Not the village constable. There are men of evil mind, who would make of everything a crime, and not because of passion, but just naturally. Gracian #109
George Rebane
WSJ editor-in-chief Gerard Baker contributes a worthy analysis and commentary in his ‘Trump, Lies and Honest Journalism’. Therein he touches on and corroborates a RR piece (here) on the nature of lies. His bottom line is that journalists should be careful in labeling any false statement, say, by a politician, as a ‘lie’ since that implies intent to deceive – which intent is hard to prove. Better present the fact along with the erroneous statement and let the reader determine intent.
My toes curl the wrong way every time I see the now accepted punctuation for communicating a list of things. An example of that is seen in the above title to Baker’s WSJ piece. Apparent from the article, what the author sought to taxonomize was the discussion of three separate notions – Trump, Lies, Honest Journalism. Yet the title, by omitting the comma between ‘Lies’ and ‘and’ ambiguates the intended taxonomy by confusing the reader to think that ‘Lies and Honest Journalism’ are on par with ‘Trump’. In previous times we were taught to express a list of three or more equivalent things as ‘X, Y, and Z’ which allowed the inclusion of compound objects in the list as ‘X, Y1 and Y2, and Z’. With the modern omission of the comma before the final ‘and’ such clarity is no longer possible, and contributes one more lexicographic factor to reduce the information carrying capacity of English. You will not see that omission on RR posts lest they snuck in as a typo. (I’m sure I’ve vented on this before and will again.)
On the road to super-AI (aka Singularity) BEIJING—A mysterious character named “Master” has swept through China, defeating many of the world’s top players in the ancient strategy game of Go. … Master played with inhuman speed, barely pausing to think. With a wide-eyed cartoon fox as an avatar, Master made moves that seemed foolish but inevitably led to victory this week over the world’s reigning Go champion, Ke Jie of China. (more here)
[update] According to the Left and their lamestream, obstructionism is now the highest virtue, both in and out of government across the land. It was not so long ago we were told that obstructionism was contemptible and anti-American – remember that it was the dastardly Republicans who shut down government all by themselves. To man the barricades the NYT is hiring ‘journalists’ with a public record of having been very unjournalistically in the tank for Hillary (even to the editing of their journalistic content). The chasm grows.
Sen John McCain concluded that “we are in a state of war with Russia” after conducting an a hearing of the Armed Services Committee on Russia’s role in the attempt to influence last November’s election. The key finding to come out of this morning’s hearing on the Hill is that ‘Espionage is an act of war’. This immediately implicates most of the world’s nations as being in a continuous state of war with each other. However, we are assured that this is a “new kind of war” that doesn’t involve shooting (yet).
The St Louis Fed summarizes the Obama years – short and sweet (H/T to correspondent)
[6jan17 update] From the looks of the invigorating Trump bashing conversations going on in the comment stream of the last ‘Scattershots’, it appears I may have to start a new regular feature similar to ‘Sandbox’ that can serve as repositories for all the Trump bashing that we are promised for the next four years. Such repositories would invite comments not related to then current policy issues or actions of the federal government, but focus on spine tingling arguments like the 497th recounting of Trump’s crotch grabbing braggadocio, or making fun of disabled reporters, and similar awkward bagatelles. Our readers would then know exactly where to go to get the latest barn circling on the President’s escapades of yesteryear. This would be a public service for those whose motto and exhortations will be to ‘Never Forget!’
rebanesruminations.com 
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