Yvette's Inner Geek Blog: CNN needs and editor

When I read the local Sunday newspaper, the Daily Herald, I've become accustomed to grammatical and spelling errors. It's not a big city newspaper, and I know that they don't pay their employees an extraordinary amount of money... for these reasons, I accept the fact that I will see glaring grammatical and spelling errors as part of my $1/week subscription. Just don't ask me about accepting the newspaper's url: http://www.harktheherald.com/

I've always had a knack (or perhaps a compulsionk?) for pointing out errors in written publications. I almost threw out the mass paperback edition of "The DaVinci Code" because I was so pissed that it made it to the Bestseller list and still had spelling errors. I'm not always a perfect writer myself, and anyone who wants to find errors in my past blog posts (or even this one) will probably be successful. I'm not perfect, but I'm not an idiot.

Which leads me to the reason for this little rant: an article on cnn.com. "Sen. Clinton: God got me through marital strife - CNN.com" was already a little grit-my-teeth as I wonder why our supposed secular nation obsesses so much over the religious beliefs of presidential candidates. The real irritant of the article is at the end:

"The danger of using good verses evil in the context of war is that it may lead us to be not as critical as we should about our own actions," Obama said to applause.

I, too, applaud Barack Obama for his statement. But I throw smelly, stinky poo at the writer and the editor(s) who didn't catch the error of verses vs. versus.

Rargh! Hulk smash. Hulk think CNN.com better than that. Hulk angry Hulk wrong.

Comments

I assume that title was purposefully ironic?

Posted by: WithaK | June 5, 2007 08:22 AM

Yes, of course!

Posted by: vetters | June 5, 2007 07:33 PM

Actually, Obama SHOULD have said: ...it MIGHT lead us to be LESS critical THAN we are concerning our own actions. But obviously, the use of verses versus versus in the write-up was a profound mistake.

Talking about VERSES - the Geek Test is seriously lacking in learning what real 'geeks' are - I don't consider Mr. Gates to be a geek - he's just a very canny salesman. But an Architect / Engineer / Artist such as Santiago Calatrava is something else. On your standard test, he would probably score close to zero. BUT when you examine his work, that's something else - consider the flying wings (made of concrete) above the Milwaukee Art Museum - to control the amount of light entering the galleries - or his telecommunications tower at Barcelona - it's called Montjuic - or even the Alamillo Bridge in Seville, Spain, crossing the Guadalquivir river..... or even the space frame he made for his PhD dissertation defence. Some people believe he is the greatest architect alive today - possibly a Geek God?
And now to verses: Real Geeks are multidisciplinary. Perhaps your test should require that all real geeks, must be engineers, scientists, techies of whatever kind,in addition to their primary technical discipline should have at least on additional discipline AND should also include a real artistic ability? So here is short example - a sonnet. It's title?

POET-ENGINEERS

War's become a dirty business: today
Romance is dead -efficiency's the word,
Not glory. Soldier-poets had their say
In Gloriana's time, their lines - absurd,

Forgotten now. So what new thinking-ground
Should such minds choose today - to cut a swath,
Have fun, yet make their way, while conscience-bound
To not descend to crime, avoiding wrath

Of Society outraged - though heaven knows
Hypocrisy is rife in every walk of life -
Poets find, choosing groups to join or throw
Aside, whichever way they choose makes strife.

Companies these days have little time for seers -
D'you think they've room for Poet-Engineers?

Neill Edwards.

Posted by: Neill Ed | June 13, 2007 07:27 AM