From a new report on the TERROR PLOT:
Zazi has publicly denied any terrorist plotting. But a series of searches in Denver and New York City over the past two weeks — including high-profile raids on Queens apartments that netted backpacks, cell phones and a scale — haven’t found any evidence of explosives.
[Emphasis added.]
But!? Shouldn’t that be And? Because, like, the second sentence in that paragraph is consistent with and reinforces the assertion in the first sentence, rather than, like, being incosistent with and weakening the assertion in the first sentence. Do these AP motherfuckers even speak motherfucking English?
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Dr. Jekyll & Mrs. Hyde
September 24, 2009 at 3:48 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
More importantly, what is the distinction between AP’s “backpacks” and the Times’s “knapsacks”? Other than that my mother is the only person I know who uses the word “knapsack.”
El Picador
September 24, 2009 at 4:36 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
knapsack = terrorist (America hater, nonDFH); backpack = Dirty Fucking Hippy (America hater, non-terrorist)
extra credit: bike courier bag = pretentious hipster git (also America hater)
Noadi
September 24, 2009 at 5:07 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Didn’t we all learn in like 3rd grade that starting a sentence with words like “but” is poor form? Leaving that word off (not even substituting “and”) would still make it a perfectly good sentence.
Of course if that “evidence” was anything of the sort it would be even better. I really hope the FBI has more than that and isn’t releasing the information because so far their case seems not just thin but non-existent.
Comrade PhysioProf
September 24, 2009 at 5:18 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
There is nothing wrong with starting sentences with conjunctions. But if you decide to, you want to do so sparingly.
Anonymoustache
September 24, 2009 at 5:46 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
CPP,
You mean, “And if you decide to…..”, right?
Just doing my part to raise your blood pressure…..you’re welcome.
scribbler50
September 24, 2009 at 8:19 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And you’re right, Anonymoustache. But what do I know? Nor should I!
Spiny Norman
September 24, 2009 at 9:33 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Kids, kids. We all know that Physioprof is neither subliterate and tasteless.
Larry H.
September 26, 2009 at 4:34 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I submit that the “But” in the AP article is intentional. This is an elementary journalistic/propaganda technique: The reader will form the impression that the evidence cited is inculpatory, while the journalist avoids charges of actual lying.
The craft of journalism — at least the difficult part — consists of slanting an article against its actual fact. There’s a similar bias in lawyering, but there you can count on an opposing advocate to slant the other way. There is no opposing advocate (at least none of anything like equal stature) to the bourgeois media.
Kowalski
September 26, 2009 at 8:37 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Little things like that that piss me off as well. They distort the truth in a big way and I wish more people would pay attention to how they’re being bullshitted.