Tuesday, August 13, 2019

KATU-TV Portland: Get out!

The diesel spilled out. I suppose it would have been a bigger story if the diesel had spilled in. 
Also, the television station's slogan takes an ironic tinge in the context of the story. Neat.

https://katu.com/news/local/train-derails-near-madras-about-4000-gallons-of-diesel-spills-out

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Devil, get thee behind behind me

Trump is trailing. Trump is behind. Trump is trailing behind. Is that clear?

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Straight from the top

“We will get rid of the redundancy and duplication that wastes your time and your money.”
By:  

Official White House statement, Dec. 14, 2017. MAGA, indeed.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Slate: Ocean's One

What's the point of stealing casino chips?


An armed gunman stole $1.5 million in chips from the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas early Tuesday. What's the point of stealing casino chips? Do they have any value outside the casino?

Slate is an online magazine that has nurtured a reputation for being smart and explaining things that people either are or should be thinking about. They've provided here an extra bonus (see how I did that?) by revisiting one of redundancy's greatest hits, the nefarious armed gunman. After all, how effective could an unarmed gunman really be?

Details: www.slate.com

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Wall Street Journal: China, Google and the Cloud Wars

What does Google know about you? What does the Chinese government know about you?

Now you know a less-spoken reason why Google has gone to the mattresses over Chinese hacking. Always in the cards, since the birth of the Web, was the possibility that some great Internet business—a Yahoo or Google or Amazon or Facebook—would be destroyed overnight by a cataclysmic loss of trust in its protection of consumer data.

We haven't seen this phenomenon yet, but it has seemed almost inevitable that sooner or later we will.


This all sounds really ominous. But so what? Gloom and doom will just have to wait while we nitpick. In this instance, the nit we are picking is "reason why." What does a reason do? It tells you why. So knowing "a less-spoken reason Google has gone to the mattresses" (mattresses?) serves our needs just fine.

You may now return to your previously scheduled gloom and doom.

Details: online.wsj.com

Monday, January 11, 2010

Tulsa Business Journal: Traveling by invisible bracelet goal

Noah Roberts wants to go everywhere that people travel and provide emergency personnel vital medical data should the need arise.

No, the Docvia president and chief executive officer doesn’t want to be physically present during the travels. That would mean dividing himself as many ways as the number of people who signed up for his service.

Rather, he wants an invisible bracelet that his firm developed to do the traveling. The bracelet would contain basic health information and up to 10 emergency contacts stored under a computer-assigned PIN number.


Maybe that means it's extra secure. After all, there's not merely a personal identification number between you and identity thieves. No sir, this will have a personal identification number number.


Sunday, January 3, 2010

Los Angeles Daily News: Rose Parade dress rehearsal


The first Rose Parades featured flower-covered horse-drawn carriages, and related events included polo matches and bronco-busting demonstrations, according to the Tournament of Roses Web site.

In more modern times, officials for the past 20 years or so have organized a separate equestrian event the week before the parade, said Asman. The location and format evolved over time, solidifying into Equestfest, which has been held for the past seven years, she added.

The Department is a big fan of properly executing the term Web site, so this citation for redundancy will contain less snarkiness than the usual post. Credit for good behavior, as it were.

The problem? Evolve means to undergo a process of change or development. Clearly, any process has a time element. So saying something has "evolved over time" is like saying it has "changed over time over time." It's safe to simply say evolved.