Posthuman Blues

I receieved evidential support for yesterday's space-marginalization theory while listening to NPR on the way to work. A newscaster was declaiming the headlines in perfectly spoken English. Then he arrived at a story about NASA's continued failure to meet safety requirements. He started stammering, as if even speaking the words "space shuttle" was somehow beneath him or extraordinarily taxing. He paused, continued fumblingly, and stumbled over simple words for the rest of the the monologue in a pained "let's get this over with" voice. He was barely understandable.

Apparantly the media is so divorced from anything remotely "futurist" that it has a latent fear of its very vernacular. This is most apparent with the word "alien." Three simple syllables -- you'd think there's no room for error. Yet professional speakers manage to mispronounce "alien" as "ellian." Have you noticed this? Pay attention the next time you're watching a cheesy news clip on extraterrestrial life.

Along with "ellian," there's a depressingly large crowd that calls NASA "Nasaw." Where the hell is the "W" coming from?

Which brings me to another point: groups of letters such as "FBI" and "CIA" are not, contrary to popular belief, acronyms. An acronym is an abbreviation that's pronounced as a word, like NASA or SCUBA or OSHA. I always thought this was pretty basic stuff until I started working corporate jobs, in which any combination of letters is passed off as an "acronym." (Has George Carlin addressed this? He should.)

And let's not forget the contingent that insists on saying "ideal" when it means "idea." I personally don't think a society that literally can't pronounce "idea" will ever come up with any genuinely good ones.

"I could say more, but you get the general idea."

--Morrissey, "Daghenham Dave"