Etc., etc.

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Could this be a good time to suggest that ADS-L put a limit on the number of times per day that the  same individual can post on ADS-L? Maybe there should be a lifetime limit as well (as there is for the number of times an insurance policy will pay to addicts to rehab)?

------Original Message------
From: Jonathan Lighter
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Subject: [ADS-L] Etc., etc.
Sent: Feb 8, 2010 2:27 PM

Not a linguistic issue, but just an example of what you can read in academic
books. I swear I wasn't looking for this:

Alex Vernon, _Soldiers Once and Still: Ernest Hemingway, James Salter & Tim
O'Brien_ (U. of Iowa Press, 2004), p. 8:

"The World Trade Center very much stood at the center of world trade....and,
oddly, the construction of the World Trade Center, begun in 1961 and
completed in 1973, parallels America's military involvement in Vietnam.  In
1961 President Kennedy ordered an additional 8,000 soldiers to Vietnam,
increasing the troop presence by more than 200 percent (from 3,200)."

Prof. Vernon is Associate Professor of English (not Math) at Hendrix
College.

(I kept the part about the WTC because, after reading enough of this stuff,
I'm no longer sure whether it's "odd" or not. Maybe it's "ironic." Or maybe
it's meaningless.)

Oh, yeah: On a hunch, I discovered that historians, not English professors,
say that as of Dec. 31, 1961, JFK had sent several *hundred* additional
troops to Vietnam, for a *total* of roughly 3200.

Now I'll shut up.

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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