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That it's = it is.
It's pretty embarrassing when a published author doesn't pay attention to the basics taught to 9 year olds in third grade.

The number of hits returned from a Google search for "its vs it's:" 1,030,000,000. Searching Google for "its vs it's grammar" will return a still impressive 41,100,000 hits.

41 million online grammar lessons and no one gets this right.

It's ridiculous.

Let's take the most salient, and for some the most grating, example: its vs. it's.

The distinction is simple, the grammarian says. ''It's'' is a contraction of ''it is.'' Therefore, ''it'' requires an apostrophe. Everyone who thinks otherwise should be burned in a fire.

But wait! To form the possessive in English, we add 's to the end of the noun. Thus, we might expect '''it's'' to be possessive, and ''its'' to be plural.

What we have is two word formation rules that are in conflict: The rule for possessive formation leads us to believe that ''it's'' is a possessive, while the rule for contraction formation leads us to believe that it's a contraction. Which rule, then, gets precedence? There is no straightforward way to resolve this. We just have to pick one, accept the resulting inconsistency, and go with it.

To top it all, it doesn't really matter. The distinction between ''its'' and ''it's'' only is without force. You are never going to be in a position where you could be confused between the two.

There are many more examples: ''there'' vs. ''their, ''lose'' vs. ''loose,'' etc. Each is a clear violation of grammar, but that's it. There is no confusion in meaning or intent. No argument will be led astray because of a resulting misunderstanding. But still, it's continually made a point of argument. The contention is usually that poor grammar and spelling is an indication of stupidity, which means arguments from grammar are a particularly anemic ad hominem.

Criticizing grammar errors impedes communication

[[I think it only fair that the grammar Nazi should be forced to post a quote like this into every forum page where cut-and-paste does not work.]]

So there's an awfully beneficial to the bus company only contract of adhesion which applies when you purchase a bus ticket from these (IMHO) idiots at Suburban Express. The students seem to be unaware of it when they purchase the tickets, and the "contract" allows suburban express to charge them loads of extra money, or "fines" (ohmigod, they call them fines!) for wierd little things. Then, the company takes the students to court for these fines, and probaby schedules the court dates such that the student could not possibly attend the court action, thereby having the student lose by default.
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There's a very interesting write-up at the Daily Illini about this company and their practices by someone who initially did not believe how bad and wierd (and imho probably illegal) the actions of this bus company were and are: Suburban Express Causes its Own Problems is the title of the April 25th article by Matt Pasquini, an "Opinions" columnist.

Just use Google:

http://www.dailyillini.com/news/campus/2009/06/02/bars-pay-price-for-underage-drinking

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20282532,00.html

http://hawkonomics.blogspot.com/2009/05/iowa-city-bar-restrictions.html

And that was just the beginning. Bars get shut down for serving underage people. It doesn't matter if they check the IDs or not - if they are fooled by a fake ID they can be shut down. It is almost never the underage person's fault, and even when they are charged, it is a fine and little else.

For the bar owner, it can result in the loss of the business.

This is a start in the right direction.

You mean something like this?

It's almost like we're in the process of switching domains.

Hot engineering students:

http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/pap er736/news/2007/01/31/Diversions/Engineering.Girls .Bare.almost.All-2687084.shtml

http://girlsofengineering.com/

I worked for a couple years on a School Newspaper, http://www.dailyillini.com/The Daily Illini, at the University of Illinois, and although it was a School paper, it was at the time the top rated University paper in America, and also in direct competition with the local news paper, The News Gazette. One of the things that i learned was that there is a constant tension between journalists and the advertisers that make the paper run. We were independent, we relied, and the paper still does rely, entirely on ads to cover the costs of running the paper and paying the journalists. People always gripe about how much journalism is a whore to the forces of the general populous, but, in order for a paper to sustain itself, it has to be.

Responsible journalism takes a hit from the interestes of keeping a paper running - and it is always a struggle to determine which stories are best suited to these interests. The fact that headlines are changing is, frankly, not surprising, except in the fact that this change has come so late. Print journalism is floundering in a morass of uncertainty, people rarely pick up the paper anymore, and insted get their information online. Previous posters have said that headlines are dumb, ill-concieved, etc, however, headlines are the most, and often, only part of a paper ever read, and copy editors, who are responsible for headlines, often just sit around fixing grammar, spelling, and ap style, their last bastion of hope was these ridiculous headlines. How do you cram as much information as possible in to two or three words, and keep people interested in the story? If the headline is sucessful, a person will continue reading, if not, at least he or she will get the information she needs.

The alteration of headlines is both disheartening and expected. It is that ugly journalist versus ads department rearing its ugly head - something has to die in order for the paper to live. Views and click-throughs now generate the capital that print advertising once garnered, so it is unfourtunately imperative for newspapers to change with the times. It is an end to an era of whimsy generated by underpaid and understimulated spell-checkers, and I think, however inevitable, it is kind of sad.

This isn't the first time someone who has videotaped the police to show police misconduct was charged with wiretapping laws. In Champaign, IL (2004) a few black youth were trying to make a documentry about the treatment between the local police and the black neighborhood. Obviously, since it made the police look bad, they were charged with unauthorized audio recordings.

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Ooo! Ooo! I'm one. I'll try to answer.

ranting about games and sex causing social decline

Oh wait. No, I don't buy that line. Uberconservative Republican hacks like Senator Hillary Clinton might want our tax dollars to investigate violence and sex in games, but I'm one conservative who does NOT. LESS governmenting spending on this bullshit.

"Yeah! I mean, do you know what's happened to rates of violent youth crime and teen pregancny in the last ten years?" They always answer that they're at unprecedented levels

Hmmm. Maybe I'm NOT conservative, because I don't believe that either. It's the George Bush cronies and conservative right-wing nuts like Senator Clinton, Howard Dean, and John Kerry who have recently been found playing up false numbers for activities that we generally frown upon as being measures of moral decay in our society. No, Republicans, screw you, I'm not buying into that line.

and then are thrown off when I tell them that they've actually been falling quite steadily.

Amen brother. And what's been happening for the last 10-15 years? Unprecedented prosperity, even when you consider the recession a few years ago. Crime rates almost always drop when people are making more money.

Teen pregancy is even at its lowest rate since we began taking statistics in the '40s, down from the all-time high in 1991.

Go go gadget condoms!

What would be really amusing to me is if they discovered, in 20 years, that untold psychological damage to children was done by The Sims. People spending all day running households like gods, torturing and killing families and developing these horribly twisted personalities. I mean, take a horribly violent, depraved movie -- for example, Saw, and ask what game the creators would probably enjoy playing?

uhhh.. The Sims 2 is actually on the list of morally reprehensible games that Jack is crusading against. Seriously.

From the stories I heard in customer service lines at the bookstore, they were not popular. One problem was that they hadn't standardized yet, and students had to buy multiple incompatible devices or, worse yet, the model they needed wasn't available.

At least at the University level, people seem to think "kinda cool, but mostly overrated". The only real purpose I've heard is to require attendance/primitive participation.

These might be popular in elementary/middle school though. We had a couple "quiz show" systems when I went to school. Used sparingly, I remember enjoying them (when they worked). Used daily, they'd probably become boring fast.

Another article (don't remember the source) discussed using cell phone messaging for similar purposes. That almost seems reasonable, excepting that not everyone can afford one.

By being fired.

In an amusing coincidence, a few hours after seeing #79 on this list, I saw a big picture of the exact model under the top front-page headline of our local paper for today. Here is the article:

Death from stun gun shocks C-U

This sounds quite a bit like pumpkin chucking.
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Somehow i doubt that. If i write directions to a local bar for you, is that really something that gets copyrighted just because i wrote it?

Actually, yes. My directions are copyright by me the moment they're transfixed in some media. Your writing them down theoretically counts.

That said, facts cannot be protected by copyright. The majority, if not the entirety of my directions will like be facts. So if you just write down "South on Maple Street, turn left onto Johnson (near the gas station), and go three blocks, bar's on the left", that's darn near pure fact. However, if you transcribe my entire directions including my idiomatic language and quirky side notes, well, you'd have something I could definately claim copyright to.

If i have a conversation with someone, do we exclusively own the copyright to that conversation?

I doubt that either of those examples would be something that can be copyrighted, any more then a students notes from a class are copyrightable.

This is actually the most obvious case. The facts that the teacher conveys cannot be protected by copyright. The specific way in which he conveys them is protected, assuming that it's transfixed (Say, through someone taking near-exact shorthand, or tape recording it). The specific notes a student takes (Assuming that it's largely their own rephrasing of the facts conveyed) are protected by copyright for the student. There is even a very real argument that the student's notes represent a derivative work of the teacher's class, thus redistribution or sale could be controlled by the teacher. Some examples are here and here. I don't actually agree with this point of view, but it's definately not a crystal clear case.

All of this is, believe it or not, for your protection. Your creations are protected, even if you didn't think to protect it in advance. The specific examples you give are a bit silly, but it's true. Maybe during a conversation on politics you give a brilliant rebuttable that convinces everyone that you are right. I'd be pretty ticked off if the journalist who happened to be recording an interview with someone else at the next table over noticed my brilliant speech in the background of their tape, transcribes it, and passes it off as his own work.

I think a gazillion indie bands would leap at the chance to be distributed alongside the entire catalog of digitized music, especially if the site could serve up streaming radio and indies have a prayer of getting some airplay...

What I'm really saying is I'd like to see "the Snapster Studios Records Radio Entertainment Channel Online" and 500 other startups doing the same thing, because ultimately future companies built around this business model are owned by it's shareholders, who are the users.

I'd like the artists to enjoy a larger percentage of that revenue and better contract alternatives than they are currently, under the 75 year old curmudgeon with five heads that's suing potential lifelong customers, and can't imagine why CD sales continue to drop other than file sharing (answer: the economy sucks and so does your record company, two reasons I'm not buying your CDs).

And another thing that bothers me...some record companies have blatantly hired and trained armies of would-be usurpers to take over the International Space Station! Think about it.

Isaac Oates's Grade-AIM project at NCSA/UIUC did a similar thing more than a year ago. Unfortunately, I can't find much remaining record of it other than this DI article. You can take a halfway peek at the graphs from his monitor in the picture.

Or am I misunderstanding what's actually going on. Are they simply doing things like creating human hearts in monkeys and the like? As with the tobacco plants we rigged up to create hemoglobin or insulin or whatever? I don't really see a problem with that, I guess.

Yes, that's pretty much what they're doing.

This is a problem that I first saw raised in a shadowrun sourcebook (and yes, I really am a biologist, but that's still the first place I saw it mentioned): you can't grow an organ in isolation. It just doesn't work that way.

Before I even start, let me suggest some background reading:
why transplants are rejected and what genes actually are and a random example of what alternative technologies exist.

Both of the first two are good introductions for an intelligent layman, although they include a lot of info tangential to this discussion.

Finally, scads more info on the general state of this sort of research in japan, if that's what interests people, can be found here.

So, you can do one of several things if you want to produce organs for use in humans:
1) You can grow up an entire human (possibly with the gray matter destroyed, in order to be "humane") and then harvest it for the organs you want. This is the route of choice in the awful future of Shadowrun.

2) You can try and grow an organ in isolation in some kind of synthetic nutrient bath. Long story short: only works for skin or bone, move along.

3) You can genetically modify an animal so that it has organs that humans won't reject. This animal is "part human" in a more real sense than option 4 (which is what the japanese are proposing) because, basically by definition, it has human DNA in every single cell in it's body, so that the organ you want to donate to a human will produce proteins that cause your recipient to think that it's part of his own body.

4) The Japanese proposition. In order to generate the environment which will cause a single human cell to become a human heart, you implant that cell into a babboon, in such a place and in such a way that it will grow into a heart. In this case, you're basically using the baboon as the "nutrient bath" from option 2. There are a whole host of technical hurdles (of course) but I wholeheartedly agree with the previous poster. This is actually less "bothersome" than option 3, and if there's a chance it will work, go for it.