So I’m looking forward to seeing whether Trump et al. will be eagerly insisting on calling these guys “radical Christian terrorists.”
Tag Archives | Lapsus Linguae
The Constipation of No Authority
Inadvertent humour department: just heard someone on CNN, discussing potential running-mates, saying that Trump “needs to be comfortable with his Number Two.”
Missing the Train to Elea
Popular culture gets Zeno’s paradox wrong again:
There’s a widespread impression that Zeno’s proposed problem is that after you reach the halfway point to your destination, you then have to go halfway to the remaining distance, and so on ad infinitum, so that you get closer and closer to your goal but never reach it.
But that’s not how the paradox goes. The problem is much worse. The paradox is that before you can get halfway to your destination, you have to get halfway to the halfway point, and so on ad infinitum, so that you can never even start moving. (Here’s Rose Wilder lane making the same mistake.)
Probably the mistake arose from someone conflating this paradox with another of Zeno’s paradox, the Achilles, in which the fastest runner gets closer and closer to catching up to the slowest runner.
Driving Their Point Home
I saw a PSA today that said, “If you’re driving and texting, you’re not really driving.”
Well, if you’re not really driving, your texting should be okay, then, right?
In fact, the behaviour they’re trying to discourage they just defined as impossible.
It Worked For Alice
Just heard on CNN: “We need to step back and take a closer look.”
Jeu de Mots
Figure this out:
