Oh, I do hate badly-done ritual. Yes, of course people are bored by it -- because the person doing it is either totally inept, and struggling through wordage they seemed to have been forced to learn phonetically, or because they have learned the words, but they're banging through them simply to be finished with them. I recently heard someone compare that latter to the someone engaging in the process of... ahhh.. digestive elimination (although they made the point with a less delicate expression).

I'm happy to see Justin's comments here. Happily enough, I was working with one of our new FC's today, and had the occasion to show him the pointer to that "Learning Ritual" article from the front page of my website. I'm sure he'll be sharing it with our two other FCs when they next get together to work.

Wouldn't it be something if Obama's speeches began to get schoolkids interested in both aspects of that art, writing and oratory? Two of my favorite fictional characters in the last few years were exemplars of those: Toby Ziegler and Pres. Jed Bartlet of The West Wing. Nice to see the skill making a comeback in the real world, too.