asserting that things are other than what they are, without the prissy distance of clutter words like like and as if, so what does it matter if he intensifies one of these assertions with literally?

He glowed. And he radiated. It filled the room. He's an incandescent light-bulb. There are, I assure you, no fluorescent bulbs in "Gatsby." There are a few candles, including 4 that Daisy snaps out with her fingers. There's particularity about lighting in this book. Daisy prefers the sun. Literally.

I've said before that one thing I've learned, reading "Gatsby" sentences, is that if you're having trouble finding a way in: Look for the light. Today, the light source is obvious: It's the man himself, Gatsby.

But, the truth is, I'm not having trouble finding a way into this sentence. It jumped out at me because of the word "exultation," which is there in the negative: There isn't any exultation, not in word or gesture. It's a situation where Gatsby might have exulted, and the glowing/radiation came right out of his skin.

We were just talking about exulting. We were mock exulting at a minor tribulation that afflicted someone we sometimes slightly pretend we don't like, and then we were mock chiding each other for inappropriate exultation. It was nothing, really. Just some passing amusement at the idea of the flimsy sin of exultation.

The original meaning — OED — of exult, now obsolete, is "To spring or leap up; to leap for joy." That physical image is lost now, and it means — literally, now — "To rejoice exceedingly, be elated or glad; to triumph."

1856   E. K. Kane Arctic Explor. II. viii. 90   We..exult to think we need no catering for the morrow.
1865   A. C. Swinburne Satire to C. in Poems & Ballads 50   As plague in a poisonous city Insults and exults on her dead.

Don't confuse exult with exalt, which means "to raise up... to lift up" and "to praise, extol, magnify." The elevation-related physical image survives:

1823   C. Lamb Mod. Gallantry in Elia 184   Exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit.
1832   Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Feb. 287   Let the rogues swing, And thus be exalted.

And the metaphorical meaning works too:

1611   Bible (A.V.) Psalms xxxiv. 3   O magnifie the Lord with me, and let vs exalt his name together.

There's one other appearance of exult in "The Great Gatsby." It's not the absence of exultation, and it's not Gatsby, it's Tom. He's talking "incessantly, exulting and laughing." Much better to silently incandesce. Exalt appears once:

I stayed late that night, Gatsby asked me to wait until he was free, and I lingered in the garden until the inevitable swimming party had run up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights were extinguished in the guest-rooms overhead.

Ah, but that's a whole other fat, juicy sentence. We've had our "Gatsby" sentence today, and it's time to snap out the lights on this post. Figuratively.

"The tears coursed down her cheeks — not freely, however..."

"... for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets."

That's the sentence from "The Great Gatsby" today, in the "Gatsby" project.

Tears coursed. The subject and the predicate are right up there at the outset. No teasing about where the foundation of this sentence is. Course is a strange verb for ran. There are reasons to choose the odder word. Course, for example, is more woody, less tinny than ran. The tears coursed, but not freely, because they got stuck on the woman's mascaraed eyelashes. It's thickly applied black mascara. We know it's thickly applied, because it's the excess blobs of mascara that give the impression of beads, and inky means black. So the tears got stuck on the blobs and became a coagulated black liquid, slowed down, but still, on each cheek, a little river, a rivulet.

Is rivulet a strange word? Classical Latin had the word rīvulus and there's rivoletto in Italian. John Milton used rivulet, in 1667, in "Paradise Lost," one of the books my readers urge upon me as they imagine they see the light at the end of the "Gatsby" tunnel. "As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight...," I found the rivulet sentence in "Paradise Lost":

In Bowre and Field he sought, where any tuft
Of Grove or Garden-Plot more pleasant lay,
Thir tendance or Plantation for delight,
By Fountain or by shadie Rivulet
He sought them both, but wish'd his hap might find
EVE separate, he wish'd, but not with hope
Of what so seldom chanc'd, when to his wish,
Beyond his hope, EVE separate he spies,
Veild in a Cloud of Fragrance, where she stood,
Half spi'd, so thick the Roses bushing round
About her glowd, oft stooping to support
Each Flour of slender stalk, whose head though gay
Carnation, Purple, Azure, or spect with Gold,
Hung drooping unsustaind, them she upstaies
Gently with Mirtle band, mindless the while,
Her self, though fairest unsupported Flour,
From her best prop so farr, and storn so nigh.

Oh, come on now! That sentence is absurdly long! And the spelling is so perverse — Bowre and Flour for bower and flower. I like the Roses bushing round as the Snake finds EVE alone. The gay flowers — flours — drooping... interestingly vulnerable. But storn... what is it? Storn! I know it's woody.

No, no, no! I'm too smart to succumb to that temptation. I am not a stooping, drooping blogger. I'm shrinking back into my "Gatsby" tunnel. Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, but I've seen my shadie shadow this evening. I'm frightened, terrified. The unfree tears course down my cheeks, slowed by the speed bumps of inky mascara.

The ethnic studies requirement.

We've had if for years at the University of Wisconsin. Here's an upcoming event:

The roundtable will include a presentation on the history of the requirement, an open-mic portion where attendees will be asked to share experiences with classes and make suggestions, and smaller discussions led by ASM Diversity Committee members. Attendees will also be provided note cards on which they can leave comments about their class experiences.

The committee is considering whether the requirement should be able to be satisfied with classes that "incorporate facets of personal identity beyond race and ethnicity, such as sexual orientation" and whether students should be required to take their ethnic studies class in their first 2 years of undergraduate study to enable them "to apply knowledge from the class to their educational experience." There's an idea of "revamp[ing the] requirement to make the classes a 'game-changer' for students, providing them with greater insight into their identities."

That made me want to look up the word "identity." There are lots of different meanings, but one is (from the OED):

The sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances; the condition of being a single individual; the fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else; individuality, personality.

Another is:

Who or what a person or thing is; a distinct impression of a single person or thing presented to or perceived by others; a set of characteristics or a description that distinguishes a person or thing from others.

Among the early quotes the OED uses to exemplify the meaning of "identity," we have 2 of history's greatest philosophers:

1694   J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding (new ed.) ii. xxvii. 180   The Identity of the same Man consists... in nothing but a participation of the same continued Life, by constantly fleeting Particles of Matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized Body.

1739   D. Hume Treat. Human Nature I. i. 34   Of all relations the most universal is that of identity, being common to every being, whose existence has any duration.

If only a philosophy course could fulfill the requirement that has to do with gaining greater insight into one's identity! But perhaps students arrive at the university with a sense of identity that suggests different building blocks at the foundation of their higher education. Or perhaps — in the future — they have such as sense of their own identity that they do not arrive at all.

"Under Boris I, Bulgarians became Christians..."

"... and the Ecumenical Patriarch agreed to allow an autonomous Bulgarian Archbishop at Pliska. Missionaries from Constantinople, Cyril and Methodius..."



"... devised the Glagolitic alphabet, which was adopted in the Bulgarian Empire around 886.... In the early 9th century, a new alphabet — Cyrillic — was developed at the Preslav Literary School, adapted from the Glagolitic alphabet invented by Saints Cyril and Methodius...."

In Bulgaria, today's "History of" country.

In the following centuries Bulgaria established itself as a powerful empire, dominating the Balkans through its aggressive military traditions, which led to development of distinct ethnic identity. Its ethnically and culturally diverse people united under a common religion, language and alphabet which formed and preserved the Bulgarian national consciousness despite foreign invasions and influences.

"The guy said they were sitting at that same table three years ago and some stranger paid for their meal and made them think about kindness and love..."

"... and they’ve been talking about it ever since. They’ve incorporated it into their lives and said there was no other place he could have proposed, it was their most impactful memory."

I think this CafeMom post would have gotten more play if only she hadn't said impactful.

She's all "Has anyone ever anonymously bought you a meal at a restaurant? Have you ever purchased one for someone else?"

But I'm all... have you ever felt enthused about something and then one word killed it?

ADDED: And you're all... enthused....

AND: You're all... you're all....

"I think Justice Scalia would correct you and say it was a Saint Thomas More hat, rather than a Sir Thomas More hat."

Said Astro in the comments to the post about the hat Scalia wore to the inauguration.

I responded saying that "the truth is that the reason I used 'Sir' is that it was the caption on the Hans Holbein painting," but the comment got me researching what's the right way to refer to More, and Wikipedia's article begins: "Sir Thomas More... known to Catholics as Saint Thomas More...." So, it seems that the failure to say "Saint" is the shibboleth that reveals that I'm not Catholic. In which case, I don't think Scalia would correct me.

Notice my tendency to reinforce my original choice — which involved little thought — with additional reasons. That's the lawyer instinct. What happened happened, and now that I'm challenged, I furiously brainstorm reasons why it was correct. (What's not lawyer-like is to concede that and display it like this.)

Another reinforcement for my choice is, as I wrote in the comments at the first link:

It's a Sir Thomas More hat, that is, a hat that he wore in his role as a knight. There is no "saint hat," or if there is — maybe you get issued a hat in Heaven — it's not that hat.

It's like, say a cowboy died and was later beatified and we had a picture of him in his cowboy hat. Cowboy Bob. If I adopted his hat, it would be a Cowboy Bob hat, not a St. Bob hat.

I'd like to think Justice Scalia would be intrigued by this language usage question, whether the noun hat calls for the modifier Sir rather than Saint — even for those who revere him as a saint — because it's not a saint hat.

ADDED: Astro did a Google images search for "saint hat," with hilarious results. Before clicking on the link try to guess what 3 types of hats come up most often. It's not this:

Are we people, persons, or individuals?

I got into a back-and-forth with kentuckyliz in this comments thread. She experienced "individuals" as dehumanizing, and I found "people" irksome unless the reference is to the collective. We both accepted "persons," but I acknowledged that "persons" feels awkward, unnatural, or even incorrect to some... people.

So, let's check the etymology of the 3 words. I'll use the Online Etymology Dictionary.

people (n.)
late 13c., "humans, persons in general," from Anglo-French people, Old French peupel "people, population, crowd; mankind, humanity," from Latin populus "a people, nation; body of citizens; a multitude, crowd, throng," of unknown origin, possibly from Etruscan. The Latin word also is the source of Spanish pueblo, Italian popolo. In English, it displaced native folk.

Meaning "body of persons comprising a community" first recorded late 13c. in Anglo-French; meaning "common people, masses" (as distinguished from the nobility) first recorded c.1300 in Anglo-French. Meaning "one's own tribe, group, etc." is from late 14c. The word was adopted after c.1920 by Communist totalitarian states to give a spurious sense of populism to their governments...

person (n.)
early 13c., from Old French persone "human being, anyone, person" (12c., Modern French personne) and directly from Latin persona "human being, person, personage; a part in a drama, assumed character," originally "mask, false face," such as those of wood or clay worn by the actors in later Roman theater. OED offers the general 19c. explanation of persona as "related to" Latin personare "to sound through" (i.e. the mask as something spoken through and perhaps amplifying the voice), "but the long o makes a difficulty ...." Klein and Barnhart say it is possibly borrowed from Etruscan phersu "mask."...

Of corporate entities from mid-15c. The use of -person to replace -man in compounds and avoid alleged sexist connotations is first recorded 1971 (in chairperson). In person "by bodily presence" is from 1560s. Person-to-person first recorded 1919, originally of telephone calls.

individual (n.)
"single object or thing," c.1600, from individual (adj.). Colloquial sense of "person" is attested from 1742.

A majority can never replace the individual. ... Just as a hundred fools do not make one wise man, a heroic decision is not likely to come from a hundred cowards. [Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf," 1933]

Latin individuum meant "an atom, indivisible particle;" in Middle English individuum was used in sense of "individual member of a species" from early 15c.

I see the Online Etymology Dictionary is trying to scare us away from "individual" by quoting Hitler, but how do I know they're not communists? Let me switch to the Oxford English Dictionary (which, unfortunately, I can't link to). It's a much richer source of quotes and it always gives us the earliest quotes that can be found.

The earliest use of the noun "individual" to mean "single human being, as opposed to Society, the Family, etc." is from 1626:

J. Yates Ibis ad Cæsarem ii. 12 (margin) ,   The Prophet saith not, God saw euery particular man in his bloud, or had compassion to say to euery Indiuiduall, Thou shalt liue.

And here's one from 1899:

J. Monro Gibson in Expositor Feb. 144   It will not be as Churches but as individuals that we shall all stand before the Judgment seat of Christ.

The oldest quote for "person," meaning "An individual human being; a man, woman, or child" is from 1225:

Ancrene Riwle (Cleo. C.vi) (1972) 236   Abute sunne liggeð six þinges. þet hit hulieð..Persone. stude. time. Manere. tale. cause. Persone. þe dude þe sunne oðer wið hwam me hit dude.

That's a tad hard to read, but I quoted it anyway, because I liked the "dude." If we crank forward to 1440, we get:

R. Rolle Eng. Prose Treat....   The fifte comandement es þat ‘thou slaa na man..’ And also here es forboden vn-ryghtwyse hurtynge of any persone.

"Person" is interesting in that it has been used to denote "A man or woman of high rank, distinction, or importance" and, alternatively, "An individual considered to be of low rank, status, or worth." An old example of the former is:

1709 J. Addison Tatler No. 116. ¶1   She had a Mind to look as big and burly as other Persons of her Quality.

And the latter:

1704 Swift Tale of Tub Ep. Ded. 2   It is amazing to me, that this Person should have Assurance in the face of the Sun, to go about persuading Your Highness, that our Age is almost wholly illiterate.

Another function of the word "person" is to distinguish a human being from things or from other animals, as in:

1678   T. Sprat Serm. preached before King in Serm. (1710) 168   A zeal for persons is far more easy to be perverted, than a zeal for things.

Finally, "people." I'd forgotten about the singular, colloquial usage, noted in 1891:

J. Maitland Amer. Slang Dict. 201   ‘He is great people’ is used in a commendatory sense of anyone.

OED also quotes "The Sopranos":

1999   J. Cahill Guy Walks into Psychiatrist's Office in Sopranos (television shooting script) 2nd Ser. 24   Lee's good people. He came all the way from the village on an hour's notice.

But basically, "people" is a singular noun and we're interested in it here for the way it's used interchangeably with person/individual when there are more than one persons/individuals. So I have to exclude the definitions that go with quotes like "I speak to the people as one of the people." (1771   ‘Junius’ Stat Nominis Umbra.)

I want the usage that you see in the song "People" when 2 individuals realize that each was a half and they've become whole, they add up to people. So even 2 is enough to make this kind of people. We're not talking about the masses or the populace or "We the People," just any number of human entities exceeding one (or one-half if these entities are the luckiest people, people in love).

I wish I could show you the long page in the OED that I'm combing through. I don't think any of the definitions fit what I'm looking for, even though it is exceedingly common in American speech. 

"As of today, Barack Obama’s presidency is half over. If that’s not enough to cheer you up..."

"... try heading over to the Insta-Wife’s new site, Helen’s Page, where you can commiserate or whatever with others who feel the same way."

Okay, here's Helen's Page/For Liberty-Minded People, which seems to be more social media than blog:

A lot of people I talked to after the election were feeling isolated. So I made a place for them to meet each other and hopefully, feel less alone and more connected to like-minded people whether for business or just to share ideas. 

Libertarians who are feeling isolated and alone? Doesn't that come with the libertarian territory? They need a "place" where they will feel more connected?

Instead of saying the place is for libertarians, Helen is saying it's "liberty-minded people." People is a collectivist word. Why not for liberty-minded individuals? Because they're so lonely! They need people. They're people who need people. They were letting their grown-up pride, hide all the need inside, acting more like children than children.

Libertarians are very special people. They're the most liberty-minded people in the world.

"I always start with physicality when I’m writing as a woman. So I always have a vagina and think about having periods."

Said Will Self, who has a new novel, "Umbrella," the title of which is based on the Joyce quote "A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella."

By the way, the first appearance of the word "umbrella" in English, according to the OED (not linkable), came in 1611:

T. Coryate Crudities sig. Lv,   Many of them doe carry other fine things.., which they commonly call in the Italian tongue vmbrellaes... These are made of leather something answerable to the forme of a little cannopy & hooped in the inside with diuers little wooden hoopes that extend the vmbrella in a prety large compasse.

That predates the first use of "vagina," which was in 1682:

T. Gibson Anat. Humane Bodies 20   It has passages..for the neck of the Bladder, and in Women for the vagina of the Womb.

The etymology of "vagina" is: "Latin vāgīna sheath, scabbard." The etymology of "umbrella" is: "Italian ombrella and ombrello, < ombra < Latin umbra shade."

Here's Perry Como singing "Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella."

Fill in the blank: Let a smile be your umbrella. Let a _________ be your vagina.

"The Language Movement catalysed the assertion of Bengali national identity in Pakistan..."

"... and became a forerunner to Bengali nationalist movements, including the 6-point movement and subsequently the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. In Bangladesh, 21 February is observed as Language Movement Day, a national holiday."

Bangladesh is today's "History of" country.

Here is the monument to the Language Movement martyrs:

 

What was so important about language?

When the state of Pakistan was formed in 1947, its two regions, East Pakistan (also called East Bengal) and West Pakistan, were split along cultural, geographical, and linguistic lines. In 1948, the Government of Pakistan ordained Urdu as the sole national language, sparking extensive protests among the Bengali-speaking majority of East Pakistan. 

Would East and West Pakistan be one country today if the government hadn't been so hardcore about Urdu?

Great differences began developing between the two wings of Pakistan. While the west had a minority share of Pakistan's total population, it had the largest share of revenue allocation, industrial development, agricultural reforms and civil development projects. Pakistan's military and civil services were dominated by the fair-skinned, Persian-cultured Punjabis and Afghans. Only one regiment in the Pakistani Army was Bengali. And many Bengali Pakistanis could not share the natural enthusiasm for the Kashmir issue, which they felt was leaving East Pakistan more vulnerable and threatened as a result.

"Althouse, 'embarrassed' by flashing her... 'its'?"

Observes EDH... with an apt clip.

"We're not going to go hog wild."

Says Governor Scott Walker, announcing a plan for a "significant" cut in state income taxes.

ADDED: In the comments, Mary Beth said: "I'm surprised, and a little let down, that this post didn't also have a history of the phrase 'hog wild.'" Thanks for missing the kind of Althouse extras that I really do love to provide. And here they are. The OED has this:

hog-wild adj. U.S. completely wild or unrestrained; crazy (chiefly in to go hog-wild).

1893   Galveston (Texas) Daily News 11 Mar. 4/3   The state of Kansas has gone ‘hog wild’.
1940   C. McCullers Heart is Lonely Hunter i. ii. 26   This here white man had just gone hog wild. He were butting his head against the side of this brick wall.
2005   Time Out N.Y. 3 Feb. 82/1   New York City Ballet went hog-wild with promotions on January 22.

And here's a graph of the history of the use of "hog wild." For some reason, it spiked in 1942 and 1963. WW2 and the Kennedy assassination. Big events in those years. Any number of reasons to turn to "hog wild."