paranormal's comments

> I think ebonics if a load of crock, but as an aficionado of linguistics...

I was under the impression that modern linguists generally agreed that good linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. Could you elaborate here?

> So it would be fine if the scarcely dressed participants in the show were of the same gender as the main characters?

It would be less sexist, but it would remain stupid.

Anyway, let's return to the main point of the argument: employing "party girls" to sell services and software at trade shows is a practice that reinforces a particular culture of discrimination that is actively creating difficulties for professional women in our field.

Do you disagree?

There's a comment by a Brad Hicks halfway down on that article about how ridiculous it was that Judge Wright allowed surprise testimony from the audience. It's even stranger that it was an attorney, who would be acutely aware of the normal consequences of something like this, who ventured to do so!

The comment goes on to say

> (The next place my mind went was, "well, if Prenda wants to establish grounds for appeal, if they need more evidence that the judge is prejudiced against them, didn't they just find the smoking gun?" I mean, if someone with only a peripheral involvement in the case had jumped up in the audience and called The Real Alan Cooper a liar, would the judge have tolerated that?)

but has received no response on Popehat so far. As a layman, I'm wondering the same thing.

Is there a word to describe this sort of writing style?

> There was no Microsoft money, no Starbucksian gentrification, no post-grunge feelings of cultural inevitability—only the low-tide stench of marine oil and clams and the calcified class system of a small Western city built on lumber, Alaskan gold, and B-17s.

Every single paragraph of this opinion piece is built on a slightly more general version of this particular device: using particular weighty symbols or instances of a concept in action to refer to the concept (kind of like a metonym). The author's point here is that "Back before Seattle became what it is today, it was a small, boring industrial town." But the way he said it certainly has more punch and says more than my version, right?

I just get the feeling that the piece is so awash in this technique that it comes off as overwrought and preachy.

In any case, I'd like to be able to put a name to this style; it'd certainly help me in my own writing (having words for things helps me understand them: their benefits, their dangers).

In addition to what asynchronous13 mentioned, the Iranian Air Force maintains and fields several US exports (notably the F4 and the F14). It wouldn't be terribly surprising if their techs were already proficient in English in order to service those aircraft.

This isn't germane to the discussion.

> FBI Agents are busy flying to Iceland working on Hollywood's vision for the future of who owns the internet, data, and computers

Wikileaks has very little to do with Hollywood. Whether you sympathize with Wikileaks or not, hopefully it makes sense that since they have publicly released federal secrets, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be charged with investigating them, right?

I make no comment on whether the handling of the investigation has been appropriate.

As for the rest of the post, I think you're trying to make the point that our "national effort" (of which there is seemingly be a finite pool) is being expended on an overseas investigations, so we couldn't fix weapons legislation or prosecute white-collar criminals.

I disagree. There's nothing to suggest that either of those problems would be fixed if those FBI agents were doing anything else. Frankly, neither of those problems exist for lack of effort.

> I know the FBI has to be irreproachable enough to resist the collective action of Mafias and cults/sects, which would make it a tough system to get rid of, even if it devolves into the Ministry of life/Ministry of truth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Truth)

Could you explain, specifically, how the FBI is becoming substantially similar to the Ministry of Truth? It would help if you could explain who, by name, and what initiatives are responsible for this.

The discipline of statistics can be defined as the set of techniques used to draw inferences and conclusions from a sample--an incomplete set of data. When you have all of the data, playing with it ceases to be statistics and instead becomes data analysis.