Link Banana

Steven Pinker has a brief and enjoyable essay, arguing essentially that, in the most recent Atlantic. The most interesting bit (profanity ahead!):

This progression explains why many speakers are unaware that sucker, sucks, bites, and blows originally referred to fellatio, or that a jerk was a masturbator. It explains why Close the fucking door, What the fuck?, Holy Fuck!, and Fuck you! violate all rules of English syntax and semantics—they presumably replaced Close the damned door, What in Hell?, Holy Mary!, and Damn you! when religious profanity lost its zing and new words had to be recruited to wake listeners up.

@#$%^&*!, there’s a word for that?

The term is grawlix, and it looks to have been coined by Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker around 1964. Though it’s yet to gain admission to the Oxford English Dictionary, OED Editor-at-Large Jesse Sheidlower describes it as “undeniably useful, certainly a word, and one that I’d love to see used more.”

… Until its OED entry is solemnized, we’ll have to settle for this definition on Wiktionary: “grawlix, n. A string of typographical symbols used (especially in comic strips) to represent an obscenity or swear word.” I don’t think I’ll ever look at a character set quite the same way again.

(via kottke)

The Daily Intelligencer brings the positive but provisional news that Snoop Dogg may be thinking hard about hip-hop’s tendency to misogyny.

At Monday’s Hip-Hop Summit Action Network awards gala at Capitale, honoree Snoop Dogg repented for some of the harsh language he’s used against women in his songs. “I’m not trying to do anything to offend nobody, but y’all’ve got to understand, I’m from the East Side,” he said. “I worked hard to become a man on my own. My mother showed me how, but she couldn’t really teach me how to become a man. My father wasn’t there. I never knocked him for that. But the playas that I learnt from, they taught me the wrong way. … It wasn’t until once I got older and got married and had a daughter and had kids and started to realize that now my music is starting to swing in a different direction, because I understand that I was wrongfully taught.”

In what The Page calls an “amazing wire story,” Libby Quaid explores Senator McCain’s reputation as a hothead for the AP.

“F — - you,” he shouted at Texas Sen. John Cornyn last year.

“Only an a —  —  — would put together a budget like this,” he told the former Budget Committee chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici, in 1999.

“I’m calling you a f —  —  — jerk!” he once retorted to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.