Preference Personnelle
Saturday, March 15
 
I'm watching the National Spelling Bee on television. I didn't remember it being paced so slowly, or the commentary so irritating (it's like there's two color commentators and no play-by-play--and wow, lots of home-schooled and vaguely-disabled kids), or there being so many words better known as proper nouns--gallipoli and torquemada, for example. There sure are a lot of words that come to us from the French. Winning words from the past include condominium ('56), sycophant ('64), therapy ('40) and logorrhea ('99, and my personal favorite). Ooh, oubliette, pentateuchal, quattrocento, those are good words. And, unlike many of these words, it's clear that they didn't pass into English, like, last week. Whoa, is this kid cheating? There's no way she's mishearing the guy that badly. They did identify her as an 'actress.' Also, they let the kids ask questions about the root words now.

And here's a fairly academic (though not to a Sokal-in-Social-Text level) essay about my man Mikejack, and an article about that Press Your Luck guy, though the documentary airs Sunday. Ooh, and a transcript of a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire episode where someone's been accused of cheating.

I just learned that Dr. Alex Cameron, a classicist at the University of Dayton and the Bert Parks of the National Spelling Bee, has died. May he rest in peace. Sadly, I'm also reminded of Akron resident, home-schooler, alleged child abuser and all-around nutcase Thomas Lavery.

  3:58 AM
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