Well, not quite, but some residents of the island of Lesbos who (it is claimed) call themselves Lesbians, are upset that their locational designation has been usurped by gay women, the "Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece" in particular.

Lesbians (the gay women kind) adopted the name from the island, which was most famously the home of the poet Sappho, who, among other things, wrote poems about love between women.

The locals from Lesbos seem to have suddenly become aware of this, and are now suing in court. While both women and men are complaining about it, it's not clear which gender is more unhappy about the reaction when they describe themselves as Lesbians.

Hmmm. It's almost like one of those domain disputes over food and wine in the EU, e.g., you can't call it Champagne unless it comes fro the Champagne district of France. Except, in this case, it's not a matter of sparkling wine trying to call themselves the name of official sparkling wines, more like a brand of car calling itself the Champagne and having the French get ticked off about it.

Some possible solutions:

1. Use capital letters appropriately. I've always found it vaguely incorrect for Lesbians (the gay women) to use a capital L when gay men only get lower case letters. So let "lesbians" refer to the gay women, Lesbians to the Aegean island dwellers.  Not that it will stop the glances or snickers when someone from Lesbos mentions their nationality in conversation.
2. Drop back to the old-fashioned "sapphists" and "sapphic" nomenclatures, more accurately allowing gay women to commemorate the person they intend to honor without the folks of Lesbos getting peeved. Plus it has a cool 19th Century sort of ring to it.
3. Just call them all "gay" and stop coming up with gender-specific nomenclature. I mean, isn't that kind of discriminatory?

Obviously, I have no personal skin in the game, being neither Greek nor gay. I just have an interest in language and how it evolves, along with a disdain for political correctness (though a fondness for politeness, which is not the same thing). I don't want to tell people what they can or should call themselves, while at the same time I can understand the dismay of some folks of Lesbos (whether or not they represent a majority, or even if people from that island actually call themselves Lesbian) at having people make assumptions (or jokes) about them.

No good answers here, assuming the questions are valid, but I'll be curious to see how it plays out in the Greek courts. 

Filed under :: Gay Stuff :: Writing and Language :: ZT & PC
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One of the side joys of having a spouse who enjoys wordplay, esp. of the bawdy kind, is that we can be having quite suggestive conversations and repartee without our young'un following along.

An eventual follow-up joy is that we'll be able to embarrass her greatly once she is able to follow along.

Double entendres -- the gifts that keep giving.

Filed under :: Love and Marriage :: Parenting :: Writing and Language
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Time to clear out the various tabs ...

1. At what point do fanfic and fan websites cross the line from fair use to infringement. A new Harry Potter case may help pin that down.
2. What actually kills you in a crucifixion?
3. Not quite sure what Six Apart's new ad network is supposed to give me that simply including Google Ads doesn't do. Not that Google Ads have netted me any big bucks.
4. Recreating childhood photos.
5. Dora the Carefully-Tailored-by-Committee Explorer. Bruce mentioned this article the other evening. I thought we were past Dora, but since Kaylee loves it, Katherine's gotten back into it, too. And, worse, Go, Diego, Go.
6. Worst baby names. It's almost impossible to come with a name that some kid, somewhere, isn't going to poke fun at, but it's nice to at least make the ffort.
7. How to terminate a Terminator.

Filed under :: Blogging :: Media - Cartoons :: Media - Movies :: Media Moguls :: Parenting :: Potpourri :: Writing and Language
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I love the ampersand. Here's a great article (from Adobe) about it. And another from Wikipedia. I think it's cool that the "&" has gained new uses in programming languages and the like, just as the dwindling-toward-extinction "@" (the "asperand") has become reborn as an addressing "at" symbol on the Web.

Filed under :: Writing and Language
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How to tell if you're being followed.

Two questions: first, who do you think you are? Are you really so secret and important that someone is prepared to spend time and money watching where you're going? During the 1980s miners' strikes the press reported that an associate of Arthur Scargill fled the United Kingdom, convinced that the British "secret police" were following him. Why should they? It would have been perfectly obvious where he was and what he was doing: organising strikes is hardly clandestine. (He took refuge in East Germany, of all places.)

Second, is there someone out there who very badly wants to know what you're doing, who believes that surveillance is the only way to find out, and who is able to follow you themselves or pay someone else to? Unless such a person or organisation exists, forget it.

Good writing reference.

Filed under :: Writing and Language
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Random pieces and bits on my way toward shutting down ...

1. A trio of us went into Amsterdam today -- a bit later than expected, as I got waylayed by a Big Boss into a project review meeting that ran an hour-plus. It was a rainy day pretty much all day -- not serious rain, but a serious drizzle. We took the Canal Bus canal boats -- that let us get a tour of the canals and get on and off at their stops at will for the day. We didn't take as much advantage of that as I would have liked, but it was still handy.
2. The Rijksmuseum is another of the fabulous 19th Century buildings in Amsterdam, with a huge collection of fabulous mostly-Dutch art. It's currently undergoing a multi-year rennovation, so "only" a side gallery is open, which "only" has about 400 of their top pieces ("The Masterpieces" collection, rightly named). It still took us a couple of hours to work through, and it was really spiffy. Very highly recommended for art and history fans. Lots of Rembrandts but also works by Vermeer, Hols, and Steen. It is (for those who "get it") the anti-"Tate Modern" -- lots of vibrant, realistic, enjoyable masterpieces.
3. The Van Gogh Museum ... not so much. It has the largest Van Gogh collection in the world, which now means I have officially seen as much Van Gogh as I ever need to. On the other hand, they have a faboo John Everett Millais exhibition going on (Ophelia sinking beneath the water; the Princes in the Tower, that Millais). A much more enjoyable area than the titular Van Gogh stuff. Ironically, in the lower gallery of the museum, which includes works by artists who inspired Van Gogh, my attention was drawn to a really spiffy painting that looked Pre-Raphaelite in subject, but far too sketchy/rough for one of that school; it turned out, though, to be a lovely unfinished Alma-Tadema, who's one of our favorite Pre-Raphaelites (there were two others of his pieces, portraits, in the collection).
4. Weather was drizzly all day, which both made it a bit annoying to take photos and, worse, meant the big glass windows of the canal bus were nearly impossible to see through about water level.
5. The Dutch countryside reminds me, not surprisingly, a lot of the English countryside -- save it's much flatter, has waterways, and is uniformly neatly manicured. Many swans and geese (the big fat Dutch kind, not Canadian) about. Also, in the city, a fair amount of graffiti.
6. Amsterdam's canals -- there are 60+ miles of them in the city, with 1250 bridges, I'm told (500 from the 17th Century) -- are full of houseboats -- 2500-odd of them. Some of these are the low-slung houseboats of the Parisian style. Others are, literally, boats that people are living on. Some are, basically, mobile homes on large concrete piers. It's kind of crazy, but fun.
7. A lot of Amsterdam was built in the 17th Century. The harbor used to be open to the sea, but eventually got locked off, so the water in the canals is "fresh" (well, not salt). The canals themselves have locks, too, and nightly they are closed and pumped to move the water through them (since there are no tides or other natural currents). The canals themselves were used to transport goods in from the harbors to the warehouses. The buildings are all row houses (or housing from former warehouse space), all of them very quaint looking, most with very narrow floor plans -- property taxation was done based on length of street frontage. As a result, most houses have very narrow, very steep staircases that you can't move furniture into. As a result of that, most houses have a hoisting beam at the very top so things can be hoisted to the upper floors (which always have doors or large windows). The locals say that's one reason why the facades of the buildings tend to be cantilevered outwards a bit, but given that they also tend to be a bit crooked -- and that most of the city is built on wooden piers pounded into the ground in the 17th Century -- I think subsidance is also a culprit.
8. We went to a great Italian bistro, the Ristorante Savini, not too far south of the Centraal railway station. Best food I had all trip, though I didn't object to most of the meals, and I'm always a sucker for osso buco. Also the best service we've had on the trip. Pleasant meal, though I ended up in a conversation with two older English couples at the adjoining table, who started off by interrupting us to ask if I was (from my accent) California. That turned into a free-ranging discussion of George W. Bush, McCain, Clinton, US immigration policy (both countries), the war in Iraq, national health care, etc. (Interestingly, while we were on the train back to Leiden, some Russian (?) young ladies coming from the airport asked me, "Do you speak English?" in order to find out if they were on a train that went to Rotterdam, which they were).
9. Two UK slang terms I picked up here: pukka (from Indian, for A-1 Okay), and plonker (stupid git). The terms came up in discussions of some UK TV shows, in particular Only Fools and Horses. Alas, nobody was impressed by my knowledge of Torchwood and Doctor Who, though they were pleased to find out we get Graham Norton in the US. Sadly, they'd never heard of Coupling.

Phew.

Off to the airport tomorrow early in the morning (hopefully before the impending big storm). Need to do some shopping, since all I've managed to find is a couple of small things for Katherine and some museum collection books (ahem). Didn't even think to shop for something for Margie at De Wallen last night ...

Anyhow, time for a last pint with the gang, head up to pack, and hit the hay. Or something like that. Chat with folks in-time-zone soon ...

Filed under :: Food & Drink - Restaurants :: Media - Art :: Media - TV :: Travel :: Writing and Language
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From one of my colleagues in the Netherlands: someone who tells a good story but who may be boasting a bit more than warranted: "All mouth, no trousers." 

It might lose something in the translation.

Filed under :: Writing and Language
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From Jeffrey Kacirk's "Forgotten English" calendar this year:

The indisposition of a drunkard after a debauch.
-- James Hallwell, Dictionary of Archaic and Provicial Words (1855)

What a wonderful word.   (And, no, there's no particular meaning to my choosing it today. :-) )

Filed under :: Writing and Language
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Evidently, the font you choose for a paper can affect the grade of said paper.  And we're not talking about being dinged for choosing something outré or difficult to read or silly-looking, but choosing between standard, familiar fonts.

It's hardly a controlled experiment -- but style does have an impact on the perception of substance.  Assuming (for argument) designers and corporate identity consultants aren't total rip-offs, presentation does influence acceptance.  Why wouldn't that be the case, somehow, with typefaces and academic papers?

Filed under :: Media :: School Daze :: Writing and Language
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So ... some folks consider New Year Resolutions passé.  And, certainly, there's something to be said for "resolving" every day to do what's right.  And there's something to be said against the standard cycle of promises made-and-broken.

That said, I'm a traditionalist, if nothing else, so here are a few to toss out there.  In fact, as reflections of last year, they are, pretty much, an ongoing tradition:

1. Spend more time with Kitten. Keep up the karate stuff, but also be more involved on a daily basis with her homework and other stuff.  Get that time in before she decides that Daddy is (like New year Resolutions) passé. 
2. Get my virtual world in order.  Get my blogs updated and cleaned up.  Increase traffic to WIST.  Get my photos caught up, including the stuff I have on other sites.
3. Write. Edit. Write. No real progress with that this past year.  It's not clear to me how, amidst all the other commitments I have, how to leverage this -- but it's something I really want to do.
4. Be fit. Repeat the 1,500 miles, keep up the karate -- and find a new Geek Diet tool.  Get back under 200 by June, and to 185 by the end of the year.  There are some things I can do toward that end (that are sustainable and rational); I just need to do them.
5. Ditto for last year's addendum, of course.

Reasonable plans for the future, stretch goals, or crazy-ass pie-in-the-sky?  I have no idea -- but let's see.

And here's hoping that for all of you, 2008 is at least as good a year, if not better, and that the New Year brings joy and prosperity to you and yours.  Happy New Year!

Filed under :: Blogging :: Karate :: Parenting :: Personal :: Weight :: Writing and Language
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