CSotD: Common sense, honesty, neither, both
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As today’s Non Sequitur (AMS) points out, there isn’t any going back to normal anymore.
To start with, as seen here, if you relax all the rules because the curve has peaked and is receding, you will guarantee that the curve has not peaked after all. Unless you are in a church or synagogue, in which case the Supreme Court has ruled that the virus shall have no power, nor shall its works, nor shall its pomps.
However, while Wiley offers caution against immediate foolishness, healthworkers are also pointing out that, once the vaccine is available, you can’t just get a shot and go traipsing about the countryside all higglety-pigglety.
You’ll have to take the shot, wait, take the second shot and then wait some more, wearing your mask and socially distancing until everyone has not only had the shot but taken the time for it to become effective.
Which, given that some anti-science jugheads are rejecting the vaccine, might take some time.
Which is no fun at all. Let’s talk about something else.
Pardon My Planet (KFS) raises a host of questions about hyphenated last names, or, to be more accurate, it raises the topic of hyphenated names which, in turn, prompts all those questions.
The notion of invertibility is a joke on the surface level, because you’d have to keep going back to various clerks and DMV offices and suchlike if you changed your name from Smith-Jones to Jones-Smith.
Meanwhile, it seems (I haven’t done a study) that most couples hyphenate in hers-his order.
We aren’t discussing women who, as is traditional, drop their middle name and use their maiden name in its place, and who, which is somewhat less traditional, write out that resulting full name instead of just first name-last name, or, certainly, couples in which the husband doesn’t change his name at all.
But the hers-his order seems as sexist as dropping her name entirely, given how few couples have a discussion over which name to drop or in what order to hyphenate.
Which, I would add, would have been a worthwhile conversation in the case of a local woman whose last name was Buck and who married a fellow whose last name was Rogers.
Perhaps they discussed it and decided to go for the giggles.
In any case, the whole thing is another reason for Millennials to hate Boomers, since we started hyphenating names a generation or two ago, and now all those dual-named kids are facing marriage and procreation and deciding which forebears to offend.
I like a custom I’ve seen in Quebec, in which nobody changes their names and the girls get Mom’s last name and the boys get Dad’s.
Or we could drop last names entirely and just assign QR codes. Hey, if infants can stand to be circumcised, they won’t mind a tattoo.
And, on a semi-related note, this
Juxtaposition of the Day
(xkcd)
(Rubes)
It’s been awhile since I’ve linked to the Jane Austen Anti-Pedantry Page, but this seems like a good time.
First, that rooster not withstanding, there is a difference between orthography and grammar, or, at least, there should be. How you use commas and capital letters and whether you spell the word “color” or “colour” has nothing do to with grammar, though imposing rules on how people speak and write has a lot to do with being a control freak.
Which is not to disagree with xkcd that it can be a fascinating discussion.
But, as noted, it won’t get you out of a well (or save you from the butcher).
As noted on the Jane Austen page, a lot of grammatical rules were made up by people who wished that English — a delightfully mongrel language — were as hidebound as Latin or Greek, which were, after all, spoken by the gods.
Grammar matters. For instance, in the above sentence, pedants wish English “were” as hidebound, not “was” as hidebound, because it’s speculation against fact, as in “If I were a rich man,” which he never was.
And English was never hidebound, which is why we raise pigs but eat pork.
Speculation against fact, or against certainty, is also when you use “may have” instead of “might have,” and the difference in meaning is significant: A seatbelt might have saved a dead man, but it may have saved one who survived the crash. (We don’t know why he wasn’t killed.)
As for the meaning of “unique,” that is neither grammar nor orthography, but an issue of context. Each snowflake may be unique, but they’re all the same when three feet of them are in my driveway and there are variable levels of uniqueness in between.
And this Speed Bump (Creators) also touches on rules in a way I learned all too well while working for an powerful, egomaniacal lightweight.
When I was in TV advertising, we suffered a lot of miscommunication between the sales staff and the production staff, which meant ads weren’t what the client had wanted, or they weren’t delivered on time because nobody could figure out what was expected.
So, as the newly appointed marketing director, I created a form the sales people could use in place of hastily scratched down concepts, and an outline of who was tasked with doing what to make sure it all happened.
Of course, I gave a copy to the boss first, who, the next day, said it was fine and I could put it into play, which I did.
Which delighted the union, since they now finally had a list of duties, but it didn’t delight the boss after all, once someone else in the building explained to him what it said, so he chewed me out for having written it up.
And if we were talking politics today, I’d explain how this helped me understand the past four years, but we aren’t, so I won’t.
Though I’ll understand if you get a laugh out of this ridiculous Twitter thread:
Seven more weeks of this chaos and deception, but let’s not pretend we weren’t give a clear, clear warning:
Same old story: “Baby, I’m the one you can trust!”
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