“Weekend Update – News that Matters” is a weekly feature that offers brief overviews of important news that you may have missed during a busy holiday weekend. Here’s what, no pun intended, may have flown under your radar in the period December 13 through December 17, 2024.
@BARTLEBY
[Editor’s Note: Last week’s @Bartleby column, which was dedicated to the memory of our colleague, Basilio Alferow, who died earlier in the month after a series of illnesses, generated a tremendous amount of reader comments as well as remembrances by readers and staff so it is in Bas’ memory that we repeat it. An obituary of Mr. Alferow will appear in a forthcoming issue.]
A GOTCHA GANG MEMBER, COMMA TSAR, AND QUOTATION QUOTIDIEN WALK INTO A BAR….
“How do you do. This is a new column about language.”
Thus opened William Safire’s inaugural “On Language” column almost a half century ago on February 18, 1979. Safire, who hadn’t finished college and had never studied Latin, relished the idea of becoming the usage dictator of the English speaking world, or at least the Times’ language maven.
He promised readers that he would explore “new words, vogue phrases, and the intriguing roots of everyday discourse – with occasionally crotchety observations on everything from proper usage to impropaganda.”
The column’s deceptively modest opening volley then led into a moment of linguistic self-reflection: Should “how do you do” be punctuated with a question mark? Much to many readers’ surprise – including that of yours truly – he decided that the question mark was not appropriate in this particular case, explaining that his simple greeting was an act of telling, not asking.
Safire, who went on to write some 1,300 “On Language” columns and garnered millions of fans and hundreds, if not thousands, of what we might today refer to as followers. The gleeful Gotcha Gang and its modest affiliate, the Nit-pickers League, comprised readers numbering in the hundreds who were ardent lovers of the English language and happy – no, ecstatic – to inform the Usage Dictator that the king worst no clothing, or, at the very least, that he worst fairly skimpy garments.
One fervent member of the Gotcha Gang who publicly reveled in his attempts to take down the dictator was FBT The Travelist Editorial Director Jonathan Spira, whom Safire called “a persnickety nitpicker” in print. Even the names of the Gotcha Gang and, in particular, Nitpicker’s League, are telling. In a column published on January 28, 2001, the placement of the apostrophe in “Nitpicker’s” was reported as having been challenged, to wit:
“Longtime readers of On Language are familiar with, or are members of, the vf, described here decades ago as ‘shock troops of the Nitpicker’s League’ (the sort who insist that it be written “Nitpickers’ League” and have their own rump faction who demand hyphenation as nit-pickers). The G.G. takes particular delight in correcting the resident grammarian in mock-furious letters directed to ‘you, of all people.’”
This column was written in memory of Basilio Alferow, also a member of the Gotcha Gang and Nitpicker’s League, who until his recent untimely demise served for 14 years as the Comma Tsar, Quotation Quotidien, and Imprecise Meaning Impresario at Accura Media Group, the parent of Frequent Business Traveler and The Travelist, and held the same titles at think tank Basex for 12 years. Prior to that, Mr. Alferow was vice president of research at Spiratone, at the time the largest supplier of photographic accessories in the United States. A memorial service will be held in January, and details will be announced closer to the service. The photograph displayed below, “Moscow at night, as seen from the Four Seasons Hotel,” was Mr. Alferow’s favorite photograph of Moscow.
Moscow at night, as seen from an upper floor of the Four Seasons Hotel
@DEADLINE
Gruesome Murder in New York City Subways
At 7:30 this past Sunday morning, a man approached a woman sleeping on a Coney Island F train. The man proceeded to light the woman on fire, according to the official police report, and then calmly watched her burn to death as transit police attempted to extinguish the flames. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch issued a statement noting that the heinous crime “took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”
U.S. Government Shutdown Averted.
Congress passed a budget to avert shutting the government down, but the bitterly disputed deal ignored an objection by President-elect Donald Trump to increase the federal borrowing limit. U.S. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law Saturday morning after the Senate passed it shortly after a midnight deadline by 85-11, while the House of Representatives approved the bill earlier, with members of both parties coming together by 336-34. Absent a funding bill, millions of federal employees would have ended up either on temporary unpaid leave or would have ended up working without pay.
Terror Attack at German Christkindlmarket
Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the doctor identified as the assailant in the Friday night attack in Magdeburg in Sachsen-Anstalt had strong anti-Islam anti-immigrant views and appears to have been aligned with Germany’s far-right anti-immigration party. By driving a rented BMW SUV into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in the city, he killed five and injured over 200 people.
An Apple AirTag
@IN DEPTH
14 Airlines Announce Support for Apple’s ‘Find My’ Lost Luggage Feature for Apple AirTags
Over a dozen airlines announced support for Apple’s new luggage location feature that works with new functionality added to the “Find My” feature in the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 18.2.
The feature allows iPhone owners who have placed AirTag tracking devices in their luggage to share the location of an item with an air carrier.
The list of airlines includes United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, British Airways, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Turkish Airlines, Aer Lingus, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Swiss International Airlines, Eurowings, and Iberia Airlines.
The new Share Item Location feature allows the iPhone owner to create a link that lets anyone with the link see the location of a lost item. Such a link can be opened on a non-Apple device using a web browser.
Use of this feature is not, however, restricted to luggage but a link for any item with an AirTag can be shared. Shared links stop working when an item is returned to you, when the link sharing date expires, or when you opt to stop sharing the location of an item.
Other airlines expected to announce support for the new feature include Qantas, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
@BRIEFLY NOTED
Plop, plop, fizz, fizz… David Ogilvy, considered the father of modern advertising, once said that “[A]dvertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.” The commercials for a seemingly unending list of medications – considered by many physicians to be the bane of their existence as patients come in demanding a pill for which they watched a commercial instead of reporting symptoms – may soon go plop, plop, that is, if President-elect Donald Trump and his nominee for secretary for health and human services, Robert J. Kennedy Jr., are both in favor of banning them. Attempts to restrict pharmaceutical advertisements have failed many times over the years, often on First Amendment grounds.
Guilty. A report following the Senate investigation of alleged ethical lapses on the Supreme Court warned that the court “has mired itself in an ethical crisis of its own making.” The report further called for legislative reforms to reinforce ethical guardrails. Incoming Republican leadership opposes these measures.
‘Man of Steal’ Dies at 65. Baseball’s Rickey Henderson, widely regarded as the greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history as well as one of the game’s most eccentric players, died Friday. The cause of death was not announced. Henderson holds the career record for stolen bases – some 1,406 – and he also holds the record for runs scored, with 2,295, and his 2,190 walks rank him second behind Barry Bonds. “Without exaggerating one inch, you could find 50 Hall of Famers who, all taken together, don’t own as many records, and as many important records, as Rickey Henderson,” the baseball statistician and historian Bill James once wrote.
Placed on the Naughty List. A woman flying from Los Angeles to Pennsylvania wound up on the Transportation Security Administration’s naughty list. When traversing the security checkpoint at Los Angeles International Airport, she was found to have a treasure trove of 87 forbidden items inside her carry-on. The list of items found included 82 fireworks, three knives, two replica guns, and a canister of pepper spray
Timothy Perry, Jesse Sokolow, Jonathan Spira, Kurt Stolz, and Paul Riegler contributed to this issue of Midweek Update.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
