Friday, March 12, 2010

If It Sounds Familiar … It’s About To Change

There are some people whose primary objective in life is to change things. The question I am trying to answer is are we better off after the Changers have done the Changing or are we just plain Confused.

Don’t know what I am talking about? Allow me to explain myself…
  • “Meeting” now has become “Meetup” … Why bother? Is this better?
  • “Increase in Taxes” now has become “Revenue Enhancement” … I fully understand the reason for this. It is Taxpayer Deception.
  • “Tax Cut” has now become “Lost Revenue” … (See above bullet).
  • “Adultery” has now become “Encounter with Another Person” … Adultery had a smutty connotation but an Encounter is just one of those things. Heck, Cole Porter even wrote about it in 1935. He was way ahead of his time.
  • “Suspect” has now become “Person of Interest” … It took a lot of TV Detective Show watching for me to figure this one out.
  • “Gas Tax” has now become “Road User Fee” … (See reference to Deception above).
  • What was formerly known as “Pork Barrel Projects” and then became “Earmarks” has now become “Budgetary Tools”.

Here is what got me going on this subject…

  • Recently my newspaper informed me of a story involving a Fire Chief that was on his way to the scene of an accident.
  • While he was on his way to the accident, he died.
  • Did he die of a heart attack?
  • Did he die because he had his own accident?
  • Did he die because he had a stroke?

I can’t tell you why he died because it was reported that he died of a “Critical Medical Episode”. Do you know what that is? I don’t. I can guess but why should I have to guess? Is it not the task of our News Media to take the guesswork out of our information seeking?

The purpose of communication is to communicate. This is really not that complicated. Here are some of the ways in which we communicate: Talking … Emailing … Twittering … Texting … Mailing Letters (remember them?) … Sign Language.

The last category above has a subcategory called, Hand Gestures. These may be the only means of communicating that cannot be obfuscated. There is no doubt about your having been communicated with if someone sends a Hand Gesture your way.

Would I kid u?