Month: August 2002

Two Big Beef Burritos Supreme

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

On the American Dialect Society's mailing list, someone posted this story from The Onion:

William Safire Orders Two Whoppers Junior

NEW YORK — Stopping for lunch at a Manhattan Burger King, New York Times ‘On Language’ columnist William Safire ordered two “Whoppers Junior” Thursday. “Most Burger King patrons operate under the fallacious assumption that the plural is ‘Whopper Juniors,’” Safire told a woman standing in line behind him. “This, of course, is a grievous grammatical blunder, akin to saying ‘passerbys’ or, worse yet, the dreaded ‘attorney generals.’” Last week, Safire patronized a midtown Taco Bell, ordering “two Big Beef Burritos Supreme.”

To which one poster, not realizing the satire, replied in seriousness:

But of course the back-to-back sibilants in Burritos Supreme would probably not be heard as pluralizing the noun, so Safire might have been heard as “talking funny,” i.e., not marking the plural after a quantifier (ESL speakers do this all the time).

Heh. (and I'm guessing that ESL means “English as a Second Language” in this case)

USA PATRIOT Act

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I was going to e-mail my brother about this, but I figured that I’d post it here as well. He and I were talking on the phone the other day when the conversation came around to Bush and our respective opinions of him.

Though I didn’t vote for him, I generally supported Bush in the past. For instance, I was pleased that he was elected in the electoral college over Gore. If for no other reason, I knew that Bush was more likely to enact tax cuts than Gore (I’m not generally in favor of the government deciding “it knows best” how to spend my money).

However, after the 9/11 attacks, the USA PATRIOT Act (yes, it’s an acronym) was quickly pushed through Congress. Though under the guise of preventing terrorism, it was full of bad ideas:

  • Allow for indefinite detention of non-citizens who are not terrorists on minor visa violations if they cannot be deported because they are stateless, their country of origin refuses to accept them or because they would face torture in their country of origin. […]
  • Give the Attorney General and the Secretary of State the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations and deport any non-citizen who belongs to them. […]
  • Expands the use of secret searches. Normally, a person is notified when law enforcement conducts a search. In some cases regarding searches for electronic information, law enforcement authorities can get court permission to delay notification of a search. The USA PATRIOT Act extends the authority of the government to request “secret searches” to every criminal case.

The ACLU also has this chart that compares various before-and-after effects of the act.

And, after all this, I’m not sure what I think of Bush. Sure, economic freedom is a plus, but that’s no good without civil freedom.

Ad Council’s “Campaign for Freedom”

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The Ad Council — the group that puts out all those public service announcements on TV — has a new collection of commercials that they call “Campaign for Freedom”.

For example, the “Library” PSA shows a young guy asking for a book from a librarian, who informs him that it is no longer available and then asks him why he wants to read it. They pan the library and all these government agents pop out of hiding.

The idea is something along the lines of “Look at what could happen if we weren’t protected by the Constitution — it’s a good thing are freedoms are intact in the U-S-of-A!” Really, the ads end up saying “Look at the direction we’re heading”. The Library spot in particular ends up frightningly close to the mark:

Those of us in the library community find the pro-liberty ad in which the young man is approached by unidentified security types after asking for particular library book interesting, particularly in light of the fact that the PATRIOT Act allows the FBI to access any library records on demand (books checked out, computer sites visited...), and forbids library employees from telling anyone that such information has been provided in response to the demands.

Connie Jo Ozinga, Library Director
Elkhart Public Library Elkhart, Indiana

Microsoft Not Going to Abuse DMCA

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Andrew “Bunnie” Huang wrote a paper explaining a security flaw in Microsoft’s Xbox gaming system. Before presenting it, his advisors had legal concerns — in case Microsoft would wield the DMCA against them. But... they didn’t.

Microsoft told Huang and Abelson that while it might prefer that the paper not be published, it would be inappropriate to ask MIT to withhold the paper. […]

That’s, err, such a non-evil attitute to have. Yeesh, I’m completely surprised. Then again, I still won’t be upgrading to WinXP ;).

Star Trek TNG Season 3

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Star Trek TNG Season 3 is available on DVD and, according to this review of the DVD-set, the third season was one of TNG’s best.

Season three remains one of my favorites from Next Gen’s entire run. Few seasons, episode for episode, hit the mark as well as season three. When re-watching “The Best of Both Worlds,” I again found myself at the edge of my seat thinking, “How long do I have to wait to see the conclusion?” Fortunately, it won’t be as long a wait for the next box set as it was between seasons three and four. As the Borg would say, “Resistance is futile”: If you’re going to buy one season of Next Gen, this should be high on your list. […]

I’ve held off on buying the earlier seasons on DVD because I didn’t think they were as good as the later seasons. With the release of the third season, I may just have to pick these up (as soon as I regain expendable income, that is).