Watching the Language
Our tricky language just keeps getting taffy-pulled more and more by the radicals currently in power in the US. Remember the stirring opening of Star Trek, talking about new life and new civilizations and boldly going and all that? Well, NASA had a similar-sounding mission statement: "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can." At least, it did until this past February, when the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" deleted. The ostensible reason given was so that the boy in the White House bubble could play with his pretend spaceships in his goal to put more people on the Moon and maybe Mars someday. The real reason? Scientists speculate that without that phrase, "there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions."
Speaking of slick talkers, Tom Tomorrow writes an open letter to his old friend David Carr at the NY Times suggesting that perhaps the Grey Lady pay less attention to mock- shock at the left blogosphere's occasional use of curse words heard in abundance on such venues as HBO, and more attention to the right blogosphere's death threats, which are apparently not obscene because they don't actually use the f-word like Cheney or the s-word like Bush, and besides the left just can't take a joke in the mean, dangerous and treasonous spirit in which it was intended. More from Glenn on this as well. Ordinarily I'd be the one saying "well, it's not all that necessary to use four-letter words in our posts detailing the atrocities of the people currently in power and their sycophants," but at this point it's all a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't proposition anyway, so I don't see what good "curbing language" would do. The mainstream media's mind seems to be as made up on the "truthiness" (™ Stephen Colbert) of "right-leaning bloggers are polite and left-leaning bloggers are filthy-mouthed" as they are on "all comic book conventions consist primarily of people dressing up in costumes," and there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about that kind of ingrained laziness.
Other bits and bobs around the blogosphere:
• It's long reading, as most of her posts are, but do catch Barbara O'Brien's two-part (so far) series People with One Watch. Here's part 1, about elective ignorance, and part 2, which concentrates on stem cells and blastocysts. Barbara explains, about the series' title, "One of my favorite sayings is 'A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure.' The point — other than no two wristwatches in your possession ever tell exactly the same time — is that the more knowledge you have of an issue, the more likely you are to see more than one side of it. But over the years I've run into an astonishing (to me, anyway) number of people who interpret the saying to mean that it's better to have just one watch." Now see, that's what I would have said as well, because having the correct time is not a matter of opinion, it's not really an issue per se, so for me the analogy of the adage kind of falls flat.
• Speaking of medical science, CE Petro examines the subversion of doctors whose otherwise educated judgment is being coopted to promote pharmaceuticals.
• Greg Palast notes that Ken Lay has gotten his revenge from beyond the grave, and gives a pretty good history of how a once-competent utility has gone down the tubes.
• Hanan says if he gets more than 500 comments to his post announcing his getting over 5 million hits, one of those 500 folks will get $100. Oh sure, heaven forfend he just give the money to the person who let him guest-blog for her a couple years ago. :)
• The DIVX community is videoblogging the San Diego con, and their team includes Heidi MacDonald so it's worth it for her bits alone. Seeing Heidi and lots of other friends, and looking at all the pictures of those booths and whatnot, it almost makes me feel like I'm there, which I'm pretty glad I'm not (we haven't been able to afford SD in a few years and it's gotten way too, well, way too). Except I could do without the mudslides and flooding back here.
That's it for now; back to reading and hoping the weather clears...
Our tricky language just keeps getting taffy-pulled more and more by the radicals currently in power in the US. Remember the stirring opening of Star Trek, talking about new life and new civilizations and boldly going and all that? Well, NASA had a similar-sounding mission statement: "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can." At least, it did until this past February, when the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" deleted. The ostensible reason given was so that the boy in the White House bubble could play with his pretend spaceships in his goal to put more people on the Moon and maybe Mars someday. The real reason? Scientists speculate that without that phrase, "there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions."
Speaking of slick talkers, Tom Tomorrow writes an open letter to his old friend David Carr at the NY Times suggesting that perhaps the Grey Lady pay less attention to mock- shock at the left blogosphere's occasional use of curse words heard in abundance on such venues as HBO, and more attention to the right blogosphere's death threats, which are apparently not obscene because they don't actually use the f-word like Cheney or the s-word like Bush, and besides the left just can't take a joke in the mean, dangerous and treasonous spirit in which it was intended. More from Glenn on this as well. Ordinarily I'd be the one saying "well, it's not all that necessary to use four-letter words in our posts detailing the atrocities of the people currently in power and their sycophants," but at this point it's all a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't proposition anyway, so I don't see what good "curbing language" would do. The mainstream media's mind seems to be as made up on the "truthiness" (™ Stephen Colbert) of "right-leaning bloggers are polite and left-leaning bloggers are filthy-mouthed" as they are on "all comic book conventions consist primarily of people dressing up in costumes," and there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about that kind of ingrained laziness.
Other bits and bobs around the blogosphere:
• It's long reading, as most of her posts are, but do catch Barbara O'Brien's two-part (so far) series People with One Watch. Here's part 1, about elective ignorance, and part 2, which concentrates on stem cells and blastocysts. Barbara explains, about the series' title, "One of my favorite sayings is 'A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure.' The point — other than no two wristwatches in your possession ever tell exactly the same time — is that the more knowledge you have of an issue, the more likely you are to see more than one side of it. But over the years I've run into an astonishing (to me, anyway) number of people who interpret the saying to mean that it's better to have just one watch." Now see, that's what I would have said as well, because having the correct time is not a matter of opinion, it's not really an issue per se, so for me the analogy of the adage kind of falls flat.
• Speaking of medical science, CE Petro examines the subversion of doctors whose otherwise educated judgment is being coopted to promote pharmaceuticals.
• Greg Palast notes that Ken Lay has gotten his revenge from beyond the grave, and gives a pretty good history of how a once-competent utility has gone down the tubes.
• Hanan says if he gets more than 500 comments to his post announcing his getting over 5 million hits, one of those 500 folks will get $100. Oh sure, heaven forfend he just give the money to the person who let him guest-blog for her a couple years ago. :)
• The DIVX community is videoblogging the San Diego con, and their team includes Heidi MacDonald so it's worth it for her bits alone. Seeing Heidi and lots of other friends, and looking at all the pictures of those booths and whatnot, it almost makes me feel like I'm there, which I'm pretty glad I'm not (we haven't been able to afford SD in a few years and it's gotten way too, well, way too). Except I could do without the mudslides and flooding back here.
That's it for now; back to reading and hoping the weather clears...
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