IMPENDING EXPLOSION AVERTED

Herb H. wrote:

Here's a usage that invariably makes my head threaten to explode.

"Unnecessary testing is becoming increasingly common in medical practice and consumer demand for certain types of tests have escalated."

Don't worry about number agreement between subject and verb now ~ just disregard the second clause there.

It's BECOMING INCREASINGLY COMMON!

Obviously, it's not increasingly common yet. Sometime, and it will be soon, it WILL BE increasingly common. Maybe even tomorrow, it will be increasingly common, and with that I have no problem. But not yet, because it's only becoming increasingly common.

Here's the question. How does the speaker KNOW it's becoming increasingly common? It cannot be based on any measurement or observation, because if there's a measurable or observable increase, then it has to be ALREADY increasingly common. So there.

I'm not exactly following Herb's argument, but his head can stop threatening him. "Increasingly" simply and colloquially means more and more, which makes sense when substituted in the all-caps sentence above. But let's parse this out.

It's becoming more and more common [than it was before]: It's more common today than it was in the past, and as time passes, we see more instances of it, whatever it is.

It has become more and more common: We can measure it, it's already increased.

The rate of increase is growing: It increased 5% in 2004, 10% in 2005, 20% in 2006, etc. Herb argues that we can only speak of an increase that has passed, not of something that's increasing now. But you know, we can speak of the future using the present tense: "I am going to the store." Our references to time are always somewhat imaginary. You might say that any statement made in the present tense has to refer to the past, because the present evaporates instantly as we speak, the present is only a dividing line between the past and future, although it's where everything is.

If there's a logical flaw in the ordinary phrase Herb cites, I'd say it's just one of those inexplicable idioms that isn't necessarily mathematically logical.

JURY-PACKING

One more note on "jury-rigging" et al from a lawyer: Dea wrote:

I have a possible end note concerning the term jury rigging. No such term of art exists in law. The term is "jury-packing", which is the act or an instance of contriving to have a jury composed of persons who are predisposed toward one side or the other. Some call it packing the jury and it means the same thing. Nonetheless, it seems common sense to know that jury-packing is illegal although a jury is rarely seated that way. Every potential juror is measured and weighed for bias in a process called voir dire, simply a verbal examination. If you saw My Cousin Vinnie, Vinnie picked on his girlfriend in voir dire because she was a reluctant witness but an expert on automobile tune-ups and tires. It was a good portrayal of counsel's voir dire. Or maybe jerry-witnessing?

My Cousin Vinnie is a favorite, and I loved it when New Yorker (or was it New Jersey?) Vinnie refers to the "yutes".

FLORENCE KING

I wish I could send you Florence King's entire essay called "A Burnt-Out Book Reviewer Case" (in Lump It or Leave It). She's reviewed a lot of books and is contemptuous of much that is considered fine literature, especially of the sensitive "so-called woman's novel", and she has a deft hand with parody, covering Anais Nin, Joan Baez, Gloria Vanderbilt, Iris Murdoch, Jamaica Kincaid, Joan Didion, and more. She firebombed a few male writers too.

I've run across references to Joan Baez three times in the last couple of weeks, and you know that always means something. Last week, I wrote that Baez said it was "ironic" that she wasn't invited to sing for the wounded troops, which would be sort of like Jane Fonda doing a little song and dance at Walter Reed. Then there's Joan Baez in Yoko Ono's book of memories of John Lennon, in which Joan's rather girlish handwriting is reproduced. And Florence King writes, "Straightforward sexuality is not Baez's long suit. Looking at the snowflakes on her boyfriend's hair, she wishes she were one of them so she could 'melt down through to the roots and then under his skin and just live there' ~ the best unconscious erotic identification with radioactivity since Phyllis Schlafly announced that the atomic bomb was a gift from God." So what does all this mean anyway? I can't envy Baez as I did in college ~ Bob Dylan's girlfriend! Incredible voice! Incredible beauty! More nobly committed than I was to political positions I didn't really understand anyway! Now I'd rather be as funny as Florence King (but also as beautiful as Joan Baez).

In "The Graves of Academe" King does for college what she did for literature, quoting one Jon Hilliard from the April 24, 1989 Time magazine: "I grew up in a poor family with four kids, and we had no extras. There's no way my kids are going to be like that. We want to make sure that if they're not good athletes or smart academically, they can still go to college." Italics are King's. This explains in a nutshell what has happened to the ideal of a classical, liberal education, while the purely technical or "vocational" education has become déclassé.

In "The Silver Scream" King reminds us of where the phrase "this is where I came in" originated. As a child she and her mother and grandmother went to the movies a lot, and the custom then was just to go whenever. You didn't find out what time the movie started, you just went when you were ready. (I say "you" because this is what I did with my mother too.) So you might arrive in the middle, and then you'd stay for the next showing and see the movie from the beginning until you got to the scene you'd come in on.

I recommend you get Florence King's books from the library, or even buy some. She's funny and kind of mean.

SHOW ME

Do you ever say "radio show"? I'm much more used to referring to televisions shows, of course, and I always have to remind myself to say "radio program". Don't tell me that we visualize the program in our minds. It's not a show unless you're in the radio audience, which doesn't exist anymore anyway.

EX-PATRIOT

Found in a program promo: "Nidra Poller, ex-patriot American journalist living in Paris..." Maybe, maybe not. The writer meant "expatriate", a person who has left her own country to live in another. "Ex-patriot" would be someone who used to be patriotic, which is not quite the same thing. Or perhaps someone who used to play for the New England Patriots football team, including someone named Junior Ah-You. Where is he now?

PROSAIC

Dennis Miller said: "I love Peggy Noonan's writing. It has a prosaic quality that I think you'll find interesting." "Prosaic" can simply refer to prose, but because it more often means dull and unimaginative, I wouldn't use it to talk about a writer I like, and Miller likes her writing.

7-11

Bill R. sent a selection from Eject! Eject! Eject!, a web site by writer Bill Whittle, inviting us to compare the wonders of the Pyramid of Cheops with the wonders of your average 7-11 store. Glass walls! Light all night! Ice! Let us count our blessings. Honestly, would you rather have a really grand tomb, or lots of ice in the summer?

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NEW! SHORT ORDER

Short Order is a new series of my short stories in 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet format. The first two are available now for $5 each (includes mailing).

/// In Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn, a young computer guy who dreams of becoming a big-time gambler sets up web sites for his role model, a real big-time gambler, Stockyard Stan of Kansas City. But when Carl comes up short on his gambling debts, he finds himself wearing concrete boots in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. 26 pages.

/// Still Ridge is about what happens when the old-time moonshine business meets up with a predatory modern bottled water corporation. How far will Kate, a newcomer to the mountains, go to protect the water supply? 22 pages.

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