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Showing posts from April 7, 2016

Actually, the truth isn't up to them

There it is, in black and white, on page 782, between gullet and Gulliver . Actually, it's not there, which is cause for worry. In the brand new fifth edition of the classic American Heritage Dictionary , the word 'gullible' is missing. A significant defect. Clearly, they need to recall all of the books they've already printed. Sandy Williams, head of the division at Houghton Mifflin that publishes the book, was clearly working hard to avoid the cost of a recall. "It turns out," he was quoted as saying, "that our lexicographers found some significant evidence that cast doubt on whether or not it's even a word. We decided, in an abundance of caution, to leave it out of this edition." That's the warning sign... when the rationale/logic/story happens after you've decided what you want to do, not before. This relentless reframing of the truth into something else causes us to not ask the right questions, it prevents us from unde