TIME and the NEW YORKER parody

[paul johnson]

from Wiki, still well remembered in the '60s
*Wolcott Gibbs* (March 15, 1902 -- August 16, 1958) was an American
editor, humorist, theatre critic
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drama_critic>, playwright and author of
short stories <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story>, who worked for
/The New Yorker <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Yorker>/ magazine
from 1927 until his death. He is best remembered for his 1936 parody of
/Time <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_%28magazine%29>/ magazine,
which skewered the magazine's inverted narrative structure. Gibbs wrote,
"Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind"; he concluded the piece,
"Where it all will end, knows God!
On 10/6/2013 11:30 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
> The self-dumbification of "Time" came with quick summaries of news in an easy-to-read format, as well as a drop in the quality of the writing. (I was reading the edition in Japan, so I don't know what it was like in the US or other countries.) With such self-dumbification comes editors who are not so careful about such details.
>
> As for the least common denominator, one could also get upset about using "least" when there are only two as well.
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Seattle, WA
>
> On Oct 4, 2013, at 7:23 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I thought that "dumbing-down" was the process of reducing the supposedly
>> "complex" to the supposedly "simple," my peevest example of this being the
>> shift of
>>
>> "_least_ common denominator"
>>
>> to
>>
>> "_lowest_ common denominator"
>>
>> as though this meaninglessly-trivial change somehow "simplified" this
>> concept, thereby  opening broad, new vistas of mathematical understanding
>> in the minds of the children of the lower orders.
>>
>> But, using "about 250 ft. _long_" in place of "about 250 ft. _in diameter_"
>> is not a simple dumbing down.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 3:16 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> "The land-mass, seen here, is reportedly about 250 ft. _long_."
>>>
>>>
>>> The photo is of an object about as nearly perfectly circular as will ever
>>> be found in nature. How TF can a journal of the supposed "quality" of TIME
>>> describe a circle as "*long*"?
>>>
>>> Give me strength.
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