We’ve always been amused by the biblical authority of dictionaries in our culture, almost as much as we’re amused by the biblical authority of the Bible. Dictionaries, last we checked, are compiled by harmless drudges, and we consider our judgment as good as theirs. For that matter, most dictionary editors are observers of linguistic usage, not dictators of meaning. Their job is to follow the crowd, not lead it.

That, and provide 300-point solutions to Scrabble problems.

So we’re not surprised that the dictionary meaning of “marriage” has been evolving in recent years, much like the dictionary meaning of everything else. Webster notices that many folks use it to describe any couple in a committed relationship. And the OED sniffs that they’ve always called it “husband and wife”, not “man and woman”.

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Natasha Richardson – 1963-2009

Still classy:

Bush joked that he’d need more such engagements to pay for the house his wife, Laura, bought without him seeing it. “I actually paid for a house last fall,” he told the crowd. “I think I’m the only American to have bought a house in the fall of 2008.”

We are well rid of him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVhuGCVIf3g

GOP ‘trackers’ stalk Dems in hunt for ‘macaca’ moment [McClatchy]

I have noticed that this joint is well-populated with music nerds.  And thus I believe, in my addled brain, that there may be grounds for formal discussions on this subject.  Therefore: Music Nerding, to which other regulars can contribute at will. Suggestions most welcome.

First, for your consideration: the incomparable Kristin Hersh, from 2007.

Not widely known or recognized, she’s been at this for over twenty years — first as a punk kid, with her punk half-sister Tanya Donnelly in Throwing Muses, then solo, and then with a thrashing side-project known as 50 Foot Wave (which released its first album about two weeks after the tsunami hit Indonesia and Thailand — forcing her onto CNN to hastily explain the audiological basis for the name, which is about as much time in the limelight she has seen in her entire career).  Oh, and she’s an all-American badass — battled mental illness and won, has four kids.  Solid.

Follow along for more, won’t you please?

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From his fainting couch, Richard Cohen clutches his pearls and complains that Jon Stewart was mean to CNBC and Jim Cramer:

What Jon Stewart needs is Jon Stewart. He could use a droll comedian to temper his ferocity and correct him when he’s wrong, as he was about the financial media, particularly CNBC and its excitable analyst Jim Cramer. They didn’t cover up the story of financial shenanigans. They didn’t even know it existed. 

Setting aside the fact that lots of people knew – shouldn’t CNBC have known about the problem? They’re the experts.

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Ten miles from where we write, Robin Long sits in a brig at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. He pleaded guilty last August to desertion from the Army, and is serving a 15-month sentence.

Long is the first war resister deported from Canada since Vietnam. He enlisted in the Army in 2003, with what he thought was an assurance from his recruiter that he would not be sent to Iraq. When the Army ordered him to Iraq anyway in 2005, he fled the country. Long had been vocal about his objections to the war, and he was the only soldier deployed from his “nondeployable” unit.

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