The Lexicographer's Rules

"OK, let's get this straight. It's not 'dogcatcher,' it's 'animal control officer.' We don't like dog warden either... We don't just deal with dogs, and 'warden' sounds more like a prison term."

—Bergen Record. Unsung heros of the urban animal kingdom, from bats to bears.'

"Swag wasn't the same thing as out-and-out stealing. It was an unwritten rule in Jersey CityÑand all of Hudson CountyÑthat you could take as much merchandise as you could carry from your job. The politicians skimmed off the top, so why shouldn't the little people?"

—New York Times. In her new book, Five-Finger Discount, Helen Stipinksi recounts growing up in Jersey among a family lightly endowed with ethics. "Her great-uncle Frankie swindled young couples, offering them cut-rate weddings that resulted in 'dozens, if not hundreds or thousands' of fake marriages in Jersey City. Her cousin George was arrested for committing 57 burglaries in a four-month crime spree. And her great-aunt Katie's son, Mike, who graduated from Harvard Law School and ran for mayor of Jersey City, would be disbarred for misappropriating client funds."'

"Unlike pilots, who have an obvious vested interest in error prevention and usually belong to powerful labor unions that aggressively negotiate on their behalf, residents are a captive population afraid to complainÑor to admit they are exhaustedÑbecause their careers depend on the goodwill of their supervisors, particularly their residency directors. These senior physicians have the power to derail, or even to effectively end, a resident's career with a bad recommendation."

—Washington Post. Interns and residentsÑdoctors in training fresh out of medical schoolÑspend up to 30 hours straight on shift and work as many as 100 hours a week. A report issued 18 months ago showed that as many as 98,000 hostpitalized patients die each year as a result of medical errors.'

"It has been two daysÑno, threeÑwithout sleep, sitting in this hut and smoking the little pink speed tablets from sheets of tinfoil stripped from Krong Tip cigarette packets. Now, as the flushes of artificial energy recede and the realization surfaces that there's no more money anywhere in her hut, Jacky is crashing hard, and she hates everyone and everything. Especially Bing. She hates that sponging little punk for all the tablets he smoked a few hours agoÑtablets she could be smoking right now. Back then, she had a dozen tablets packed into a plastic soda straw stuffed down her black wire-frame bra. The hut was alive with the chatter of half a dozen speed addicts, all pulling apart their Krong Tip packs and sucking in meth smoke through metal pipes. Now that the pills are gone, the fun is gone. And Bing, of course, he's long gone."

—Canoe. Speed, called yaba by Thais, shabu in Japan and Indonesia, batu in the Philippines, and bingdu in China, each name referring to methamphetamines, is on the tail end of ripping its way through Asia.'

"Atom bomb, atom bomb. Atom bomb. Atom bomb."

—Guardian. Crowds in Islamabad, Pakistan, applaud and chant as the Shaheen I and Shaheen II ballistic missiles roll by during a national day parade. "The Shaheen can hit India in six minutes. It is anti-Bharat (India). We can also hit Israel with it."'