Anyone wishing to marry a dead person must send a request to the president, who then forwards it to the justice minister, who sends it to the prosecutor in whose jurisdiction the surviving person lives.

-- article discussing a French law

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K v. E.: I'm not as sangfroid about who is chosen, and I don't quite see the point of tossing in "huh" words like "andreia" [AndrAIa, I know] and "Neustadtian" (professorial privilege, I guess), but this take on Kerry v. Edwards is largely on the money. The use of those words did lead me to Google, and this was one website I found. Surely as long ago as a grade school teacher did so while giving spelling tests, I have found much joy in such tangents. They are like footnotes, adding enjoyable details to the text, but able to overwhelm it as well if one isn't too careful.

[See here for a defense to the claim Kerry is hypocritical to argue that the President is beholden to "special interests," along with an aside noting that yes quite arguably the term includes those of a noncommercial nature.]

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Don't Judge An Article By Its Title: I saw the headline "Laura Bush Says Gay Marriage 'Shocking.'" and I admit to have been titillated. How shocking! So is the point, even though it turns out that the text of the story is a lot less controversial. This bit of showmanship is troubling, since quite often people do not read the story that closely, and the headline is for them largely the story. And, remember, the editor, not the writer, generally selects the headline. I myself was a small victim of this when a message board post of mine was highlighted by the editor and in my view somewhat exaggerated for effect. He agreed, and I just thought "ah well, we all have our roles to play."

[Talking about tangents, check this out; "affect" v. "effect" and "would of" v. "would have" bedeviled me to no end. I still slip on them now and again. Note in particular that "effect," some accounts notwithstanding, is sometimes a verb.]

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Couple More Things: This account of the latest White House Press "Gaggle" is hilarious, down to a reporter asking for the definition of "is" as used by the press secretary. The dispute over whether a "forecast" or a "goal" is involved seems amusingly (so to speak) like the dispute in affirmative action between a "quota" and a "goal" ... at times but a game of semantics. Cheers as well for some supporting words on gay marriage from Chicago ... Mayor Daley opened up the possibility he wouldn't be too upset if the city also started handing out marriage certificates to gays. Some more of his gay friendly comments can be found here.