KNOWLEDGE
IS POWER.
CONTEXT
IS OMNIPOTENCE.
JOHN THE
OBSCURE ™
By John Ruch
©
2010
Editorial
Comments [Is that the best title you could come up with?]
Coincidence does not equal significance, so I’m not sure what to make of the fact that I recently came across two instances of editorial comments fossilized within published works where they clearly were not supposed to be retained. [That is not true. You have an inkling that this is relatively common in this digital era when everyone is an amateur publisher making professional-looking amateur mistakes, the same way that web page design wrecked a century of sensible layout principles like a 2-year-old melting crayons on a radiator.] I will merely report them.
The first was in the latest issue of the “Massachusetts Law Review”:
…Further privacy protections by way of privilege or evidence disqualification are found in the common law and in state statutes relating to attorney-client communications, marital and parent- child communications, clergy communications, mediation, medical examinations and communications, and in limitations on discovery obtainable from the Commonwealth in rape cases. Absence of the privileges can lead to abstention from recourse to the justice system and substitution of self-help remedies to abate grievances or for retribution. [I do not understand this point. For example the spousal privilege, when asserted, keeps the witness spouse from being compelled to testify. In other words, that witness is not available for trial. How would removing that privilege “lead to abstention from recourse from the justice system”?]….1
The objection of this devil sitting on the author’s shoulder, as it were, is answered in a footnote presumably elaborated after seeing this comment. But the footnote, too, has retained an editorial comment:
…The term ‘privilege’ is used loosely in this instance. The statute bars compulsion of the spouse’s or a child’s testimony, i.e., makes such witnesses unavailable. A husband or wife might hesitate to seek court or police aid absent such protection against compelled spouse or child testimony. [This is an incorrect statement of the law. I suggest simply deleting it rather than explain the difference between spousal privileges which can be waived, and spousal communications that cannot be waived.]
I suggest deleting editorial comments before an article is published, or better still, asking such questions in a separate document. In any case, it appears that the author either never satisfied the editor, or the incorrect version of the entire piece was published.
We would expect less from a cell phone manual than from a law review, but editorial notes are a great leveler. The manual for LG’s new Rumor Touch is almost plaintive rather than pushy in describing the phone’s “My Stuff” folder: “This folder contains all applications, games, ringtones, wallpapers, and ringback tones. Need some one to provide proper verbiage.”2
Indeed. [And to delete it as well.]
1 “Secrets of Governments, Enterprises and
Individuals Affecting Access to Justice” by Jerry Cohen in “Massachusetts Law
Review,” June 2010, Vol. 93, No. 1, p. 226. The article also elsewhere retains
a smaller editorial question: “…participation [in what] by thirty eight state
and local Information Fusion Centers….”
2 Online at www.virginmobileusa.com/resources/phones/prepaid/manual/lg-rumor-touch.pdf. The error is on p. 37. Incidentally, while LG failed to delete this verbiage from its manual, it did manage to delete the entire manual, and any reference to its existence, from the actual phone’s packaging. Puzzling how the heck to install the battery, I googled up this manual.
Posted Aug. 22, 2010.
N
N N N N N
Mantissas added
as fact and fancy warrant.
You asked for
it. Archives of the greatest answer-man column in history.
90
MINUTES CLOSER TO BEING DEAD
Movie Reviews
from
N
N N N N N
Get off the Internet and read
a book. John currently recommends:
“In a Glass Darkly” by Sheridan Le Fanu
N
N N N N N
LINKS
Cocktail
Party Physics // This Godless
Endeavor
(the Iraq War
through the prism of heavy metal) // Female Science Professor // Wounded Warrior Project (your tax dollars are doing
the damage. pony up some more to help fix it.) // Wikidumper // Cerebral Wasabi (one of those magical people
with whom I think I probably have nothing and everything in common) // Emily Short’s Interactive Fiction (chatbot deluxe) // William Poundstone (still telling secrets)// Cake Wrecks (let them wreck cake) // Museum of
Animal Perspectives (because
YouTube and TV already show us enough of our own animal perspective)// IFoughtTheLaw (we’re the future—your
future)//
Lucy Lawless (quit preaching and fight!) // Yaka-Wow! (the proper form of address
when greeting a baroness who wants to be the next Tipper Gore)// Feminist Headbanger (i’ll see your testosterone
and raise you an estrogen)// S.T. Joshi (loving the craft)
All
Web site contents copyright 1998-2010 by John Ruch. All rights reserved.
John
the Obscure ™ and Stupid Question ™ are
trademarks of John Ruch,
Web
assistance by He Who Shall Not Be Named.
Web
hosting by www.modwest.com.
Biographical
information: John Ruch is not the former prior of Inchmahome.
Why
are there giant letter Ns all over your Web site?: Because you are viewing it
in Firefox rather than IE. “John the Obscure” consists of Word documents
optimized for easy printing-out on your boss’s printer. So get with the MS
conspiracy!
This Web site does not deliberately
collect, keep, transmit, sell or otherwise use personal viewer information in
any way. No mailing lists are compiled and no mass e-mails are sent out.
Personal communications to Mr. Ruch may be retained to stoke Mr. Ruch’s ego and
be fondly looked at in his old age, unless they’re mean. Site traffic may be
monitored, but any personal information, including IP addresses, will be
completely ignored and not purposely recorded by Mr. Ruch in any way. The
hosting site, www.modwest.com,
does gather some site traffic information and maintains it for webmaster
convenience. Contact the hosting site for its privacy policy. Please report any apparent abuses both to Mr.
Ruch at the address above and to the hosting site. Mr. Ruch is not responsible
for the content and policies of external sites, including the hosting site and
sites reached through advertising links. The appearance of paid advertisements
on this site does not constitute endorsement of advertised products. All
content and opinions on this site are solely those of Mr. Ruch and anyone
otherwise directly cited and do not necessarily reflect the interests and
opinions of any organization, group, acquaintance or employer with which Mr.
Ruch might be affiliated. Secret government surveillance of and intrusion into
this and other sites is possible under federal “anti-terrorism”
legislation; Mr. Ruch will immediately
publicize and condemn such actions, if detected, on this site, and quote the
First Amendment before his military tribunal. Information is for reference
purposes only; readers are encouraged to think for themselves and act at their
own risk.