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#59930 03/06/02 08:34 PM
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In September 2001 article in Smithsonian magazine an English professor who is a leading lterary forensic expert found it significant that notes attributed to the Unabomber several times used the phase "You can't eat your cake and have it too", alleging that this was a British, not an Amercan usage, which is said to be "You can't have your cake and eat it too." I have always heard it the Unabomber's way, but search of Internet shows the alleged American way is much more common. The alleged British way makes more sense to me. (I can have my cake, and eat it later, but not vice-versa.) Any comments?


#59931 03/07/02 08:41 AM
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I can categorically state that, as a Brit, I have never used "You can't eat your cake and have it too", but have always said 'You can't have your cake and eat it'.

Does that help at all? Probably not!


#59932 03/07/02 10:23 AM
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I like thinking about those situations in which you can have your cake and eat it, too.

You know, like when it's an especially huge cake--plenty to spare--can even freeze some of it for later eating.

I think flexible, vertical thinkers are especially adept at having their cakes and eating them, too.

Now linear thinkers: they're the ones who can't have their cake and eat it, too. They get too hung up on details, such as, "Is it really a cake if it's only in the imagination?" And "What is it to really 'have' anything? Must you have the whole thing in order to have it?" And other such considerations that keep them from enjoying even a single bite.

Bite regards,
WholeWind


#59933 03/07/02 06:49 PM
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The article begins: "Closing his evening broadcast on Febrary 15,1996, poker-faced as ever, CBS anchor Dan Rather intoned: 'The same scholar who recently used his computer to identify what he says is an undiscovered poem by Shakespeare and got some high-profile attention for himself has unleashed his machine on author Anonymous.' "

"The statistical apparatus that forms the backbone of Foster's analysis has
led to a widespread misconception, the very one that Dan Rather mongered in his 1996 broadcast."

Quite possibly the author intended to insult Dan Rather. A monger is a small-time dealer in such commodities as iron, fruit, vegetables, and fish.
Quite different from a highly paid presenter on a multimillion dollar TV network.
It is also a bit surprising to see a former English professor verbing that noun.

He should get a flunking grade.



#59934 03/07/02 07:19 PM
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shall we take a look in the OED and see when monger was actually verbed?
<fires off another netscape window>
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.
<logs into MPL proxy server>

yes, well monger is a very old word, dating back to C10 OE; and it was first verbed, to deal or traffic in, (in print) by the Observer on 5 Feb 1928: Both American and British opinion is laughing out of court those who monger their scares about the United States Navy.

at least give him a C-

('twould be interesting to learn the context of that citation.)

#59935 03/07/02 07:37 PM
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Foster's analysis

dr. bill, would this be the same Foster we discussed at
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=wordplay&Number=49886, starting on Christmas day?


#59936 03/07/02 08:23 PM
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Dear Keiva:"Don Foster has become a celebrity. Just last winter he made People magazine and newspapers across the country by proving that the beloved American poem 'The Night Before Christmas' had been written not by the straitlaced Bible teacher to whom it had always been attributed, Clement Clarke Moore, but rather by a bon vivant named Henry Livingston."


#59937 03/07/02 08:36 PM
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Reminded me of flamboyant English prof at MIT over sixty years ago, who told his class that they should write the way he drove, unconsciously.


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Just last winter he made People magazine and newspapers across the country by proving ...

But take a critical look at the book, before jumping to accept the conclusion dr. bill quoted. A more accurate verb-clause would be "claiming to have proved".

But I do hope that Professor Foster enjoyed the publicity.


#59939 03/07/02 11:07 PM
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Here is one more real goof in that article. Keiva, please do not go ape about it. The author is stupid enough to use the word 'debunker" in a extra stupid way. He is mentioning a guy who is believed by FBI to be responsible for a series of bombings. Instead of saying the guy was a psychopathic neo-Nazi, the article says: "The FBI had a long list of suspects. One of them was Eric Robert Rudolph, a white supremacist,debunker of the Holocaust and survival expert."

I think it quite stupid of Smithsonian editors to let that word get by them.


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