more short takes

Mon Apr 2 07:17:46 UTC 2012

More short takes, except for #4, which is somewhat elaborate.

1) "in terms of me"

http://goo.gl/bDXeW
> Gov. Chris Christie told Oprah Winfrey in an interview broadcast
> tonight on OWN that a lot depends on whether he'll run for president
> in 2016, but one thing's for sure: "In terms of me, I'll be much more
> ready four years from now," he said.

2) "most classless"

http://goo.gl/89lm9
> I’ve been in practice for seventeen years, and the blog has existed
> for ten, and this is the single most classless and misleading thing
> I’ve ever seen related to the Court.

Would "least classy" have been an improvement?

3) "Facepalm"--with or without a hyphen--has become a common chat and
email refrain, both in noun and verb form. Now it's well beyond that
kind of media.

http://goo.gl/WjZtG
> In Alabama and Mississippi, Romney claimed no historic connection like
> he did with Michigan, New Hampshire or Wisconsin, but local
> Republicans did a face-palm when he tried to court voters with a newly
> Southern persona.

New Media dictionaries have it--Wiktionary, UD and Wikipedia--and it's
covered by WordSpy and Wordnik. Traditional dictionaries do not. The
original use is "*facepalm*"--although in some email clients the
asterisks mark "bold", in chat this traditionally identifies an "action"
rather than something that is spoken.

http://goo.gl/8Ofd4
> Presumably, he already had the free-thinkers and non-partisan voters
> on his side *facepalm*

4) Apparently, -gate suffix is just as pervasive in the UK apparently as
it is in the US. A number of English paper have been nibbling at the
"Pastygate"--none more than The Sun. The problem is that the latest
budget slapped a 20% tax on "hot pasties". It gets worse--we get a bit
French Revolution added to Nixonian malfeasance. And The Sun is pushing
its own pseudo-pun in its petition campaign against the tax. Bonus:
verbing of "U-turn" [emphasis in original]

http://goo.gl/GKzZM
> He was *BRANDED *a modern-day Marie Antoinette for suggesting broke
> Brits could dodge the 20 per cent price hike by buying cold pasties,
> pies and sausage rolls.
> And his Treasury was *ACCUSED *of being "insensitive" to hardship by
> popular bakery shop chain Greggs.
> The Chancellor slapped on the tax in his Budget last week. But
> yesterday he clashed with Labour MP John Mann during a Treasury
> Committee hearing on his annual economic blueprint.
> Pressed on whether the "pasty tax" was fair, Mr Osborne said: "If it's
> cold when you buy it, it will not be VAT-able." Mr Mann also asked:
> "When was the last time you bought a pasty in Greggs?" The Chancellor
> replied: "I can't remember."
> The Labour MP told The Sun later: "It just shows how out of touch
> Osborne is.
> "It's obvious he has never been in Greggs so he'll have no idea on the
> impact this measure will have. Let them eat cold pasties -- how
> heartless. It sounds just like Marie Antoinette."
> The Sun has launched a "Who VAT All the Pies" campaign to demand the
> Chancellor U-turn before the tax starts on October 1. Hot takeaway
> food from bakery shops is a staple of ordinary Brits..

There is a certain language issue here as well:

> Mr McMeikan produced a letter from ex-Chancellor Nigel Lawson, who
> appeared to contradict Mr Osborne's assertion by declaring in 1984
> that VAT should *NOT* apply to freshly-baked savouries.
> The boss said: "The point is that these are freshly-baked products
> that are cooling down, not remaining heated. They just don't get it."

The problem is that the European Court has ruled that VAT of this type
has to apply to all foods of the claimed type or none at all. So if it
applies to "hot takeaway" food (a.k.a. "take-out" in the US), it must
apply to hot pasties. The last comments is intended to contradict that
assertion by claiming that pasties that are "cooling off" don't qualify
as "hot takeaway".

http://goo.gl/hBjiT
> A European Court of Justice ruling meant he was under pressure to
> either slap VAT on all hot takeaway food or axe the duty completely.
> In the case, a German won a bid to carry on selling grilled sausages
> without charging VAT.
> Last night the Treasury admitted they had taken account of a number of
> court cases. Some Tory bigwigs reckon Mr Osborne will do a U-turn -- a
> call made by The Sun's Who VAT All the Pies? campaign.
> ...
> THE "Pastygate" story could be written off as a bit of Westminster
> silliness.
> But commentators who say there are more important things to discuss
> than the price of pies are missing the point.
> Dismissing it as trivial shows how out of touch many in Westminster are.

I am amazed no one has slapped the Marie Antoinette tag on Mitt Romney yet.

And, of course, the Marie Antoinette comment needs clarification (not
new, but always worth a reminder):

http://goo.gl/LPRjB
> It was telling that the French had no words for pie, pudding or cake.
> English cake was both the sponge we associated with tea, and heavy
> fruit cake. This was the complete opposite of a fancy gateau.
> When the Revolution broke out and Marie Antoinette was accused of
> making her cake comment, it wasn't cake she was supposedly talking
> about but brioche.
> Brioche is an egg dough, a world away from the English bakery
> tradition -- still going strong in the form of the pasty today.

Just to be clear that "pasty-gate" is not limited to the Sun:

http://goo.gl/CMHpM
> Maybe good (or maybe bad!) economics, but cutting taxes for the rich
> while simultaneously raising the prices on the cheapest lunch options
> is probably not great politics. Hence, the birth of pasty-gate.

NYT relegates the story to the blogs.

http://goo.gl/wjXd9
> Pasty-gate and a Series of ‘Own Goals’ Hit Cameron

Another UK "-gate".

http://goo.gl/tOKJI
> Petrol Panic, Granny Tax, and Donor-gate: Seven Days That Shook David
> Cameron's Government

Not to be left behind, there are still US instances of "-gate".

http://goo.gl/vL5Hk
> The New Orleans Saints' Bounty-Gate Scandal has stirred up a lot of
> controversy over the last month.

http://goo.gl/9QeWv
> iPad heat issue: Is another ‘antenna-gate’ ahead?
>
> ...
> For a brief moment, the scenario seemed to recall the infamous
> “antenna-gate” flap that occurred in 2010 just after the launch of the
> iPhone 4.

http://goo.gl/LimGo
> IPad Battery-gate: Nothing to See Here

http://goo.gl/1WyHQ
> Romney on Etch A Sketch-gate: ‘The issues I’m running on will be
> exactly the same’

But the best one comes from India:

http://goo.gl/F0rcf
> With the controversy surrounding porn, coal and exams, isn't it time
> we dumped 'gate' once and for all?
>
> The law finally caught up with the corrupt public functionary who
> masterminded a 'gate', so goes the story! Sounds funny? It shouldn't.
> Haven't you noticed some of the recent headlines? There has been an
> Examgate (an education minister helping his son cheat), Porngate
> (Karnataka ministers caught watching porn), Porngate Returns (Gujarat
> legislators watching porn), Memogate (leaked diplomatic memo in Pakistan).
> The list is long. Our media added another gem to this list last week
> with its 'Coalgate' (CAG's draft report over the 'flawed' allocation
> of coal blocks).
> So what if such nomenclature makes a potential scam sound like a
> toothpaste brand!
> Wonder why there is this laziness when it comes to newspersons
> attaching labels to events. Or maybe it is pure and simple aping of
> the Americans.
> Haven't you also noticed the use of 26/11 or 13/7 to refer to terror
> incidents in India after the 9/11 attacks on America? Wikipedia has
> dedicated a whole webpage to the problem - suffixgate!
> It lists at least 105 big and small news stories that carried the
> suffix, 'gate'.
> To cite an instance of the truly bizzare, a chess grandmaster's
> repeated visits to the toilet came to be referred as Toiletgate!
> In this age of 24x7 news, when mediapersons are hungry for audiences,
> they perhaps harbour the hope that attaching 'gate' to a scandal will
> make it hog attention.
> Maybe, they await their Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein moment - the
> duo had broken the original 'gate' (Watergate) story.
> But it is a blessing that this concerned the Watergate hotel in
> Washington. Had it taken place at the Ufuk Hotel (in Turkey), French
> Lick Hotel (US) or Wang Thong Hotel (Thailand), it sure would have
> made for a risque headline.

5) It's my old pet peeve that people refer to multi-digit numbers as
"digits" and vice versa (although calling digits "numbers" is not quite
as egregious). But it's quite a different offense to say that a
particular order of digits "spells" a number.

http://goo.gl/n04nj
> “But then I realized that to him I must sound like a crazy
> person--like one of those people who claims that he can crack the
> lotto draw because last night’s number was his birthday spelled
> backward. No wonder they didn’t want to talk to me.”

6) "Upfall"

I noticed this one a week earlier, but initially thought nothing of it.
I am not sure if it means "elevation in popular opinion" or that
combined with increasing criticism because of increased popularity. I'm
assuming the simpler explanation.

http://goo.gl/yGNhU
> Stephen J. Dubner: My Part in his Upfall
>
> So it appears that Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics is
> upset at various critics. He is deeply unhappy with Andrew Gelman and
> Kaiser Fung, for having written what appeared to me to be a skeptical
> but intellectually generous take on the Freakonomics project. ... I’d
> hereby like to sincerely apologize for having done my little bit to
> make Stephen Dubner and the whole /Freakonomics/ phenomenon what they
> are today.

Best I can tell, the header is the sole instance of "upfall". All ghits
I checked either refer to a proper name or are spurious. Well, there is
one exception: http://goo.gl/cv71s Another instance has water appearing
to rise in a small waterfall http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xGhHYH4ZAQ

Bonus: "chanciness"

> Very likely, it would have become prominent anyway (it had a very well
> organized PR campaign). But perhaps, given the chanciness of social
> contagion etc, it would not.

7) "Appetising store", lox/nova

http://goo.gl/EHDRb
> In New York, an "appetising store" usually refers to a place that
> sells those fishy delicacies sometimes defined as "stuff that goes
> with bagels".
> ...
> But at the very heart of the place is the lox and the nova.
> In New York, almost everyone refers to smoked salmon as lox. Lox in
> fact is the cheaper, saltier, brined belly salmon.
> Its more aristocratic cousin, cold-smoked salmon, often comes from
> Nova Scotia but New Yorkers use the term nova, to refer to all smoked
> salmon, except lox. Got it?

It's not quite right--to the best of my knowledge, no one refers to
/hot-smoked/ salmon as "lox"--only the sliced cold-smoked and brined
varieties. And Nova is often considered to be lower-quality,
machine-smoked salmon, packaged in rectangular containers--hardly an
aristocratic product. Lox purists look down at nova the way gourmands
look at Chicken McNugget. But what to the British know about food!

Bonus:
> "Do you like the food at Russ?" I ask. Sherpa grins. "Oh, yes, I eat
> it all. I always say to customers that I am from KathmanJew."

8) I guess, it was only a matter of time...

http://goo.gl/YLt9u
> Three die-hard Giants fans have contracted a sudden case of Timsanity.
> The Big Blue crew -- a Manhattan man and a pair of Brooklyn-bred
> brothers -- are competing for the trademark to "Timsanity," a phrase
> they hope to splash on athletic gear to capitalize on the mania
> surrounding new Jets QB Tim Tebow.
> ...
> Timsanity derives from "Linsanity," spawned in February after the
> emergence of Knicks guard Jeremy Lin. There are nine Linsanity
> trademark applications pending -- including one on behalf of Lin himself.
> Experts said the Perez and DeGrim applications may not have a prayer
> -- federal examiners may sack Timsanity because of its similarity to
> Linsanity.
> "The typical test is sight, sound and meaning," said trademark lawyer
> Kurt Anderson. "I think there’s a reasonable case to be made that one
> might be confused with the other."

9) Posthumous question

http://goo.gl/hxFR3
> Where did it all start? Perhaps posthumously, in 1898 with Nipper.
> Nipper was a terrier who lived in Englandfrom 1884-1895. Painted
> posthumously by the original owner’s brother, Nipper looking into the
> horn of a phonograph was registered in 1900 as the trademark of The
> Gramophone Company.

Note that there are two "posthumously" here. The first one clearly
refers to Nipper--the dog died in 1895 and the "it" started in 1898. But
what about the second one? Does it refer to the dog or the original owner?

Quoting Wiki (via the previously mentioned site),

> Nipper’s original owner, Mark Henry Barraud, died in 1887, leaving his
> brothers Philip and Francis to care for the dog. Nipper himself died
> in 1895 and was buried in Kingston upon Thames in Clarence Street in a
> small park surrounded by magnolia trees. ... On 10 March 2010 a small
> road near to the dog’s resting place in Kingston-upon-Thames was named
> Nipper Alley in commemoration of this resident.

10) A touch of a potential snowclone: Chip off the old hoodie
http://goo.gl/L2s9H

11) Another nutty trademark decision.

http://goo.gl/5x27r
> U.S. District Judge Thomas Marten cited ... lyrics from the song
> “Heartland” by George Strait in a March 20 ruling on a trademark
> infringement case that may force Heartland SPCA to change its name.
> The judge ruled that Overland Park-based Heartland Animal Clinic PA
> could be harmed by pet owners’ confusion about the two names. If
> “Heartland” was tied to a geographical area, the clinic’s name
> wouldn’t get as much protection. But Marten said the song, as well as
> survey results presented by the clinic’s lawyer, show that the word
> also conjures up traditional values of integrity and hard work.

If you don't know the lyrics to that song, you're clearly unhip--at
least, according to that judge:
> The judge took exception with Heartland SPCA’s lawyers dismissing
> Strait’s tune as an “obscure country song.” He noted that it spent 20
> weeks on /Billboard Magazine/’s country music chart in 1993.

12) David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy gives "An Example of Academic
Out-of-Touchedness" http://goo.gl/0c1yD

VS-)

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