Ariana's Newest Contributor

Pulitzer-winning columnist Connie Schultz, currently on leave from the PD, showed up last week on Huffingtonpost, as its newest blogging contributor. The piece was not uninteresting (and should provide plenty of red meat for those bloggers already hostile to her and/or her husband, Senate candidate Sherrod Brown). But the most interesting thing about it, I thought, was the tagline, where we learn that she plans to publish a book next year about the campaign.

A Pox on Those Sportswriters. Cleveland.com blogger Chas Rich may be a hardened sports nut, but he's tired of sportswriters and their hair-trigger censoriousness. He writes: "Is there any breed of writer more repressive, reactionary, shortsighted and just generally hating fun than the sportswriter? Whenever something happens their first response is to call for bans, laws and restrictions."

A Quote that Got My Attention. 'Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.'--the late humorist and essayist S. J. Perelman, as quoted on novelist Michael Chabon's website/blog.

And Finally...You sticklers for language can now rest easy. A major dictionary has formally accepted the term google as a verb, perhaps three or four years after it informally entered the American lexicon through the time-tested route: slang.