“The fuel tax thing impacted the wrong way,” Keith Olbermann said when commenting on Senator Hilary Clinton’s strategy of proposing a fuel tax relief–effectively short term relief. Senator Obama seemingly chose correctly when he chose otherwise. At least this is Olbermann’s point of view. We might be able to say that the “demand for such [...]

The word “thing” can be used with good effect. See Keith Olbermann, “The Fuel Tax Thing” next posting. However, when used indiscriminately, as had a Los Angeles television reporter while reporting on a fire threatening the ruin of nearly completed condominiums, “things” like using language to actually name a solid object can cause alarm. [...]

A friend recently asked for an interpretation of the following sentence:
“For every one year, the debt per capita rises $1139.”
She posed the question: Does the sentence unequivocally means the same as:
“For each additional year, the debt per capita increases by $1139″?
My Response: Yes, I believe it does mean this. Other [...]

n a recent outing for brunch my wife asked my mother whose name is Loraine if she had enjoyed her quiche, which happened to be Quiche Lorraine. Amusingly, the cadence of the words in the query might have made it unclear whether my wife actually addressed my mother by her name. The written question would [...]

David Lazarus in a recent Consumer Confidential column in the Los Angeles Times quotes Michael Shames of the Consumer Action Network on the “duopoly* of “two titans battling for the hearts, minds and wallets of consumers.” The two competing titans are posed as cable versus telecom, sort of like Coca Cola versus Pepsi Cola.
Lazarus writes [...]