languagehat

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003699.php

A pleasantly discursive Cardus post by Nate Barksdale examines the history of "hello" as a telephone greeting:

Hello streamed into the gap created by an unprecedented social scenario, gaining popularity and, little by little, respectability. By the 1920s, Emily Post had given up on banning hello from her version of proper speech and simply tried to tame its former brashness: "On very informal occasions, it is the present fashion to greet an intimate friend with 'Hello!' This seemingly vulgar salutation is made acceptable by the tone in which it is said. To shout 'Hullow!' is vulgar, but 'Hello, Mary' or 'How 'do John,' each spoken in an ordinary tone of voice, sound much the same. But remember that the 'Hello' is spoken, not called out, and never used except between intimate friends who call each other by the first name."

... The fact that the message did not depend on the word itself was probably as key a factor as the device's American pedigree in the internationalization of the telephone hello. This was especially [true] for languages that have an active distinction between the formal and informal you. In Bulgarian, say, the formal greeting is zdravejte, while the informal is a simple zdravej. The phone rings in Sofia: what do you do? Is the caller a friend or a stranger, an official, a salesman, a wrong number? Will it be zdravej or zdravejte? I know, alo!

laughsquidfeen

http://feeds.laughingsquid.com/~r/laughingsquid/~3/ZqyxeZR-NjA/

http://laughingsquid.com/links-for-2009-11-27/

• Review: 2011 Ford Fiesta and the Fiesta Movement (Paul Stamatiou)
• Please design a logo for me. With pie charts. For Free. (27b/6)
• What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997? (TechCrunch)

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid, subscribe via RSS, Twitter, Facebook & FriendFeed.

coilhouse

http://coilhouse.net/2009/11/friday-afternoon-movie-they-live/

http://coilhouse.net/?p=11348

It’s been quite a hiatus for the FAM. Why that was, no one knows. Perhaps the FAM was in hiding, on the lam after a particularly large methamphetamine deal went decidedly South; or maybe the FAM has been kept in a dank, dingy basement for the past two or three weeks, the unwilling plaything of a cruel and demented mistress. Like I said, we’ll never know. But the FAM is back, albeit with a gaunt visage and a faraway look in its eyes. Poor, poor FAM.

To ring in its return we present to you, our adoring, viewing audience Rowdy Roddy Piper’s breakout film, They Live; directed by the one and only John Carpenter. Now, I realize that there has been a particularly heavy dose of Carpenter on the FAM as of late and, rest assured, this will be the end. For a while. Hopefully. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. They Live is the story of a young man named George Nada who comes into the possession of a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see the truth lying under the surface of our perceived reality. That truth being that the world is controlled by skull-faced aliens who jerk us about like puppets through the use of hidden, subliminal messages. This lifting of the veil terrifies Mr. Nada and he is encouraged to save the human race by masticating chewing gum and “kicking ass”. He is partnered with Kieth David — who previously appeared in Mr. Carpenter’s The Thing — who plays the part of Frank Armitage. Frank Armitage is also the pseudonym that Carpenter used when he wrote the script and is also the name of a character in The Dunwich Horror by one Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The story of They Live a has equally pulpy roots, the plot being taken from both “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and a story called “Nada” from a comic entitled Alien Encounters by both FantCo and Eclipse.

It is no surprise then that They Live turned out the way it did. This is a classic sort of quick and dirty sci-fi, with brash, one-liner-spewing heroes and a central premise masquerading as social commentary. But you know what? As cheesy as They Live can be — um, Rowdy Roddy Piper stars in this — it is still fantastic, a delectable morsel of Carpenter’s truly over-the-top films that are both unabashedly silly and truly enjoyable. It is mindless, yet guilt-free entertainment and sometimes, that’s all one need.

Post tags: Conspiracy theories, Crackpot Visionary, Film, Horror, Sci-fi

sf_citizen

http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2009/11/27/is-today-black-friday-or-buy-nothing-day-well-take-your-pick/

http://sfcitizen.com/blog/?p=12718

Of course, today is both Black Friday and Buy Nothing Day in San Francisco.

A Market Street flyer announcing a 24-hour moratorium on consumer spending, inconveniently coinciding with the height of Zhu Zhu Hamster mania:

via Steve Rhodes

As BND looked in 2007 at Union Square:

also via Steve Rhodes

sf_citizen

http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2009/11/27/thanksgiving-was-no-holiday-for-the-kelly-moore-day-laborers-at-oak-and-divisidero/

http://sfcitizen.com/blog/?p=12713

See?

Thanksgiving morning on San Francisco’s Oak Street. Waiting for work:

Click to expand

sf_citizen

http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2009/11/27/thrilling-muni-ipod-recovery-im-a-marathon-runner-i-will-catch-you-eventually/

http://sfcitizen.com/blog/?p=12700

How did you prepare for Thanksgiving on Wednesday afternoon? Probably you were stealing iPhones off of MUNI’s N Judah? No? Really? All right, well somebody was, a teenaged (or tweenaged) girl, in fact.

Par for the course, you say? Well this iPhone was recovered after pursuit from marathoner Chris Phipps. Read all about it on Murphstahoe’s Holier Than You Blog.

And read the informative Tweets below.

See? NextTheft works sometimes. Just like NextMUNI: 

via Jamison, somewhat. Click to expand.

Here are  the revelatory Tweets from Canabalt-loving Chris Phipps:

“A thief just stole the iPhone of the woman sitting next to me on muni. I jumped off the train, ran after her & caught her in reply to Im4tun8″Echofon from thuntil the SFPD arrived 4:50 PM Nov 25

I yelled “I’m a marathon runner, I will catch you…eventually” 3:46 PM Nov 25th from Echofon

Woman got her iphone back, called 911 & SFPD were here within 3 minutes. 3:48 PM Nov 25th from Echofon

@jeffremer I don’t know about heroic. The thief was a 16yo girl. Had it been a 200 pound guy, I don’t know what I’d do if I caught him 4:01 PM Nov 25th from Echofon

@munialerts N Judah @ Noe & Duboce. Around 3:40 PM4:16 PM Nov 25th from Echofon in reply to munialerts

@Im4tun8 Thanks. Several others in the park who were witnesses stopped to help detain & watch the suspect. Echofon from th. 3:45 PM Nov 25″

So, the next time you see some Apple product flying out the rear door of your MUNI vehicle, ask yourself, What Would Chris Phipps Do?

inhabitat

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/11/27/obama-going-to-copenhagen-next-month/

http://www.inhabitat.com/?p=72910

In case you missed the big news in the wake of your Thanksgiving celebration, President Obama is, in fact, planning to travel to Copenhagen next month to deliver a speech and participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference! Armed with a tentative plan and an emissions reduction target for the US, Obama’s trip is a great sign of leadership and a chance to achieve a global commitment towards reducing the effects of climate change. Now this is truly something to be thankful for!

Read the rest of Obama Going To Copenhagen Next Month!

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: Climate Change, climate change conference, copenhagen, obama, president obama, UN climate change conference

laughsquidfeen

http://feeds.laughingsquid.com/~r/laughingsquid/~3/gE5RUkAU8L8/

http://laughingsquid.com/?p=37035

photo by Scott Beale

“Dali’s Moustache”, a sculpture by Carole Eisner located across from the new Upper West Side Apple Store at 67th Street and Broadway in New York City. It is part of her series of nine monumental recycled steel sculptures along the Broadway Corridor from West 64th to West 166th Streets.

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid, subscribe via RSS, Twitter, Facebook & FriendFeed.

boingboing_net

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/PSfmY2nWdbI/roomba-1-deadly-snak.html

What's that Roomba, you say Timmy is stuck in a well? A Roomba vacuuming robot did more than clean the floor for one family in Israel, killing a venemous Vipera palaestinae by, apparently, running over the snake and wrapping the creature around one of its rotating brushes. The family credits the robot for sparing their children and pets from possible snakebite. Good boy. (Via Engadget)

sf_citizen

http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2009/11/27/ceremony-and-candlelight-march-for-harvey-milk-and-george-moscone-tonight-at-600-pm/

http://sfcitizen.com/blog/?p=12689

There will be a ceremony and candlelight march to honor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone tonight at the intersection of 17th Street and Market. See the Harvey Milk Club’s website for the latest.

From club president Rafael Mandelman:

“Hope you had an excellent Thanksgiving. Just wanted to remind you that today is the 31st anniversary of the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. Please join us tonight at 6 PM at the Castro Muni Stop for a ceremony to commemorate their lives and legacies, followed by a candlelit march.”

It’ll be ‘neath the largest gay pride flag in the world, right here:

Click to expand

See you there.

whedonesque

http://whedonesque.com/comments/22496

http://donetheimpossible.com/

The guys are offering a nice bargain in time for the holidays. Best fan documentary ever.

zooborns

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ZooBorns/~3/OFC09H1pjv8/tokyos-ueno-zoos-got-a-gorilla.html

mightygodking_f

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mightygodkingcom/~3/Zs7KFd09Ia4/

http://mightygodking.com/?p=2369

tordotcom

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58355

The Phoenix Guards (1991) is a novel in the mode of The Three Musketeers. It’s set in Brust’s world of Dragaera, but almost a thousand years before the Vlad books. The Vlad books are hardboiled wisecracking first person, the Paarfi books are long-winded romantic omniscient. The Phoenix Guards is delightful. Four young (barely a hundred years old) Dragaerans travel to Dragaera City on the accession of the Phoenix Emperor Tortalik with the intention of taking up positions in the newly formed Phoenix Guards. They are of different Houses but they’re all young and enthusiastic, they love honor, adventure, duelling and swordplay. They share an immense zest for life. Khaavren is an honor-loving Tiassa, Tazendra is an impetuous Dzur, Aerich is a thoughtful Lyorn who likes crocheting, and Pel is a devious Yendi. They fight crime! And they have adventures! And the adventures are related by a historian who insists he is sticking to the facts, which does seem doubtful from time to time.

I think Paarfi’s style, as well as being infectious—an infection which I am endeavouring to the best of my ability to resist for the purposes of this article—is something people either love or hate. I love it. Give me chapter titles like “In which the author resorts to a stratagem to reveal the results of a stratagem” or “In which our friends realise with great pleasure that the situation has become hopeless” and I am happy all day. If you like the style this is a lighthearted adventure about four highspirited friends bantering and duelling their way into trouble and out of it again, and I recommend it highly. I read this before I read the Vlad books, and there are things about the world that were utterly opaque to me but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Read more, let’s look at it in the context of the series]

For those who pretend they have no objection to Spoilers, and on the general assumption the reader has done themselves the honor of reading the books...

So, having given us Vlad and alternated between novels in the main continuity and novels set earlier than Jhereg, and throwing everything into confusion with Brokedown Palace, I think it’s reasonable to say that nobody could have expected this Dumas pastiche. It isn’t a retelling of The Three Musketeers in Dragaera, it’s more something inspired by the concept of The Three Musketeers and Sabatini mixing with a solid fantasy world to come up with something totally original. This was Brust’s first book for Tor, though he continued to publish with Ace as well for a few more books.

As far as the world of Dragaera is concerned, it gives us another angle, and it tells us a lot about life before the Interregnum, when things Vlad takes for granted like revivification, psionic communication and teleportation were incredibly difficult. It’s a very different world, and yet it’s recognisably the same world, with the Houses, the Cycle, and glimpses of the science fictional explanations underlying the fantastic surface. Of all the Khaavren romances, The Phoenix Guards has the least historical relevance. The battle of Pepperfields, and the peace that Khaavren (“Lord Kav”) makes with the Easterners is the same battle that we see in Brokedown Palace, from an utterly different perspective. (Reading these two first made me think this was a lot more significant than it turns out to be.) We meet Adron, five hundred years before his famous rebellion and disaster, and Aliera is born—announced by Devera.

I go through the Vlad books like cookies, gobbling them as fast as I can, grabbing another as soon as I finish the one in my hand. Brokedown Palace is like a baked Alaska, hot and cold and once, and very puzzling. The Phoenix Guards is like a warm croissant with melted chocolate and strawberries, you can’t gulp it down like a cookie, you have to savour it, but it’s an utterly delicious confection.

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

boingboing_net

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/VV7cCwxq72M/laser-cut-poe-in-sta.html

Edgar A. Poe Memento cameo necklace in black stainless steel (via Wonderland)

boingboing_net

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/8YrJMf-BKsg/man-hires-movers-to.html

boingboing_net

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/mfYvN1oyZvY/are-fake-academic-co.html

Tired of snaring your Grandma with sob stories about deposed princes and their locked bank accounts, email scammers are branching out. Their new target: Academia. Researchers get invitations to a hot, new scientific conference and are asked to send their personal information in order to register. But when The Scientist checked up on the conferences, the location hadn't been booked, the named speakers didn't know anything about it and the organizer asking for info fell strangely silent. (Full story is free, but you may need to log in.)

boingboing_net

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/plbjiDZ_GLc/national-day-of-list.html

Whether the reasons are ideological, demophobia-based, or a little bit of both, many of us would rather avoid today's mass shopping chaos. As an alternative to Black Friday, Story Corps is promoting today as the National Day of Listening--an opportunity to sit down for an hour with family members and other people you care about, ask them about their lives and preserve their stories for future generations.

At the National Day of Listening site, you'll find helpful How To's for recording and preserving family stories and a question generator, to help you get over that "what the heck do I as Grandma?" hump.

Your family stories can also become part of the oral history archives at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. To do that, though, you'll have to get hooked up with a Story Corps professional recording session. They've got semi-permanent booths in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta, and they're traveling the country with a portable system all year.

whedonesque

http://whedonesque.com/comments/22495

http://uk.eonline.com/photos/gallery.jsp?galleryUUID=1651#51343

And well they are not wrong!