>> ^Kuga: "Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteers are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe."
^ That's probably why both the title of the vid and the actual spelling error on the screen were missed by people.
Hehe, that's a neat psycholinguistic trick. And yeah, I feel bad for the guy who had to type the title. I think we've all gotten ahead of ourselves in typing and transposed letters at one time or aonther.
>> ^shuac: ^ To address the larger point: I think spelling and grammar do count. Given enough time and ever-diminishing education spending, all these errors could eventually become the norm, and I don't feel that's a good thing. It would be similar to "1984" where each edition of their dictionary is thinner than the last because they actively destroy words. We may not be actively destroying spelling and grammar but doing little to correct it produces a net equivalent, so to speak.
I, like you, want to be correct. You want to be correct in pointing out how silly I am spending time with this sort of thing. I simply want to be correct in my spelling and grammar because that's my profession. I feel we can both be right.
If writing is your profession then surely you are aware of the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar--particularly the fact that most prescriptive rules (the rules against double negation and split infinitives for instance) were completely arbitrary and not even being followed at the time of their invention?
Grammar and spelling change over time in any language, unless it is a dead language such as Latin. There's absolutely no stopping that. There's an estimated 800 new words added to English every year and that's not counting how we use old words in new and innovative ways. At the same time, other archaic words fall out of use. It's a natural process.
Language change is inevitable and is actually a good thing. I'm reminded of my Portuguese friend. He was telling about how the government in Portugal strictly regulates the language, particularly in publishing. It was a huge hassle for him as an academic back in the 80s because Portugal refused to allow the importation of foreign words. Personal computers were becoming common on college campuses, but because the government had yet to approve an official Portuguese word for them yet, they needed to be referred to in official publications as something like "machines that use electricity to calculate and process" or some such extremely long moniker. Of course, most Portuguese at the time in private simply referred to them by their English name of "computers."
Standards of language have their place in the realm of academia and legalese. The standards exist because precision in these areas is crucial to preventing costly misunderstandings. Even these standards change over time (as evidenced by the annually updated manuals of style), though much more slowly than common usage.
I, for one, am not concerned about grammar of spelling errors on the Internet at all. If those errors become accepted usage someday it will only be because the vast majority of English users agree that the supposedly incorrect form is easier to read, write, or understand than the supposedly correct one. And what's wrong with that?
>> ^jonny: In regards to the claim that there is no evidence of god, do you discount the subjective spiritual experiences of billions of people?
As someone who had one of those subjective spiritual experiences I do indeed completely discount those accounts.
The story:
This happened when I was about 8-years old. I was over my best friend's house and it was about 3 in the afternoon. I suddenly had this strong "feeling" that I needed to go home. It's hard to explain what it felt like. It was simply like this voice in my head saying, "You need to go home NOW." My curfew wasn't until sundown, which in the summer wasn't until about 8PM or so. I just told my friend and his family that I needed to go home and left. They found it extremely odd, because we were actually right in the middle of eating a late lunch and having a good time when I suddenly stood up and left.
I got on my bike and peddled towards home. I rounded the corner just in time to see a police car with lights flashing and sirens blazing screech to a halt in front of my house. I can still remember what it felt like, peddling as hard as I could to get back to my house to find out what had happened.
It turned out that while starting to cook dinner my mom had collapsed without warning in the middle of the kitchen. My dad came home early from work and found her sprawled on the floor and called 911.
To this day, doctors can't explain why my mom collapsed. She was in the hospital for two days of testing--MRI's, cat scans, etc. but they couldn't find a thing wrong with her. And she never had it happen again.
Anyways, after things had settled down I told my parents the story about how I suddenly just had this urge to leave my friend's house. My family was very religious at the time and we all agreed that it must have been God telling me to go home and help my mother. How else could you explain that sudden inexplicable urge to go home at that precise moment?
There is, in fact, a much better explanation than God: coincidence. Years later, thinking about the whole incident, I realized how stupid the God explanation really was. My mom was in no danger--by the time I got the urge to go home my dad had already called 911 and the ambulance was on the way. My family knew I was at my friend's house and had I not come back home before the ambulance arrived they would have just called up my friend's family and asked them to look after me while they went to the hospital. Also, I realized there was a completely mundane and plausible explanation for my sudden urge to go back home--I was tired. I'd been at my friend's house since about 9 in the morning that day. Yeah, we'd had a lot of fun, but I distinctly remember on the bike ride back to my house (before I saw the police cruiser) how relieved I was to be going back home to relax.
However, for years I totally believed the "God" explanation. The story even came out at church and everyone agreed it had to be a miracle. Heck, I wanted it to be God talking to me, communicating with me. That would mean I was a worthy human being. God doesn't talk with just anybody right? And because of all the attention I was getting from my family and church-members, I totally wasn't interested in looking into any other explanations other than God for what I experienced.
So yes. I discount the subjective spiritual experiences of billions of people. I think to some degree we are all delusional--thinking the world revolves around us. I explain their experiences just like I explain mine--an attempt to inject the other-worldly into our mundane existence. We have this need to prove ourselves to be special. What could be more special than communicating with the divine? So to fill the need we imbue ordinary circumstances that we can't explain with the supernatural rather than try to find logical answers. But if we actually examine what happens with an open mind, we will eventually find a rationale answer that does not require a divine entity and that is in fact entirely more plausible.
Complaining about grammar and spelling on the Internet is as much of a waste of time as trying to win an Internet argument. The Internet is not an academic journal with strict editing guidelines. People are going to write quickly and casually and that means they are going to make mistakes.
If it makes you feel better about yourself to play it smug because you anal-retentively spend precious minutes of your life spell-checking everything you post, by all means continue to do so. Clearly, though, the majority of people on the Internet have better things to do with their time, such as scavenge for more cat-videos to Sift.
>> ^bluecliff: >> ^gwiz665: All the evidence presented to me indicates that there exists no supernatural being (a god), thus my conclusion is that there is no god. If any evidence has been introduced to other people, I would like to be shown this so that my conclusion can be strengthened or invalidated.
Isn't the meaning of faith precisely that there IS no evidence... "Evidence" and the metaphysical don't go together, it's beyond experimental verification - most good things are...
This certainly had potential to be a powerful message about how we turn our back on the world to solve our own selfish problems but I found the execution lacking. It's not terrible by any means. Just didn't deliver on what it promised.
He's got some great one-liners. I kept imagining a rimshot after each one of them.
Interestingly, when I lost my faith in Christianity I went through a similar thought process to the one he had here--it seemed completely hypocritical to continue going to church and singing hymns and bowing my head in prayer when I didn't believe in it anymore. The only reason I was still doing it was 1) out of habit and 2) to appease those around me (particularly family) who could not accept that I no longer believed. Eventually I grew a pair and stopped going entirely.
New Advertising Campaign a Little Too "Aggressive"
Dumb blonde girl
And could they have found "actors" with any less ability or comedic timing?
How to Lose "Street Cred" When You're a Pimp
I promise this is NOT a farting cat video! I promise!
"Quite Amusing" Courtroom Cross Examination
The Amazing Remote Control Otters!
Fox needs an Eductaion in Spelling
"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteers are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe."
^ That's probably why both the title of the vid and the actual spelling error on the screen were missed by people.
Hehe, that's a neat psycholinguistic trick. And yeah, I feel bad for the guy who had to type the title. I think we've all gotten ahead of ourselves in typing and transposed letters at one time or aonther.
Apostrophe-s on Plurals (Meme Talk Post)
^ To address the larger point: I think spelling and grammar do count. Given enough time and ever-diminishing education spending, all these errors could eventually become the norm, and I don't feel that's a good thing. It would be similar to "1984" where each edition of their dictionary is thinner than the last because they actively destroy words. We may not be actively destroying spelling and grammar but doing little to correct it produces a net equivalent, so to speak.
I, like you, want to be correct. You want to be correct in pointing out how silly I am spending time with this sort of thing. I simply want to be correct in my spelling and grammar because that's my profession. I feel we can both be right.
If writing is your profession then surely you are aware of the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar--particularly the fact that most prescriptive rules (the rules against double negation and split infinitives for instance) were completely arbitrary and not even being followed at the time of their invention?
Grammar and spelling change over time in any language, unless it is a dead language such as Latin. There's absolutely no stopping that. There's an estimated 800 new words added to English every year and that's not counting how we use old words in new and innovative ways. At the same time, other archaic words fall out of use. It's a natural process.
Language change is inevitable and is actually a good thing. I'm reminded of my Portuguese friend. He was telling about how the government in Portugal strictly regulates the language, particularly in publishing. It was a huge hassle for him as an academic back in the 80s because Portugal refused to allow the importation of foreign words. Personal computers were becoming common on college campuses, but because the government had yet to approve an official Portuguese word for them yet, they needed to be referred to in official publications as something like "machines that use electricity to calculate and process" or some such extremely long moniker. Of course, most Portuguese at the time in private simply referred to them by their English name of "computers."
Standards of language have their place in the realm of academia and legalese. The standards exist because precision in these areas is crucial to preventing costly misunderstandings. Even these standards change over time (as evidenced by the annually updated manuals of style), though much more slowly than common usage.
I, for one, am not concerned about grammar of spelling errors on the Internet at all. If those errors become accepted usage someday it will only be because the vast majority of English users agree that the supposedly incorrect form is easier to read, write, or understand than the supposedly correct one. And what's wrong with that?
To Believe, or Not To Believe, that is the Question... (Religion Talk Post)
In regards to the claim that there is no evidence of god, do you discount the subjective spiritual experiences of billions of people?
As someone who had one of those subjective spiritual experiences I do indeed completely discount those accounts.
The story:
This happened when I was about 8-years old. I was over my best friend's house and it was about 3 in the afternoon. I suddenly had this strong "feeling" that I needed to go home. It's hard to explain what it felt like. It was simply like this voice in my head saying, "You need to go home NOW." My curfew wasn't until sundown, which in the summer wasn't until about 8PM or so. I just told my friend and his family that I needed to go home and left. They found it extremely odd, because we were actually right in the middle of eating a late lunch and having a good time when I suddenly stood up and left.
I got on my bike and peddled towards home. I rounded the corner just in time to see a police car with lights flashing and sirens blazing screech to a halt in front of my house. I can still remember what it felt like, peddling as hard as I could to get back to my house to find out what had happened.
It turned out that while starting to cook dinner my mom had collapsed without warning in the middle of the kitchen. My dad came home early from work and found her sprawled on the floor and called 911.
To this day, doctors can't explain why my mom collapsed. She was in the hospital for two days of testing--MRI's, cat scans, etc. but they couldn't find a thing wrong with her. And she never had it happen again.
Anyways, after things had settled down I told my parents the story about how I suddenly just had this urge to leave my friend's house. My family was very religious at the time and we all agreed that it must have been God telling me to go home and help my mother. How else could you explain that sudden inexplicable urge to go home at that precise moment?
There is, in fact, a much better explanation than God: coincidence. Years later, thinking about the whole incident, I realized how stupid the God explanation really was. My mom was in no danger--by the time I got the urge to go home my dad had already called 911 and the ambulance was on the way. My family knew I was at my friend's house and had I not come back home before the ambulance arrived they would have just called up my friend's family and asked them to look after me while they went to the hospital. Also, I realized there was a completely mundane and plausible explanation for my sudden urge to go back home--I was tired. I'd been at my friend's house since about 9 in the morning that day. Yeah, we'd had a lot of fun, but I distinctly remember on the bike ride back to my house (before I saw the police cruiser) how relieved I was to be going back home to relax.
However, for years I totally believed the "God" explanation. The story even came out at church and everyone agreed it had to be a miracle. Heck, I wanted it to be God talking to me, communicating with me. That would mean I was a worthy human being. God doesn't talk with just anybody right? And because of all the attention I was getting from my family and church-members, I totally wasn't interested in looking into any other explanations other than God for what I experienced.
So yes. I discount the subjective spiritual experiences of billions of people. I think to some degree we are all delusional--thinking the world revolves around us. I explain their experiences just like I explain mine--an attempt to inject the other-worldly into our mundane existence. We have this need to prove ourselves to be special. What could be more special than communicating with the divine? So to fill the need we imbue ordinary circumstances that we can't explain with the supernatural rather than try to find logical answers. But if we actually examine what happens with an open mind, we will eventually find a rationale answer that does not require a divine entity and that is in fact entirely more plausible.
Apostrophe-s on Plurals (Meme Talk Post)
If it makes you feel better about yourself to play it smug because you anal-retentively spend precious minutes of your life spell-checking everything you post, by all means continue to do so. Clearly, though, the majority of people on the Internet have better things to do with their time, such as scavenge for more cat-videos to Sift.
Domo Music Video
Unnecessary Censorship Sesame Street Edition
To Believe, or Not To Believe, that is the Question... (Religion Talk Post)
>> ^gwiz665:
All the evidence presented to me indicates that there exists no supernatural being (a god), thus my conclusion is that there is no god. If any evidence has been introduced to other people, I would like to be shown this so that my conclusion can be strengthened or invalidated.
Isn't the meaning of faith precisely that there IS no evidence...
"Evidence" and the metaphysical don't go together, it's beyond experimental verification - most good things are...
For example...?
Yellow Sticky Notes
The curse of faith - Pat Condell
Interestingly, when I lost my faith in Christianity I went through a similar thought process to the one he had here--it seemed completely hypocritical to continue going to church and singing hymns and bowing my head in prayer when I didn't believe in it anymore. The only reason I was still doing it was 1) out of habit and 2) to appease those around me (particularly family) who could not accept that I no longer believed. Eventually I grew a pair and stopped going entirely.