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unscrupulous lawyer 1843, U.S. slang, probably altered from Ger. Scheisser "incompetent worthless person," from Scheisse "shit," from O.H.G. skizzan "to defecate" (see shit).

shyster--'shIs-t Etymology: probably from German Scheisser, literally, defecator
: one who is professionally unscrupulous especially in the practice of law or politics : PETTIFOGGER

You're not helping anyone. You make people with a legitimate beef look petty and you present people with no bad intentions at all as anti-semitic (or specifically anti-Jewish, as there are a lot more semitic people than just Jews).
Now, go into a closet and say "niggardly" a hundred times.

> All your GNU are belong to us!
Sure. Sober will break into computer systems but will not attack GNU systems. Now you can guess who is behind. What coincidence!

Please also not the similarity to Exodus 7, see http://www.bartleby.com/108/02/7.html

Please keep in mind that Moses was depicted by Michelangelo with a Horn, just like some images of Richard as found on the net. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MichaelangeloMo ses20020315.jpg and watch the GNU symbol below.

And another question is unresolved: why do the Nazis need GNU and why did Richard start on their party Anniversary? I don't know but RMS did not comment until now to his links to the nazi party which was discovered today thanks to Slashdot.

Most Nazis were from Germany and most Sober variants are from Germany. q.e.d.

Richard Stallman also once went to Germany. Why?

Liberals ruined the newspapers, just like they ruin everything else they touch.

You can argue about whether they're too smart, or just too clever by half, but Roblimo's suggestions are so obvious that even a child would think of them.

Yet even if a hypothetical newspaper were to adopt all of Roblimo's suggestions [and I could add a bunch of my own], no-damned-body this side of an insane asylum is gonna wanna waste their lives pouring over mountains of doom, gloom, despair, ennui, filth, muck, and the oppressive, stultifying, lobotomizing influence of the great leviathan of politically correct marxist propaganda and disinformation which masquerades as "journalism" in the Western World - not to mention that poor, lonely [quite frankly, pathetic] spinster, Maureen Dowd, bitching and moaning about the onset of menopause - even assuming any of this nonsense were true in the first place.

Memo to liberals: Cheer up. Enjoy life. Write about fun people doing fun stuff who experience a little success in life. We're not all ecopagan alcoholic/suicidal lesbian/transgendered native american women's studies professors living off of taxpayer-subsidized humanities grants, covering our naked bodies in performance-art chocolate, and pondering the desperate hopelessness and meaninglessness of it all.

Believe it or not, some of us actually enjoy our lives every now and then.

Or - what the hell? Hang tough with The Culture of Death®, and experience, well, ah, Death Itself©. At least then you'd be intellectually consistent for the first time in your lives. Or deaths. Or whatever.

Liberals ruined the newspapers, just like they ruin everything else they touch.

You can argue about whether they're too smart, or just too clever by half, but Roblimo's suggestions are so obvious that even a child would think of them.

Yet even if a hypothetical newspaper were to adopt all of Roblimo's suggestions [and I could add a bunch of my own], no-damned-body this side of an insane asylum is gonna wanna waste their lives pouring over mountains of doom, gloom, despair, ennui, filth, muck, and the oppressive, stultifying, lobotomizing influence of the great leviathan of politically correct marxist propaganda and disinformation which masquerades as "journalism" in the Western World - not to mention that poor, lonely [quite frankly, pathetic] spinster, Maureen Dowd, bitching and moaning about the onset of menopause - even assuming any of this nonsense were true in the first place.

Memo to liberals: Cheer up. Enjoy life. Write about fun people doing fun stuff who experience a little success in life. We're not all ecopagan alcoholic/suicidal lesbian/transgendered native american women's studies professors living off of taxpayer-subsidized humanities grants, covering our naked bodies in performance-art chocolate, and pondering the desperate hopelessness and meaninglessness of it all.

Believe it or not, some of us actually enjoy our lives every now and then.

Or - what the hell? Hang tough with The Culture of Death®, and experience, well, ah, Death Itself©. At least then you'd be intellectually consistent for the first time in your lives. Or deaths. Or whatever.

The mass market is about choosing what is the most convenient and most profitable. That almost always means cutting corners to get the job done.

In effect if you can get away with throwing a party and leaving it for someone else to clean up, market rules say you win.

Your James Surowiecki citation leaves out two highly damning issues:
a) the majority of Germans decided that killing Jews was OK and that the Communist Party really was responsible for the Reichstag fire, even though we all know now that this was horribly wrong.

IOW: If we had, in fact, a totalitarian regime that said "kill no Jews", what do you think would have gone wrong then?

b) Apathy + Wealth = Power. If one of you has the wealth and the polluting smokestacks, and 10 scientists oppose you, their 10 to your 1 says they should win. But then again, there's also 100 million people that don't care, so you can overwhelm those 10 scientists with a media blitz. Especially if you own the TV network. Does this ever really happen? Yes it does.

c) More about apathy.

BTW there is a middle ground between totalitarianism by the minority and what we have now: that middle ground is called eloquence and a sense of leadership. Unfortunately that is also stifled because the public is not only apathetic, but also anti-intellectual...

Crimes happen anywhere. But there's a difference between relative priorities. We (the so-called "normal" human beings) place an importance to our privacy that sets the need to be not-monitored in our homes higher than the need to avoid some crimes that could possibly happen. On the other hand, our behavior in public places is already monitored by Mrs. Grundy, so having a camera filming us in those circumstances will not make much difference in our personal sense of privacy.

Are you happy with this diagram, or do you need further explanation?

Actually, the only idiots we should be ignoring are the ignorant fucks that don't google something to see if they're right before posting wrong information and looking like a dumbass:

The American Heritage® Book of English Usage.
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.

3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints

78. could care less / couldn't care less

"I could care less! you might say sometime in disgust. You might just as easily have said I couldn't care less and meant the same thing! How can this be? When taken literally, the phrase I could care less means "I care more than I might," rather than "I don't care at all." But the beauty of sarcasm is that it can turn meanings on their head, thus allowing could care less to work as an equivalent for couldn't care less. "

For the umpteenth time, Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing.

In the sense that humans are not chimpanzees that is true, but humans and chimpanzees had common ancestors. Humans are not direct descendents of chimpanzees; however, intelligent design is a direct descendent of creationism. Intelligent design is an elaborate begging the question fallacy. Everything about ID smacks of deception. As Hamlet once said "The devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape." The proponents of ID fail to see that the only ones they are deceiving is themselves. And they get annoyed when everyone else doesn't fall for it.

The power of faith in a god or the God of the Bible (pick your flavor: King James, Catholic, etc.) is about how you live your life. It is concerned with the Rock of Ages not the age of rocks. It is not about imposing your views on others. Some believe they must preach the word. It doesn't meany anyone has to listen or be converted. But a person who lives as a Christian says more than one who says you must live as a Christian. It is beyond the comprehension of most Christians that God is a metaphor. In fact God forgot he was a metaphor.

Let's make this clear once and for all that ID is nothing but another flavor or creationism. How many atheists are proponents of intelligent design?

"Reeked" has to do with odor, which suits your sewage theme, but that's the wrong word. "Wrecked" means broken. "Wreaked" is the work you wanted. Pronounced the same, but spelled differently.

Your larger argument is a bit like changing the terms of a formula so one variable either approaches infinity (all the lights on, all SUVS, all the time) or approaches zero (a falsely reductive description of Chinese developments). That's no problem by me; sometimes it's useful to do to check your terms. I'm not sure that argument doesn't amount to a needlessly distracting spat about who has the moral advantage when what we really need is practical mechnisms for exchanging environmental technology, but it's not off limits or anything...

You are so intelligent. Grammar and spelling are imposed on languages. There is no real true grammar or spelling.

Have you ever heard a teacher say that you are not supposed to say, may, instead of, can I go to the bathroom? This is one example of grammar imposed on language. No one thinks can is wrong as used in living language(speech) save for grammar nazis(dead artifical language).

"The successive editions of his[Webster's] dictionary show still further concessions. Croud, fether, groop, gillotin, iland, instead, leperd, soe, sut, steddy, thret, thred, thum and wimmen appear only in the 1806 edition. In 1828 he went back to crowd, feather, group, island, instead, leopard, sew, soot, steady, thread, threat, thumb and women, and changed gillotin to guillotin. In addition, he restored the final e in determine, discipline, requisite, imagine, etc. In 1838, revising his dictionary, he abandoned a good many spellings that had appeared in either the 1806 or the 1828 edition, notably maiz for maize, suveran 11 for sovereign and guillotin for guillotine. But he stuck manfully to a number that were quite as revolutionary--for example, aker for acre, cag for keg, grotesk for grotesque, hainous for heinous, porpess for porpoise and tung for tongue--and they did not begin to disappear until the edition of 1854, issued by other hands and eleven years after his death." ...

and the popularity of Webster's dictionary work: ... "I have a New York edition, dated 1848, which contains an advertisement stating that the annual sale at that time was more than a million copies, and that more than 30,000,000 copies had been sold since 1783. In the late 40's the publishers, George F. Cooledge & Bro., devoted the whole capacity of the fastest steam press in the United States to the printing of it. This press turned out 525 copies an hour, or 5,250 a day. It was "constructed expressly for printing Webster's Elementary Spelling Book [the name had been changed in 1829] at an expense of $5,000." Down to 1889, 62,000,000 copies of the book had been sold." ...

Do your elitist ass a favor and read H.L. Mencken's: "The American Language ...". Noah Webster and many other early dictionary compilers made their own spelling reforms, that is invented which spelling they felt best. I wonder where enlightened holy men such as you were to inform him that there is one true spelling for every word. Perhaps the cloud nine?

The original English word in this group is the noun "burglary", quickly followed by "burglar", both of which are first attested in the early 1500s, and ultimately derive from the Indo-European root *bherg, which means "high". The verb "burglarize" is a regular verb form, dating from the late 1800s, formed from "burglary" by the same process that gives us "scrutinize", "sympathize", etc. The British form "burgle" is an (apparently originally humorous) back-formation, also dating from the late 1800s, but not widely considered acceptable (in Britain) until somewhat later.

What do you not understand? Most of the length of my last post was material pasted from the 2nd edition of H.L. Mencken's "The American Language ..." (especially the chapter on Webster's influence), it is not a troll. I have read the 3rd edition of that work, which is a better edition at my local library. What do you not understand, lexicographers have invented spellings they have felt are right for a long time and lexicographers have also used spellings they found in sample literature. There is no one true spelling, if you consult certain dictionaries or older dictionaries you will find different spellings. The only way there is one true spelling is when someone like a teacher is imposing such things on you.

Another example from Webster:

"The successive editions of his dictionary show still further concessions. Croud, fether, groop, gillotin, iland, instead, leperd, soe, sut, steddy, thret, thred, thum and wimmen appear only in the 1806 edition. In 1828 he went back to crowd, feather, group, island, instead, leopard, sew, soot, steady, thread, threat, thumb and women, and changed gillotin to guillotin. In addition, he restored the final e in determine, discipline, requisite, imagine, etc. In 1838, revising his dictionary, he abandoned a good many spellings that had appeared in either the 1806 or the 1828 edition, notably maiz for maize, suveran 11 for sovereign and guillotin for guillotine. But he stuck manfully to a number that were quite as revolutionary--for example, aker for acre, cag for keg, grotesk for grotesque, hainous for heinous, porpess for porpoise and tung for tongue--and they did not begin to disappear until the edition of 1854, issued by other hands and eleven years after his death." ...

and the popularity of Webster's dictionary work: ... "I have a New York edition, dated 1848, which contains an advertisement stating that the annual sale at that time was more than a million copies, and that more than 30,000,000 copies had been sold since 1783. In the late 40's the publishers, George F. Cooledge & Bro., devoted the whole capacity of the fastest steam press in the United States to the printing of it. This press turned out 525 copies an hour, or 5,250 a day. It was "constructed expressly for printing Webster's Elementary Spelling Book [the name had been changed in 1829] at an expense of $5,000." Down to 1889, 62,000,000 copies of the book had been sold." ...

This is no troll, the most respected American lexicographer has picked spellings he felt were right that did not appear in literature, he wanted to reform the language with these spellings. Some of his reforms survive today, some do not. What dorks like you do not realize; languages live and change all the time, dictionaries, spelling books, and grammars are dead and at best can only every represent the language at a certain period in time. Not only did Webster invent spellings and add more new words then other more conservative dictionaries, he became the most popular dictionist in the English speaking world doing so. Meaning alot of the reforms he invented which were "wrong" probably according to people like you since they did not appear in conservative Oxford editions, were more right than you could imagine because his work became the most consulted.

You are so intelligent. Grammar and spelling are imposed on languages. There is no real true grammar or spelling.

Have you ever heard a teacher say that you are not supposed to say, may, instead of, can I go to the bathroom? This is one example of grammar imposed on language. No one thinks can is wrong as used in living language(speech) save for grammar nazis(dead artifical language).

"Webster had declared boldly for simpler spellings in his early spelling books; in his dictionary of 1806 he made an assault at all arms upon some of the dearest prejudices of English lexicographers. Grounding his wholesale reforms upon a saying by Franklin, that those people spell best who do not know how to spelli. e., who spell phonetically and logicallyhe made an almost complete sweep of whole classes of silent lettersthe u in the -our words, the final e in determine and requisite, the silent a in thread, feather and steady, the silent b in thumb, the s in island, the o in leopard, and the redundant consonants in traveler, wagon, jeweler, etc. (English: traveller, waggon, jeweller). More, he lopped the final k from frolick, physick and their analogues. Yet more, he transposed the e and the r in many words ending in re, such as theatre, lustre, centre and calibre. Yet more, he changed the c in all words of the defence class to s. Yet more, he changed ph to f in words of the phantom class, ou to oo in words of the group class, ow to ou in crowd, porpoise to porpess, acre to aker, sew to soe, woe to wo, soot to sut, gaol to jail, and plough to plow. Finally, he antedated the simplified spellers by inventing a long list of boldly phonetic spellings, ranging from tung for tongue to wimmen for women, and from hainous for heinous to cag for keg." ...

"Webster had declared boldly for simpler spellings in his early spelling books; in his dictionary of 1806 he made an assault at all arms upon some of the dearest prejudices of English lexicographers. Grounding his wholesale reforms upon a saying by Franklin, that those people spell best who do not know how to spelli. e., who spell phonetically and logicallyhe made an almost complete sweep of whole classes of silent lettersthe u in the -our words, the final e in determine and requisite, the silent a in thread, feather and steady, the silent b in thumb, the s in island, the o in leopard, and the redundant consonants in traveler, wagon, jeweler, etc. (English: traveller, waggon, jeweller). More, he lopped the final k from frolick, physick and their analogues." ...

Do your elitist ass a favor and read H.L. Mencken's: The American Language .... Noah Webster and many other early dictionary compilers made their own spelling reforms, that is invented which spelling they felt best. I wonder where enlightened holy men such as you were to inform him that there is one true spelling for every word. Perhaps the cloud nine?

So what I put in an extra s. At least I expressed an opinion worth expressing! Unlike the parent poster expressing nothing but elitism. And I am an American speaking the American language, not English, I am not from the isles like Douglas Adams.

Oh, okay. And what makes you think I got it from the web? I really can't believe I'm continuing to dignify this. Your principle really does mean that if ANYONE ELSE has ever quoted the same passage, you have to also quote them. You and I both know that's wrong, so you can spare me the lecture. I bolded the passage, not because someone else happened to do it a few years ago in an obscure little internet article, but because that is the part I wanted to emphasize! And guess what? I sorta kinda mentioned that I added the bold.

You know what my favorite intro to a book is? It's the one in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. It goes "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." (p. 1, bold added) as quoted in

http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/cities.html

http://www.bartleby.com/59/6/itwasthebest.html

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/29595.html

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/charles dic101118.html

http://www.epinions.com/content_3173621892

http://www.courierpostonline.com/columnists/cxan06 1104a.htm

http://www.answers.com/topic/it-was-the-best-of-ti mes-it-was-the-worst-of-times

http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=75 62_0_10_0_C

http://en.thinkexist.com/quotation/it_was_the_best _of_times-it_was_the_worst_of/147366.html

According to you and only you, I have to quote all those webpages whenever I want to quote the first like of that book. Otherwise, it's plagiarism. Oh, and I better cross my fingers and hope no one has bolded any part of that sentence.

Well, good work. You got me to dignify another person who really doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

Sad that piddling language parsing, legalese, even copyright are what the American Thinkers have to trot out to "win" the debate with the American Believers. How did the intellectuals lose this one --> we had the religious sitting in public classrooms for decades, being taught science and certainly being taught evolution, with blind religious belief kept strictly separate from the curriculum.

Now, less than half of the U.S. "believes in evolution?"

Even I grew up in conservative Catholic schools, but I was taught evolution. It's not as if the majority of Americans were taught creationism in school. We've lost this battle on two fronts: in the classroom, obviously, where we're in complete control and we've no excuses, and then in the churches and temples across this country.

This is a massive, historic failure by American intellectuals and American education. Scientific methodology, philosophy, nay critical thinking have not been adequately communicated to the tens of millions of people who now also believe they, their country and their president "lead the world," "police the world," and are the world's "only Super Power." We have a Believer for what they call "the leader of the free world."

Here's a thought: 99% of us reading and writing here loved science and math class, we couldn't get enough of it. I still see some sigs here and there with "Jesus saved me and he can save you, too" appending an otherwise critically considered opinion. Generally speaking though, we're not blind Believers.

So I'm preaching to the choir, in some respects, except that rather than preaching I'm really saying: we've failed, failed the American people and in some regard the world, for at least one entire generation. What are we going to do about it?

It could be as simple as communication. Maybe the thinkers should learn to play organs and guitars, write some melodramatic music and stories about the origins of the universe, life and humankind. While marching around with candles and holding up portraits of Great Scientists, we can explain the afterlife (worm pudding), but in a comforting way ( maybe some of Thanatopsis?). We can discuss modding, karmatic /., and maybe Newton's third law of motion (action, reaction) so the congregation understands justice in a critically considered and organized nature.

If we dress science up a bit, teach it as Truth (not as right or wrong, but as critically considered and open minded). We could strongly recommend that all people, for all their life, attend a science class every Sunday morning.

I'm willing to propose that if families regularly attended science class together, we would all enjoy a more reasonable, and more peaceful world.

As much as we intellectuals have failed to "save" the believers, we can take a hard look at where this country has been since 2000 and say undoubtedly, that even moreso the believers have failed us all. Are not the biggest sinners walking this earth today also those most loudly denouncing sin?

BG

Didn't Friedrich Nietzsche and countless others makes this argument already?

Out of life's school of war.--What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/carrot.html

An explanation of the derivation of the term, that points out the common fallacy of thinking it's a "carrot on a stick"

From the American Heritage Dictionary: http://www.bartleby.com/61/89/C0128900.html

There are, of course, professionals in etymology that disagree, but it's generally accepted as reward/punishment, not unreachable reward.

Even for personnel, that's on the order of time it took to sail from Europe to America via wind power, and people did that

http://www.bartleby.com/65/co/ColumbusC.html
On Aug. 3, 1492, Columbus sailed from Palos, Spain, with three small ships, the Santa María, commanded by Columbus himself, the Pinta under Martín Pinzón, and the Niña under Vicente Yáñez Pinzón. After halting at the Canary Islands, he sailed due west from Sept. 6 until Oct. 7, when he changed his course to the southwest. On Oct. 10 a small mutiny was quelled, and on Oct. 12 he landed on a small island (Watling Island; see San Salvador) in the Bahamas.

I get 2 months and a bit over a week from that, not over 1 year.

That's sort of true, definitely true in the short term, but you've got to look at the issue from a long term point of view as well...

"[T]his long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."

-- John Maynard Keynes

http://www.bartleby.com/30/16.html

Go down to figure 133. Around the turn of the century, there were devices even more elaborate than that one.

The ITU submitted a proposal this year that leap seconds be abandoned.

And if it's tracking UTC, or as the article mentioned, local solar time, then it doesn't have to deal with stupid things like daylight savings time.

...when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.

There's god damn nothing wrong with the Passive Voice except that it has a stigmatic notion in English.

Yeah... and there's god damn nothing wrong with murder except that it has a stigmatic notion in most civilised societies. *ahem* :-)

I prefer the active voice in writing for one simple and personal reason - too much passive voice gives me a headache and makes it difficult for me to concentrate. A sprinkling of passive voice is fine for variety, but a document written predominantly (or exclusively) in passive voice is a horrible thing to read.

In German, it has a air of respectability to it over the active voice.

It's interesting that you emphasise the "respectability" aspect of passive voice in German, as in my experience people (over-)use passive voice in English for exactly the same reason. They think it makes the writing seem more formal, more detached. More "respectable".

I find overuse of passive voice in English is a hint that the writer is insecure about their writing - especially in a supposedly "formal" document. So they overcompensate by going nuts with the passive voice. Or, as you describe with your dad below, they've just been taught to use passive voice for certain kinds of writing (with really weak justifications for that teaching - but hey, what employee is going to argue with their bosses' justifications?).

He worked on process documents and reports. The idea is that you put everything in the passive, because the agents of the senteces are not to be indicated.

For most types of writing, one of the goals is to make it easy for the reader to understand - to omit needless words. For "process" documents or legal documents, however, the goal is exactly the opposite - the goal is to cause the reader maximum pain and to obscure useful information (while making sure that information is still technically present).

Given the above, your dad's experience in writing everything in passive voice is perfectly reasonable. ;-)

There's god damn nothing wrong with the Passive Voice except that it has a stigmatic notion in English.

Yeah... and there's god damn nothing wrong with murder except that it has a stigmatic notion in most civilised societies. *ahem* :-)

I prefer the active voice in writing for one simple and personal reason - too much passive voice gives me a headache and makes it difficult for me to concentrate. A sprinkling of passive voice is fine for variety, but a document written predominantly (or exclusively) in passive voice is a horrible thing to read.

In German, it has a air of respectability to it over the active voice.

It's interesting that you emphasise the "respectability" aspect of passive voice in German, as in my experience people (over-)use passive voice in English for exactly the same reason. They think it makes the writing seem more formal, more detached. More "respectable".

I find overuse of passive voice in English is a hint that the writer is insecure about their writing - especially in a supposedly "formal" document. So they overcompensate by going nuts with the passive voice. Or, as you describe with your dad below, they've just been taught to use passive voice for certain kinds of writing (with really weak justifications for that teaching - but hey, what employee is going to argue with their bosses' justifications?).

He worked on process documents and reports. The idea is that you put everything in the passive, because the agents of the senteces are not to be indicated.

For most types of writing, one of the goals is to make it easy for the reader to understand - to omit needless words. For "process" documents or legal documents, however, the goal is exactly the opposite - the goal is to cause the reader maximum pain and to obscure useful information (while making sure that information is still technically present).

Given the above, your dad's experience in writing everything in passive voice is perfectly reasonable. ;-)

has taken a rash beating in the passed (past? Could a Slashdot grammar Nazi clarify?)

The correct usage is 'past'. 'Past' is the noun, adjective, and adverb form. 'Passed' is used only as a verb. This may help. Or it may not. It's really something that just has to be memorized.

fyi

it isn't "Money is the root of all evil", but rather "Love of money is the root of all evil."

Basically, the industry needs to deal with Apple, not Microsoft. Microsoft is not a player in the game anymore. Microsoft is a a Johnny Come Lately.

The Mariner tells a story of a ship adrift for so long they ran out of drinking water, after the 'hero' of the story shoots an albatross (bad luck)

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

So. That's that.

Nobody remembers this now, but Harvard University was founded by a bunch of evil white puritan dudes so that their evil white puritan spawn could be taught to read the New Testament in its original Greek, without all the overhead of the {Greek -> Latin} and {Latin -> English} interventions.

As an aside, the word in question here is porneia, and there's a great deal of controversy about what it might have meant to the first century ear. One theory is that porneia meant "abomination", so that a man and a woman were not to divorce unless they came to discover that their marriage was an abomination - for instance, if they were to learn, after marrying, that they were in fact half-brother and half-sister. Cf Pierre Jourde's Lost Land, or - SPOILER ALERT - John Sayles's Lone Star, or, of course, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex.

Finally, while we're on the subject of Harvard, you might be interested in her motto, Veritas, or "Truth":

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/1.html#S1

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/3.html#S10

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S33

Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S34

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S58

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S59

But this cometh to pass, that

Nobody remembers this now, but Harvard University was founded by a bunch of evil white puritan dudes so that their evil white puritan spawn could be taught to read the New Testament in its original Greek, without all the overhead of the {Greek -> Latin} and {Latin -> English} interventions.

As an aside, the word in question here is porneia, and there's a great deal of controversy about what it might have meant to the first century ear. One theory is that porneia meant "abomination", so that a man and a woman were not to divorce unless they came to discover that their marriage was an abomination - for instance, if they were to learn, after marrying, that they were in fact half-brother and half-sister. Cf Pierre Jourde's Lost Land, or - SPOILER ALERT - John Sayles's Lone Star, or, of course, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex.

Finally, while we're on the subject of Harvard, you might be interested in her motto, Veritas, or "Truth":

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/1.html#S1

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/3.html#S10

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S33

Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S34

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S58

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S59

But this cometh to pass, that

Nobody remembers this now, but Harvard University was founded by a bunch of evil white puritan dudes so that their evil white puritan spawn could be taught to read the New Testament in its original Greek, without all the overhead of the {Greek -> Latin} and {Latin -> English} interventions.

As an aside, the word in question here is porneia, and there's a great deal of controversy about what it might have meant to the first century ear. One theory is that porneia meant "abomination", so that a man and a woman were not to divorce unless they came to discover that their marriage was an abomination - for instance, if they were to learn, after marrying, that they were in fact half-brother and half-sister. Cf Pierre Jourde's Lost Land, or - SPOILER ALERT - John Sayles's Lone Star, or, of course, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex.

Finally, while we're on the subject of Harvard, you might be interested in her motto, Veritas, or "Truth":

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/1.html#S1

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/3.html#S10

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S33

Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S34

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S58

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S59

But this cometh to pass, that

Nobody remembers this now, but Harvard University was founded by a bunch of evil white puritan dudes so that their evil white puritan spawn could be taught to read the New Testament in its original Greek, without all the overhead of the {Greek -> Latin} and {Latin -> English} interventions.

As an aside, the word in question here is porneia, and there's a great deal of controversy about what it might have meant to the first century ear. One theory is that porneia meant "abomination", so that a man and a woman were not to divorce unless they came to discover that their marriage was an abomination - for instance, if they were to learn, after marrying, that they were in fact half-brother and half-sister. Cf Pierre Jourde's Lost Land, or - SPOILER ALERT - John Sayles's Lone Star, or, of course, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex.

Finally, while we're on the subject of Harvard, you might be interested in her motto, Veritas, or "Truth":

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/1.html#S1

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/3.html#S10

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S33

Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S34

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S58

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S59

But this cometh to pass, that

Nobody remembers this now, but Harvard University was founded by a bunch of evil white puritan dudes so that their evil white puritan spawn could be taught to read the New Testament in its original Greek, without all the overhead of the {Greek -> Latin} and {Latin -> English} interventions.

As an aside, the word in question here is porneia, and there's a great deal of controversy about what it might have meant to the first century ear. One theory is that porneia meant "abomination", so that a man and a woman were not to divorce unless they came to discover that their marriage was an abomination - for instance, if they were to learn, after marrying, that they were in fact half-brother and half-sister. Cf Pierre Jourde's Lost Land, or - SPOILER ALERT - John Sayles's Lone Star, or, of course, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex.

Finally, while we're on the subject of Harvard, you might be interested in her motto, Veritas, or "Truth":

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/1.html#S1

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/3.html#S10

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S33

Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S34

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S58

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S59

But this cometh to pass, that

Nobody remembers this now, but Harvard University was founded by a bunch of evil white puritan dudes so that their evil white puritan spawn could be taught to read the New Testament in its original Greek, without all the overhead of the {Greek -> Latin} and {Latin -> English} interventions.

As an aside, the word in question here is porneia, and there's a great deal of controversy about what it might have meant to the first century ear. One theory is that porneia meant "abomination", so that a man and a woman were not to divorce unless they came to discover that their marriage was an abomination - for instance, if they were to learn, after marrying, that they were in fact half-brother and half-sister. Cf Pierre Jourde's Lost Land, or - SPOILER ALERT - John Sayles's Lone Star, or, of course, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex.

Finally, while we're on the subject of Harvard, you might be interested in her motto, Veritas, or "Truth":

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/1.html#S1

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/3.html#S10

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S33

Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/8.html#S34

Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S58

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/43/14.html#S59

But this cometh to pass, that

I got it backwards. Toward is "more common" in the US, but both are acceptable in both places. http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/040.html

http://www.bartleby.com/73/1056.html

http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/013.html

No offence intended :-)

"Judge not..." And now for something completely different...Just thought I'd throw that in for...no reason really. Must've been something I ate. An "undigested bit of beef", perhaps I see more evidence every day that free will is indeed an illusion. "The mind is what the brain does" --Nat Geo, March 2005 issue. It's quoted elsewhere, but that's where I first saw it. So...who's going to be the first to use the "parasite" defense in a murder case? The "twinkie" defense might have some merit after all. Some people do react rather intensly to suger alergies. Maybe all that soda pop you drink could actually make you crazy. Watch out Coca-Cola. There could be a lawsuit coming.

Let them eat cake
A saying that shows insensitivity to or incomprehension of the realities of life for the unfortunate. Rousseau, in his Confessions, tells of a great princess who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake." This statement is often, and incorrectly, attributed to Marie Antoinette.

Yes, its affected and not effected. That is one of my pet peeves as well. Also, the incorrect distinction between 'bring' and 'take' gets me as well.

When I was in highschool English class we used the "Elements of Style" book that is now in the public domain here: http://www.bartleby.com/141/. It clears up commonly misused expressions like these.

(Now lets hope I didn't make a silly grammar mistake like I always do when correcting someone :)

Yes, its affected and not effected. That is one of my pet peeves as well. Also, the incorrect distinction between 'bring' and 'take' gets me as well.

When I was in highschool English class we used the "Elements of Style" book that is now in the public domain here: http://www.bartleby.com/141/. It clears up commonly misused expressions like these.

(Now lets hope I didn't make a silly grammar mistake like I always do when correcting someone :)

I enjoy Bob the Angry flower's method of grammar instruction.

However, you have to reference Strunk's Elements of Style to find the rule for this one. In this case, "it" is a pronoun, and with other pronouns, we don't change him to hi's or her to her's. It's just plain hers, his, and theirs. So a possesive it becomes "its".

Contrast this with the Sermon on the Mount. Consider the lilies of the field, and don't worry about saving up worldly things, because when you ask, it shall be given to you. These are the words of Jesus.

That's the problem with the Bible. If you take everything it says literally, your head will explode.

Contrast this with the Sermon on the Mount. Consider the lilies of the field, and don't worry about saving up worldly things, because when you ask, it shall be given to you. These are the words of Jesus.

That's the problem with the Bible. If you take everything it says literally, your head will explode.

Contrast this with the Sermon on the Mount. Consider the lilies of the field, and don't worry about saving up worldly things, because when you ask, it shall be given to you. These are the words of Jesus.

That's the problem with the Bible. If you take everything it says literally, your head will explode.

LONDON (Reuters) - In a press release, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) today announced its intention to pursue legal action against Robert Louis Stevenson, over his poem Summer Sun, for two "illicit" uses of the word "golden", and one of the word "summer".

Stevenson, being long dead, declined to respond. However, visitors to his grave on Mount Vaea on Upolu, Samoa, have reported hearing a grinding sound from underground, as of something rotating in the dirt.

Is this really that hard?

You said yourself that their qualifies person. Person is singluar, their is plural. Therefore, there is no pronoun agreement in number, and the sentence is incorrect. As I pointed out, the sentence could be correct if their refers to some unnamed third party group of people, in which case their doesn't qualify person.

I assume, and I am right (it doesn't take a mind-reader, and no matter how much you insist otherwise, you're not fooling anyone), that you meant that the original poster has too much time on the original poster's hands. In this case, the only wiggle room you could have gotten is if you had argued that the correct sentence is You are a person with too much time on his hands, or to be more gender-neutral, You are a person with too much time on his or her hands. This would agree in number, gender, and person with person in a generic sense of the word. "You are a person with too much time on your hands" is correct because person as an antecedent isn't generic; it refers to a specific person, you, which justifies usage of the second-person possessive pronoun your.

If you had said, "Pedants are people who have too much time on their hands," you would have been right, because their (plural) qualifies people (plural), and indirectly, pedants (plural). Of course, that sentence is semantically different and, as I said, not interchangeable with the corrected original sentence.

you have proven that a tortured rewriting of the sentence can cause the possessive pronoun to change

This is just, for lack of a better term, crazy talk. What are you smoking, anyway? I don't care how tortuously you rewrite a sentence, the possessive pronoun doesn't change unless its antecedent changes. Your hands are your hands, not his hands, not her hands, not their hands, not our hands.

Seriously, call your local high school English teacher. Then again, make it a college English professor, because too many high school teachers are incompetent, and knowing my luck, you'd get one of the stupid ones. True story: I once had a high school teacher who, when I got into an argument with an idiot of a classmate over whether there were 50 or 52 states in the United States, said, "Well, I don't know, really..." To add insult to injury, I was in a history classroom full of textbooks, none of which contained a simple list of the 50 states. The next class, I brought in detailed documentation that I was right, and it was all I could do to keep from commenting on how sad I think it is that someone who educates our children doesn't even know that there are 50—and only 50—states in the Union. Hey, just out of curiousity, how many states do you think are in the Union? That wasn't you by any chance, was it? (Guess number two...)

Anyway, if you don't believe me, then maybe you'll trust the literati at Emory , Purdue, or the writers of the American Heritage Book of English Use . Now please, stop making yourself look so foolish. I wish there were some way to agree on a disinterested third party to hold a large wager in escrow and settle this matter once and for all, because I am 100% certain that you are 100% wrong. Again, on the offhand chance that anyone else is reading this silliness, your grammatic illiteracy doesn't make you an idiot, because we all make stupid mistakes sometimes. Your relentless efforts to justify yourself in the face of obvious wrongness is what makes you an idiot. Hey, wait a minute, you're not George W. Bush, are you? (Guess number three...)

Moron.

If by "moron" you mean

.. albeit one that was not expressed very diplomatically.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, it sent a shock wave through the collective American populace. From coast to coast, people were asking themselves a simple question: "How could this have happened?" There was a sense of general dismay that the Soviets had won this particular leg of the Space Race, and Americans were more or less united in the goal of making sure that it didn't happen again.

As a result of this, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which set new standards for math and science education and established low-interest loans for college tuition. We recognized a threat, we took it seriously, we invested in our educational system, and the result of that investment was the generation that built the tools with which we won the Cold War.

Fast-forward to Modern America, and not only does it seem that we did not learn from that lesson of the past, but we're also moving in the wrong direction. Test scores are slipping, math and science education are being regarded in some circles as irrelevant (and even as "dirty" in some more extreme circles), and I've even seen the phrase "college-educated" used as a slur. (As if having a college education is a bad thing!)

It is dismissive to suggest that the rising and disturbing trend of religious fanaticism here at home has nothing to do with this trend. No offense intended to anybody's beliefs, but it should be obvious that the "6000 year-old Universe" crowd has far more political clout and organization than they did (say) ten years ago, and it is dangerous to dismiss them as "quaint" or "traditional." When I think "quaint", I think of Norman Rockwell paintings; it is hardly an adjective that I would attach to a movement that (I would contend) is a threat to the national security and the future of the United States.

Of course, it's equally dismissive to suggest that only religious fanaticism is responsible for our nation's disinterest in proper education. We've got a culture that is obsessed with shark bites, missing white women, and celebrity divorces. We've got parents that are more worried about having better landscaping or a bigger SUV than their neighbors than they are about their own children's education.

Personally, I don't care so much about the root causes of the problem as I do about the problem itself, and I'd like to see it fixed. Maybe what we need is a new national committment to math and science education, much like the one that served us so well in the past. Maybe what we need is a National Defense Education Act for the new millennium.

Sadly, however, I have very little faith that such an act would even make it out of committee in today's climate.

Hitler never said it.

But so what if had? Hitler was a demogogue who might say anything if it would gain him power. To that end, he might just as easily have said something true as something false.

For instance, he's quoted here as saying "There could be no issue between the Church and the State. The Church, as such, has nothing to do with political affairs. On the other hand, the State has nothing to do with the faith or inner organization of the Church."

No doubt Hitler had some ulterior motive for advocating separation of Church and State but simple quoting Hitler would not in any way undermine the concept.

Similarly, America's law makers may have their flaws but they are by no stretch of the imagination like the Nazis or secretly harbour the objectives of the Nazis.

A poster farther up asks "how many tin foil hat types think theres a connection with today's bombings"... All things considered, I find the coincidence of today's bombings somewhat disturbing. If history is to be considered, then there is good reason to question whether or not there is a connection.

How much farther does this idiocy have to go before the proles wake up. Aside from a new and improved Asshole Act, I wonder what monstrous retaliation awaits the next targets of our country's arrogant and foolhardy wrath.

If knowledge is power, then ignorance must be impotence. So I beg you to do what you can in that regard, at least. Share the knowledge. Encourage the ideals. Stand by your neighbors. Voice your opinion. Be disobedient if you must.

Need some red pills for your trapped friends and family? Perhaps these will help:

The Law, Frederic Bastiat http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

No Treason, by Lysander Spooner http://www.lysanderspooner.org/notreason.htm

An Essay on the Trial by Jury, by Lysander Spooner http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1201

Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

The Declaration of Independence http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.h tml

Civil Disobedience http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/civ.dis.html

Common Sense, by Thomas Paine http://www.bartleby.com/133/

Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Ettiene de la Boetie http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/laboetie.html

The Discovery of Freedom, Rose Wilder Lane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Wilder_Lane

Law of Nations, Vattel http://www.constitution.org/vattel/vattel.htm

Best luck to us all.

C