> Of Jim Elwell >If you want something a bit more thoughtful than >an ignorant thug's take on "American Imperialism":
I think that these debates can be interesting and informed. Unfortunately, the standard of debate is not what I would like. >http://www.techcentralstation.com/091205B.html That was an interesting article that I read from start to finish. The author creates his own Empirical Empire Test that I do not accept. Furthermore, he scores the test himself and produces a 'no' outcome that I think is wrong. However, it is at least a starting point for debate rather than 'A is bad, B is good'. I sympathised with the comment in the article about words being misused and losing value. My own examples include: * 'literally' to mean 'metaphorically' e.g "I literally died when I found out" * 'impact' to mean 'effect' e.g. "The collapse of the Berlin wall had a big impact on those that were there". * certain use of the term 'tsar' as colloquial government job titles in 'drugs tsar'. * certain use of the term 'war' when associated with abstract nouns. As in 'war on terror'. It sounds as ridiculous to me as having a 'war on unhappiness'. Overall the author and I do agree that a certain amount of care with the use of words is important. Terry
