Hahahahahahahaha MeanAlex!

Yes! Josh watches Jeopardy!. Or at least he reads Mean Alex.

This is meaner and funnier than me. And has screenshots!

Yikes!

Kentucky and New York. Kentucky, dang it.

Two of the four men on Mt Rushmore were born in Virginia; these two states were the birthplaces of the other two.

Only one of them knew Lincoln was born in Kentucky - and she, too, first guessed Ohio - the other said my mistake of Illinois. I knew better. At least as soon as I saw "Kentucky" I was all "D'oh!"

Sheesh.

Amazink!

Seriously? This (in the entirely reasonable case that you aren't reading Apartment 3-G) is the governor of New York and his inamorata, the stunningly dimwitted Lu Ann Powers. The funeral is for the lieutenant governor (who just died of a stroke, sending Peter into a panicked depression).

The funeral seems to have a bit hole-in-the-corner, with no crowds, cops, press or bodyguards. But that's not the wonderful thing about it! I find it unbelievable that he's wearing his standard blue suit with a checky yellow tie and just delightful that she is wearing her pink blouse with the Peter Pan collar (the same one she's been wearing since before the dear departed ... well, departed). I'm sure that Peter's old "friend" and fashion maven Zoey was appalled.

The importance of register

The text is talking about Gazprom and its European customers. In a section dealing with why the Czechs pay such a high price, compared to the British or the Dutch, is this sentence:

Вaжнeйший чeшский постaвщик гaзa при этом являeтся eвропeйским уникумом: он полностью нaходится в чaстных рукaх.

Now, уникум (unicum) is a word I'm not so familiar with that I don't feel I should check that my instinctive "unique, yeah?" reaction is right (after all, there are plenty of Russian words that were clearly borrowed and which don't mean what you might think, like аккурат (akkurat) which means "punctual" or "neat, tidy"). And here's where the importance of register comes in. This is its set of meanings:

general: unique; unicum; the Arabian bird; best thing since sliced bread; one of a kind; world-beater; unique object; one-off
religious: unicum (Latin for "the only one")
slang: bee's knees; the bee's knees

But

This largest Czech gas supplier is, by the way, the European bee's knees: it is completely privately owned

No.

And

This largest Czech gas supplier is, by the way, a European world beater: it is completely privately owned

Also no.

And as for

This largest Czech gas supplier is, by the way, the European best thing since sliced bread: it is completely privately owned

Not just no, but hell no.

For that matter

This largest Czech gas supplier is, by the way, the European Arabian bird: it is completely privately owned

is also no good, though it's better than the others. Instead, you're going to have to go with something like

This largest Czech gas supplier is, by the way, a rarity among European companies: it is completely privately owned.

Surprising? Really?

At TPM Josh Marshall notes that

At the height of Cruzapalooza, a number of conservatives claimed the press was ignoring Cruz's 'filibuster' while they'd all but gone giddy over Wendy Davis' filibuster in the Texas state legislature.

After doing some digging around in Google Trends, Marshall has to conclude:

But even with all these caveats, it's hard not to conclude that there was a lot more interest [on the part of the public] in Davis's gambit than Cruz's - a fact I find quite surprising. If anything it's the national news media that's out of sync with popular interest and perception.

What I find astonishing is that nowhere does he mention the big difference: Davis was really filibustering, and under some extremely strict rules (if she'd pulled out Green Eggs and Ham she'd have been gone), and filibustering a bill that had an excellent - one might say ironclad - chance of passing otherwise. Cruz was grandstanding, not actually preventing anything from being voted on.

So yeah: people were more interested in what she was doing than what he was.That Marshall can't understand that is probably a result of TPM's (inevitable) slide into "national news media"hood.

The Week in Entertainment

TV: Modern Family, back with two funny episodes - so glad Cam and Mitch are getting married! The Neighbors - funny and a bit poignant. But I love that Amber was smiling in the photo! And The Middle is back, too. "He's only 42 minutes away!" - and context rules that sentence. (And everything else.) Broadchurch - I didn't expect him to be the killer, but it does all make sense. And a nice ending, too. Orphan Black - these people are creepy. Who the hell leaves Barbie dolls around? Yes, I get it's the clone thing, but still... creepy waste of effort. Why scare them so much? Can't find them all? Yes, I'm sucked in. Sleepy Hollow is still intriguing, though I must object to the notion that a witch would be identified as such on her gravestone in the freaking church cemetery, even if it was decoy grave. Not to mention that American witches weren't burned, they were hanged. (Giles Corey was pressed to death, but that's because he wouldn't confess.) I also gave the new Michael J Fox Show a try - it's cute enough, but it seems like another wacky-family sitcom, with added Parkinson's, and I don't know that I need that.

Read: All six and a half of the Iron Druid books. My gripes about Hearne's misunderstanding language terms notwithstanding, this is an engaging, fast-paced, and fascinating series. Can't wait for the next book (but will have to, since it's not coming until summer). I did take a break after the third one ('cause Atticus had really annoyed me) and read Aunty Lee's Delights, a delightful cozy set in Singapore, before returning to the Druids, Aesir, and Olympians. Fortunately, the Milk, an adorable children's book by Neil Gaiman. And began This Is How You Die, the second Machine of Death collection. So far, some excellent ones in the mix ("Shiv Sena Riot" and "Screaming, Crying, Alone, and Afraid" are my favorites so far).

Talking about grammar: he's doing it wrong

Kevin Hearne writes a very engaging story. I'm enjoying The Iron Druid series (though Atticus can be a real arrogant jerk at times). But he should stop trying to talk about grammar; he gets the terms wrong. Very wrong.

For instance, in the second book (Hexed) Atticus and Leif the vampire discuss Leif's need to learn to blend in. For instance, Atticus says, he should learn to speak more casually:

"How should I have responded?"

"First, get rid of 'well.' Nobody uses that anymore either. Now they always say 'I'm good.""

Leif frowned. "But that is grammatically improper."

"These people don't care about proper. You can tell them they're trying to use an adjective as an adverb and they'll just stare at you like you're a toad."

"Their educational system has suffered serious setbacks, I see."

And, by the way, this comes up later in the book when Atticus screams at a teacher that taking attendance is "what you're best at, because the gods know it's not teach them English. Damn kids don't know the difference between an adjective and an adverb!"

Problem is, "well" isn't an adverb in "I'm well." Well is two different words in English. One is the adverb of "good" but the other is an adjective meaning "not sick". (Actually, of course, there are a lot of wells - there's the noun that you get water from, and the verb meaning to rise to the surface and flow over, and the interjection... ) When you answer the question "How are you?" with "I'm doing well", you're using the adverb, but if you say, as Leif did, "I am well," then you're using the adjective. (By the way, his actual answer was: "While I am well, not so jocund as you." Jocund? A freaking adjective, is it not?)

The copula (linking verb to be) takes a predicate nominative, meaning an adjective, not an adverb. "Well" is modifying "I" in that sentence, unlike the "well" in "I'm doing well", where it's modifying the verb. Just so it's "The dog is black" not "blackly"; "the house is large" not "largely"; "the shirt is red" not "redly". If you (or Hearne, or Leif) wants to complain about "I'm good", you or he should feel free. Just don't complain that "good" is an adjective, because (a) it has to be after is, and (b) so is well!!!.

And then this in Hunted:

"Mr. O'Sullivan? What are you doing here?"

"Miss Sokolowski. I could ask you the same."

"It's Sokołowska in Poland. There are genitive endings on names here that I didn't bother with in America."

No no no no no.

That's a GENDER ending. It's not a GENITIVE ending. Those are very different things. One indicates the class (or gender or declension pattern) of the word, and the other is its case, that is, the grammatical function. Thus, Sokołowska is the feminine form of Sokołowski, which is the masculine form. But it - both of them - is the nominative. The genitive ending would be -iej for the feminine and iego for the masculine.

So Hearne sort of knows what he's talking about. But he doesn't know the terms to use. And that makes his characters sound stupider than they're meant to.

Rafting

Vachel Lindsay's poem "The Raft" says "(this author)  in white / Stands gleaming like a pillar of the night". The contestant said ... Thor Heyerdahl.

I suppose Heyerdahl is someone you think of when you here "raft", but considering that Lindsay died in 1931, you'd do well to think back a ways. To another famous raft, and an author who wore white.

To Mark Twain, in fact.

(The poem is here.) A sample:

All praise to Emerson and Whitman, yet
The best they have to say, their sons forget.
But who can dodge this genius of the stream,
The Mississippi Valley’s laughing dream?
He is the artery that finds the sea
In this the land of slaves, and boys still free.
He is the river, and they one and all
Sail on his breast, and to each other call.

Come let us disgrace ourselves,
Knock the stuffed gods from their shelves,
And cinders at the schoolhouse fling.
Come let us disgrace ourselves,
And live on a raft with gray Mark Twain
And Huck and Jim
And the Duke and the King.

The Week in Entertainment

TV: Last Tango in Halifax is still good, but definitely getting soapy.

Read: Should mention that Indexing continues to be excellent; several new installments have arrived and the tension is really building. On a friend's recommendation I'm reading Hounded, book 1 of the Iron Druid series, and I'm enjoying it very much. Wonderful narrative voice and fascinating set-up and characters. Also got All Yesterdays, a lovely collection of cutting-edge paleoart (including a few old-style paintings to show how far we've come in understanding, and a few 'reconstructions' of modern animals to show how little we really know).

Sort of proves the point

Ha. The AP story in the Washington Times today said Jeff Daniels won the Best Actor-Drama Emmy for his role as a "liberal news anchor".

Um, I believe the point of Bill's character is that he is a registered Republican who proudly describes himself as conservative and is outraged that the crazies have taken over his party - people who aren't conservatives. If AP (and/or the Times) thinks he's playing a liberal, it just goes to show that either they're not paying attention, or they've never met a real liberal.

The Week in Entertainment

Live: Sarah Brightman in concert. Entertaining, though I really don't understand the musical business drive to amp everything to 11 and then mike the singer as hard as possible to give them a chance to be heard. Even someone like Brightman can't really do it. (Also, I think her lighting designer was doing his damnedest to burn out the lenses of all the cellphones in the audience. I don't know if that's even possible, but I'll bet the pictures weren't good.)

Film: The Way Way Back, which was so good. Excellent cast, quiet moments of great meaning. Wonderful movie.

 DVD: World War Z, which I enjoyed very much.

TV: Last Tango in Halifax which is darker and more complicated - the two sons-in-law, the daughters' love lives - than I had expected. But it's beautifully filmed and the two old ones (Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid) are wonderful. They do have a creepy "Miranda" in the UK, though, don't they? The second bit deliberately undermines the first. The Newsroom ended the presidential election and its season with satisfying developments that make me wish the next season was sooner than it is.. Broadchurch, moving the story along nicely. Sleepy Hollow, which is intriguing enough to warrant watching the next episode, but is very dark - everything happens at night, and it's just damned hard to see what's happening. Since Paul Krugman mentioned it and BBC America is rerunning the first season, I tried Orphan Black. The first two episodes are quite intriguing, and I'm starting to wonder about the original of the clones - was she messed up, too? The Neighbors began, after moving nights (why? I wonder), and is setting up a season of romantic angst that might be really funny but might not. We'll see.

Read: The Golem and the Jinni, a very entertaining book about, well, a golem and a jinni in 1900's Manhattan.Very good story, with interesting looks at free will and the value of relationships through the prism of their very different outlooks.

Yes, just maybe...

Paul Krugman on why the GOP hates food stamps so much:

There’s the thing about SNAP: it’s one federal program that really has exploded in size in recent years, with the number of beneficiaries rising around 80 percent. Of course, it’s exploded for a very good reason, namely a once-in-three-generations economic crisis, and the program has stayed large because our so-called recovery hasn’t trickled down to the bottom half of the income distribution. But the right doesn’t care about any of that; in food stamps, it gets to see what it wants to see — surging government spending! Millions of takers! And so food stamps become public enemy #2.

Number 1 is, of course, Obamacare, which really does represent a major expansion of the government’s role. And that, perhaps, is where [Tyler] Cowen’s weakness theory may come in: Republicans, frantic over their inability to kill health reform, may be trying to make themselves feel better by lashing out at the poor.

Seems like a good guess to me...

The "balance" that isn't

From the much-missed-by-(at-least-some)-Post-readers Dan Froomkin, an excellent look at "media bias" - and how the fear of displaying it has led to context-less and therefore meaning-less parrot-reporting.

The Republican-led House yesterday voted to make deep cuts to the food stamps program that has kept millions of American families from going hungry since the recession hit, saying its response to growing need was instead a sign of bloat and abuse.

The New York Times editorial board this morning said the vote "can be seen only as an act of supreme indifference."

But that's not the way the paper's own reporters covered it. Like those at essentially every other mainstream news organization, they wrote it straight. They focused on procedure. They quoted both sides. And they called it a day.

I decided to closely examine this morning's coverage of the vote because such a blatantly absurd and cruel move struck me as a good test of whether the Washington press corps could ever bring itself to call things as they so obviously are -- or whether they would check their very good brains at the door and just write triangulating mush that leaves readers to fend for themselves. It was no contest.

I't's an excellent review of the coverage, and the way few mainstream reporters even hinted at the fraudulent "balance" of GOP says it's bloated; Dems say it's saving families.

This sort of thing, along with "journalists" like Chuck Todd saying things like

"But more importantly, [Americans would repeat] stuff that Republicans have successfully messaged against [Obamacare.] They don't repeat the other stuff because they haven't even heard the Democratic message. What I always love is people say, 'Well, it's you folks' fault in the media.' No, it's the President of the United States' fault for not selling it."

- this is why Wikileaks. This is why Snowden.

This is why "Old Media" is dying; it's suicide by profit-driven-owners.

Step Three: Passive!

Paul Krugman's column today drew (among others) these two comments, one in reply to the other. Here I'm not discussing the content of the first comment's suggestions, nor their practicability. Instead I draw your attention to a phrase in the response - my italics:

Simply defund Congress retroactively to the beginning of 2013; cancel the members' health benefits, pensions, and any other remuneration associated with their membership that formerly august body retroactively to the beginning of their current terms. Deny them any federal benefits to procure food, clothing, or housing. Do this, and let it stand until six months after the Senate and the House have approved a budget that improves the quality of life of the so-called bottom 80 percent of the American population. This will also encompass the time in which President Obama should by all rights have raised the debt ceiling, citing the powers contaIned in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Let the members of Congress work for free, much like the new employment subculture of interns, who are cheated by large corporations and inadvertently take away paying jobs from workers beyond the intern stage of their careers.

Do this before this country descends into madness. It's a simple enough request from a simple American citizen.

Dear -: You say "simply defund Congress," but the problem is WHO would defund them since the House of Representatives holds the purse strings of the nation according to the Constitution. Are suggesting that Obama disband the Congress, like Morsi did in Egypt? You say "deny them any Federal benefits" you use the passive voice failing to identify the actors of your suggested defunding.

Why is it that people cannot identify the passive? "Deny them any Federal benefits" is not the passive. It's an imperative, and it's active voice.

Granted, the commenter is "failing to identify the actors of [his] suggested defunding", but failing to identify the actor is neither the hallmark nor a necessary condition of the passive. Plenty of active constructions totally hide the "actor", if by that you mean the person responsible (the bus blew up, the rules require you to dress differently, the poison killed three innocent people), and plenty of passive sentences point a rather emphatic finger (the man was killed by his own doctor, mistakes were made by each and every one of us, the civilians were gassed on the orders of their own president).

It's certainly akin to "and then a miracle happens" or "step two: ???" to just wave your hand and say "defund Congress". But it's not using the passive voice.

Can we please attack the real problem, and not the not-even-real symptom?

Intonation!

Certainly "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime" was a hit for Dean Martin, but Alex just made it sound like it was his only hit!

Harvest Moon

From Flying Deuces, Laurel and Hardy sing and dance

One reason I love the train

Here's the policy on changing or canceling your Amtrak reservation:

If you change your reservation, reprint your eTicket yourself or obtain a new eTicket at Quik-Trak or from a station ticket agent (if either are available). If your travel plans change, call us before departure to modify your reservation. If you have not done this and do not board your train, your entire reservation will be canceled; the money paid for the trip will be stored in an eVoucher that you may redeem at an Amtrak station ticket office for future travel.

So you don't pay to change your train from one day or time to another. You only pay if you go to a more expensive trip (like from a regional to the Acela), and if you go to less expensive one, they refund you the difference (cheerfully, I may add - I have done this and gotten money back from them!). If you cancel before the trip, they refund it all. And if you just don't show up, they give you a voucher for the full fare to be used on another train.

Unlike the airlines and their "change fee" (which might be more than the ticket cost, depending).

Ah, they're back

Yikes! Not only did Charlton Heston not play Spartacus ... Spartacus is not a Biblical role!

 (Yes, Jeopardy! is new tonight and starting off with a great WTF?! moment...)

It's ours!

Seriously? Michael Hayden said "Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide"?

Okay, give him a break, he probably meant "email provider", as the Post notes in the story. But then this:

Asked whether the United States's promiscuous surveillance was setting a harmful example for other nations, Hayden suggested that the Internet's origins in the United States partially justifies the NSA's conduct. If the Web lasts another 500 years, he said, it may be the thing the United States is remembered for "the way the Romans are remembered for their roads."

"We built it here, and it was quintessentially American," he said, adding that partially due to that, much of traffic goes through American servers where the government "takes a picture of it for intelligence purposes."

O rly?

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what the heck he even means. We built it, so we're permitted to spy on everything that transpires there? And only we are?

The Week in Entertainment

Film: The utterly splendid The Patience Stone, whose star, Golshifteh Farahani, is mesmerizing.

TV: Thanks to Kathy's comment last week, I found Silk on On Demand, and she's right: it's superb. What wonderful characters and a great ensemble cast. I hope there'll be more of it. Last Tango in Halifax was on my DVR, so I saw the first part of it (anything with Derek Jacobi gets at least a look), and I loved it. A bit predictable, but he's so good you don't care. The Newsroom - election night! Woohoo!

Read: Strangeways to Oldham, a fairly funny mystery about a couple of pensioners in a small English town solving the murder of a third. A couple more old mysteries by JJ Connington. The Red Queen Dies, an extremely good alternate-world (just a little bit alternate) SF mystery. Started So Wrong for So Long, Greg Mitchell's book about "how the press, the pundits, and the president failed in Iraq", which I will probably read in bits since it's not pleasant reading, and Scalzi's new collection The Mallet of Loving Correction, which is made to be read in pieces.

Welcome to the Altiverse

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida:

"It is against the norms of international standards and to let something like this go unanswered, I think will weaken our resolve. I -- I know that President Reagan would have never let this happen. He would stand up to this. And President Obama -- the only reason he is consulting with Congress, he wants to blame somebody for his lack of resolve. We have to think like President Reagan would do and he would say chemical use is unacceptable."

Okay, I know that the GOP has turned Reagan into a mythical creature, but for the love of Pete. People are alive who were around back then. For crying out loud, Ros-Lehtinen was around back then.

How can she pretend not to remember that Reagan approved of - in fact, facilitated - Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against Iran? Not to mention the Kurds, who were "his own people!!" 100,000 people died during An-Afal. But (back then) Hussein was our Middle Eastern despot, so we - and Reagan - were for it.

Yes, I know that Reagan and Hussein on the same side is anathema to the modern GOP. But too bad. In this universe, it happened.

It did happen.

So, without in any way condoning the behavior of Bashar Al-Assad, I have to call out Ros-Lehtinen and those who enable her and her ilk: you are liars.

Happy Friday!

Pragmatics, Herb.

Oh, Herb.

Actually, of course, this is an example of why that whole "two negatives make a positive" argument is fallaciously applied to language. If it were applicable, then this sentence - I ain't never had no gumbo taste like that before - would be completely acceptable.

Herb's problem, though, is he's socially inept. Intonation would tell him whether his customer meant by "I have not ever had any gumbo taste like this before" that he liked the taste or not. The number of negatives has nothing to do with it.

Not quite the same thing.

Name something you'd hate to get your fingers stuck in, says Steve Harvey.

Poop, says the contestant.

I think she mixed up "get your fingers stuck in" and "stick your fingers in".

Remembering

I was at work that day, and spent much of it in a parking lot as they tried to evacuate our building in nothing flat. But, really, who am I, that anybody cares where I was or what I was doing?

Still, here's what I think about:

A man describing making his way down the stairs from the 67th floor of the North Tower:

"And then when we got to around the 35th floor we had to move over for the firefighters. I mean, we were all trying to get out, and here they came, up into the building."

Interesting choice of words

Found this article in a Russian paper:

Известная российская актриса выходит замуж за подругу

В то время как в РФ пока не готовы принять однополые браки, российские пары с нетрадиционной сексуальной ориентацией стараются узаконить свои отношения за границей.

Famous Russian actress is marrying her girlfriend

While the Russian Federation is still not ready to accept same-sex marriages, Russian couples with nontraditional sexual orientation strive to legalize their relationships abroad.

What caught my eye was the актриса выходит замуж за подругу. Because it's not just "is marrying".

Ordinarily Russian has two ways to say "get married", and which one you use depends on the gender of the subject. Выйти замуж is for women - it literally means "go out to behind a husband". For men, you say жениться, which is "to get wived (wifed?)". (There are of course some more generic ways to put it, which aren't often used: идти под венец, to go under a wreathe (from the custom of a bridal wreath); венчаться, which is literally 'to be wreathed'; сочетаться браком, to combine by marriage; and соединяться, to unite - while these can be (though rarely) used intransitively - 'they got married' - they are particularly used in the transitive sense; there's no "he married her - I mean, performed her marriage" confusion in Russian. The first couple of these are quite poetic, the third quite formal, and the last one has about the same register as the English translation. In other words, you don't see any of them very often (although из-под венца, out from under the wreath is used quite a lot, either for genuine backing out of marriage and/or stealing the bride from the altar, or - more often than we would use the same metaphor - for snatching something away at the last minute (I remember seeing an article which said that Barcelona had led its fans to believe their signing David Beckham was a done deal and Тут-то "Реал" и кинул своим "заклятым друзьям" подлянку, увел невесту прямо из-под венца (just at that moment Real played a dirty trick on their "frenemies" and stole the bride right from the altar).)

So it struck me odd that they used the выйти замуж construction here. I would have gone for актриса женится с подругой, the actress is taking her girlfriend to wife - if I hadn't said актриса и подруга сочетаются браком (the actress and her girlfriend are uniting in matrimony), which seems the neutral choice used by a lot of the media - and not just for gays, by the way; in any context where both members of the couple are famous or getting equal billing.

This wording reads like "the actress is taking her girlfriend as a husband". I get that "she is taking a wife" would also sound odd to Russians, but surely "taking her girlfriend as a wife" sounds less weird?

(Of course, I'm sure the weirdness was desired.)

The Week in Entertainment

edited to say: Yikes! I had a very busy weekend and Monday, and ... well ... I thought this was in draft, not scheduled, status!

Film: Blue Jasmine, which was wonderful to watch. Cate Blanchett is astonishing - so are Sally Hawkins and Bobby Cannavale, for that matter.

TV: The Newsroom - wow. I can't believe Leona's going to go head to head with that guy - the whole A Team should have been fired (of course, there wouldn't be a show if that happened!) Broadchurch - well, obviously Jack was going to be (a) innocent and (b) dead, because that's the trope. I didn't expect the reason he was (a), I admit. And the show is still riveting.

Read: A mystery about eventing called Murder She Rode - stupid title but a pretty good story. The author did do something that annoys me mightily; she writes in first person, and then decides she needs to tell the reader things that the narrator wouldn't know, so she abruptly chunks in  a couple of scattered third-person chapters that don't feature the narrator. Also, Sir Laurence Dies, a book set in the 1930s but just written, about a Dutch psychologist-sleuth, pretty good. A couple of books written in the 1920s by a guy called JJ Connington, also mysteries, and quite intricate and well done.

In this universe...

Krugman writes of the lower-than-expected Obamacare premiums:

In an alternative universe, conservatives would be celebrating this good news as a vindication of their views. See, the Heritage Foundation — which actually developed the original version of this plan! — was right! You don’t need single-payer, just a properly set up market system. (For the record, I believe that single-payer would be better and cheaper, and it’s still a goal we should seek).

But in this universe, conservatives claim that creating a real market for health insurance, and making sure that everyone can afford it, is the moral equivalent of slavery.

Happy Birthday, Janet

Here is a picture of my mother, age 2, when they were living in Akron, Ohio - 1924. I don't think she wanted her picture taken.

I miss her.

Happy Labor Day

This year we in the US celebrate Labor Day today.

By Hammer and Hand all Arts do stand.

Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts. Molly Ivins

Labor Day differs in every essential from other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflict and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation. Samuel Gompers

If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. Abraham Lincoln

Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. Ronald Reagan

With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men. Clarence Darrow

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership - the American worker. US Department of Labor

The Week In Entertainment

TV: How did I not know about The Newsroom? Watched the first season, and will catch up on the second one as quickly as possible. Wonderful stuff. Last episode (for the season) of Perception, which was okay. Glad to see they're not trying to push Daniel and Kate together; it wouldn't be believable. Almost the end (!!) of Futurama. One more episode.

Read:  The Great Dissent, about Oliver Wendell Holmes and the rise of taking the First Amendment seriously - with the resurgence of the Espionage Act of 1917, very timely too. Also Gideon's Trumpet, about the right to an attorney. Then diversion again with Neil Gaiman's lovely collection M is for Magic.