We Need More Collective Nouns To Identify Political Group

Conor Friedersdorf creates a list of collective nouns to add to one's political vocabulary. I note that none of the groups are associated with "pride."

An axis of wonks.
A muzak of talking heads.
A friedman of taxi drivers.
A scandal of senators.
A capra of filibusters.
A cabinet of secretaries.
A forge (or jones) of Smithsonians.
A molestation of TSA agents.
A hospice of Supreme Court justices.
A stipend of interns.
A deceit of talking points.
A bordello of lobbyists.
A belligerence of neocons.
An obama of drone casualties.
A cyclotron of press secretaries.
A euphemism of atrocities.
An ostrich of climate-change skeptics.
A david gergen of David Gergens.
A cirrhosis of happy hours.
A per diem of fundraisers.
A peroxide of Fox News anchors.
A slumlord of rent-control advocates.
A kabuki of debates.
A baldwin of Romneys.

"A bordello of lobbyists descended on Pierre" does have a nice ring to it. So does "An obama of drone casualties has created a euphemism of atrocities."

Some Minor Musings About Language Use

Language evolves; that fact is not news.  This Gary Gutting post in the New York Times "The Stone" provides a good reminder.

Debates about linguistic norms typically set traditionalists against revisionists. The two sides are particularly entrenched because each is rooted in a fundamental truth: the traditionalists are right that the rules are the rules (for instance, pronouns do need to agree in number with their referents), and the revisionists are right that language does change over time (nouns can come to be used as verbs).

Gutting's conclusion, however, goes far beyond the obvious.

The pure traditionalist and pure revisionist positions are both oblivious to what is at stake in arguments over language. The traditionalists claim they are just asking us to play by the rules of the game; revisionists say they are just asking us to accept the fact that language is always changing. But both sides ignore the profound consequences of how we speak.

Language usage is and should be a battleground. Our task is to make the conflict fruitful. To do this, we need to understand what precisely is at issue in any particular dispute. Does a new locution advance or retard our power to express our ideas effectively? Is the issue primarily one of different aesthetic sensibilities? Or is our argument over language rooted in deeper disagreements over who we are and how we should live? Once we understand what is really at stake, we may be able to learn much through arguing about language.

I tend to believe that language arguments are the "deeper disagreements," and that STEM can never adequately deal with the questions about "who we are" and "how we should live."

The cynic in me frequently wonders if Governor Daugaard's or Arne Duncan's emphasis on STEM isn't a concerted effort to distract people from contemplating deeper questions.

It's A Start But . . .

I'm not sure in media res is the right tool here.

A New York Times article about proposed standards for science curricula reports,

"One of the big goals, the committee said in a 282-page report, is "to ensure that by the end of 12th grade, all students have some appreciation of the beauty and wonder of science."

I love the desire to have students appreciate beauty and wonder.  Three obstacles stand in the way of that goal.

The first is that science writers use so much jargon that they wring the beauty out of science.

The second is that reading standards have made it impossible to recognize and appreciate language that appreciates beauty or expresses ideas beautifully.  It's difficult to appreciate anything if that thing is described in tech manual language.

Finally, if education's direction is to be set by roundtables dominated by insurance companies and securities traders, I'm not sure anyone in power is seeking to eliminate jargon and instill an appreciation of beauty.The language in my State Farm policies lack beauty and a sense of awe.

On the other hand, most heroic epics begin in the middle.  Maybe an heroic effort will be made and lead to success here.