The 'On Language' column in today's New York Times magazine carries a column that refers to "Wooster, Mass." The columnist is trying to make a point about how the city's name is pronounced, but he gets the spelling wrong -- it's Worcester, Mass. The New York Times Company ought to know -- it paid $295 million for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in January 2000. The New York Times spelled the city's name wrong in its November 6, 2001, issue, as well, making this the second time in two months that the New York Times has mangled the name of the city where it spent $295 million to buy the daily newspaper. There is a city called Wooster, Ohio, but that is different from Worcester, Massachusetts.
Six Nations: Today's New York Times Book Review carries an arrogantly disdainful review of a new book by Allan Gerson and Jerry Adler, "The Price of Terror." Never mind the nasty tone of the review; it contains a factual error. The reviewer writes, "Under the 1996 law, however, cases against Afghanistan face serious obstacles, because Afghanistan was not one of the six nations on the State Department's list of sponsors of terrorism that year." In fact the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report for 1996 said, "The Secretary of State has designated seven countries as state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria." In other words, it was a seven-nation list, not, as the Times reviewer would have readers believe, a six-nation list. You could look it up: http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1996Report/overview.html.