{"id":5942,"date":"2004-05-06T13:29:49","date_gmt":"2004-05-06T17:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/05\/06\/bite-size-buts-bag-1-2\/"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:58:48","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:58:48","slug":"bite-size-buts-bag-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/05\/06\/bite-size-buts-bag-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"BITE-size BUTs &#8230; bag #1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1447'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Some quickie Blurbs from the yaBut guys: <\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/MinusSignblack.jpg\" alt=\"minus sign black\" \/><\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><SPAN><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><STRONG>Brain-Dead Nomenclature<\/STRONG>: The <A href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/science\/nature\/3495433.stm\">press<\/A>, the <A href=\"http:\/\/www.abanet.org\/journal\/redesign\/05nbrain.html\">ABA Journal<\/A>, along with many&nbsp;<A href=\"http:\/\/www.legalreader.com\/archives\/001813.html\">bloggers<\/A>, have adopted the in-apt and inept terminology <STRONG>Brain Fingerprinting<\/STRONG> for the process of&nbsp;&#8220;reading the brain&#8217;s involuntary electrical activity in response to a subject being shown certain images relating to a crime.&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp; Even if Dr. Larry Farwell, chief scientist and founder of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, chose a catchy rather than accurate phrase to help sell his device, there&#8217;s no excuse for lawyers or journalists to aid and abet his linguistic crime.&nbsp; <\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI><br \/>\n<DIV><SPAN><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">&#8220;brain&#8221;&nbsp; After thinking about it for&nbsp;maybe a minute, <EM>skepticalEsq<\/EM> suggests that this appears to be <STRONG><EM>image recognition<\/EM> testing<\/STRONG>.&nbsp;&nbsp;Wouldn&#8217;t that, or similar,&nbsp;terminology communicate the concept to the public more precisely, without being too arcane for acceptance in everyday language?&nbsp; Earlier this year, <A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/01\/11#a493\">ethicalEsq complained<\/A> about calling DNA identification&nbsp;procedures &#8220;DNA fingerprints&#8221;.&nbsp; The term &#8220;brain fingerprinting&#8221; seems to be even less helpful and more confusing.&nbsp; <\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/DIV><\/LI><\/UL><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><SPAN><A href=\"http:\/\/www.corplawblog.com\/archives\/000333.html\">Corp Law Blog<\/A>&#8216;s&nbsp; <STRONG>Mike O&#8217;Sullivan<\/STRONG> didn&#8217;t even mention this website [or its predecessor], when whining about his weblog&#8217;s comparative treatment at the hands of Evan Schaeffer.&nbsp; Mike, &#8220;Better Abused Than Ignored&#8221; is the motto around here (but, don&#8217;t try this at home).<\/SPAN><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><SPAN><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/pluskeyneg.gif\" alt=\"plus key neg\" \/><\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><STRONG>Scheherazade<\/STRONG> is thinking about setting up a (tentative) <A href=\"http:\/\/civpro.blogs.com\/civil_procedure\/2004\/05\/imaginary_lunch.html\">imaginary lunch<\/A> with <EM>Your Humble Editor<\/EM>.&nbsp; Cool.&nbsp; And, not even fattening.<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><STRONG>Evan Schaeffer<\/STRONG> included <EM>ethicalEsq<\/EM> in his list of &#8220;useful&#8221; weblogs.&nbsp; See <A href=\"http:\/\/www.legalunderground.com\/2004\/05\/ibj_article.html\">Blogging Evangelist<\/A>. [Evan didn&#8217;t even complain about the frequent name changes at this website URL.]<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">The <STRONG>Federal Trade Commission<\/STRONG> is finally&nbsp;suing a&nbsp;<A href=\"http:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/opa\/2004\/05\/ncc.htm\">&#8220;debt negotiation&#8221; firm<\/A> for its unfair, deceptive and harmful financial&nbsp;&#8220;services.&#8221;&nbsp; The firm is also the first respondent sued for violation of the federal&nbsp;Do Not Call Registry.&nbsp; [We won&#8217;t even point out that we wrote to the Director of the FTC&#8217;s Bureau of Consumer Protection at the end of 1997, complaining about a virtually identical debt reduction-negotiation scam.&nbsp; The FTC took no action against the offending &#8220;law firm,&#8221; which subsequently took millions of dollars from perhaps 20,000 financially distressed customers, while ruining their credit.]<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><\/FONT>&nbsp;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">The <A href=\"http:\/\/www.llrx.com\/columns\/grammar10.htm\">Grammar Goddess<\/A> <STRONG>Diane Sandford<\/STRONG> has recently covered several topics of importance to lovers of good language and diction.&nbsp; For example:<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<UL><br \/>\n<LI><br \/>\n<DIV><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">&nbsp;&#8220;If you want a simple rule guaranteed to improve your writing, try this: Avoid the words <I>very<\/I>, <I>really<\/I>, <I>truly<\/I>, <I>quite<\/I>, and <I>thing<\/I>. Rarely do these words contribute to a sentence.&#8221;<\/FONT><\/DIV><br \/>\n<LI><br \/>\n<DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\"><FONT color=\"black\" size=\"2\">&#8220;Skill in writing consists of having at command <STRONG>an array of synonyms, together with a sense of their fitness<\/STRONG>.&#8221;<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV><\/DIV><br \/>\n<LI><br \/>\n<DIV><br \/>\n<DIV dir=\"ltr\"><FONT face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">&nbsp;She also offers a very good lesson in <A href=\"http:\/\/www.llrx.com\/columns\/grammar9.htm\">Comma Sense<\/A>.<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/DIV><\/LI><\/UL><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/SPAN><\/DIV><\/FONT><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some quickie Blurbs from the yaBut guys: &nbsp; Brain-Dead Nomenclature: The press, the ABA Journal, along with many&nbsp;bloggers, have adopted the in-apt and inept terminology Brain Fingerprinting for the process of&nbsp;&#8220;reading the brain&#8217;s involuntary electrical activity in response to a subject being shown certain images relating to a crime.&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp; Even if Dr. Larry Farwell, chief [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1xQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13846,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942\/revisions\/13846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}