nihil obstat

Don't ask for the facts unless you want the truth.

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Saturday, June 22, 2002
 
DELETED



 
trying to even things out

Since St. Blog's has so few female contributors, it might appear that I'm picking on the guys.

Betty G writes about Mother Theresa:
"I am even more impressed with the sanctity of that women. She should not have to wait 50 years to be called saint. "
I hope the first error is obvious. The second is more subtle - "saint" should be in quotation marks.



 
new word disorder

from "Guilty Bystander" :

"The Islamists understanding of martyrdom is distinctly different from that of Christianity. Islamists martrys ..."
"On the other hand, the Islamists martyrdom ..."

The word "Islamist" won't be found in the Oxford English Dictionary.
After the attacks of September 11, it came into use in discussing the radical strain of Islam behind such terrorist atrocities.
The word has been used as a noun, signifying a person who holds beliefs such as those expressed in
this interview with the mother of a suicide bomber.
I don't recall "Islamist" being used as an adjective, although it may take on this use.

In the first use of "Islamists" above, if the word is meant to be a possessive noun, then it should end with an apostrophe.
Also, "Christianity" should be replaced by "Christians".
I don't believe that the word is being used as an adjective, but if so, "Islamist" would be correct.

The second use is clearly as an adjective, so "Islamist" is correct.
The third use is as a possessive noun, so " Islamists' " is correct.



Friday, June 21, 2002
 
neither would a dedicated blog-watcher

from "relapsed catholic" again:
"A dedicated blog-watcher launes his own"



 
America's most famous domestic goddess would not be pleased.

Kathy Shaidle provides the following link at her blog:
"The Marth Stewart 'scandal' is a case study in the Tall Poppy Syndrome,"



 
a couple from Mr. Welborn, er, Dubruiel

Michael Dubruiel, best known as husband of the lovely and talented Amy Welborn, contributes two items from his blog, Annunciations:

"Why he would be against laicizing guilty priests (doesn't want to sully the name of the "good" ones that leave:"

first and obvious, a missing closing parenthesis
second, unless the good ones somehow share a reputation, I contend that "names" is correct


"What about all the other priest's crimes against the faith:"

This, unlike the first item, really is a question, so the colon needs to be replaced by a question mark.
I then thought of moving the apostrophe to the end of "priests".
I thought some more and realized, that in order to be talking about other crimes by all priests,
the sentence needs to be restructured, thusly:
What about all the other crimes against the faith committed by priests?



Thursday, June 20, 2002
 
occupational hazards

Mark Shea comments on this story from the Family Research Council.

In the story, Al Rantel says, "I'm openly gay here on the radio in Los Angeles, and have been for many years.".

That reminds me of a question once posed to a prominent National Football League player:
"How long have you been a black quarterback?"



 
Watch out for those crowds of pious Italian ladies.

Michael Tinkler (the Cranky Professor) reports on the canonization of Padre Pio.

I am happy to report that the good professor appeared to have come out of the experience unscathed,
although he may have been the victim of a theft.
In such close quarters, a pickpocket may have stolen a preposition from him.



Wednesday, June 19, 2002
 
My idea... of poor spelling

Timothy Mason of Biblical Babylon writes:
"Lets build a big wall around Isreal... No hear me out... We build this wall and then send in regular supplies of Guns and Bombs to keep them occupied.



 
Freudian slip

Old Reliable (Mike Hardy) doesn't like this document, as he makes clear in a post from May 8:

"I should have known it would be bad when I read a glorious review of it on Mark Shea's site.
If I didn't know at that point, then surely the following assinine quote ... should have given me a clue"

No... it's just too easy...



 
light/lite, moose/meese, who cares?

Steve Schultz of Catholic Light has some ideas on "scaring aggressive cow mooses".



 
No, I'm not calling for a German section on the LSAT.

Roger Ho, Esq. writes at "Between Heaven and Hell..." of " 'Heir Doktor' Alfred Kinsey".



 
blogger links greater than nothing?

At A Saintly Salmagundi, links to the individual posts of Fr. Bryce Sibley are not working.
The cause is the character ">" appearing after "http://britius.blogspot.com/".



Tuesday, June 18, 2002
 
I have to correct him already!

I'm sure that Chris got guud grades at his Katholik skool, but I most note a mistake in this post at Gregorian Rant:

"... cutting out half the potential applicants because they aren't a member of the right group"

On the plus side, his site has the coolest name in St. Blog's domain.



 
streams of malformed HTML

At Nota Bene, Sean Gallagher attempts to link to Streams of Consciousness.

The link actually contains the URL of Heart Mind and Strength and some line noise.



 
Hear I am, indeed.

Even professional writers are not immune from homonym confusion.

The lovely and talented Amy Welborn writes:

"Oh dear.

Did you know that St. Blog's has an "official proofreader?"

I didn't until a moment ago. but hear he is:Nihil Obstat."


I wonder if that is truly an error or a little joke on her part.

It's interesting that she assumes that a proofreader must be male.

Kudos go to the anonymous reader who noted that I left out the final "s" in "possessive" in an earlier post.



 
Now we know that Mike Hardy was not a Latin major.

Your humble blogger always strives to ensure that this site contains nothing obnoxious.

By the way, you're missing an apostrophe there, Mister Hardy.



 
"The Big Brain" is unable to avoid an apostrophe catastrophe.

At Sunny Days in Heaven, Mark Butterworth writes, "I have also played with pro's ...".

He is commenting on this article in the Independent, but introduces it as being from the Telegraph.



Monday, June 17, 2002
 
CATHOLIC AND NOT ENJOYING IT'S!

Mark Shea gets half credit for this sentence:
"One of the letters was poignant in its contempt for the Church and it's longing for the Church to not be contemptible."

A reader of his blog joins in the fun.
"Somebody writes: The Knights of Columbus has it's annual meeting in few weeks. "
Somebody also seems to be missing an indefinite article there.



 
"Sorry, I still get to link back critically", or "Seems like bad spelling is contagious"

It's good to know that Mike Hardy of "Enemy of the Church?" fame is aware that he's being watched.
It's also good that he corrected some factual errors in the "Steven Mattson has been prolific this weekend" post.

So, it really pains me to point out a few boo-boos.

Of the Latin Mass community, he writes that he won't "mistake it for the WWF".
I hope not.
A recent change means that WWF now exclusively stands for World Wildlife Federation.
After "getting the F out", WWE signifies World Wrestling Entertainment.

In two other posts, he provides links to the blog of Amy Wellborn.
The lady's last name is Welborn.

There is a post entitled "Two 'Must Read' Posts as Heart Mind and Strength".
Perhaps on would have been a better choice of words.
A poorly structured sentence begins "Seems like good sense and good writing is contageous".
I sincerely hope that they are contagious.



 
Speaking of Misspellinitis

Emily Stimpson spells schizophrenic correctly in a post's title at Fool's Folly, but the next post is entitled Speaking Of Schitzophrenic...



Sunday, June 16, 2002
 
beaten to the punch

At Annunciations, part of an article from Catholic Family News appears:

"The convicted offender was ... ordered to undergo severe penances and prayer vigils to expedite his sins ...".

In a comment, Terrence Berres states, "That sounds like a more recent approach. Back then they probably wanted to expiate his sins."