Doug-at-large

Compare these two article snippets about the same event. One, from the New York Times, is much like most you will find all over the Internet:

“A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest struck deep inside the heavily fortified International Zone on Thursday, killing eight people when he detonated inside the Parliament building just a few feet from the main chamber.”

Now read the same incident, as reported by Fox News:

“A homicide bomber detonated himself inside the Iraqi parliament cafeteria Thursday, killing at least eight people — including three lawmakers — in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified, U.S.-protected Green Zone, an American military spokesman said.”

Note that only Fox News insists on calling bombers who kill themselves in order to gain the access needed to kill others “homicide bombers” instead of “suicide bombers”.

They do this because it fits into some weird, crypto-conservative philosophy at Fox that I don’t quite understand, where they don’t want to acknowledge that the terrorist is committing suicide in performing the act, or something like that.

But it is a weird phrasing. Homicide is understood in a terrorist bombing. So calling them “homicide bombers” doesn’t provide any added, useful information. However the phrase “suicide bomber” does provide very useful information; it explains the tactic used and goes towards explaining how an otherwise impossible terrorist attack became more possible to accomplish (since it is always harder to stop someone who is intending to die themselves).

Fox News’ use of language does a disservice to its readers and listeners by inadequately informing them, and twisting the English language around to fit some strange political agenda of their own.

doug

It’s a little hard to take a video with one hand and play with Hao-chan with the other, but you can see she is clearly fetching the tissue for me!

Here is Hao-chan reading a magazine with Hirokazu.

Hao-chan is learning to use the Mac.

I am not buying tradesport shares yet, but my early thinking is that the Democratic candidate will be Hillary.

I support both Edwards and Hillary at the moment. I think Edwards positions on most things are most in line with my own, but Hillary is also a very reasonable candidate.

Anyway, the reason I think Hillary has the best chance of winning the nomination is because of the way the really huge state primaries have all been moved up to February 5th (!). This gives the best chance of taking it all to the most popular candidate at that time. I think that is Hillary, much more so than Edwanrds and more so than Obama.

As far as the Republican side goes… it is still too early to tell. They have a very open, very odd nomination on their hands. The person raising the most money so far is, contrary to logic, the person with some of the smallest poll numbers - Mitt Romney. I hope Romney gets the nomination. If Republicans thought they had a field day with Kerry for so-called “flip-flopping” the Democrats will be in flip-flop hog heaven if they are battling against Romney, who changes positions on fundamental (pun intended) questions practically on a daily basis.

On the other hand, I hope Giuliani gets the nomination. He is a walking, talking time-bomb.

McCain seems to be wearing thin on Republicans this time around, for some reason. At least a McCain vs Clinton race would be very clear-cut on issues and we might even see a campaign with some civil discourse for a change.

doug

Hao-chan is a Java Sparrow. Welcome to Tokyo, Hao-chan.

doug