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Showing posts from September, 2010

Nine Eleven et al

There is a peculiar tendency for humans to summarize memorable ideas or events or moments in some catchy phrase or anagram - media airheads certainly do their part to contribute to this - they also have a word for that - sound bites. Apparently the origin of this word is credited to Samuel Langhorne Clemens aka Mark Twain. There again I am not sure what it is with this pen name nonsense. Mark did not like his given name or what? What was wrong with Samuel? Pelham Greenville Wodehouse did not seem to mind that - although he is fondly remembered in some circles as PG or his own family refered to him as Plum. Anyway getting back to this idea of catchy terms '9/11' is one such - I think about it because we are on the cusp of the anniversary of a horrible tragedy in American and World history - something dramatic in many ways yet in the scheme of things not comparable to say the genocide in Africa or the mass killings in former Yugoslavia. But somehow the media outlets had