A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work - The only comment I'll make

Sep. 21st, 2007

02:32 pm - The only comment I'll make

Ugh. I can't believe this is an AP headline.

"MIT coed with fake bomb 'art' arrested"

Problems here:

Co-ed is an outmoded term. I am pretty sure that the AP style guide explicitly stated this when I studied it over a decade ago. Do they make an exception for headlines? If so, what difference does it make what gender the person was?

There was no fake bomb. It was a sweatshirt modified to have a light-up message, and by all accounts one that the person frequently wore. But every other headline is saying the same thing, and such was the best general knowledge in the first few moments after the arrest, so I can give this a reluctant pass. I'll be pissed if it sez this in tomorrow's print newspapers, though.

I know that putting 'art' in quotes is ostensibly the headline writer saying that someone in the story is quoted as calling it art, but it ends up just sounding really snotty, as in my two year old kid could do that or whatever.

Tags: boston, idiots, journalism, terrorism

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Comments:

From:	metahacker
Date:	September 21st, 2007 06:41 pm (UTC)

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This just in -- "Hack with fake news 'story' excoriated". :-P

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From:	chocorisu
Date:	September 21st, 2007 07:03 pm (UTC)

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I can see why they get called scare quotes, when hack journalists/editors use them inconsistently. If it said:

'MIT coed with "fake bomb art" arrested'

(as it really should) then it would be perfectly OK. After all, it's only a fake bomb according to a couple of people as well.

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From:	surrealestate
Date:	September 21st, 2007 07:06 pm (UTC)

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Co-ed is an outmoded term.

Seriously. I am always stunned when I see/hear this used.

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From:	prog
Date:	September 21st, 2007 07:11 pm (UTC)

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It's appropriate if you're trying to emulate the prose style of, like, Playboy magazine in 1973, but otherwise I'm just nonplussed.

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From:	cortezopossum
Date:	September 21st, 2007 08:31 pm (UTC)

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I have to wonder if the 'art' was one of these ATHF LED bomb/signs.

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From:	ron_newman
Date:	September 21st, 2007 09:04 pm (UTC)

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co-ed is appropriate only if you're describing the first or second entering class of a former single-sex school that just started admitting both genders. (Which obviously isn't MIT.)

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From:	prog
Date:	September 21st, 2007 09:26 pm (UTC)

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Yes, and only in a context like "the first co-ed class in Furbrush University's 500-year history". Even then you wouldn't call an individual from that class a "co-ed".

I give a little bit of benefit-of-the-doubt to headline writers who are trained to do everything they can to conservice horizontal space, and "coed" is a narrower word than "student". But still.

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From:	cortezopossum
Date:	September 21st, 2007 08:33 pm (UTC)

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I've heard three other news reports call this a 'fake bomb'. When AP goofs their goof tends to propogate.

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From:	hrafn
Date:	September 21st, 2007 09:04 pm (UTC)

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"Co-ed" - what is this, the 1950's?

I suppose the "fake bomb" bullshit is because of her being charged with having a "hoax device."

On the other hand, I think I know what to say for the next little while when people ask where I'm from: "Oregon." (See, I've been wondering how accurate that is any more, when I spent far more of my adult years in Boston than Oregon.)

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From:	keimel
Date:	September 21st, 2007 09:19 pm (UTC)

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Good thing there were no refrigerators around. Who knows what boston would have done to those.

(this is only pertinent because these two incidents occurred on the same day. One city over-reacted as is their norm, the other city did not)

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