Unforgiving Grammarian Moment #298

I know this is petty of me, but I get annoyed by bad grammar in newspaper writing. It is usually the subtle little errors that irk me the most; so subtle that sometimes I'm not even sure they are errors.

Like this one from a story on a fish kill in today's News Journal:

Unlike many other regional species, DNREC Fisheries Manager Craig Shirey said the croaker spawn late in the season, in the early fall, and are therefore less equipped to handle cold temperatures and rough surf.

My first question is, what do the other species say about when the croaker do their spawning? And is Craig Shirey really a distinct species? I've met Craig, by the way, and he is a nice fellow, but not that unique.

The fix is simple, by the way. Simply insert a comma:

Unlike many other regional species, DNREC Fisheries Manager Craig Shirey said, the croaker spawn late in the season, in the early fall, and are therefore less equipped to handle cold temperatures and rough surf.

Or even better:

Unlike many other regional species, croaker spawn late in the season, in the early fall, said DNREC Fisheries Manager Craig Shirey. They are therefore less equipped to handle cold temperatures and rough surf, he added.

You could probably leave off the "he added," I suppose.

Yes, I know. I am being petty. And I am often guilty of equally egregious grammatical errors. But newspaper writers and editors get paid to write.

I'm just blathering on here for my own amusement.

Fans? In January?

left behind
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

Walking to the post office in Dover today, I went past Legislative Hall in Dover. Lying on the grass across from the Capitol Building were a pair of "lobbying fans" from a protest out there yesterday.

A group of workers -- union members in a variety of trades -- had turned out to urge the General Assembly to act to support job creation in Delaware. They were supported in part by the folks proposing a new horse-racing track and casino complex: DelPointe.

That project would require General Assembly action, and it would lead to jobs -- at least in the short and medium terms.

So the DelPointe folks brought hats and lobby fan signs to hand out. These fans are a long-standing tradition. They are cheap and easy to hand out and they function both as signs and, in warmer weather than we've had lately, as fans. They are handy when things get sticky in the heat of political debate.

It seemed odd to see them out there in January.

This demonstration also gave our Governor a leg-up to a great headline, by the way: Markell calms angry crowd of jobless.

The newspaper reports that the protest had gotten a bit heated when the Governor stepped-in and stepped-up:

The rally ended after Gov. Jack Markell, scheduled for an appearance a few feet away, climbed onto the front of a state police SUV to address the crowd through a megaphone, promising to work to bring jobs to Delaware.

Nice press if you can get it.

On a Less Clear Day

The Atlantic Ocean from the dune at Fort Miles
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

This morning started with dreadful wind and rain, but by mid afternoon the skies had partly cleared.

I was off for a day of car service, eye exams, and furnace-checking and by the time things cleared I was free and ready to head out to Cape Henlopen State Park to have a look at the ocean. I went up to the dune gun emplacement at Fort Miles and found empty dunes, beach and (mostly) ocean.

A closer (telephoto) look revealed a distant freighter in the mist that clung to the water well off-shore.

I watched until the mist, drifting out to sea, revealed the ship was heading out as well.

Social Media Success Story #286

Meet Phineas Gage... Or how flickr changed our life
Originally uploaded by photo_history

This is an old Daguerreotype found by a couple and posted to Flickr. They thought he was a whaler, but comments from viewers eventually led to the discovery that he is a man named Phineas P. Gage who, in 1848, had an iron spike accidentally driven straight through his skull.

There's a more detailed story on NPR.com: The Face Of A Famous Skull Found On Flickr. This is, to me, one of the great values of social media tools; we can, collectively, by sharing and talking across all of many societies, learn so much more.

What's for Lunch?

I have a new obsessive compulsive symptom habit: cellphone photos of lunch-specials chalk boards.

I work in downtown Dover, Delaware -- a really pretty city. I like to walk uptown at lunchtime and usually will get lunch from one of several places along Loockerman Street, the main commercial street.

A few weeks ago, a coworker asked me to let her know what the soups were for that day at 33 West, a very popular eatery (my favorite, in fact). I was thumb-typing the  list of soups into my cellphone to send to her when I thought, "why not put this out via twitter? There may be other folks trying to decide what to have for lunch." So I tweeted the soups and lunch specials.

I did that a time or two more before I realized that it would be easier to simply snap a cellphone photo of the specials board and post/tweet that.

So began an occasional habit. On those days when I do walk up town, I stop to snap the specials boards of the two lunch places that routinely have them -- 33 West and the Dover Newsstand.

The Newsstand, it should be noted, does post its specials each day on its web site. That's a good practice, though I think it would make sense for restaurants to routinely post their own specials to their own twitter accounts. Twitter is a "push" medium; it goes out to all who subscribe (or follow re-tweeters), while a web site is a static thing and of no use unless someone is specifically looking for it.

So, if you are in Dover and wondering what to have for lunch, I invite you to check my twitter-stream. It won't be every day, but on many days, I'll post links to pictures of the chalkboards that will tell you what's for lunch.

Oh, For The Love Of...

The following came in via e-mail today from the head of a local right-wing, anti-government, property-rights group:

Glenn Beck has announced he will be doing a series of documentaries on the history of the progressive movement. The first is this Friday.

The Glenn Beck program is on at 5 PM and 2 AM on the Fox News Channel. I have set my DVR.

I truly believe this series of documentaries will explain much of how we've gotten to where we are today.

Okay... I know this is ridiculous, but I also know that there are people who will take this seriously. And that makes me sad.

Roots of the Tea Party Party?

The "tea party" movement seemed to just appear last year. The link to the Boston Tea Party of colonial America seemed a little forced to me; why that connection? Why now?

Reason.com has an interesting post up today that provides, if not a full background, at least an interesting connection and a hint. The post -- The First Anti-Ted Kennedy Tea Party: Boston's Anti-Busing Brigades --includes news footage from 1974 of an anti-busing protest in Boston.


These protests were in response to the legal rulings that schools shouldn't be segregated. These are white people angry that they will now have to interact with black people.

They use the tea bag metaphor too.

February 5 Will be George HP Smith Day in Lewes

The City of Lewes has set aside February 5 of each year as "Hon. George H.P. Smith Day." The City Council chose that day to honor our late former Mayor because it is his birthday.

George Smith was our Mayor for many years and he did a great job. I wrote a detailed memorial for the Mayor back in 2005, shorty after he passed away. I stand by what I wrote then; he was a fine man.

This year on the 5th, current Mayor Jim Ford will dedicate a marker honoring Mayor Smith at a tree planted in his memory at Smith Park. His family will launch an annual appeal for contributions to a scholarship fund in his name, and Grotto Pizza will donate a portion of its proceeds on February 4 to the fund. (it's a shame I don't care for Grotto's pizza)

I think this is a good idea.

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Dr. M.L. King

Unstable isotope has posted the full text of the speech at Delaware Liberal. So, naturally, I plugged that into wordle to create a word cloud of the speech.

From My Bucket List?

I had my picture taken with The Count, from Sesame Street, today. I was very excited about this.

I didn't realize that I wanted this until earlier in the week, when I looked at the media advisory from the US Census Bureau about the Census in Schools event I was planning to attend.

Right there, listed along with the Governor, a Senator, and the Director of the Census, were The Count and Rosita!

The Count was there for the students at Bancroft Elementary and a demonstration of the educational materials about the Census that the Bureau is making available to schools nationwide.

But I did get to pose for a picture after the lesson. Great fun!

Though when you compare this picture of me with the picture of my Grandfather at about the same age that I posted earlier this week, it makes you wonder about my level of dignity.