Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!aioe.org!feeder.news-service.com!feeder1.cambriumusenet.nl!feed.tweaknews.nl!209.197.12.246.MISMATCH!nx02.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!69.16.185.16.MISMATCH!npeer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!news2 From: Michael Wojcik Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Class.forName().newInstance() vs new Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:53:53 -0400 Organization: Micro Focus Lines: 53 Message-ID: References: <95ho4qFd7cU1@mid.individual.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: p23622517a2ed476e186ad980a35e4e4e03325e8550b70a7d.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.23) Gecko/20090812 Thunderbird/2.0.0.23 Mnenhy/0.7.5.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:5503 Arved Sandstrom wrote: > > The point being, I've found that obfuscatory English is used as a weapon > to disguise incompetence and inefficiencies, or worse. I've seen some > pretty horrible wastage of taxpayer money precisely because muddy and > weaselly English let all the players wriggle out of accountability, and > often enough even get rewarded for their previous disaster. > > So that's why I like clear English. This worry is ancient, of course, if we can substitute other languages for English. It's the overt root of the battle between the Periclean rhetors (Plato, Socrates, Isocrates) and the Sophists: the Pericleans claimed that ethics was inherent in rhetoric, and so using language to persuade to an incorrect end was an unethical use of language (and not just an unethical act in general), while the Sophists argued that it was fine to formulate an argument in favor of an unethical end, if your broader purpose was good.[1,2] This argument over the coupling of rhetoric and ethics is older than the ancient Greek rhetors - you can find versions of it in various ancient cultures [3] - and it continues to this day [4]. But whether you think ethics inheres in rhetoric (like Plato) or not (like Gorgias), you can dislike ill uses of rhetoric, of course. [1] The classic example is the Sophist Gorgias' "Encomium of Helen", a fairly short and entertaining essay about why Helen of Troy was a pretty good kid after all, and not the villain traditional Athenian lore made her out to be. [2] The *covert* reason for the acrimony between the Pericleans and the Sophists was that the latter were foreigners, come to Athens to steal all the good rhetoric jobs. Periclean Athens did not have a limit on H1-B visas. [3] I think there's at least one example in the collection _Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks_, but it's too hot to go dig that out right now. [4] A well-known recent example is Katz's work on the rhetoric employed in technical documents by Nazi scientists.[5] [5] ObAntiGodwin: Note that there is no *comparison* to Nazis, etc, here, so Godwin's Law does not apply. -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University