JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Photo: Obama with lightsaber from Japanese toy company.

‘Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual…Among these fetishes is the prohibition against “split verbs,” in which an adverb comes between an infinitive marker like “to,” or an auxiliary like “will,” and the main verb of the sentence. According to this superstition, Captain Kirk made a grammatical error when he declared that the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise was “to boldly go where no man has gone before”; it should have been “to go boldly.” Likewise, Dolly Parton should not have declared that “I will always love you” but “I always will love you” or “I will love you always.”’

Neuroscientist Steven Pinker on American Chief Justice Roberts’ fumbling of the administration of the presidential oath of office. The Oath was administered again, so nutcakes can stop ranting that President Obama was never sworn in.

We really are in a new era. Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi has an op-ed piece in the New York Times.