The Volokh Conspiracy
[Eugene Volokh, February 15, 2008 at 2:59pm] Trackbacks
Footnotes and Exile:

In Russian, "a reference in a footnote" and "internal exile" (often as a form of criminal punishment) are the same word, ссылка (ssylka). Odd but true.

Or maybe not so odd, given the root "send"; the footnote sends you to another source, the exile to another city. So remember: Footnotes are the Siberia of your article (and endnotes, I suppose, the Kamchatka).

The Cabbage (mail):
I guess that makes Poland the doormat roadmap.
2.15.2008 2:08pm
DavidAWW (mail):
Shorter Gulag Archipelago:

Alas, I was relegated to a footnote.
2.15.2008 2:26pm
judgment:
Twenty postings on the briefs in DC v Heller (plus one posting on gun control in space) and zero postings on either the school shooting at NIU or the threatened school shooting at Alabama Law School.
2.15.2008 2:32pm
Sean M:
Good thing this is Volokh Conspiracy, judgment, as opposed to cnn.com. If it were cnn, I'd be pretty annoyed.
2.15.2008 2:37pm
Sean M:
What's more, like the jails in Siberia, the footnotes are too populated with things that do not belong there, yet are imposed by unyielding editors bound to "order" and "tradition."
2.15.2008 2:38pm
judgment:
Sean M:

You are exactly correct. This is the Volokh Conspiracy, which is one of the best websites in the world for intelligent discussion of gun control laws. And usually events like school shootings stir up a great deal of public debate about gun control laws. So to not read about those events on VC is more than a little odd. My only hope is that some of the bloggers are waiting for more details before weighing in.
2.15.2008 2:50pm
Anderson (mail):
In Soviet Union, footnote exiles YOU!
2.15.2008 2:59pm
Eugene Volokh (www):
judgment: I appreciate your kind words about the site, and of course we've blogged a good deal about school shootings before; do a search on Virginia Tech on this site, for instance, and you'll see quite a few such posts.

At the same time, because we're generally scholars, not reporters, we have a tendency to try to focus on things on which we have something new to say -- and I'm not sure how much new there is to say about the Northern Illinois shooting. (I haven't heard anything about the Alabama threat, though I'll look into that.) Occasionally we do repeat the pretty familiar observations, and I certainly wouldn't fault a coblogger for doing so, when a news event offers an occasion for repeating something that bears repeating. But sometimes we're inclined not to say much unless we feel there's something at least relatively unfamiliar that we can say on the subject.

Note that the posts about the Heller briefs at least pointed readers to documents they otherwise wouldn't have seen, and pointed to some arguments (e.g., about gays and guns) that are relatively unfamiliar.
2.15.2008 3:00pm
ys:
In many non-law fields the preferred term for pointers to sources is simply "references" rather than "*notes" and that of course also has moving (carrying) something at its root, just like sending. So, a reFERence can transFER you to parts unknown.
2.15.2008 6:02pm
Dr. Weevil (mail) (www):
Tangential, but it involves a similar odd pair of meanings from the other side of the Russian-English divide:

In San Francisco around 1980 I was working with a recent arrival from Leningrad, a mathematician, who was shocked to hear that in English what sidewalks are made of is also the opposite of 'abstract'. She of course knew the second meaning, but had not heard the first, and thought it was "SO silly".

Even more tangential:

One day as we left work she said "See you later, alligator -- ha ha, I got that from Asya" (her 13-yeard-old daughter). When I told her the proper reply ("After while, crocodile") she was thrilled: "Asya will think I am SO smart".
2.15.2008 10:05pm
A Guest:
There's a whole word for "a reference in a footnote"? Who comes up with this stuff?
2.16.2008 12:41am

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