Meta and Meta

Marketing Bliss

"[T]he more you know about music, the less qualified you are to sell Rock Band."*

Or rock, for that matter.

Believe It Or Not!

Shelley Batts notes that "foreign objects introduced [in]to the brain via the eye sockets can be deadly."

Yes, I would have thought so.

Top Ten Most Obscure Words

I was going to provide a list of the top ten most obscure words. But that would be a little self-defeating, wouldn't it?

Join 'Em

Possible brand name for fresh eggs: Better 'n Beaters. ("More flavor than Egg Beaters™, with nowhere near the same amount of fat or cholesterol.")

New Song

I put a new song ("Memories of You") up on my MySpace page a couple of weeks back, but forgot to mention it here. You've been served.

Dictionary Use Gone to Pot

My dad yesterday recounted a story involving a friend (of my dad's generation) who professed both unfamiliarity with the word 'cannabis' and an inability to find that word in a dictionary -- two odd bits of cognitive incapacitation that rather ironically suggest a robust familiarity with the substance in issue, if not its designation.

Anyway, this got me thinking about basic dictionary-using competence. Seems like if you weren't good at using a dictionary, you'd have a need for a reference work, say, "Dictionaries for Dummies." But then given the very incapacity in issue, you'd need another reference work for that, ostensibly "'Dictionaries for Dummies' for Dummies." And so on. This obviously leads to a pedagogically vicious regress. Turns out, then, dictionary illiteracy is irremediable.

As a corollary, it is impossible that you are comprehending this post at all.

Pride and Extreme Prejudice

And the moral retardation continues:

In a November 5 National Review Online column -- "Waterboarding Has Its Benefits" -- contributing editor Deroy Murdock wrote that "[w]aterboarding is something of which every American should be proud...."

Yes -- he said "proud." Proud, because

[t]hough [it's] clearly uncomfortable, waterboarding loosens lips without causing permanent physical injuries (and unlikely even temporary ones)."

At last: Wife-beaters who prefer phone books over brass knuckles can now go about their business with pride.

Nice Rack

Brian Leiter posts Gerard Dworkin's "Is the Rack Torture?" It's a fine bit of satire, and a useful corrective to the pathological agnosticism about waterboarding that continues to be espoused by even "grown up" conservatives. (Strangely, the more they know, the less they know it.)

Looking Neoconfabulous!

Wow. No one makes stuff up quite like Rudy Giuliani.