"The lawyers of Yangon could have done with a little divine intervention in their recent battle against the privatisation of the former high court and police commissioner’s office, a grand classical edifice whose ionic colonnade marches around an entire city block facing the waterfront on Strand Road. The place has a dark history; its top floors were used as torture chambers by the Japanese during the second world war and by the military regime in the 1960s and 70s. They will soon become the luxury spa of a new five-star Kempinski hotel, due to open next year."

(The Guardian's curious reluctance to capitalize things that should be capitalized, such as "Second World War", also routinely raises my eyebrows, as does the British press's recent habit of not capitalizing acronyms, but that is neither here nor there for our current purposes.)

Anyway, yeah. And here I thought I was indulging in artistic license with the Imperial Hotel Lubyanka. Turns out there really are hoteliers that tone-deaf.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'm going to have to check this out. I love, love love love, stories of urbanization and the logistics and history surrounding it. I have a well-thumbed copy of Cadillac Desert on the shelf near me, along with Caro's The Power Broker, although that's a bit more about politics than it is about Robert Moses' development strategy.

>(The Guardian's curious reluctance to capitalize things that
>should be capitalized, such as "Second World War", also routinely
>raises my eyebrows, as does the British press's recent habit of not
>capitalizing acronyms, but that is neither here nor there for our
>current purposes.)

I rolled this over in my head and I can kind of, sort of, suss out the reasoning in this specific instance. I think. I can see someone deciding "World War II is a proper noun and should be capitalized, second world war is not, it's merely referring to the second of a series of world wars. So you don't capitalize it for the same reason I didn't capitalize 'world wars' in the sentence immediately preceding this one."

I would not necessarily agree with that logic, on aesthetic grounds if nothing else, but the argument might just be wrong without actually being risible.

How the hell do you not capitalize an acronym, though? I mean... I have treated them like regular words on accident sometimes. I've typed "Nasa" and "Norad" when I meant "NASA" and "NORAD." But that's me fucking up. And I don't run a newspaper.

-Merc
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