What’s the Difference?

Trying to understand the Trinity is about as easy as explaining the difference between bluegrass and country, AM and FM or an ale and a lager.

Pop quiz:

Consider the following situations and apply the proper term to each:

1. A mosquito lands on your arm and, feeling it alight, you slap it with your hand. Have you committed murder or manslaughter (or, in this case, bug-slaughter)?

2. You’re traveling in your car on a back road in the American Southeast, listening to a radio with crackling static in the background on which a song plays that prominently features stringed instruments played with a bow. Are you listening to AM or FM radio, a fiddle or a violin, and is the music bluegrass or country?

3. You belly up to the bar and order a beer. The barkeep brings you a dark, amber-colored elixir with a bitter and nutty taste. Are you drinking a lager or an ale?

4. You’re living in 19th-century England and helping to lace up your wife’s corset which, you, being an inattentive cad, pull too tight. She hits the floor unconscious. Has she fainted or has she passed out?

5. You’re at the mall getting ready to pull into ...