In the last few weeks, I've been corrected several times for using the word "album" to refer to a CD. I've been told the usage is outdated and/or inaccurate. So given the chance to do some "obsessive research" as well as indulge two of my favorite geekery topics (music and words), I thought I'd post a photo essay of some items from my album collection.

Tags: music, photos, words
Current Music: Leroy Carr, "Don't Start No Stuff," remastered from a 78

I've had a quote in the Quote Server for years, attributed to Louis Armstrong: "All music is folk music. Horses don't sing." But recently someone on the folk music list questioned whether Big Bill Broonzy had said it first.

( To the microfilm! )

Tags: music, words
Current Music: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Do I Get To Be Called a Man?"

The Press Association (the UK version of the AP), in a story about Eric Clapton investing in a historic London men's clothing store, gave us the historical context:

Cordings was the originator of the Covert coat and the Tattersall shirt and made riding boots from the Queen Mother, the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Simpson.

Those Victorian tanning salons must have been brutal!

Tags: words

Can someone explain to me how a glaring grammatical error -- "there was nothing where it's face should be" -- makes its way from a professional writer with a dozen published novels, to one of the biggest SF magazines in the field, to page three of The Year's Best Science Fiction anthology?

Tags: sf, words

A new brand of milk has shown up in the local bodega lately, Cream-O-Land. Their label design somewhat resembles the organic milk brands, and proudly proclaims, FROM REAL COWS. As opposed to...?

Tags: stupidity, words

In a scare story in today's New York Times, we're told that even high-end software jobs are vulnerable to "migrating abroad":

In the debate over high-technology work migrating abroad, there has been widespread agreement on at least one thing: the jobs requiring higher levels of skill are the least at risk.

However, it seems that Microsoft has "agreed to pay two Indian outsourcing companies, Infosys and Satyam, to provide skilled "software architects" for Microsoft projects."

But those architects are working where? "At Microsoft facilities in the United States." They're Indian citizens who come in on H1-B visas to work for the company. That's offshore? Only if you consider Redmond to be "offshore" of Seattle (which, I imagine, many do, but that's a separate issue).

U.S. software companies have been bringing citizens of other countries here on H1-B visas for years to work on projects, frequently for very high-end work. The number of these visas has dropped: From nearly 200,000 in 2002 and more than 300,000 in 2003, the H1-B cap dropped back to 65,000 in October of last year. (This fact sheet shows data from the Bureau of Citizen and Immigration Services through 2003; and this article discusses the cap. The Wall Street Journal also discussed it in March of this year, but that article is available only to paid subscribers.)

So, there's no news here -- the practice is nothing new -- and the description of this as "offshoring" is questionable. Is it "offshoring" because Microsoft is paying an Indian company to supply the workers? Is it therefore also "offshoring" when a U.S. company hires consultants from Accenture, which risks losing a a big homeland security contract because it's based in Bermuda?

The Times got the story from The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers , a CWA-backed activist group supporting the rights of technology workers. (And good for them, but let's try to keep our facts in line.) Surprisingly, the organization's article on the topic is a little more balanced, pointing out that nothing indicates the consultants replaced U.S. workers, and they are being paid U.S. wages for the work. WashTech's concern seems to be that Microsoft has been aggressively pushing managers to send work offshore, and the contract workers may be part of a larger plan to train high-level architects here, then send them back to India to run projects for Microsoft there. That might be an interesting "offshoring" story, but it's not what the Times wrote.

Tags: media, tech, words

J.K. Rowling has a rather charming web site that she actually seems to be writing herself (one sign that marketing doesn't control the site is a rare flash of rational web design: a very usable text version of the site). While reading it I was surprised to see that she had gotten the title of the first book in the series wrong. However, it seems that in the U.K. the first volume is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (rather than "Sorcerer's Stone"). The same is true in Germany and in Japan (the latter at least according to poor Babelfish's garbled translation, "Stone of Halley [untranslatable] and wise man") although not in France, where it's just called Harry Potter at the School of the Wizards</a>.

Allegedly, many scenes in the movie were filmed twice, one with each phrase. How strange. Were they assuming that Americans were less familiar with alchemical lore?

Tags: books, words

Here's one I just committed myself: maelstorm. There's no such word. It's maelstrom, the name of a whirlpool in Norway, also known as Moskenstraumen, and as the reference points out, brought to us primarily by Jules Verne and Edgar Allen Poe.

Tags: words

In support of Silvertide's language campaign, I'd like to howl for a moment about "uninterested" and "disinterested." I saw this in yesterday's New York Times (it's a quote, so the Times is not necessarily culpable):

Fox is completely disinterested in raising any consciousness. In fact they're bending over backward to disassociate themselves from the environmental community.

DISINTERESTED DOES NOT MEAN YOU DON'T CARE. IT MEANS YOU'RE OBJECTIVE. A good judge is disinterested but should not be uninterested. Argh.

Tags: words
Current Music: John Cale, "Wilderness Approaching" (New!!!)

The New York Times yesterday had a hilarious article on Richard Desmond, the publisher of the Daily Express in London, responding to a potential offer by German publisher Axel Springer Verlag's offer to buy the competing Telegraph. In a meeting with Telegraph executives, Desmond goose-stepped Cleese-like around the room with his finger under his nose, invited the Telegraph's publisher to "step outside," and finally led his executives in singing the banned first verse of "Deutschland Uber Alles" as the other group walked out of the meeting.

The Journal's edit page today followed up with an uncommonly amusing piece, perhaps defending Desmond, though it's hard to tell, but outlining the history of anti-German English humor.

It quotes ads by Spitfire Ale, made in the county of Kent, that feature slogans like Goering, Goering, gone and Spitfire -- downed all over Kent, just like the Luftwaffe. (The beer company's web site calls it "quirky World War [Eleven]-themed advertising," which is amusing although the thought of nine more of them is a bit bleak.)

Amusingly enough, the front page of today's Daily Express blares "Stop Le Nazi," responding to the UK visit of Jean Le Pen.

Tags: media, words
Current Music: Guy Clark, A Nickel For the Fiddler