William Safire, who now does the On

William Safire, who now does the On Language column for the NY Times, wrote a speech for President Nixon in 1969 in the event that something happened during the Apollo 11 mission to strand the astronauts on the moon.

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

(via cyn-c)

• Apollo
• Apollo 11
• Moon
• NASA
• Richard Nixon
• space
• williamsafire

You’re Safired!

Wes Felter calls for the ass fact-checking of William Safire over the latter’s article in the NY Times about blog jargon and he’s not wrong. Wes correctly notes the etymology of “weblog” and “blog” and hopefully the people responsible for things like the AP Style Guide, English dictionaries, and influential columns like On Language will, at some point, do the 20 minutes of research necessary to convince them and the unwashed journalist masses that “blog” is not and was never short for “web log”.

Safire also gets tripped up on where the word “blogosphere” came from. While William Quick’s usage in 2002 popularized the term, Brad Graham first used the term in 1999.

• etymology
• language
• weblogs
• williamsafire