College Football!

It's officially the best time of the year. Until the first week of January.

Sexy People

sexy people.



amazing.

My New Crush is a . . . Javelin-a ?

I love the Olympics. They bring the world to me . . .



. . . and make my heart go pitter-pat.

Of course, the Olympics are full of wonderful contrasts: victory/defeat, rich/poor, youth/age and, appropriately, there is ugliness to offset Ms. Franco's beauty.

That is to say, Bob Costas' hairpiece . . .



. . . which makes me throw up in my mouth.

However, please note: if you zoom in close enough, you can see that Bob's toupee is actually the inspiration behind . . .



. . . the Bird's Nest. I have yet to confirm my suspicion that the NBC nickname for the arena was actually an inside-joke about Bob's hair, another Olympic icon, which unfortunately has preceded him in retirement.

The best part about being grown-up?

It may not be #1, but it's up there:

Being able to run and jump on the shopping cart without anyone telling me to stop.

Failed to find this in time.

Re: the previous the post

It is possible to achieve the "failure to" effect without resorting to "failure to language." From Bill Kristol's Op-Ed in today's NYT:

Perhaps the most revealing moment was the two candidates’ response to a question about evil. Yes, evil — that negation of the good that, Friedrich Nietzsche to the contrary notwithstanding, we seem not to have moved beyond.

Um . . . what? "to-the-contrary-notwithstanding" ? have we "failed to" move beyond evil? Geez. Worst sentence ever. Or at least today.

I need to . . .

1. Move into my new digs
2. Get things out my storage unit
3. Charge my camera battery and transfer photos to my computer so I can post them
4. (Get this:) Develop film (!)
5. Grocery shop . . .

and lots of other things.

But, let's be serious, none of that is more important than discussing poor syntax. Or in other words, I failed to work on my to-do list in order to discuss others' failure to write effectively.

Example #1, from CollegeFootballNews:

" . . . Last year he changed and became a dominant run blocker and was more consistent overall. Most importantly for this offense, he was fantastic in pass protection failing to allow a sack all year."

So, he failed to allow a sack? Or did he succeed in not allowing a sack? I thought that you weren't supposed to allow sacks as an offensive lineman.

Yes, this is just one example. No, I am not going to track down other examples. But lately I have seen this everywhere from Olympic broadcasts to the New York Times. The trend seems most prevalent among sportswriters -- or maybe it appears so to me merely because that's the sort of writing I read the most.

There are many related syntactical goofs. Basically, the author (or sportscaster) wants to sound more sophisticated. Somewhere (e.g. prep school, college, or the New York Times opinion page) the author ran across "failed to" / "failure to." It's abused as a fancy substitute for "did not," in the same way that "problematic" is abused as a fancy (but incorrect) adjectival susbtitute for "is bad."

One reason that the New York Times and professors are so fond of these bit of Academic Restrictive Code is that they are convenient means of injecting opinion in places where professors and journalists prefer to weigh in but still desire to preserve their aura of impartiality.

Consider:
"The Senator failure to acknowledge [X] is problematic."

Basically, the facts behind such a statement are usually: the Senator did not respond to questions, or has not taken a position, about X yet.

Certain stock phrases like "raises [more] questions [than it answers]" and "very troubling" are dressed-up ways to disagree -- saying nothing substantively more than "I disagree" but nonetheless trying to produce the impression "I am very erudite and disagree."

But "failed to" actually does say something substantive, namely, the "fail-er" had a responsibility to do something and failed. Never mind that the responsibility is often left unsaid (conveniently masking the injection of opinion). In the above example, the Senator may not agree that she has a responsibility to acknowledge X or that about X is actually the case. She would likely agree that she does not acknowledge X as being the case. The fact that she is not on-the-record acknowledging X is only a failure because of the journalist's word choice, and it is not problematic unless it poses particular difficulty (i.e. is problem-laden) or is debatable.

This is a similar, less subtle trick to using different (facially impartial) terms depending on the journalist's opinion of the subject: the _____ administration vs. junta/regime (the latter sounds more hostile, illegimate and foreign) and President ___ vs. Mr. (or even Ex-President) _____ (emphasizing the authority of the former and the lack of authority of the latter).

This is all nothing new: journalists and professors and even random bloggers like myself love to inject opinion without appearing to inject opinion. Think of doctored photos and carefully cropped headlines: "Governor Fails (line one) to discuss (line two) Allegations (line three)."

Back to sportswriting. One reason that all of this opinion-without-opinion writing is, er, problematic (sorry, couldn't resist) is that some writers and talking-heads start to think that "did not" is low-brow and "fails" is a more sophisticated way of saying the same thing.

But "fails" generally has certain normative ("should have but did not") or intentional ("wished to but did not") implications. Indeed, one reason it is employed so often by political talking heads and journalists: vagueness! A reader can read into "fails" implications of either sort. Besides, "did not" is not very newsworthy -- but "fails to" is:

Dog Fails to Bite Man! (versus, Dog did not Bite Man)

Not only is "failure to" wording capable of opinion-without-opinion, it can also achieve news-without-news! Indeed, it's particularly vague, and effective to those ends in the passive voice:

Man Fails to be Bitten by Dog! (versus, Man was not bitten by dog)

So why do sportswriters so commonly resort to "failure to" language? Simple. NYT reporter: "Their failure to write at the same standards as the rest of journalists is problematic due to their troubling lack of formal credentials." (i.e. they're dumb jocks). Actually, I think they are just mimicking other journalists but have exaggerated motives to appear impartial and sophisticated. I mean, ESPN guys call themselves "analysts" -- that's even more impartial and sophisticated than a journalist, right?

Sportswriters love to inject opinion without injecting opinion. Every one of them is a fan at heart. The more they get paid, the more they try to appear above-the-fray. ESPN game crews look down their noses at local homer radio announcers. But more the most part they are all former players and coaches or fans who have made the big-time. They have personality conflicts, alma maters, favorite teams and players and their own preseason predictions to defend. Then someone tells them to be journalists -- and they have to figure out how to play the game: opinion-without-opinion and news-without-news.

Quarterback fails to throw interception! Closer has failed to blow a single save! Point guard fails to be affected by injury!

There is a time and a place for "failure to" language:

Traveling Mattie failed to blog about Bali! -- True.

But:

Traveling Mattie failed to have any work to do for the last 45 minutes -- Not true . . . or is it?

Angry in Anchorage

My boxes finally un-anchored themselves from Anchorage. The combination of FedEx and Customs has been ridiculous.

Genius

Vanilla syrup intended for gourmet coffee(?) + [diet] Coke from the soda fountain = [Diet] Vanilla Coke.

I may not have had math since high school, but I still know a thing or two about addition.