You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March, 2004.
Good news…I passed the interview for becoming an interlocuter for the Cambridge Exams. I’m attending a training session on Saturday (8h – 14h) and if all goes well, I’ll be a new examiner for this exams season.
Awaking to a Dream
March 28, 2004
The New York Times
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I have a confession to make: I am the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and I didn’t listen to one second of the 9/11 hearings and I didn’t read one story in the paper about them. Not one second. Not one story.
Lord knows, it’s not out of indifference to 9/11. It’s because I made up my mind about that event a long time ago: It was not a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of imagination. We could have had perfect intelligence on all the key pieces of 9/11, but the fact is we lacked — for the very best of reasons — people with evil enough imaginations to put those pieces together and realize that 19 young men were going to hijack four airplanes for suicide attacks against our national symbols and kill as many innocent civilians as they could, for no stated reason at all.
Imagination is on my mind a lot these days, because it seems to me that the only people with imagination in the world right now are the bad guys. As my friend, the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen, says, “That is the characteristic of our time — all the imagination is in the hands of the evildoers.”
I am so hungry for a positive surprise. I am so hungry to hear a politician, a statesman, a business leader surprise me in a good way. It has been so long. It’s been over 10 years since Yitzhak Rabin thrust out his hand to Yasir Arafat on the White House lawn. Yes, yes, I know, Arafat turned out to be a fraud. But for a brief, shining moment, an old warrior, Mr. Rabin, stepped out of himself, his past, and all his scar tissue, and imagined something different. It’s been a long time.
I have this routine. I get up every morning around 6 a.m., fire up my computer, call up AOL’s news page and then hold my breath to see what outrage has happened in the world overnight. A massive bombing in Iraq or Madrid? More murderous violence in Israel? A hotel going up in flames in Bali or a synagogue in Istanbul? More U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq?
I so hunger to wake up and be surprised with some really good news — by someone who totally steps out of himself or herself, imagines something different and thrusts out a hand.
I want to wake up and read that President Bush has decided to offer a real alternative to the stalled Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming. I want to wake up and read that 10,000 Palestinian mothers marched on Hamas headquarters to demand that their sons and daughters never again be recruited for suicide bombings. I want to wake up and read that Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invited Ariel Sharon to his home in Riyadh to personally hand him the Abdullah peace plan and Mr. Sharon responded by freezing Israeli settlements as a good-will gesture.
I want to wake up and read that General Motors has decided it will no longer make gas-guzzling Hummers and President Bush has decided to replace his limousine with an armor-plated Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that gets over 40 miles to the gallon.
I want to wake up and read that Dick Cheney has apologized to the U.N. and all our allies for being wrong about W.M.D. in Iraq, but then appealed to our allies to join with the U.S. in an even more important project — helping Iraqis build some kind of democratic framework. I want to wake up and read that Tom DeLay called for a tax hike on the rich in order to save Social Security and Medicare for the next generation and to finance all our underfunded education programs.
I want to wake up and read that Justice Antonin Scalia has recused himself from ruling on the case involving Mr. Cheney’s energy task force when it comes before the Supreme Court — not because Mr. Scalia did anything illegal in duck hunting with the V.P., but because our Supreme Court is so sacred, so vital to what makes our society special — its rule of law — that he wouldn’t want to do anything that might have even a whiff of impropriety.
I want to wake up and read that Mr. Bush has announced a Manhattan Project to develop renewable energies that will end America’s addiction to crude oil by 2010. I want to wake up and read that Mel Gibson just announced that his next film will be called “Moses” and all the profits will be donated to the Holocaust Museum.
Most of all, I want to wake up and read that John Kerry just asked John McCain to be his vice president, because if Mr. Kerry wins he intends not to waste his four years avoiding America’s hardest problems — health care, deficits, energy, education — but to tackle them, and that can only be done with a bipartisan spirit and bipartisan team
One final post before we switch to Daylight Savings Time. I’ve just returned from a great weekend trip to Finland.
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On Wednesday, Jessica told me that she had scheduled me to work at 8h30 today. I told her that that wasn’t a good idea, as I had to photocopy an exam and pack for my weekend away, but she refused to budge on it. Great. I predict that it’s not going to be a good day.
Still no power. I guess I’ll go to work, there should be power there.
The power just went out. The only reason I noticed was because my space heater turned off. I thought it had died, but then saw that the ‘not running on battery’ light on my laptop was also off. I hope it’s not off too long.
‘At the End of the Day’ Tops Cliche List
Yahoo News
LONDON – At the end of the day, it’s the most irritating cliche in the English language. So says the Plain English Campaign which said the abused and overused phrase was first in a poll of most annoying cliches.
Second place went to “at this moment in time,” and third to the constant use of “like,” as if it were a form of punctuation. “With all due respect” came fourth.
“When readers or listeners come across these tired expressions, they start tuning out and completely miss the message — assuming there is one,” said Plain English Campaign spokesman John Lister.
“Using these terms in daily business is about as professional as wearing a novelty tie or having a wacky ring-tone on your phone.”
Lister said people should follow the 1946 advice of writer George Orwell: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”
The Plain English Campaign, which offers annual awards for good use of the language, surveyed its 5,000 supporters in more than 70 countries for the poll.
Other terms that received multiple nominations included: 24/7; absolutely; address the issue; around (in place of about); awesome; ballpark figure; basically; basis (“on a weekly basis” in place of “weekly” and so on); bear with me; between a rock and a hard place; bottom line; crack troops; glass half full (or half empty); I hear what you’re saying; in terms of; it’s not rocket science; literally; move the goal-posts; ongoing; prioritize; pushing the envelope; singing from the same hymn sheet; the fact of the matter is; thinking outside the box; to be honest/to be honest with you/to be perfectly honest and touch base.
Formed in 1979, the Plain English Campaign is an independent group that campaigns against cliches, jargon and obfuscation, particularly in official and public documents.
