The word panoply means, “a magnificent of impressive array.” The word derives from the full amour a ancient Greek hoplite solider wore.
Random fact of the day–panoply
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Monthly Archives: October 2009
7 Bad Writing Habits No one Learned in School
This article by Jonathan Morrow on “good” writing irritates me—7 Bad Habits You Learned in School.
The first paragraph explains much of what wrong with the article:
What is good writing?
Ask an English teacher, and they’ll tell you good writing is grammatically correct. They’ll tell you it makes a point and supports it with evidence. Maybe, if they’re really honest, they’ll admit it has a scholarly tone — prose that sounds like Jane Austen earns an A, while a paper that could’ve been written by Willie Nelson scores a B (or worse).
Really? That’s what people learned in school, to write like Jane Austen? I don’t think so. Hopefully people learned to write for their audience. If their audience wants Jane Austen, give them Jane Austen, but very few people actually want Jane Austen.
And I love this sentence, “They’ll tell you [good writing] makes a point and supports it with evidence.” That sounds incredibly uncontroversial, but not to Morrow. The only thing he cares about it whether writing is interesting, not whether or not it is supported anything in the real world. Morrow’s 5th "bad habit” people learned in school was “Leaning on Sources.” Heaven forbid that your writing pertains to reality. Writing is so much more interesting if you aren’t constrained by truth or the facts.
Morrow’s article is really a few thoughts about what makes compelling writing for certain types of fact-less blogging. It should not be confused with what makes good writing.
Stimulus money and Jobs
The AP checks in on the claims of job creation from stimulus funds:
The AP reviewed a sample of federal contracts, not all 9,000 reported to date, and discovered errors in one in six jobs credited to the $787 billion stimulus program — or 5,000 of the 30,000 jobs claimed so far.
Even in its limited review, the AP found job counts that were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of paid positions; jobs credited to the stimulus program that were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs that were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.
For example:
- Some recipients of stimulus money used the cash to give existing employees pay raises, but each reported saving dozens of jobs with the money, including one Florida day care that claimed 129 jobs saved.
- A Texas contractor whose business kept 22 employees to handle stimulus contracts saw its job count inflated to 88 because the same workers were counted four times.
- The water department in Palm Beach County, Fla., hired 57 meter readers, customer service representatives and other positions to handle two water projects. But their total job count was incorrectly doubled to 114.
Edmunds checks in, estimating that it costs taxpayers $24k per vehicle sold for the “cash for clunkers program.”
The White House, not realizing that Edmunds is no in fact Fox News, tries to call B.S. on Edumnds estimate.
You are the establishment…
How to install a CanoScan N650U scanner on Vista or Windows 7
I have an Canon CanoScan N650U scanner that I use a few times a year. Canon never released Vista drivers for this scanner, using the instructions below made the scanner work on Windows 7 for me:
- Download the XP drivers from Canon’s website
- Install the drivers
- The driver didn’t install, but unzipped to C:/Temp/CanoScanCSUv571a
- Go to C:/Temp/CanoScanCSUv571a and uncompress CanoScanCSUv571a.exe
- Plug in your scanner
- Go to your device manager.
- Click on Add a Device and select the scanner
- Right click to update driver information
- Select browse my computer for driver software
- Type in: C:\Temp\CanoScanCSUv571a
- Click next and my scanner worked
Update: In the comments Paul wrote, “I used the WIA drivers, which I found here: http://www.normalgeeks.com/Canoscan_WIA.zip” I haven’t tried it, but’s worth checking out.
Yesterday was Saint Crispin’s Day
In honor of Saint Crispin’s Day yesterday:
Budget Deficits for Dummies: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love $1.4 trillion.
Tom Sietsema’s Annual Dining Guide is out
If you live in D.C., the Washington Post’s food critic’s annual dining guide is out.
It shocks me that he has been the Post’s food critic for 10 years and I remember when he took over from Phyllis Richman. How have I been here that long?
An event the Olympics should bring back
I would love to see one of the first sport included in the Olympics make a comeback—the four-horse chariot race. How could a four-horse chariot race not be exciting? The world doesn’t need race-walking, but four-horse chariot racing would be entertaining.
Why I hate the Olympics
This article from the L.A. Times is a good example of what I hate about the Olympics.
The Olympics movement has passed over Chicago, but it has left a lasting and unpleasant mark on George Tsoukas’ business.
He has owned a butcher shop here for about 40 years. But a year or two ago, Olympic Meat Packers Inc. had to be renamed Olympia Meat Packers Inc. because federal law gives the U.S. Olympic Committee a trademark on the word "Olympic."
Tsoukas, whose family is Greek, says he sometimes forgets and answers the phone with the old name.
"My customers, they hang up on me and they think it’s a different business," he says. "I’m so used to ‘Olympic Meat’ . . . and it’s so hard for me to remember ‘Olympia.’ "
The USOC enforces its exclusive rights to the word "Olympic" under the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act of 1998. The law includes a clause explaining that businesses using the word "Olympic" before Sept. 21, 1950, are unaffected by the law.
"It’s our heritage. It’s our tradition," said Tsoukas’ son, Nick, who manages the shop. "It comes from ancient Greece. . . . So I feel kind of like they’re taking that away from us. . . . I was really surprised that they were calling, and they demanded that we change our name."
Not only are the Olympic organizing committees corrupt (how else do you explain the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia) but they are also unjust, unfair, and downright silly in enforcing their trademark.