What the Heck Happened to the Semi-colon?

If your orientation is, for the most part, of a linguistic nature, you might have asked yourself the same question I, and the French, have been asking ourselves:
Just what the heck happened to the semi-colon?

'In the red corner, desiring nothing less than the consignment of the semicolon to the dustbin of grammatical history, are a pair of treacherous French writers and (of course) those perfidious Anglo-Saxons, for whose short, punchy, uncomplicated sentences, it is widely rumoured, the rare subtlety and infinite elegance of a good semicolon are surplus to requirements. The point-virgule, says legendary writer, cartoonist and satirist François Cavanna, is merely "a parasite, a timid, fainthearted, insipid thing, denoting merely uncertainty, a lack of audacity, a fuzziness of thought".'

A definite must-read. Full text here.

Richard Florida's Who's Your City Delivers On All Counts

I've been a fan of Richard Florida since after last summer's travels when I first saw him on the Colbert Report. I became acquainted with his work then and started reading his creative class exchange blog regularly.
His new book Who's Your City is on my top 5 books of the year. It is not only vastly interesting but also professionally relevant.

The premise of the book is that picking the place in which to leave is far more important than some of us might think. That decision ranks even higher than picking a mate and career. The book also centers around the creative class and the importance of the creatives clustering together.

So, just where should one live?

While many factors contribute to a good answer for this question, one of the very first things to have in mind is the importance of being around like-minded individuals who will support, fuel, and inspire one's work and creativity. Being in clusters and urban areas where such things are found will improve the overall qualitative aspect of life not only of the individual but the community as a whole as well.

I most definitely recommend. And those of you who are not Florida-ized yet, might I also recommend his Rise of the Creative Class as well as his blog on which he contributes multiple times a day.

And I'm out.

graph per amazon

Of Cots and Such

Food for thought...
'CONCORD, N.H. — Calls from obese patients had increased nearly 25 percent in recent years, and the Fire Department could no longer handle them.

The department’s gurneys could not adequately support the patients’ weight, and the department had to pay a private ambulance company.

Last fall, the department bought three gurneys that can hold patients weighing up to 600 pounds, about twice the holding capacity of a regular stretcher.

“We had to do something,” Acting Chief Tim McGinley said. “It was one of those things where we would try to use the equipment we had and were afraid that you were going to end up hurting somebody, the patients themselves or the staff.”'
Read it in is entirety here.
per ny times