how better to... than... ?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

following up on some stuff in my recent Language Log posting "How
safer is America?", i googled on "how better to" and got a huge pile
of instances that were awkward avoidances of the split infinitive
"how to better" ("how better to handle editing attachments", that
sort of thing), in addition to the stuff i was looking, instances of
the idiom "how better to X than Y?", a rhetorical question conveying
'there is no better way to X than Y, the best way to X is Y':

How better to start the new week than with a fresh Upsideclown?
interconnected.org/home/2001/04/23/how_better_to_start

How better to study human frailty than in The Great Gatsby or Gilgamesh?
www.umobile.edu/acad/humanities.asp

And how better to learn about wine than by actually drinking it?
search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?
ean=9780743216777&z=y

Ask those you meet: “How better to reduce the threat of terrorism
around the globe than to create a Department of Peace?”
www.thepeacealliance.org/content/view/56/123/

(not, so far as i can tell, in the OED, and i don't know its
history.  huge number of occurrences.)

probably the idiom encouraged "how better to" for "how to better".

oh, also the variant "what better way to X than Y?":

What better way to commemorate 9/11... ...than shooting doves to
raise money for a Republican?
www-personal.umich.edu/~bgoodsel/post911/2006/09/what-better-way-to-
commemorate-911.htm

What better way to procrastinate... ... than to update my blog!
www.sneaker.org/news/2003/ 06/what-better-way-to-procrastinate.html

What Better Way to Spend April Fool's Day, Than with Foolishness?
blogs.kitsapsun.com/kitsap/tomorrow/archive/2006/03/
what_better_way_to_spend_april.html



and an inverted version:

cozy campfires - what better way to end the day?
camping.about.com/cs/advicetips/a/campingbasics10.htm

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org