The Ubiquitous Grammar Cop

Here are the opening lines to "Black Cow", sung to the tune of Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog": Got vanilla ice cream Got some root beer too. Gonna mix it well Gonna make it smooth... (Jimmy Page guitar riff)

President Ronald Reagan once said, “The government isn’t the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” He said that in the firm belief that privately owned enterprises, for-profit companies and non-profit organizations could provide goods and services better than the government could (presumably at any level). This ignores the fact that the primary goal of a privately owned business is to make profit. The secondary goal is to serve the public good. If a business provides a product or a service that the public values, they will satisfy its primary goal while fulfilling the secondary goal. Some organizations that serve the public good, the government (in principle) and non-profit organizations like charities for example, do the same thing as for-profit entities for much less cost since their primary goal is to serve the public good. In our economy where private enterprise supplies all of the products (material goods) while public entities provides us with basic services that...

With Iowa, Maine, and Connecticut joining the ranks of Massachusetts in recent weeks saying gay couples should enjoy all of the legal benefits afforded to heterosexual married couples, other state legislatures show they want to follow suit. There is one state in particular, New Hampshire, that triggered the memory of an argument I made in an essay about five years ago. The governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch, recently vetoed a bill passed by the state's legislature calling for Marriage Equity for gay couples (civil unions are legal for gay couples in New Hampshire). He did so because he felt the bill, as passed by the New Hampshire legislature, did not do enough to protect the significance marriage has in religious institutions. According to Governor Lynch, "I have also heard, and I understand, the concerns of our citizens who have equally deep feelings and genuine religious beliefs about marriage. They fear that this legislation would interfere with the ability of religiou...

This is why I enjoy Fark.com.

I am amazed at the reaction I've seen so far about the recent influenza outbreak. Schools closed their doors to prevent the potential spread of the virus, businesses are complying to the point of overcompensating with the guidelines submitted by the World Heath Organization (WHO) which issued a Level Five alert on 29 April 2009, and the public behaves as if it were listening to an Orson Welles radio program from October 1938. While this event gives me cause for concern (just like any flu season), I fear that this flu frenzy, spurred on by hyperactive media outlets, will make people behave more irrationally that they presently do. So far I have seen plenty of precautions taken by my place of employment. I've also read reports of actions taken so far by organizations, public and private, to minimize the spread of this virus that leaves vigilance behind heading towards hysteria. Because of this, I wonder what may happen if the fever pitch (pardon the pun) continues to rise. Will ...