#528 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Wednesday December 7)
Good morning,
PHILOSOPHERS CORNER
Today, I’m moved by the words of two brilliant philosophers. The first, Ralph Waldo Emerson, is the famed American transcendentalist. The other, Reinhold Niebuhr, is not as well known but just as brilliant. Niebuhr, an American minister, was a public intellectual and realist, who won the Presidential Award of Freedom in 1964. He chastised religious liberals and conservatives equally for their naivete and their dogma. One of his most famous lines is "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true, or beautiful, or good, makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
GRAMMAR CORRECTION QUIZ
Here are some excerpts from one of the Wall Street Journal articles called “find the flubs,” because of errors in grammar in their published stories. They are followed by the reasons why the grammar was incorrect. See how you do:
Quiz (find the flubs)
Once thought of as the ultimate depreciating asset, some car owners are finding their vehicles are worth as much as—if not more than—they originally paid for them, dealers and analysts say.
“The reality is that misinformation is still spreading like wildfire in our country, aided and abetted by technology platforms,” Dr. Murthy said on Fox News Sunday.
Going back to the time of its purchase of Bank One in July 2004, which brought Mr. Dimon to its executive suite, JPMorgan Chase’s shares have produced a total return of 524%.
Asbestos trusts established by bankruptcy courts have dispersed billions of dollars in recent decades to victims of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related cancers.
The traders took turns driving coffles of heavily shackled, ill-clad, barely fed chattel as many as 1,000 miles on foot.
Answers
Dangler alert (technically, a disjointed appositive). We made it sound as if car owners were once a depreciating asset.
True, he said it on Fox News, and on a Sunday, but we meant the show called “Fox News Sunday”—so as with any TV program, it should have been in quotes.
A dangler. The shares didn’t buy Bank One.
Disbursed, we meant, not dispersed (which is what you do to a crowd). Several disperse/disburse phrases are programmed to be caught by the Tansa spell-checker.
We meant as much as or as long as 1,000 miles since it is a measurement, not as many as. The latter is just like fewer as opposed to less than—reserved for whole, countable items like M&Ms on a table. But miles and other distances are continuous (not experienced in whole miles at a time).
Have a great day,
Glenn
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