December 20, 2004
I realized, after posting the prior Hollyku message very early this morning,
that I had forgotten the gang at Volokh’s place. Since my webserver won’t
let me edit the earlier post (I can’t explain it), and I had no intent to boycott
the VConspirators, they get their own little dedication (plus, a pointer to EV’s
excellent post on the freedom to tell the truth about another person):
for Eugene, Orin, Erik, David(s) and
shortest day —
all of the yellow
beaten out of eggs
update (5 PM): How could I possibly forget my weblog-haijin colleagues, Paul
but being an Old Brain is not.] Since they’re suffering from an Artic Express today,
like we are in Schenectady, they will hopefully understand dagosan’s lament:
bitter cold
before the solstice:
the weather man’s surprised
married a decade
she hides
the mistletoe
married a decade
he buys
new mistletoe
[Dec. 20, 2004]
one-breath pundit
Not an Irony: One of my biggest pet language peeves is the misuse of the
adverb “ironically.” See a fuller discussion here. I am happy to say, therefore,
that it was not ironic, but definitely serendipitous and coincidental to counting
our year-end blessings, that someone did a Google search today for the query
Ironic vs coincidental> and f/k/a was the #1 result in the Search. As we
stated in our earlier post and are more than willing to reiterate:
The indiscriminate discovery or attribution of irony where there is
no incongruity is, to use the vernacular, dumbing down the English
language, as well as the human thought process. As aptly noted in
the American Heritage Dictionary:
The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes
used of events and circumstances that might better be
described as simply “coincidental” or “improbable,” in
that they suggest no particular lessons about human
vanity or folly.
For further discussion of the use and misuse of the concept of irony, see
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