July 08, 2004  Lederer should care less  Talk about insult to
injury ... not that I'm a big fan of kicking someone again when
he's down, but Richard Lederer really just asks for it.  On the
show that Lederer co-hosts on my local public radio station,
people usually call in to ask questions about word and phrase
origins and the like. But every once in a while, someone calls
to ask about phrasing choices and pronunciation, things that
might actually be interesting to the typical professional
linguist. Predictably, I am often disappointed, annoyed, and/or
seriously irritated at the hosts' answers to these questions. On
the weekend of January 24-25, 2004, for example, someone called
in with multiple interesting questions, one of which was (this
is not a direct quotation):  Why do some people say I could care
less instead of I couldn't care less?  Lederer's answer was that
even though many people say "I could care less" -- in Lederer's
estimation, roughly half of the people who use either form -- it
is logically i