Government by blogging. Hundreds of people have commented with stories and complaints about TSA experiences. Expect thousands, maybe millions more.

From the NYTBR review of David Rieff's memoir about his mother's death:

In a car returning from receiving the terrible diagnosis, he writes, she looks out the window, and "'Wow' she said, 'Wow.'" It tells us something important, surely, that one of the most articulate women of the last century should say, in the face of her cancer, "Wow."

Not sure? Here, fill out the questionnaire. (Or to win a prize for your beat answers, take this quiz.)

On this blog I feel as if I'm mostly moving information around, which isn't that satisfying to write, and it's no fun to read, I admit. So I'm going to work harder to add some value to what I put here. But for right now, I wanted to pass on several Our Fathers written in some pidgin Englishes, which are collected here.

Here's the Gullah version:

We Papa een heaben,
leh ebrybody hona you nyame
cause you da holy.
We pray dat soon you gwine
rule oba all ob we.
Wasoneba ting you da want,
leh um be een dis wol,
same like e be dey een heaben.
Gee we de food wa we need dis day yah an ebry day.
Fagibe we fa de bad ting we da do.
Cause we da fagibe dem people wa do bad ta we.
Leh we don't habe haad test wen Satan try we.
Keep we from e ebil.
Amen.

Then there's this one, from Middle English. Familiar, isn't it?

Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halewid be thi name; thi kyngdoom come to; be thi wille don, in erthe as in heuene. Yyue to vs this dai oure breed ouer othir substaunce, and foryyue to vs oure dettis, as we foryyuen to oure dettouris; and lede vs not in to temptacioun, but delyuere vs fro yuel. Amen.

Like horses.

The Globe & Mail apparently published my piece about Ed Vajda's "discovery" of a new language family, though they not only keep most of their content behind a wall but evidently hide everything from Google crawlers. Searches on google.com and google.ca turned up no sign of the piece. Even the search function of their own site turns up nothing! I can barely understand protecting content (I'm coming around); intelligent people can disagree over the best business model for online newspapers. Not having search that actually works on your own site? That's really retarded. Providing search and making sure it works isn't arguable. It's a basic tool. Of course, this is the website -- for Canada's newspaper of record! -- that doesn't link to a major section (Focus, the Saturday special section) off the main page. I thought a newspaper of this caliber would be smarter than this.

UPDATE: The story never showed up because it hadn't been posted online yet (even though it was in print on Saturday?!?!). Anyway, the long version -- with lots of detail -- is here.
There's one thing I'd like to correct: Ed Vajda isn't and wasn't a "long ranger," as the subtitle says (read the story to find out what a long ranger is).

Also, unfortunately, the Globe & Mail designers had no way (or so they claimed) of representing the IPA symbol for "schwa," so it ran with my note, "schwa," in what should be a phonemic transcription of a Ket and ancestral Athabaskan word.

Embarrassing.