This came up in a Slashdot thread, and I thought I might as well post it here. Today's pet peeve: misuse of "an" before words starting with a voiced "h".

Most of us understand that when a noun starts with a vowel sound, you use "an" before it: "an apple". And most of us get that this includes words that start with a silent consonant: "an hour".

There are a few words, like "homage", that can be pronounced with the "h" either silent or not. It's silent in the preferred pronunciation, so "an homage", just like "an hour"; but if you're using some dialect where the "h" is pronounced, "a homage" would be correct. So either "a" or "an" could be okay there.

But there's a common misusage with some "h" words. I have a strong urge to punch people who say "an historic occasion" or "an hallucination". These are just wrong, unless you are a British aitch-dropper. ("An 'istoric occasion, guvnor!")

I'm not a big grammar stickler but this one grates on the ear. It does not leave me an happy camper.

The rule is simple: "an" before vowel sounds, "a" before consonants. The "n" in "an" is exactly there to hold vowels apart; if you don't have adjacent vowels (sounds, not symbols) in your phrase, it's redundant.

Because the rule is about sounds, not symbols, you also get cases where "a" rather "an" should be used before a word whose spelling starts with a vowel: "a union" or "a unicorn". If it helps, think of how you could spell these as "a (you)n-yin" or "a you-ni-corn".

And there there's acronyms: "a USB port", but "an MBA". ("A you-ess-bee port, an em-bee-ay".)

If we could all get this right, it would really cut down on my urges to punch people, and I'm sure there are others who feel the same way. So work for world peace: use the proper article. Thanks.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: freewrite around the phrase "there's potency in pears"

the apple gets all the press
Adam and Eve and the apple
apple of my eye
Apple Records, Apple Computers, Apple Ford
apple for the teacher
Johnny Appleseed

but we who study the subtle and hidden know
there is potency in pears

the crows and squirrels come into my yard
to feast on the sickle pears
that fall from my tree like hail in late spring
the sweet white flesh of the fruit
the potency of the seeds within

each ready to create a whole new tree out of nothing but soil and water and light

It's well-known that the CIA's MK-ULTRA program dosed unwitting people with LSD in the 1950s and 60s as part of their mind control experiments. (Really. I Am Not Making This Up, and it is not loony conspiracy theory history -- read the linked Wikipedia article if you've never heard of MK-ULTRA before.)

However, these experiments were thought to have limited to administration of drugs to one person at a time, or at least only to small groups. But new research into the history of MK-ULTRA provides evidence that a bizarre 1951 outbreak of mass insanity and hallucinations in a southern French village was caused by the CIA spiking the food supply with LSD, rather than by ergot-containing fungus poisoning the bread.

Hundreds of people were affected, dozens were committed to asylums, and at least five died.

According to the Telegraph,

Mr Albarelli said the real "smoking gun" was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses. It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the "Pont St. Esprit incident." In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon, Mr Albarelli claims, the US army also drugged over 5,700 unwitting American servicemen between 1953 and 1965.

None of his sources would indicate whether the French secret services were aware of the alleged operation. According to US news reports, French intelligence chiefs have demanded the CIA explain itself following the book's revelations. French intelligence officially denies this.

Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Palestinian grass-roots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, writes about trying to bring about non-violent change while living under Israeli oppression:

Yet, every Friday, Palestinian villagers losing precious agricultural land to Israel’s wall turn out to protest peacefully. Unarmed farmers and entire families march to defend their lands. They do so though 16 have been killed, many just kids. They continue to show up though thousands have been injured.

In October, I expressed concern over the arrest of my colleague Mohammed Othman. Shortly before his arrest, Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint took him aside and warned, “We’re going to arrest you, but it’s difficult with you because all you do is talk.” I wrote then, “If talking is a crime, if urging the international community to hold Israel accountable for theft of our land is a crime, then we all are vulnerable.”

Less than two months later I, too, was sitting in an Israeli prison cell – for talking too much.

As they dragged me from my house, Israeli occupation forces threatened my family’s well-being, saying they would only see me again after a prisoner exchange.

Because we Palestinians are under military occupation, where military decrees sharply limit political activity, the struggle for our most basic human rights is, by default, criminalized. Once arrested, protesters do not face civil courts, but military courts which blatantly violate international standards of fair trial.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to enable Israel's oppression and theft of land to the tune of $5.5 billion annually, fueling more anti-American feeling in the Middle East.

I've been thinking for a while that there are (at least) two unlikely pre-conditions that must be met before there will be peace in this region:

1. The existence of Israel must be recognized a fait accompli. It has no special "right to exist" any more than than did the U.S.S.R., Austria–Hungary, or any of the other nations that have come and gone; but the people living there now are there and, so long as they respect the rights of others, have the right to be free from violence. This does not mean that the Palestinian people give up the right of self-defense.
2. The existence of Israel must be recognized and admitted to be based on a huge crime, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration when the U.K. decided it could exploit the Zionist movement for its own geopolitical benefit by supporting a "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," and never mind all the people already living there. This does not mean that the people of Israel all have to pack up and leave, any more than the fact that the United States was founded on the genocide of the Native peoples means that I need to move to the homeland of my ancestors.

But so long as so many Americans believe that Palestine was essentially empty until Israel was formed, and so many Palestinians still think it's possible to expel the invaders, and so many Israelis actually believe that they have some divine right to that land, and so long as we ignore the fact that most of the trouble can be traced to the goddamn British Empire and fail to demand aid and compensation for the region from the U.K., the blood and the tears will continue.

We mentioned recently how Sarah Palin's grandson Tripp Palin Johnston -- and reportedly all of the Palin kids -- receive free federal health care through Indian Health Services and the Alaska Native Medical Center.

According to The Daily Telegraph, her family's love for socialized medicine extends to Canada as well: when she was a kid, the family would engage in a little medical tourism, and sneak over the border to get care paid for my Canadian taxpayers:

Mrs Palin, who moved as a child to the south-eastern Alaska town of Skagway, was speaking at an event sponsored by the Fraser Institute, a conservative Canadian think tank.

"Believe it or not - this was in the sixties - we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse [capital of Canada's Yukon Territory]," she said.

"I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing, and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse, and I think, 'Isn't that kind of ironic now'. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada."

Hypocrisy: a great luxury, or the greatest luxury?

Please, keep talking, Sarah; you're the greatest weapon those of us opposed to the wingnut faction of the GOP have.

In honor of this fine spring day, Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Pigeons In The Park". "Spring is here, spring is here, life is skittles and life is beer."

(My mom introduced me to Tom Lehrer's work. Also to George Carlin. I do love my mom.)

This is minor, but god(dess)(s/es) how it annoys me...

Look at one of your credit cards. Notice how the digits of the card number are displayed in groups of four, something like "4111 1234 5678 9011".

Now, try entering the digits in just that way on some website where you want to buy something using that card. Odds are 50/50 that the site won't accept the input, that it will require you to type them in as the much less legible "4111123456789011".

There is absolutely no reason for this other than laziness or incompetence. Telling the program to remove spaces or dashes is trivial -- a decent program should be able to accept either format. (I've done it for my employer.)

Modern programming languages have a rich array of functions and methods for string manipulation. Learn to use 'em or go home and leave the programming to the grown-ups, kids.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: supported freewrite on random phrase from the Urbanite -- "walk the streets to get a feel for the neighborhood."

walk the streets and feel
under your feet
under the asphalt
the geography of the land
shaped by millions of years
each little hill and valley the result of
catastrophic forces, earthquakes, continental shifts
the slow erosion from the flow of water

walk the streets to get a feel
for the paths thousands of years
of the feet of thousands of people
have worn
each body 60% water
our steps just another form of water erosion

walk the streets to get a feel for the neighborhood
the architecture and the art
the people of the place
the climate, the shade, the sun and the shadow
concrete and grass and bare soil and culverts
the cracks in the cement that become little ponds

the gritty feel of industrial neighborhoods
like dirty used machine oil hanging in the air
the downtown man-made canyons where sunlight never
     penetrates to the bottom
the artificial viridian of chemical-infused exurban lawns
where you will not be permitted to walk --
it is a place for looking not for feeling

walk the streets if you can
the ghettos not safe to walk
but neither the gated communities, where guards eye with
     suspicion any who walk rather than drive

walk the streets and get a feel for the neighborhood
if you can
if you dare

Came out to the "Speak Your Piece" reading at New Age Dine and Dance tonight, to see Alan Reese do his poetry thing. Alan, a fine and formidable poet, was my middle school English teacher, and the man responsible for my introductions to Mark Twain, zazen, Howard the Duck, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

A few years after I moved back to Baltimore, I was doing an open mic reading at the original Minas Gallery in Fells Point. They had a shelf of local poets, and I found a chapbook, Reports From Shadowland, written by some guy named Alan Reese. Huh, that's funny, I thought, I had a teacher named Alan Reese, ain't that a coincidence. Then I read the author bio, and saw he used to be a teacher in the Baltimore County school system...so I sent him a quick note and got back in touch, and we see each other around in the poetry scene from time to time. (He runs a small press these days, and I'm hoping to get some advice on the book from him.)

Hanging out now at the comedy hour that follows the poetry reading. It's interesting to try to figure out the structure of a comedy routine, the relationship between poetry/spoken word and comedy.

At long last, the decision is in: after being (rudely, IMHO) booted out of its long-term home at the Brushwood Folklore Center, this year's Starwood Festival will be held at Wisteria in Pomeroy, Ohio, July 6-12.

That's pretty much due west of Baltimore, so hopefully should be warmer than Sherman, NY, where nighttime temperatures can drop into the 40s in July! It's about the same drive time, if Google Maps can be believed.

(I had a conflict in the that my karate school has a retreat scheduled that weekend, but I've learned that that event has already filled up. So it's looking good for me to be at Starwood.)