tidbits from Fast Food Nation

I’ve been meaning to read this for years, and thanks to a “no new books until you read all your old ones” ultimatum, I’m finally doing it! I already know a lot of this stuff, but it’s still an enjoyable read – he pads his analyses pretty heavily with anecdotes about individuals involved in the systems he’s describing (which I like, at least in this case), and although his tone is critical, it isn’t righteously judgmental (which I also like).

Here are a couple things I didn’t know:

1. McDonalds is one of the world’s leading purchasers of satellite photography. They have sophisticated software that uses the photos (along with demographic information and sales statistics from nearby stores) to predict future urban sprawl and traffic congestion, and thereby select future locations of new restaurants.
2. Fast food restaurants claim tax credits worth up to 2k/employee that are designed to compensate companies that hire and train impoverished and unskilled workers. However, they also spend tons of money and effort creating “zero-training workplaces” where the work procedures are as standardized as possible so employees don’t actually require any training. (Apparently ‘deskilling’ is the relevant creepy managerial jargon here.)

elegant variations and all that

Here’s an article I found while reading about the guy whose quote inspired my blog title. It’s a review of his revised edition of Fowler’s guide to modern english usage, which was originally one of the most staunchly prescriptivist style guides in existence, and which Burchfield substantially (and controversially) reworked in accordance with his more descriptivist philosophy.

Based on this article, Fowler sounds fucking hilarious, often unintentionally so. Just check out this melodramatic list of fire-and-brimstone adjectives culled from this article alone: linguistic errors are absurd! Ludicrous! Wrong! Ugly! Needless! Barbaric! Worse than electrocution! Inexcusable! Fit for parrots!

…fit for parrots is definitely my favorite. I’m stealing that.

Hello world!

“The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib.”

–Robert Burchfield

I am going to attempt to chronicle everything I read. Actually, I’m lying: that’s an impossible idea which would produce a really boring blog. I’ll settle for trying to chronicle everything that I read which I find interesting or substantive.

This endeavor is partially based on a narcissistic desire to share my internal monologue with the world (it is a blog, after all) and partially a weapon in my Sisyphean struggle to chisel as much knowledge as possible into the shifting, fragmentary surface of my own memory. This will help me maintain the illusion that the time I spend slacking during my workday is actually part of some grand autodidactic endeavor. Yesss!