Deborah Lipp

I have two hard drives. One is a master, and one is a slave. I am told that these are offensive terms to some. I have a hard time accepting that, because these aren’t words which are slurs, they are words which have specific meaning, accurate and applicable to the situation: One entity is able to act, but only with direct instructions from another entity, never independently. The other entity directs operations, both of the subordinate entity and of the system as a whole. So this sounds like a slave and a master to me.

I am told I should now call my hard drives primary and secondary. This is non-offensive but inaccurate. A secondary entity should be able to take over if the primary fails; a second-in-command takes over if the captain is incapacitated. If my “primary” hard drive fails, I’m SOL, because the “secondary” has no ability to substitute for the primary. It’s non-promotable; it remains, let’s face it, a slave. I need a new master (or mistress, I guess, but I think hard drives plug into slots, and in the language of hardware, that makes them male).

Arthur says it trivializes a tragedy of history to use the language cavalierly, about computers. I say it is never trivial to use language accurately.

Meanwhile, my motherboard died, but Gary tells me I shouldn’t call it a motherboard, I should call it a mainboard. Except, every time we spoke to a vendor about buying a replacement, the conversation went:

Gary: “We need a mainboard.”
Vendor: “Do you mean motherboard?”

So it’s an idea whose time has not yet come.

Anyway, since when is “mother” sexist? It is gendered, yes, but I am wracking my brains and failing to come up with a way that this demeans either gender. I like that my computer has a primary female part (especially what with the masters and slaves running around inside—presumably with collars and whips and such).

So I was poking around yesterday and I discovered…language blogs.

I discovered them here. And here. And here.

Some of them are very nerdy and intellectual. Some of them are pretty much dissertations 300 words at a time. But many of them are The Big Fun. It makes me all warm and cuddly inside. Arthur is going to lose his shit when he sees these links.

So sometime in the next few days I’ll finish compiling my favorites and add a new set of links to the sidebar.

UPDATE: Okay, look to the right for Language Blogs.

I just learned a new word! Apotropaic.

Intended to ward off evil: an apotropaic symbol.

You see, I was just given a Hand of Fatima as a gift, and the explanatory material enclosed described it as an apotropaic amulet.

So. Pretty gift. New word. What more can a girl want?

Last night, Arthur and I were discussing teen life with someone (Ann), and we got into a thing about the difference between navigate and negotiate.

Ann said Arthur negotiated a situation, and Arthur said he didn’t because it was non-verbal, it was more like he navigated it. And I said negotiate can be non-verbal, like negotiating a curve, and maybe the difference was that navigation was a planned route, whereas negotiation was just getting through. In which case Arthur had negotiated.

So now this is interesting. Both navigate and negotiate have specific meanings, and metaphorical meanings. What is the difference?

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So Arthur and I are playing Scrabble®, and my brain was in froze-mode. And I need to look something up and he has the dictionary in his lap and my tongue gets all wrapped around the inside of my mouth. So I sort of point at the dictionary and say “Uh uggy thingy goo ug.” Which, I admit, sounds stupid, but we actually talk like that in my house and actually, he understands me. And Arthur says:

“Try asking for the dictionary with words.”

Which is very beautiful, if you think about it.

How come when something good is made better, that’s good for it (horse manure is good for the garden)? And when something bad is diminished, that’s also good for it (castor oil is good for scar tissue)?