Anyone who’s read a couple of posts here knows that I’m hung up on the use of language. But part of my exquisite beauty is that I can also get hung up on science.
Today, I present a combination of the two. A misuse of a science term. Slate, which I like (and link to from the main page) allowed the following sentence to be published on their site, in this otherwise boring article:
“Even if a six-hour flight … turns into an 11-hour … ordeal, it’s still light-years faster than a cross-country train or car ride.”
No. No no no. And again I say, no.
Just don’t use the term “light-year” if you don’t know what it means. I’m not asking you to learn it, but just don’t use it. Avoid it. Pretend that it’s any other word you don’t know, like “macled” or “orography.”
I may sound hypocritical, since I surely, occasionally, misuse words right here on weeklyrob. But I’m allowed to make hideous errors because I’m just writing a blog that 8 people read. Slate writers, and Slate editors, need to do better.
Especially a Slate writer who, in the second ellipsis of the quote above, threw out a “look-at-my-culture” reference to Hieronymus Bosch. Like, if you’re gonna be all arty and shit, could you please get the science right, too?
As has been noted many times, there seems to be a Cultural Type who gets all wound up that people don’t read Shakespeare, for instance, but then thinks it’s unimportant to know the basics of science. Not knowing the Dutch painters is a sign of ignorance beyond belief, but it’s cool to shrug at “conservation of energy” or to use “light-year” as if it means a measure of time.
Note to Slate: Next time, just say that it’s really really so much faster. I know that sounds kinda dumb, but it’s a lot smarter than what you said.
I read her use of the word as a colloquial synonym for “lots more”, as in “light-years beyond”. Which I know is a different, but it seems to me like she’s so internalized “light-years” as meaning “lots more” that she didn’t realize she switched “faster” for “beyond”, not that she didn’t understand what a light-year is. Although I reserve the right to be completely wrong.
But the point of his sentence is that people fly, even though it’s a huge pain in the ass, because it’s so much faster than any other mode of transportation.
The whole point is speed. He doesn’t know what it means.