Dictionary.com provides the following definition for DEI:
Abbreviation for
diversity, equity, and inclusion: a conceptual framework that promotes the fair treatment and full participation of all people, especially in the workplace, including populations who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination because of their background, identity, disability, etc.
How can anyone not be for that?
The 100th anniversary issue of The New Yorker is now out. The cover date is “Feb. 17 & 24, 2025.” Excepted for the cover price (15¢ instead of $9.99) and date (“February 21, 1925¨) the cover seen on the newsstands duplicates that of the first issue. The anniversary issue also carries a stylized and centered “100” below the masthead. The current issue, we are informed is “VOLUME CI, NO. 1.”
I must confess that, upon receiving the magazine, whether electronically or physically, I first search out the cartoons. In doing so, however, I sometimes pause to read an article I cannot pass up before completing my cartoon-reading first pass through the issue.
Appropriately, current editor David Remnick has written “Comment” at the top of “The Talk of the Town” titled “Onward and Upward.” I recommend reading Remnick’s brief history of the magazine. It is both informative and occasionally quite humorous. Samples:
I have been raising oxalis for 50 years. I have often taken photos of complete plants. Such pictures usually look like an explosion of leaves (green or purple) and flowers (white or lavender). Only today did I think of taking a close-up of oxalis flowers. The result can be seen below. I’m pleased with the result.
Multiple flowers branch off from a single stalk. The flowers are about an inch wide.
Increasingly, I am encountering advertisements describing a particular computer program (or, more commonly, a phone program) as a software. One might hear of “a powerful software” or “a convenient software.” This is not the traditional use of the word “software,” and it is an unfortunate neologism. I have been dealing with software for six decades, and I find this new way of using the word jarring.
What is software? Software is the stuff used with hardware to make computing devices work. Software is the collection of instructions that tell computers and computer-like devices what to do. Hardware, on the other hand, is the physical machinery that carries out software instructions. To be useful, those instructions are collected into programs for a particular purpose.
Traditionally, programs for computers are either applications or operating systems. Applications (“apps” on phones and, increasingly on computers) do useful work for users. Examples are Chrome, Word, Acrobat Reader, etc. Operating systems control the hardware, making it easy to control applications. Examples are Windows, iOS, Android, etc. (The earliest computers lacked operating systems and were exceedingly difficult to use.)
Applications are the entities sometimes being called softwares. But applications are made from software. Calling an application a software is like calling a short bridge a “concrete.” Perhaps a more useful analogy is to be found in underwear. People put on their underwear; they don’t don their underwears. If I buy T-shirts or briefs, I am buying underwear, not underwears.
Please don’t try to expand the meaning of “software.” Doing so is not useful.
I signed up for the Clifton Springs Library book club the other day. We meet Thursday to discuss this month’s book, The Booklover’s Library by Madeline Martin. The early chapters of the book are set in Nottingham, England, in 1939, where residents are preparing their houses and persons for a war they hope will not come. In Chapter 5, however, England declares war on Germany, and the prospect of wartime catastrophe is suddenly no longer theoretical.
I had never thought about England’s domestic actions before entering World War II, a disaster that was both anticipated and prepared for. On this day when President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on our nearest neighbors and biggest trading partners to extort actions from them he deems desirable, it was difficult not to feel the sort of dread felt by Ms. Martin’s characters. Like them, I was fearing a second Trump administration before January 20, but that catastrophe is now upon us and will be for some time to come. Without reading the rest of the book, of course, I know that England survives. I am less certain about the the United States.
I’ve had a busy morning. I began by writing a brief note to The Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, telling her how much I appreciated her plea to President Trump to have mercy on people who have been justifiably frightened by his pronouncements and apparent intentions. I am always gratified when there is a public indication that Christianity is not always that of Evangelicals seemingly ignorant of the Gospel message.
I did not expect to speak to Tenney, of course, but I thought her office staff might have ready answers to one or more of my questions. That seems not to have been the case, and I couldn’t really be upset by that. I was assured that the congresswoman would get back to me.
I was surprised that the staffer who answered my call did not ask me who I was. He did, however, ask me if I were a constituent. I told him I was and gave him my name. When I tried to offer my address, he stopped me before I finished. It was not clear how the congresswoman was going to get back to me. Perhaps, because of my previous e-mail communications, the staffer had my contact information readily at hand.
I likely will eventually get a letter from Congresswoman Tenney in response to my telephone call. Such communications are usually standard responses that don’t address the specifics of my inquiries and parrot standard GOP talking points. I hope I made the point, however, that this constituent has serious concerns about the early actions of the second Trump administration.
