Nigel Richards
The Weiner Issue
Is Really Funny
(Though Taibbi says not)
but the real point of this entry is to verify that Xanga makes it easy to transport hyperlinks (I emailed the following to myself, then cut and pasted it here, and to Live Journal, and to Word Press, and the only place it works is here).
I haven't had much to say about Anthony Weiner because, well, Matt Taibbi says it so much better than I do.
I've wasted this day dicking around over at LJ and WP, and it does appear that Word Press is where I'll wind up, which I guess is a good thing because if there's anything left of Xanga (Xanga 2.0, that is) it will be from the WP platform.
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The current national champions are Nigel Richards and John O'Laughlin. I equate them as co-champions because Richards won the recent five-day event in Las Vegas in which they used the American word list. The international list (known as Collins, after the dictionary company that publishes the official word list in Great Britain) was the lexicon of choice in the event won by my friend John, who deserves equal recognition.
It's a sad thing that Americans stubbornly refuse to join the rest of the world in accepting the Collins lexicon. Yes, Collins decided to add a lot of Maori words a few years ago, Maori being the native tribe of New Zealand, an English-speaking nation, so the idiots at Collins consider Maori a part of the English language, and that's the current excuse for Americans refusing to go along. But before that (this battle has been being waged since 1991), the excuse was that the Chambers English Dictionary had too many old-fashioned single-author citations in its lexicon, and Americans don't have the respect for Shakespeare and Coleridge that the Brits do.
Just an excuse. The only sensible thing to do is agree on a single word list. And the rest of the world has made its choice -- American AND British words. (And Maori, and Australian, and South African.)
The real reason that Americans refuse to stop being insular over this is that too many players are too lazy when it comes to studying. But if I say that (and I just did), I get accused of being elitist. But the truth is the truth.
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Well, OK, even though the hyperlinks won't work, I'll transport this thing over to WP at least, and probably LJ, if I get time because Xanga shuts down in just three days from now.
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But I wanted to say something more about my OTHER friend -- Nigel Richards. I don't know him as well as I know John O'Laughlin, but Nigel is not only a wonderful human being, he's an awesome freak of nature who dominates a Scrabble board like no one in history. He outshines my other heroes, Brian Cappelletto, David Gibson, Joe Edley, Joel Wapnick, and Jim Kramer, by a mile.
Do you know what Nigel has just done? He just won his fourth U.S. championship in a row. Before he came on the scene, nobody ever won consecutive championships, and I think it was only Edley that had won the title more than once.
Not only that, Nigel's primary lexicon is Collins. He manages to keep in his head which words are illegal in U.S. tournaments, and I'm talking on the order of 50,000 such words. Words that he knows and plays in Collins tournaments, which he also wins when he plays in them.
Nigel is the current world champion as well as the current U.S. champion.
On the other hand, I'm probably the only person in the world who considers John O'Laughlin a co-national champion. Such is the low regard in which the Collins lexicon is held in this country. Click below to see the tournament results.
Scrabble Tournament website
Maybe I'll come back later and make usable hyperlinks.
Is Really Funny
(Though Taibbi says not)
but the real point of this entry is to verify that Xanga makes it easy to transport hyperlinks (I emailed the following to myself, then cut and pasted it here, and to Live Journal, and to Word Press, and the only place it works is here).
I haven't had much to say about Anthony Weiner because, well, Matt Taibbi says it so much better than I do.
I've wasted this day dicking around over at LJ and WP, and it does appear that Word Press is where I'll wind up, which I guess is a good thing because if there's anything left of Xanga (Xanga 2.0, that is) it will be from the WP platform.
********************************
The current national champions are Nigel Richards and John O'Laughlin. I equate them as co-champions because Richards won the recent five-day event in Las Vegas in which they used the American word list. The international list (known as Collins, after the dictionary company that publishes the official word list in Great Britain) was the lexicon of choice in the event won by my friend John, who deserves equal recognition.
It's a sad thing that Americans stubbornly refuse to join the rest of the world in accepting the Collins lexicon. Yes, Collins decided to add a lot of Maori words a few years ago, Maori being the native tribe of New Zealand, an English-speaking nation, so the idiots at Collins consider Maori a part of the English language, and that's the current excuse for Americans refusing to go along. But before that (this battle has been being waged since 1991), the excuse was that the Chambers English Dictionary had too many old-fashioned single-author citations in its lexicon, and Americans don't have the respect for Shakespeare and Coleridge that the Brits do.
Just an excuse. The only sensible thing to do is agree on a single word list. And the rest of the world has made its choice -- American AND British words. (And Maori, and Australian, and South African.)
The real reason that Americans refuse to stop being insular over this is that too many players are too lazy when it comes to studying. But if I say that (and I just did), I get accused of being elitist. But the truth is the truth.
********************************
Well, OK, even though the hyperlinks won't work, I'll transport this thing over to WP at least, and probably LJ, if I get time because Xanga shuts down in just three days from now.
********************************
But I wanted to say something more about my OTHER friend -- Nigel Richards. I don't know him as well as I know John O'Laughlin, but Nigel is not only a wonderful human being, he's an awesome freak of nature who dominates a Scrabble board like no one in history. He outshines my other heroes, Brian Cappelletto, David Gibson, Joe Edley, Joel Wapnick, and Jim Kramer, by a mile.
Do you know what Nigel has just done? He just won his fourth U.S. championship in a row. Before he came on the scene, nobody ever won consecutive championships, and I think it was only Edley that had won the title more than once.
Not only that, Nigel's primary lexicon is Collins. He manages to keep in his head which words are illegal in U.S. tournaments, and I'm talking on the order of 50,000 such words. Words that he knows and plays in Collins tournaments, which he also wins when he plays in them.
Nigel is the current world champion as well as the current U.S. champion.
On the other hand, I'm probably the only person in the world who considers John O'Laughlin a co-national champion. Such is the low regard in which the Collins lexicon is held in this country. Click below to see the tournament results.
Scrabble Tournament website
Maybe I'll come back later and make usable hyperlinks.