Dear blogophile,

This piece by William Safire in the On Language section of the NYT had me smiling/resonating all the way to the office.

I sympatize with our dear William. In Dutch, the equivalent salutation would be "Beste William" ("Dear William") or the possibly more formal "Geachte William". However, in a twist not mentioned in the article, I often catch myself writing just "Beste," ("Dear,") when writing a multi-recipient email. Doesn't it look lonely:

Dear,

A bit like finishing a letter or email with just "Yours," — I have done it, but am never sure if I am being too forward or too abrupt.

Where is that promise of office automation (Thunderbird plugin developers, are you listening?) that would allow me to have multiple parties in my To:-list and just

Dear [first name],

as a salutation. Or even better

salutation([first name]),

where depending on the person in question, the salutation function generates "Dear William", "Hey Will", "Da man W." or, when it senses my state of mind just

""

And with that vision that one day all emails will be templated, automated and impersonal, I urge you to accept, Dear blogophile, the expression of my most respectful sentiments,

M.

Draw me a war

The item that ticked me off has been floating around the blogosphere for a quite a while already (I picked it up @ Daring Fireball), but it is still bothering me. Badly.

The question I would like to address is : "Have they gone completely bonkers!?!?". They referring to the citizens of that greatest nation on earth .

Of course, Texas may be an isolated hotbed of silliness, but I doubt it. You see, they have tried to forbid Fahrenheit 451 as appropriate reading material for high school students. All because of a complaint by someone that hasn't even (he admits) read the book. The irony is goddamn' beautiful.

Now, that very irony has been discussed in several places and the idiocy been exposed in most eloquent ways. What bothered me even more was the snippet halfway through (sorry, the original content is no longer available for free, but the google cache is still available) when other banned books were discussed. One of them being:

"NCISD banned "Draw Me a Star" by Eric Carle and "Absolute Power" by David Baldacci, but it has not received a book challenge in three years, Cindee Reynolds, NCISD superintendent/community relations executive assistant, stated in an e-mail to The Courier."

Let me show you this evil book:



I must be a horrible parent, I have read that very book to my children several times. And I cannot think of a single reason why it should be forbidden. Nor can understand that this was not front page news - I guess you get used to stuff like this when you live in the States. Go get it at a local library (a become a patron while you're at it!) - it has been translated into a number of languages. Then, join me in my passionate plea to the NCIS:

STOP IT, YOU SILLY BUGGERS !