Innumeracy At ABC
December 21st, 2008 - 4:41 pm
Pointing to Republican victories in Louisiana and Georgia after the Nov. 4 vote, Republicans are now batting .1000 in the post-2008 era.
I’m going to remember that line every time I see a mediot use the word “decimate” incorrectly…
And in my world, we’re not post-2008 yet either.
Uh… so “decimate” means to break something a whole lot, right?
“Decimate” means “sounds like devastate only more seriouser.”
Frankly, I think since the Roman legions went out of business it’s a word that no longer has any purpose.
Well, if we engineers could control language, ‘decimate’ would always mean “to cut into ten pieces”.
And “batting a thousand” would be replaced with “batting 100%”.
So hopefully we could avoid situations like this, where the writer (and editor (s)) is actually saying that the Republicans are hitting 10%, or “one hundred” in the vernacular.
There probably aren’t 1 in 10 people who use “decimate” properly.
The rest of the article was as bad, including idiot generalizations that the environment is a “key concern to younger voters.”
Not to mention that twit they quoted who said he preferred to “improve” public schools instead of “focusing” on charter schools and vouchers because he thinks the GOP is run by old white men. Yep. That’s logic, that is.
As a younger voter I have to call bulls**t on environmental concerns amongst my age group.
Outside a few activist types, I can’t think of any discussion I’ve heard or had where the environment was a primary topic.