academics

If ever a bill needed a thoughtful veto. . .

I know how to make a plural form from a proper noun than ends in “s” like say, Jess or Missus.

. . .or ARKANSAS!

Put the apostrophe after the “s” and you’re done. And if you don’t have a clue or aren’t completely sure, don’t go around telling people you are, much less legislating that they do it your way. And then people won’t think you dumb. How hard is that?

This goes for academics, not just lawmakers. Think through your own case before you go setting standards for the whole population. Otherwise you might make apple-arkansauce of the whole mess. Or maybe this prescriptive English professor's argument is just too subtle for me (?)

Apostrophes will disappear because
1) We read and write less now, AND
2) We read and write more now.

The apostrophe may be disappearing in part because students increasingly learn by hearing, rather than by reading and seeing words, and many people communicate electronically, Slattery suggested.

“The culture is more aural than in the past,” Slattery said. “Conventions are evolving for communicating electronically. For many people using e-mail, there is a sense that prose doesn’t have to be technically correct. It’s especially difficult with instant messaging to proofread and to write in standard usage.”

Bush's idea of staying the course is insane on almost all levels. Stay the course on a stagnant economy? Why? Stay the course on global warming? Stupid and a missed economic opportunity! Stay the course on al-Qaeda? Bush STILL doesn't seem to care about catching bin Laden, the man who actually attacked America. Stay the course on Iraq? The course in Iraq is a spiral of violence that is beyond Civil War. Civil War implies two organized sides. Iraq is descending into the chaos of Afghanistan and Somalia, the exact kind of chaos that ENCOURAGES al-Qaeda and destablilizes the entire region.

The latest sign that he Iraq quagmire is an out of control mess that Bush has fumbled about every way he can is the fact that Iraqi academics are being killed at an enormous rate and those who survive are fleeing the nation as fast as they can.

From Salon.com:

Gunmen killed the Shiite dean of Baghdad University's school of administration and economics along with his wife and son on Thursday, four days after the murder of a prominent Sunni academic.

Jassim al-Asadi was driving with his family in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah when unidentified assailants pulled alongside and opened fire, police Lt. Ahmed Ibrahim said.

The shooting follows the killing on Monday of geologist Essam al-Rawi, head of the University Professor's Union and a senior member of the hardline Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have links to the anti-Shiite insurgency raging against U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies.