That was fast

Eric Posner is wrong about virtually everything involving politics or the law, but the opening sentence of his analysis of this op-ed by John Bolton and John Yoo in Sunday's New York Times expresses my feelings perfectly:

It didn’t take long for conservatives to rediscover limits on executive power. You’d think something — if not philosophical consistency, then at least manners — would cause them to hold off until, say, inauguration day.

Iter

(Walking in the snowy metropole.)

Helvidius: I might just give up and become a wandering iterant.

Alix: Don't you mean itinerant? I think you've been spending too much time programming. ...

Alix's recipe corner

The legendary Rôti sans pareil:

Farcir une belle olive avec des câpres et des anchois ; après l’avoir fait mariner dans l’huile, l’enfermer dans un becfigue, ou tout autre oiseau dont la délicatesse est connue, pour le mettre ensuite dans un plus gros, tel qu’un ortolan ; prendre une mauviette, dont on supprimera les pates et la tête, pour entourer les deux autres, et la recouvrir d’une barde de lard très mince. Mettez la mauviette dans l’intérieur d’une grive, parée et troussée de même, la grive dans la caille, la caille dans un vanneau, celui-ci dans un pluvier, pour l’envelopper d’un perdreau ; enfermez ce perdreau dans une bécasse, celle-ci dans une sarcelle, pour passer dans un pintadeau, ensuite à un jeune canard sauvage, de là dans une poulade, arrivez au faisan que vous recouvrirez avec une oie, après quoi vous mettrez le tout dans une poule-dinde que vous enfermerez dans une outarde. Que si, par hasard, il se trouvait quelque chose de vide à remplir, vous auriez recours aux truffes, marrons et saucisses, dont vous feriez une farce. Placez le tout dans une casserole de suffisante capacité, avec des petits oignons piqués de clous de girofle, des carottes, du jambon coupé en petits morceaux, du céleri, un bouquet garni, mignonnette, quelques bardes de lard, poivre, sel, épices fines, coriandre, une ou deux gousses d’ail ; mettez cuire sur un feu doux continué pendant vingt-quatre heures, ou, mieux encore, dans un four un peu chaud ;dégraissez et servez sur un plat chaud.

Abstraction faite d’une complication aussi grande, on peut varier à l’infini, suivant les lieux et les saisons, cette manière de préparer plusieurs objets dans un seul.

Idiosyncratic annoyance #542: Ad hoc spelling alphabets

Which I will not refer to as a ‘pet peeve’, because the phrase ‘pet peeve’ is one of my idiosyncratic annoyances.

Monologue dramatique, d'après d'innumerables conversations téléphoniques que j’ai eu la malchance d’écouter:

Yes. The licence plate? It’s B T P 4 5 2. B as in Boy. T as in Top. P as in Paul. Four. Five. Two. Yes. No ... no, B. B as in Boy. Yes. Yes, that’s what I said. No ... wait ... did you say Boy or Toy? No, oh, okay, sorry, I said B as in Boy, not T as in Toy. Make it B as in Ball. You’ve got it. Yes. No, no, not P as in Paul, B as in Ball. Right. Then T as in Top. What? No. Top, not Pop. T as in Top. ...

Public service announcement: we have fixed spelling alphabets that were specifically designed by linguists in order to avoid this kind of ridiculousness.

Is it really so hard to remember — to use the best-known Anglophone example, the NATO spelling alphabet — the words Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu? (There are plenty of other well-designed ones if you feel that the aeronautical connotations of that alphabet are a bit much for customer service.)

Misspelling alphabets, of course, are an art in themselves. My best effort thus far (drawing on the work of others, including examples here and here): Aye, Bdellium, Cue, Dzo, Ewe, Felindre, Gneiss, Hour, Ian, Juan, Knight, Lladró, Mneme, Nxuba, Oestrogen, Ptyxis, Quay, Rzeszów, Sea, Tchotchke, Uakare, Vates, Wring, Xylem, Yves, Zollverein.

Suggestions for improvements are welcomed.

My first trackback

Obama Conspiracy Theories, a site devoted to looking at "alternate views of reality and fringe ideas regarding Barack Hussein Obama II"--and very carefully critiquing them--was kind enough to link to my post about Chester Arthur (which it calls "delightful") and to "recommend it heartily".

I reciprocate the compliment unreservedly.

OCT is definitely the first place to go if you want to see just how strange some of the anti-Obama arguments get. I must also say that I admire the author's extraordinary patience and civility in trying to reason with the "truthers"--qualities which I'm not sure I'd be able to muster were I keeping up with this stuff on a daily basis.

Niemeyer

I am again struck by how little I know about things I profess to love. Until today, I had never seen (or had seen and somehow forgotten) photographs of the incomparable Edificio Copan in São Paulo. My only experience with São Paulo, sadly, was a long layover in its ugly airport fifteen years ago. But now I want to return, if only to for a brief encounter with the late-modernist architectural sublime.

Query

Of late this blog's diet has involved a lot of mockery directed at cranks purveying bad law and bad history in the service of xenophobia and political opportunism. Perhaps a worthwhile endeavour, perhaps not, but it's time to return to our usual, and far more pleasant, fare of academic, philosophical, literary, and bibliographical trivia.

Somewhere, I read or heard the following smackdown: "A logician is a mathematician who knows the difference between use and mention." I cannot remember where, and I cannot find it on the internet. Can anyone help me?