Occasional Tales

Perhaps we can send them an irate letter. With the arrival of the 81st dilemma, we only have twenty to go. Today’s dilemma is about a terrorist school which has quite a roll of evil-doing graduates most of whom I have, thankfully, never heard of. They are some rather unsavoury specimens of humanity. It sounds like the school ought to be bombed back to the Stone Age, and I’m sure the Americans, who are busy with their War on Terror, will be wanting to eliminate this place where the merchants of atrocities are trained in their Dark Arts. Except there’s one small problem. It’s actually in America itself (Fort Benning) and is funded by the American government. How ironic is that? The book notes that the American philosopher, John Rawls, observed that the only way to come to an impartial decision is to be ignorant of the players and the effects of the decision. The problem in this case is that the American government takes the view that it can attack you, but you can’t attack it. It might b...

But not the other. I missed this recent post over on Language Log. In my English, "Hurting people loved here" can only mean that the North Park Baptist Church likes to cause people pain, although I understand the other sense which is, to me, strictly American English, or the sort of inanity spouted by British journalists who seem to adopt every Americanism they hear. The church should've stuck with something like "Here to assuage the pain".