Via comments on a post at Crooked Timber, an article in the Globe and Mail about a tribe in the Amazon that not only doesn’t have a numbering system, they also don’t have clearly defined words for colors. Adding weirdness to weirdness, they also change their names on a regular basis. The thrust of the article is that the lack of number names interferes with their ability to count. There’s a whole literature in linguistics about this and the larger issue of how language influences thinking, though the subject has fallen into disfavor. I suspect that the truth of the matter is that language severely constrains thought, in that it’s easier to conceptualize things for which you have a word, but does not completely limit it (or where would new words come from? – the concept has to precede the word).
Incidentally, if you’re interested in this question, check out the logical langauge group. They are developing and promoting a language based on formal logic with the explicit intention of exploring the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Bob Dole says that Bob Dole is skeptical about his friend Senator Kerry’s Purple Hearts. He’s not very kind to his friend Senator Kerry in general:
…what I will always quarrel about are the Purple Hearts. I mean, the first one, whether he ought to have a Purple Heart — he got two in one day, I think. And he was out of there in less than four months, because three Purple Hearts and you’re out.
[Update a couple minutes later]
This Boston Globe editorial is simply mind boggling:
Kerry, on the other hand, may have done more than Dole to qualify as a genuine war hero. Although his tour in Vietnam was short, on at least two occasions he acted decisively and with great daring in combat, saving at least one man’s life and earning both a Silver Star and a Bronze Star. That’s not our account or Kerry’s; it is drawn from eyewitnesses and the military citations themselves.
Ignoring, of course, the much greater number of eyewitnesses who dispute it, and the possibility that the citations are based on false testimony.
And this bit is amazing as well:
Rather than seeking debate, however, this group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is attempting political assassination, claiming in ads and a best-selling book that Kerry is “Unfit for Command.” In many cases the charges conflict with statements the same men made in the past. Sometimes the allegations contradict documentary evidence.
“Rather than seeking debate”? They’re eager to join in a debate, but the media refuses to interview them for the most part. It’s John Kerry who is resisting debate. He won’t even address the charges, instead slandering them and accusing them of being Republican attack dogs.
Anyway, on to the relevant part of the Dole interview with Wolf Blitzer:
Lileks has some appropriately cruel and hilarious commentary on the latest fashions.
For young men, true high style: $30 John Deere shirts or T-shirts with typefaces from the “Mork & Mindy” era, worn with a brown knit cap I’d wear only if I were missing part of my skull and wanted to keep my brain warm en route to the hospital. The shirts remind you of that glorious era of grunge. Plaid. Ratty plaid. You remember grunge! That’s when Dame Fashion required healthy, happy people to look like they had inherited the contents of a Salvation Army dumpster filled with the clothes of heroin-addicted lumberjacks.
Enjoy the whole thing.
Here’s an interesting interview with Brit Hume, with an extensive discussion of his take on media bias.
The incompetence of reporting continues to amaze me. This story says in its headline that one of Kerry’s crewmates is upset about the Swift Boat ads, but when one reads the story, it turns out to be about Rassman, the Green Beret that Kerry pulled out of the water (hint, reporter Robynn Tysver, Kerry’s “crewmates” were in the Navy).
It’s a minor thing, but it’s just another example of reportorial sloppiness (and sloppiness that somehow always, always, redounds to the benefit of Kerry).
[Update a few minutes later]
Whoops, spoke a little too soon. The dam may really be starting to break. Newsweek has a piece on the Kerry’s Bronze. It’s the first investigative piece that I’ve seen that actually discusses what happened, instead of who is making the charges. In fact, they refreshingly point this out themselves:
Obscured by all the political maneuvering is the truth of what really happened 35 years ago.
Yes, heaven forbid anyone actually dig into that.
As Ed Morrissey points out, this story is problematic for Kerry’s narrative, because his helmsman is now admitting that he can’t remember whether there was fire from the shore when they pulled Rassman out of the water. The Swift Boat Vets all claim that there was not. This is a key element on which the award of the medal was based. Ed also points out other inconsistencies with the Kerry version about boat damage, and says that Kerry and Edwards are hypocritically squealing like schoolgirls over this.
Fred Barnes just predicted that Arnold will call Democrats “girlie men” in his convention speech, and that it will bring down the house.
I hope he does. It was pretty funny to see him stir up the hornet’s nest in Sacramento (and San Francisco) the last time, in which they all got outraged and acted as though they were going to hit him with their collective purse.
If the Dems are smart, they’ll be figuring out a way to respond ahead of time that doesn’t make them look ridiculous, so they’ll be ready for it this time. But so far, they haven’t shown much sign of being smart.
That’s the only word I have for this piece from the AP. It’s a compilation of all of the Dem talking points in a single article. As someone at Free Republic said, they’re not even attempting to pretend to be objective any more. There’s an amusing howler in the first graf:
John Kerry’s Vietnam War service records run to multiple medal commendations and a notation of “conspicuous gallantry” in combat. President Bush’s file tracks the stateside career of a National Guard test pilot. Yet the combat veteran is the one under attack as a wartime pretender in the race for the White House.
The National Guard has test pilots? And George Bush was one of them? Who knew?
Apparently not David Espo.
Of course, if he was smart enough to know the difference, he’d also know that a test pilot has a much lower life expectancy than a Swift Boat commander in the post-Tet-offensive Mekong Delta of late 1968, after much of the Viet Cong had been wiped out.
The last line in the paragraph somehow reminds me of Monty Burns grumbling after he loses the race for governor: “Ironic, isn’t it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election. And yet, if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail! That’s democracy for you.”
Read the whole thing, and be amazed.