The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Larry Kestenbaum:

I graduated from a well-regarded public high school in 1973, followed by a bachelor's and law degree at two lowly state universities, and later graduate work at an Ivy.

In all that time, I don't remember any training in grammar or parts of speech. For example, I still do not understand the meaning of the word "preposition".

In my public and political roles, I write a lot of text. If I write well, and I think I do, it is through care, revision, and practice, not through any education in the basics.

I think the first-order and second-order distinction is clearer than simply calling the disagreement "substantive".

What I may feel about Beinert's (or Drum's) credibility going forward is not terribly relevant in the real world. Fact is, they have vast audiences, and will continue to have vast audiences regardless of what kind of harsh judgement somebody like me could ever call down upon them.

When it comes to hiring national security advisors for a Democratic White House in 2009, I certainly hope that track records are taken into account. Until then, we need all the allies we can get. We need to think in the present rather than worry about past heresies.

My rule of political battles is: If you thoroughly like and trust everybody who's on your side -- that means you've lost.

I guess if these things are set to music, they become mondegreens.

I don't find myself accidentally typing homynyms, and I avoid spell checkers. But I do have one personal howler to relate.

It doesn't make any difference in spelling, but I took it for granted that the expression "the die is cast" referred to the process of making a mold.

In the Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce wrote that the die is not cast, it is cut. For some reason missing the context of "dice", I emphatically agreed. After all, a die is USED to cast, so I assumed the original expression about casting the die had been garbled somehow.

Mitch: Yes. FWIW, IAAL, too.

I'm late to the party (hey, it was a four hour drive to this conference), but I've linked from my blog too.

The scam "literary agents" publicized in the main entry remind me of the Manutius "publishing house" in Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum.

It was more than just a vanity press. With fake, glossy "literary magazines" and staged book signings and social events, Manutius lulled its authors into an expansive belief in their own importance.

Then the publisher would quietly let slip to the author that the book wasn't selling as well as hoped, and all those newly printed volumes would have to be pulped unless, ahem, someone came up with the money to buy them all ...

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