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Category Archives: Language

Some etymology

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Paul Krugman links to a blog called The Monkey Cage, by a political scientist named John Sides. Mr. Sides points out something that many of us have known for a while: that while people in this country call themselves conservatives, on the issues they tend to come out as liberals. Sides points out that most […]

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Must be true-it’s got footnotes

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Paul Krugman writes about Paul Ryan's latest flim-flam, replacing magic asterisks with mis-citations: Give Ryan some points for originality. In his various budgets, he relied mainly on magic asterisks — unspecified savings and revenue sources to be determined later; he was able to convince many pundits that he had a grand fiscal plan when the […]

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Humpty Dumpty bested again

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Yet another example of the malleability of words and meaning. In this morning's Times we learn that the Euro, wonder of wonders, may be the source of the problems in Europe. That's no surprise to anyone who reads Krugman, et. al., but let that pass. What struck me was this: True, there have been glimmers […]

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Humpty Dumpty, ur-Republican

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

One of my favorite exchanges in literature appears in Alice in Wonderland. Humpty Dumpty tells Alice: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” To which Alice-remember Alice?-, replies: “The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.” Bu the far wiser […]

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Playing by Humpty Dumpty’s rules

Sunday, September 8, 2013

A few days ago I came across an article, in which the following paragraph appears. The Obama administration is considering putting the Pentagon in charge of arming and training moderate rebel forces in Syria, a move that could help expand the effort significantly beyond the limited scope of the current Central Intelligence Agency program, U.S. […]

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Painful

Monday, March 11, 2013

Sports headline in this morning’s Day (not repeated on-line): Huskies win easy 

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More adventures in semantics

Saturday, March 9, 2013

As one ages one acquires the right to become a curmudgeon, or at least one tends to believe that to be the case. Having reached a not yet ripe, but still old age, I am going to indulge myself. The object of my not-quite-wrath? Why, as often, the New York Times, whose style book, in […]

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An implied confession

Thursday, July 12, 2012

  It seems many Republicans are upset about the fact that Obama is successfully introducing the real Willard to the American public: Conservatives have lit up talk radio programs across the country, worrying whether Mr. Romney’s business record has been “Swift Boated,” referring to attacks waged against Senator John Kerry’s military record in 2004. The […]

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Adventures in Semantics, Redux

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

A few days ago I noted that the Mystic River Press featured this front page (very large type) headline: RTM tries new tact on budget Apparently the disease is spreading. Today I saw this, in an article about the demise of unlimited data plans, at a computer blog called EverythingICafe: AT&T has taken a different […]

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Adventures in Semantics

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Front page headline (not on-line) from the Mystic River Press: RTM tries new tact on budget

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