How to argue, part 8
Yglesias' argument is emphatically about a practical,
politically feasible Democratic foreign policy, and not
about seizing the quasi-pacifist moral high ground.
-- CC@unfogged.
Yglesias' argument is emphatically about a practical,
politically feasible Democratic foreign policy, and not
about seizing the quasi-pacifist moral high ground.
-- CC@unfogged.
Many patients point to another problem with chronic fatigue syndrome:
the name itself, which they say trivializes their condition and has
discouraged researchers, drug companies and government agencies
from taking it seriously. Many patients prefer the older British term,
myalgic encephalomyelitis, which means “muscle pain with inflammation
of the brain and spinal chord,” or a more generic term, myalgic
encephalopathy.
Continue reading "Myalgic Encephalopathy is the new yuppie flu" »
Virgin mobile's copywriters phone it in.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘Murray Hill’ and ‘Rule’ used in the
same sentence before,” he said. “The copywriters certainly
deserve some credit for this. It’s not that easy to go from
bashing Sutton Place to selling prepaid phone service in
less than 50 words.”
-- John Reardon.
You are doing what you accuse older feminists of doing
-- declaring your views unassailable simply because you
have them.
They say,"You weren't there,"
You say, "You aren't here."
Okay, but you still have to make your case -- plenty of
young women, including young feminists, don't share
your POV. Your real beef with Ariel Levy, for example,
is not that she's too old and out of it to understand
young women (she's only in her early thirties).
It's that you don't agree with her view that today's
sexual culture (girls gone wild, hooking up etc) is
basically exploitation and exhibitionism packaged
as feminism. I'm not saying she's right or wrong,
I'm just saying that "Female Chauvinist Pigs" presents
an actual argument, not a mindless ignorant diss
of young women by some old fussbudget who
knows little about them.
Katha Pollitt, in response to The Feminist Sorority.
We, we are assessing the alternatives. The other guys,
they are divided and squabbling.
Continue reading "Squabbling vs assessing the alternatives" »
Separatedbyacommonlanguage compare US English to British English.
On how Freedom became central to the Republican party's
campaign for word domination.
Nunberg notes there are lots of metaphors for the state
—a ship adrift, an actor on the world stage, a city on a
hill, a house with crumbling foundations—and there is
simply no reason to think one of them structures our
political thought. We should all thank Nunberg for
suggesting that there is no thread, metaphorical or
logical, that runs through the contingently evolving
packages of partisan commitment.
-- WW
urbandictionary is looking good.
Collaborative nature compels user contributions
and feedback, thumbsupping or thumbsdowning
competing definitions on clarity, detail, and
plausibility (for the zero information set) or
accuracy (for those in the know.
The freshness of the content poses a challenge
o the traditional dictionary.
Its information architecture lists adjacent and
related words, and offers endless serendipity.
Example: garaigo.
Dictionary with completion as you type, by ObjectGraph.
-- updates.
How to argue without facts or logic:
The Casey campaign has portrayed Mr. Santorum as far
too close to the K Street lobbying community and far
too devoted to a national conservative agenda.
Too close: how is this measured ?
K street: what is this, why is it 'bad' ?
"At some point, he began to spend a lot more time on
Washington politics and Republican Party politics and
ideology than on Pennsylvania's priorities," Mr. Casey
said. "In a nutshell, he's gone Washington."
Washington politics. How are these irrelevant ?
National issues. How are these issues not material ?
Ideology. Why is his ideology bad ?
Not a fight between left and right, a fight about
how politics should be conducted. On the one
hand are the ...
Update: for the 'How to argue...' file
How to introduce evidence you don't have:
So these days, for example, one hears that Lieberman is a
| true believers | quasi-independents |
| fundamentalists | heterodox politicians |
| party discipline | distrust ideological purity |
| passion | rebel against movement groupthink |
| purity | bipartisanship |
| orthodoxy | John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton |
| clear choices | Joe Lieberman |
When neighbors return, after having moved out temporarily to
have one of these steroid palaces built for them, I'm at a loss
for what to say.
Nice house seems insincere.
Where the hell did you get the money ?
would be aggressive and intrusive.
But it seems as if you should say something, right?
I want to say,
Why ? or,
You expecting quintuplets ?
I settle for
Looks like it's really coming along.
George W Bush, comforter.
BUSH: When I saw TV reporters interviewing people
who were screaming for help. It looked the scenes
looked chaotic and desperate. And I realized that our
government was could have done a better job of
comforting people.
Americans should find comfort in knowing that millions
of their fellow citizens are working every day to ensure
our security at every level -- federal, state, county, municipal.
The more people learn about the port deal and the
government's scrutiny of it, the more they'll be comforted.
It's a tough job, making broadcasts filled with canned fluff and
hours-old taped packages seem up-to-date. So, starting way
back in the nineties, I chronicled the practice at NBC NIghtly
News of inserting the word "tonight" into the copy more than
a dozen times per broadcast. My theory: it made the newscast
seem more newsy.
Now comes Marvin Block, who deconstructs a recent Anderson
Cooper script to find similar topical weaseling afoot.
At this moment, this is what's going on, tonight.
Stick to your knitting means continue to do what you have always done
instead of trying to do something you know very little about.
hanzi smatter or hanzis matter ?
Proofreads tatoos, ex post.
勢 (power; force; tendency) and 夢 (dream).
Proposition 79 would use the purchasing power of the State of
California to negotiate the best price for up to ten million
Californians, who now pay more than anybody else in the world
for prescription drugs.
* Prop. 78 is completely voluntary for drug companies: they
are free to choose whether or not to offer discounts.
* Prop. 79 has an enforcement mechanism. If a drug company
refuses to provide discounts, the state can shift business away
from that company and buy more from other drug companies that
offer discounts.
Above is from the so-called Better California campaign site for
Prop 79 *.
Klingian Question of the Day:
What is preventing buyers from comparison shopping
between drug companies, either now or under Prop 78 ?
What exactly is an “Information Architect” or “Information Architecture” ?
Explain it in 10 words or less. And then, take all the words you
need to explain the difference between an information architect and
a designer (not an artist, but a designer).
-- 37signals
Well, you know, you have to remember that in every war, a battle plan
doesn't survive first contact with the enemy. This is in history. Why?
Because the enemy has a brain and they're constantly adapting, so we're
constantly adapting. Every time there's an adaptation, someone says,
"Oh, there's a mistake." It isn't a mistake. It's just reality. ...
Essay:The Secret That Didn't Reach Washington's Lips
By Sally Quinn
No. I did not know who Deep Throat was. And no. I never asked
my husband, Ben Bradlee. Why not? For several reasons. I have too much
pride, to begin with. I knew perfectly well Ben wouldn't tell me and I
didn't want to be refused. Secondly, I . . . how shall I say this? ...
have a big mouth. It would have been a huge responsibility to know.
It was also clear that if somebody else spilled the beans, fingers
would be pointed at me.
It's not that writers in this country don't have their work
judged on literary merit; it's that we are not judged exclusively on
these grounds. The writer's biography is also examined, his or her
stats plugged into an authenticity equation to determine, once and for
all, how real the work is. There are many reasons why this is
self-defeating, and many reasons why we should not play along. When we
should be judged on the basis of our ability to imagine worlds and
empathize with our characters, we are instead reduced to merely
representing that which we must surely know firsthand. When we allow
ourselves to be praised for "being authentic," when we traffic in
biography, we are complicit in our own disenfranchisement: Suddenly we
are dismissed as serious artists. It's no longer art; it's reportage
and facsimile. It's real.
-- Peruvian guy
Dinner with a friend has not always been so fraught. Before women
were considered men's equals, some gender historians say, men routinely
confided in and sought advice from one another in ways they did not
do with women, even their wives. Then, these scholars say, two
things changed during the last century: an increased public awareness
of homosexuality created a stigma around male intimacy, and at the
same time women began encroaching on traditionally male spheres,
causing men to become more defensive about notions of masculinity.
-- 8.
And so, man date joins the lexicon.