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  | Ones and Zeros |
| An irregularly updated journal of my Fair and Balanced thoughts, reactions, opinions, biases, outrages, strategies, victories, and commentary. Whatever it is, it's much too subtle to be considered a parody... |
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| Category : Writing and Literature (4)
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 Once Upon a Time I knew an artist who painted the covers for fantasy novels. He did this really well and I think he enjoys his work. I went to high school with his son and he and his wife were lovely and gracious people who were very friendly towards a bunch of 14 year olds who, like most 14 year olds, were probably pretty awkward.
Tim asked me to pose a few times for him. Usually the nature of the picture was such that I’m the only one who knew it was me (“see that leopard pirate with the eyepatch? That’s me…”). Once I posed for a painting that ended up on the cover of a CJ Cherryh novel that is now, alas, out of print. I ran across the cover on the web today, and copied it. Of note are my warm fuzzy bedroom slippers, masquerading as high soft boots, and the bright pink scarf that Tim’s wife Rita got for me to wear. Tim assured me that the scarf would be red in the final picture, because he didn’t think I wanted the scarf to be pink.
This was after my freshman year in college, when I was just starting to grow out my hair.
I’m the one on the left.
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| .:Posted by Michael at 10:32 PM
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This is from an internal disaster recovery plan for a related department in my office. I like it. It made me go to the dictionary twice!
Executive Summary:
This document will provide the information necessary for administrative staff to restore Source Control Management and Release Engineering functionality in the event of a disaster.
It is presumed that this document will only really be used in the event of a catastrophe. However, copies of this document may be used as a propaedeutic for new administrators or as an enchiridion for any recovery process.
Now I’ve got to figure out what I can put in an executive summary to see if I can make smoke come out an executive’s ears…
Update: Ginger blogged this, too…
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| .:Posted by Michael at 05:29 PM
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Author Eric Olsen of Tres Producers discusses the controversy over Amazon.com’s efforts to push used books.
I’m as cheap as the next guy, but I don’t feel comfortable buying used books over the net. I don’t feel comfortable buying used clothes or cars or records over the net, either. I’m not a very good ebay customer. I want to see it and know that the seller isn’t ripping me off before I pay up.
Maybe it’s just me.
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| .:Posted by Michael at 10:20 PM
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He’s The Underground Grammarian and studying his essays, books, and speeches is an adventure into the foibles of modern education, an affirmation of my impulse to deride poor grammar, and a gauntlet thrown against my personal aspirations as a writer. It is all that and more. It’s funny and thought-provoking. I’d like to be Mitchell when I grow up.
Mitchell started a newsletter in the mid 1970s (before desktop publishing) in which he undertook to defend the English Language from barbarians who were abusing it. From that humble beginning he takes his readers on a fabulous trip from a principled stand against poor writing to a stand against poor educational practices to a philosophical position on the nature of thought as expressed by writing. He makes enemies of all ideological stripes, living up to his goal from Volume 1, Issue 1 toexpose and ridicule examples of jargon, faulty syntax, redundancy, needless neologism, and any other kind of outrage against English.
Clear language engenders clear thought, and clear thought is the most important benefit of education. We are neither peddlers nor politicians that we should prosper by that use of language which carries the least meaning. We cannot honorably accept the wages, confidence, or licensure of the citizens who employ us as we darken counsel by words without understanding. His fifteen year run of the newsletter was always true to his adopted motto “Neither can his mind be in tune, whose words do jarre, nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous.”—Ben Johnson That I am not as articulately literate as Dr. Mitchell is a failing. I write because I wish to meet and exceed that high standard. If I had lesser goals, I would be wasting my own time and the time of my putative reader.
I encourage anyone who enjoys writing to dive, headlong, into his works and his words. They are interesting and valuable writings. Would that we had more Mitchellian teachers and fewer of those Mitchell calls Educationists.
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| .:Posted by Michael at 12:51 AM
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