Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

Making Abortion a Non-Partisan Issue

Friday, October 17th, 2008

If the Republicans really cared about life…
and if the Democrats really cared about reducing abortions…

Here is what they would propose:

Any pregnant woman could receive 100% federal funding for:

  • complete pre-nuptial medical care including regular checkups
  • counseling to help her deal with the trial that is pregnancy/birth/postpartum depression/childrearing
  • hospital care pre and post birth
  • the entire cost of the delivery itself
  • the basic necessities of caring for a newborn
  • adoption proceedings, including having a social worker handle all the paperwork
  • anything else related to pregnancy/birth/childreading/adoption that I’ve forgotten

Can you imagine if such a policy were enacted? It would have the effect of actuallyreducing the number of abortions in this country each year. But the Democrats would reject it because it would hurt one of their big contributor’s bottom line (Planned Parenthood) and because it would leave women who did get abortions without it being a medical necessity open to criticism. And the Republicans would reject it because it would cost too much money, meaning we might have to raise taxes, and because it would teach people to be lazy and dependent on the government instead of personally responsible.

Would it cost any more than the financial bailout? Than the Iraq War? I sincerely hope that one of the parties (or another) might prove me wrong one day, but I have little faith in that. America’s god is the dollar bill, and a policy focused on welcoming more babies safely into the world doesn’t serve at that altar.

If you care about life, if you care about choice; give more babies a chance at life, give more women better choices. Make abortion a non-partisan issue.

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Language Learning is the Hard!

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

This Corner posting is just plain factually wrong, obviously so to just about everyone who has lived outside the USA. Considering that essentially every single person in the Philippines speaks multiple languages…is every single one gifted and talented?

Sure, if you start trying to teach every American schoolchild Spanish starting at age 12, not that many would ever be fluent. But there are benefits to speaking multiple languages non-fluently. I would guess that more than half would be capable of reaching some level of fluency, if they kept with it–but isn’t the real nature of this complaint that we shouldn’t be so demanding of our poor children?

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Facebook Politics

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

More fascinating than the lead Barack Obama holds over John McCain is where current President Bush sits. Below Dennis Kucinich. Oh, also a dead guy.

That’s right, there are three times as many people on Facebook willing to declare their support for the long dead first president of Turkey over the Leader of the Free World ™.

Also, I feel very sorry for the politician on Facebook with the least supporters, Stephen Chase of Canada. Last may he was re-elected to Saint John Common Council and no one even said anything! He has all of four supporters, which has got to be depressing, despite his wildly successful career. Well, thanks to my support, Mr. Chase has now moved into a tie for last place, rather than having it to himself. Be a Canadian patriot! Support Stephen Chase in his ride of the Facebook charts!

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The Fate of The Journalist

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Is the paid journalist on her way out?  From a recent WaPo article “The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall?“:

This assault on the lowly — and mighty — sentence, he says, is symptomatic of a disease potentially fatal to civilization. If the sentence croaks, so will critical thought. The chronicling of history. Storytelling itself.

Setting aside the obvious Luddite hysteria–for Linton Weeks the demise of the sentence is caused by text crazy teenagers, troglodyte advertising copy writers, and (naturally) blogs–the most enraging thing about this article is that Weeks’s writing suffers from the same maladies it decries.  His polemic, tucked away in the “Style” section of one of the nation’s preeminent newspapers, has no style.  Is full of fragments.  Like that one.

But it’s cool.  Perhaps he is being ironic.  Or maybe fragments are now considered good form?

“I’m an optimist myself,” she says. “We’re still using sentences. Maybe they are fragments of sentences, but good writers use fragments. I would have to see more proof that the sentence is dying.”

I’ve seen the light!  I should probably write every subsequent post in fragments just to show how great a writer I am, huh?  But I never be as Hemmingwayesque a writer as Linton Weeks’s fragments show he is:

In complete sentences.

“Language as a method of instruction, not a portal into critical thinking

Of 1937.

And that’s the way it.

If there is anything that is causing the youth of day to write poorly, it is not text messages, IMs, blogs, email, advertising copy, or leetspeak.  Teens understand the difference between mediums for writing; if they don’t, they can be taught.  No, if anything is causing the youth of today to descend into the utter chaos that awaits us when the sentences swoons and collapses, it is Linton Weeks.  Who writes in fragments in respectable publications.  That teens are taught to emulate.  Wither the paid journalist of today?  If he can’t write any better than the very teens he rails against…well let’s just say I’m not shocked that WaPo doesn’t have an email address on file for him.

In closing, an alternative perspective:

My impression was that the author intentionally used ill-formed sentences and fragments to illustrate the point. At least in the initial and final paragraphs. As an English teacher, I agree with the idea that students can’t identify or produce good sentences anymore, in any style or context, so I understand the concern. However, as a linguist, I do think that email, text, etc., is simply another form of communication and that language will adapt. I took a class in computational linguistics where we briefly discussed the impact of computers on language (the focus of the class was not nearly so interesting…it was about programming and text analysis for development of speech synthesizers, etc.–not exactly my forte). Anyway, it may be that email and text are the mediums we need to rid descriptive grammar of outdated rules (ex: ending sentences with prepositions). As a linguist, as long as it is comprehensible, it is acceptable. I think that the language will adapt. I do agree that students need to be taught better grammar and writing style, however, because the language of casual communication is not always acceptable in the classroom. Once a student can make that adjustment, however, then I see no cause for concern.


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