Cisco hyperbole and other foolishness

A recent web ad by Cisco asserts that robot interfaces are part of "pure research".

A Cisco vice-president in a long-running ad on MSNBC claims that the next generation will be able to see whatever they want, wherever they want.  Will that generation be living on another planet?  Apparently you don't need to know much history to predict the future.

Then there is the CNN headline to report that new planets have been found "in the Milky Way".  Did they really think that we are spotting star wobbles in another galaxy?  In the Andromeda Galaxy? The Whirlpool Galaxy?

You might as well report that more species of salt-water fish have been found - and that they live in the ocean.  Or that more craters have been found on the moon - and that they are on the surface.  Or that you don't need to know much to be licensed as a journalist under the law proposed in Quebec ...

The CNN Insider: what CNN did not report

A CNN "Insider" page today failed to give any balanced view of the lies of their "source".

This was the "balanced" CNN web headline:

Group arrested not Christian or militia, insider says
By the CNN Wire Staff
March 30, 2010 9:35 a.m. EDT

which should remove any doubt that CNN is the garbage news of the web.

The Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia web page could not be clearer:

A well-armed citizenry is the best form of Homeland Security and can better deter crime, invasion, terrorism, and tyranny.

Of course, they do not say "better" than whom.  Your elected sheriff?  Your "paid" police chief? Our National Guard? The Coast Guard?  The Civilian Air Patrol? The NY Port Authority?  Protect us where?  In and around the Port of Los Angeles?  Are we not watching a "militia" at work breaking heads and terrorizing families in Teheran?  Is Hezbollah a fiction of the Southern Poverty Law Center?

Here is their previous "measured response" to CNN itself:

[...]

Americans want the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness restored and protected. We don't need to have every facet of our lives micromanaged down to the finest detail.

But there are people at every level of government who somehow think it is their divine right to interfere with, tax, regulate, and confiscate every single aspect of working Americans' lives. This is shameful, and it doesn't have to be this way.

But this is not the only issue causing the very pleasing and expected growth of pro-freedom militia groups. The threat of terrorism or disaster will always loom over our heads. Crime is a constant concern for many Americans. And while the threat of invasion seems at best a very distant, remote one, we would like to help keep it that way.
[...]

Lee Miracle (Weapon M), Coordinator
Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia
Michiganmilitia.com

Are they talking about the NTSB? The FAA? The IRS? The EPA?  In what sense must the "pursuit of happiness" be "restored" ?  Machine guns for all?  Or just assault weapons for militias? 
Further on they state:

If you are a United States citizen (or have declared your intent to become such), who is capable of bearing arms, or supports the right to do so, then YOU ARE the militia

Which non-citizens do they imagine have the right to bear arms in America?  Those who "declare" their support?  Declared where and to whom?  Canadian tourists with hunting permits?

At every level of government? Are they thinking of the Kansas territory and the 2nd Amendment?

Do they propose to replace State police with militia? City police with militia? The FBI with militia?

How will state militias better serve our airports, train stations, ports, fuel depots, refineries? Would they replace the Secret Service?

Can any nutter be quoted as an "inside" source by CNN for world-wide consumption? I can see no difference between the Hutaree web site which I visited yesterday and the SE MI Milita site which I visited yesterday in any "Christian" or "militia" essentials.

Jedi Logic

This morning I was re-reading parts of Donald Davie's "Articulate Energy" on syntax in poetry.

I couldn't help but remember what I had heard on hulu.com as an advert during an episode of "The Daily Show".
Toyota was telling us that they are building cars for us LIKE they always have.  Wrong.  Bad idea.  Don't even start to make a comparison.  Perhaps the writer's thought was to plant the idea of preference, as in, "we do like Toyotas". Why are they not trying to tell us that they will be building cars for us just AS they have always intended and just AS they have so often done in the past?

In conversational English, a medical researcher in a CNN interview says that the treatment results in LESS visits to the emergency room.  He did not say FEWER nor did he mean "FEWER expensive visits."  But he is merely speaking, even if he is speaking as a medical expert.

Now a news report on healthcare legislation before the US House: the journalist tells us that the Democrats have been told "to try and secure passage" of a bill.  A reader conversant in German would not be surprised to write two infinitives - the double infinitive - as many textbooks have been written to try to teach you this curiosity.  We can avoid the construction with "in an effort to teach" or some such.  Maybe they were told to try to secure passage of the bill, but the report sounds like gossip fed to a reporter.

So how does "to try and secure" end up on the internet in a published CNN news report?  I have an idea: the likes of gmail and blog software miss this sort of error.  There is no editor reading the submission from the "contributor" - it simply passes muster as would most any comment from a reader which might be appended to the article.

At what point will internet news be reduced to the accumulating tweets of a Rick Sanchez?  I will try and tell you.  My blog entries are written spontaneously and with minimal edits and corrections - or they do not serve my various purposes.  I post them freely, less as I see fit and often as not as if in a fit.  Some are more fit than others.