Cicero Agrees with Me!

A while ago, I wrote a post about how I don't see political flip-flopping as such a big deal. My Latin teacher set me up with these selections from Cicero:

...numquam enim in praestantibus in re publica gubernanda viris laudata est in una sententia perpetua permansio....

...for persistence in a single permanent opinion among men [sic] active in the governance of the republic has never been praised....

Familiares 1.9.21

and

nemo doctus umquam ... mutationem consili inconstantiam dixit esse.

No educated person has ever said that a change of mind was inconsistency.

Atticum 16.7.3

Obama - "Seven"

This is a great ad from the Obama camp in response to a question from Politico asking how many houses McCain owns, to which he responded, “I think — I’ll have my staff get to you.…It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.” This is a major gaffe by McCain, and the Obama camp will get tons of mileage out of it.

Annoyances

These things annoy me, although not a lot. Still, though, what's up with this?

The phrase "not to mention" is a blatant lie.
I saw a magazine to day that was entitled "History Today." Really? I think they should re-name it "History a While Ago."

The Media

Have you ever wondered where the word "media" (sg. medium) derives its meaning from? Well, I didn't either, but it hit me in Latin class today (I started school yesterday). It derives from the Latin "media," an adjective meaning "middle." From this comes the word "medium," both in the sense of size and in the communications/art sense. The plural of the latter meaning is media, which we use to refer to the conglomeration of radio, TV, newspaper, blogs, etc. So why, exactly, does a word like "medium" derive from a word meaning "middle?" It is because the media are intended to take the middle ground and to be unbiased. In the truest sense of the word and its etymology, the media have failed and done so miserably.

Who "Wins" the Olympics?

Personally, I agree with the IOC here, in that competitions are between athletes not countries. Nonetheless, how to rank countries has always been a source of contentious debate. Here's my modest proposal: Assign 3 points to gold medals, 2 to silvers, and 1 to bronzes. This weights each medal fairly, gives recognition to silver and bronze winners, and is, well, fair. By this count, as of right now, it's China: 184, US: 162. There you go, media, free advice, just for you.

Line of the Week 6

This passage comes to you from Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope.

"And yet I find myself returning again and again to my mother's simple principle—'How would that make you feel?'—as a guidepost for my politics.
"It's not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit. We wouldn't tolerate schools that don't teach, that are chronically underfunded and understaffed and underinspired, if we thought that the children in them were like our children. It's hard to imagine the CEO of a company giving himself a multimillion-dollar bonus while cutting health-care for his workers if he thought they were in some way equals. And it's safe to assume that those in power would think longer and harder about launching a war if they envisioned their own sons and daughters in harm's way
"I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current policies in favor of those people who are struggling in this society. After all, if they are like us, then their struggles are our own. If we fail to help, we diminish ourselves."

Photo of the Week 13

This photo, too, comes from the first small batch of photos from Maine I've uploaded to my Flickr account. I'm going to upload those photos... eventually.