8 ms·
Bills are always named like this. It's just something short to put on a sign.
by caryhartline 11y ago
Bills are always named like this. It's just something short to put on a sign.
- Balgair 11y agoNames have no meaning? I'm pretty sure that's dystopian.
- stephengillie 11y agoIt's a primary key, a handle for the thread of the bill, a (human-friendly) designation. Even important CVEs get named.
- rmxt 11y agoImportant CVEs get names like "Heartbleed" and "Shellshock" which are straightforward in their negativity, and reflect the severity of their underlying nature. I understand that we need a human readable/writable title for this bill, but putting "freedom" on this bill is polishing a turd of a policy (bulk collection). It obscures the actual values at stake with the consideration of this bill.
- vinceguidry 11y agoIt's a hard problem. When coding, I have to come up with sufficiently descriptive names for all methods, all internal variables, all classes, all modules to fit those classes in. Sometimes I feel the urge to cheat, to give less than fully descriptive names for things. Inevitably, this comes back to bite me when I go back to revise the code and find I can't immediately understand what the code is doing, and the first thing I find myself doing is renaming poorly-named constructs. Congress has very different constraints when naming bills, but the end result is the same, adding the burden of a hard-to-do-right, yet high-visibility responsibility to already-overworked staffers. I'm not surprised at all that the names for most bills are sappy and nondescript.
- tetrep 11y ago>Congress has very different constraints when naming bills, but the end result is the same... You speak as if they're making an honest attempt to give the bills meaningful and accurate names. They want the former, not the latter. The PATRIOT Act, like the USA FREEDOM Act and many other bills, is purposefully misnomed in an attempt to hide what the bills does and to dissuade voting against it. "You wouldn't vote against patriots or freedom, would you?"
- dragonwriter 11y ago> The PATRIOT Act [...] is purposefully misnomed in an attempt to hide what the bills does and to dissuade voting against it When discussing the manipulative nature of the naming of the act in question, its perhaps useful to get the name right: it's not just the PATRIOT Act, its the USA PATRIOT Act, and USA PATRIOT isn't the full name, its an acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism".
- bookface 11y agoWow, that is, appropriately, a tortured backronym.
- npizzolato 11y agoI'm reminded of this line from Agents of Shield: Maria Hill: What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for, Agent Ward? Grant Ward: Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Maria Hill: And what does that mean to you? Grant Ward: It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out "shield."
- timtas 11y agoOrwellian, to be precise.
- zo1 11y agoIndeed, that's precisely what first popped up in my head when I read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak
- timtas 11y agoIndeed. I was thinking specifically of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak