Revisiting "that" vs. "which"
Sometimes I like learning grammar and, following up on an an earlier exploration of who versus whom, here, today I took another look at that versus which.  Here's the synopsis: use that when introducing a description that identifies or singles out the noun from others.  The lawn mower that is broken is in the garage.  (There's multiple lawn mowers and we're talking about just one of them.)  The lawn mower, which is broken, is in the garage.  (There's not any question of multiple lawn mowers, we're merely supplying additional information about the lawnmower, which requires a comma before the which.)  Sometimes, though rarely, you can also use a which not just to add information, but to single out, like a that.  Find out more about these mysterious defining whiches on my "That Vs. Which" page here.
posted May 16, 2:04 pm

Gun-totin' U.S.A.
Gun proliferation, as satirized in experimental rock group Negativland's song "Sycamore," here, which satirically juxtaposes a Bay Area real estate pitch against a manipulative gun lobby political ad, has gotten totally out of control.  The country drifts between massacres, and the White House weakly tells us that after a gun massacre is no time to talk about guns, as detailed in Alex Koppelman's December 14, 2012 New Yorker blog post "The Right Day to Talk About Guns" here.  The gun lobby, with lawmakers in its pocket, presses its preposterous vision of America-as-shooting alley, pleading for ever still more guns to prevent gun shooting, as a December 21, 2012 article by Forbes contributor Jeffrey Brown, "What the NRA Is Assuming (and Why They Are Wrong)" here. We had an assault weapons ban but Bush—bleagh—let it expire in 2004, as described in Josh Harkinson's January, 2012 Mother Jones article "Who Killed the Assault Weapons Ban?" here.  Since then, mass shootings have only increased, relentlessly.  There was the mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater last July, at a Wisconsin Sikh temple last August, at a Minneapolis manufacturer in September, and then, unacceptably, the horrific slaughter at a Connecticut elementary school in December.  25 of the 62 mass shootings since 1982 have happened after 2005, seven of them in 2012, as a February 27, 2013 Mother Jones article by Mark Follman, Gavin Aronsen, and Deanna Pan, "A Guide to Mass Shootings in America," goes on to describe here.  But so tight is the gun lobby's stranglehold on our throat that four months after the Newtown massacre and two days after the Boston Marathon bombing, our dysfunctional Senate can't even pass an anemic background check law, even when the majority of the public supports it, as detailed in Rebekah Metzler's April 29, 2013 U.S. News article, "Poll: Majority Supports Failed Senate Gun Control Bill" here, much less pass any legislation that might curb the problem.  What can you do?  Find out who your representative is here, call them and tell them you don't care what their gun lobby tells them, you want gun control, including a ban on assault weapons, and you want it now.
posted May 2, 2013 8:40 pm  

Toxic couch
I think Crate & Barrel is the place to go for aesthetically beautiful furniture at reasonable prices.  So it was disappointing to find out that all their sofas, as well as virtually all sofas currently being  manufactured for the United States are still, thanks to a misguided California law, treated with carcinogenic fire retardants.  Over time, the retardant seeps out to raise the risk of cancer for people who use the couch.  A September 6, 2012 New York Times article by Dashka Slater asks "How Dangerous Is Your Couch?," here, describing a widely used fire retardant called chlorinated tris as "a mutagen" that "should not be used."  A May 6, 2012 Chicago Tribune article by Michael Hawthorne, "Testing Shows Treated Foam Offers No Safety Benefit," here, shows how studies indicate furniture treated with fire retardant burns just as fast as furniture without.  An October 31, 2012 Science KQED post by Liza Gross here suggests that the chemical properties making a fire retardant resist flame apparently are inseparable from the properties that damage living tissue and goes on to describe the discouraging response of manufacturers, which has been to play a game of chemical whack-a-mole by simply switching one toxic fire retardant with another.  A December 7, 2012 Consumers Digest article here gives hope that California may revise its law in time for retardant-free couches for fall, 2013.  But my preferred apartment furnishing source Crate & Barrel— according to an e-mail I received from them today—continues to sell toxic furniture despite knowing about the danger: after they have "sold through" their furniture manufactured with chlorinated tris, according to the e-mail, they will sell furniture with foam infused by a new fire retardant "from the phosphorous/ phosphate [sic] family" (the e-mail misspelled the word "phosphorus") that has a secret "proprietary" formula.  Read the e-mail here.  What can you do?  If you want to ask them to sell cleaner furniture, contact them here.  
posted March 14, 2013, 7:22 pm

For entries posted prior to 2013, I invite you to my archive.