“Edmonson might be the most promising American jazz singer to come along since Cassandra Wilson.”
—The Boston Globe

Tonight, please welcome back Austin’s own

KAT EDMONSON

7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.

FREE

Kat Edmonson, 26, has one album to her name, and it’s been out for just a few months. She has had no formal training, no big-shot mentor. Instead she has a preternaturally gifted voice, sense of rhythm, and ability to swing. Where other singers her age tend to belt out a tune, she retreats, nearly whispering the lyrics, with a timbre that recalls Blossom Dearie. Comparing Edmonson to Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux doesn’t quite work; she’s more jazz-focused than they are, even if her set list is more contemporary than theirs. With an imaginative repertoire that includes jazzy remakes of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven’’ and the Cardigans’ “Lovefool’’ and updates of such classics as “Angel Eyes’’ and “Just One of Those Things,’’ Edmonson might be the most promising American jazz singer to come along since Cassandra Wilson.

—Boston Globe
August 2009

A sharp rise in belief in hell boosts economic growth in developing countries, while an increase in church attendance slows growth. That’s the curious conclusion of a new study of the economic effects of religion.

Michael Fizgerald of the Boston Globe reports:

I read a dirge by famous columnist Vir Sanghvi—in a blog he maintains for hindustantimes.com—on the death of the front page over the last year or so. As a consumer of more than half a dozen newspapers I can also vouch for receiving some dead bodies on a daily basis. And here I mean not just the front page but that part of the bundle that goes to the heap in the storeroom with every crease in tact.

I buy different newspapers for different reasons and despite the recession some of them are part of an old habit while some of them are just for my neighbours to know that a journalist lives here and, therefore, buys more newspapers and magazines; never mind the fact that the world and he himself is recession hit.

This post is also an elegy, though the scope here is vast and encompasses much more than just the front page and tries to sniff if behind the death of the front page is the debris of the strongest pillar of the fourth estate; the institution of the editor. I don’t have extensive factual basis for such a nauseating inkling but then it has been that kind of a year where I am finding it difficult to believe that the six-letter title of ‘editor’ automatically means some simple ‘virtues’ like transparency, ethics, a basic minimum honesty, the competence to gauge the merit of a story and the most important quality to know what to do when confronted with an ethical dilemma.

“The newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation, must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free but facts are sacred.”—C.P. Scott, Editor, Manchester Guardian, May 6, 1926.

This is a time when the newspapers are competing with quality material that readers have access to much before the broadsheet comes out and that number is going to go up with the broadband coming, the economy growing, and the literacy rate climbing up. Quality is going to live and no matter where it is the interested reader will get to it.

That does not in any way mean that the bullshit is going to go away because a lot of people don’t know the difference and a lot of journalists cater to that market because they don’t know what else to do themselves; so all of it lives side by side. I have had some classic interactions over the years with the relatively-new as well as the senior old hands to have a decent first-hand experience of journalistic ‘copelessness’. The details are both horrifying and hilarious and some of them have even been on official channels; it is at best a subject for a book and not a long post.

The average marketing professional has his logic: “We’ve come up with a study that the market loves bullshit and we don’t understand why you can’t give more of it.” A story I read in livemint.com by Aakar Patel explores whether India’s high-growth can continue and says, “Nine half-literates are produced by our colleges, by Nasscom’s numbers, for every graduate of passable quality.” Mathematically then there has to be a probability for these semi-literates finding a way to the newsrooms. And also some probability of heading the newsroom. Also if there is just one literate for every nine semi-literates; it would be quite unsuccessful to cater to just 10 per cent of the population that is of passable quality.

So I come to my morning bundle and the Hindustan Times is the first paper I see on Sundays for the columnists I follow; on other days I look at its design and then go elsewhere to find something to read. I take The Indian Express for news as their reportage is excellent. The Times of India to see the pace and the direction that the market-leader is setting. The Economic Times for clean good copy that one can learn from and for some of their international business coverage that is unlikely to be found in any other paper. Last Saturday I took my first Crest and it was a pleasure; the edition was miles ahead of what any paper had on Tendulkar completing 20 years of international cricket. Three more daily papers that do not deserve mentioning serve some purpose or the other in my house.

When columnist Patricia Smith of the Boston Globe was forced out in June 1998 after having been found to have made up quotes, Andrew Marshall of the British newspaper The Independent had a go at his American peers in an article on June 23, 1998.

“British journalists have been smirking at two high-profile scandals involving two of their American peers who made up quotes and events in articles for two highly-respected publications. No, that sentence will not do. Since we are writing on the subject of journalistic accuracy, let’s be spot on. British journalists have been laughing hysterically, slapping their thighs and fighting desperately to retain bladder control. ‘We have long suspected that all this fact checking stuff was a charade,’ said a source close to me yesterday. ‘And now we know.’”

It is quite natural to think that lapses in journalistic accuracy would cause some major concern to our editors as well. And to point them out would not be considered as tantamount to being ‘the enemy of the fourth estate’ in India. As a journalist it is very heartening to know via the Medium Term that the heart of the Chairperson of a large newspaper house of the country is tilted positively towards the editorial aspect of the business. What is disheartening is that the hearts and minds of ‘some of the people’ responsible for editorial quality and journalistic ethics in the same newspaper house are not in their jobs. I’ll spare you the details but don’t be disappointed they will come up in the static pages once I have learnt how to organise the sub-folders.

On Saturday, though, the Hindustan Times did an exceptional bit of investigative journalism on a front page top box with a wonderful picture of Tendulkar under a good headline ‘The everlasting run machine’. I should not have been reading it as it was not a Sunday but I did; and so I found out.

“30,065 Runs scored in international cricket in both forms of the game (Tests and ODIs), the highest by any batsman. Ricky Ponting, again at second place has 24,057.” The numbers are wrong in both the cases; by 10 runs for Tendulkar and by 401 runs for Ponting. The sum total actually is in all three forms of international cricket where Tendulkar has played just one T20 international and scored 10 runs while Ponting has played 17 matches and 16 innings for his 401 runs. Although it is a very complicated error to achieve; it is understandable that this could have happened due to lack of communication.

Lets gear up for the investigative part now. “43 Centuries scored in Tests, the most by any batsman. Ricky Ponting of Australia comes second with 39.” This is an open insult in a country where cricket is a national obsession and the gap between the Little Master and the Tasmanian called Punter a subject of everyday discussions. Ponting scored his 38th Test hundred in the first Ashes Test of 2009 played in Cardiff beginning 8th July and did not manage a three figure score in the rest of the series. Who knows where he was caught scoring his 39th Test century after the series was won 2-1 by England and I signed off writing a post titled ‘A Sad Ashen Pundit’ after HT signed off with ‘A Sad Ashen Look’?

I LOVE energy drinks, almost more than alcoholic drinks. And I have to tell you, I find these facts amusing as hell.

Energy Drink Heaven

The Boston Globe had this to report:

In a year when financial crises are as common as the seasonal cold, one local company is taking charge to keep themselves afloat.

The Boston Globe faced many obstacles this year, from almost being sold to dealing with the ever changing field of journalism. Luckily for students at Emerson College, Globe publisher Stephen Ainsley and editor Marty Baron, were on hand to clear the air about the Globe’s troubling year.

The main issue the Globe faced this year was how to redo their budget so they could cut out $80 million. Baron referred to this year as the “most hellish year of my newsroom career.”

Baron and Ainsley first approached union leaders to discuss contract changes which they hoped would put a dent in the $80 million. After much discussion their plan worked out. Union concessions led to the saving of the Globe. Ainsley complemented union leadership by saying they “did an extraordinary job working with us.”

Even with the union concessions, there was still roughly $60 million to be tackled. Ainsley took the matter to his sector of the business. He is responsible for dealing most specifically with circulation, production and advertising. Ainsley determined that the amount charged for the paper had to go up. It went up 33-50% depending on the area. These hikes include both sales at the stand and papers delivered to residences.

The staff also took a major hit, as it was reduced significantly. The Globe was also forced to close its foreign bureaus. “Our core purpose is to cover this community of Boston,” said Baron. It was this focus on Boston and the state of Massachusetts that caused the Globe to refocus their energies and close down foreign as well as several national branches. They did keep their Washington branch open though as that branch is crucial to quality news coverage.

Taking these cuts, along with others that we not disclosed, Ainsley appeared optimistic saying “given our financial performance as it is today, I’d say we’re in pretty good shape.”

The next major obstacle the Globe has to tackle involves its website, Boston.com. The big question is whether or not the company should charge for the internet content. This question is buzzing around newspaper offices country wide. There are very few risk takers out there willing to roll the dice when it comes to charging a fee for content.

Boston.com posts an impressive five million unique visitors each month, averaging 20 minutes per month. However, Baron warns that “averages can be highly deceptive.” He elaborated saying that some visitors scan a headline and move on while others spend a considerable amount of time reading and analyzing the content.

One solution to the question of charging is to start off with modest payments. These payments would provide access to certain features of the website or limit the number of ads readers would see when reading stories. It is a thought, but many companies are still unsure of a model to go by.

With all this, “media is exploding,” Baron said. Although many people think that journalism is a dying field, Baron and Ainsley agreed that the future for journalism is strong. They said that more people are reading the newspaper today than in any other generation. The reason for this is the web. More often than not, readers will catch a glimpse of something online or on the television and do more research on it. Baron and Ainsley advocated for bloggers and are impressed that the public is starting to question the information they are given.

So while it has had its problems in the past, the Globe is in the middle of a changing industry and is working on staying competitive both online and in print.

BOSTON GLOBE PREVIEW OF HEROES

Check out today’s Boston Globe for a preview of Heroes, including interviews with the cast, director Carl Forsman, and Merrimack Rep Artistic Director Charles Towers. Heroes is currently in previews, with opening night on Sunday, November 22 at 7PM.

Visit Merrimack Repertory Theatre Online

What is in Thurston Moore’s iPod? Well, the Boston Globe put his musical device in shuffle mode and here’s what they got:

1. “Pinch,’’ Can. “I got it as a teenager in the early ’70s, and it was 49 cents at Woolworth’s.’’

Slipping into the weekend news cycle this morning, everywhere from the Boston Globe to Huffington, is the story of the United States Postal Service management’s decision to change the Letters To Santa/Operation Santa Claus program. The change applies to the volunteers at the North Pole, Alaska post office who, since 1954, have answered letters to Santa and post marked them from the small town. Apparently, after a registered sex offender in Maryland volunteered for the program last season, and was stopped before answering a letter, information will be redacted from letters electronically. This isn’t feasible for North Pole and the program will effectively be stopped there. Spokespeople at the USPS claim that only a handful of letters go to North Pole anyway and that it’s not a big deal. Right. For a town of 2100 that lives for this annual ritual and for the thousands of kids writing letters, it’s no big deal. Lets make the problem North Pole’s and not that of the USPS. Nice.

After reading dozens and dozens of comments by incensed readers on various sites, I’m going to postmark the issue in my own way. Many upset individuals have labeled the Post Office “evil,” and “Grinch-like.” No, they’re  just stupid. How do I know? I worked as a Postal Clerk for a number of years and was fully assimilated by the stupidity Borg. Stupid from the top on down. Right now I’m sitting in front of a little plaque I got after joining a group that was presented with the statistics showing Postal machine clerks do 12 minutes of work in an 8 hour day. While your letters are going to Santa, The magazines and periodicals you expect won’t show up ’till January, because the Post Office backs everything up until after the holidays. The big, stupid, money losing giant just rolls on. They care about Priority and Express mail, because it makes money for them. Everything else can rot. I have no axe to grind with the Postal Service, it was a great job. Good money, little stress. They just have a way of getting rid of things that matter in an effort to save pennies, rather than fixing the things that lose billions of dollars. The Letters To Santa program falls into this and I have a feeling that the whole thing will go by the wayside. As a country we’ve railed against General Motors and Chrysler and their decades of excess, while the Postal Service skates by-A ginormous, triple unionized, money losing entity that will die the brontosaurus death soon.

Signs of the times are all around us this Holiday season and I suppose this is just another one. Hopefully, we can find a little humanity in Christmas this year, even if it doesn’t come from North Pole, Alaska. Onward and Upward.

The Boston Globe dismisses Palin’s book tour with insults comparing it to Jon and Kate and other reality TV shows.

This week’s Sarah Palin TV tour has been like “Jon & Kate & Sarah & Todd & Bristol & Levi Plus Kids.’’ A 2012 presidential candidacy may not be on Palin’s “radar screen right now,’’ as she told both Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters in separate interviews, but her desire to remain a free-floating reality star on the American stage clearly is.

She goes on a gossipy show like Oprah and talks about her family. But the Globe slams her on this. What the hell else do you expect her to talk about with Oprah? I guess she could have told Oprah that her family was off limits but the libtards would have busted her for dodging the questions or something.

The liberal media and elite do not get it. The reason Palin is so popular is because she is not a robo-politician. She’s not polished. She actually answers questions when asked. She’s a real person. She doesn’t dodge a question. It’s refreshing.

So I guess today’s libtard insult is to compare Palin with reality TV personalities. Gotta give the left credit. They keep trying. And Palin just gets stronger. Fascinating.

I have a rip-roaring screed all ready (almost) to post, but first I need to make sure it won’t get me fired. So in the meantime (and to procrastinate), a little boston.com column action.

First: As usual I’ve forgotten to promote myself, because I’m already on to the next story. But: a couple of recent stories:

- Eating local takes root
- Election Night at the old-boys’ club (favorite story since the wrestler)
- What happened to the bike path Maypole? (only a brief, but hey! I got fairies into Globe North)

Second, I’m having a minor identity crisis that’s interfering with my ability to write the story on tap. I never intended this boston.com column thing to be an all-first-person all-the-time deal. It seems horribly egotistical. In my mind, this weekly Somerville slot simply continued the work of City Weekly, which meant ordinary third-person journalism.

But since I wrote the Thriller story, which made my editor kvell, I’ve been on a more personal-voice tip. Self-indulgent? Appealing? Please advise.
xx
djd
p.s. Pardon the really stupid overuse of slang. Also overused this week: “odd,” “fer real,” and independent clauses separated by a colon.
p.p.s. Hallelujah the Hills returns from tour this weekend. I will miss the awesome Facebook updates in which Ryan Walsh has more fun than me. As he did in Austin:

[dang, hey kids, why won't this embed? Anyway, it's a video. Watch it.]

NUMBER ONE JAMS: Hallelujah The Hills.

Closing show Saturday.

A Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting came to San Francisco State University Tuesday to speak with students of journalism about his experience in the field.

Steve Fainaru is a Washington Post foreign correspondent most widely known for covering the lawless operations of private security contractors in the war in Iraq.  His book on his experience there from 2004-2007 is “Big Boy Rules”.  Fainaru is also the coauthor of “The Duke of Havana: Baseball, Cuba, and the Search for the American Dream”.

Fainaru claims to have initially been drawn to journalism because, “it seemed like a really cool job that offered you experience and passage to adventures”.

Graduating from the University of Missouri, Fainaru started his career at the San Jose Mercury News but soon found himself back in school getting another degree in international affairs with hopes to become a foreign correspondent.

Fainaru has worked for the Washington Post since 2000, previously covering civil liberties and the fight against terrorism and serving as an investigative reporter focusing on sports.

Before writing for the Post, Fainaru worked at The Boston Globe for 11 years, covering the Boston Red Sox, Wall Street and Latin America.

In front of an eager group of green student journalists, Fainaru discussed his experiences covering the war in Iraq and the implications of the decrease in coverage of how America conducts its war strategies and business abroad.

“I felt like I discovered this whole other side of the war,” said Fainaru.  “Story coverage was in real time there.  You felt like you were at the center of history at that moment”.

These days, Fainaru thinks more of his family and is more interested in hyper-local news coverage that benefits a community but still covers the Mexican drug wars to which he says is like, “a picnic” in comparison to Iraq.

Fainaru ended his speech, leaving students with a solemn but illuminating view on the future of journalism.

A moment of pause for photography that causes you to

What evokes more unfiltered human emotion than death, love and sacrifice?  One of Boston.com’s recent “The Big Picture” photo galleries featured all three, in highlighting something that often gets lost in the big picture of a war: the people.

The photo gallery, titled Armstice Day Remembrances and posted on Nov 13, includes images you might expect to make the front page, and might not expect to leave your memory anytime soon:

…A shriveled hand dropping a red poppy on The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

…A triple amputee Afghanistan war veteran gazing upward  during a memorial ceremony, in a wheelchair and still in full uniform.

…The President of the United States walking stoically through section 60 of Arlington National Cemetary.

These are photos you inspect closely because you want to stay those extra few seconds…it’s that interesting, that artful. Most importantly, this gallery was one that makes you pause, and think. 

One of it’s predecessing galleries, however, makes you gaze.

“Launch of the Ares I-X” , another boston.com Big Picture gallery of late, was admittedly the most NASA gear I’ve seen since I watched Tom Hanks & crew sweat it out in the 1995 Ron Howard film Apollo 13.

But the most memorable picture had nothing to do with landing gear, thrust or simulator crew modules.

In a photograph sure to make you pause, photographer Bruce Weaver captures a perfect example of earth’s distant, curious relationship to whatever’s up there in the stars-a beautiful and wordless example that either my autistic 10 year old little brother or the NASA astronauts themselves could appreciate-could crack a smile at.

What is it, you ask?

I’ll phrase it how my 10 year old brother would: “An alligator swimming next to a rocket ship.”

What do all of these photos have in common? They make you pause. They make you think. I imagine the cliche “a picture’s worth a thousand words” may be mentioned-either explicitly or, more than likely, implicitly-in our class discussion tonight. The cliche is too true to die, and the best pictures are the ones that don’t make you say anything at all.

For a moment, just a moment before you go about your day, you are immersed. Then it’s time to blink, and you’re changed, a tiny bit.

Those are the best photos.

Yes, this is a “hot debate” right now with just about everyone weighing in their opinion.  Beyond sharing this story, I have only one thing to say:

Many people in the sports world were too eager to jump at the opportunity to chastise Bill Belichick on what they perceived to be a moment of weakness because they do not like him.

Belichick had the numbers on his side
By Adam Kilgore, Globe Staff  |  November 17, 2009

FOXBOROUGH – Among the countless criticisms hurled at Patriots coach Bill Belichick for his decision to go for it on fourth down Sunday night, former Colts coach Tony Dungy summed up the most popular when, speaking on NBC, he said, “You have got to play the percentages and punt the ball.’’

What Dungy did not realize, though, is that “the percentages’’ dictated that Belichick do exactly what he did.

The Patriots coach has been lampooned by experts, fans, and former players for his call. All of them followed football’s rigid dogma and not what mattered: Did the Patriots have a better chance to beat the Colts if they went for it on fourth and 2 than if they punted? The answer is yes.

While Dungy spoke and football-watching mobs sharpened pitchforks, a former Navy pilot named Brian Burke ambled to the computer in his Reston, Va., home so he could determine if Belichick had made the right decision.

Burke is a football-crazed, math-inclined single father who works for a military contractor. Three years ago, he found himself with nothing to do once he put his children to bed. “I was pretty bored,’’ Burke said. He used software leftover from grad school to create a simulation tool that could solve football arguments for his friends at work. When they stopped paying attention, he put his findings on a website.

The result is AdvancedNFLStats.com <http://AdvancedNFLStats.com/> , a site devoted primarily to determining win probability for football teams. Burke’s simulation engine is perfectly suited to solve debates such as, say, whether a team should go for it on fourth and 2 from their 28 with two minutes left while leading by 6.

Late Sunday night, Burke compiled the data and ran the numbers. When Burke began, even though he believes coaches are too conservative, his gut told him Belichick had made the incorrect decision. His outcome proved him wrong.

According to Burke’s tabulation, going for the first down gave the Patriots a 79 percent chance of winning. Punting gave them a 70-percent chance to win. Even after Burke made tweaks, the win probability never dipped in favor of the punt. If anything, factoring in how explosive the Colts’ offense is, the team-specific adjustments only made going for it more favorable.

“A lot of criticism is probably way over the top,’’ Burke said. “At the very least, it’s defensible. It’s not crazy. It’s not reckless.’’

Sheer data, which Burke has compiled and stored like a librarian, argues the point. On average, an offense operating outside the red zone will make the first down on fourth and 2 60 percent of the time. When teams face the situation the Colts would have had if the Patriots failed – two minutes left, needing a touchdown, at roughly the opposing 30 – they score 53 percent of the time.

The Patriots would certainly win the 60 percent of the time they convert. They would also win the 47 percent of the time they’d stop the Colts. Overall, going for it gave them a 79 percent chance to win.

Now, what if the Patriots had punted? On average, the net punt would have been 38 yards, and the Colts would have taken over on their 34. Statistically, teams will score 30 percent of the time in that situation, meaning a punt gave the Patriots a 70 percent chance to win.

Burke is not the only statistically minded football source to draw the conclusion. The ZEUS program, developed by a pair of champion backgammon players, was made to simulate specific football situations and spit out probability. One of the developers told the New York Times that Belichick had made the right call, their numbers similar to Burke’s.

Critics of Belichick made two mistakes. First, they underestimated the chances of converting a fourth and 2 and overestimated the difference a punt makes. Playing with abandon against a preventative defense, an offense can typically pick up the yardage from a punt in a matter of three plays and 30 seconds, Burke said.

(Burke, it should be noted, did not wholly absolve Belichick. Burke believes Belichick, who knew he was going to go for the fourth down if necessary before third down, should have run the ball rather than pass on third down.)

“The one thing people aren’t looking at is that third-down call,’’ Burke said. “An unsuccessful pass on third down gives you fourth and 2. An unsuccessful run is going to give you a real short fourth down and make your chances of winning better.’’

Second, they mistook convention for truth. Football is a conservative sport coached by conservative men. In moments of uncertainty, when a fast, important decision is required, they revert to what they know, what has been passed down, what is safe.

“The traditional decision has always fallen back on the punt,’’ Burke said. “That’s how human beings have evolved to make decisions. They fall back on the punt.

“Maybe 30 years ago, that made a lot of sense. You didn’t have a lot of high-powered offenses. The math was different. Punting on fourth down made a lot of sense then. Now, you have guys like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.’’

Burke is often frustrated by the unwillingness of coaches to break their tendency for the safe. “Belichick,’’ he said, “is the exception to the rule in a lot of ways.’’

And Sunday night, that helped him make the right decision. All he had to do was play the percentages.

Jnah Lehrer

On Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought

In The Stuff of Thought, Pinker pitches himself as the broker of a scientific compromise between “linguistic determinism” and “extreme nativism.” The linguistic determinists argue that language is a prison for thought. The words we know define our knowledge of the world. Because Eskimos have more nouns for snow, they are able to perceive distinctions in snow that English speakers cannot. While Pinker deftly discredits extreme versions of this hypothesis, he admits that “boring versions” of linguistic determinism are probably accurate. It shouldn’t be too surprising that our choice of words can frame events, or that our vocabulary reflects the kinds of things we encounter in our daily life. (Why do Eskimos have so many words for snow? Because they are always surrounded by snow.) The language we learn as children might not determine our thoughts, but it certainly influences them.

Extreme nativism, on the other hand, argues that all of our mental concepts — the 50,000 or so words in the typical vocabulary — are innate. We are born knowing about carburetors and doorknobs and iPods. This bizarre theory, most closely identified with the philosopher Jerry Fodor, begins with the assumption that the meaning of words cannot be dissected into more basic parts. A doorknob is a doorknob is a doorknob. It only takes Pinker a few pages to prove the obvious, which is that each word is not an indivisible unit. The mind isn’t a blank slate, but it isn’t an overstuffed filing cabinet either.

So what is Pinker’s solution? He advocates the middle ground of “conceptual semantics,” in which the meaning of our words depends on an underlying framework of basic cognitive concepts. (As Pinker admits, he owes a big debt to Kant.) The tenses of verbs, for example, are shaped by our innate sense of time. Nouns are constrained by our intuitive notions about matter, so that we naturally parcel things into two different categories, objects and substances (pebbles versus applesauce, for example, or, as Pinker puts it, “hunks and goo”). Each material category comes with a slightly different set of grammatical rules. By looking at language from the perspective of our thoughts, Pinker demonstrates that many seemingly arbitrary aspects of speech, like that hunk and goo distinction, aren’t arbitrary at all: They are byproducts of our evolved mental machinery.

Pinker tries hard to make this tour of linguistic theory as readable as possible. He uses the f-word to explore the topic of transitive and intransitive verbs. He clarifies indirect speech by examining a scene from Tootsie, and Lenny Bruce makes so many appearances that he should be granted a posthumous linguistic degree. But profanity from Lenny Bruce can’t always compensate for the cryptic vocabulary and long list of competing ‘isms. Sometimes, the payoff can be disappointing. After a long chapter on curse words — this book deserves an “explicit content” warning — Pinker ends with the banal conclusion that swearing is “connected with negative emotion.” I don’t need conceptual semantics to tell me that.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Lehrer is editor at large for See magazine and the author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and more recently, How We Decide. He is a graduate of Columbia University, a Rhodes Scholar, and author of several articles for The New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.

* * *

If you wish to read the entire review, please visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122100139.html.