A long time ago a world-spanning empire collapsed and a "new religious movement" rushed into the vacuum and took the Throne of the World. Necessary to that "movement" was a formalized debate on the interpretation of the Greek genitive and whether certain textual lacunae obscured an "in" or an "as."* (I'm not certain that's exactly right, but I'd be happy to research it if anyone's interested or pays me.)
Prepositions are an important part of the language game: how importantly you take them may correlate with how often you are taken advantage of. Lawyers "know" prepositions, and that alone should make you distrust them. Perhaps the entire framework of jurisprudence is the skillful use of prepositions.
Prefixes are often prepositional, and can also conceal traps. For example, I wanted to use a word today, "irrational," to describe the Clinton campaign's argument for staying in the race. I didn't say it, careful under tens of thousands of years of patriarchy to not choose an epithet that has been used so often and so unfairly against women.
Rachel Maddow, out-and-proud, of Air America and MSNBC, obviously gets paid the big bucks to provide this stunning rhetorical cover: The Clinton nomination strategy is "post-rational."
I may be a stickler that, given all the hermeneutic ambiguity and all, a journalist can at least use words that I can look up in a dictionary or good reference encyclopedia. What Orwell pointed out isn't a critique anymore, its our media's standard operating procedure.
You know what? Hillary's irrational. Stupid too. And dumb.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Casual Carpool Psychology
Casual carpool is an East Bay phenomenon.
I line up at the curb with fifteen other folks during morning rush hour, outside the BART, and lo, a SF-bound car shows up within a few minutes wanting to bring more passengers onboard.
This can turn out one of two ways: Number One is that we nod to each other, zoom away, and part ways at the other side of the bridge with another nod goodbye. Number Two is that the driver begins chattering away...etiquette dictates passengers shouldn't initiate conversation...but there's no etiquette about how to handle a driver-tells-all kind of morning.
The first day I carpooled was with a woman who immediately began talking about how it's so horrible to have small children, and she volunteered for work that day just to get away from them. Yikes.
It's kinda like an airplane; it can turn out well if you start chatting with your neighbor and you find out you know the same people, or you're both in the same line of work, or whatever. But it can be pure hell for the next 5 hours if the chatty Kathy next to you decides to continue your polite small talk into your nap- or book-time.
You have to figure these things out early, I guess.
I line up at the curb with fifteen other folks during morning rush hour, outside the BART, and lo, a SF-bound car shows up within a few minutes wanting to bring more passengers onboard.
This can turn out one of two ways: Number One is that we nod to each other, zoom away, and part ways at the other side of the bridge with another nod goodbye. Number Two is that the driver begins chattering away...etiquette dictates passengers shouldn't initiate conversation...but there's no etiquette about how to handle a driver-tells-all kind of morning.
The first day I carpooled was with a woman who immediately began talking about how it's so horrible to have small children, and she volunteered for work that day just to get away from them. Yikes.
It's kinda like an airplane; it can turn out well if you start chatting with your neighbor and you find out you know the same people, or you're both in the same line of work, or whatever. But it can be pure hell for the next 5 hours if the chatty Kathy next to you decides to continue your polite small talk into your nap- or book-time.
You have to figure these things out early, I guess.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)