Just What Does THAT Mean?

I’m a writer.  As such, words and their uses are important to me, and it bugs me when I hear them used inappropriately or in ways that I know are wrong or intended to mislead.  It’s like an itch I can’t scratch.  Most of the time, I let them slide, because I know there’s nothing much to be done and I don’t wish to sacrifice what little sanity I have complaining about Other People’s Ignorance and/or Language Abuse.

But the other day I listened to an essay by Jeff Nunberg.  He’s a linguist and I usually catch him on NPR on the Frech Air  program.  This piece was about the word–the term–Lifestyle.

Nunberg has a new book out about the way in which the Right has stolen language in politics in the last couple of decades, and he lays it out clearly the way in which a masterful job has been done by those not liberal to take the “high ground” linguisitically in our national debate.  The book is called Talking Right  and it’s on my list.  I’ve been listening to Nunberg for years on this subject, so I think I know what the book contains.  I recommend it to all and sundry.

His piece on Lifestyle centered on its use as a substitute label socially and politically for discussions about choices and the way in which the word has come to denote everything about us.  Our politics, our spending habits, our taste in clothes, even our personal hygeine and …

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New Civilian Casualty Theme Park lets you experience the thrills and spills of being a CIVILIAN WAR VICTIM!

I didn’t know that they had amusement parks like this, until I recently saw this advertisement . . .

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Americans are unfairly deprived of what it’s like to be a genuine civilian war victim.  Americans experience the effects of bombs and bullets from a distance, through antiseptic television reports and glitzy video games.  Our research has shown, however, that many of you want a much more up-close, detailed, exciting and visceral experience.  We also realize that Americans have a difficult time learning anything at all in the absent of a concurrent entertainment experience.

It is for this reason that we have built Civilian Casualty Theme Park to give you the Adventure and Experience of being a civilian war victim.  We offer you the thrill and exhilaration of BEING THERE while your own neighborhood is ripped apart by warfare. This is no ordinary theme park.  We give you up-close and personal real-life action where the bombs actually explode.  If you like haunted houses and slasher films, you’re going to love Civilian Casualty Theme Park!

 civilian casualty theme park drawing.jpg

We use state-of-the-art computer simulations and pharmacology combined with hundreds of highly trained actors and technicians to give you the gut-wrenching and mind-twisting experience of what it is like to be a civilian war victim.  For starters, our experts and technicians will construct a replica of your own neighborhood in anticipation of your scheduled visit. 

After allowing you to settle in at your own residence in your own personalized Hollywood-caliber “neighborhood,” your heart will start …

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Start the happy music! It’s time for the end of the world!

Yes, these are giddy and unnerving times, but it’s also time to bring out popcorn and balloons.  It’s time to celebrate the end of the world!

You can hear it 24/7 on evangelical radio, (I’ve been listening to radio station KJSL, based in St. Louis).  Each passing month, the voices of those radio preachers are getting faster and higher-pitched. It’s all intensely festive, in a macabre sort of way.  All the signs are there, the preachers proclaim.  This is really “it.” 

Syndicated talk show host Paul McGuire is among the many radio preachers leading the cheers with their own gnashing teeth.  McGuire just wrote a book entitled ARE YOU READY?  WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD.   What’s his new book about?  Check out McGuire’s website:

A NUCLEAR ATTACK ON AMERICA; THE COMING MEXICO, U.S. & CANADIAN MERGER; ISRAEL & THE PALESTINIAN STATE; GLOBAL GOVERNMENT; TERRORISM; HURRICANES, FREAK WEATHER & EPIDEMICS; PREDICTIONS OF THE ANCIENT HEBREW PROPHETS; SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Any time the radical Christ crowd gets this excited (excited enough to use the Caps Lock key so extensively), it’s worth checking out.  Just because they’ve been wrong about the end of the world so often before doesn’t mean that they aren’t on target this time. 

But there’s this other thing on my mind—why have those evangelicals gotten so enamored about protecting their very very very good friend, Israel?  It turns out that these two things—the end of the world and the existence of Israel–are connected.

Remember Pat …

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Loyalty is not a virtue

What is it to be loyal? According to Merriam Webster, to be "loyal" is to be

1 : unswerving in allegiance: as a: faithful in allegiance to one's lawful sovereign or government b: faithful to a private person to whom fidelity is due c: faithful to a cause, ideal, custom, institution, or product.
I don't have a problem with this definition. I do object, however, that "loyalty" has been given a free pass in modern American culture, as though loyalty is always a good thing. In particular, the mass media has bought into this linguistic sleight-of-hand: according to the mainstream media, it is always a good thing to be "loyal." Loyalty is undoubtedly a virtue when we are dealing with pet dogs. We like our dogs to be loyal. We like our dogs to do what we tell them to do. The loyalty of a human being is not necessarily a good thing, however. Loyalty is a matter of committing oneself to a person, to a group of people or to a cause. But people and causes can be either praiseworthy or despicable (or something in between). If a social cause to which I am loyal is that all babies should have basic medical care, loyalty to such a cause would be a good thing. If my idea is that we should all give homage to Hitler, loyalty to this cause would be a horrible idea. Therefore, how can it be said that loyalty is per se a good thing unless one first examines the merit of the person(s) or clause(s) to which a person is being loyal? [More . . . ]

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Are you a rebel? What is your birth order?

Here’s an interesting example on how intuition can go awry.  What would you guess to be the primary factor for determining whether a scientist is receptive to new and innovative scientific theories?  Education? Economic resources? Gender? None of the above! 

In Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives (1996), a meticulously researched book that has now withstood a decade of criticism, Frank Sulloway concluded that those people who tend to cling to old paradigms, who are not confortable with new innovative scientific theories, have something surprising in common.  They tend to be firstborns. Sulloway based his conclusions on the analysis of the written positions of 3,890 persons, writers who have commented over the past several hundred years on controversial new scientific theories.

Firstborns are significantly more likely to “identify more closely with parents and authority,” and more “conforming, conventional and defensive—attributes that are all negative features of openness to experience.” [pp. 21-22.] 

Sulloway analyzed the attitudes of the writers of published commentary regarding the theory of Copernicus during the early stages of that controversy:

[I]ndividual laterborns were 5.4 times more likely than individual firstborns to support Copernicus’s claim that the earth revolves around the sun.  Copernicus himself was the youngest of four children.

[p. 38] There are many books written for a lay audience on the topic of birth order, but very few of them are carefully documented with statistical analyses.  Sulloway’s book is a shining exception to the rule.  It is a highly detailed work …

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