Archive for March, 2012

This Texan never heard of ‘jumping the broom’

Thursday, March 8, 2012 by:Laura Weisman
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Growing up in Texas, the only person I heard say “kinfolk” was Granny on “The Beverly Hillbillies.” (Handout)

After almost 50 years of work, the Dictionary of American Regional English has finally been finished. The final volume (Sl-Z) is complete, and they sent out a an announcement to the Texas media outlets about one part of the book, their Lone Star State regionalisms.

I’m a native Texan, and took the bait. But I was surprised to be unfamiliar with almost all of them. Texas is a big state and I imagine a lot of these regionalisms are very rural and perhaps old. I grew up in Dallas, which was fairly homogenized, but my people were from rural West Texas and East Texas. We said y’all and it had two syllables in those days.

Anyway, here’s their clever announcement:

If someone is on the carpet, it means they want to jump the broom. They want all their kinfolk down to take pictures that will end up on the mantelboard. They want a full band, complete with a French harp. You can’t worrit them about that. After that, it’s time to move out of the rent house and into their own house, complete with a majestic gallery shaded by a post oak and enough room for the hound dog.

Here’s the translation helper:

on the carpet: eager to marry
jump the broom: to get married
kinfolk: relatives, kin
mantelboard: a mantel
French harp: a harmonica
worrit: to vex, tease, nag
rent house: a house that is rented out
gallery: a porch, veranda or balcony
post oak: usually an oak native to much of the eastern U.S. from southern New England to Kansas and central Texas
hound dog: a dog of mixed breed; a mongrel—also used as a derogatory term for a dog in general

Here’s my take:

on the carpet: Never heard it.
jump the broom: Never heard it.
kinfolk: Heard it on The Beverly Hillbillies.
mantelboard: Only heard of a mantel.
French harp: Don’t know it; I’ve heard it called a mouth harp.
worrit: Never heard it
rent house: I have heard this one.
gallery: Nope. Front porch and a back porch. Maybe in Deep East Texas they do verandas.
post oak: This is a species of tree, Quercus stellata, that has more than a dozen common names, according to the U.S. Forest Service, including yellow oak and iron oak.
hound dog: a hound dog is a hunting dog. Or a huntin’ dog.

It’s always a good time to learn something new. And the website is fun. Play around there.

Any Texans out there familiar with any of these words?

Olive Garden review in Grand Forks, N.D., newspaper gets ultra-serious

Thursday, March 8, 2012 by:Peter Hockaday
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Not just for North Dakotans: Michelle Obama enjoys the Olive Garden in Fort Worth, Texas, on Feb. 9. (AP)

In medium-town America, hype over incoming chain restaurants can dominate the local conversation. “Did you hear there’s a Red Lobster coming?” “Can’t wait for that Applebees!”

Non-middle-America is getting a taste with the latest viral sensation: A newspaper’s Olive Garden review that reads like an Onion article. But luckily for us, it’s most certainly real, and quite serious.

The review comes from Grand Forks, N.D., a city of about 50,000 on the eastern border with Minnesota. Grand Forks Herald columnist Marilyn Hagerty, left, decided to check in on the “novelty” of the new Olive Garden and notes “The place is impressive. It’s fashioned in Tuscan farmhouse style with a welcoming entryway.” As for the food: “At length, I asked my server what she would recommend. She suggested chicken Alfredo, and I went with that.”

She later notes the chicken Alfredo “was warm and comforting on a cold day. The portion was generous.” Sadly or not, she concludes “All in all, it is the largest and most beautiful restaurant now operating in Grand Forks.”

The review hit Boing Boing, Gawker, and other big sites today, prompting the Grand Forks Herald to post a follow-up article. The review got 107,000 page views in 36 hours after it was posted, compared to 5,000 for the next-most-popular story. Hagerty’s other reviews also went viral, with one Twitter user exclaiming “How am I supposed to work when there is an entire archive of Marilyn Hagerty articles to read?”

In case you want to kill some time, here’s that “Eatbeat” archive. Although, of course, you won’t find a restaurant better than the Olive Garden.

‘KONY 2012′ campaign goes viral across World Wide Web

Thursday, March 8, 2012 by:Laura Weisman
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If you’ve been on Twitter or Facebook in the last few days, you’ve probably seen the references to “KONY 2012.”

The leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, shown in 2006. (Stuart Price / Associated Press)

It’s all part of a viral meme by a group called Invisible Children, calling for the capture of Joseph Kony, an elusive Ugandan warlord known to kidnap children to fight for his Lord’s Resistance Army.

The movement intends to target 20 celebrities (George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Oprah among them) and a dozen policymakers to keep U.S. advisers in Africa and to help the Uganda government find Kony.

The group solicits donations, and offers an “action kit” with a unique bracelet and other supplies geared for the big, “Cover the Night” event on April 20. At sundown, activists are to gather “on every street corner in every city” and blanket areas with campaign literature.

The group’s goal “aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.”

And a big part of that campaign is a 30-minute online movie narrated by Jason Russell.

Russell talks about meeting a boy named Jacob in Uganda in 2003. And Russell attempts to explain the Lord’s Resistance Army and Kony to a worldwide online audience, and to his young son, Gavin.

Then he introduces the meat of the movie with this message: “The next 27 minutes are an experiment. But in order for it to work, you have to pay attention.” Here it is:

Since posted March 5, the film has drawn around 10 million views, with about 680,000 “likes” and 17,000 “dislikes” on YouTube as of Wednesday evening.

The movement does have detractors.

Jezebel.com, for example, warns readers to “think twice” before donating to the cause, citing “dubious finances,” exaggerated claims, support for military action, marketing tactics, and recommends donating to other groups, such as Doctors Without Borders.

A Google search shows other reports, both pro and con, on the issue.

Heart medication may treat racism, study says

Thursday, March 8, 2012 by:anna.gallegos@chron.com (Anna Gallegos)
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Scientists are looking into the ethical implications of their findings. (Frank Herzog/Fotolia)

Propranolol, a high blood pressure medication, could be used to combat racism, according to The Telegraph.

British scientists have found that the drug reduces racist views by targeting the part of the brain that dictates fear. The pill only prevents “implicit racial” views, according to Dr Sylvia Terbeck, experimental psychologist and study leader.

“Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality. Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest.”

The drug did not prevent other forms of prejudice, including religious or sexual.

Coke tweaking ingredient to avoid cancer warning

Thursday, March 8, 2012 by:Kate Shellnutt
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Coke will alter the caramel color used in its sodas. (AP file)

Coca-Cola, America’s most popular soda, said it will adjust the formula of its caramel color to keep from having to label the soda with a cancer warning to comply with California regulations.

“The company did make the decision to ask its caramel suppliers to make the necessary manufacturing process modifications to meet the requirement of the State of California,” Coca-Cola told NPR.

The additive in question, a compound called 4-MI or 4-MEI (long name: 4-methylimidazole), has been the target of a campaign by consumer groups to ban it, claiming it causes cancer.

California recently added 4-MI to its list of carcinogens, after high levels of the chemical were found to lead to tumors in animals. Studies haven’t shown it to have similar effects in humans.

Coke will change its caramel color in sodas produced and sold nationwide in order to avoid a cancer warning label in California, but the company says its coloring recipe has always been safe.

“The fact is that the body of science about 4-MEI in foods or beverages does not support the erroneous allegations that CSPI would like the public to believe,” the spokeswoman said to NPR.

The American Beverage Association, caramel color manufacturers and the Food and Drug Administration have all released statements saying the campaign against 4-MI – led by the Center for Science in the Public Interest—exaggerate its risks.

Strong ad designed to fight teen rape

Thursday, March 8, 2012 by:Laura Weisman
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In an effort to raise awareness about rape, a British government ad campaign simply asks viewers, “if you could see yourself, would you see rape?”

The controversial new ad campaign is designed to change the way teens view rape, The Huffington Post reports.

The public service announcement uses shock value to convey the fact that rape doesn’t always take the form of a violent attack from a hooded criminal — it can happen within committed relationships.

The perception-altering ad is aimed at teens who might never associate rape with themselves or their group of friends. The 60-second video depicts a nice-looking teenage boy watching himself from behind a glass wall as things are getting heated with his girlfriend. Initially they’re kissing and nothing seems to be wrong, but he becomes forceful and the girl resists his advances — at this point, the boy begins screaming at himself to stop and pounding on the glass.

Edited version of Breitbart’s Obama video released

Wednesday, March 7, 2012 by:Laura Weisman
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This edited video of Barack Obama in 1991 that has been released by BuzzFeed is apparently the video Andrew Breitbart had been planning to release, before his sudden death on March 1. The original video is purportedly going to be shown on Fox’s Hannity show tonight.

At BuzzFeed, Andrew Kacynski writes:

In this video, not previously available online but licensed by BuzzFeed from a Boston television station, the future president speaks at a 1991 campus protest organized to demand tenure for minority and female law professors.

… As President of the Harvard Law Review in the spring of his final year there, 1991, he aligned himself with Professor Derrick Bell’s dramatic protest for diversity on the faculty of Harvard Law School.

(Bell’s) protest that spring was occasioned by Harvard’s denial of tenure to a black woman professor, Regina Austin, at a time when only three of the law school’s professors were black and only five women.

Breitbart.com contends that this video has been “selectively edited”:

The video, which Kaczynski says was “licensed from a Boston television station,” shows a young Barack Obama leading a protest at Harvard Law School on behalf of Prof. Derrick Bell, a radical academic tied to Jeremiah Wright–about whom we will be releasing significant information in the coming hours.

However, the video has been selectively edited–either by the Boston television station or by Buzzfeed itself. Over the course of the day, Breitbart.com will be releasing additional footage that has been hidden by Obama’s allies in the mainstream media and academia.

Filmmaker and friend of Breitbart, Steve Cannon said earlier this week the video would be released on the Hannity show tonight.

Texas State University astronomers say rare lunar event sunk the Titanic

Wednesday, March 7, 2012 by:Francisca Ortega
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In this April 10, 1912 file photo, the liner Titanic leaves Southampton, England. (AP file photo)

Astronomers at the Texas State University – San Marcos, say a rare lunar event caused the Titanic to sink.

Well, indirectly anyway.

In a study published in the April edition of Sky & Telescope magazine, physics faculty members Donald Olson and Russell Doescher explain how an unusually close moon in January, 1912, caused the ocean’s tide to rise and made more icebergs move into the area where the Titanic was then able to strike it in April of that year.

The moon was the closest to earth than it had been in more than 1,400 years at the same time the Earth was on its closest approach to the sun, causing an abnormally large number of icebergs to break off from the Greenland glaciers.

“Of course, the ultimate cause of the accident was that the ship struck an iceberg. The Titanic failed to slow down, even after having received several wireless messages warning of ice ahead,” Olson said in a statement. “They went full speed into a region with icebergs—that’s really what sank the ship, but the lunar connection may explain how an unusually large number of icebergs got into the path of the Titanic.”

The astronomers were researching a speculation originally put forth by an oceanographer Fergus Wood who theorized the moon in January may have made for high tides that meant for more icebergs in the area.

According to Reuters, Captain Edward Smith had been criticized for disregarding warnings that there were icebergs in the area. This research shows that the icebergs would have been extremely unusual to an experienced captain such as Smith.

About 1,500 people lost their lives in the icy waters of the North Atlantic during the ocean liner’s premiere voyage.

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