I’m doing this post without Web searches to help my point, namely, that when one gets 95%+ of one’s news from NPR, not only does one get a skewed selection of stories (I saw a checkstand tabloid and asked my mother “Is Patrick Swayze really dying?”), one never knows how to spell anything.  If I had ever read a story about the man, I might have a vague clue of how to spell the Iranian president’s name.  I think I could utter (the American pronunciation of) the syllables, and I bet it starts with an ‘A’, but even that is a guess.

Sometimes, though, the misconceptions can be more fundamental.  Consider the proposed environmental regulation that I kept hearing as cap in trade.  This made no sense to me, if for no other reason than that politicians are rarely so forthright about the negative consequences of policies.  Toying briefly with Cap’n Trade — presumably a lovable mercantile sailor with a cool hat — I saw on a blog today cap-and-trade.  Oh.  So, that’s like, “An upper limit on allowable discharge of pollutants by corporations, a market in which unused allowances can be auctioned, and a catchy three-short-word moniker”?  That would make sense.  I suppose a quick Wikipedia search would clear that up, but, again: that’s my point.

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:01:19 +0000
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