AUDIBLE PUNCTUATION

In the newspaper cartoon "Jump Start" the mother of the protagonist appears from time to time, usually to correct his grammar. Last week she actually heard him leave out the apostrophe when he said, "Its kind of cold today." She's my hero. Punctuation does indicate oral pauses and emphasis, of course, but you have to be really good to hear a missing apostrophe.

STRANGE AGENT

Perhaps you heard about the Batavia, Ohio, man who shot and killed a teenage boy for crossing his lawn, and then called 911 and turned himself in. One of the neighbors said, "He was a strange agent." I've heard "strange bird" before and other such expressions, but not "strange agent," which I found interesting. Probably either a Kentucky or West Virginia expression.

NO PROBLEMED

From a local news source of consistently atrocious English: "City Council targets problemed areas." Could it be a typo? Or did someone think the "ed" ending is required to create an adjective, as in "doomed areas" or "blighted areas"? Of course the writer could have gone with "problemy areas" or "problemous areas", or even "problem areas" or "problematic areas" which are correct but unoriginal. So many possibilities.

GOOGLE EVIL

After I used Google's Gmail to try to get last week's PO out, Dave DaBee wrote:

Be aware that Gmail is being shunned by privacy freaks, because the company has a formal policy of retaining every bit of information they can about your searches and everything else from their interactions with you ~ including your emails, which are NOT treated as your own private business.

I still use Google for my searches and my mapping, but I won't touch gmail. If their ethics ever become a concern for me (which may or may not happen), all I need to know is that they sold out their vaunted ethics to get into China, as you probably heard.

Lord knows what heavily digested data they'll offer to the Chinese government (or ours) if it suits them. (Lord does; I don't.)

As for integrity ~ well, last year a CNet.com writer decided to google Google's CEO just as an example of what someone could dig up on someone in 30 minutes, and published what they found (all kinds of personal info including how much he donated to various candidates, his neighbors' political affiliations, etc). It wasn't a scandalous article, but the guy got "wicked pissed*," as they say in Boston, and banned his company from talking to that company for a year. Definite violation of their famous "core value" of "Don't be evil."

As I say, I still use their stuff, but I sure won't use their email. (Nor will I knowingly write to it, which is true for a fair number of other people, because when person X signs up for a gmail account, they authorize Google to keep and index and analyze everything from incoming mail, too, with or without the sender's knowledge.)

Dave also sent several article links on the Google privacy issue. You can do your own search if you want to pursue this further. It's not clear to me, by the way, whether the info on CEO Eric Schmidt found by googling was already present on other web sites, or found within Gmail? Could it have been found using AltaVista too, for instance?

But let me play Google's advocate for a minute. I've never really assumed I had privacy on the Web, and now all sorts of companies send me batches of cookies and insert spyware into the computer, which Fred spends hours cleaning out. And I figure the government can get their own hackers to find stuff, even without Google. Aren't they always tracking down people who use their computers for child porn? Furthermore, while the government may have access to all kinds of information, we know that they are not always capable of acting on it, even when it's desirable or necessary. As for China, I know Google caved, but last week I asked my Chinese student about the Internet (and other issues), and he said the people there know how to get around these blocks imposed by their government (including the one-child policy, which surprised me).

So far there we have attempted coups on Wikipedia (me) and Google (Dave). What I need is a list of untainted companies. I boycotted grapes for years, but I need more motivation to boycott Google and I've already been talked out of boycotting Wikipedia.

*And by the way, as for "wicked pissed," this is a most amusing (to me) use of "wicked" as an adverb intensifier, in the Boston area ~ never "wickedly".

MEMORIES

Garner's Quotation of the Day: "We are too pietistic in our concern with transmitting the gems of our national heritage. But one skill of youth ought to be exploited precisely because it fades along with youth ~ I mean the capacity to learn by heart. Pupils will whine at having to memorize a stanza from Gray's 'Elegy' or a speech from Macbeth or Hamlet. In later years they will be glad to have stocked their minds with the quotable." Anthony Burgess, A Mouthful of Air 399 (1992).

Or, as Jane Austen put it in Emma (chapter 9), glad to have made "mental provision for the evening of life". Students today hardly have to learn the multiplication table ~ they are encouraged to use calculators in class ~ much less memorize passages of literature. As for me, I'd do nothing more than paraphrase if I couldn't look up faintly remembered quotes on the Web.

O BABBINO BABBINO

I was listening to Kiri Te Kanawa sing the aria from Puccini's opera Gianni Schicchi, "O mio babbino caro," one of the most beautiful combinations of human musical creation and physical human talent in my known universe.

While listening I thought, "I couldn't even sing that song badly" and then realized this could be easily misunderstood (if I said it out loud), depending on word order and emphasis. What I meant was, since I can only carry the simplest tunes, and not well, I couldn't even do a bad job of singing that song. I did not mean that it's so beautiful that even I couldn't louse it up. There are several ways to garble my meaning:

Even I couldn't sing that badly.

1. Even I, a bad singer, couldn't mess that song up.

2. Even I, a bad singer, couldn't sing so badly. (doesn't make sense since the performance was flawless)

Even I couldn't sing that song badly.

1. Even I, a bad singer, couldn't mess that song up.

As for the lyrics, the sentiment is universal ~ a girl begging her father to approve her lover ~ not the most brilliant lyric, but the form makes a difference. I thought the title meant "O my dear baby" but Babelfish gives it as "Or mine beloved babbino" ~ can't handle "babbino" and of course "or" is wrong. Here's a translation from the web:

Oh dear daddy

I love him, he is so handsome

I want to go to Porta Rossa

to buy the ring

Yes, yes, I want to go there

And if my love were in vain

I would go to Ponte Vecchio

and throw myself in the Arno

I fret and suffer torments

Oh God, I would rather die

Daddy, have pity, have pity

It's better in Italian, with music.

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