The server logs at the Merriam-Webster online dictionary have spoken -- "bailout" is the word of the year as much for how often it was looked up than how many industries wanted one. The arbiters of the English language say the trillion dollar word eclipsed favorites from the campaign trail, "maverick" and "vet." (The list comes out just in time for the much anticipated holiday's slow news days.)
But this year's finalists hold the promise of being red meat -- "bailout" for conservatives, "maverick" for liberals -- at the extended-family Thanksgiving Day feast, which just isn't right because the day is supposed to be about turkey (the original white meat).
Of course, if you received an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner this year, you have probably figured out the wisdom behind the prohibition on talking politics and religion in such settings.
But there is an occupational hazard that could send your tryptophan-saturated hearers face down into the jellied salad. Infrastructure.
It is an easy shorthand in the private vocabulary of information technology but both high- and low- culture word watchers don't think much of it.
According to no less an authority than Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Director of the Annenberg School of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania in comments at the fall NASCIO conference, IT's coupling of infrastructure and architecture has little meaning outside of the technology community and is confusing to the very people with whom CIOs and their kin seek to communicate.
MSNBC commentator Chris Mathews agrees. "Infrastructure is an awful word," he gurgled during an early on-air dissertation on the merits of the depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA) and how it may be time to try such a scheme again.
But his cable news colleague Rachel Maddow opened her show early on Monday by enthusing about the opening of the federal spigot under the new administration:
Even with infrastructure worth about 115,000,000 returns on Google, when and if real people think about it, they think about roads, bridges and schools. They don't readily think about the Internet and digital infrastructures. We run the risk of thinking we are part of this new national conversation when we are not. We don't share a common definition of the word, a word it should be noted that nobody really uses in casual conversation anyway.
The final caution can be ripped out of context from The Princess Bride, the 1987 Rob Reiner film that has become a perennial favorite rental on Thanksgiving long weekends. In a recurring exchange with Vizzini, Inigo Montoya calmly intones, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Inconceivable! No, infrastructure.
But this year's finalists hold the promise of being red meat -- "bailout" for conservatives, "maverick" for liberals -- at the extended-family Thanksgiving Day feast, which just isn't right because the day is supposed to be about turkey (the original white meat).
Of course, if you received an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner this year, you have probably figured out the wisdom behind the prohibition on talking politics and religion in such settings.
But there is an occupational hazard that could send your tryptophan-saturated hearers face down into the jellied salad. Infrastructure.
It is an easy shorthand in the private vocabulary of information technology but both high- and low- culture word watchers don't think much of it.
According to no less an authority than Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Director of the Annenberg School of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania in comments at the fall NASCIO conference, IT's coupling of infrastructure and architecture has little meaning outside of the technology community and is confusing to the very people with whom CIOs and their kin seek to communicate.
MSNBC commentator Chris Mathews agrees. "Infrastructure is an awful word," he gurgled during an early on-air dissertation on the merits of the depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA) and how it may be time to try such a scheme again.
But his cable news colleague Rachel Maddow opened her show early on Monday by enthusing about the opening of the federal spigot under the new administration:
President-elect Obama's ... big plan? He's rolling out what amounts to a new "New Deal" to invest in infrastructure. Yes. I've wanted infrastructure to be a sexy political issue for so long now that when I say the word, I can almost hear wakachicka-wakachicka background music in my head - infrastructure, yessss.That last little wakachicka-wakachicka bit has morphed into a downloadable ring tone under the heading of what Maddow calls infrastructure porn.
Even with infrastructure worth about 115,000,000 returns on Google, when and if real people think about it, they think about roads, bridges and schools. They don't readily think about the Internet and digital infrastructures. We run the risk of thinking we are part of this new national conversation when we are not. We don't share a common definition of the word, a word it should be noted that nobody really uses in casual conversation anyway.
The final caution can be ripped out of context from The Princess Bride, the 1987 Rob Reiner film that has become a perennial favorite rental on Thanksgiving long weekends. In a recurring exchange with Vizzini, Inigo Montoya calmly intones, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Inconceivable! No, infrastructure.
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