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Friday, February 15, 2002
posted by gbarto at 11:56 AM:
Olympic update. Still watching Fox (we can't all have personal details as interesting as Sullivan's). Salé and Pelletier are every bit as smooth off the ice as on, and have shown themselves to be a real class act. Salé comments that she felt they had given a gold medal performance, and whether they got silver or gold for it, no one could take away the performance. Such an excellent attitude, and too rare.On another note, that the Russians keep their golds seems appropriate - the poor kids had no role in this - yet takes some of the luster off that gold. One hopes that with this gold medal so thoroughly tarnished, the people who manipulate these competitions, whether with steroids, political machinations or whatever will realize how false such glories are. But probably not.
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posted by gbarto at 11:36 AM:
"Campaign Finance Reform". The WSJ lead editorial has sharp commentary, but Dan Henninger's Wonderland column is superb. As I write, I'm watching GWB on Fox News (the conservative caricature is now complete!) as he discusses the Peace Corps. Bush is talking about service - to community, to country, to the world. Henninger provides the contrast - "public servants" who are restricting the speech of the public they represent, disemboweling the term-limits they've implemented by referendum and generally giving the impression that what they do is far more important than going to work to pay the bills for their schemes, running a corporation that provides goods, services and jobs or putting your life on the line to protect the system in which we live. McCain served his country well 30 years ago. But his finest hour is long past. The jury's out on whether Daschle or Gephardt have had a fine hour to begin with.* * *
posted by gbarto at 11:11 AM:
Olympic Campaign Reform. So the Canadians win after all! Theirs definitely looked to be the better performance to this untrained eye. Of course, this breaks the 28-year sweep for the Russians. And it leaves us wondering how the French are going to do in the ice-dancing competition.On a more serious note, I earlier ridiculed the idea of making Enron the metaphor for our time, but it seems that some people have been - with a pleasing twist. The Olympics is only one spot - behind the scenes manipulations, accounting not adding up, et cetera. Even if everything leading up to this went from disheartening - are the Olympics still so divided along East-West lines (with France, as always, straddling) - to icky - trading of votes? - to bizarre - the French judge was intimidated? confused? - it's nice to see this one set right.
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Wednesday, February 13, 2002
posted by gbarto at 2:38 PM:
Excellent Holman Jenkins column again, on the Enron mess, again. This, of course, on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. There's also a nice column by Jeremy Siegel.Thomas Bray, in the Detroit News, joins Jenkins in highlighting the greatest threat posed by the Enron debacle: That new and foolish laws will be made to protect us from capitalism, but that the laws will really only make it harder for capitalism to do its work.
Jenkins also gives a very concise summary of what I was trying to say a while back:
To state a truism, accounting fraud usually follows rather than precedes bad business results.
To listen to our fine lawmakers, Ken Lay and his buddies got together to orchestrate the biggest swindle in history. One of the senators accused Lay of being the biggest con man since Ponzi (ironic, since I think it was one of the senators fighting to protect Social Security in its current form). Without question, I disapprove of the games played by Enron, and am about as certain as I could be that CFO Fastow is a criminal. But I think the short version of what happened to Enron qua Enron is not a planned fraud. Rather, it was a matter of a lot of arrogant dreamers thinking they'd become masters of the universe, getting a wake-up call from reality and panicking. This does not excuse their actions, but it should put them in perspective. Ken Lay is a bad businessman, not the devil; Enron is yet another dot-commer hybrid gone south, not a metaphor for the evils of capitalism.
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posted by gbarto at 2:24 PM:
And more Victor Hugo. There's one more poem here. And don't forget about the short explanations of alexandrin, octosyllabe, enjambement and more! Could life be any better? Coming soon, I'll have rough translations of a few of the poems up for those whose French is a bit sketchy.* * *
Tuesday, February 12, 2002
posted by gbarto at 10:27 PM:
Glenn Reynolds has a few of the more noxious quotes from the show trial on the Hill today. Whether Lay is a dupe or a crook I don't know. I suspect the latter, but as Reynolds points out, charges haven't even been filed, much less proved. On the other hand, I think we can judge our beloved senators as braying asses. Will they next start sending subpoenas to bank robbers, just so we know that they don't care for that either? I agree with Larry Kudlow that if Lay and company really subverted capitalism in such a vile manner, they ought be strung up by their toenails, but I don't think even Ken Lay deserves a lecture on propriety or responsibility from these bums.* * *
posted by gbarto at 8:42 PM:
More Victor Hugo - and more!A few more poems have made their way onto the Victor Hugo page, along with a short introduction to French versification (including the bare bones of how to read French poetry aloud).
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Monday, February 11, 2002
posted by gbarto at 1:36 AM:
Joanne Jacobs has a letter on sentence diagramming from one Robert Wright, a middle school teacher. She also provides this link to letters to the editor on the same subject from the Washington Post. The letters in the WaPo were interesting, but it's Wright's letter that concerns me.Wright asserts that:
The best way to learn grammar is by studying a foreign language. Studying grammar is essential for learning a foreign language but pretty near a waste of time for improving expression in one's native language.
How curious! Foreign languages require study. But your native tongue comes effortlessly. Just practice. I'll bet this is why our schoolchildren are making such high marks in English! I guess you kin just lern yer own langage gooder! Look! I just get gooder the more I write! Ain't it gittin gooder still?
When I lived in France - a country that may respect little else but does cherish its language - we would frequently find ourselves arguing about grammar. Even dinner table conversation would be interrupted for a digression on why a certain sentence really demanded the indicative, not the subjunctive (for example). While this may be taking things to extremes, consciousness of the language one is using is not a bad thing. It shows that you care enough about your interlocutor to make a serious effort at sharing your thoughts. Our educators know this: even as we have deemed verb conjugation oppressive, we have adopted a politically correct vocabulary whose mastery demands careful attention. The truth is that both angles are important; giving offense impedes communication, but so does the utter failure to communicate.
So what of sentence diagrams? I have before me a book on good writing by a fellow named Zinsser. He makes the point that good writing consists in rewriting. In rewriting, we can improve confusing passages, can cut unnecessary words and digressions and can eliminate verbal tics that get in the way of our ideas. What's more, rewriting allows us to become more conscious of mistakes we commonly make so that we can correct them. By consistently correcting our errors - in both usage and style, we can develop new habits of mind that make for sharper writing. But it's hard to make corrections if you can't figure out what is wrong. When a sentence feels out of balance, a handy-dandy non-ideologically charged sentence diagram enables you to think through what you're putting in the sentence and whether it will all fit. (The ideologically charged ones cause famine in Bangladesh). The non-ideologically charged sentence diagram will even allow you to see where you ought consider putting in that unwieldy fragment, should you choose to leave it in. In short, the sentence diagram is a tool we can use in the pursuit of clearer, more orderly writing. It helps us see how to put more complex ideas together effectively, making for richer writing. And it helps us see where we simply can't, so that we can eliminate run-on sentences.
Neither the grammar rules nor the sentence diagram demand slavish devotion. Rather, they give us a way to make sure our meaning will be clear so that we can focus on what we are saying, not how we are saying it. We have to do this in foreign languages because we don't know enough to fake it. But ask yourself: If you're willing to take the trouble to speak properly with the French, don't you owe your own fellow citizens the same courtesy?
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