NEW DIGS!!!!!

Sorry to do this to you all, but the WordPress platform was really starting to get on my nerves. My new blog is here.

http://nathancushing.tumblr.com/

Is The C-Word Still Jarring?

Kathleen Deveny wonders if the word is starting to lose it’s acerbic effect.

The C word has been in use since at least 1230, according to the Oxford English Dictionary online, when it referred to a street name, Gropecuntelane (bet I can guess what went on there). It has gradually been finding its way into mainstream American culture since the 1970s. Think of Travis Bickle’s rant in Taxi Driver, Hannibal Lector’s delightful salutation to Agent Starling, or the last words Adriana heard before being shot to death on The Sopranos. And don’t forget Citizens United Not Timid, best known by its acronym, a Hillary-bashing group that got media attention during the last campaign.

For decades, such feminists as Germaine Greer have advocated reclaiming the C word, in a take-back-the-night kind of way. While I’m all for this, efforts to redeem loaded words can be problematic, as we’ve learned from the N word. Besides, most women just don’t seem to have the stomach for it.

Great Moments in English Usage, Care of the Dollar Store

Harry Crews

Interesting thoughts from an interesting man.

Why I Won’t Be Eating Eggs Anymore

I’ve been thinking about going to an egg-free diet for a while now, and this video and article reifies why I’ll now be doing so:

Hy-Line admitted to the Associated Press that “instantaneous euthanasia” (e.g. grinding up male chicks) is a standard practice and claims that it is also supported by the animal veterinary and scientific community. (Male chicks are less valuable because they can’t lay eggs or be raised quickly enough for meat.) Mercy for Animals estimates that 200 million male chicks are killed annually and United Egg Producers confirmed this figure.

No federal law exists to ensure the humane euthanasia of animals on farms or hatcheries. According to the Humane Society of the United States, even egg farms that sell cage-free eggs, get their hens from hatcheries that kill their male chicks. (This to me is the worst news of all because it means few commercially sold eggs are truly “blood-free.”)

Are Twitter and Facebook Making Kids Better Writers?

Stanford Writing & Rhetoric Professor, Andrea Lunsford, posits this very idea:

The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That’s because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom—life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of 25 things about yourself add up.

But is this explosion of prose good, on a technical level? Yes. Lunsford’s team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.

Iranian Man, Tortured and Raped, Commits Suicide In Street

This is rough. He leapt from a bridge in daylight. The blood-stained man is the boy’s father. His son was tortured and raped because of the young man’s participation in the post-election protests. The shame of the acts inflicted on him in prison were too much for him to live with.

(via Daily Dish)

When Prescriptive Grammarians Go Cuckoo

I admire the gusto, and the adherence to principles, but someone needs to get a girlfriend.

Mr Gatward…will not join the ‘five items or less’ queue at the supermarket, in protest that the sign should read ‘five items or fewer’.

He also gets annoyed when people-neglect the ‘Royal’ in ‘Royal Tunbridge Wells’, and was vexed when he saw a major chain store advertising sales with signs saying ‘until stocks last’ rather than ‘while stocks last’.

‘I fought for the preservation of our heritage and our language but some people seem happy to let that go. I’m not,’ he said.

‘I feel very strongly about the English language.

Squirrel Photobomb

I guess the animal kingdom can get in on the fun, too. An account from the photographers:

We had our camera set up on some rocks and were getting ready to take the picture when this curious little ground squirrel appeared, became intrigued with the sound of the focusing camera and popped right into our shot.

Examples of the human form can be found here.

The Value of Shitty Work

The Daily Dish publishes a reader’s email:

I worked a number of jobs in college to make ends meet. My parents were able (and gracious) to help me out my freshman year, but with two more siblings following me to college in short order, I knew I had to get off the parental dole after that. I was fortunate to have an academic scholarship to pay for tuition, so all I had to cover was room, board and incidentals (including books). I worked at McDonald’s and as an overnight stocker in a grocery store in the summers, and during the school year in the cafeteria and at a tutoring center. These experiences have led to my “shitty job” theory: everyone should have to work a shitty job at least once in their lives. It does two important things for you:

Ten Things We Don’t Understand About Humans

Among them: laughter, art, and pubic hair.

Judd Apatow Movies are Socially Conservative?

Ross Douthat makes a case:

Don’t laugh. No contemporary figure has done more than Apatow, the 41-year-old auteur of gross-out comedies, to rebrand social conservatism for a younger generation that associates it primarily with priggishness and puritanism. No recent movie has made the case for abortion look as self-evidently awful as “Knocked Up,” Apatow’s 2007 keep-the-baby farce. No movie has made saving — and saving, and saving — your virginity seem as enviable as “The 40-Year Old Virgin,” whose closing segue into connubial bliss played like an infomercial for True Love Waits.

Old People Talking About the Internet

A new site.

Mystery in Outer Space

A cosmological whodunnit? on Saturn’s rings.

Over the past few months, as the Sun shines almost straight into the rings (instead of down on them), every bump and irregularity sticks out like, well, like a tree in the desert. Weird gravitational effects from Saturn’s fleet of moons tune and resonate the countless particles making up the rings, creating beautiful waves and ripples.

But this, this is something new.

It’s not exactly clear what’s going on here, even in this slightly zoomed shot. But it looks for all the world – or worlds — like some small object on an inclined orbit has punched through Saturn’s narrow F ring, bursting out from underneath, and dragging behind it a wake of particles from the rings. The upward-angled structure is definitely real, as witnessed by the shadow it’s casting on the ring material to the lower left. And what’s with the bright patch right where this object seems to have slammed in the rings? Did it shatter millions of icy particles, revealing their shinier interior material, making them brighter? Clearly, something awesome and amazing happened here.

Proof the French Can Be Funny

Young Christian Proselytizing

(rolling my eyes)