URLs du Jour

2007-03-09

  • Over sixty years ago, George Orwell wrote on the topic of the English language:
    It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
    Today in the Washington Post, Dana Milbank looked at how that all plays out in the campaign speeches of Hillary Clinton.
    Are you in it to win? Would you regard civil rights as the gift that keeps on giving? Do you believe in the American Dream, stupid?

    If you answered yes to any of the above, you might consider supporting Hillary Clinton, the person to send to the White House when you care enough to send the very best. More than any other candidate, Clinton has brought the sensibility of Hallmark greeting cards to the 2008 presidential race.

    Many, many examples provided. I especially liked:
    She mixed metaphors like a Cuisinart: "Take our country back and put it on the right track. . . . I am not running for president to put Band-Aids on our problems. . . . Let's plow ahead."
    If you have, at this point, a mental picture of a band-aid covered snowplow racing around a track, … well, so do I.

  • Also over sixty years ago, Hayek wrote in The Road to Serfdom:
    Many socialists have the tragic illusion that by depriving private individuals of the power they possess in an individualist system, and transferring this power to society, they thereby extinguish power. What they overlook is that, by concentrating power so that it can be used in the service of a single plan, it is not merely transformed but infinitely heightened.
    … and darned if that point isn't reflected in the current musings of socialist Senator Bernie Sanders from the great state of Vermont, about a "media reform" bill he's about to introduce:
    Because I think that one of the major problems that we have is we're never going to be a vibrant democracy in which people are discussing the real issues facing them unless we address the growing corporate control over what the American people see, hear and read."
    I can't read this any other way than: Bernie is dissatisfied with what the American people "see, hear, and read", and he's not going to be happy unless and until they "see, hear, and read" things more in line with his own thinking, and he's not going to be shy about using the coercive power of the state to make that happen.

    Nah, that's not scary.

    Will the the vast media empire of the New York Times Company prick up its ears at this?

  • OK, so Bernie's an enemy of the First Amendment; wonder how he feels about the Second?
    A federal appeals court overturned the District of Columbia's long-standing handgun ban Friday, rejecting the city's argument that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied only to militias.
    My own opinion is, roughly, yee-haw! Your go-to guys on this are Clayton, Glenn, and Eugene.

  • Not for everyone, and kind of old, but it made me laugh out loud: How the vi editor would seem if it has been made by Microsoft (via GeekPress, of course).