Helots

A piece from the American Air Force Times comes up in my google alerts;

"Charity: Consider a good cause

By Regina GalvinSpecial to the Times
If your idea of charity starting at home means diverting all your contributions to the “Me, Myself and I” fund, you might want to skip ahead to the next entry. If you are a bit more charitable than that, read on.....
Last but far from least, consider creating a charitable fund. Was a member of your unit permanently disabled or killed in action? Imagine if 100 members of your unit gave 1 percent of the $25,000 toward a fund established to help a fallen or disabled buddy. Your $250 could go toward a scholarship for his children, financial assistance for the surviving spouse or a wheelchair-accessible renovation for the home.
The military has always been known for taking care of its own; when you give from the heart, you will be richer for it. "

Alternatively, you might consider moving to a country like Australia where everything on that list is provided by the government without question as of right for all who need it.

*Though I don't remember any member of the air force getting killed in Iraq anyway.

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English names

Yes, there it is again, that absolute tin ear Americans have for English names. In a crap Christian thriller called "A man called blessed" about a search for the Ark of the Covenant (I say crap - it's better written than the Da Vinci Code, but then so is the label on my Thai packet of Peculiar Flavour Broad Beans) and one of the McGuffins is a letter from a crusading templar who found the ark had moved to Ethiopia at some vaguely given date approximately 800 years ago. It begins "I, Sir Wallace Thronburge III...."

'Sir' goes only with a given name.

'Wallace' is a surname, and people then didn't use surnames as first names.

'Thronburge' is one of the very few collections of letters that doesn't appear on Google and has never been used as a name by anybody (actually, that could be unfair; it's probably a misreading of misprint for Thornburge, which does exist).

And that 'III'... Mencken notes: "The use of 2nd, 3rd, etc., is marked as an Americanism by the DAE and traced to 1804. At the start 2nd seemed to have been only a substitute for Jr., but now it often indicates, not the son, but the grandson or nephew of the first bearer of the name. The use of the Roman numerals II, III, etc., came much later. It is frowned upon in England as an invasion of Royal prerogative..." Not that the royals numbered themselves till a good deal later than 800 years ago.

Even some good writers, though, have the same tin ear; "Lord John Marbury" in West Wing still rankles. CJ says he's the 'hereditary Earl Of Shelbourne' , making him Lord Shelbourne and not Lord Marbury.

What is it about Americans and English names?

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Silent treatment

You have to admire the delicate wit whereby US News and World Report has accompanied its story on Bush evading his National Guard obligations with a picture of a girl captioned

Silent treatment, n. (1) adolescent act of defiance. (2) denial of drug and alcohol problems.

And, flipping back to the page, I see it's been replaced by another anti-drug ad -

What if I can't handle the truth?

What if it's worse than I thought?

Pure gold.

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Not angry, just very, very sad

Disillusionment! For just about the first time Google has let me down. Watching a program last night dramatising Stephen Hawking's early life, I was of course shouting "Nonsense!" and "Horsefeathers!" whenever Penzias and Wilson came on to say that they'd discovered the background microwave radiation proving the Big Bang, knowing, as do all we skeptics, that it was discovered by their research assistant. I called up Google to verify the fact to a sceptical Rose, and it didn't say anything about it! I'm truly shocked.

Oh well, let's look in the book at Amazon.

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Arnold

Apparently gave a good speech at the RNC on how America is the land of opportunity where anyone can rise to the heights as he did.

Mind you, one of my favourite quotes has always been that one from pumping iron where Arn is reflecting on tactics; (from memory) "The great thing about being champion is that the up-and-coming triers look up to me, and they come to me for advice about how to compete. And I give them bad advices...."

He's rich, he's powerful, and he doesn't want company.

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Lincoln, not even

Bugger, I was misled by William Saletan. Steele mentioned Lincoln, and quoted from the fake text, but didn't actually attribute the one to the other. Steele didn't actually cite the Rev. William J. H. Boetcker, but that's a pecadillo.

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Lincoln, not.

Americans are tone deaf. At the Republican National Congress the (black) lt-governor of Maryland gave a speech in which he quoted Lincoln -
"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift," Steele said, quoting Abraham Lincoln. "You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. ... You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and incentive. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they should do for themselves." The delegates responded with a furious ovation.

I haven't seen any of the blogs, let alone the press, mention that this isn't Lincoln at all, and I can't see why anyone would have thought it was. Lincoln was one of the finest prose stylists in the history of America. This sounds like Calvin Coolidge.

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