Intergalactic-Memo
To: Interested parties
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: The non-existent pogrom on religion
There is an interesting article in the London Telegraph this morning. The headline reads:
Words associated with Christianity and British history taken out of children's dictionary
It seems that a venerable British children’s dictionary has been systematically deleting words that have anything to do with England’s Christian heritage, as well as it’s ancient past. They are replacing the “old, outdated words” with word which reflect Britain’s role in the twenty-first century.
Oxford University Press has removed words like "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity". Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.
According to some unnamed nitwit, the changes are being made to reflect the fact that England is a “modern, multicultural, multi-faith society.” Which is true, but the implication in his remarks is that by virtue of their contemporary identity, England’s historical identity is somehow irrelevant, which is, of course, nonsense. One wonders why the editors would not add new words and expand the dictionary, rather than delete perfectly good words relevant to England’s rich, and famously cookoo history.
Lisa Sanders, a concerned mother and therefore no one important or qualified, has done an exhaustive comparison of old and new editions of the dictionary and is “horrified” at the number and quality of words deleted. She says it is clear that England’s Christian heritage is being eradicated. More importantly, a rich collection of descriptive words like “buttercup”, “heather” and “sycamore”, as well as “bishop”, “Chapel”, “Empire” and “Monarch” are being purged from the English language.
It’s sad. The human mind is capable of inputting and storing an infinite supply of words. (my own personal theory). Language is everything. It provides us with civilization, culture, and all the wonderful ideas theories and discoveries by which we grow and progress. To simply delete a portion of it is criminal. Certainly words fall out of favor, and die natural deaths bases on the “evolution” of cultures and movements, but that is different, unless the deaths are the result of Political Correctness, which is as artificial and mindlessly bigoted as this current debacle in England. In fact, one could argue that the deletion program currently underway on the Children’s Dictionary is part and parcel with the worst instincts of our own childish attempt to remake the world based on an irrational fantasy of utopian nonsense.
To my mind, words cannot become useless. To believe so is tantamount to believing that humans can be useless. This is a concept that seems to be gaining favor in some circles, and one which I categorically reject.
Perhaps someone is making the argument that the deletions are merely a matter of necessary expediency—that it is simply too expensive to continue to add words and their definitions forever. That one I get. But it’s still a shame. And it’s still curious that the majority of words being disappeared are religious (Christian) in nature. Oh, and having to do with the Monarchy. I have no interest in Monarchies at all. But The language they engendered is often beautiful. I’d hate to lose the rich variety and colorful, descriptive lexicon just because there isn’t room, or it costs to much, or someone considers them inappropriate in today’s “society”.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
IGM Ted Turner
Inter-galactic Memo
TO: Interested parties
FR: W. Leavitt, Crypto-Analyst
Re: Ted Turner
Over the weekend Ted Turner made a few interesting comments on “Meet The Press” or “Face the Nation” or one of those pundit shows. Tom Brokaw was interviewing Mister Turner about a few things, one of which (the one I heard) was a revisit of Turner’s original remarks concerning Vladimir Putin. They met when Putin was an assistant to the Mayor of St. Petersburg.
Now, I have nothing against Ted. He seems like a pretty harmless blowhard most of the time, with an inflated sense of his own importance, based, I’m sure, on some pretty spectacular achievements, like winning the America’s Cup, Founding CNN (which used to be an excellent news-gathering organization), building cable television into the giant it is today and establishing TCM (Turner Classic Movies) which runs great films 24-7 for free, without commercials. Oh, and famously donating One billion dollars to the UN.
That being said, it is clear he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He married Jane, after all. But what he said in his interview with Brokaw speaks to that wacky sense of out-of-touchness we’ve come to expect from a certain faction of our elite power-brokers. Brokaw mentioned that now, several years after his initially meeting Putin, many people find the man frightening. (Ted originally described Putin as having “Soulful eyes” and being someone he could trust and do business with.) Brokaw countered that many people now see “shark’s eyes” [my words] that say nothing more than K-G-B, and asked Ted to talk about that, in relation to our own FBI, say, or CIA. Turner could have said a lot of things, several of which would have been acceptable. Instead, he jumped all over the chance to lend moral equivalence to one of the most notorious and violent organized syndicates in modern history. “Well, the KGB is just like the FBI isn’t it?” Ted asked. “It’s just people doing their jobs, honorable work. The KGB has an honorable tradition. Putin should be proud that he worked for the KGB (actually he ran it) just like an FBI agent should be proud.
H-m-m-m-m-m . . . .let’s see . . . . unwarranted arrests, government-sanctioned torture, falsifying evidence, trials with no jury, imprisonment without representation or notification, the Gulags of course, international espionage, terrorism, and regime-control, mind-control experiments, covert microwave beaming at foreign embassies, a still-unexplained attempt to overthrow Afghanistan, well, you get the idea, right?
Now, I will admit there might be some similarities to our own CIA (except when the CIA does those kinds of things they are the exception rather than the rule), and the KGB activities can always be excused as normal behavior for government agencies, but comparing what they do (did) to what the FBI does is just ignorant. Someone of Turner’s stature should really know better than that. It’s like Sarah Palin not knowing Africa is a continent, right? Oh, wait, that turned out to be a completely false story leaked by McCain people.
Ted tried to convince us that the KGB can somehow be accepted into that great mish-mash of “doing business” by which all organizations and governments operate by claiming moral equivalence. All these group do the same kinds of things, which somehow makes the means by which they function honorable across the board. I could do a relevant and accurate contrast between our CIA and the KGB, but I won’t because too many people would be outraged by my making unflattering comparisons, and would argue about how evil the CIA is and how benevolent the KGB is. Everybody’s a critic. Let me just say that the FBI is nothing like the KGB. Their mandates are not even similar, and despite occasional lapses into over-zealousness, (Waco, Ruby Ridge) the FBI is a positive force in the world, while the KGB (was) a purely negative force. The FBI isn’t even a law-enforcement agency, it is an investigative branch of the Treasury Department which “borrows” it’s authority to make arrests from the US marshals. For Ted to make such a faux pas on national television is, unfortunately, par for the course. I mean, he is the guy who gave a billion dollars to the UN, arguably the most corrupt and ineffective organization in history. But to excuse Putin as just one of the boys, doing his patriotic duty, is like excusing Cain because “everybody was doing it.” Putin is a despot. He is a power-hungry, world-domineering wanna-be emperor who feels nothing but disdain for the standards and values of the West. And someone needs to remind people like Ted that this is the case. Except he won’t take my calls.
TO: Interested parties
FR: W. Leavitt, Crypto-Analyst
Re: Ted Turner
Over the weekend Ted Turner made a few interesting comments on “Meet The Press” or “Face the Nation” or one of those pundit shows. Tom Brokaw was interviewing Mister Turner about a few things, one of which (the one I heard) was a revisit of Turner’s original remarks concerning Vladimir Putin. They met when Putin was an assistant to the Mayor of St. Petersburg.
Now, I have nothing against Ted. He seems like a pretty harmless blowhard most of the time, with an inflated sense of his own importance, based, I’m sure, on some pretty spectacular achievements, like winning the America’s Cup, Founding CNN (which used to be an excellent news-gathering organization), building cable television into the giant it is today and establishing TCM (Turner Classic Movies) which runs great films 24-7 for free, without commercials. Oh, and famously donating One billion dollars to the UN.
That being said, it is clear he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He married Jane, after all. But what he said in his interview with Brokaw speaks to that wacky sense of out-of-touchness we’ve come to expect from a certain faction of our elite power-brokers. Brokaw mentioned that now, several years after his initially meeting Putin, many people find the man frightening. (Ted originally described Putin as having “Soulful eyes” and being someone he could trust and do business with.) Brokaw countered that many people now see “shark’s eyes” [my words] that say nothing more than K-G-B, and asked Ted to talk about that, in relation to our own FBI, say, or CIA. Turner could have said a lot of things, several of which would have been acceptable. Instead, he jumped all over the chance to lend moral equivalence to one of the most notorious and violent organized syndicates in modern history. “Well, the KGB is just like the FBI isn’t it?” Ted asked. “It’s just people doing their jobs, honorable work. The KGB has an honorable tradition. Putin should be proud that he worked for the KGB (actually he ran it) just like an FBI agent should be proud.
H-m-m-m-m-m . . . .let’s see . . . . unwarranted arrests, government-sanctioned torture, falsifying evidence, trials with no jury, imprisonment without representation or notification, the Gulags of course, international espionage, terrorism, and regime-control, mind-control experiments, covert microwave beaming at foreign embassies, a still-unexplained attempt to overthrow Afghanistan, well, you get the idea, right?
Now, I will admit there might be some similarities to our own CIA (except when the CIA does those kinds of things they are the exception rather than the rule), and the KGB activities can always be excused as normal behavior for government agencies, but comparing what they do (did) to what the FBI does is just ignorant. Someone of Turner’s stature should really know better than that. It’s like Sarah Palin not knowing Africa is a continent, right? Oh, wait, that turned out to be a completely false story leaked by McCain people.
Ted tried to convince us that the KGB can somehow be accepted into that great mish-mash of “doing business” by which all organizations and governments operate by claiming moral equivalence. All these group do the same kinds of things, which somehow makes the means by which they function honorable across the board. I could do a relevant and accurate contrast between our CIA and the KGB, but I won’t because too many people would be outraged by my making unflattering comparisons, and would argue about how evil the CIA is and how benevolent the KGB is. Everybody’s a critic. Let me just say that the FBI is nothing like the KGB. Their mandates are not even similar, and despite occasional lapses into over-zealousness, (Waco, Ruby Ridge) the FBI is a positive force in the world, while the KGB (was) a purely negative force. The FBI isn’t even a law-enforcement agency, it is an investigative branch of the Treasury Department which “borrows” it’s authority to make arrests from the US marshals. For Ted to make such a faux pas on national television is, unfortunately, par for the course. I mean, he is the guy who gave a billion dollars to the UN, arguably the most corrupt and ineffective organization in history. But to excuse Putin as just one of the boys, doing his patriotic duty, is like excusing Cain because “everybody was doing it.” Putin is a despot. He is a power-hungry, world-domineering wanna-be emperor who feels nothing but disdain for the standards and values of the West. And someone needs to remind people like Ted that this is the case. Except he won’t take my calls.
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