Over-zealous application of the law by its inspectors, known in English as the language police, subjected the office to so much international ridicule that on March 8th its head was forced to step down.It began, as do many things these days, with a tweet.
More than 70 years ago, Sir Albert Howard foresaw many of the problems that would result from the over-zealous application of science to the vast biological and social complexities of agroecosystems.
Part of the excess hype comprised the over-zealous application of ideas across very different fields, when the hypothesis (power-law degree distributions) was both weak and in many cases incorrect.
When you've got a stubborn zit that you know is going to show through your most zealous concealer application, dab some Visine on it.
The expectation that the Taliban would establish order -- despite its zealous and intolerant application of Islamic law -- has been an important reason for its success.
The social risks from AI assistants, for example, are different from those posed by predictive policing software and "smart weapons". But an overly zealous regulatory regime might erroneously lump such applications together, stifling beneficial technologies while dedicating fewer resources to the big problems that really matter.
An examination of court records suggests that the 1995 zoning law was imprecisely worded, that city officials underestimated the profit potential still available under the 60-40 provision, and that state and appellate judges found the city's application of the law to be so zealous as to cross the line of constitutionality.
While they were shamed into filing an unsuccessful clemency petition for him after the lower court denied his request for new counsel, the Justice observed in her statement that the application "likely would have benefited from additional preparation by more zealous advocates".
This doctrine has been widely accepted – we all know about the dangers of overprescribing antibiotics, about the risks of over-zealous or misinterpreted scans, about the creeping medicalisation of childbirth – but its application to old age and death is what interests me here.
