Faute de Mieux

How much do I love Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Confrontational Times? I know it's been out for quite some time, but I just found it at the library last week. The book is a compilation of some of Geoffrey Nunberg's Fresh Air commentaries, and various print articles from 2001 - 2004. The great thing about this book is that Nunberg wrote articles about what he observed in modern language as it was happening. Many phrases and descriptions that are firmly entrenched in the vernacular of 2005 were just nascent little proto-memes when Nunberg wrote about them.

Going Nucular is more than just a book on modern language, it's a history of the buzzwords that will be in history textbooks twenty years from now. What do they mean? What did they mean? What are the political goals of the media barons and policy wonks who work so hard to put these words in the mouths of average Americans? Going Nucular is fascinating, entertaining and thought provoking.

And Now for Something Completely Trivial:
In the interests of doing my part to make language clearer to my fellow American, here's a guide to Starbucks' Coffee Drinks that I found at memepool.