Rosemary for Remembrance - I read it in the Times
thats only an explanation its not an excuse
Jonquil Serpyllum
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Jonquil Serpyllum
Date: 19 Feb 2006 13:46
Subject: I read it in the Times
Security: Public

You know, William Safire should give up discussing any word more recent than 1970. Whoever his Internet experts are, they apparently have the long-term memory and historical expertise of paramecia. In today's "On Language" column, we read:

A ping is not just the word for a sound anymore. It is also an acronym for "packet Internet gopher," a program that tests whether a destination is online and can also be the gently noisy notification sent when a blog needs updating or has been updated.

It's hard to know where to start. I began --after clearing the bloody foam from my upper lip-- with a simple Google for "ping history". The story of the PING program:

"Yes, it's true! I'm the author of ping for UNIX. Ping is a little thousand-line hack that I wrote in an evening which practically everyone seems to know about. :-)
I named it after the sound that a sonar makes, inspired by the whole principle of echo-location. In college I'd done a lot of modeling of sonar and radar systems, so the "Cyberspace" analogy seemed very apt. It's exactly the same paradigm applied to a new problem domain: ping uses timed IP/ICMP ECHO_REQUEST and ECHO_REPLY packets to probe the "distance" to the target machine.
In December of 1983 I encountered some odd behavior of the IP network at BRL....

Let's assume that Mr. Safire isn't comfortable enough with the Internet to make use of a search engine. In that case, years of practice writing about language should have made his nostrils twitch whenever something was declared to be an acronym; acronyms are the rhinoviruses of folk etymology, ubiquitous yet hard to remove.

Anybody who has ever seen a submarine movie -- I suggest "The Hunt For Red October" -- is aware that "ping" is a term of art used in sonar: you send out a single pulse and wait to hear what echoes back. It's called a "ping" because, well, it goes ping, or did. The Internet use of "ping" is a precise analogy; the history I cite explains that the analogy was in the mind of the inventor.

Oh, and Mr. Safire? "Fuck" isn't an acronym either. Just in case you were wondering.

18 sounded | Sounding Spheres | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link


M o I {she is poetry and Prozac}
User: [info]the_red_shoes
Date: 19 Feb 2006 21:57 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

Whoever his Internet experts are, they apparently have the long-term memory and historical expertise of paramecia

((fangrrls you abjectly))

Do you read languagehat.com? He takes after Safire regularly....

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in vinculis etiam audax
User: [info]misia
Date: 19 Feb 2006 22:13 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

I think I need to be next in line for fangirling. Please?

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in vinculis etiam audax
User: [info]misia
Date: 19 Feb 2006 22:14 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

As in, next in line to fangirl [info]jonquil, not next in line to be fangirled.

A problem of unclear referent, I know.

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'Rin: Fangirls
User: [info]rintheamazing
Date: 20 Feb 2006 01:50 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Keyword:Fangirls

Hey, this is the internet - no reason you can't do both.

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M o I {she is poetry and Prozac}
User: [info]the_red_shoes
Date: 20 Feb 2006 01:59 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

Aww, you know I fangrrl you anyway.

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M o I {she is poetry and Prozac}
User: [info]the_red_shoes
Date: 20 Feb 2006 01:58 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

Mais oui!

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Springheel_Jack
User: [info]springheel_jack
Date: 19 Feb 2006 22:28 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

Heh. PING is just so brand new and cutting edge. It's not like it's been around for thirty years or anything.

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easier with elephants
User: [info]cofax7
Date: 19 Feb 2006 23:01 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

Oh, dear god. And then there's the thing about blog updating? WTF? ::boggles::

Please tell me you're sending a gently snarky letter to the NY Times. I'm sure they'll get plenty, but yours will be funny.

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Jonquil Serpyllum
User: [info]jonquil
Date: 20 Feb 2006 00:02 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

I'm afraid I sent Safire a dry note with the citation from the above posting, all snark ironed out.

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easier with elephants
User: [info]cofax7
Date: 19 Feb 2006 23:06 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

And now I've read the entire article, and ... gah. It's not all of it wrong, but most of it is, well, off.

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Jonquil Serpyllum
User: [info]jonquil
Date: 20 Feb 2006 00:02 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

The entry for "meme" is pretty fucking stupid, too. It isn't as if it's in the American Heritage dictionary or anything.

I couldn't find cites, but the first time *I* saw "weblog" was in "Good Morning Silicon Valley", where it was defined as a log of recent news stories; the "log" in question had absolutely nothing to do with referrer logs.

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M o I {she is poetry and Prozac}
User: [info]the_red_shoes
Date: 20 Feb 2006 02:15 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

the first time *I* saw "weblog" was in "Good Morning Silicon Valley", where it was defined as a log of recent news stories

Yeah, I think I first found out about the history of it all from a rebecca's pocket essay (after getting into Blogger), which she defined as link-driven sites, sort of like MeFi. In fact IIRC originally it was "we-blog," which quickly died a merciful death.

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the utterance itself is adoration
User: [info]_swallow
Date: 20 Feb 2006 00:38 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

Safire's crazymaking.

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User: [info]dsgood
Date: 20 Feb 2006 02:47 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

I believe Safire relies on an assistant to do the research.

I find his language writings more palatable than the political column he used to do. (I didn't like having someone who'd served in the Nixon White House lecturing on political morality.)

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Veejane
User: [info]veejane
Date: 20 Feb 2006 04:39 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

Safire has always been a much better chronicler of down-home and regional slang than of jargon in any context. Basically, if he doesn't use the word himself in his everyday speech, he'll treat it like a Hottentot -- imperious and mistaken exoticism.

Which would be why, when I was in college, he declared that the word twit was a British dialect word not in use in the US. I was on ISCA BBS at the time, run out of the University of that heartland state, Iowa, where "twit" was in use as both verb and noun on every forum. Also, it's too cool a word to be confined across the pond!!

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User: (Anonymous)
Date: 21 Feb 2006 03:30 (UTC)
Subject: "Packet internet groper"

(not gopher) was a retroactive acronym designed after "ping" caught on, so the phrase isn't quite pulled out of Safire's ass.

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Erin O'Connor: ling
User: [info]kirinqueen
Date: 21 Feb 2006 16:48 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Keyword:ling

You got Language Logged!

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Jonquil Serpyllum
User: [info]jonquil
Date: 21 Feb 2006 16:49 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

::hides::

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