Ineptocracy

From Papa Mike:

This word may well apply to the youth(s) of America who are currently protesting in our streets for something they can’t verbalize well at all. They seem to want a continuation of the free ride that mommy and daddy have provided them all their lives. Sorry boys and girls, the real world is about real work and production of something else besides rhetoric, BS and virtual computer games. It’s time to grow up and join the producing (working) adults of America.

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Ineptocracy (in-ept-o-cra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

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JUST A LITTLE NOTE ON BOOLEAN SEARCHES (“SAY WHAT??”)

I was reading a sort of grammatical treatise on prepositions when I encountered a remark about someone not knowing the difference between the words “errant” and “arrant,” the latter of which I had never, to my knowledge,  heard.

(I almost never use Google.  Bing, to me, in spite of being from Micro$oft, does not embed advertisements posing as “hits,” but places them to the side, out of my way.  Bing accepts Boolean searches, which is what this note is ultimately about.)

Back to the subject:  I typed ARRENT ERRANT into the search box and pressed Enter.  All of my results had something to do with arrest warrants because the string “arrant” is part of the word “warrant.”  In order to rid my results of returns based upon that subject, a Boolean search was needed.  A Boolean search is a little like an algebraic equation.  It allows one to include or exclude specific strings of letters (or words) by specifying how the search engine is to handle your input.  Some search engines will respond just as well to your use of operators such as NOT, while others will only return correct “hits” if you use mathematical operators, such as the minus sign.

Lost yet?  Here’s the simple way I narrowed the search results to a more manageable herd:  I added the terms –ARREST –WARRANT (the capital letters are immaterial except for clarity in this note) and pressed Enter.  Bing eliminated all search returns with those words, but did still show ads at the side based on them.  Go figure.

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On The Star Spangled Banner

While the words to The Star Spangled Banner are both historic and inspirational, it is quite obvious from its arrangement by many singers of today that, with respect solely to the score, one might benefit from imbibing some form of alcoholic beverage before attempting to either sing it or listen to it.  The music was, in fact, taken from what what was originally an English drinking song:  http://www.colonialmusic.org/Resource/Anacreon.htm.

That said, I do not side with those who would change our National Anthem due to peacenik philosophies.  It is simply so that I might actually enjoy singing it that I would prefer America The Beautiful, followed by God Bless America.  (I think we’ll have to hurry to change our ways if we want the latter!)

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