• Sometimes I wonder whether common sense is worth a damn. My (alleged) common sense tells me to worry some about recent earthquake swarms to the north. See "Perilous fault might be causing quake swarm near O.C."
All this concentrated shakin’ tells me to hunker down. The OC Reg’s Science Dude says there’s no use worrying about earthquakes, though he also says that we'd better prepare for the Big One.
• In an odd spasm of, um, common sense, the leadership of some local churches has been preparing for the Big One: "O.C. churches team up."
Yeah, on Friday, the OC Reg reported that “more than 30 people” gathered to learn about preparedness.
30 people. (Closet agnostics, all of ‘em, I bet.)
• The Dude ("UCI finds racial bias in Internet dating") also reports on a UCI study about, well racial bias in Internet dating.
The two sociologists that conducted the study are quoted as saying,“We argue that exclusion related to racialized images of masculinity and femininity, and shapes dating and marriage outcomes, and thus minority groups’ possibilities for full social incorporation.”
Please tell me that that sentence makes no sense. (A missing “is”?)
The missing verb is likely the Dude’s fault. But what about the hideous jargon? “Dating and marriage outcomes”? These outcomes are “shaped” by “exclusion,” I guess.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit (as Harry Truman used to say).
On the other hand, the female sociologist is photogenic.
• These sociologists’ shitty way of speaking reminds me that I’m still pissed off about Friday’s de facto slam of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style in the New York Times ("Happy Birthday, Strunk and White!").
Happy birthday? More like, “FU.”
• The OC Reg’s Rachanee Srisavasdi reports ("Carona") that former OC Sheriff Mike Carona “will be sentenced at 1:30 p.m. Monday by U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford.”
Evidently, Judge Guilford can give "America's Sheriff" anything from probation to twenty years.
As you know, Carona believes in the Lord bigtime. When not making out with Russian bimbos or passing out deputy badges to morons, he does a lot of public praying and flag-pledging. He’s a typical right-wing OC politician: he’s pious and patriotic and corrupt, like his good pal and supporter SOCCCD trustee (and former OC GOP chair) Tom Fuentes, who, no doubt, will be at tomorrow night’s meeting of the SOCCCD board of trustees, praying and pledging and scheming and cheating. I can’t wait.
• Did you read Frank Rich’s column yesterday? (See "The Banality of Bush White House Evil.") Naturally, it's about torture, and it responds to new info about the Bushies' motives for their disastrous and dismal embrace of it.
It ends with:
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.
[Senate Armed Services Committee report chairman Carl] Levin suggests … that as additional fact-finding plays out, it’s time for the Justice Department to enlist a panel of two or three apolitical outsiders, perhaps retired federal judges, “to review the mass of material” we already have. The fundamental truth is there, as it long has been. The panel can recommend a legal path that will insure accountability for this wholesale betrayal of American values.
President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.
• Meanwhile, Nick Kristof, a fellow well to Rich’s right, urges the institution of “an independent commission to investigate harsh treatment and tally its costs and benefits.” ("Time to Come Clean") He offers three reasons:
First, it could help forge a consensus against torture, for almost everyone in the national security world believes that the result would be a ringing affirmation that we should not torture….
…
Second, a commission could help restore America’s standing by distancing ourselves from past abuses. Alberto Mora, a former general counsel for the Navy, has said that some flag-rank officers believe that Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo constitute “the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq,” because they galvanized jihadis. An Air Force major and interrogator of prisoners who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander told Harper’s Magazine that “hundreds but more likely thousands of American lives” were lost because of “the policy decision to introduce the torture and abuse of prisoners.”
Third, a commission could help counterterrorism efforts. Foreign governments have been wary of cooperating with us for fear of being tarnished by scandal. At home, Arab-American and Somali-American communities have been leery of reporting tips because they see the authorities as unjust and hostile to Muslims.
• I do hope our new President gets out of the way of our doing the right thing!
8 comments:
If you are miffed at the Times's treatment of Strunk and White, Geoff Pullum, a linguistics professor who was one of the commentators there, wrote an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education where he really took the gloves off: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm
I've grown less adoring of "the little book" over the years. As the introduction says, it's a work of opinion -- Strunk was idiosyncratic. Treating it as Holy Writ, as so many do, is wrong.
After many years of editing professionally, I have begun to think, for example, that singular "they," as a gender-neutral alternative, is not such an abomination as has been previously held.
I now recommend Joseph Williams's book, Style: Ten Lessons In Clarity and Grace over Strunk and White.
Postscript: In every post I make to the Internet which mentions what I do for a living, there is at least one error. You'd think that I'd check more carefully; there's just something overly attractive about that "Publish Your Comment" button.
(1) You're right, Roy; the sociologists' (or dude's?) sentence makes absolutely no sense. And the jargon is execrable.
(2) Oh, dear; I must read the pieces on Strunk and White. I'm discombobulated and disturbed by jonathan's post, for I admit to thinking of the little book as near-Biblical in importance for decades. They improved my writing a thousand-fold with the primary message that I remember (besides that about avoiding jargon): if fewer words will do, stick with fewer words. I think of S & W every time I grade papers (or edit my own) and happily, even jubilantly, cross out words, phrases, sentences--even whole paragraphs!
But I will look back and also check out the Williams book.
If you'll navigate over to Language Log, you'll find a fuller discussion of what's wrong with Strunk and White.
Short version: S&W's pronouncements about style are useless (Be clear! Avoid unnecessary words!) remind me of my neighbor screaming "Behave yourself!" to his autistic child.
S&W's pronouncements about grammar are either just plain wrong or contradictory. The examples they use in their "avoid passive voice" discussion are not passive voice, and S&W use passive voice pretty frequently themselves.
The Williams book is much better.
--100 miles down the road.
I suspect that most of us encountered S&W in our youth (in my case, in 1973), having been freshly processed by typically benighted High School instructors (re writing anyway), who then and now seem somehow oblivious to college standards of writing. That Strunk (and even White) were idiosyncratic and conservative in their approach has little to do with the impact they had on us over the subsequent years, I think, for, in the beginning, we were very bad writers (most of us) who, with the help of S&W, were directed to a conception of good writing that emphasizes clarity and precision and, in general, sympathy for the reader. Most of the idiosyncracies and dogmatism that irk critics of S&W concern, not the general thrust (that thing that stays with one), but the details--about possessives and such. There is something about an iconic/charming book and author that makes believing in its writing philosophy lasting, a tradition. Those New York Times pieces (critiquing S&W) seem to me to protest too much, emphasizing relatively unimportant details while failing to honor the fundamentally sound central philosophy that S&W communicate like a harpoon deeply imbedded in one's verbal heart. One more thing: I am attracted to the notion that good writing is a tradition, and, as such, having affection for an old book and passing that affection on to young writers (with some caveats about idiosyncracy and dogmatism and whatnot) is a good and valuable thing, a thing that supports and enriches the community of "good writers." For what it's worth, I am the kind of writer I am to a significant extent because, to this day, I have been guided by the spirit of S&W. (I do hope that hasn't destroyed my argument!) --Roy B
Thanks for an eloquent defense of affection and loyalty to Strunk and White, Roy. Their advice about sympathy for the reader, precision, and clarity were most definitely *not* useless to many of us who wanted to write, but simply forgot about the reader (of all things) in our younger days. Their examples of bad and good ways of saying the same thing are still priceless--and remarkably pertinent to my students' writing.
While I don't wish to be mindlessly loyal, it seems to me that some criticisms of S & W are ungenerous and insensitive to the book's context and aims.
I was going to respond, but you beat me to it, MAH.
Good job.
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