[comments removed - this is not the Cory hate thread you are looking for, go to MetaTalk]Aww.
Enormity means hugely evil, not just huge. For some reason, it's one of the few word/meanings I actually care about.Well, the dictionary definition you linked too indicates it does mean "big" but tags that definition with "Usage problem.
Usage Note: Enormity is frequently used to refer simply to the property of being great in size or extent, but many would prefer that enormousness (or a synonym such as immensity) be used for this general sense and that enormity be limited to situations that demand a negative moral judgment, as in Not until the war ended and journalists were able to enter Cambodia did the world really become aware of the enormity of Pol Pot's oppression. Fifty-nine percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of enormity as a synonym for immensity in the sentence At that point the engineers sat down to design an entirely new viaduct, apparently undaunted by the enormity of their task. This distinction between enormity and enormousness has not always existed historically, but nowadays many observe it. Writers who ignore the distinction, as in the enormity of the President's election victory or the enormity of her inheritance, may find that their words have cast unintended aspersions or evoked unexpected laughter.So the panel wasn't happy, but 41% said it was OK. Most people would understand what you mean. I think it sounds better "enormousness"
*Okay, first, the college funds. Cory, you're a guy who rather famously dropped out of college. I completed college with a lucrative degree in (wait for it) JOURNALISM. There are people coming out of colleges now with humanities degrees and debtloads of $100K. What precise benefit are you trying to confer here? You want your kid to go to some college? Move to a country like Italy where they've got FREE college, and people don't leave school till they're 28 years old.I think a lot of people do the 'college fund' because they want to feel like they're doing something important for their kid. But you'd be much, much better off helping/forcing your kids do really well in highschool then trying to save money. If they do well in H.S. they'll probably be able to go to a state school for free.
Doctorow is married to Alice Taylor, and together they have one daughter, named Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow, who was born in 2008.[7] Cory Doctorow and Alice Taylor married on Sunday, October 26, 2008.Turns out he was born in 1971, if you were wondering.
*Most of my Twitter tweeple, in expressing their mild hopes for the decade, seem obscurely terrified. "Well, it couldn't possibly be any worse than last year," seems to be the consensus notion. I haven't seen any Scrooge-like spoilsport remarking on the prospect that the twenty-teens could easily be MUCH, MUCH worse than the zeroes. The Depression of the 1930s was followed by the 1940s, right? It's casino thinking to imagine that the next poker hand is bound to be great just because you lost your ass in the last one.Heh.
It's not that print's a medium, and the web's a medium, and you get to migrate between media. The Web is a metamedium that turns everything it grips into network-culture.I have been asked why I name people like Sterling, Doctorow, Ellis on the same level as Jarvis, Rosen, Shirky for understanding media. That's why. These guys are not only great artists but dedicated craftsmen and heavy users of media. This quote is just tossed in the WELL's conversation, but it sums up brilliantly everything that's bugging the news business on the Web. If only media moguls got it, the so called media crisis would be over.
Bruce Sterling
"...Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow... - DU"DU and I are different people.
JESSAMYN YOUR ADMINISTRATIVE RULINGS ARE CRUEL AND UNUSUAL
You're thinking: "got some money here, might as well settle down in suburban Shepperton where the kid has a stable neighborhood with those delightful Ballard children." That's a joke. They're ALL FOREIGNERS in Shepperton now, just like you. They're living in DISINTEGRATED, ROOTLESS, MULTI-ETHNIC HOUSEHOLDS where people relate through SMS messages. Go outside, walk around in extremely globalized London, count the number of exiles in the streets. Is that Christopher Robin and Pooh at the gates of Buckingham Palace? The Buckingham Palace charades are wall to wall Brazilians, Indians and Chinese. That's why they put up with YOU. And the genuine kids there are even weirder than their parents, because they're multi-ethnic Brazilo-Indian-Chinese kids.what
Once again, Bruce's interlocutory partner is Jon Lebkowsky. Jon writes about culture, society, technology. He is an Internet pioneer and thought leader immersed in contemporary social technologies, with expertise in digital communication and collaboration.Really? Wow, fuck - so am I.
"In December 2007, Harvard introduced a new financial aid plan that dramatically reduces the amount families with incomes below $180,000 are expected to pay. Families with incomes above $120,000 and below $180,000 with assets typical for these income levels are asked to contribute 10 percent of their incomes. For those families with incomes below $120,000, the parent contribution declines steadily from 10 percent, reaching zero for those with incomes at $60,000 and below."There has been an ongoing discussion at Harvard about adopting a "tuition-free model" for all students: Why Can't Harvard Be Free?
So we've ended up with our current "It's a Wonderful Life" Pottersville, where Rupert Murdoch plays our Mr Potter. Everybody who should have been down at the mall last Christmas stocking up at the Sharper Image is ruined, corrupted, prostituted, miserable, or a hysterical librarian.Sterling's making an extended reference to the alternate universe sequence in It's a Wonderful Life. "Pottersville" is the neon-drenched skid row that the hero's hometown would have become if it had fallen under the unchecked influence of Mr. Potter, the local plutocrat, and it's populated by the jerks and losers that the hero's friends would have become if they'd never known his moral example. The amiable patrolman's now a trigger-happy, growling enforcer; the town flirt is now the town whore; the hero's eccentric uncle has been committed to an asylum; and his vivacious, homemaker wife is now - gasp! - an "old maid" and a librarian.
Enormity. The OED agrees that the use of enormity to mean "bigness" -- its sense 3, which it glosses as "[e]xcess in magnitude; hugeness, vastness" -- is obsolete, and its citations for that sense are all from the late 18th or early 19th century:So, to the contrary of those who seem to think that the use of "enormity" to mean "bigness" is just a silly misconception, it's actually an anachronism, an old understanding of the word that probably comes from reading too many old books. I have a feeling that those who get puffed up about the word are under the mistaken impression that we don't know where it comes from. All this in spite of my reluctance to defend Mr Doctorow.1792 Munchhausen's Trav. xxii. 93 A worm of proportionable enormity had bored a hole in the shell. 1802 HOWARD in Phil. Trans. XCII. 204 Notwithstanding the enormity of its bulk. 1830 Fraser's Mag. I. 752 Of the properties of the Peak of Teneriffe accounts are extant which describe its enormity.But if enormity could mean "enormousness" in 1830, who's to say that we have to hold the line "until the end of time" against the return of that sense?
... an Internet pioneer and thought leader immersed in contemporary social technologies, with expertise in digital communication and collaboration.This bit just screams "I love fetishizing everything and making it sound fancy." These are the people Woody Allen was talking about in that bit about Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall. Wow, he's "immersed in contemporary social technologies, with expertise in digital communication and collaboration?" You mean he does Facebook, Twitter, and a blog, and he knows how to do italics with HTML? Skippety doodah, let's paint the town red! Of course, to be charitable, maybe that really was just copied straight from a resume; I sure hope so.
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posted by localhuman at 6:39 PM on January 6, 2010 [4 favorites]