Google’s informal corporate motto is “Don’t Be Evil.”  Yet many people, even those who are relatively well informed, refer to it as “Do No Evil,” particularly when criticizing Google for one of its actions or policies.  In fact, the search query on Google’s own web site for “Google ‘do no evil’” returns more hits than for “Google ‘don’t be evil’”, 220,000 vs. 173,000.

This bugs me because, while the statements look similar, they have dramatically different meanings.  “Do No Evil” is a statement about actions, whereas “Don’t Be Evil” is a statement of, well, being.  Put another way, the former is about the body but the latter is about the soul.  If you can get these two confused, then you don’t really get the point that Google was trying to make in the first place.

Continuing the thread of Wikipedia and politics, I recently made my second edit to Wikipedia, a small change to the entry for former U.S. Senator Roman Hruska.  (Here’s my first.)  I am certainly not an expert on Hruska, but his entry cited a noteworthy historical quote attributed to him and used as its source a random blog that itself cites no source.  This is beneath the standards of any reference work.

My little bit of web browsing did not turn up an online archive of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where the quote was supposedly uttered, but relying on Hruska’s New York Times obituary seems like a reasonable fallback and is still a clear improvement.

Now why was I looking up that quote in the first place?

In case you're tempted to believe by this week's events that political discourse in this country has always been in a perpetual downward spiral, it's worth revisiting the presidential election of 1884.

Wikipedia's article on this election perpetuates the apparently incorrect version of the story: "Blaine's supporters condemned Cleveland in the strongest of terms, singing 'Ma, Ma, Where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha.'" In fact, the "Gone to the White House..." refrain was added by Cleveland supporters after he defeated Blaine in the election. This is of course surprising, as Wikipedia is known for the accuracy and impartiality of its articles on U.S. history and politics, as illustrated by the classic Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence.