A Pointless Language Rant About Pointless Language Rants

Every so often, columnists seem to feel the need to go on a rant about linguistic pecadilloes: the misuse of "hopefully," "between you and I," etc. So Stephen F. Hayes in the Weekly Standard recently teed of on (what he calls) the misuse of the word literally. He starts by picking on the hapless Naomi Judd, writing,

The singer-actress-philosopher sat down with Larry King recently to promote Naomi's Breakthrough Guide: 20 Choices to Transform Your Life. Not content to mimic the mawkish language of the self-help set, she promised to take the conversation to the "neuroscientist level." Then she declared: "We literally become whatever we think about all day."

Literally?

Hayes's snarky response: "At some point in the near future I will become a bratwurst."

Hayes doesn't like it that most people often use the word literally "to indicate that some conventional metaphorical or hyperbolical phrase is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense" (Oxford English Dictionary). One wonders why not: the OED traces this use at least as far back as 1863 (though the OED, too, objects to it).

But the meaning that Hayes prefers is itself rather odd. He gives an example of how he'd like us all to use literally:

By the end of the meal I literally had to hold my tongue to keep from saying anything. I got several strange looks. [He was holding his tongue! ha ha!]

Hayes's preferred use of literally indicates "that the following word or phrase must be taken in its literal sense" (OED). But this is an odd use for an adverb: it doesn't modify the verb -- because holding one's tongue has nothing to do with words' senses --; rather, it instructs the reader on how the words had to hold my tongue are to be interpreted. How novel. In fact, how un-literal. It's sort of meta-adverbial. I wonder why Hayes prefers it?

In truth, literally can only be applied, in its oldest and most literal sense, to words or phrases having to do with the understanding of language, e.g. "They interpret literally that which the author intended figuratively."

Aaaand, if we wanted to be really picky about it, we might point out that literally is ultimately derived from the Latin word for "letter" (as in "letter of the alphabet"), so that it should only be applied to written language. And since letters of the alphabet don't have senses, it isn't even reasonable to talk about a literal sense, or about interpreting words literally, right? So let's not be picky.

Hayes's objection to the fact that literally has acquired a new meaning over the last century and a half is about as sensible as me objecting to French because it isn't Latin any more.

So I've had it with columnists' pointless rants about the fact that language changes.

In fact, if I read another one, I'm literally going to throw up.

P.S. BUT – if pointless rants about language change are your thing, NPR has a guy who specializes in them: here's a whole page of his stuff.

Bonds . . . or the Invisible Hand?

A couple of years ago, the Aycock neighborhood proposed to radically alter the intersection of Summit Avenue and Murrow Boulevard, and to open up the currently-underused acreage there for a mixed-use, new-urbanist development, provisionally dubbed "Aycock Square." The City Council approved of the idea -- in principle -- and adopted a long range plan for the neighborhood that includes provisions to study this proposal. The proposal is to turn this:



into this:



David Hoggard thinks that NC's newly-approved tax-increment financing, aka Amendment One, should be used to make this happen post-haste, and is nice enough to suggest that I might weigh in on the subject. So I'm weighing . . . .

The truth is, I don't know yet whether a bond is the way to go with this proposal. The other candidates for bonds that city staff mentioned in the N&R's article this morning are in pretty dire straits. And Aycock currently has two other irons in the city's fire: the Summit Avenue Corridor Study, and the renovation of War Memorial Stadium, both of which will require infusions of public cash.

But I'd like to float an idea that applies not only to this project, but to center-city infill and redevelopment in general. I'll call it the Targeted Tax Holiday (TTH).

Since there's plenty of underused land in Greensboro's urban center, and since everyone agrees that it is a good idea to develop this land, and since the city's Comprehensive Plan calls for such development, why not offer developers a little incentive to do so at no cost to taxpayers?

Here's how it would work. The city identifies underused/vacant areas that need redevelopment, and insures that they are zoned appropriately for that redevelopment. If the city wants a certain kind of development in the area, they might rezone it. For example, if the city determined that the blighted area at South Elm should be mixed-use like Southside, they could re-zone it with a pedestrian-scale overlay like Southside's.

Then, if a developer develops the area appropriately, the property is taxed only at its pre-development value for a period of, say, 10 years. The city loses only the tax revenue that it probably wouldn't have got anyway without the TTH, and it gains the kind of development it wants, plus increased tax revenue down the road.

I know, it's kind of like some of the incentives we offered to Dell. But the TTH is fairer because it is open to anyone who wants to buy and develop a TTH property -- not just one business. And it's friendly to entrepreneurs and small business people. And it taps into market forces rather than relying on government borrowing.

Of course it does that last thing by skewing the market a bit. But one could make the case that the market is already -- and always -- skewed, and that this is skewing it in a good direction: just giving Adam Smith's Invisible Hand a little nudge.

I wish in retrospect that the city had adopted a TTH for the downtown area rather than increasing taxes via the BID (Business Improvement District). But the city could still conceivably do both.

Anyhow, I think that the blank area on Summit Avenue between Murrow Boulevard and Church Street would be an excellent test area for a TTH. If it worked, the city would have a strong motivation to re-do the silly cloverleaf at Summit and Murrow, and open that area to further TTH incentives and development.

250-Word Review: The Roads to Modernity

Gertrude Himmelfarb's latest book, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, is well worth your time if you're curious, as I was, whether Garry Wills was right when he wrote recently that the Enlightenment in America is dead.

Himmelfarb makes a strong case that America's share of the Englightenment came mostly from England and Scotland, via David Hume, Edmund Burke, and Adam Smith (who was as much of a moral philosopher as an economist) whereas the French philosophes like Voltaire and Diderot, who were (and are) so influential on the Continent, never really caught on here.

The American Englightenment, she argues, led by the likes of Jefferson and Franklin, was crucially interested in the politics of liberty; the English Englishtenment pusured the politics of virtue; and the French worshipped Reason -- at one point converting the cathedral of Notre Dame into a Temple of Reason.

Himmelfarb points out that the American Enlightenment worked in partnership with religion to a degree unimaginable in France, where the Enlightenment was largely motivated by anti-clericalism. I'm personally indebted to this American tradition, having been educated at a Methodist-founded liberal arts college. My wife was similarly educated at a strongly Christian Reformed college. (We are both Catholic now.)

Garry Wills spoke too soon; the traditions of the American Enlightenment are still vigorous, but could certainly be strengthened. Bible-thumping fundamentalists, as well as agnostics/atheists who think that Christians have abandonded their reason, all need to read this book. It would raise the level of our national dialogue considerably.

Tsunami aid links

Daniel Drezner has links to charities that have begun helping tsunami victims, and so does Tim Blair. And here's a link to the American Red Cross (via Instapundit).

Christmas Day Chiaroscuro

Christmas is all about contrasts: the Star of Bethlehem against a black sky; grubby shepherds and glorious angels; the Infinite God becoming a little baby.

I got to see a little of that contrast for myself, on Christmas day, on my own street.

After early Christmas mass, after the iPods, books, CDs, DVDs, PJs, sweaters, boxer shorts, and socks had been given and received with love, my dad and I decided to take the dogs for a Christmas Day walk.

We passed a parked Honda, well-maintained. I saw a woman inside, also well-maintained: nice hair, fur collar. In her left hand was a spoon filled with liquid; in her right hand, a syringe.

I got mad, and borrowed my dad's cell phone to call the police. Get out of my neighborhood! She saw me calling, and drove away.

Then I was sad. Really sad. Try to imagine what her Christmas was like.

Merry Christmas

My parents are about to fly in from Tucson, and I expect I'll be fully absorbed in family and Christmas celebration for the next few days.

Merry Christmas!

RUCO: Read the Fine Print

Greensboro city government wonks will remember that, about a year ago, the City Council adopted an ordinance that was advertised as a cure for most of Greensboro's substandard housing ills.

It is called RUCO -- the Rental Unit Certificate of Occupancy ordinance. Briefly stated, the ordinance says that a rental property must meet the minimum housing code before it can receive a Certificate of Occupancy; otherwise, people aren't allowed to live in it, and the owner has to fix it or face some serious fines.

A lot of people worked hard to get this ordinance passed, because it faced stiff oposition from TREBIC -- the Triad area Real Estate and Builders' Coalition. The Greensboro Neighborhood Congress put a big effort into this, of which I was proud to be a part.

We were told that the implementation date of the ordinance was January, 2004, and some of us have been really interested in finding out how well the ordinance would work. Especially those of us who live close to some pretty nasty rental properties.

But guess what? The real implementation date of the ordinance is July 2007. Nobody breathed a word of this during the public hearing, but here's what's in the ordinance:

The owner shall have an initial period of three and one-half (3 1/2) years from the date of implementation of this section, (January 1, 2004), to bring the rental unit into compliance with this chapter. (Read the whole thing -- section 11.40.)

Would I be cynical to detect the hand of TREBIC in this little blob of verbiage, lurking unobtrusively in the middle of the ordinance?

Would I be even more cynical to fear that, after 3 1/2 years, when essentially nothing has changed, because the ordinance has not been enforced, TREBIC will go to the Council and say, "See -- RUCO didn't work. Repeal it!"

Mark your calendars for Spring, 2007, and we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, be prepared to see a lot of cruddy housing not being maintained.

Name That ID Guy

I blogged a bit about the theory of Intelligent Design here, and some people thought it was interesting.

So here's a little Intelligent Design in History game: Name That Intelligent Design Guy.

Rules: no Googling.

Can you guess who wrote this?

The six primary planets are revolved about the sun in circles concentric with the sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane. Ten moons are revolved about the earth, Jupiter and Saturn, in circles concentric with them, with the same direction of motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits of those planets; but it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions, since the comets range over all parts of the heavens in very eccentric orbits; for by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbs of the planets, and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detained the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions. This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another.

Answer tomorrow.

Update: And the winner is . . . Southern Rants! The author was Isaac Newton; it's from the General Scholium to his Naturalis Philosophiae Principia Mathematica. The sure giveaway that it wasn't Copernicus or Galileo is that he mentions gravity. I think it's also interesting that he talks about the possiblity of other worlds, and hints at what would later be called the anthropic principle.

Goodbye, Garrison

Garrison Keillor's radio program A Prairie Home Companion is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. NPR's Morning Edition did an interview with Keillor this morning; click here and scroll to the bottom to get the audio.

I've been a listener -- at times an avid one -- for most of 25 years. I first heard the program when I worked as a proofreader for the Cedar Rapids Gazette in 1979, helping put the Sunday paper to bed; one of the paste-up guys always had it on in the back room.

I was immediately addicted. I grew up in small Iowa towns (Ottumwa, Davenport, Mr. Vernon), and my family all come from Rockford, Illinois, just south of the Wisconsin border, so Keillor's cast of characters, with their painfully self-deprecating midwestern manners, often mixed with a rather sly, laconic irony, resonated with me.

I always thought that Keillor's strength was his sympathy for the real, existential problems of small-town folk. Keillor's love for them was apparent, even as he satirized their attitudes and faults. The show was topical in the best way, in that he took on everyday dilemmas-- how to deal with a teenage daughter who rejects your most cherished values? what do you do with a choir member who loves to sing, but can't? how can a homely, bookish boy express his love for the impossibly beautiful exchange student?-- that really admit of no solutions.

But in the past several years, Keillor has progressively allowed our world to creep into his fictional Lake Woebegone, and allowed political vitriol to creep into his show. Like a lot of people, he's very angry at George W. Bush and the people who voted for him. A number of sketches on the show around election time were flat-out mean, and I came to believe that Keillor had come to hate those small-town people he once loved, since so many of them voted for Bush. His recent off-show comments seem to back this up.

None of this displeases his audience, however, who cheerfully applaud his anti-Republican bile. So I've felt more and more like an unwanted visitor in Lake Woebegone, and I don't expect that I'll be coming back anytime soon.

Not that I'll be missed.

Update: Keillor talks about his decision to go political here. If you read it, you'll see that I fall into his "ignorant fascist bastard" category. Commenter Johnny Dakota mentions something about Keillor retiring, but I haven't heard or read anything about that.

Smothers Place turret update

A couple of days ago I voiced some doubts about the roof pitch on the new Smothers Place building in this post.

I've since heard from Greensboro architect Patrick Deaton, who writes,

I just read your item about Smothers Place and the comments from readers. I was the designer for the building and originally, we did have a steeper roof pitch on the turret, similar to the one the train station used to have. The steeper roof pitch made the turret look a bit too much like part of a Disneyworld castle. The lower roof pitch is intended to give the building more of an industrial look as opposed to a Victorian look. The increased cost for a steeper roof would have been minimal since it is such a small part of the project.

I understand the thinking here, and Patrick is much more knowledgeable than I, both about architecture in general, and about the history of Greensboro architecture in particular, since he's the former chair of the Greensboro Historic Preservation Commission.

Although my own taste runs in the direction of Victorian whimsey, it's likely that, if the Smothers Place roof pitch were steeper, someone would have accused Patrick of designing an "Elm Street Neuschwanstein."

(Neuschwanstein is the castle pictured here, built by Bavaria's mad King Ludwig II, on which the castle in the famous Disney logo is based.)

I do hope that at some point the old Southern Railroad turret will be restored in its original proportions. In talking to other architects in the past few days, I've learned that other Elm Street buildings had turrets, and it would certainly give Greensboro's downtown a distinctive cachet to have some of them back.

In the meantime, I'm eager to see how the facade of Smothers Place will turn out.

Soaking up that superior Triangle culture

Triangle area blogger Andy Wismar had a few choice words to say about Greensboro yesterday (via Hoggard):

Greensboro [is] often described as "Raleigh without the PhD's" . . . Whenever I'm there and surrounded by locals and not lawyers, I expect a spontaneous NASCAR race to materialize. (Read the whole thing.)

Well, it just so happened that the family and I were headed to the Triangle this very morning, where was I hoping to get away from all these oppressive Greensboro NASCAR fans, and mix it up with some real urban sophisticates.

Our destination was the upscale new Southpoint Mall, which was just packed full of prosperous and urbane Triangle shoppers picking up some last-minute Christmas gifts.

All my cultural expectations were met -- and more! For Southpoint had arranged a performance by one of Chapel Hill's premiere artists for the shoppers' cultural uplift. I refer, of course, to the vocal (and hair) stylings of the great Keith Henderson, performing his inspiring medley, Illusions of 'The King' -- right there in front of the Hudson Belk store!

Now my eyes are opened to what it's like to live in a real city. Never more will I be satisfied with Greensboro's meager cultural offerings.

Luckily for me, Mr. Henderson was kind enough to direct me to his website, so that we can all follow his performances and soak up more of that superior Triangle culture.

Thank you, Andy Wismar, for opening my eyes, and thank you Keith Henderson for opening my heart.

Thank you, thank you very much.

Smothers Place

I've been watching with anticipation as the new Smothers Place building has been rising on Elm Street. I admire Mark and Todd Schwartz for sinking $9 million into downtown Greensboro, and I think it's all but certain that their contribution will help drive more retail business to South Elm. It's really fun to see this happening.

But there's an architectural detail that's bugging me. Saturday morning I was heading to Blumenthal's, next door to Smothers Place, for a jacket and some jeans, and noticed how the turret on the Smothers building is shaping up.

The turret is a great idea, as it reiterates a similar decorative element on the old Southern Railway building just across the railroad tracks. Here's a picture of what that station used to look like:



But there's something slightly amiss with the Smothers Place turret.



The pitch of the roof on the turret seems too shallow -- notice how much shallower it is than the roof on the old Southern Railway station turret (which is now gone). It also seems a bit out of sync with beautifully-pitched roof of the Jefferson Pilot building in the distance, and is not in keeping with the pitch of other turrets in or near downtown Greensboro.

Compare, for example, the turrets on the beautiful Methodist church on Market Street -- and notice how well the architects of the JP building harmonized their proportions with that wonderful building.



More modest turrets, like this one on Summit Avenue, just a few blocks from downtown, also show a steeper roof pitch.



The roof on the Smothers Place turret looks a bit squat and awkward to my eye. What do you think? I don't think it would cost a whole lot to change it.