Language Log

Reading Remy Tumin's article today discussing Stephen Colbert's guest appearance in Michael Moore's Broadway play ("Stephen Colbert Uses Profanity to Describe President Trump’s ‘Soul’", NYT 10/5/2017), I was struck by this passage:

“Trump keeps summoning monsters of abstraction — things that aren’t real — they’re extensions of the ordinary, fears that you have that he plays on,” Mr. Colbert said. “

He wants to brush people into a corner where he can shine his feeble, fucking anemic firefly of a soul,” Mr. Colbert continued, inching his two pointer fingers close together.

What struck me was not my failure to understand Colbert's metaphor — perhaps someone will explain it to me in the comments — but the fact that the NYT chose to quote it.

That's a word that was completely unknown to me until I received this note from my sister, Heidi:

Glamping is big and getting bigger all of the time. Especially as the boomers retire daily. There are even 3 sites in PA and four in Ohio… and 9 in Texas.

And it is related to the off the grid and tiny house movement… also inspired by Burning Man subculture. As you can see, it was added to the Oxford Dictionary last year.

There are glamping supplies, tents, and destinations. See the official web site.

Yesterday (10/4/2017) Theresa May gave a speech at the Conservative Party conference in which a remarkable number of things went wrong: she suffered an extended coughing fit, the comedian Simon Brodkin handed her a fake dismissal form ("P45") signed by Boris Johnson, and two letters fell off her background slogan "BUILDING A COUNTRY THAT WORKS (F)OR EVERYON(E)". For details and commentary, see e.g. "The cough, the P45, the falling F: Theresa May's speech calamity"; "Theresa May battles a sore throat and prankster in conference speech"; "Theresa May’s speech overshadowed by a persistent cough and a prankster"; "The most excruciating moments in Theresa May’s speech"; "Theresa May's nightmare speech: a prankster, a lost voice and a stage-set fail"; "Theresa May, Coughing and Caught by a Prankster, Endures a Speech to Forget".

But besides these performance issues, the content of the speech also came in for some criticism — there was the "British Dream" theme, and the alleged West Wing plagiarism.

[A guest post by Jichang Lulu.]

After all the brouhaha over Kim Jong Un's 'dotard' philippic, I was reminded of some other Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) invective: those sexist insults against Park Geun-hye, the racist insults against Obama, and specifically those aimed at Michael Kirby, the Australian judge who led a UN inquiry on North Korean human rights. The NK leadership didn't appreciate the scrutiny, and responded by calling Kirby, who is openly gay, a DOL (Disgusting Old Lecher). I was wondering what the Korean for that would be, so I looked for the original piece.

According to HuffPost UK, although figures from the Office of National Statistics indicate that the LGB percentage of the population rose last year by a statistically significant amount, "the majority of the UK population still identifies as heterosexual or straight."

Phew! So the straights (unlike the current Conservative-led government) held on to their majority. Good. I was bracing for a wave of homophobe fury. But let's take a look at the numbers to see how close a call it was, shall we?

Yep, just like that.  This expression is very common on the Chinese internet, messaging, chatting, etc. now, but — for those of us who are not in the know — what does it mean?

I'll just give one hint:  nǐ 你 means "you".

Yesterday, The New Yorker posted an article on its website: "The Error in Baseball and the Moral Dimension to American Life," by Stephen Marche. As originally published, the article contained this paragraph (emphasis mine):

In practice, “ordinary effort” describes, as Bill James wrote, what should have happened. What should have happened in a piece of fielding can have nothing to do with the play of the fielder. Utter offered me a case: The runner hits the ball into the outfield, the fielder baubles the ball, and the runner advances to second. Is that an error? It depends. “What we would have to look at is—is it a single or is it a double? Or is it a single and advance on an error or on the throw?” The way that the scorer determines whether that bauble is an error or not has less to do with the action of the fielder than with the action of the runner. “Was the runner going all the time? Did he never think about stopping at first? Or was he running and looking at the play and then slowed down a little bit and then took off when he saw the little bauble?” If he paused, noticed the misplay, and ran to second, “That becomes the error.”

Claro's tweet:

Volunteered to be a penpal for Japanese Junior Highschool students, and the letters they sent are priceless. pic.twitter.com/JHPRREPy7Y

— Claro (@MellowZenith) October 2, 2017

Lisa Chang took this photo of two paintings at an antique store in 2015 (the store was either in Maryland or Pennsylvania):

On the eve of the establishment of the PRC, Chairman Mao referred to united front (tǒngyī zhànxiàn 統一戰線) work as one of the Party’s “three great fabao” (sān gè dà fǎbǎo 三个大法宝).  So what is a fabao, what did Mao mean by that expression, and where did he get it?

Mao's "fabao" is often glossed as "magic weapon" or "secret weapon", and it seems to be a reference to the "Three Jewels / Treasures" (sānbǎo 三宝 / 寶; Skt. triratna) of Buddhism: the Buddha (Fó 佛), the Dharma (fǎ 法, the "Law" or "Doctrine" of Buddhism), and the Sangha (sēng 僧, the community of Buddhist monks and the monastic order to which they adhere).

This is a sign pointing the way to a sign. pic.twitter.com/aTKEej99aG

— Chris Buckley 儲百亮 (@ChuBailiang) October 2, 2017

From "Theresa May's interview with Andrew Marr – Summary", The Guardian 10/1/2017:

May refused to deny that Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has become “unsackable”. Johnson yesterday used an interview with the Sun to set out four personal red lines for Brexit, all of which go beyond the cabinet position set out in May’s Florence speech and at least one of which may prove to be impossible. Asked if he was now unsackable, May laughed at the question and just said he was “absolutely behind” the plan for Brexit she set out in Florence. She did not use the line she used in July, when she was in a stronger position and told LBC: “There’s no such thing as an unsackable minister.”