Isaac Laquedem

Chief Justice John Roberts indirectly alludes to Ambrose Bierce, lexicographer

John Roberts wrote today's Supreme Court opinion in which a 6-member majority struck down the Biden administration's forgiveness of most of the student loan debt in the country.  Whatever the merits of the court's decision, the Chief Justice included this allusive gem in his opinion:

From a few narrowly delineated situations specified by Congress, the Secretary [of Education] has expanded forgiveness to nearly every borrower in the country.  The Secretary's plan has 'modified' the cited provisions only in the same sense that 'the French Revolution 'modified' the status of the French nobility' - it has abolished them and supplanted them with a new regime entirely.

The Chief Justice is quoting from Antonin Scalia's opinion in MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 512 US 128 (1994), which turned in part on the definition of "modify."  In that case Justice Scalia wrote, "It might be good English to say that the French Revolution 'modified' the status of the French nobility - but only because there is a figure of speech called understatement and a literary device known as sarcasm." 

Justice Scalia did not credit any earlier source for his bon mot.  I suspect he was inspired, perhaps unconsciously, by Ambrose Bierce's work "The Devil's Dictionary," in which he defined "abridge" as "to shorten," attributing this fictive mashup of a sentence from the Declaration of Independence to Oliver Cromwell as an example of "abridge" in use: 

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Maybe Google doesn't think that anyone reads click-sign licensing agreements

Wanting to download Google Earth to my computer, I used Google to find the website.  Picking one on the first page, I clicked to obtain the download.  As all good sites do, this one asked me to read and click-sign a licensing agreement.  Here's a portion of the licensing agreement that Google offered me, obscurantist even by my high standards::

إليهما معًا بالاسم "بنود الخدمة"). تتم الإشارة في هذه الاتفاقية إلى برنامج Google أو أي جزء منه باسم "البرنامج".

1. استخدام البرنامج؛ القيود

استخدام البرنامج. بالنسبة لمستخدم نهائي بمفرده، يتاح البرنامج من أجلك كما يمكن لك استخدامه فقط للاستخدام الشخصي وغير التجاري وفقًا لبنود الخدمة هذه ولوثائق البرنامج. بالنسبة للمستخدمين النهائيين من المؤسسات أو الهيئات الحكومية، يجوز استخدام البرنامج بواسطتك أو بواسطة موظفيك للاستخدام الداخلي وفقًا لبنود الخدمة ووثائق البرنامج هذه (يتم الإشارة إلى المستخدمين النهائيين من الأفراد والمؤسسات والهيئات الحكومية في هذه الوثيقة بالاسم "أنت"). القيود. باستثناء الأمور التي اختصتك Google بترخيص القيام بها، لا يحق لك استخدام هذا البرنامج فيما يتعلق بأية منتجات أو أنظمة أو تطبيقات مثبتة أو متصلة بشكل آخر، أو ترتبط بمركبات تستخدم أو ذات صلة بما يلي:

(أ) التوجيه المتزامن على الطريق (بما في ذلك، على سبيل المثال وليس الحصر، التوجيه التفصيلي على الطريق وعمليات التوجيه الأخرى المُمكّنة من خلال استخدام جهاز استشعار)؛

ب) أية أنظمة أو وظائف للتحكم الآلي أو الذاتي في حركة المركبات؛ أوالسعة أو الموجزات المجمعة للإحداثيات الرقمية لخ

 

Isaac translates Jack into Plannerese -- fo' shizzle

Much as I enjoy what Gizoogle does with my language, its words are not those of the languages that I usually speak.  One tongue that I do speak fairly fluently is Plannerese, and it occurred to me that, had I the time, I might build an engine that could translate ordinary text into Plannerese, and specifically into the metropolitan dialect of Plannerese spoken in this area.  I then read one of Metro's Opt-In surveys, and found to my delight that a ready stock of Plannerese phrases awaited me, vetted by the masters.

Until I build the translation engine (Planoogle?  UGBoogle? Processpool?) I will have to translate by hand.  Consider this recent passage from Professor Bogdanski:

It's time for a moratorium on all things streetcar in Portland.  But given that the incoming mayor has been pimping streetcars for a living around the world, that isn't going to happen.  And so onward toward bankruptcy we march.  It's too bad that the voters don't get as worked up about gross financial incompetence as they do about fluoridated water.

The first sentence is hard to convert to local Plannerese, as it runs counter to the Received Plannerization, but the others are easier.  I render it thus:

A pause in expanding the streetcar network is one of a number of options for the region to consider as we strive toward multi-modal connectivity.  The incoming mayor has supported streetcars in the public and private sectors and construction should resume.  The fiscal and qualitative practicability of an integrated streetcar-centric transit network is less well understood than the social and community benefits actualized by the network.  As borne out by surveys, the community values streetcars and their attendant matrix of social, economic, and lifestyle availabilities almost as much as our region's historic commitment to clean, pure water.

Do these two paragraphs say the same thing?  Of course not; that's one of the joys of this strange and wonderful tongue.  Actually, I'm not sure that the second paragraph says anything, which means my translation might be pretty close to the mark.

Scary, isn't it?

Isaac gets Gizoogled

Concerned that my stilted 19th-century language might leave the Laquedemitasse unable to communicate with his peers, Mrs. Laquedem recently pointed me to www.gizoogle.net, a service which translates Google pages, and anything found by Google, into dialect.  I had it translate the front page of this blog.

Most complete sentences aren't quotable -- actually, they are quotable, but not printable -- but some of my headlines would pass muster with the Federal Communications Commission.  For example, Gizoogle renders the headline of my last post as "Governor, itz time ta bust a cap up in tha bridge, not build it."  From studying how Gizoogle translated my recent posts, I did learn that there is no hip-hop word for neodymium.  I did, however, learn many other words that are new to me, but not, apparently, to the Laquedemitasse.

"And they brought us whole binders full of women." -- Mitt Romney

And here I was, thinking that Mr. Romney was trying to put the polygamy issue to bed.

Only really, really thin senior citizens can have pets

Venerable Mom Laquedem inhabits, not too happily, a nearby senior center which is in the process of changing owners.  The new owner wants all of the residents to sign new residence contracts, printed in type small enough to be difficult or impossible for the average octogenarian or nonagenarian to read.

Many things about VM are above average, but her eyesight isn't.   Hence VM's call: could I read her contract, tell her what it says, and tell her if she can safely sign it?

I found a few things in the contract that could have benefited from, or that should have been quietly exterminated by, a competent proofreader, including a gem of a sentence that, as written, allows only residents who weigh 25 pounds or less to keep a pet in their apartment. 

A quiet and friendly pet can be a great comfort to an elderly person, but not at the cost of anorexia.  Venerable Mom doesn't want a dog or cat for herself, but she'll watch with great interest to see if any of her neighbors start skipping their meals.