In the past, when a government agency felt it needed to communicate with me via my television, it ran a “crawler” across the bottom of my screen. While annoying, it was not overly intrusive. The recent change to this mechanism is unacceptable. Recently, this mechanism has changed. FedGov now takes over my TV receiver entirely. [...]
Posts under ‘Pet Peeves’
Fun With Numbers II
Let’s say that Jimmy Jones is in the lowest quintile (bottom 20%) income-wise. Jimmy invents a better mousetrap and sells the patent rights for millions of dollars. Suddenly, Jimmy is in the top quintile of earners and someone from the second quintile drops down into the lowest quintile to fill his place. The headline will read: “Rich Get Richer!”
The Stop Sign Tax
A remarkable thing happened the other day. I was driving home from the post office and when I stopped at the stop sign on Sixth Avenue, at the Elm Street intersection, there was a pedestrian crossing the street! He was crossing Sixth Avenue right in front of me. Really! I saw him with my own [...]
“Less” or “Fewer”
I have long held the view that our children cannot read and write well because they don’t read and write enough. Becoming proficient at anything requires practice. Lurking in the back of my mind I’ve also had the notion that we see far too many bad examples that we take as proper usage because they [...]
Geeks and Nerds
A while ago, a friend introduced me to someone else and noted about me: “He’s a Mac nerd.” Naturally, I corrected him. It’s a common enough mistake — confusing geeks and nerds. This mistake is up there with not understanding the difference between “infer” and “imply.” So let me explain. Geekiness is knowledge-based, nerdiness is lifestyle-based. [...]