Same stuff, different dateline
SAN FRANCISCO -- Another obligatory dateline post, this time to remind everyone that great big papers on the distant coast are heir to the same sins as our own.First, a quiz: Name a novel on the HEADSUP-L All-Time Favorites shelf in which the protagonist eats in the restaurant shown at right.
Now this from the hypercorrection front:
Hutchinson's conviction is one of three highlighted by the Mercury News that has been overturned since the newspaper published its series "Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice.''
Diagramming party to action stations. It's one of three convictions that HAVE been overturned since the horn-tooting series began. Somebody was thinking too hard and failed to think hard enough.
Tropical Storm Chris
may become hurricane
Indeed it may. As can be said of every tropical storm since Cro-Magnon Person started building condos on the Atlantic coast. And then again, it might not. As appeared much more likely as of this post, from midday today:
Tropical Storm Chris rapidly ran out of steam Thursday morning as it pushed across the eastern Caribbean, and forecasters said it could weaken by evening to a tropical depression.
"May" heds: Tool of the weak! Don't use 'em. Don't approve 'em.
posted by fev at 1:48 PM
4 Comments:
SFO, one of my favorite cities. I think it was Sam Spade that ate there in "The Maltese Falcon." I wonder if you can still smoke inside.
--Diego
Could the first sentence be saying that three convictions were highlighted in the series and this is the only one that has been overturned? Poorly written either way, but just a guess on my part.
Chops, baked potato, and sliced tomato. I remember Spade's meal because it was one that Groucho Marx also liked. Although Marx sometimes had a quarter of a head of iceberg lettuce, for which he carried a special fork with one tine sharpened on the side.
Speaking of trivia, Marx's across-the-hall neighbor when he was young was Jose Iturbi, the pianist. I'm not sure if Iturbi liked lettuce or tomato, though.
Anyway, last time I was in San Francisco there was a sign in the window of John's Grill stating that of all the restaurants mentioned in the book, John's was the only one still open. Threat or menace?
Ah, readers with a sense of history.
No, as far as I can tell, if you even think about smoking in a San Francisco restaurant, attack dogs will eat your toes.
Amy raises an interesting counterargument, but I think that meaning would require different syntax, like a determiner in the predicate noun phrase. As in:
Two femmes fatales were suspected in Miles's death. She is one.
One of those femmes fatales shot Miles. She is the one.
Make sense? To get the only-one-of-three sense, we'd have to specify "the." (Qualitatively, I'd also expect some finger-pointing at the officials who had ignored the newspaper's warnings, but not everybody has qualitative tastes.)
Any of you grammarians out there want to jump in, go right ahead.
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