Discreet and discrete

Any discussion about language usage tends to provoke disagreements between so-called prescriptivists (those who argue that we should try and maintain what they consider to be standard or correct usage) and descriptivists (those who argue that language just reflects current usage and is thus always evolving and that there is no timeless standard that can be appealed to.)

David Owen writes about a pet peeve of his that he claims is beyond an issue of taste and is objectively objectionable.

Here’s an example of a sentence type that I think no writer should ever use:

A former resident of Brooklyn, Mrs. Jones is survived by three daughters and five grandchildren.

The first phrase is an appositive—typically a noun or noun phrase that modifies another noun or noun phrase, which appears next to it in the sentence. (“A former resident of Brooklyn” and “Mrs. Jones” refer to the same person, so they are said to be “in apposition.”) Appositives almost always follow the noun they modify, and are set off by commas; the kind I don’t like come first.
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My problem with all such sentences is that they seem to have been turned inside out: they start in one direction, then swerve in another. The awkwardness is obvious if you imagine hearing one in conversation. No one has ever said to you, “A sophomore at Cornell, my niece is coming home for Christmas,” or “Sixty-six years old, my wife is an incredible cook.” Either sentence, if spoken, would sound almost comical, as though the speaker were struggling to learn English. (You wouldn’t use one in an e-mail or a text to a friend, either.)

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Finally, news reports that month-over-month CPI has dropped

In a recent post, I complained that the media tends to report just the year-over-year inflation figures even though those numbers can remain high even when inflation has stopped or prices have even fallen. I said that the month-over-month figure is a better indicator of current inflation and should be reported as well.

Well today, they reported just that, confirming my suspicion that inflation likely peaked back in June and since then has ceased or even declined.

Prices dropped in the US in December for the first time since May 2020, in an encouraging sign that the inflation crisis may be easing.

According to the latest consumer price index (CPI) – which measures a broad range of goods and services – the cost of living dropped 0.1% in December compared with a rise of 0.1% in November. The annual rate of inflation fell to 6.5% from 7.1% in the previous month, the sixth straight month of yearly declines, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Falling gas prices were by far the largest contributor to the monthly decrease, falling 9.4% over the month, more than offsetting increases in shelter indexes, which rose 0.8% over the month and were 7.5% higher than a year ago.
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US inflation peaked at 9.1% in June, its highest rate since 1982, as the war in Ukraine drove up energy costs and supply-chain issues in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic continued to push prices higher.

Despite the fall, the inflation rate remains more than three times as high as the Fed’s annual target rate of 2%, and is expected to remain elevated through 2023.

The professionals at the Federal Reserve know all this of course and likely take both CPI rates and other factors into account but the general public may not be as aware and giving only the year-over-year figure may make them fearful that inflation is still high when it might have stopped or even declined.

Why did T. Rex have such small arms?

While the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus Rex is huge, its arms are surprisingly small and this has been a puzzle for scientists. This article describes the search for an explanation ever since the discovery of fossil remains of the dinosaur in 1902 by a team of paleontologists led by Barnum Brown from the American Museum of Natural History, an institution that was headed by Henry Fairfield Osborn.


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Be careful when using unfamiliar words

The word ‘cis’ has recently entered the vernacular in the US and I too only recently became aware of its usage. I had assumed that it was a neologism but it appears that it is derived from an old word with Latin roots. According to Wikipedia, “Cisgender (often shortened to cis; sometimes cissexual) is a term used to describe a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth. The word cisgender is the antonym of transgender. The prefix cis- is Latin and means ‘on this side of’ “.

Pronouns have recently become part of the many culture wars that rage in the US, especially being by right-wingers, often invoking them in pathetic attempts as humor. Ted Cruz said in a speech that his pronouns are ‘kiss my ass’ while Elon Musk recently tweeted that his pronouns are ‘prosecute/Fauci’. Neither of these works as jokes because they make no sense but what they are really meant to be are dog whistles to signal to their supporters that the speaker is firmly on the side of anti-LGBTQ bigotry.
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Covid finally catches me

Last Tuesday night (ie., a week ago), I started a cough and felt that I had a fever so I took a test on Wednesday morning that confirmed that I had Covid. I am pretty sure that I know how I got it. I have been very conscientious about wearing my N95 mask in all indoor public settings but on New Year’s Eve I attended a party. While I wore my mask almost all the time, I removed it to eat and I expect that that was when the virus snuck in. My symptoms started three days after that event. I have been isolating myself since then.

My symptoms were mild. In addition to the slight cough, I had a fever of about 101F. Three days after my test, by Friday, my fever had gone and I felt back to normal but I will continue to isolate for another week just to make sure that I am not contagious. Friends and neighbors who became aware that I have Covid have been very generous with offers of food and to run errands.

I am now part of the nearly 700 million people globally who have had the virus. I wrote earlier about the kinds of personal risk-benefit calculations one makes. I had on a few occasions removed my mask in indoor public spaces in order to eat and had not caught Covid. But it is always a gamble. You can reduce the risk by taking precautions but can never make it zero.

Government, politics, and compromise

It is sometimes said that politics involves the art of compromise. This does not mean that in politics one cannot have principles and stick to them but that at some point if there is a clash of principles, then there may be no means of resolution within the system other than having one or both sides back down, at least partially. This is because when it comes to the decisions of certain political institutions, there is no supra-arbiter to decide who wins and who loses. The contesting parties themselves have to work things out. This can be contrasted with (say) civil disputes between two parties where there is always recourse to an external entity like the courts that can step in and decide the issue.

This was perfectly illustrated in the vote for the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. The rules under which it operates created a box whose remarkable rigidity only became apparent when it went into operation this time. The rules said that the first order of operation had to be the election of the Speaker and that the Speaker had to be elected by a majority of the 435 members present and voting. Those members who were absent or voted ‘present’ or abstained were not counted. In a two-party system in which each side puts up one candidate and where the vote is along party lines, there is no problem in that the party that has the majority will always have its candidate win. And that is what usually happens.
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But packages were delivered on time, right?

Today comes another report alleging how the drive at Amazon to deliver packages quickly overrides basic human decency.

On the morning of 27 December 2022 at the Amazon DEN4 warehouse in Colorado Springs, Colorado, 61-year-old Rick Jacobs died on the job after experiencing a cardiac event, right before a shift change. What happened next has angered his former colleagues.

Witnesses say a makeshift barrier around the deceased worker using large cardboard bins was used to block off the area on the outbound shipping dock where the incident occurred, and workers criticized the response and lack of transparency about the incident. Amazon denied boxes were used to cordon off the area, but said managers stood around to make sure no one came near for privacy and security.

As workers arrived for their day shift, they say they were not notified about what was going on and continued working as usual while a deceased colleague remained in the facility and emergency responders awaited the arrival of a coroner.

I find it hard to believe Amazon’s story that they used managers to cordon off the area to ensure privacy. Use real people that you have to pay instead of cheap cardboard boxes could achieve that same result? That is not the Amazon model, surely?

As I have said repeatedly, the drive for ever-increasing speed of delivery at the cheapest price, even when there is absolutely no need to get stuff quickly, creates an inhumane workspace.

The riot in Brazil – inspired by the US?

In what seems like a Brazilian reprise of the January 6th, 2021 assault by Trump supporters on the US Capitol buildings, thousands of supporters of defeated president Jain Bolsonaro stormed the government institutions of Brazil yesterday, ransacking the buildings and committing many acts of vandalism.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has ordered the federal government to take control of policing in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, after hundreds of hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court.

The massed attack was a stunning security breach that was immediately compared to the 6 January invasion of the US Capitol by followers of Donald Trump in 2021.

“What we are witnessing is a terrorist attack,” the news anchor Erick Bang announced on the GloboNews television network as word of the upheaval spread. “The three buildings have been invaded by coup-mongering terrorists.”

Shocking video footage showed the pro-Bolsonaro militants sprinting up the ramp into the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential offices, roaming the building’s corridors and vandalising the nearby supreme court, whose windows had been smashed.

Videos posted on social media showed fires burning inside the congress building. Furniture was broken and tossed around, objects were reportedly stolen in the presidential palace and the supreme court, and in some places sprinklers appeared to be dousing chambers.

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A battered and bruised McCarthy finally gets his dream job

Late Friday night, on the 15th attempt, Kevin McCarthy finally got enough votes to be elected Speaker. He still did not get the 218 absolute majority that he needed in the reduced 434-member body (one Democratic member being deceased and not yet replaced) because 212 members voted fro Democrat Hakeem Jeffries again and there were six members in his 222-member caucus who refused to vote for him. But he did manage to get the six to merely vote present, which took them out of the calculus. This meant that he needed a majority of the remaining 428 members and he squeaked by with 216 or, as Trump would describe it, “by a landslide that some people are calling the biggest landslide ever”. Of course, the ever-toadying McCarthy thanked Trump for his support though it appeared that the renegades ignored Trump’s repeated pleas to switch their votes.
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Six-year old shoots teacher

In the US where guns are easily available, it is not unusual for young children to shoot someone. This usually happens because an adult has carelessly left a gun lying around where a child has got hold got it and accidentally fired it.

But in Newport News, there was an alarming report that a six-year old had deliberately shot a teacher in their elementary school.

The superintendent of the public school district in Newport News, Virginia, has called for increased gun control while condemning a shooting in which a first-grade student deliberately shot his teacher.

In a news conference, the superintendent George Parker said he was “disheartened” and “in shock” after the attack left a Richneck elementary school teacher with “life-threatening injuries”.
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The teacher identified as Zwerner was shot in a classroom and was said to have “some improvement” as of Friday afternoon, the Newport News police chief, Steve Drew, told reporters.

Police arrested the six-year-old boy accused of shooting his teacher.
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Under Virginia law, six-year-olds cannot be tried as adults, the Associated Press reported. They are also considered too young to be committed to the juvenile justice department’s custody if they are found guilty of any criminal charges against them.

Nevertheless, a juvenile judge is able to strip away custody from a parent of such a child and place that child under the care of the state social services department.

If the report checks out, this shows an alarming level of premeditation for a young child: to take a gun to school undetected and then fire it at the teacher.