cannot be said enough but don't say "I'm sorry" more than once. According to this the apology is diminished by repetition. I no longer think that this is an important rule.

Recently we drove by a traffic sign on the small island where we took our vacation, "Slow down, children's lives matter." We were all annoyed by it and I am not sure why. Was it the use of a politically charged phrase or the self-righteous tone of the sign?

An British exchange instructor asks the students "are you alright?" in place of our "how are you?" and people are taken aback.

Thank you, Tim

Thank you, Tim, for the interesting Open Thread. Please excuse me now as I'm going to make coffee.

Happy Friday!

in the New York Times Magazine that is long and according to people that I respect worth reading when you have the time.
FRACTURED LANDS: HOW THE ARAB WORLD CAME APART - BY SCOTT ANDERSON - PHOTOGRAPHS BY PAOLO PELLEGRIN
There are some images in it and I think that's the way it looked to those who drove into Fallujah. An interview with the author is running now on Democracy NOW. The author interviewed Gadhafi before the Iraq invasion and I just wished people would listen to "dictators" because they do sometimes have an insight that others don't have and just disregard, because you know ... it's a dictator.

Good Morning, NCTim. I like everything about your OT, though I only glanced over it so far.

Also, I had a dream this night and woke up telling myself that I have to give up fighting against my enslavement to the intertubes. I will be the slave for good, a status I have so little respect for. But helas, I am just one of them. Just have to face it and live with it. Sigh.

I'll start:
Thank you for this essay you slutty cock. Sorry for the quick hit and run, but shit, I can't find my pussy cat or my dog, that bitch.

the 374 words the government monitors. Then we all could just randomly, haphazardly drop them into every post making sure they have no relevance to the rest of the post. One or two every line, singly or in combinations. Think how many people we'd put to work. We'd be Job Creators, though I don't expect our taxes to be cut.
(TM Rouser of Fine Rabble for Forty Years)

for the modern day Democratic [absorb and spit your mainstream automaton ass out] Party. Keep on thinking free, c99ers.

Your revolution
gets in the way of my confusion
I need someone to tell me who I am
To keep me under this illusion

"Mainstream Kid"

I'm gonna to fit in
I'm on the list
I'm gonna to get in
Haven't you heard
Don't you know who I am
I'm with the Joneses
I'm their best friend

I came to saturate the market
To perpetuate the hip kid
I was born so I could fall in line
I'm a legend in my own mind
Can I blend in with your kind?

I need you to liberate me
You the masses educate me
Hold my fist into the air
Declare a social victory

You can own me, you control me
Individuality has never stood a chance against you
Jump into the mainstream

Your revolution
gets in the way of my confusion
I need someone to tell me who I am
To keep me under this illusion

I came to separate the classes
To place the fails above the passes
And there has never been a better time to set the bar beneath the masses
Can I blend in with your kind?

I need you to liberate me
You the masses educate me
Hold my fist into the air
Declare a social victory

You can own me, you control me
Individuality has never stood a chance against you
Jump into the mainstream

I need you to liberate me
You the masses educate me
Hold my fist into the air
Declare a social victory

You can own me, you control me
Individuality has never stood a chance against you
Jump into the mainstream

Your revolution
Into the mainstream kid
Your revolution
Into the mainstream
Your revolution
Into the mainstream kid
Your revolution
Into the mainstream

Jump into the mainstream kid

by the way you build your themes, NCTim. Please continue. Thank you.

Good stuff. From the Alternet piece:

For almost 700 years the word ["liberal"] meant generous, selfless, noble, tolerant. When the word began to describe a political philosophy it mostly retained its original meaning. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, aside from being "broadminded" a liberal is someone "favoring political reform tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual."

And then the 1960s happened. The Great Society, and civil rights legislation, spawned a change in the definition of liberal. We began to hear the phrase "bleeding heart liberal" to describe someone excessively softhearted . . . .

Within 20 years the word "liberal" had been demonized. Long-time Chicago based columnist Mike Royko wondered why the term had become so negative if the major criticism of it was that a liberal was too compassionate. He thought the reason was racism. "So I learned that in Chicago, as in many parts of the South and other big cities, the word liberal has one basic, simple definition. It’s just another word for "nigger lover,'" Royko concluded . . . .

The assault on the word "liberal" hit its peak in 1988 during the Dukakis-Bush Presidential campaigns. Coming out of the Democratic convention in late August Michael Dukakis was 10-15 points ahead in the polls. An aggressive campaign orchestrated by Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes attacked Dukakis as a "card carrying liberal," evoking language used by Senator McCarthy in his attacks on leftists as Communists. A highlight of the campaign was a series of ads about Willie Horton, a black man who while on furlough under a program begun when Dukakis was Governor of Massachusetts had raped and killed a white woman.

The strategy paid off. Late in the Dukakis campaign Royko reflected, "Republicans have used [the word liberal] like cops beating a confession out of a suspect. Admit it, Mike Dukakis, you are guilty of being a liberal. Confess, confess." And noted, "Dukakis, who started in the primaries saying he was a liberal, now grimaces when he hears it and says he's not a complete liberal after all."

Always thought it odd, that once the racists had damaged "liberal," lefties settled on "progressive" . . . since the original progressives were glow-in-the-dark racists, favoring eugenics, Jim Crow, immigration strangulation, and unceasing overseas imperial rampages against people with melanin.

More Alternet:

For many of the same reasons the term liberal, once so positive became so negative, the word "welfare" once so positive it was included in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution became a blasphemy.

When FDR promoted the idea that we must collectively accept responsibility for helping those in need the term "welfare" had admirable connotations. Tellingly, the first federal welfare program, Aid to Dependent Children, was part of the aptly named Social Security Act of 1935. But welfare was done in by one of the same forces that did in liberal: racism.

Under President Reagan, who famously campaigned against "welfare queens," the federal government financially penalized states that gave welfare to ineligible families. As if to underline the objective of the initiative, no financial penalties were imposed on states that did not offer assistance to eligible families! . . . .

The word welfare, like the word liberal, had become lethal. A 2006 poll by the National Opinion Research Center reveals how much words matter. More than 65 percent of those surveyed thought government spends "too little" on "assistance to the poor." But when the phrase "assistance to the poor" was replaced with "welfare" only 20 percent thought the government spent "too little" while 46 percent said it spent "too much."

William Burroughs famously observed that language is a virus. I have never understood why the people in the politics don't use that as an excuse, when they "mis-speak": "I was laid low by a virus."

In face-to-face communication, some 80% of your message is transmitted non-verbally. This means that, when you are in a tube, some 4/5ths of what you seek to get across, is not going to travel.

Then there is the fact that the word only dimly reflects the ideal, and neither truly exist.

"I have this beetle here in one hand," Aristotle proclaimed one day, "with a single oval shell and eight jointed legs, and I have here in my other hand this second beetle of lighter hue which has twelve legs and a shell that is longer and segmented. Can you explain the differences?"

"Yes," said Plato. "There is no such thing as a beetle, in either of your hands. There is no such thing as your hand. What you think of as a beetle and a hand are merely reflections of your recognition of the idea of a beetle and a hand. There is only the idea, which existed before these specimens came into being. Otherwise, how could they come into being? And the form of the idea, of course, is always eternal and real, and never changes. What you are holding in what you think are your hands are shadows of that idea. Have you forgotten my illustration of the cave in my Republic? Read it once more. That the two beetles you have are different is clear enough proof that neither is real. It therefore follows that only the form or the idea of the form is susceptible to study, and it is something about which we will never be able to learn more than we already know. Ideas alone are worth contemplating. You are not real, my vain young Aristotle. I'm not real. Socrates himself was but an imitation of himself. All of us are merely inferior copies of the form that is us. I know you understand me."

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_WbC7FUqds]

Things I do when I'm bored, I like to play with a word counter on occasion, in this case I plugged Hill's DNC speech into it.

Top 10 words.

people 36 (0.7%)
us 31 (0.6%)
will 28 (0.5%)
just 25 (0.5%)
america 23 (0.4%)
country 23 (0.4%)
president 20 (0.4%)
trump 20 (0.4%)
me 20 (0.4%)
because 19 (0.4%)
believe 19 (0.4%)

Not sure what it says that me and Trump are tied, but I get the feeling there's a joke in there somewhere, or a jab at which one is the lesser evil.

I've always been fascinated by the words other languages use to express affection.

Especially endearments.

When I went to school for a summer in Florence, I lived with a family and noticed with some amusement that Signore Martelli lovingly called his wife a little onion (cipollina) and his daughter a little strawberry (fragolina).

In a country where food is such an integral part of enjoyment, it made sense it was reflected in their language and what they loved best.

Each other