A proof of the existence of an intelligent proofreader?

Just one sentence was deleted, the last sentence of an appendix-of-sorts at the end of a brief (three-page) article. And that deletion appeared to me to be a proof of the existence of an intelligent (if not loving) proofreader.

A few years ago I was invited to contribute a brief introductory article to a special issue of a magazine. So I did. 

The professional society that publishes this magazine (and many journals) requests (insists) that every author supply a brief professional biographical sketch (the usual stuff: training, appointments, research interests), to appear at the end of the article. So I did. 

Only, when I got the page proofs back (in PDF form), I found that the final sentence of my biographical sketch was gone! 

I didn't mind. I certainly wasn't offended, nor did I think that this editing reflected poorly on the journal or its publisher. Indeed, I took the deletion of the final sentence of my draft biosketch to be a sign of the existence of an intelligent proofreader. As in "hey, someone is really reading this stuff!"

And that sentence? It was:

A son of the Garden State, Dr. Pekar is especially grateful to have worked with so many international scientists, who tend to lack the irrational prejudice against New Jersey so prevalent among his own countrymen.

"a hot car, a hot girl, and a cold beer"

Just one sentence, from a 1953 letter home from Al Puntasecca (Fifth Infantry, Forty-Fourth Battalion, A Company) during the Korean War, presented earlier today by tenor and actor David Kozisek (photo below) as part of the "Letters Home" program at the Smithsonian Institution's American Museum of Natural History:

I still want a hot car, a hot girl, and a cold beer, but, there were times I could have traded them all for a warm blanket.

fresh!

Speaking of googlewhacks, this morning we wrote about the smooth cruiser vs. the bucking bouncer. Googling "smooth cruiser" gives over forty thousand results; googling "bucking bouncer" gives none but our Kensington Diary entry. You can, as they say, try it yourself:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22bucking+bouncer%22

NeuroCooking: offering fresh phrases ever since 2009!

"... fantasies of the eras when the longings began..."

Just one more sentence, this one from page 298, of Thomas Pynchon's new novel "Inherent Vice":

Studio musicians showed up in rides they had bought with their first big paychecks, to be redeemed in years to follow from impound lots, winched out of mudslides, preserved from the depredations of divorce lawyers, all replacement parts kept authentic for resales that would never happen, fantasies of the eras when the longings began, Morgans from the showroom up in Westwood with hoods held down by leather straps, Cobra 289s and '62 Bonnevilles and that supernatural DeSoto in which James Stewart, gone round the bend of love, tails Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958).

stay smooth

On this morning's dog walk I didn't see many cars, because who's out driving before seven o'clock on a Saturday morning? But I did see two in a row cross Kensington Parkway on Beach Drive. The first was a small sedan that smoothly glided to a stop and then smoothly accelerated away; the second was a big white SUV that - as the sedan ahead was slowing - roared up, braked suddenly, causing the front of the vehicle to dip down, crossed the intersection without stopping (because the meaning of a sign saying "STOP" is just so, well, obscure and hard-to-understand), then accelerated suddenly, causing the front of the vehicle to buck up, and then braked hard again, nose diving, to fall close behind - i.e., tailgating - that small sedan...

So, there you have it, a fundamental dichotomy in the multi-dimensional (surely there are at least four dimensions: psycho-, socio-, spatio-, temporal-) world of driver-types: The smooth cruiser vs. the bucking bouncer. NeuroCooking friends, if you do drive, I hope that you stay smooth.

googlewhacks, Orwell, & modest immodesty

A googlewhack is a two-word phrase, which, when entered as a google query, yields a unique result. It turns out that a three-word phrase in our public service announcement posted yesterday, namely "inane marketing falsehoods", does not appear, as of this writing, per google, to be anywhere else on the web. 

Here, try it yourself:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22inane+marketing+falsehoods%22

George Orwell, in his great 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language", lamented that "modern writing at its worst ... consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else..." So, what appears to be our accidental invention of a novel three-word phrase may suggest that we are at least avoiding the worst.

as a courtesy to our readers

Following several inquiries, we thought it would be useful to state here that NeuroCooking is not affiliated with or sponsored by the Neuro beverage company, makers of "Health and Wellness Drinks" including NeuroBliss ("happiness in every bottle"), NeuroTrim ("a leaner you in every bottle"), & NeuroGasm ("passion in every bottle"); nor does our quotation here of their inane marketing falsehoods constitute our endorsement of their products. And let's not even mention their Junior line of beverages for kids, including NeuroSonic Junior Formula "...for better cognitive function."

"... reveals better than all the words in the world could..."

Just one sentence from Glenn Greenwald's Salon.com essay "The CIA torture regime: What every American should be forced to learn" (a sentence found in "Update II" and addressed "to those blithely dismissing all of this as things that don't seem particularly bothersome..."): 

The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle -- all things that we have always condemend as "torture" and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies ("torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering...") -- reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.

Presenting Research and Methodology

If you are going to be presenting research, especially to mid-sized to large audiences, you may wish to, ahead of time, post a web page thoroughly explaining the research methodology. Then, when you get a question about the methodology, you can volunteer that it is fully explained and documented on the web site, and, out of respect for the rest of audience, you will not take their time to go into details about it now. This offers both transparency and confidence, and keeps you on message. The skeptics can poke around at the research on line, instead of poking at you, the trustworthy presenter.

and the last word is...

Just one sentence from Toni Bentley's review, in yesterday's New York Times, of "Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex", edited by David Henry Sterry and R. J. Martin, Jr:

This collection is a wonderful reminder that good writing is not about knowing words, grammar or Faulkner, but having that rare ability to tell the truth, an ability that education and sophistication often serve to conceal.