(Not about language.)
In the NYT on the 21st, “Judith S. Wallerstein, Psychologist Who Analyzed Divorce, Dies at 90” by Denise Grady, beginning:
Judith S. Wallerstein, a psychologist who touched off a national debate about the consequences of divorce by reporting that it hurt children more than previously thought, with the pain continuing well into adulthood, died on Monday in Piedmont, Calif.
(About plants, with linguistic digressions.)
Two notable plants of the season in my neighborhood: the tree jacaranda and the perennial flower alstroemeria. Both gorgeous, and both originally from South America.
(A jacaranda tree in South Pasadena CA, and a florist’s assortment of alstroemerias in various colors.)
Today’s Bizarro, with another play on cartoon conventions:
That would be Zoom In (however you achieve that on your computer).
Today’s Rhymes With Orange:
An earlier Rhymes on Yoda’s syntax, complete with links to Language Log postings on the subject, is here. Here we see the early days.
Exploring Mickey Mouse in the old days, I came across Tijuana bibles involving Disney characters, in particular a famous one pairing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck:
But what, you ask, are Tijuana bibles? Not bibles, and not from Tijuana.
Don’t know who thought of it first, but it’s certainly been propagated by NewScientist — print story on June 23rd; on-line story on the 19th:
Higgsteria rising as trouble brews for standard model
Excitement about the Higgs boson is ramping up ahead of a hotly anticipated conference in Australia next month. But even if last year’s tentative signals of the particle are confirmed, a fresh analysis of data from a particle accelerator in California suggests that this may not complete the standard model of physics.
A portmanteau of Higgs and hysteria. What happens when theoretical physicists get excited.
The word has been picked up enthusiastically by other science sites.
Today’s Rhymes With Orange:
Sympathetic ouch, from someone who’s prone to tennis elbow.
Via Jen Dewalt in Grapefeed, this story, “Back in the day, Mickey Mouse attempted suicide and fought opium smugglers” (by Cyriaque Lamar on the 22nd), beginning:
Intrepid readers will remember that one time Mickey Mouse and Goofy espoused the salubrious effects of amphetamine-laced soft drinks.
The truth is, that helium-voiced cartoon rodent weathered many a dubiously family-friendly moment during his early years.
Wilson Gray reported on ADS-L this morning that in an earlier posting he had written:
… having come across it here in there …
and that no one commented on his in for and. Well, people are generally tolerant of errors they are inclined to see as inadvertent, as in this case.
As it turns out, here in there has been commented on in the Eggcorn Forum, where it was treated as not an eggcorn, but some other sort of error.
A comment from Tané Tachyon on my last Zippy posting, in which Family Circus figured prominently:
A couple years back I had The Best American Comics 2008 out from the library, and just loved Lynda Barry’s intro comic about what the Family Circus had meant to her when she was growing up.
So: some words about Lynda Barry and Family Circus, and about language in Bil Keane’s strip.