Brevity
Dear Short Winded Correspondents:
This is an extraordinarily short issue, so I'll be short, too.
What do you see in this YouTube video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow4RU6PtslY
)? The Metro police say that what the video shows is a man in his
seventies, in a wheelchair, resisting arrest and assaulting the police
officers who were trying to arrest him for drinking in public. Watch the
video and watch the NBC Channel 4 news story about the incident ( http://tinyurl.com/449puqk
), and then thank goodness for ubiquitous video cameras on the street.
Here's a footnote to the introduction to last Wednesday's issue of
themail, about the difficulty the mayor is having managing his press
conferences. There was important news that Mayor Gray could have
announced last Wednesday, and that would have overshadowed any other
items that caused him difficulty. On that day, the mayor issued a
Mayor's Order that froze new non-personnel spending by the District
government. It “requires agencies to get additional approval from the
Executive Office of the Mayor to spend local funds for supplies,
materials, contractual services, subsidies, and equipment. Salary and
other personnel costs are not affected.” But the mayor did not
announce the order at his press conference. Instead, the spending freeze
was announced only in a press release the next afternoon, on
Thursday ( http://tinyurl.com/3p2qhb2
). (The version of the press release on the DC government web site is
dated Friday, May 20, but it was released and originally dated on May
19.) So here's more unsolicited and unwanted advice for Mayor Gray.
Don't try to deflect attention away from bad news by avoiding it at your
press conferences and hoping that it will be buried in press accounts.
Shine a spotlight on bad news. Admit it and show that you're grappling
with it.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Drummer’s Circle in Malcolm X Park on Sunday
Afternoons
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
The DC community is at its very best when we gather together for the
drummer’s circle in Malcolm X park on Sunday afternoons at 5:00 p.m.
If you haven't experienced this yet, see the YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--CAJM2IIOo
If you have visitors from out of town, please take them to this
community event. Thanks are owed to John Pitt for shooting and editing
this video.
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I wrote, “it applies only to narrow streets, less than 30 feet
wide.” You changed this [in themail, May 18] to, “narrow streets,
fewer than thirty feet wide,” and I object! That is pretentious
nonsense, and I am embarrassed to find it in writing attributed to me.
“Fewer” is used for individual, countable, discrete objects, e.g.,
“fewer than 30 balls.” “Less” is used for continuous quantities,
such as a measure of distance. Yes, you can have half a foot, or a tenth
of a foot, or 30.159 feet, or whatever fractional quantity you like.
It's a continuous measure, so the correct adjective is “less,” not
“fewer.” Using “fewer” in that context is only a failed attempt
at grammatical sophistication. I'm embarrassed to be apparently guilty
of that.
[Jack is right on the main point: the sentence should have read,
“less than thirty feet wide,” and my alteration to “fewer than
thirty feet,” was an error. I think the rule can be better stated,
however. The test for using “less” or “fewer” isn't whether a
number is of a continuous measure or not. The general rule is that
“less” is used for things that can be counted, while the exception
to the rule is that “fewer” is used with measurements of time,
amount, and distance. Jack cited Oxforddictionaries.com in a separate
E-mail to me: “Less is also used with numbers when they are on their
own and with expressions of measurement or time. . . .” That can still
lead to some confusion; Jack can have less than a dollar in quarters,
while I have fewer than four quarters. But as for being pretentious, moi,
pretentious? Mais non. — Gary Imhoff]
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
National Building Museum Events, June 6
Stacy Adamson, sadamson@nbm.org
June 6, 8:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m., How can we use data to improve our
cities? A one-day forum with experts from across the country to explore
the evolving, deep-rooted connections between technology and ever
expanding cities — from education and energy to government, public
health, and transportation. Join as experts — planners, policy makers,
tech professionals, academics — share ideas about using technology to
make cities better places to live and work. Network with the
practitioners and visionaries who are using technology to make cities
more livable, sustainable, and efficient. The day-long forum begins with
a keynote conversation at 8:05 a.m. with Richard Stengel, managing
editor, TIME Magazine (moderator); Anne Altman, general manager, IBM
Global Public Sector, leader of IBM's Smarter Cities initiative; Judith
Rodin, president, The Rockefeller Foundation; and Nancy Sutley, chair,
White House Council on Environmental Quality, discussing our national
priorities for creating today's intelligent cities.
At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square
Metro station. $100 members, $150 nonmembers, $45 students. Prepaid
registration required. Nonmember registration includes a one-year
individual membership to the National Building Museum. For more
information, visit go.nbm.org/IntelligentCitiesForum or call 272-2448.
This event will be simultaneously broadcast on the web through www.nbm.org.
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