Good and Bad Cryptic News

So, I got the inevitable bad news last week: My cryptic was rejected by the Times. Their criticisms were very fair, and I appreciated their (briefly stated) insights. It was still sad. They published a cryptic on Sunday, though, and it was a very neat one: Show about meat (6) = REVEAL; Musical instrument tossed into breach (9) = VIOLATION; Starts to cry after performing extremely risky stunt (5) = CAPER. Tidy clues like that. I was very happy that I still loved doing the cryptic, even after mine was rejected. I've had negative experiences with things I love after which I can't really look at the thing for a while. It's always bugged me, and I like to think I'm getting over that.

In other good news, I got into another vibrant center of UU studies, and they're giving me mad incentives. Incentives are tempting, so I will be considering this particular UU institute more closely. Yay, them.

And I've discovered a new pet peeve: Jargon. (OK, it's actually an old pet peeve that's resurfaced.) I understand things need names, and shorthand can be very convenient...so, yes, there is a time and place for jargon. But I feel like people and ideas are often unfairly excluded by jargon. People will, say, have an idea about what it means to act ethically, and someone will respond, "Oh, that's utilitarianism." And that way whatever subtle differences existed between the person's original idea and utilitarianism proper get eliminated. It's kind of like how victims of a crime will describe the perpetrator to a sketch artist, and from then on in, their image of the perp is the one drawn, not the one they saw. Everyone's ideas kind of get sifted into preexisting categories. Maybe this is fair...maybe the currently existing categories are the optimal versions of these theories...the ones that have withstood the test of time. But I have a hard time believing they're truly an orthogonal basis of philosophy. I think it might be better to let people's ideas flourish for a while without categorizing them. Maybe it could actually lead somewhere.

As for excluding people...well, I just see so many blog comments telling people the name of the fallacy they're committing, or the theory they're ignoring, or the concept they've overlooked. And by handing them the jargon (affirming the consequent! logical positivism! the patriarchy!) they're putting them out of the conversation. Usually these concepts are simple enough that they could take the time to explain and thus continue to engage the person. But they don't. They just tell them to "look it up." In this way jargon prevents learning, and it pisses me off.

So, here's my quick thought for the day: Jargon is a necessary and convenient evil for people who spend large amounts of time dealing with a topic, but in general, the use of jargon shows a lack of understanding and does not in any way indicate that the speaker belongs to the group that should be using it. If you can explain an idea simply, always do it. Ultimately the name of the idea isn't as important as the idea itself.

And now I am tired. Good night.