Finally, a gun control advocate who is honest enough to admit what many of them really want:
Interesting words I encountered while meandering through the blogosphere:
gobsmacked (GOB-smakt), adj. -- Brithish slang (though used here, too) for utterly astounded, astonished, flabbergasted, as in: "I was gobsmacked that TeD Cruz could talk so eloquently for more than a half hour without using a teleprompter."
The New Republic thinks we should stop talking about "taxpayers" because, you know, it's divisive:
Starbucks is apparently ending its silly Race Together campaign in which people who can get only service jobs attempt to engage us in serious conversation, so guess we can go back to enjoying our high-price coffee in peace:
Oh, wow, what a stunner! I mean,who could have expected this bombshell announcement from Ted Cruz?
I'm running for President and I hope to earn your support.
Give us your, tired, your poor, your job-stealing masses:
The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing into abuses of the H-1B skilled guest worker visa program. Lawmakers heard experts describe how the use of foreign workers has come to dominate the IT industry, with many tech giants using the program to fire well-paid current workers and replace them with workers from abroad at significantly lower pay.
Depressing thought because it sounds about right:
Interesting words I encountered while meandering through the blogosphere:
epistemic (ep-uh-STEE-mik, STEM-ik), adj. -- of or relating to knowledge or the conditions for acquiring it, as in: "Poor reasoning can result in epistemic distorions, leading to a wrong conclusion and a poor decision" or "I can't swear that my reliance on search engines instead of encyclopedias has improved my epistemic habits."
Just when you think President Obama couldn't possibly be any more extreme, he gives another signal of how deep his totalitarian instincts go:
How do we offset the influence of big money in politics while fixing the country's abysmal voter turnout rate?
Conservative/libertarian radio host Glenn Beck has had it with the Republican Party:
Interesting words I encountered while meandering through the blogosphere:
razzia (RAZ-ee-uh), n. -- a plundering raid, as in "The United States is being overwhelmed by a razzia of uncontrolled immigration."
Those rotten kids and all that texting, I tell you. With the way they abbreviate and make up acronyms and leave grammar behind, they are just ruinin' the English language, ruinin' it, I tell you.
But hold on there, not so fast:
Oregon became the first state to automatically register Americans to vote on Monday.
An interesting (and vigorous) takedown of Alcoholics Anonymous:
The political class has kinda sorta stopped talking about illegal immigration. But that doesn't mean it isn't an issue important enough to talk about:
Regular readers will know that I love words, to the point where I used to watch William F. Buckley's "Firing Line," dictionary in hand, just so I could learn new ones. In that spirit, I've decided to create an irregular feature based on "interesting words I encountered while meandering through the blogosphere."
Two today.
farrago (fuh-RAH-goh), n. -- a confused mixture; hodgepodge, medley, as in: "Hillary Clinton's farrago of email explanations gets harder to take with a straight face every day."
Sonia Sotomayor is still trying to sell her "Supreme Court needs diversity" schtick:
And the latest gatherings of lunatic, dangerous gun nuts can be found in . . . the Ivy League?
In between completing problem sets, writing code, organizing hackathons, worrying about internships and building solar cars, a group of MIT students make their way to the athletic center, where they stand side-by-side, load their guns and fire away.
What's next? Hanging? Stoning? Burning at the stake? The guillotine?