Why can't the English teach their judges how to speak?

A San Jose Mercury News reader has weighed in on my spelling of the mild insult Simon Cowell offered last week to Taylor Hicks:

"Simon referred to Taylor Hick's 'barminess,' not 'balminess.' To us Brits someone who is barmy is zany, whacky, harmless, slightly crazy. Taylor Hicks could be described thus -- he could never be described as balmy."

Well, I certainly wouldn't, since to me, balmy still refers to the weather.

But before I run up the white flag and undo 230 years of American defiance, I must at least point out that while I didn't drag my Oxford English dictionary down to check -- because even one of its volumes could easily crush my laptop -- the Web site thefreeddictionary.com, under "barmy," has "eccentric, daft" as a secondary meaning, and then suggests it's an "alteration of balmy."

(I know, I know. You get what you pay for.)

The sad thing, of course, is that of the three judges, Simon's the one I most often understand. And even then, that's only about 30 percent of the time.