Nothing but Rouble

I've added a new tag, "tour de forceps," for appealing typos, because they're such an important part of das Blogg. Here's another, this time from Jeffrey Goldberg, which bizarrely turns Hamas into a purveyor of worthless Russian notes:

"Let the Israelis kill them," he said. "They've brought only rouble for my people."

Seeing Stairs

There used to be a sign in Merrill that said "Elevator and Stars" -- effaced I -- that I thought was unintentionally very pretty. The Economist has another, also vaguely appealing, example of this typo:

Inspector Clouseau's falling down a flight of stars

I wonder if replacing "stars" with "stairs" almost invariably produces something sensible and either accidentally pretty or wonderfully deflating. E.g.:

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stairs
I summon to the ancient winding star

Looking up at the stairs I know quite well
That for all they care I can go to hell

Though admittedly there isn't much one can do with twinkle twinkle little stair.

Ocular Logjammin'

Thus S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, in a generally ill-advised article:

We would be wise to start with the biblical notion of first taking the log out of your own eye before worrying about the splinter in someone else’s.

It was the word "splinter" that caught my eye, but I'm amused by how far Sanford's maxim diverges in thrust from the usual versions. Of the many reasons to want a splinter out of your eye, improved vision is not the most important. Besides, "splinter" imbues "log" with enough vividness to make that metaphor seem rather silly. (cf. here.) The upshot is that when I read Sanford's version of the maxim, it sounds like "put on your life vests before you help other passengers with theirs." Which makes sense, I guess, given his political tendencies.

"Tour de Forceps"

It's neat how typos can turn platitudes into something rich and strange. This one, from the comments on an old Krugman post, was very eye-catching; on closer inspection I don't think it's actually a typo, just a half-assed metaphor, but it could have been one:

I must assume that if, in his alter ego of O’Reilly-like rightnews he condemns your book so completely, it must be another of your tour de forceps with which you draw out the truth from the maelstrom of fact and fiction through the medium of your liberal conscience.