I am dismayed by Cecil’s use of the ever more popular phrase “my bad” in his recent crocodile tears revisited. You might as well use “my green” or “my large”. How much longer until we see Cecil say “I had 4gotten 2 think that ‘my bad’ is not a sentence”?
Welcome to the SDMB. You’re bad (but only a little) because you didn’t provide a link to the column. Doing so can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, making sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020503.html
You seem to be under the impression that bad can only be an adjective. It can also be a noun meaning a bad thing as in “T’exchange the bad for better” [Shakespeare] or “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” “My Bad” may not be a complete sentence because it has no verb, but then again you could say the same of “My mistake” which I suspect would not so raise your ire.
Regarding the Crocodile Tears question, http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020503.html
Crocodile physiology aside, I believe the term, “crocodile tears” is in reference to the fact that crocodiles do NOT produce tears (as we think of them); therefore if you accuse a youngster (or anyone else for that matter) of producing “crocodile tears” you are saying they are pretending to cry. In other words, they are making crying sounds, but no tears are actually forming in their eyes, leading you to believe that they are doing this just for effect, or to manipulate the situation to get their way.
As for “my bad” (IMHO): like a lot of other slang that has been adopted by society, it may not follow the traditional grammatical rules, but if it is accepted as slang, it doesn’t have to.
Well, as long as we’re posting nitpicks, I’ve got one:
On the Home Page, shouldn’t the word “revisited” have the link to the updated column, which is actually titled, “Do crocodiles shed tears? (revisited)”? The word “revisited” links to the original 1978 column. Swap 'em around, Zotti, eh?
No, as Cecil’s original column correctly indicated, the origin of the phrase is in a myth popularized in early bestiaries. Early versions of the legend, such as that by the French Franciscan monk Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the 13th century, merely said that the crocodile wept as it was consuming a victim that had already been killed. Later authors, such as Topsell in his History of Four-Footed Beasts (1607), claimed that crocodiles wept and sobbed in order to attract the attention of humans, and then attacked them when they approached closely enough. In either case “crocodile tears” came to indicate duplicity, insincerity, and hypocrisy. The original authors believed that crocodiles shed tears, even though this has no real basis in fact.
SD Staff George, S.D.C.O.A.T.W.C.O.F. (Straight Dope Curator of All that Walks, Crawls, or Flaps)
I think that Gargoyle48 probably knew that; I suspect that his point is that a person with the intellectual stature of Cecil should not be using slang, especially the kind often associated with youth or low-class.
If Gargoyle will look back at a good sample of past columns, s/he will see that Cecil has always peppered his writing with slang, idioms, insult, and (sometimes off-color) humor. He has never affected the tone of a stuffy academic. Some of his flights of verbal abuse have been somewhat factually wanting (“If ignorance were cornflakes, John, you’d be General Mills”), but what he lacks in genteel discourse, he more than makes up for in entertainment value.
Cecil’s lasting legacy may be to have decreased ignorance, but in my opinion, he has done the human race just as great a service by showing that you can do it and have some fun at the same time.
P.S. to DDG: yeah, the same thought entered my head. Perhaps the parenthetical link could read “update to”. Or maybe just eliminate the link from the home page and cross-link the two columns.
Re: Cecil’s lame follow up.
This makes me wonder how much of the straight dope, is straight dope. WHat I have taken as gospel, from the “Smartest Human Being Alive,” might just be a croc o’ BS.
Lately I find the staff reports more interesting and Uncle Cece’s columns less and less inspired.
Perhaps it’s time to update the FAQ:
Considering Cecil out-and-out admitted that he was wrong, I’d say this needs correcting. Also, there was that bit about the flea circuses a couple of months ago…
Crocodiles can shed tears. Check out the faq at crocodilian.com:
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/cnhc/cbd-faq-q6.htm
There’s even a photo of a crocodile tear, which isn’t exactly proof, but it’s better than the dubious information in Cecil’s column.
WTF? The site does mention that crocodiles have lacrimal secretions (tears), but it goes to great length to say that they don’t cry. Pretty much exactly what Cecil says in his followup.
Whaddya mean, dubious information? Yes, crocodiles have lacrimal glands that produce secretions that lubricate the eye, aka “tears”. No, these secretions are not shed externally from the eye under normal conditions; therefore crocodiles cannot be said to cry.
From the site you linked to:
I didn’t say they didn’t have tears, I said they didn’t shed tears. That’s pretty much what the article says too, as Nametag has already pointed out.
SDSAB Staff George
Cecil’s follow-up never says explicitly that crocodiles can shed tears from their eyes. In fact, if one didn’t already know that they can, the most likely conclusion from Cecil’s article would be that they can’t. Consider the statement:
“Those references that mention crocodile tears at all simply state that the tale is bunk…”
To what tale is he referring? The only reference we have at that point is in Hayden S’s question:
“…and that tales of crocodile tears are a myth.”
So the tale is that crocodiles can shed tears, and that conclusion we draw is that that tale is bunk.
Bad, bad, bad Cecil!
The points Cecil needed to address were:
a) Crocodiles do indeed secrete liquid into their eyes
b) This liquid is sometimes shed from the eye, although not commonly
c) In case you’re wondering, this is not in any way a display of emotion.
The information in the column does not make any of these clear. From reading the column, without outside information, I would conclude that crocodiles have no real tear ducts, although they do secrete fluid into their mouths, for some purpose other than to lubricate their food. The column not only fails to answer the question asked, it manages to be misleading in its answer.
This is why I call the information “dubious.”
The page I listed in my previous post is not “Pretty much exactly what Cecil says,” rather it is both clear and correct.
Just to be entirely clear (since I’m throwing around accusations that being unclear is bad) I find no fault in the information presented by George. The fault lies with Cecil. It’s his column, and he needs to make sure the information he provides answers the question asked and makes sense to people who don’t have all the background information.
Keep in mind that the question doesn’t ask if crocodiles cry, it asks about crocodile tears. I don’t think anyone, at least not in the enlightened SDMB community, things that any reptiles weep from remorse.
Ok, that’s a relief. 
I think part of the problem here is that you need to read the original 1978 column in conjunction with the current one to get the full picture.
**
The “tale” I was referring to was the one Cecil describes in the 1978 column. The “myth” is not that crocodiles “can shed tears,” but that they actually weep while devouring their victims. Cecil may have figured that, since the first column is linked to in the second, you would have read both.
Admittedly, the whole story could perhaps have been explained a bit more explicitly in the second column, but Cecil does have a word limit on these things.
If the follow-up was solely online, I would’t imagine Cecil would have a word limit. If it was in print, then Cecil could hardly expect anyone to have saved a hardcopy of his column from 1978. But at this point I’m just being difficult, I think we pretty much agree on the matter.
The follow-up is both - posted online and also in newspapers.
Someday we may eradicate ignorance, but never kvetching.
If anyone can do it, you can.
Especially not on hot dogs… We’ll never eliminate kvetching on hot dogs.