Odds 'N Ends

1. Repentant Phelps: "I Made a Mistake"

This Phelps.


Not this one.

Yawn.



2. "Yes on 8" Doesn't Mean What She Thought It Meant


In other news, sorry but this made me laugh.

Like I said before, sometimes celebrities should just stick to what they do best.


3. How Not To Give An Apology

Generally, an apology is an admission of error coupled with an expression of regret. Some people, unfortunately, believe that apologies are just something that other people make them do when their otherwise legitimate expressions are "negatively received" by overly-politically correct people who lack senses of humor.


4. Annoying Use of Passive Voice

In Chicago, there have been a series of attacks at a Metra train station. In describing one of these attacks, ABC writes:

"The woman resisted a sexual assault and she was thrown into the path of a train."

Nope. Wrong. The woman was not "thrown" on to the train tracks. Somebody threw her onto the tracks.

I don't agree with the journalistic tendency to maximize the victimhood of women and minimize the fact that perpetrators, other human beings, are committing these crimes. People don't just walk to work and get themselves assaulted. Other people assault them.



5. Only in America?

Is the rise to power of someone coming from a "stigmatized ethnic minorit[y]" group something unique to America, or is the phenomenon "an uncommon but regularly recurring part of history"?

Macon over at Stuff White People Do makes a convincing case that it's the latter.