Motus Mentis

I am having terrible troubles with my computer (an HP dvr9000 series laptop), and it will need to be replaced. It crashes often — I can now expect to get only ten or fifteen minutes at a time out of it — and it it takes several attempts to get it to restart. So cranky is it tonight (and as a result, so cranky am I), that I have given up on trying to do any serious writing. I got a late start this evening anyway: the lovely Nina and I spent most of the afternoon at the spectacular and uplifting Vassily Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim, and this evening we took our son, who is heading off in a few days for his final semester of college, out to dinner.

So for tonight, then, a brief and enjoyable item (and high time; the mood has gotten altogether too dark and negative around here lately).

For several years I have had on my sidebar a link to a website called Language Log, and for at least the last two of them I have neglected to visit. My good friend Jess Kaplan wrote to me yesterday, however, to point out a couple of items there that he had just enjoyed, and that got me back in the door. I had forgotten what an outstanding blog it is.

For tonight, then, we direct you to a fine pair of posts (here and here) explaining why Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, is probably the worst prose stylist ever to make a living writing books (even that title contains a gaffe), and an item examining the relative frequency of “you know” vs. “I mean”. But don’t stop there. This is a site that is curiously difficult to navigate away from.