I love the black humor of BOHICA and BCG. I also followed the link to the meaning of "Hooah!" and was charmed by the Ranger variant of "Who, us?"
Via Grow a Brain.
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Stephen Ambrose gently suggested that the ingenuity of the American soldier was a contributing factor in the Allied victory in WWII, pointing to the GI-engineered solutions to, say, Normandy's hedgerows as an example. That creative spirit is illustrated linguistically, too, as shown in the linked list of acronyms and expressions.
"The classic beginner's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day."
The OC Register's Timothy Morgan writes about the increasing tendency of classical audiences to applaud between movements. His response? "I don't care."
I too have noticed this—even here in NYC. It puzzled me at first, but it doesn't really bother me—at least not as much as the program rustler two seats away from my stall at the NYP series I've been frequenting, or the fact that people with apparently life-threatening catarrh still insist on attending. A little applause between movements barely gets my goat.
Former Talking Heads frontman and the author of This Is Your Brain On Music discuss Music, language, and memory.
The secret life of the F word. Now that you know what it's about, you know not to click the link if that sort of thing offends you. Me? I live in Brooklyn—we use it because "uh" sounds so inexpressive.
Please click the External Link to enjoy the latest stop on Michael Lavorgna's Road Tour. Exit 11A leads Michael down the ramp to DeVore Fidelity, where we spend another lovely day at the hard-working Brooklyn Navy Yard and learn more about John DeVore's design philosophy.
I enjoyed reading this, feeling as though I was there again, feeling that Michael conveys some things in ways I couldn't. In fact, I was never really satisfied with how I described my time spent with John DeVore or his gibbon speakers. After all, writing about music is hard to do.
But I'll tell you this…
Eugene O'Neill is currently having a resurgence everywhere from prisons to Broadway (John Atkinson ranks the Old Vic production of Moon For the Misbegotten as one of his most intense theatrical experiences). John Patrick Diggens argues that O'Neill's themes of deceit and desire are particularly timely for 'Muricans today.
I've been reading Chet Raymo's Walking Zero, a meditation on the history of science focussed through a walk along the prime meridian in the UK. It's a lovely book, one I tend to linger over, reading a chapter and then mulling over it for a few days. Highly recommended.
Here Raymo ponders the question of style and whether there's an evolutionary mechanism for it. His answer might surprise you.