John Crowley's Blog, page 4

Collapse

The Asutralian auto dealership I owned with my brother Brendan (where'd he come from?) has collapsed, apparently quite literally if you believe the photo:

http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/anz-launches-lawsuit-against-bryan-byrt-directors-john-and-brendon-crowley-after-auto-dealers-collapse/story-fnihsps3-1227241888701

More me

My climate change research, which I can't think how I found time to do, has turned up some surprising results, suggesting that it may be due to a sort of natural gastric upset on Mother Nature's part.  I'm sure I have my reasons.

http://guardianlv.com/2015/02/climate-change-is-linked-to-underwater-volcanoes/

Thanks

I'm somewhat overwhelmed by the good will, patience, generosity and affection my post about the fine-press edition of Little, Big drew.  Abashed, somewhat.  But thanks to all of you (and to all those still waiting who didn't respond, at least SOME of whom are surely a bit grumpy).  

Unredeemed

WHat is the term -- I believe descending from Calvinist theology -- that means unsaved or depraved or not among the elect, but that came to mean simply bad, immoral, resistant to correction?

Grammar whiz XIII

Pretend you didn't read this already and guess what you could add to it to make some kind of sense.  Rules as usual.

is going to go — is bomb throwing?

Salacious

From the NY Times about the death of MAndy Rice-Davies: "The death of Mandy Rice-Davies, who played a starring role in one of Britain’s most salacious Cold War sex scandals, evoked more than a vicarious return to moments that defined their times."

This is the second time I've seen the Times use "salacious" in this way.  It's clearly wrong by standard definitions -- lascivious, lustful, lecherous -- or (of written or other work) arousing, sexually suggestive, dirty.  Has the definition changed?

Legal term query

Is there a legal term for the unnecessary law that bans or forbids something that either is never done or has long ceased to be done or can't be done?   Like a law passed forbidding Shariah law, or one that prevents developing time-travel capability?

Grammar whiz

With the usual rules and the usual note that I may well not have seen how obvious a solution would be.  This from the Times:

the court did either the law

crowleycrow @ 2014-11-27T10:26:00

NY Times:

Greek Navy Aids Disabled Ship With Hundreds of Migrants
You wonder what the migrants could do to help, and where the Greek Navy got them.

Dark composure

A new Microsoft product is called Lumia.  There is something Dark Ages about corporate uses of fake or dog-Latin to name their products.  Inevitably the tense, gender, spelling, part of speech or usage is wrong, sometimes all of these.  Lumia isn't Latin and Google Translate identifies it as a word in only one language:  Indonesian.  Of course they could have chosen Lumen, Latin for "light," but maybe they didn't think to look it up.  At some point in those ages the formula for the transubstantiation of the host into the body of Christ -- "Hoc est enim corpus meum" -- which the congregation heard whispered by the priest became "hocus pocus" with some muttered additions.
Wikipedia offers this delightful quote:  "I will speak of one man... that went about in King James his time... who called himself, The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so was he called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currently without discovery, because when the eye and the ear of the beholder are both earnestly busied, the Trick is not so easily discovered, nor the Imposture discerned."— Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark, 1656