The Logovore's Dilemma

The Logovoracious Challenge

2009-10-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

So here's the deal--on my web radio show The Logovore's Dilemma, at the wonderful Randoradio.com, I have offered a challenge to my listeners, which I now Extend to you. It regards an English-language factoid I've carried around in my head since I was knee-high and, since I wasn't doing anything else with it, I decided to pass it along to you.
Here 'tis: English can be twisted, turned and stretched in many ways, some of them glorious, some just silly. This is about the second kind. Now--if a group of large hooved ungulates in upstate New York intimidated their peers and were in turn intimidated by their victims, one might say, "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo; Buffalo buffalo buffalo. Eight bison in all. But I can top that. There is a common English word which can be used eleven times consecutively, grammatically(and more sensibly than those buffaloes) in a sentence (or sentences, depending on punctuation). What is that word, and how do you do it?
A couple of hints--1) the word in question is a commonly-used verb, though in this sentence(s) it is sometimes used as a noun. 2) No homophones are involved. 3) The answer can be found on-line, and I've given you a big hint about where to look.
The first person to solve this Challenge will be awarded the keys to the music on a future edition of The Logovore's D--you pick it and, if I can find it, I'll play it. Which I think is a pretty cool prize. You can send your response to logovore@gmail.com or post it as a comment here. First correct response wins the prize. Good luck--you cannot win if you do not play.

I'm Probiotic--And I Vote!

2009-06-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

Probiotics: Live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host (WH.O. definition)
Sometimes I get to thinking about words because the way they are being used or abused is having some profound impact on society at large, or that society is having a profound effect on the words. Ethnic cleansing bothered me both these ways when it came into vogue in the early '90s, because it provided a linguistic fig leaf for what was in fact genocide and because it forever dirtied up "cleansing", a word which did not deserve this horrible connotation. At other times words catch my ear and eye because they emerge from the underbrush and are suddenly, and for no particular reason on every page and tongue. And every once in a while, a word sticks in my head because thinking about it cracks me up. Right now, the word is probiotic.
What's so funny about that? After all, biotic is an adjective " pertaining to life or specific living conditions", according to the first edition of The American Heritage Dictionary (the official dictionary of TLD because it was the first to include the dirty words). So who wouldn't be probiotic? But wait. What about antibiotic? Antibiotics have saved my bacon on more than one occasion, so I would have to say I'm proantibiotic too. And just because I'm proanti- does not however mean I'm antipro. Here's where things start to get confusing. Don't the "pro" and the"anti" cancel each other out? And wouldn't that leave us back at plain old biotic? It's a conundrum.
At the heart of this mess is the way technical and scientific terms are coined. By long and elitist tradition, such words are almost always constructed form Greek and Latin parts. The trouble is that these nabobs use the two languages indiscriminately, and we end up with Greco-Roman hybrids like probiotic (Greek stem, Latin prefix). Some people have contended that the whole word is from the Greek, but the pro prefix in Greek means "coming before", as in prologue. This is obviously not the pro in probiotic, so it must come from the Latin, meaning "promoting or in favor of".
This kind of thing happens often in the world of tech/sci lingo, and is often source of bafflement. Jargon of all kinds is a way of keeping ideas obscure and exclusive. Probiotics (the word seems to have been created in the early 1950s, and attained its current meaning in the '70s). It could just as easily been rendered as "lifehelper" or "good germs", which would have been more readily understandible, but not as impressive-sounding. I understand, but I do not approve.
By the way, while I was researching all this, I stumbled across the creepy fact that the good bugs we have living in our guts far outnumber the cells in our body that are actually us. How do you like that? We're a minority in our own skins. Well, I guess that's what comes of being probiotic.

Fraught Green Divas

2009-05-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

I am, as is often the case lately, all in a dither, so I must be brief. Spring fever? Swine flu? Who can say? Anyhoo, no show hence no blogging last week. Today I will be doing neither prescription nor proscription, just talking about some words that people seem to be using a LOT just lately. To keep you in suspense, that's all I'm saying right now, except to point out the title of this post. More anon

Silver Bullets and Swine

2009-05-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

I've spoken about this on the show, and I had hoped that would suffice, but I can see I'm going to have to be firmer about it. I think we're going down the wrong metaphoric road with our increasing use of "silver bullet" to refer to the various miracle cures being proposed to fix the economy, the enviornment, the flu... Except for being far more expensive, a silver bullet is pretty much indistinguishable from the regular kind. Though it kills werewolves, it would kill you too, if somebody shot you with it. No matter what the problem, indiscriminate carnage is not the solution. So what we need in these trying times is a "magic bullet" which would lay low the toxic asset, polluter or microbe, but not hurt little Bobby or Grampa Earl. Or you or me, for that matter. Dontcha think? Isn't magic bullet more descriptive of what the world is looking for now? Let's leave ilver bullets to the Lone Ranger and get on the magic bandwagon.

Speaking of the flu, nobody seems to be able to decide what to call it. Back in the day, it would have been called Mexican flu, but I think we've become too culturally sensitive to ascribe a disease to a nationality so most people have settled on the name Swine flu. The trouble with that is, no trace of this flu has been found in any of our little piggie pals, so the name is at least inaccurate. At worst, it has become deadly for the pigs, as things happen like the Egyptians slaughtering millions of them as a precaution (btw, millions of pigs in Egypt? What's up with that?).
An attempt was made to use H1N1, the scientists' name for the virus strain in question, but come on, who's going to say that? Besides, it sounds too much like H5N1, the bird flu virus. It's all too confusing. The Logovore has an answer. Just substitute the Roman numeral I for the Arabic 1 in the name. The resulting HINI, pronounced like "high knee" flu would be easy to remember, fun to say, and, given the reported gastrointestinal symptoms of this flu perhaps even descriptive. Hini flu. Pass it on (the name, not the disease!).

Logovore Pick of the Week #1

2009-04-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

Starting right now, I will be writing a bit each week about the words, expressions, usages and such that I'll be talking about on the Logovoracious segment of TLD .
Today, I'll be looking at "white-shoe law firms", a phrase much in the news recently. Federal Judge Jay Bybee, notorious memo writer as a member Of the Bush administration Justice Department, is often described as having come from the world of white-shoe law firms. These are broadly defined as firms of high status and long history, the legal world's equivalent of the Fortune 500. Having been born, bred and buttered in the upscale suburbs of new York City, where these people congregate, I've been rubbing elbows with them for decades, but I rarely see them in white shoes, except the ones they wear for exercize. (What ever happened to "sneakers", by the way?) Turns out, the white shoes construction is a hoary old anti-WASP slur referring to the red-soled white bucks worn by men of the Ivy League during their leisure season at places like Newport and Saratoga at the turn of the 20th century. Its application has broadened over time to include first Jews of similar economic status, and now anyone who is a partner in one of these firms, or of banking and financial firms of similar stratospheric status. It has also become somewhat less perjorative (though considering who these people are and why they've been in the news, that could change).
What surprises me most about this is that the shoes in question are white bucks. For those of you who have never seen them, white bucks are suede oxfords, which traditionally had soles of hard, ox-blood colored leather. In the 1950s, Pat Boone favored them, and they enjoyed some popularity among preppies into the '60s, mostly in the form of Hush Puppies, which had white rubber soles and could therefore be worn on the deck of one's yacht without fear of marring the varnish. I owned a few pairs myself when I was in high school, because they were part of our marching band uniform. They were reasonably comfortalbe for hard shoes, but easily scuffed and fiendishly difficult to keep clean. Though I suppose if one has a valet, that would not present a problem. Hmmm. Maybe I'm not so surprised after all.

E Pleb Neesta

2009-03-30T07:38:00.000-07:00

Hidy-ho, fellow logovores. Didja miss me? I'd prefer that you not answer that--allow me to cherish my illusions. Thank you. Here, as promised on today's (3/30/09) Logovore's Dilemma broadcast, is my all-mondegreen version of the US Pledge Of Allegiance.

I led the pigeons to the flag
of the New-knighted Snakes of America
And Tudor Republic,
for Richard Stans--
one naked, under guard individual
with levity and justice
for oil.

Quick Program Note

2008-09-20T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hey There Fellow Logovores--This is just a quick note to let you know that on this Monday's Logovore's Dilemma (3-5 PM EDT) I'll be reading George Orwell's 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language". Out loud, so you can hear it, not just to myself so I'll have something to do while you're listening to the show. It's fairly short, so there'll still be plenty of groovy music, and I think you'll agree it was worth hearing, especially right now. Tune in! If you'd like to follow along at home, you can find the text at http://www.ourcivilisation.com/decline/orwell1.htm

lazy lazy lazy me & the end of the world

2008-09-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

Lazy lazy lazy me
I'm a lazy son of a gun

Sorry I've been away so long. I wish I had a good excuse for my absense, but the fact is that I am a profoundly lazy person. As Walter Brennan as Will Sonnet in the '60s western series "The Guns of Will Sonnet" would have said, "No brag; just fact."

I am not sorry that the world did not end this week when the Eurogeeks at CERN turned on the Large Hadron Collider for the first time. I have too much unfinished business--I need at least 30 days' notice before I would be comfortable with the eschaton. I've gotta say though that I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a little something, maybe a small pucker like the scar of a bullet wound, there in the Alps on the France-Switzerland border where this science fair experiment run amok is located.

What am I on about? Well, you may have heard folks saying that, since this device is believed by some physicists to be capable of creating itty bitty black holes, maybe, just maybe a chain reaction would occur, the ultimate result of which would be that the universe, like the legendary hoopoe bird, would spiral ever inward on itself until it disappeared--poof!--up its own asshole. If this has happened, I haven't noticed. Maybe your experience has been different.

Really, I never was ever able to work up any optimism that a Trans-Europe Fundament was going to appear, though I would have surely gone to see it if it had. The problem is that people have a misguided notion of what black holes are. As Pope Benedict would surely tell us, It's all about mass. The kinds of black holes we read about and see in sci-fi movies are the result of the collapse of really massive things--objects far more massive than, say, our Sun, or even former president William Howard Taft. These celestial black holes were born huge--cosmic glandular cases whose gravitational fields are so robust that nothing, including light, can escape them. The black holes which may even now may be being created in the new collider are not nearly so formidable. In fact, they are about as massive as one (1) molecule of hydrogen (keeping in mind that hydrogen atoms, like nuns and hookers, prefer to travel in pairs). No matter how tightly you scrunch two hydrogen nuclei together, which is what this device does, their mass is the same as it was before the scrunching. And two hydrogen nuclei, no matter how buff, just don'thave the gravity to suck up Switzerland (and I say thank goodness--where would we go for our cheese, chocolate, cuckoo clocks and no-tell banking?) Much less the whole freakin' universe.

Now, I can imagine you thinking, "Couldn't you say the same thing about the big black holes? Their mass wouldn't increase either, and yet they are reputed to have a voracious appetite." Well, I think that's right. Free-range black holes (and I claim to have made up that designation to differentiate the ones out there in nature from the lab-made ones) will pretty much gobble up anything that falls within their event horizon, an invisible sphere which may be millions of miles in diameter. It's the same thing with the b.h's from the L.H.C., except that their event horizon would be smaller than a hydrogen atom; so small that it is unlikely that anything will ever come close enough to be subsumed.

"Wait a minute wait a minute--what is an event horizon?" is what I imagine you saying now. To which I rspond, "Jeez, if I knew you were going to be so picky I would never have brought this up." Sigh. OK. Only stars a lot bigger than the sun can become black holes. A guy named Schwartzschild, working with Einstein's equations, figured out how massive a star would have to be before it would end its existance by collapsing on itself, leaving behind a volume of space from which nothing could escape. Although the star itself would just keep collapsing forever, forming a singularity which (more or less) takes up no space at all, the borderline left behind, though smaller in volume than the star was before it collapsed, still describes a big big place. That borderline,is the event horizon, or suck zone. It was actually there all along, but while the star was shining, it was deep inside. By the way, Schwartzschild is German for "black shield". Heavy, huh? I don't care if you want to know about what a singularity is. What do I look like, Wikipedia? But the point is, big mass, big suck zone; small...small. So, no end of the world this week.

When I started this, I had a really pithy way to tie it all in to the coming election (something about not believing everything that sounds plausible when you first hear it), but I think that's enough for one day. I'll try to be more communicative here in future. Sigh. Used to be, when you had a radio show, you could do the whole thing on the radio. This internet stuff is interactive and fun, but it could get to be a lot of work. Listen to Randoradio. Think about the difference between what people say and the truth. Register and vote. Comment if you want.

Thanks, a plea for more,a conundrum for the 4th

2008-07-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well, a great big Huckleberry Hound-dog "Howdy!" to y'all. It being flea and tick season, it would be fitting that we spare a moment's thought for Huck H's less fortunate sibling Dingleberry Dawg. Like Billy Carter and Roger Clinton, ol' Dingleberry was never able to get out from under the shadow cast by his successful brother. Who can forget the debacle that was his1993 HBO Special "Dingleberry Dawg: In a Brown Study"? He never really recovered. But that's not what I wanted to talk about--in fact, it's probably best not to think of it al all. Just too sad.

So...thanks to everybody who has sent along their secret family words. I've gotten some good ones, which I'll be sharing with you on TLD on Monday July 7. I'm still looking ffor more examples from you. Briefly, what I want is the secret words you use in your family circle; words immediately understandable among those near and dear to you, but mysterious to the rest of the world. Not surprisingly most of the submission I've received so far involve body parts and bodily functions. These are fine, and I'm glad to have 'em, but any and all your "just between us" words & phrases are fair game, so keep them coming. Like Johnny 5 (and doesn't Wall-E bear a suspicious resemblance to that bot of yore?) I need input.

Can somebody explain this to me? A close friend was making preparations for the coming Independence Day festivities. He lives in a state where private ownership of fireworks is illegal, even in the wake of the recent bizarre decision of the US Supreme Court, so he travelled with friends to a nearby state, a state very much like Pennsylvania. Just across the border he arrived at a large, well-stocked fireworks store. My goodness, they had everything, from sparklers and bang-snaps (those really annoying little wads of fun that POP when you toss them on the ground) to mortar-launched projectiles that might provoke a visit from the Dept. of Homeland Security. They also had my...oops I mean my friend's personal favorite, the dreaded Cookies of Death*, so called because they are packaged like Oreos in cellophane tubes and, when lit, fly so unpredictably as to be hazardous to life & limb. Great fun. When you arrive at this emporium, the first thing you have to do is to prove that you are not a resident of the state where the store is. And inside the place, there are prominent signs warning customers that as soon as they leave the state with their purchase, they will be in violation of the laws of the state they are entering. Convoluted enough for ya? Anyway, have a glorious 4th, and keep on listening to RandoRadio. And tell your friends and neighbors about it. I 'preciate it

*Cookies of Death, the name among my coterie for the small firework usually called Artificial Satellite or Flying Saucer, is an example of the kind of stuff I'm looking for from you. Get it?

2008-06-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

Gosh. A Blog of my own. I feel just like Arianna Huffington. Arianna Huffington talks just like Eva Gabor. On Green Acres, Eva Gabor says "Times Square!" Eddie Albert says "fresh air!". "Fresh Air" is Terry Gross' radio program. "The Logovore's Dilemma" is my radio program. See how it all ties together?
As far as I know, logovore is a word of my own coinage. It means one who enthusiastically consumes language, as a carnivore loves his meat. I suppose a Logovore could also be one who eats his own words but...no! It's my word, so I get to say what it means. Dagnab it.
Like all the fine fine superfine shows on Rando Radio.com, TLD will be mostly music, but when it's not we'll be exploring the English language in all its glory. Grammar, usage, vocabulary, fads, follies, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia...if you can say it, we'll discuss it.
Our first project, as I mentioned on the show on 6/23, will be a discussion of what I'm calling family words--words you used as kids, or to your kids. Many of these will be words having to do with body parts or bodily functions, of course, but others will be examples of the mysterious private language that often springs up in families or other groups functioning in isolation (I'll bet they've made up some doozies at Gitmo). In my family, for instance, our first dishwasher was always referred to as Williamsburg. Made perfect sense to us, but it would have been incomprehensible to the rest of the world.
I'll tell you mine, but I need you to tell me yours. What did/do you call your dinkie, you weewee, your woowoo? Did you make a nunnie, clunk a dunker, or did you just make? The world wants to know. Really. Leave a comment on this page, or e-mail me with your secret language secrets, and I'll make sure everybody knows.
In the weeks to come, look for features based on the classic 19th century English phrasebook English As She Is Spoke, one of the most amazing little books ever published. You'll love it. More anon.