The Naming of Things

I'd like to do a bit here on language.  Primarily on how we have seen it distorted over the last few decades.  According to George Lakoff and Geoff Nunberg, the Right has seized the rhetorical high-ground and driven Liberals into defensive postures by altering or subverting the meanings of certain…

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The Coming Four (Eight) Years

Maybe there's something wrong with me.  I am not enthused about the coming election.  I hope Obama wins, but only because I have had enough of the Republicans and their wistful, "wish it were 1952 again" attitudes, and the ideological leech they've been carrying around since 1980 that wants to…

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Ignorance Rampant

The following is a quote lifted from Charlie Stross's blog and is pretty much In Full. We. Are. Not. Going. To. Die. On. Wednesday. The maximum energy the particles generated by the LHC (7TeV) get up to is many orders of magnitude below the maximum energy of cosmic rays that…

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Phyllis Schlafly For President

Since Palin's from Alaska, I thought it appropriate to post this link from an Anchorage newspaper. This ought to get plenty of circulation in the next couple of months. Even if, as the article indicates, Palin's questions regarding the censorship of library materials was "rhetorical" it nevertheless is informative that…

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Georgia On My Mind

Just when we thought it was a good time to buy one of those magnificent, Soviet-era dachas in Georgia, this happens. We're getting the updates on the most spectacular round of this event, but the fact is this has been brewing since the break up of the Soviet Union.  Georgia…

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