The road to disaster is paved with wrong math and bad thinking

[Jose Carillo]

October 25, 2009

Dear Fellow Communicators in English,

My critique last week of over-the-top language and bad mathematics in print journalism has drawn a flurry of responses not only from members of Jose Carillo’s English Forum but also from nonmembers—including the expert source of the flood-disaster story in question. As you will recall, I had criticized as “false and misleading” one newspaper’s front-page metaphor of the San Roque Dam’s water releases during Typhoon Peping as “equivalent to a billion balikbayan boxes tumbling at the rate of 5,000 cartons per second.” One argument against my critique was that there could be no exactitude with metaphors since exactness is not the objective, and another argument—propounded by the expert source herself—is that “It is better to underestimate the total water volume rather than to overstate it.” For the rich lessons in language and semantics that can be learned from this clash of views, I have put together in My Media Watch this week all the arguments pro and con regarding my critique of that flawed flood-disaster metaphor.

Also this week, I am pleased to announce that the Forum has opened a new section, “Preparing For English Proficiency Tests,” for the benefit of those preparing to take the TOEIC, TOEFL, IELTS, or similar tests as required by prospective employers or for admission to college or graduate school. Every week, the Forum will present a new set of practice tests in four of the most commonly measured areas of English-proficiency: vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and reading comprehension. Simply click the link to the practice tests for the week and you can start testing yourself.

 

THIS WEEK IN THE FORUM (October 24-30, 2009): 

• My Media English Watch: A Truer, Fairer Picture of the Flood Disasters That Have Befallen Us (The road to perdition is paved with wrong math and bad thinking)

• Special Education Forum: Let’s Now Resume Our Discussions on Education and Teaching in Earnest (We need a quantum leap in the quality of our learning process) 

• How Good is Your English?: Getting Ready to Take English Proficiency Tests (It’s worth your while to polish your English without letup)

• Essays by Jose Carillo: Writing to Hook the Reader (An opera of sorts in four acts)

• News and Commentary: World’s Largest Thesaurus Finally Goes Off the Press (45 years of work yields 800,000 meanings in 4,500 pages!)

• Readings About Language: Clichés are Forever, But What Was That Word at The Tip of My Tongue? (Words in search of meaning, and meaning in search of words) 

• Advice and Dissent: When Adulation Turns into Obsession, Expect Puffiness (The saga of a book meant to stop English instructors from “whoring after strange gods”)

• Time Out from Grammar: Medical Wisdom Isn’t Just Knowledge But a Divine Blessing(This doctor says doctors need a better ability to think about their thinking) 

• You Asked Me This Question: When’s a Verb Not a “True Finite Verb” and What Does That Mean? (It’s when a verb isn’t working as a verb but as something else!)

See you at the Forum!

With my best wishes,

Joe Carillo

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