WotD: to the nines

1. in Schale (geschmissen/geworfen), piekfein
2. in gala (gestoken)
3. de punta en blanco, de pipa y guante
4. de vint-i-un botó
5. à quatre épingles, sur le rimpinpin/un ratata
8. wystrojony
9. 끝내주게 입었다
10. (梳妝) 打扮 (shūzhuāng) dǎbàn

Notes: 1. Lit. "thrown in shell" 3. Lit. "of point in white", "of pipe and glove" 4. Lit. "of twenty-one buttons" 5. Lit. "at four pins"

Non-apology apology of the now

I am willing to say that I may have said the wrong things, but you aren't. There were mistakes on both our parts, but you won't admit that you were wrong. If you would only admit your mistakes, then it would make things better.

The title of the message containing this was "I'm sorry, I think." Pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?

It all comes back to Sesame Street

So fengi post a link to an article in the NYT that expands on the generation gap in attitudes toward immigration that I previously mentioned coming across in the Economist. They ascribe it neatly to the composition of the community during one's formative years, which strikes me as being a little too close to the progressive notion that diversity breeds tolerance when there's at least as much evidence for the "familiarity breeds contempt" school of thought. (American South, anyone?) I find it interesting to see how much resistance there is to immigration among liberal baby boomers, since they're the ones who came up with the New Ethnicity after all. But I guess that's why many are so wedded to tendentious arguments about how qualitatively different the current crop of immigrants is from their those of their parents' and grandparents' generations.

In any case, speaking of you old fogies, I know some of you actively remember Watergate and all that, so I was wondering if you'd be willing to share your two cents regarding this claim (relating to a very different sort of alien population):

Pre-Watergate, most Americans were inclined to trust the President--no President had ever been implicated in that kind of criminal activity (White House staff, yes, as with Grant and Harding, but never a President). There was zero historical reason for suspecting a President would do such things as Nixon did; it was as unprecedented in the American mind as aliens visiting Earth.