Visions of scripturience (say what?)

If you've ever been possessed by a violent desire to write, you may not have been able to put that feeling into words. However, there is a word for it: you were feeling scripturient.

It's one of the rare words that have been gathered and then graphically rendered by the Project Twins, a pair of designers based in Cork City, Ireland. James and Michael Fitzgerald do design work for a number of companies and have created their own projects independently. A-Z of Unusual Words is one of those independent series.

Some of the words, like scripturience, do not appear in abridged dictionaries. But they can be found in the heftier versions, and, of course, the massive standard, the OED.

A sampling from the Project Twins lexicon:

Acersecomic: A person whose hair has never been cut

Biblioclasm: The practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media

Fanfaronade: Swaggering; empty boasting; blustering manner or behavior; ostentatious display

Noegenesis: Production of knowledge

Pogonotrophy: The act of cultivating, or growing and grooming, a mustache, beard, sideburns or other facial hair

Ultracrepidarian: A person who gives opinions and advice on matters outside of one's knowledge

Vernalagnia: A romantic mood brought on by spring

Zugzwang: A position in which any decision or move will result in problems.

The words alone are charming, and the graphic images created by the Project Twins even more so. Originally displayed in 2011 at the MadArt Gallery Dublin during DesignWeek, limited edition prints from the A-Z of Unusual Words are now for sale on the Project Twins website for about $250 each. Hat tip to Design Taxi for the link.

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Every writer's nightmare: the wordless Web

A dictionary for warped minds

La-La Land now the dictionary definition of Los Angeles

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: The poster for "scripturient" by the Project Twins. Credit: The Project Twins

 

Every writer's nightmare: the wordless Web

Just imagine if you could go on the World Wide Web and see no words. No words at all.

You can.

Designer Ji Lee and programmer Cory Forsyth have created a browser plug-in that erases all text from Web pages. It's called the Wordless Web.

To make it work, drag the icon into your bookmark bar. When on a Web page, click it and all the text disappears. It doesn't erase text that has been saved as an image, like some text-based logos, but all the html text goes away.

We tried it on Jacket Copy, and there was beloved children's book author Maurice Sendak without the news that he died Tuesday at the age of 83. Which, come to think of it, is sort of nice.

“Looking at sites without words makes the entire experience on the Web a little calmer, as if all the noise is gone,” Lee told Wired.

Using the Wordless Web is a reminder of how text-driven the entire Internet is. There are exceptions, I'm sure, brilliantly-designed image-oriented websites. But even things like Pinterest and Tumblr -- look at them with the words stripped out. They're pretty, but what do they mean?

If the Wordless Web is every writer's nightmare, we can't be angry at Ji Lee. The former creative director at Google Creative Labs has also tried to generate words in places where there were none, by pasting 50,000 blank word-bubble stickers on advertisements in New York.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Screenshot of Jacket Copy after getting the Wordless Web treatment

 

 

Rodney King and the L.A. riots: When 20 years can seem like yesterday

One aspect of Los Angeles hasn't changed in the 20 years since the 1992 riots: Traffic tie-ups. Rodney King, whose March 1991 beating by L.A. police officers was the first link in the chain of events that culminated in the 1992 riots, was a half-hour late Saturday for his interview with Times columnist Patt Morrison.

So, in a sense, the session ran in reverse. With Morrison, who also anchors a radio show on KPCC, as the moderator, Angelenos spent a half-hour talking about their own experiences during and after the riots as they awaited King's arrival. The general consensus: The LAPD has changed for the better, but the socio-economic conditions that set the stage for the riots have worsened. And the racial divides are still chasms.

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"I'm surprised at how white we are here," said one white woman, looking around at the crowd of more than 500 people in a basement auditorium at USC's Ronald Tutor Campus Center, about four miles north of where the riots began near South Central's Normandie and Florence Avenues. The woman said she lived in South Central, in a neighborhood in which she is the rare white resident. "The riots can certainly start again, until we have socio-economic changes, and in how we view other people."

King, for his part, arrived out of breath, and spoke of forgiveness for the officers involved in his videotaped beating after a high-speed chase. With his history of substance abuse, he said, he has been in need of some forgiveness. "I am a forgiving man," he said. "That's how I was raised, to be in a forgiving state of mind. I have been forgiven many times. I am only human. Who am I not to forgive someone?"

Maya Angelou missed the whole 'carved in stone' part

Maya Angelou caused a stir this week by objecting to the quotations inscribed on the recently unveiled Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington. "I was a drum major for justice peace and righteousness," one quote reads.

Angelou, 83, knew King during the Civil Rights movement. "The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit," she said Tuesday. "He was anything but that. He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply. He had no arrogance at all. He had a humility that comes from deep inside."

Angelou objected to the way King's original quote had been truncated. In a 1968 sermon, King spoke of himself in the past tense. "If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter." He was assassinated exactly two months later.

"The 'if' clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely," Angelou said. "It makes him seem less than the humanitarian he was .... It makes him seem an egotist."

As valid as her concerns may be, they seem to miss the point that the words are already carved in stone.

The edit was made while the memorial was being constructed. "As you move through the process, things happen and you have to make design changes on the spot," said executive architect Ed Jackson Jr., who points out that he infomed an oversight body, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, and "They didn't have a problem with it."

The quote was selected back in 2007 under the auspices of a Council of Historians. Two of the council's more active members, James Chaffers and John Lockyard, were also informed of the edit that would be made to the quote in order to fit it in the space available. Angelou's name also appears on the Council of Historians list, although it is said she did not attend its meetings.

Of course Angelou, a writer and poet, is concerned about being exact with words. But her complaints are arriving a little late for a memorial made of stone.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Credit: Charles Dharapak / Associated Press

After 22 years, Kate Bush gets to record James Joyce

Kate Bush had hoped to use the words of Molly Bloom for a track on her 1989 record, "The Sensual World." However, she was not able to get permission from the estate of James Joyce to use words from his seminal work, "Ulysses," and instead wrote song lyrics of her own.

Now, more than 20 years later, Bush has been given permission to use Molly Bloom's soliloquy as song lyrics. "I am delighted I have had the chance to fulfill the original concept," Bush told the BBC.

Bush has recorded "Flower of the Mountain" -- the song formerly known as "The Sensual World" -- with Molly Bloom's words from "Ulysses." The song will appear on her upcoming album "Director's Cut," slated for release May 16 in England.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photos, from left: Kate Bush in 2005 (credit: Trevor Leighton); James Joyce in 1931 (credit: file).

A dictionary for warped minds

Last week the Oxford English Dictionary announced March additions to its pages, include FYI, OMG, email (not e-mail) and La-La Land. But something it hasn't added yet are brightly colored pictures.

Those can be found in "My First Dictionary" by Ross Horsely. Colorful illustrations are not unusal in dictionaries for children -- but this may be the only one intent, as its subtitle says, in "corrupting young minds one word at a time."

The images are from an actual 1950s chldren's book and have been repurposed by Horsley, a British librarian, to his nefarious ends.

The book, which went on sale in Feburary, contains entries that look childish but are not at all suited for children. Some are homicidal. For instance, a picture of two teacups accompanies the word ALIKE:

Tommy and Granny's drinks are alike.

They look similar.

If only Tommy could remember which one he put the arsenic in.

Some are dirty. A girl writes at a desk with BACKFIRED:

Lucille's plan backfired.

It had the opposite effect of what she intended.

Her teacher actually gave her a lower grade after reciving oral sex from her during detention.

And some are  rather bacchanalian. A woman reclines in a chair on a covered PORCH:

A porch is a sheltered area at the front of a house.

Mother has passed out on the porch after too many mint juleps.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

'La-La Land,' now the dictionary definition of Los Angeles

The Oxford English Dictionary made some stellar updates on March 24, which are now online. For instance, "e-mail" is now "email." You can now, with reference to the OED, eat a banh mi sandwich or a taquito. And FYI (newly added), OMG is there too -- and it dates back to 1917. (OMG!).

But then there's this: La-La Land is in the newest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, and it defines our fair city. Here's the definition:

la-la land n. can refer either to Los Angeles (in which case its etymology is influenced by the common initialism for that city), or to a state of being out of touch with reality—and sometimes to both simultaneously.

What is it, the sun, the palm trees, the nightclubs, the limos, the fact that Spiderman can get arrested on Hollywood Boulevard? Do we deserve this (new word) smack-talking from a bunch of dictionary writers? Maybe they should all be wearing (new word) tinfoil hats.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: A man dressed as Spiderman is arrested in 2009 for outstanding misdemeanor offenses after an alleged assult on Hollywood Boulevard. Credit: Mel Melcon / LA Times

From 'gaa' to 'water' -- language acquisition at TED

"Imagine if you could record your life, everything you said, everything you did ... that's exactly the journey that my family began 5 1/2 years ago." Deb Roy, who directs MIT's cognitive machines group, wired up his house with video and audio and built a kind of grid-based tracing system for how people moved through the space, creating a vast data set -- all to study how his son learned to speak.

In this TED Talk, Roy demonstrates the stunning data-driven visualizations his team created to reveal space-based components of language acquisition. He's focusing not just on the words, but the where and how of what was said to his son; suggesting what was said around the infant, and when. For example, his team could map out each time and place a single word was spoken in front of Roy's child, which appears like a series of stalagmites spiking up around their house.

And in a crazy audio compression, he demonstrates how one sound -- "gaa" -- evolves into the full word, "water."

Doubtless, not everyone wants to have their home fully wired for around-the-clock observation. But Roy's research certainly makes it seem worthwhile.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Who is the true Urban Homesteader (TM)?

For more than a decade, the Dervaes family of Pasadena has labored to turn their one-fifth-acre lot into a self-sufficient, sustainable farm. When the Los Angeles Times checked in with them in 2007, they were producing much of their own power, although they hadn't gone entirely off the grid yet. There were still some foodstuffs they'd buy, but they'd regularly sell produce and duck eggs to local restaurants.

"People thought, and I did too, that we couldn't make it on such a small piece of land," patriarch Jules Dervaes told The Times. But he decided "we're going to grow as much as we can on this property for a living. I was going to live off this come hell or high water."

In the years that Dervaes has been doing his urban gardening thing, the ideas and practices have become widely popular. Our own Susan Carpenter tried a two-year experiment in eco-living, discovering what worked (gray water reuse) and some hard lessons (backyard chickens make easy prey, even in the city). Not surprisingly, bookstores now stock a plethora of memoirs, guides and how-to books that address the project of city folk living sustainably.

This is complicated by the fact that in October 2010, Dervaes trademarked the phrases Urban Homestead and Urban Homesteading. According to the O.C. Weekly, he recently has been sending out cease-and-desist letters to those using the phrase, including KCRW's radio show "Good Food" (which had used it in a blog post) and the Santa Monica Public Library, which held a free event on the topic.

One book has gotten caught up in Dervaes' campaign: "The Urban Homestead" by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. The authors, who also live here in L.A., published the book in 2008 and maintain a blog with tips and chronicles of their sustainable-living efforts. Apparently the recipients of one of Dervaes' letters, they have, according to BoingBoing, found legal representation with the Electronic Freedom Foundation. (They did not respond to request for comment. It's OK: They're probably in the yard, mulching).

When the book came out, Knutzen spoke to the L.A. Times. Back then, we asked him about the now-trademarked term Urban Homestead. Knutzen explained:

It's a phrase that's been floating around since the '70s.  That's the earliest I've seen a reference to an "Urban Homestead." The magazine Mother Earth News, a classic resource for back-to-the-land hippies, and still a wonderful resource, had a bunch of stories in the 1970s that used the expression "Urban Homestead."

There's also a classic example in Berkeley from the early 1970s that was an experiment in self-reliant living in the city called the Integral Urban House. It was a very ambitious project based in Berkeley aimed at setting up a self-reliant urban household. For instance, they had fish ponds with bee hives over the fish ponds. The dead bees would fall into the ponds, providing food for the fish. The goal was to apply principles of the back-to-the-land movement to living in the city.

Interestingly, Knutzen expressed some dissatisfaction with his book's title, saying, "the word homestead suggests a sort of Little House on the Prairie, completely self-sufficient life.  Our focus isn't on that kind of extreme living but on small things that anyone can do."

Which probably did not include getting involved in legal tusslings over sustainable-living phraseology.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photos: At top left, Jules Dervaes in 2007. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

What 'blood libel' means

Commentator and author Sarah Palin, whose target-like attention to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was criticized after Saturday's shooting in Arizona, released a video statement Wednesday that is proving inflammatory on its own.

In the video, Palin protested against such criticisms, saying, "journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel."

"Blood libel" is an old and unusual term. In the L.A. Times, James Oliphant reports:

Sarah Palin's remarks Wednesday in which she accused critics who would tie her political tone to the Arizona shootings of committing a "blood libel" against her have prompted an instant and pronounced backlash from some in America's Jewish community.

The term dates to the Middle Ages and refers to a prejudice that Jewish people used Christian blood in religious rituals.

"Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a 'blood libel' against her and others," said David Harris, president of the National Democratic Jewish Council, in a statement. "This is of course a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries -- and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today."

"The term 'blood libel' is not a synonym for 'false accusation,' " said Simon Greer, president of Jewish Funds for Justice. "It refers to a specific falsehood perpetuated by Christians about Jews for centuries, a falsehood that motivated a good deal of anti-Jewish violence and discrimination. Unless someone has been accusing Ms. Palin of killing Christian babies and making matzoh from their blood, her use of the term is totally out of line."

Read the complete report here. 

-- Carolyn Kellogg