[2696] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Congress Announces Cure for the AUP Disease
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sean mclinden)
Thu Apr 23 07:19:20 1992
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 07:09:25 -0400
From: sean@dsl.pitt.edu (sean mclinden)
To: com-priv@psi.com, cook@tmn.com
Gordon:
You act as though the language of our Government somehow still surprises
you. If you think that legislation of technical matters is ambiguous you
should look at civil rights and tax legislation. Personally I think that
the Foreign Service should offer mandatory "English as a Foreign Language"
courses for Congress every term.
Maybe then we'll have real legislation for "real" people.
By the way, you might be interested to know that about 10 years ago in
an FAA (it migh have been NTSB but I think more highly of them) document
a fatal commercial plane crash was described as "the unauthorized decent
of the aircraft below the level of the runway."
The Social Security Administration has been known to send letters to
deceased recipients informing them that payments are being terminated
due to the recipient's death but may be reinstated if there is a "change
in status."
Not that the private sector is much better. The New England Journal of
Medicine published an excerpt from the court record of a wrongful death
suit in which the plaintiff's attorney noted that the patient's death
"seriously impacted his ability to earn a living."
The problem, of course, is that this government was not designed to be
managed by professional politicians but by real people; farmers, businessmen,
teachers...Until and unless we get back to that, we are going to have
to continue to suffer under the often amusing and sometimes malignant
accidental and frequently deliberate misuse of the English language in
the form of laws, statutes, and regulations.
Sean
