People often talk about the Christmas season starting earlier every year, but it seems to me that it pretty much always starts around early to mid-November.
I think you should put a comma right after "neighbors".
1: It's just that people start talking about people talking about Christmas starting earlier every year earlier every year.
4: No, I think that's supposed to be a nonrestrictive relative clause.
Either interpretation makes sense. Which is the best depends on facts about Stanley's neighbors.
Jesus saves, Moses invests wisely
As for me, I'm just spent.
I just talked to Stanley's neighbors right now, and also their neighbors. They all say I'm right.
In certain economic environments, saving might be equivalent to investing wisely.
Don't borrow from Moses. He'll break your legs kill your firstborn if you don't make your payments on time.
You should totally borrow from Moses, but only if the seventh year is coming up.
Jesus saves, Fanny Hill spends?
17: I will not shame this blog with intentional fallacy.
(Further to 19: that said, I'm not sure I'm grasping the entirety of the grammatical quibble.)
The way you wrote it implies that some but not all of your neighbors spent the day putting up lights and decorations. If you put a comma after "neighbors" it would imply that all of your neighbors did.
With or without the comma it can be parsed as an unspecified number of neighbours, though.
21: That's what I thought I wrote. That's what happened. M/tch can suck it. And go to China. Or Scotland.
24 was originally supposed to be to 22, but it works to 23 as well.
I'm saddened by the lack of song-reference kudos, notwithstanding teo's commenting.
Er, by which I mean I didn't expect teo to know the song.
21 is not correct. 21.2 is especially incorrect.
I'm not taking questions from M/tch, until he dignifies this with a response.
To be more exact, the way Stanley originally wrote it, he seems to at least potentially be saying that according to a particular set of neighbors, it's officially Christmastime. That particular set of neighbors is distinguishable from the rest of his neighbors by being the ones who spent the day putting up lights and decorations. (Cf: "It's officially Christmastime, at least according to my neighbors who have the red car.")
I'm asserting that I'm pretty sure that what Stanley actually meant to say is that a particular set of neighbors informed him that to them it's officially Christmastime. They did so by the very act of spending the day putting up lights and decorations. That is, the putting up of lights and decorations isn't just what distinguishes this particular set of neighbors from the rest of his neighbors, it's what actually did the work of informing Stanley that these particular neighbors thinks it's officially Christmastime. I think a comma after neighbors makes this clearer.
30: I'll ask for a comma on the rotating-head deer. Deal?
I saw Christmas displays in a couple of stores up here a almost two weeks ago. I guess when your Thanksgiving is in mid-October, there's no reason to pretend to wait.
Comma kew saw, kew see
Whatever will be , will be
There's some straight up commanism goin' on here.
You hear about the new bookstore/bakery they got opening, Stanley? Surely you must have. They've got these ads all over the place, "GO COMMA 'N DOUGH!"
41: And do they call each other Commarades? It's not an accident. COMMANISM.
If unfogged is turning into alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe, I guess I have to accept partial blame.
Commas are just fallen apostrophes. In other news, I am no longer physically capable of typing the word apostrophe without ending it r-space-backspace-backspace.
Or think of it as a commapliment.
THE APOSTROPHER HAS CROSSED ME.
Commas are just fallen apostrophes.
Apostrophes are just comma-angels.
I keep a record of all interestingly punctuated phrases I read in my comma place book.
Hey, everyone. Come on. Gather round. Okay, good. Let's mark this day. No, no. no you in the back shhhhh! Let's mark this day.
This was apo's comma-uppance.
The grammar police lock up the accused in cells near the Court of Comma, Please.
What would this thread be worth, if we traded it? Like a commadity?
I'm bored. I'm going to go play on my Commadore 64.
That's where I'm a Commodoriole.
53: That heebie, such a commacialist!
You can learn about more exotic punctuation in the Comma Sutra.
But before then, there's the comma hither look.
Do it right and you can have anyone in your clause. They will ask you to stop talking and say: "You had me at ','."
Which is why this is often referred to as the "Comma'n Era", or briefly, "C,E".
That notation will not survive the Second Commaing.
Which will happen when the process of comma deification is complete.
In medieval Europe, some people claimed to have visions of the comma deity, but some revisionists argue that they may have been having ellipsileptic fits.
63: That's unsurprising. Medieval Europeans are surprisingly comma-politan.
Sometimes they were persecuted by the Inquisition and subjected to the horrors of the splice until they recanted. Fortunately, today we have the separation: church, state.
There's a reason Aquinas changed the title of his famous work.
The Inquisition was a dick to a lot of people. Burned people, too, but that's not even the story. And if you're talking numbers of people whose life got different afterward, man, that's probably a book. Someone go write a book.
Or, more predictably, someone way smarter already wrote the book, and it's great, and someone here will give the head's up on that book.
(Uh, sorry, burned people for possible crassness.)
Earliest Christmas decorations we saw this year: october 17th...
I remember looking for some general book about the Inquisition a few years ago and then acknowledging that it would sit on my shelf unread for a long time, so I stopped. But I remember it being a lot more interesting than just the really bad stuff when we learned about it in the medieval survey I took (which was about the extent of my medieval history knowledge).
69: In all seriousness, there was even a bit of Inquisition history in New Mexico, or no, teo? Or elsewhere that you might want to drop knowledge about? I think I thought you were on that case, too, a bit.
This book, which is somewhat difficult and has caused some controversy, uses Inquisition records for New Mexico.
Where there were Spanish Catholics, there was the Inquisition. (At least until the early 19th century).
I bet they were always expecting it, too.
I haven't read the book in 73, but I have seen it and considered reading it.
In all seriousness, there was even a bit of Inquisition history in New Mexico, or no, teo? Or elsewhere that you might want to drop knowledge about?
More or less. The Inquisition itself never actually came to NM as far as I know, but it did summon people from NM down to Mexico City for interrogation (and sometimes ended up burning them). For a variety of reasons, mostly tied to its frontier nature and extreme distance from the authorities, colonial NM was considered something of a hotbed of heresy.
Netanyahu's dad wrote a (very controversial) book on the origins of the Inquisition.
One thing to keep in mind is the distinction between the medieval European Inquisition and the early modern Spanish Inquisition. Totally different institutions.
77: You should read it, if only to pick at it. When we read it for a graduate seminar, it was paired with a set of readings from Pueblo women (I think just women) excoriating Gutierrez. We didn't have time to really talk about their criticisms and the rest of the book, which saddens me, because I still don't have a firm grasp on the good and bad parts of the book. FWIW, I know that a professor with New Mexican roots assigns it to undergrads pretty regularly.
79: I read much of that in a grad course on early modern Spain. It was, uh, interesting.
You should read it, if only to pick at it.
I'm sure I will at some point. If and when I do I'll write something about it. I've heard that it was controversial, but not having read it I don't have a clear sense of what exactly he was arguing.
I read much of that in a grad course on early modern Spain. It was, uh, interesting.
My dad read it in grad school. I mostly just remember seeing it on the bookshelf and thinking about how long it must have been. That was one huge book.
Looks like the Gutierrez book is checked out of all four libraries at Rutgers that have it. Guess it'll have to wait.
New Mexico: the Greenland of Spain.
I remember it being the kind of book that's considered brilliant or groundbreaking or some similar adjective for its interpretation, but controversial for how that interpretation is related to the source base. I felt like I needed to know more about religious studies/history to really get some of it.
what exactly he was arguing
Marriage structured inequality.
To be clear, in 85 I mean simply that I remember it being an area where there just isn't a lot of historical evidence in existence, and that what there is can be read in different ways, not anything scandalous or outside the norm.
Netanyahu's dad wrote a (very controversial) book on the origins of the Inquisition.
Lemme guess: it was the Palestinians' fault?
On the OP (kind of), I think that the massivication of Halloween has acted as a sort of firewall to Christmas really bleeding into October: the sorts of people who would seriously consider putting up Xmas decorations while baseball is still being played have instead turned into people who install inflated Death's coaches on their lawns.
OTOH, I live in a city and don't shop at many chain stores, so I may be a bit sheltered from all this. Certainly Home Depot had Christmas stuff for sale pre-Halloween.
New Mexico: the Greenland of Spain.
Pretty much, yeah.
Marriage structured inequality.
That doesn't sound very controversial.
I remember it being an area where there just isn't a lot of historical evidence in existence, and that what there is can be read in different ways
This is definitely true, though, and it's a constant issue in the historiography of colonial New Mexico.
Lemme guess: it was the Palestinians' fault?
Pretty close. My understanding (not having read the book myself) is that he basically chalks it up to antisemitism on the part of the Spanish.
Where there were Spanish Catholics, there was the Inquisition.
Putting the Germans in charge isn't necessarily an improvement.
Where there were Spanish Catholics, there was the Inquisition.
What no one really expects is that there was a Portuguese Inquisition, too. True story.
They mostly just talked you to death, though, so it wasn't as bad.
Pretty close. My understanding (not having read the book myself) is that he basically chalks it up to antisemitism on the part of the Spanish.
Not the Moors?
They mostly just talked you to death, though, so it wasn't as bad.
As expected.
That doesn't sound very controversial.
I believe that the really controversial part was how he depicted pre-colonial sexual practices of Pueblo Indians. The standard argument is that he somewhat uncritically accepts colonial documents detailing native sexual practices and that he indulges in a great deal of speculation, much of which turned out to be offensive to modern Puebloans.
My understanding (not having read the book myself) is that he basically chalks it up to antisemitism on the part of the Spanish.
That fits with my recollections as well.
Meanwhile, in England, they were all "Tea and cake or death?"
The standard argument is that he somewhat uncritically accepts colonial documents detailing native sexual practices and that he indulges in a great deal of speculation, much of which turned out to be offensive to modern Puebloans.
Now that sounds really problematic. Those colonial documents were written mostly by priests with considerable biases and axes to grind. I've seen some of that stuff quoted in other scholarship and I would be very hesitant to rely on it at all. Of course, there aren't really any other sources for precontact sexual practices, so he seems to be in something of an inherent bind.
Of course, as always it depends on the specifics. It does make me want to read the book and judge for myself.
It does make me want to read the book
Perv.
98: If you have access to JSTOR, here is an article with sample criticisms of the book.
The thing that muddles it for me is that I just can't imagine Guiterrez isn't aware of the problems with colonial documents, but it seems that perhaps he went too far in his interpretations.
Thanks. The criticisms in that review are pretty damning, but the reviewer is obviously coming from her own disciplinary and ideological background. Again, I think I'd have to read the book to see how accurate it really is.
This, on the other hand, is a serious article.
But on the other hand is a golden band.
Child Whispering
is kinda dumb.
On the other hand
I have four fingers and a thumb.
Burma Shave.
Netanyahu pere left Israel after independence because he felt that his old comrades, Begin and Shamir, were Arab loving sellout bleeding heart liberals. From what I remember hearing about it the book argues that there isn't really any difference between the racial antisemitism of the Nazis and that of Spaniards at the time of the Inquisition, and that hatred of Jews is a permanent and unalterable part of Christian civilization. The rather prominent old school Zionist head of Jewish studies at my department hated Netanyahu's guts, saw him as a Jewish Nazi and refused to allow the book to be taught in any history course, his or others.
OT: We are so fucking doomed.
I know, you put a choke chain on a kid one time and everybody freaks out.
109: Yes, the book is hugely anachronistic. He tries to make limpieza de sangre and racial pseudoscience into exactly the same thing; I seem to recall a lot of the argument waving away the historical actualities with a lot of "This is how it was, because I say so." As for whether or not to teach it, it seems to me that every once in awhile you do need to give an example of how not to do it.
Worker's slave, the rich get more . . .
Great album
Please excuse the typo; I don't think they were suggesting the worker owned a slave.
That doesn't sound very controversial.
I was trying, and apparently failing, to mess with the search results.