Author: Brian J. Noggle

In his latest Fox News.com column “Junk Science,” Steven Milloy recounts the “science” (snicker) of Mad Cow Disease and its entertaining media hysteria, such that:

Front-page coverage in the New York Times, for example, reported that eating meat from diseased cattle has allegedly caused more than 100 human deaths in Europe since 1994 and “raised questions about the health benefits of eating beef for many consumers around the world.”

More than 100? A number of “More than 100” in a hysterifluff piece means like 103. Mad Cow disease has killed that many people in ten years? Is that all? Well, at least we’re asserting our species dominance and slaughtering hundreds of cattle for each dead human to teach those cattle about going mad. One of your brains swell, all of your friends get it.

However, according to an old United Kingdom government study (see table B.5), in 1995 alone choking caused 153 deaths in just the UK, which would lead one to postulate merely eating (or putting things in one’s mouth) kills 1500% more people each year than Mad Cow Disease. Time for some appropriate hysterifluff.

Outlaw oral ingestion! Mandate intravenous feeding! Shoot the herds of people who chew gum with their mouths open! Although, since that would include me, I am less in favor of the latterest (most latterly?) suggestion.

However, in defense of our media and our own perception of statistics, people think they can win the lottery, too, so of course they imagine that Mad Cow Disease could get them if they bought a hamburger or McDonald’s stock. So at least we’re consistent in our ignorance of statistics and risk analysis.

Spinsanity discusses how some commentators have mischaracterized President Bush’s description of certain elements of Al Qaeda’s terrorist network. To be brief, the meme has spread that Bush said Al Qaeda was no longer a threat. He didn’t actually say that, but once attackers got a hold of that piece of straw, they thought it was meat. (Both Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan mentioned this Spinsanity piece yesterday.)

The problem, and the potential for the straw man, lies within the “slops” contemporary writers and speakers play with collective-noun-subject/pronoun/verb agreement. In many cases, writers and speakers mangle it, and those who read or listen come to expect it. The full Bush quote to which the commentators refer:

Al Qaeda [singular] is [singular] on the run. That group [singular] of terrorists who attacked our country is [singular] slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half [collective singular or plural, plural in this case] of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are [plural, refers to “half”] either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re [plural/plural] not a problem anymore.

So the text indicates that the pronoun “they” does indeed refer to the half of the top operatives who are jailed or dead, which is the nearest antecedent. Al Qaeda, an individual entity, should be referred to with the pronoun “it.” That group, another singular antecedent that refers to Al Qaeda, is also singular.

Of course, “half” as a noun falls into the collective noun category where it can refer to either a plural (for a number of entities, like Maureen Dowd has lost half her marbles and cannot find them) or a singular (for a quantity not enumerated, like Maureen Dowd has lost half of her mind and cannot find it). Although Strunk and White advise you to play colloquially with such collective nouns, no where would they tell Bush to mix agreement (Al Qaeda is…they’re) in the same paragraph.

So Bush’s text means what he (or his writers) meant for it to say. Anyone who argues differently is deconstructing. Which will help you graduate from some of the country’s finest higher education institutions with a frameable piece of paper that says English upon it, but it won’t necessarily help you communicate more effectively.

(P.S. I’ll save the extended rant of each word and grammar rule having an individual purpose in oral or written communication and how violating these rules can lead to listen-time or read-time exceptions like the one demonstrated, and exploited by grammatical commentatorial H4X0Rz, above.)

Looks like Billy-Bob teeth sales were actually hurt by a copycat novelty teeth maker, so the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decreed. Thank heavens that got straightened out. Perhaps it will stop there and not have to go to the United States Supreme Court.

In our Fun Facts corner, Billy-Bob Teeth, Inc., had sales of novelty teeth of five million dollars last year. Call the investment bankers! We need an sophomorically exuberant Novelty Item stock market bubble to re-energize the markets, and we need it stat.

The Washingtion Post mentions in passing in a story about a spammer that Senator Charles Schumer of New York wants an international treaty for the non-proliferation of spam.

Protected by International Treaty? What’s next, an Axis of Spammers? Trade wars or military intervention to depose those who would forge headers?

For the love of pete, it’s just junk mail you can delete from your inbox and filter, fairly effectively, from your server. It’s annoying, but the pushes to make it illegal and criminal are a little much for my taste, but I rankle against legislation and regulation more than I rankle at being annoyed.

A home schooled child has won the National Geographic Bee this year. And it’s not as though he’s been in training for the geographic bee: he’s also on his state science bowl team.

Regardless of these accomplishments, he probably doesn’t feel good about himself since his home schoolers, who love him and don’t just look at him as a little monster to suffer for a year, lack diversity and sensitivity training to provide programs to love himself and his fellow little monsters. Of course, his educators aren’t paying the administrative vigorish that cripples school district budgets, either.

So this homeschooling win must be a fluke.

Nestled among the column in Forbes that examines how small cars have fared in the United States throughout history lies the trivium that Sears once produced a compact car, way back in the 1950s.

Of course, I am not going to tell you its name here; I’ll save that for a random conversation about Sears or small cars, wherein I can interject, “You know, Sears once sold its own car. The Sears …..”

A couple of outraged students at UCSB are frothing about the use of the Gaucho as a symbol for the school’s mascot or some such nonsense. They’ve written to the school paper to foam on at length about how the school mox Mexican-Americans and their descendents. Oh, yeah, here’s the response to those who might think the collegiate children are being foolish:

Now some of you reading this might be immediately tempted to dismiss our commentary as some “PC” reaction to what you might perceive as a rather harmless appropriation of Mexican culture. [Emphasis mine]

Oh, spare me the pillaging of your heritage. As some tonto gringos know, gauchos roamed las pampas de Argentina, not Mexico. And gaucho is a romanticised profession, not a race or ethnic group.

See also Green Bay Packers, the Ottawa Senators, Seattle Mariners, the Washington Wizards (sorry, I had to stretch for the NBA) or, more appropriately, the Dallas Cowboys.

Still, the incited students have a great idea! Change the mascot!

We propose the changing of the mascot name from UCSB Gauchos to UCSB Gavachos, a slang term used by Mexicans and Chicanos to refer to white people.

That learned them Fighting Whities guys, wot?

(Original source: Fox News Tongue Tied.)

Hey, if you’re coming in from Google and want to see the complete Ted Nugent transcript from KRFX, sorry I don’t have it (but if you do find it, I would love to see it. I did talk about the “controversy” on Wedneday, May 7, and you can read the two posts here.

Google’s searches only bring you to the main page here, and not the actual post for which you were looking. But rest assured, the Doc-U-Matic 3000 is here to serve you! Don’t forget to drop me a line and say thanks.

The Shepherd Express discusses the possibility of eliminating last call at taverns and pubs, or at least allowing them to stay open a while after they’ve stopped serving liquor. Although this article examines regulations far off lands where even sober people talk funny, like England and Minnesota, I thought I would add my two shots.

It would be a good idea to eliminate last call and deregulate alcohol serving totally.

After all, two o’clock closing times merely throw a bunch of inebriated and partially-inebriated people into the streets at once. A number of people to bicker, to continue partying, and sometimes to drive home at the same time. The mandated closing time concentrates the goofiness into a single period of time arbitrarily assigned by the municipal or state government. Heaven knows the problems the neighborhoods in Milwaukee alone have suffered because of the throngs. Denny’s restaurants in Milwaukee close before the bars do to avoid the rush of post-tavern patrons, for crying out loud.

By eliminating the bars’ closing time, municipalities would spread out the impact of partying people and whatever infractions they might perform, hereby diminishing the overall disquiet created in neighborhoods, allowing bar patrons to trickle out until the next day. With the end-all, drink-all crowd evacuating at a single time, we’re assuming the cops can be everywhere at once to catch all of the drunk drivers who would kill short-order cooks getting off at one o’clock in the morning and all the gun-, knife-, and fist-bearing disagreeable people.

Of course, opponents might say that eliminating the bar closing time would make people likely to drink more, but that’s not necessarily the case of Miller High Life. People can drink as much as they want outside of taverns and clubs. It just means people would drink in places where restaurant keepers could profit from it.

I hate junk mail that looks like invoices for something I have ordered. Cripes, this very day I got three from the wonderful Domain Registry of America, warning me that unless I paid right now my domain names would expire!. In August. Send your check now! Of course, they’re not my domain registrar and they’ve never gotten dime one out of me. As a matter of fact, considering they have sent me this triplicate postal spam four times, I have cost them 12n, where n is the cost of your general presort postage.

It’s not just these desperate, fly-by-day two-bit-and-you-get-change operations doing it. Time Warner’s been onto the ploy before they wed “A Disk A Minute” AOL. Time and Sports Illustrated offers started looking like past due bills a long time ago. I no longer subscribe to any Time Warner magazines. I have a long memory.

I have no respect for a company that would hope to trick me out of my money. These guys send their “invoices” out the same way as GAINPRO PENIS ENLARGERS (excuse the keyword spamming) pinheads send e-mail. The number of people who are too busy, too unintelligent, or too inattentive and simply cut a check to Time Warner, Domain Registrars of America, or whatever, obviously rewards them enough to keep them doing it. But they won’t get my money, and in the case of legitimate and large corporations, I mean any of it.

So is legislation the answer? Hardly. But individuals should be careful with such “invoices,” and we in the blog-o-mockracy and in the consumer world should stand up and let the companies know we see what they’re doing, and we disapprove.