I do think that Tolkien's Catholicism tends to get over read when treating his work, but otherwise yup.

Well, on the one hand, it is basically Mad Men set around the Fall of the Roman Empire. That sounds pretty awesome.

What always got to me on the misery vampire circuit were nature photographers. Homes filled with beautiful horizons and tiny exquisite moments from the most wild of creatures, but minds filled with glee that a volcanic eruption in the Philippines meant gorgeous sunsets over the Pacific for two months.

Wild Kratts really is remarkable for its just rabid and explicit hate speech against Australians, isn't it?

I'll take it!

I love it for the crazy-ass dynastic disputes and majestic dykes.

Bless you, chochacho.

I talked about this a little bit further down. Essentially, you're exactly right in that a split infinitive rule makes no sense for a language where the inifinitive is of a piece (A) and where it can be split nonetheless (B), the origins of the rule are purely from English and only tied to Latin retroactively. I don't…

Well, I grew up with a Pasadena accent and an academic vocabulary in a Southwestern community with 2 - 3 English dialects (none of them close to mine) and maybe as many in Spanish. So the pain-in-the-ass went every which way.

I have a real hate-on for the 'based on Latin' canard for split infinitives. That's a tale that academics tell to associate the rule with the bad old days. The sort of just-so story that shows up when it's on the periphery of someone's education but has no real relevance to their specialty.

Split infinitive rule isn't from Latin.

The SAE we use now does not specifically descend from upper class dialects, many of which are now effectively dead at SAE's hands including stage/fake upper class dialects like trans-Atlantic, there are some upper-class roots (Pasadena is an important contributor and that's, historically, a middle to upper enclave),…

American English exists because of its own local prescriptivists, however, and saying all rules and standards need to 'have function' is to apply your own prescriptivist ethos.

I've always wondered how much of a six of one half dozen of the other argument that actually is, particularly from the perspective of places like Texas where the power of contractors' lobbies drastically limits the incentive to build anything like a good foundation.

There are two distinct backlash phenomena:
1. The usual defense of cherished institutions/contrarian anger at press headlines
2. That the initial reports on the investigations were quite bad and widely distorted the work by the initial historians (which is pretty non-unique for press work, journalists and historians…

I think it's worth noting that people with large families are pretty clear that each of their kids is pretty special.

Yeah, medieval literature is very pro-childhood.

Glasses and beard fall to the ground, stand up on their own, hiss, and scurry into corner.

It can be a little tricky, but not anymore so than other formats.

You do… realize that pictures are an important aspect of children's books?