Grammar sins: a case study

From Nicolas Poussin,
 Le Christ et la femme adultère

You know the story. A woman was caught in the act. The religious leaders grabbed her and brought her to Jesus. Are you a biblical literalist? they asked. Because if you are, shouldn't we stone her? What would Moses do?

Quick, now. What did Jesus say?

About.com's French Language website quotes his words thus: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

My inner grammarian wincing, I dashed off an email to the website's author: "That should be 'Let him who is without sin ... ' (i.e., 'Let him ... cast the first stone'; I don't think you'd be tempted to write 'Let he ... cast the first stone').

Of course she knew the difference - she herself is a grammarian. But, she said, she was just quoting the Bible, which says "Let he ...."

Actually it doesn't, at least not in the King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New International Version, the New American Bible, the Common English Bible, the Douay-Reims Version, or presumably any other version that uses copyeditors. Lacking a Bible at hand, she explained, she had found the verse online. Just Google it, she told me.

So I did. I am pleased to report that when I compared "Let him who is without sin" to "Let he who is without sin," correct grammar won, 3.8 million to 1.3 million.

I also learned that "Let He Who Is Without Sin" is the name of a Star Trek episode.

It's a good thing modern English tends to use only three pronoun cases (such as he, him, his). We'd never learn to speak Hungarian - it has at least 18 cases.

But hey, if you use the wrong case, I won't stone you. I'm not without sin: I refuse to say "It is I."

Apostrophes are easy: a three-minute lesson

You wouldn't know it from reading blog comments or grocery store signs, but you know what? Using apostrophes correctly is really, really easy. Here's a three-minute lesson that will turn you into an apostrophe expert for life.

Rule 1. Never use an apostrophe to make a word plural. Never! No exceptions. Not even if the word ends in a vowel. The plural of apostrophe is apostrophes. The plural of 1920 is 1920s. The plural of LCD is LCDs. The plural of do is dos. Really.
   Corollary: Do use an apostrophe to make a single letter of the alphabet plural. Example: There are two p's, four i's, and four s's in Mississippi.
  No to words, yes to letters.

Rule 2. Use an apostrophe to replace the missing letter(s) in contractions. Most of us don't have too much trouble with this one. We know how to spell words like I'll, he'd, can't, shouldn't, it's (meaning it is).
   Put Rule 1 with Rule 2, and you become one of the few people in the United States who know how to spell dos and don'ts.

Rule 3. Use an apostrophe to make a noun possessive. Put it immediately after the noun that tells who is doing the possessing. (If you're not sure, just turn the phrase around and you'll instantly see where the apostrophe goes.) Examples:

• the boy's dog = the dog that belongs to the boy
• the boys' dog = the dog that belongs to the boys
• the Smiths' house = the house that belongs to the Smiths
• the smith's house = the house that belongs to the smith (would he be a blacksmith, perhaps?)
• the woman's room = the room belonging to the woman
• the women's room = the room intended for women (since the word womens doesn't exist, there is no reason to put the apostrophe anywhere else)
• the newspaper's reputation = the reputation of the newspaper
• the newspapers' reputation = the reputation of the newspapers

   Corollary: Never use an apostrophe to make a pronoun possessive. Not even if the pronoun is it. Examples:

• his dog = the dog that belongs to him
• their house = the house that belongs to them
• her room = the room that belongs to her
• its reputation = the reputation that belongs to it

OK, you're an apostrophe expert now. How hard was that?

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If you want to debate the fine points, you can always discuss what to do with words that end in s or z. Is it Jesus' name or Jesus's name? Thomas' car or Thomas's car? Style books differ. But notice that the apostrophe still follows Rule 3 above: it still comes immediately after the noun that describes who owns the name (Jesus) or the car (Thomas).

David Brooks, Charles Murray, and the Reign of Mammon

Today's New York Times carried a thought-provoking op-ed by David Brooks called "The Materialist Fallacy." I recommend that you read it: it's only 764 words long. Brooks argues that "in the half-century between 1962 and the present, America has become more prosperous, peaceful and fair, but the social fabric has deteriorated." This is not just because of job loss (the liberal explanation) or government intrusiveness (the libertarian explanation) or "the abandonment of traditional bourgeois norms" (the neo-conservative explanation).

It has more to do with declining social context and social capital, says Brooks, who never met a financial capitalist he didn't like. He really likes Charles Murray's new book, however: Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. (If you're not up for the 416-page book, you might want to read Brooks's January 30 column in praise of it.) Both authors worry about nefarious social forces that are driving a wedge between rich and poor, productive and non-productive, law-abiding and outlaws.

Brooks is partly right, and so are his critics. Yes, there's a rip in our social fabric. Yes, it is caused or made worse by job loss, ill-advised government programs, and shifting (or abandoned) values. Yes, it diminishes social capital and impoverishes social context. But also, Mr Brooks, and perhaps fundamentally, our decaying social fabric is the direct result of our enthusiastic worship of Mammon--the love of money that is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10).

I don't need to remind anybody about rapacious financiers, bloated CEOs, unscrupulous lobbyists, and corrupt politicians. But there were plenty of those in the 1890s and the 1920s, and, as Brooks points out, the social fabric still stayed more or less intact back then. Even two World Wars and a Great Depression didn't unravel it. People still finished school, still got jobs, and still got married before having children, if not always before getting pregnant. Why did things start to break down in the 60s?

It's all the Boomers' fault, right? I mean, the first Boomers were getting their driver's licenses in 1962, the very year Brooks chooses as the beginning of the end. And once we had wheels, and cars with back seats, and, hey, the Pill!--it was all downhill from there.

Nope. Brooks doesn't think it's that simple. But I don't see him fretting about the sea change in the cult of Mammon that took place in the 1950s when we older Boomers were children. For the first time, kids--millions of us--became a market segment. With a brand-new television set planted in nearly every living room in America, we were sitting ducks for anyone who had a product to sell and money to buy air time. We were as plankton to whales, as baby seals to sharks.

The marketers told us we were fantastic, and we believed them. They told us we deserved whatever we wanted, and we agreed. They warned us, sometimes not so subtly ("often a bridesmaid, never a bride"), that if we didn't buy their product, we might face some diminution of our social capital, and we trembled. And they encouraged us to buy their product right now, whether or not we had cash on hand.

Believing them, we stopped thinking about tomorrow. Sha la la-la-la-la, live for today--never mind that what we did today might get us in debt, or destroy our brains, or produce babies. We were the "Now" generation, and proud of it.

But what do you get when people start wanting everything now, so much so that they stop making and carrying out long-range plans, that they defer commitment indefinitely, that they heedlessly risk future solvency in favor of present satisfaction? Well, at the front end, you get a great economy based on thriving businesses with ever-expanding sales volumes. Then, when the rush subsides, you get fatherless children, inadequate education, declining health, a hazardous environment, crumbling roads, and joblessness. You get a social fabric shot full of holes.

So whom shall we blame for the present sad state of so many Americans? Government? Big business? Mysterious social forces? Our own lack of moral fiber? Sure, why not. We've all sold out to Mammon. Our society's organizing principle is the love of money.

Alas, until we as individuals and as a nation stop worshiping at Mammon's altar, all attempts to fix the social fabric--be they Republican, Democratic, socialist, anarchist, moralist, religious, or academic--will be about as effective as sewing "a piece of new cloth on an old garment" (Mark 16:21). Still, a patched garment, if no new fabric exists, is better than no garment at all.

Q. How can you get health insurance if you're an American with a pre-existing condition? A. Live long enough.

This Sunday is an important milestone for me. It's the day I no longer risk losing health insurance.

I left my last job-with-benefits when I was 51 years old. I'd been commuting an hour and a half each day, and I was worn out. My husband had excellent health insurance, and publishing jobs were plentiful.

Six weeks after my job ended, however, the dot-com bubble burst and jobs everywhere started to dry up. In 2003, I discovered I had a great big pre-existing condition - a defective heart valve and an aortic aneurysm that would eventually require surgery. I became uninsurable except through my husband's employer (and mine, should I ever find another job). And then in 2008, the year I turned 60, the whole economy tanked. I realized I was now entirely dependent on my husband's employer for health insurance, since I would probably never again have a job-with-benefits.

I got scared. What if my husband died? Through COBRA, I could extend his insurance for three years, as long as I was able to afford the $7500+ annual premium. But that might not take me all the way to Medicare. 

And what if he lost his job? The annual premium for the two of us would come to nearly $16,000, and the insurance would run out after 18 months.

Doesn't the Affordable Care Act mandate coverage for the formerly uninsurable? Yes indeed, but there's a catch. To be eligible for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, you have to be not only uninsurable but also uninsured for at least six months before applying, and then there's a lapse of two to six weeks before the insurance becomes effective. Going without insurance for 6 1/2 to 8 months when your aneurysm is reaching the danger zone is not a great idea.

But hospital emergency rooms have to treat you, don't they? Right, but they don't do prevention. They would not repair an aneurysm before it burst, though they would try to save you after the damage was done. Trouble is, if you wait for surgery until after the aneurysm ruptures, you will probably die, most likely in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Fortunately, my husband is alive and well and has a fine job with an employer who continues to provide excellent health insurance. Six months ago I had elective open-heart surgery, which means I am still totally uninsurable by pre-Affordable Health Care Act standards, but I am much less likely to die. And Sunday, I turn 63 1/2. If my husband lost his job today, COBRA would take us right up to Medicare. I can finally relax.

I am very much in favor of the Affordable Care Act, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. Repeal Obamacare? Only if our lawmakers make a serious study of why health care in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, etc. costs considerably less than equivalent health care in the United States; and why those countries are getting better results than we are - and why citizens of those countries never, ever have to worry about living with a major medical condition and no health insurance at all.

Make It Modular: quick and easy vegetarian meal ideas

Most of the time I want food that looks good (lots of color!), tastes good (fresh ingredients!), is good for me (mostly plant based!)--and takes just a few minutes to fix. If it takes hours to prepare, I'm probably not going to eat it very often.

This is why I tend to ignore most of the vegetarian cookbooks on my shelves. Their authors seem to think I want to spend all day hunting for odd and expensive ingredients, then bringing them home to peel them and chop them and grind them into powder with my mortar and pestle.

Now and then that can be fun, but there's a much easier way to eat vegetarian: Go modular.

Figure that your meal will need three basic elements:

1. A grain. This could be made of wheat, corn, rice, barley, oats, quinoa...  Ideally, it will be a whole grain, which means it will probably be brown.

2. A source of protein. Instead of meat or fish, go for nuts, cheese, yogurt, beans, or eggs.

3. Fruit and/or vegetables, the more the merrier. Go for color. Go for texture. Go wild.

You can arrange the three elements on a plate: a mound of beans, a mound of rice, a mélange of finely chopped tomatoes, avocadoes, corn, and jalapeño peppers. You can combine the grain and protein (bean burrito, cheese pizza, peanut butter sandwich) and eat a salad or a bowl of fruit on the side. You can turn your grain, protein, and vegetables into minestrone soup. Those are all good, quick meals.

What I most like to do with the three elements, though, is stack them--grain on the bottom, protein next, fruit or vegetables on top--or mix them all up together. Here are some sample combinations:

Grain	Protein	Fruit/Vegetable
bread	peanut or almond butter	applesauce or other fruit
bread	cheese	lettuce, tomato
tortilla	beans, cheese	lettuce, tomato, avocado, chili peppers
rice	beans	bell peppers, tomato
spaghetti or linguine	parmesan cheese	tomato sauce
farfalle or rotini	goat cheese	chopped broccoli, zucchini, carrots, etc.
waffle or pancake	yogurt, sliced almonds	berries
pie crust	eggs, milk, and cheese	spinach or broccoli
couscous	chopped walnuts	chopped broccoli

Three elements--that's all you absolutely need, though you'll probably want to accessorize. Add a little salt and pepper or herbs or spices or onion or garlic or lemon juice or vinegar or anything likely to make your meal tastier. Experiment. Make up your own combinations based on whatever's in season or in your refrigerator. By late spring, you'll be an accomplished vegetarian cook. And then the farmers' markets will open and the fun will really begin.

Number-One Hits: Not Just for Birthdays

The Andrews Sisters

A lot of my Facebook friends are sharing links to the number-one hit song on the day of their birth. Listening to the song can be disconcerting. One friend, after discovering his was by the Andrews Sisters, wrote, "Will someone spoon oatmeal into me for dinner?"

(If you want to find your song, click here.) Mine was a song I'd never heard of - somehow I didn't pay much attention to the hit parade when I was in my bassinet. What with diapers, bottles, and sleep deprivation, my parents may never have heard of it either. I just checked the top hits on the days my daughters were born, and they were completely unfamiliar to me too.

So I got to thinking, this meme has it wrong. The important song in my life isn't the number-one hit on the day of my birth. It's the number-one hit on the day I was conceived. That song might explain my existence.

I immediately checked out my idea by looking up top hits on my daughters' probable dates of conception. OK, scratch that theory. One song was barely familiar. The other was "American Pie." Well, yes, "I can still remember how that music used to make me smile..."

The top hit on my own probable date of conception, though, seemed sweetly appropriate: Francis Craig's "Near You." (If you want to estimate your date of conception, click here. If you were born in a leap year, choose 2012 as your birth year; otherwise, choose 2011.)

But hey, the hit parade is more for teenagers than for sober young householders. What song was popular that Sunday afternoon when Mr Neff and I, aged 19 and 18, snuggled in a parked VW and decided to get married?

Groovin'

On a Sunday afternoon ...

We'll keep on spending sunny days this way

We're gonna talk and laugh our time away

I feel it comin' closer day by day

Life would be ecstasy, you and me endlessly . . .

More than 44 ecstatic years later, the music hasn't died, though it's getting more and more difficult to groove in a VW.

Yesterday in U.S. health care policy - a step in the right direction

Yesterday a provision in the Affordable Care Act went into effect: health insurers' profits must now be limited.

In response, Rick Ungar, a journalist specializing in health-care policy, posted a feisty column on Forbes's Policy Page. Provocatively titled "The Bomb Buried in Obamacare Explodes Today - Hallelujah!," the article looks at "the provision of the law, called the medical loss ratio, that requires health insurance companies to spend 80% of the consumers’ premium dollars they collect—85% for large group insurers—on actual medical care rather than overhead, marketing expenses and profit."

Knowing how much Steve Forbes hates the Affordable Care Act (see, for example, my November 10 post), I started reading Ungar's post with trepidation. Was his "Hallelujah" sarcastic? Was he wincing when he wrote that the medical loss ratio provision would lead to "the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry"?

Evidently not. Insurance companies can't possibly make a profit once this provision is enforced, Ungar writes, and their parent companies are "fleeing into other types of investments. They know what we should all know – we are now on an inescapable path to a single-payer system for most Americans and thank goodness for it." Ungar thinks the results will be good for the rich, who will still be able to buy expensive insurance for luxurious care; and good for the poor, who will finally be able to "get their families the medical care that they need." His Hallelujah is genuine.

I completely support the medical loss ratio provision, but I believe Ungar should have mentioned that the poor are unlikely to be able to get the medical care they need unless there is a federally enforced mechanism for limiting costs. As far as I know, there is no such mechanism in the Affordable Care Act - the providers' lobbies saw to that. So federal funds will continue to subsidize providers' profits (as long as the providers aren't insurance companies), and prices will continue to rise way beyond the means of poor and middle-income families.

I also believe he is mistaken when he suggests that "the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry" will lead to the advent of a single-payer system. As T.R. Reid points out in his excellent 2009 book, The Healing of America, "the United States is the only developed country that relies on profit-making health insurance companies to pay for essential and elective care." Those other OECD countries, however, do not all have single-payer systems. Britain, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Spain do. France, Germany, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland do not. Like us, they finance health care through competing private (but not-for-profit) insurers. There is no reason we could not do the same.

The United States has taken an important step forward by limiting insurers' profits. We now need to do something about profiteering in other parts of the gargantuan health-care industry. If we truly want to improve our health-care outcomes, provide health care for all Americans, and still spend less money per capita on health care, we need to take lessons from other developed nations, all of whom are ahead of us in all categories (see, for example, this 2010 article on a Commonwealth Fund study, or check out the facts and figures yourself at the World Health Organization's detailed database search page).

Or we can continue down our present path of allowing lobbyists to finance elections and line the pockets of our elected representatives in hopes of reversing or indefinitely deferring any meaningful health-care reform.