The Quietly Disappearing Senator

Trent Lott has announced his resignation from the Senate!

Even though this story broke only yesterday, it was completely invisible today on several mainstream news sites I checked. Even that notorious liberal rag The New York Times had this story buried in a list all the way at the bottom of their politics page. I couldn't even find the story listed on the politics page of CNN, although they made room for "Was Obama too honest about drug use?" and, amazingly, "Fifth graders' take on politics and the issues."

Why isn't this story getting more press? A senior Republican Senator is resigning before the end of his term, thereby ending a 35-year career, and it's regarded as a mere footnote? So much for the liberal media!

One FEWER

There is a new ad campaign on TV that's raising awareness for cervical cancer. Launched by the pharmaceutical company Merck, which manufactures an HPV vaccine, the "One Less" ad campaign features young women defiantly proclaiming, "I want to be one less woman who will battle cervical cancer. One less." The website also announces that "You could be 1 less life affected by cervical cancer."

While I applaud cancer treatments, I loathe illiterate mishandlings of the English language. Apparently the good people at Merck forgot to check Strunk and White before making their commercials.

'One less woman' is nonsense; it's the equivalent of saying 'fewer water' or 'many money'.

'Less' is a word for non-numerical quantity: "I want there to be less cancer in the world," or "I have less money than she."

When discussing numbers, however, 'fewer' should be used, as in "I want to be one fewer woman who will battle cervical cancer," or "I want there to be fewer commercials that employ bad English."

So, to sum up: LESS cancer, LESS water, or LESS money, but FEWER women, FEWER commercials, or one FEWER life.

"You could be 1 less life affected by cervical cancer." Laudable sentiment. Terrible writing.

Rice and Vocab

Free Rice
http://www.freerice.com

My kind of website: learn vocabulary while donating rice for the hungry! The edifying AND ethical way to procrastinate at work!

Christianity as antiquity

"When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! this, for a Jew, crucified over two thousand years ago, who said he was God's son. The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed - whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions - is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A got who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and the ignominy of the cross - how ghoulishly this all touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?"

-Friederich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human

"Dollars," but no sense

DOLLAR MAX
YOUR "DOLLAR" BUYS "MAX" HERE

Another purposeless use of quotation marks with an unintended humorous effect. Are they trying to poke sarcastic fun at the weak US Dollar? Or does they just not write that good?