New Words for New Communications

Today, the term blogtificate came to me: the process of unloading one's unqualified opinions, unsupported by fact, into a blog because no one else wants to hear them.

That got me thinking that there must be plenty of others:

• imaway - (adj.) When you set your Internet messaging software to away status so people will stop bothering you as you try to get something done.


• blackberryed - (adj.) The state of having a Blackberry filed with so many emails that you will never be able to respond to all of them.


• iphoney - (n.) A technology poseur who purchases some trendy device but hasn't yet learned how to turn it on.

So what others can you think of? There are comments on this blog for a reason.

Definitions: Love and Marriage

Linguist Geoff Nunberg had a great piece about how political factions use dictionary definitions in taking their stances toward gay marriage. It's a great analysis, and one that transcends the specific topic. I found of particular interest the following:

A couple of months ago, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary made some long-overdue revisions in the definitions for a bunch of gender-related words. Before then, the dictionary's definition of girlfriend in the meaning of "sweetheart" read "a man's favorite female companion," which would have precluded lesbians from having girlfriends in the romantic sense. And the old definition of love read, "That feeling of attachment which is based upon difference of sex. . . and which is the normal basis of marriage." So both words were given new definitions that would cover their use to refer to same-sex relationships.[1]

This is hardly a matter of rampant political correctness, or of giving the words a new meaning. It isn't as if the English language has ever ruled out talking about lesbians having girlfriends, much less prevented Shakespeare from describing a romantic attachment between two men with the word love. It's just that when the definitions were written, those sorts of relationships were officially invisible.

Oh, what a great point. People use language to make themselves comfortable, and set definitions to try and form the world in the way they wished it was, and not in the way it actually is. To point to "traditional" definitions is really to point to traditional prejudices and recorded wishful thinking. What axe edges are the dictionary editors grinding? So what we get is a true example of "begging the question": people take a stance based on social norms, and then use definitions created by those norms as proof that the opinion is correct. Might as well say that infant mortality is normal and "the way things should be" because in the past there was lots of infant mortality.

Waterboarding, Torture, and Definitions

The appointment of former judge Michael Mukasey is closer, with democratic senators Feingold and Schumer voting in favor after private assurances that all ending the simulated drowning technique required was Congressional action. How convenient. All it would take is for the House and Senate both to spend time to draft bills, send them through committees, take votes, go through a reconciling process, and present it to the president - who, presumably, would veto it. And then Congress would only need two-thirds majorities in both houses to override.

This may not be the height of deception, whether of voters or of the senators themselves, but it at least hits a plateau. Such a law will never surface with so many other things to do, and with probably enough resistance to make a veto override impossible. This is window dressing and playing with the meaning of such words as torture and assurance.

Anyone who has ever come close to drowning - and I speak from personal experience, here - can tell you that being forced to feel as though you are breathing your last is not mere intimidation nor strenuous questioning. It is a form of torture that dates back to the Spanish Inquisition. There may be times for scholarly debates over the meaning of words, or legal disagreements over how to construe a sentence. But this is not one of them. For a people to stand for something, it must actually stand for those principles, not twist definitions for expedience.

By accepting such a preposterous concept as needing a law for every single condition whose characteristics easily fit the broad premise, Feingold and Schumer are looking for an excuse of convenience. Perhaps they think Mukasey is the best candidate they might get. Pragmatism has an obvious place in life, but there are times you must put your support behind not what seems of practical advantage, but behind what you truly believe. To do any less is to abdicate responsibility, duty, and humanity.

Most Arguments for "Moral" Use of Torture Are Greviously Flawed

I've seen many people argue the shades of gray as to why torture might be morally justified in the face of terrorism. But largely what the people arguing see as ambiguity as actually a lack of clarity because they are using a set of unstated presumptions.

When people like Alan Dershowitz talk about accepting or approving torture, there is usually an argument (whether stated or even internally articulated or not) that goes something like this:

1. There is a bad person.


2. That bad person knows of specific harm that will be done.


3. The person will get away without punishment and without being stopped because he or she hasn't yet done what would be considered illegal.


4. Torture will extract the information that will stop the specific harm.


5. Therefore, we should use torture to extract the information and stop the harm.


6. If we make a mistake, it's justified and excused by the good we do or at least intend.

Unfortunately, there are some fatal (sometimes literally) flaws in this line of reasoning.

The first premise is that someone knows the person to be guilty. But often we've seen that the people tortured wind up not being guilty of anything. So no one knows for sure that the person is "bad," or even that the person has specific information or is about to do anything. Suddenly the argument about having to extract specific information from the known guilty party to save someone's life in a specific amount of time crumbles like so much badly mixed and cured concrete.

Now we find a few more problems. People who understand interrogation generally agree that torture is a highly unreliable way of gaining information, because the person is likely to say anything to stop the torture. Now we have information that we can't trust to stop a harm that may or may not be happening.

It's also unnecessary. Look at a number of plots that have been claimed to have been stopped in the last couple of years. It wasn't torture that turned them up.

Finally, the last point: when you are willing to toss away principles of the nation, you destroy the true nature of the nation. Or, to paraphrase what we heard during the Viet Nam war, we had to destroy the country to save it - whether Iraq or our own rule of law. There is a theoretical gray area - if you could satisfy the conditions above. But people don't explicitly address their flawed logic, so they don't see this as a generally black and white issue.

American Manufacturers Want to Redefine Chocolate

Words definitions count, and when someone redefines what a word means, you might find yourself affected. Look at this entry in my Flash in the Pan blog. Large members of the U.S. chocolate industry want the FDA to change the definition of chocolate so they can use vegetable fat instead of cocoa butter and whey instead of whole milk powder. If they get their way, things once labeled as chocolate flavored could instantly become chocolate and you wouldn't know the difference from the label. Today's the last day for public comment and there's a link on the entry to let the FDA know what you think.