New phrase alert

Actually, it is an old phrase but one I only heard for the first time a few years ago and still find interesting. It economically implies a host of things economic.

And political. From Wikipedia:

The simplest definition of rent-seeking is the expenditure of resources attempting to enrich oneself by increasing one's share of a fixed amount of wealth rather than trying to create wealth. Since resources are expended but no new wealth is created, the net effect of rent-seeking is to reduce the sum of social wealth.

Rent-seeking generally implies the extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity. The origin of the term refers to the gaining control of land or other pre-existing natural resources. In the modern economy, a more common example of rent-seeking is political lobbying to receive a government transfer payment, or to impose burdensome regulations on one's competitors in order to increase one's market share

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Of course, it is more complex than this. Much more complex than poor Clemens can figure out. So I think I will go lay down to think about it.

New words

I like vocabulary, mainly because I actually have one. So I am always on the lookout for new words and expressions.

Here's one now: Mood mail.

It means sending e-mail when you are angry. It's a no-no. And dangerous.

also self-indulgent which Clemens is never guilty of.

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Old words that need a good home

Now that the late political barrage of garbage being hurled left and right is over, you probably feel that you had the scaevity to hear way too much tortiloquy from one too many political foppotees.

Well, take a break if you love the English language and go to this site, 'Save the Words.'

The Oxford English Dictionary is attempting to save thousands of words from going out of use. You can go to the site and adopt a poor lost word. Carmen found it and thought it was hilarious. We are giving great thought to our first adoption.

As an inveterate inveterist how can one resist?

yes - those are all real words. Look them up. Or is that too much boreism?

Word origins

If you have been reading this blog at all you know I like to play with words and to learn where they came from (I also like weird little cars). Today in my morning reading of Marco Polo I found the following among the translator's notes:

The same romance brings in the story of the Stone of Samarkand [used for the throne of Timur-i-lang), and accounts for its sanctity in Saracen eyes because it had long formed a pedestal for Mahound!

And this notion gave rise to the use of Mawmet for an idol in general; whilst from the Mahommerie or place of Islamite worship the name of mummery came to be applied to idolatrous or unmeaning rituals; both very unjust etymologies. Thus of mosques in Richard Coeur de Lion:

"Kyrkes they made of Crystene Lawe,
And her Mawmettes lete downe drawe." (Weber, II. 228.)

So Correa calls a golden idol, which was taken by Da Gama in a ship of Calicut, "an image of Mahomed" (372). Don Quixote too, who ought to have known better, cites with admiration the feat of Rinaldo in carrying off, in spite of forty Moors, a golden image of Mahomed.

I read Don Quixote once, and think the writer misses the point. Cervantes was nothing if not ironic, and sometimes downright sarcastic.

Mummery! A much neglected word. Now I know where it came from.

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Freudian slip?

Well, only if I believed in Freud the way I do Darwin.

Matthew Yglesias in talking about the latest politico to have an embarrassing moment, claiming he was in Vietnam when he wasn't:

"people have been urging Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to run for hire office"

"hire office" I like that.

Sort of like our stipendiary pundotcracy.

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Notes on words

E.J. Dionne Jr in today's Washington Post:

Intelligence and intellect. The two are quite different, as Richard Hofstadter noted more than four decades ago in his instructive book, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life."

Intelligence, Hofstadter argued, is an "unfailingly practical quality" that "works within the framework of limited but clearly stated goals." Intellect, on the other hand, is the mind's "creative and contemplative side" that "examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, imagines."

A New Phrase

I love new words and phrases. Here's one I found in the NYT today:

"tassel-loafed failures"

As in:

As with the $700 billion bailout that Bush insisted had to be given to the very bankers, insurance companies and other tassel-loafed failures who got us into the economic meltdown ....

What an evocative term - roll it around in your mouth: tassel-loafed failure.

is it my imagination, or is contempt for the financial management class rising?

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