Favorite Passages: "not a crash but a crash landing"

The way in which we use language to envelope ourselves from danger. One can almost hear the echo of Derrida ("I SHALL SPEAK, THEN, OF A LETTER ...").

Certain elements in the crew had decided to pretend that it was not a crash but a crash landing that was seconds away. After all, the difference between the two is only one word. Didn't this suggest that the two forms of flight termination were more or less interchangeable? How much could one word matter?

-- White Noise