Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Captured Koala

This is seriously the best thing I have read since the local librarians were on a first-name basis with my mother.

The other day I went back to the West Hartford library for some more DVDs and stopped by the New Non-Fiction shelf. This book caught my eye. It claimed to be a lexicon of euphemisms, “doublespeak”, and other language used in the US to disguise one’s true opinion, assumptions, or political agenda (you know how we love politics over here). An Ambrose Beirce for the talking head set, if you will.

So I flipped through it for a bit, and to be fair, the authors did do a commendable job of pointing out some of the subtle presumptions of many words that I myself think I use completely innocently. Even if I try to directly combat this tendency in my own way, one could certainly argue that ideas like systemic bias or jargon themselves implicate or demonize certain groups.

But that's why we need something like this book, right? Have to keep on our toes. Then I landed on H. The first entry was “hacktivism”.

“...which,” it read, “like hacking, is illegal...”

OMG! I just remembered I own a copy of the elephant shrew book!

...Somewhere.

I would have had no idea that’s what those were if not for this page. (This is a blog, I have to make a link somewhere. Read the articles; they made me smile at least.)