{"id":145,"date":"2005-12-03T03:44:22","date_gmt":"2005-12-03T03:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/turning_in_her_\/"},"modified":"2005-12-03T03:44:22","modified_gmt":"2005-12-03T03:44:22","slug":"turning_in_her_","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/language\/turning_in_her_\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning in Her Grave"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Missgould\"<\/a>The letters page (20) of the Nov 28 New Yorker<\/em> contains an odd use of the phrase "survival of the fittest":<\/p>\n

"Idealists may be shocked, but pragmatists know that Harvard and Yale are wise in admitting future survivors of the fittest."<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The letters are usually edited to the same high standards as the rest of their prose, so I'm surprised this nonsensical peculiarity made it through. (But what would be the sensical alternative to "future survivors of the fittest"? "the fittest, who will survive in the future"? Um…) The letter's author, a professor of psychology at Hofstra, is not the first to use the phrase "survivors of the fittest," but he is in rare company. Google brings in 438 hits.<\/p>\n

Another seemingly careless oddity pops up later in the same issue(!). On page 111, in an article about invasion novels, Tom Reiss writes about William Le Queux: "His books…quickly spun out across the globe in fantastic plotlines that took his heroes from San Francisco to Siberia." Now, unless Le Queux's books are highly repetitive and all involve protagonists making the same commute between California and Russia, I think Reiss means "that took his heroes to locations<\/em> from San Francisco to Siberia."<\/p>\n

(To be a literalist about it, he should also replace "from<\/em> San Francisco to<\/em> Siberia" with "including<\/em> San Francisco and<\/em> Siberia." Unless, of course, the characters never actually make it to the Far East…)<\/p>\n

What I'm saying is, we miss you, Miss Gould<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The letters page (20) of the Nov 28 New Yorker contains an odd use of the phrase "survival of the fittest": "Idealists may be shocked, but pragmatists know that Harvard and Yale are wise in admitting future survivors of the fittest."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}