Month: July 2007
He rolls over!
This evening, on his four-month birthday, Guthrie rolled over for the first time. At least, that is, according to his father who claims to have witnessed the momentous event while Mama was in the kitchen preparing dinner. Mama rushed in when she heard Papa’s cheering and found the boy looking slightly stunned to be on…
New, super-fast server; plus a request for comments
Over the weekend I moved the site to a new service provider, one offering incredible high-speed hosting for database-driven web sites (and for less than a third of what I was paying elsewhere for dismal speeds). EngineHosting has smartly shown that they understand that static web sites will soon be, if they are not already,…
Esptein vs. Epstein
It could happen to anybody, but the second summer replacement column for William Safire—which is about getting basic facts like names wrong—gets the writer’s name wrong. It’s right at the bottom—Jaimie Epstein—but wrong at the top—Jaimie Esptein. Maybe it was done purposely?
UPDATED: July 5/6: Scheduled as a guest on “Up All Night” on BBC Radio Five
My radio partner Martha Barnette and I are scheduled as guests on the BBC Radio Five show Up All Night. We’ll be taking language questions from listeners very much as we do on our own radio show, public radio’s A Way With Words. If all goes as planned, we’ll be on Up All Night at:…
America’s identity theft: what to call an American instead of “American”? And in French?
Martine Rousseau and Olivier Houdart, copy editors for the French newspaper Le Monde who also co-edit the blog Langue Sauce Piquante (which I’ve linked to from the cohort page for years), address a long-standing issue: if “American” should apply to all people from North, Central, and South America, then what should we call citizens of…