Popular Culture

Etymology Question

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When did “kick-up” become an adjective?

I ask because I get a lot of porn spam using it that way in the subject line (e.g., “kick-up video of Mariah Carey”).

Do people who are into this stuff commonly use that phrase? I’ve never heard of it in any other context. The only Google hit for “kick-up” that seems pertinent is this column by Mark Morford, which is basically a spam dump of his inbox. And it’s not even in the top ten hits. The vast majority of them are a verb (as I would expect). I would have thought there’d be something in the Urban Dictionary, but no.

So is it some new usage that some spammer made up, and it’s supposed to be obvious what it means? Anyone more hip than me (i.e., almost everyone) have any idea where this comes from?

[Update in the afternoon]

Heh. Google works fast. This post is now number seven in a search for “‘kick-up’ adjective.”

Political Commentary

Feel The Love

For Hillary Clinton: Go away you horrible human being!

I actually liked Hillary up until a few months ago. Other bloggers used to tell me that Joe and I were too nice to Hillary. People just assumed that we were endorsing her. Now I actually loathe her. She makes me yell at the TV like she’s George Bush, and no one other than George Bush makes me yell at the TV – until now. I actually can’t stand her or her husband any more. I defended her. I defended her husband. And now I’m actually wondering if the Republicans weren’t right about them. That’s how bad she has damaged her reputation. People who actually liked you, who actually helped you, who actually defended you, LOATHE you now. Call me a Clinton-hater all you like, but people like me were the ones who had your back. And we never will again.

Emphasis mine (and Jim Geraghty’s).

Yes, the scales continue to fall from their eyes, and they’re finally seeing the Clintons that some of us, more objective, have seen all along.

Hear that sound? It’s a nanoviolin, scraping out a plaintive dirge.

I’m overcome with emotion. I think that it’s called schadenfreude.

History, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Month Of The Natural Disaster

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May ’08 has been a pretty rough month for the planet and its inhabitants, what with the volcanoes and tornadoes and cyclones and earthquakes, <VOICE=”Professor Frink>and the drowning and the crushing and the evacuating and the staaaaarving, glavin</VOICE>.

Jeff Masters has a roundup and some history, and some inside info on why the death toll in the country formerly known as Burma was so high.

Space

Frustration

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Phil Plait has a little rant about our (lack of) progress in human spaceflight. The usual pointless man-versus-robot debate ensues in comments. (I think that the post title should be “whither,” though, not “whence”–whence, which is often misused with the redundant “from whence,” means “from where,” while “whither” means “to where”.)

[Via Tom Hill]

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!