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Published Letters: 4
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Magna Carta doesn't take an article. Latin doesn't have them, so we don't refer to "the Magna Carta," just "Magna Carta."
The OED defines abuse as:
-Wrong or improper use, misuse, misapplication, perversion.
-A bad or improper usage (i.e. a use which has become chronic), a corrupt practice.
-Injurious speech, reviling, execration; abusive language.
-Improper use of words (Chiefly rhet.)
or as a synonym for violation. Nowhere in the entire entry does the dictionary even mention intention. Abuse comes from the Latin word to either use up, or mis-use. Again, no mention of intention. It's pervertedly amusing how abuse can refer to catachresis, when that's the precise tool the Bush administration has used to keep its stranglehold on absolute power.
I think women have to have some inherent sense of humor in order to undergo birth. I mean, women have their respective most-private-areas spread open for some 24 year-old acne-scarred intern to observe for eight hours, while passing a bowling ball through the straw that is the birth canal and most likely shitting themselves at least twice (they never tell them they're going to). How can women not have a sense of humor about such an experience?
Q. v. Astrid Benohr, whose quintuple-&-deca-ironman world records are two and five hours faster than the men's.