My irrational prejudices

So I’m drafting a precise, unimpeachable experimental design, right? I’m gettin’ my passive sentences on, right, when I am reminded of probably my greatest linguistic prejudice these days. I hate it when people misuse the word “random.” It’s not even that I’m some science weenie — it’s just, people, look: words have meanings. That’s probably the hallmark of symbolic language. Respect that. Don’t go misappropriating entirely innocent concepts just because you’re not creative enough to come up with a more fitting phrase. “Random” doesn’t mean “unusual” or “funny” in the same way that “beg the question” doesn’t mean “raise the question,” “jejune” doesn’t mean “childish,” and “dog” doesn’t mean “cat.” Don’t try to “language is a dynamic thing” me, either — to call a simplification of the language in which unique meaning is lost “evolution” is to … well, to be remarkably stupid. You can’t see it, but I am sneering.

Would you believe that’s not actually the point of this post, though? I believe I had a story going. Right, yes: typing up an experiment, hating on “random”… oh, yeah. So anyway I decided to do something to further my cause, and to do something in as vigilantist a manner possible. So I decided to visit http://randomblog.blogspot.com (a URL which, based on the epidemiological prevalance of the “random means non sequitur” bug, I was certain must exist) and use the “flag objectionable content” button to express my distaste. Hey, it offends me.

Okay, we’re closing in on the point of this story. Anyway, the blog is so old, and so not recently updated, that it still features the old-school Blogspot layout. Haven’t seen that in a while — isn’t the top banner ad quaint? Clicking the “Remove this ad” link shows how times have changed. I used to have the same ad on my first blog, about a year or so later. Ahhh, nostalgia.

Right, so the Point: Blogs were better in the Old Days. Whenever bloggers talk about the Old Days, incedentally, it’s best understood to mean “those days before you, the reader, had a blog.” It’s kind of how we feel good about ourselves.