We go through the day processing massive volumes of waste data for the occasional skimpy fact or insight or hypothesis.

This is one of Althouse's gifts - her focus on words, language, logic, and coherence in communication. From "Imams Overrule Pakistan’s Coronavirus Lockdown as Ramadan Nears." by Ann Althouse.

"The government gave in to clerics’ demands that mosques be allowed to stay open during the Islamic holy month. Now critics are asking who’s in charge."

NYT has a headline and subheadline that don't cohere. If the imams have the power to "overrule," then the government didn't "give in." If the government "gave in," then the imams were only petitioning the government for relief. From the article, it seems that the latter is correct, so it's the subheadline that is accurate.

This can be dismissed as pointless pedanticism. I don't think it is.

We are are blasé about the miracle which is person-to-person communication. It goes way beyond simple word definitions and grammar.

I formulate an idea in my mind which I wish to convey.

I have a half-framed cogitation which I blurt out without pondering or review.

I misspeak.

I fail to articulate.

I place unintended stress on one word over another.

I use vocabulary unfamiliar to my auditor.

I reference abstract concepts with which my auditor is unaware.

I make allusions I don't realize my auditor will not catch.

I am unaware of his or her circumstances and therefore do not understand whatever filters he or she might be applying to what I am saying.

My auditor is not paying full attention, or there is background noise, and misses part of what I said and supplies her own supposition of what I must have intended.

Whatever she thinks I said then sparks an idea which she wishes to convey and the whole processes begins again in reverse.

And that is the tip of the iceberg for sources of communication misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

It is a quotidian miracle just how effective we are at communicating across circumstances and regions and cultures and experiences and ages and backgrounds and assumptions and knowledge, etc.

But who should be the most practiced at exactly this magic? Print media of course. It is unfair to expect perfection but certainly, were there professional standards and norms, we would expect the striving for perfection.

But this is a highly nuanced criticism. Fair, but subtle.

It goes beyond evidence or vocabulary or grammar. It is all correct.

Althouse focuses on the logic. She treats, as any constitutional lawyer would be expected to do, each statement as a building block of an argument and therefore immediately alerts to the logical inconsistency of the headlines in a way which most causal readers would not.

Most of us are like whale sharks who filter 1,500 gallons of ocean water an hour for the gleanings of krill. We go through the day processing massive volumes of waste data for the occasional skimpy fact or insight or hypothesis. And in that filtering, we are highly accommodating of error. We fill-in, we make assumptions, we reinterpret to make sense, we extrapolate for partial statements.

We usually don't stop and examine everything equally. We don't insist that loose articulations adhere to a Vulcan standard of logical integrity and consistency. We don't have the time, the patience or the tolerance to do so.

But it is neat to see someone like Althouse catch subtle inconsistencies which, once pointed out, are actually glaring.

Refreshing reminder of infinite subtleties and the wonder of communication.