The Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal): The Reported Explosion

September 10, 2010

The Reported Explosion

Within just a couple of hours, news cobbled together of the the explosion in San Bruno had gained the attention of the entire world. The BBC News RSS headline, linked to an article on its website, stated, inaccurately, Blaze engulfs San Francisco homes and continued, inaccurately, "Dozens of homes have been set ablaze near San Francisco International Airport, after a reported explosion."

Residents and travelers alike have long noted that San Francisco International Airport is not in San Francisco, but on the shore of San Francisco Bay miles south of the city. If the body of the RSS feed is accurate, and the blaze, caused by a reported explosion, caused dozens of homes near the airport to be engulfed in flames, then its headline is simply wrong, as there are no houses both in San Francisco and near its airport. Complicating matters, the actual homes set ablaze in San Bruno are not only not in San Francisco but not particulary close to the airport, either.

The BBC's RSS feed makes for a crude approximation of the event it points to. "San Francisco" BOOM! would do as well. But it's notable that even garbled word of this local catastrophe was reverberating in London less than three hours after the terrible explosion.

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For some years now I've travelled bumptiously about the internet commenting on other people's blogs under the pseudonym "peter ramus," pointedly and I regret to say at times heatedly disclosing the general shape my own intricately devised misapprehension of current events in contradistinction to the remarkable torrent of misapprehensions made known daily on that medium by everyone else.

Nominally I associate myself as much as possible with the views of those who seem to know what they're talking about, but often enough I find myself obliged, like so many others, to go on about things I'm not in the least qualified to address simply because it is my way when the opportunity presents itself. I find this shortcoming as personally irritating as it is to those I've favored it with over the years, an as yet irrepressible feature of my discourse. Thus the admittedly defensive assumption of the nom de blog, "peter ramus."

"peter ramus" isn't to be confused with Peter Ramus, another fellow entirely, who lived and died a long time ago around the sad times leading up to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France, an event which saw his own undoing in the chaotic days that followed.

He was a zeolot, Peter Ramus was. He had a particular bone to pick with Aristotle over the stuff and substance of rhetoric, which led him to propose revolutionary changes in the subject and manner of teaching which prevailed in higher education in those times. A quaestio was convened, a solemn gathering of all the branches of civil society, to see what was to be done about him. The King sent a man, and the Church sent a man, and of course the University of Paris couldn't help but send one, too. Unsurprisingly, they found overwhelmingly in favor of Aristotle and against Peter Ramus. In addition, it pleased the members of the assembled body to pronounce Peter Ramus personally disagreeable and notably ugly to boot. Strictly as an aside.

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The ideas expressed here, and the words used to express them here, are the ideas and words of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), which is to say "peter ramus," which is to say, me. Naturally, given their ultimate source, the ideas are half-formed at times, provisional always, and subject on mature reflection to substantial revision and, often enough, to outright repudiation by the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), by "peter ramus," and by me.

The words themselves, however, in the precise carnival train order in which they appear, and such original images which may from time to time be displayed here, excepting of course for those attributed materials the provenance of which, as duly noted, originate elsewhere, are owned by and are the property of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," or me, and are subject to the terms of Creative Commons License 2.5 , by which license (in the unlikely event that such words and original images appearing here are taken up and displayed elsewhere) clear attribution must be attached to those words or images indicating their ownership, to wit: the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," but not me.

September 10, 2010

The Reported Explosion

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