Samizdata posts a fine though by no means complete list of Brit and Americanisms, and the Britishisms are nearly always shorter. Which reminds me* of a poem by Chesterton on the subject:

A Ballad of Abbreviations

The American’s a hustler, for he says so,
  And surely the American must know.
He will prove to you with figures why it pays so,
  Beginning with his boyhood long ago.
When the slow-maturing anecdote is ripest,
  He’ll dictate it like a Board of Trade Report,
And because he has no time to call a typist,
  He calls her a Stenographer for short.

He is never known to loiter or malinger,
  He rushes, for he knows he has ‘a date’;
He is always on the spot and full of ginger,
  Which is why he is invariably late.
When he guesses that it’s getting even later,
  His vocabulary’s vehement and swift,
And he yells for what he calls the Elevator,
  A slang abbreviation for a lift.

Then nothing can be nattier or nicer
  For those who like a light and rapid style,
Than to trifle with the work of Mr. Dreiser
  As it comes along in waggons by the mile.
He had taught us what a swift selective art meant
  By description of his dinners and all that,
And his dwelling, which he says is an Apartment,
  Because he cannot stop to say a flat.

We may whisper of his wild precipitation,
  That its speed is rather longer than a span,
But there really is a definite occasion
  When he does not use the longest word he can.
When he substitutes, I freely make admission,
  One shorter and much easier to spell;
If you ask him what he thinks of Prohibition,
  He may tell you quite succinctly it is Hell.

*Because I was a prissy little pedantic English major who got picked on in high school. Deservedly.

William F. Buckley reports on the raging controversy:

The major battleground next week is in Nevada, where people will vote on Question 9. If the vote is affirmative, in 2004 a constitutional ratifying amendment will be on the ballot which would legalize pot, which is to say, permit 3-ounce packets of it to be sold with impunity. How much is three ounces? On that point, as on so many others raised by Question 9, there is disagreement. The pro-pot people claim that the allowance is only enough to make up 80 joints. The antis insist it’s enough to make 250 joints.

WFB, dude, that all depends on whether you’re rolling bombers or pinners. (Link from Spoons via Wickens.)

I was listening to Jerry Cronin, the Right-to-Life Party gubernatorial candidate in New York, on the radio this morning, and he claimed that the Hippocratic Oath proscribes abortion. This sounded wrong to me, so I looked it up. Turns out he’s right. The injunctions of the original oath are remarkable. They are:

• To tithe one’s income to one’s teacher and his offspring;
• To teach, for free, anyone who swears the same oath;
• To help the sick and not to harm them (the oft-cited “first, do no harm” clause, although it isn’t put exactly that way);
• No euthanasia;
• No abortion;
• No surgery;
• No sex with patients;
• To protect the privacy of patients and their families.

Leaving aside the question of whether this medical advice is actually Hippocratic, it is certainly, for the most part, medical advice. (Unsound and out-of-date medical advice in my view, but that’s another matter.) The modern version, to which the overwhelming majority of medical students are still required to swear, is rather different. There are many but this is among the most popular.

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

The tithing and teaching provisions have been reduced to an anodyne exhortation to “respect” and “gladly share” one’s scientific knowledge. The medical advice has disappeared altogether, replaced by vague social duties. What are the “special obligations” that doctors owe to the “sound of mind and body”? To what extent, exactly, is a doctor obliged to account for his patient’s “family and economic stability,” and how is this a medical matter?

Respecting patients’ privacy survives more or less intact; the rest is cuddle clauses. If you want a warm, sympathetic, understanding, humble doctor with awareness of his own frailty, be my guest. I’d prefer a cold, nasty, arrogant doctor whose knowledge if his field is current and who will back, when necessary, his best medical judgment to the hilt. You can have Charles Bovary; I’ll take Monsieur Larivire. Doctors of my acquaintance tell me that no one takes the modern oath very seriously, which is fortunate. But if it isn’t taken seriously why should it be taken at all?

Radley Balko finally unburdens himself about war with Iraq. He’s against:

Id say yes if I could see definitive proof that Iraq had nuclear capabilities and had plans to put them into action. Id say yes if I could see definitive proof that Saddams own sense of self-preservation and survival were overwhelmed by his hatred of the United States.

In other words, to support war with Iraq, he would have to be certain — I assume that’s what he means by “definitive” — that Saddam had nuclear weapons and planned to use them against an American city, because, presumably, his “sense of self-preservation [was] overwhelmed by his hatred of the United States.”

Certain. Is he sure? If Radley thought the probability were 90%, that wouldn’t suffice? How about 50%? I think even a 10% risk of such a catastrophe would justify war with Iraq, but hey, that’s just me. War has serious costs. But surely the threshold probability, when we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of American civilians dying, lies considerably south of “definitive.”

From The Sum of Life

Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes,
To keep one from going nude.

Nothing to breathe but air,
Quick as a flash ’tis gone;
Nowhere to fall but off,
Nowhere to stand but on.

Nothing to sing but songs;
Ah well, alas, alack!
Nowhere to go but out,
Nowhere to come but back.

Nothing to strike but a gait;
Everything moves that goes.
Nothing at all but common sense
Can ever withstand these woes.

–Benjamin Franklin King Jr.