From a letter to the editor in the Nov. 8 New Yorker: Such rhetoric then [by left-wing critics of George W. Bush] was hardly less corrosive, or less supported by scholarly reasoning, than the crackpot vitriol now spewed by Beck and his ilk. As we've noted many times, combinations of negation and scalar predicates are […]
Breffni O'Rourke has contributed a lovely specimen to our growing collection of cases where combinations of negations and scalar predicates leave writers and readers in a state of confusion. This one is from the EB section on the 14th and 15th centuries in Ireland (full path "Ireland:History:First centuries of English rule (1166-1600):The 14th and 15th […]
A couple of weeks ago, a reporter asked me for an interview "to discuss the style of Donald Trump's campaign events, the role his rhetoric plays in them, and why they’ve been an effective tool for him". I explained that I haven't held any focus groups or done any polls, so I don't have any […]
Scalar inversion of the week — Jon Christian, "Elon Musk fans horrified when his Grok AI immediately 'goes woke'", Futurism 12/9/2023: The woke mind virus appears to be coming from inside the house. Multi-hyphenate entrepreneur Elon Musk had promised — in line with his overall slide toward the reactionary right — that his new venture […]
Ron Irving sent in this sentence from Will Bunch's latest Philadelphia Inquirer column ("Proud Boys’ only ‘idea’ is violence. Penn State is wrong to give its leader a platform", 10/13/2022): What’s more, it’s hard not to think that McInnes and his allies didn’t choose both their location — State College, on a campus surrounded by […]
From Will Bunch, "In wagering on Doug Mastriano, Josh Shapiro plays a dangerous game for Pa.", Philadelphia Inquirer 5/8/2022: The Democrats should have learned their lesson in 2016. In this millennium, it’s impossible to underestimate the power of “tha crazy” coming out of a Republican Party base in which not only a majority of voters […]
In reading texts from the earliest times of Chinese writing up to the present, and at all social levels and linguistic registers, I have noticed a curious phenomenon. Namely, often an overtly negative particle or term will have no privative or prohibitive force, but is simply there for rhythmic, clitic, or rhetorical function. Naturally, since […]
M. Paul Shore called my attention to a highly useful Latin expression that, in his opinion, is much needed in various scholarly communities, but that few people are aware of, much less use. Paul writes: For the last four-and-a-half decades of my life, from late teens to early sixties, I've had the nagging feeling that […]
This was posted yesterday evening by Liz Harrington, who regularly posts Donald Trump's "statements" on Twitter: NEW! President Donald J. Trump: "Anybody that doesn’t think there wasn’t massive Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election is either very stupid, or very corrupt!" pic.twitter.com/QFjeJHt2SP — Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) December 5, 2021
From the Wikipedia article on Martin Foss (1889–1968), the German-born American philosopher, professor, and scholar: Foss provides a fascinating and important theory for how change happens in life—a theory that has been unmatched by no other philosopher. (source) Possible solutions: –> matched by no other philosopher OR –> unmatched by any other philosopher
Jeré Longman, "An N.H.L. Prospect Is the First Such Player to Announce He’s Gay", New York Times 7/19/2021: Luke Prokop, 19, a prospect with the Nashville Predators, on Monday became the first player with an N.H.L. contract to publicly announce that he is gay. Prokop, who is from Edmonton, Alberta, made his announcement in an […]
Dmitry Ostrovsky reacted to a litotic sentence in Bari Weiss's resignation letter: "None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don’t still labor for this newspaper." Dmitry's email: This strikes me as very odd. It is not a simple "arithmetic" misnegation, if "none of this means that" and "don't" […]
On this morning's State of the Nation program, Jake Tapper asked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this question: Negotiations are- are ongoing on an economic stimulus package chief White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow could be as high as two trillion dollars. Y- you suggested that's still not enough. If you were writing this bill how much would […]