Unpack your adjectives... Weekly wrap-up
by meep
I did go to the public hearing on public pensions issues, and much of what was said is accurately represented in the comment letters submitted ahead of time. No, I did not testify, but then, I am not a pension actuary, public pension participant or trustee. I am somewhat of an outsider, which is the position I prefer to take.
I will write more later, because there was much to digest, and I’m still tired from my trip. If you want to read about the logistics of the trip, you can check it out on my personal blog.
Before the hearing, a story ran in the NY Times, and I’m quoted in it. That quote came from my official comment letter.
A NOTE ON EDITING
Yes, I did get quoted in the NYT, and that was verbatim from my submitted comments. I had help on the letter, and I want to thank the people who reviewed what I wrote ahead of time.
I am not going to make a critique of the composition of the other letters, but I am going to make two remarks:
1. If you are writing something important, that you’re not going to be able to change later, have someone else review it before you put it in public.
For a blog, it’s no big deal. I often catch my errors, but also, I have had readers email me when they’ve caught problems. If you catch an error, feel free to email me at marypat.campbell@gmail.com.
2. Unless you work in medicine or sex education, I want you to do this right now.
Remove the word “pubic” from your spellcheck dictionary. Here’s one how-to guide, but you can just google it.
You’re welcome.
And no, I’m not going to link to the letter where the person could’ve used this advice. You find it yourself. This is a problem when writing about public pensions. A lot.
You might want to do this for any number of sensitive words, because spellcheck catching it would at least require a conscious choice that you want that specific word in your writing.
By the way, evidently Apple has done something like this for their autocorrect function.
THANKS TO REFERRERS
Thanks to all the people who referred to STUMP this week.
- Wirepoints, covering Illinois issues – Mark Glennon and Nancy Mathieson in particular
- Pension Tsunami by Jack Dean, covering public pension issues for ten year
- The Other McCain, though it is specifically Wombat-socho who links here
- …The wikipedia entry for Jehovah?! What? I don’t know what that’s doing in my logs.
Also to the tweeps who retweeted me, though unfortunately I can’t round those up as easily as my referral logs.
Linking to stuff from my referrers:
- Mark Glennon from Wirepoints was on The Financial Exchange, WKRO Boston
- As well, Mark wrote a piece as to why Michigan’s approach to Detroit schools is even better suited for Chicago.
- Wombat does the linkages at The Other McCain, but the highlight of the week is Rule 5 Sunday. If you are unfamiliar with Rule 5, check this out on how to get 1M hits on your blog.
Alas, I generally don’t follow rule 5.
Finally, Jack Dean of Pension Tsunami — I linked to the site itself, but here is Jack talking to reason.tv five years ago on public pensions and unfunded liabilities.
As I wrote in my letter, these disasters are decades in the making. Just because it takes decades for the final collapse does not mean the collapse isn’t coming.
Have fun parsing that one.
