Notes & asides.(Letter to the Editor)

* Dear Mr. Buckley: Is it characteristic of all of us that we mess up our writing by trying to impress? It can cause some to mess up their grammar, although I am not sure whom would make that mistake. It can cause some, post ergo, to mess up with Latin, and it can even lead to the inappropriate use of accent marks. I, myself, worry the most about grammar, but I take comfort that the one thing that I really care about, which is precision in meaning, can survive some errors. Ain't that the truth?

I am starting to suspect that my only strong point is your only weakness: technical jargon. In NATIONAL REVIEW of May 31 (p. 58) you say: "One reason for this is that the reduction in the size of the state is an asymptotic enterprise." Asymptoticis a word I reserve for technical audiences. One can argue that the underlying idea is quite simple, but as it is essentially a point of calculus, it is simple in nearly precisely the same way that calculus is simple. I was not even sure what you meant by the use of asymptotic in this context, and I think that is a bad sign for at least one of us. Upon a quick check of several dictionaries, the only definitions I found were essentially the mathematical one I know. If I understand you correctly, then I must say you are wrong. In an ideal world, the size of the state would be whittled asymptotically towards an ideal size, getting arbitrarily close over time. However, in practice the reduction of the state is like jungle warfare. Making broad strokes with a machete, or better yet a kukri, one cuts away great gobs of state bureaucracy only to find that even larger state organs sprang up while one was resting from the exertion.

Again, I use asymptotic only with technical groups. I might say, for example: "The Fibonacci sequence is asymptotically a geometric sequence." With a more general audience I would say: "The Fibonacci sequence is, for all practical purposes, a geometrical sequence as it closely approximates a geometric sequence over time."

Am I being supercilious, ...