Mary Matalin on CNN’s Campbell Brown show just now, on the subject of marijuana:
My libertarian sense says let’s regulate it.
Tag Archives | Lapsus Linguae
Headline News
The following letter appeared in today’s Opelika-Auburn News:
To the editor:
Today’s article on Homo floresiensis was given a very misleading headline, saying that the find “challenges the theory of evolution.” Such a claim is quite false, and is not supported by anything in the body of the article.
The article does say that the find may alter “our understanding of human evolution,” i.e., may change the prevailing views about where and in what sequence human evolution occurred; but the basic theory of evolution itself is entirely unthreatened by anything connected with the discovery.
By analogy, if scientists were to discover that, say, the great pyramid of Giza is heavier than previously thought, would you run a headline saying that the find “challenges the law of gravity”?
Roderick T. Long
7680 mph (12357 kph)
That’s how fast Amazon moves its merchandise.
At least if you believe what Amazon tells me here.
Anarchists For Total Government
It takes the perspicacity of a Glenn Beck to detect them.
A Question About the Huntsville Shooting
So the media outlets all seem to be saying that Amy Bishop shot six of her colleagues before her gun “jammed,” whereupon she was “pushed out of the room.”
We haven’t heard what model gun she was using, but don’t most handguns have just six shots? If so, why not assume her gun ran out of bullets rather than that it jammed? Is it that the reporters know more than we do (i.e. that her gun held more than six bullets) or that they know less than we do (i.e. the media’s usual vast ignorance about guns)?
A related question: why didn’t those who pushed her out of the room disarm her first? Weren’t they afraid she might reload and come back?
East and West
The late Michael Kreca’s article “The Needless US Pacific War with Japan,” posted on LRC today, begins like this:
Rudyard Kipling
“East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet…” – Rudyard Kipling
When Kipling penned those immortal words during the height of Pax Britannia in the 19th century, he believed East and West were so different in their respective civilizations and outlook that there would be no basis for any real understanding between the two hemispheres. True or untrue, at the times they each have met, it has often sadly been in the cauldron of warfare …
Okay, but two quibbles. First, the “East” in Kipling’s poem refers to the Muslim world, not to East Asia; and second, the whole point of the poem is to deny that there is “no basis for any real understanding” between the two cultures – instead, the reiterated message of Kipling’s poem is that “there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth, when two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.”
(Needless to say, Kipling is not exactly consistent in maintaining this attitude of equality and mutual respect between cultures; indeed he’s probably best known for his jingoistic imperialist side. But he had other sides as well.)