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I don't think the term is quite that bad, but the way we talk about it is. That said, my choice to use the term "puff" was specifically to avoid any pre-conceived notions about the duality.

The term "wave-particle duality" was coined because we can imagine waves, and we can imagine particles, and when we realised that we couldn't force light and electrons to be one or the other, that they must be, in some sense "both".

The term is not wave particle alternation, conversion, collapse, or any thing which implies that it is sometimes one and sometimes the other. However, the elementary examples we give people learning about QM might mislead people to believe that.

The "duality" is expressed specifically to indicate that it has both aspects at all times.

The stupidity is that Quayle didn't realize there were two valid and correct spellings of potato/potatoe, and refused to accept a valid spelling.
That is to be clear, "potatoe" was a spelling accepted in the 20th century, used by some respected publishers, up until the "Quayle incident". See: http://blog.oxforddictionaries...

See, I showed that a person on the right and on the left can both be wrong about the same subject.

definition of robot...

A machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer

landmines on the other hand only have a few simple states, "safe", "armed", "detonated", "dud" they are simple single purpose constructs. It's not right to call them robots in any technical sense.

Read OED's blog on less or fewer.

nope, Attila had it right in the GP post. The word Engineer comes from latin....

See Oxford dictionary for details

Middle English (denoting a designer and constructor of fortifications and weapons; formerly also as ingineer): in early use from Old French engigneor, from medieval Latin ingeniator, from ingeniare 'contrive, devise', from Latin ingenium (see engine); in later use from French ingénieur or Italian ingegnere, also based on Latin ingenium, with the ending influenced by -eer.

uh...

As I wrote "I suppose another Oxford UP product" ... it very clearly is not the OED though. No more than my New Shorter OED is the OED ... yeah?

I mean look at the definition in the link and compare it to the tiny snippet of the OED entry which I reproduced here (or to the full OED entry if you can access it). Oxford produce enough different dictionaries to fill most peoples bookshelves.

Quick car analogy: To refer to www.oxforddictionaries.com as "the OED," is like referring to a Fiesta as an "F-150." It does indeed seem to be the legitimate Ford Motor Company that makes both.

They should be 140 characters or fewer.

Er. No, not quite.

Reference: http://www.oxforddictionaries....

Less is also used with numbers when they are on their own and with expressions of measurement or time,

This guy's my hero - misuse of "comprised" is a pet peeve of mine.

I hope you don't have a weak heart, because if you do, the Oxford English Dictionary entry on comprise might be a little too much for you to take:

When this sense is used in the passive (as in the country is comprised of twenty states), it is more or less synonymous with the first sense ( the country comprises twenty states). This usage is part of standard English,

what happens when oxford announces that "comprised of" now also means "made up of" ?

They already have.

Message to the editors:

http://www.oxforddictionaries....
This is elementary school level guys, aren't you ashamed of yourselves?

...and they ended up decimating over 95 percent of the targeted insect population.

So... they killed about 9,5% of targeted mosquitoes? Hardly an impressive result.

The modern meaning of the word decimate is: "Kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of". But you probably already knew that. So why did you not know that the historical meaning, "kill every tenth individual", is not relevant in this context? Trying to prove to everyone how smart you are? An attempt at humor?

What can you expect from a dictionary publisher that picked "selfie" as the word of the year in 2013 and "vape" for 2014

(Different AC)

It is 100% "proper grammar", and an online article from a magazine editor isn't enough to change that.

I've always been more a fan of "they" for a singular person of undetermined gender but "he" has been around for far too long to start calling it wrong.

from the first page of results for googling "he or she grammar"

It's more than just writer's digest.

Here

If your child is thinking about a gap year, ? can get good advice from this website.

A researcher has to be completely objective in ? findings.

In the past, people tended to use the pronouns he, his, him, or himself in situations like this:

If your child is thinking about a gap year, he can get good advice from this website.

A researcher has to be completely objective in his findings.

Today, this approach is seen as outdated and sexist. There are other options which allow you to arrive at a ‘gender-neutral’ solution, as follows:

You can use the wording ‘he or she’, ‘his or her’, etc.:
If your child is thinking about a gap year, he or she can get good advice from this website.

A researcher has to be completely objective in his or her findings.

and here

He or She in Unknown Gender

For years, if the gender of an individual referred to in a sentence is unknown, “he” would be used as the generic pronoun.

“We don’t know who started the fire,” a police officer might say, “but he will be held responsible.”
It is understood, by both the police officer and any listeners, that “he” could refer to either a woman or a man.

However, as culture changes, so does the language along with it, and many believe that the exclusive use of “he” for a person of unknown gender is sexist. There are a few options in this situation.

An archaic way of dealing with the issue is to use “one,” as in “One never knows what one can expect.”
Using this pronoun is often clunky and results in some strange-sounding sentences.

“He or she” can be used in moderation, but it cannot be used too many times at once: “he or she knows that if he or she needs to talk, he or she can visit his or her professor.”
Some use “they,” but this word cannot be used with a singular antecedent—it is only used with plurals.

and

Traditionally, he and him were used to refer to both genders in formal writing:

If anyone has any evidence to oppose this view, let him inform the police immediately.

Nowadays, we often see gender neutral forms (e.g. he or she, he/she, s/he, (s)he, they and him or her, him/her, them) when we do not know if the person referred to is male or female:

The bank manager could help with your problem. He or she will probably be able to give you a loan. (or he/she will probably be able to or they will probably be able to )

Go to a hairdresser. Ask him or her to come up with a style that suits you, your hair, your lifestyle. (or ask him/her to come up with a style or ask them to come up with a style )

When you get into the building, go to the person on the desk in the reception area. They can tell you where to go. (or He or she can tell you where to go.)

Language changes. There are plenty of words that previous generations used (eg: the "N" word, "Mistress" for the female head of the house) without a second thought - but usage has changed.

Come on, they're claiming it was their petition to the FDA - "Fast track Drug and vaccine research for Ebola Hemorrhagic fever" - that did it?

I think what they're claiming is that the desired outcome was reached and the petition was pushing in that direction. The degree to which any one petition took a lead or decisive role might be unknown, however, any assertion that all those petitions were simply ineffective noise is ludicrous. Clearly, looking at the individual cases, there are some where the petition would have been a very significant form of pressure (to which electing one legislator does not favorably compare.)

Some of these petitions deliver nearly half a million signatures to the decision makers engaged with a specific problem. When the target is a corporation or some other entity that is actually concerned with public opinion, any thesis that the petition is inherently ineffective is about as dubious as anything gets. Particularly in light of the outcomes often going the way the petition was asking for, whereas prior to the petition, these same conditions were not extant (obviously that is why the petitions arise in the first place.)

They got 19,000 signatures. That's nothing. There was an international race to get control over Ebola. This petition had ZERO effect.

Slacktivism is for slackers - those who are too lazy to get their butts out of a chair.

Gratuitous, research-free, unjustified name-calling is for the ignorant, the disingenuous and the propagandist. I wonder which of those you represent.

Research-free? The term has been used repeatedly in news reports to deride the people who think that signing a petition or clicking on like will mean something - usually when comparing slacktivists to the people who are in the streets marching, protesting, resisting police, or actually doing something. Besides, how can you say it's research-free when I provided a link to slacktivism, or unjustified name-calling when it's a recognized phenomenon and wikipedia uses onchange.org petitions as an example of slacktivism?

Here are some more definitions of the term, which has been in general use for years, and is often defined as useless actions such as signing online petitions or buying a bracelet. Also implying that I'm either ignorant, disingenuous , or a propagandist is either ignorant, disingenuous, or the mark of a frustrated slacktivist. :-)

> Wow I learned something new! I didn't know Muslim was a race.

When it comes to dictionary pedants there is one thing you can always count on - their own failure to read the damn dictionary.

Race:
1.1 A group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc.; an ethnic group
    Example: We are trying to find out why the British as a race find it amazingly funny to take their clothes off.
1.3 A group or set of people or things with a common feature or features:
    Example: This sedentary behaviour is apparently turning our kids into a race of slothful fatties who risk a reduced lifespan and other problems.

The word appears in Oxford.

starvation

.star'vaSH(e)n/

noun

suffering or death caused by hunger.

synonyms: extreme hunger, lack of food, famine, undernourishment, malnourishment

Let's try English, shall we? Undernourishment, lack of food, EXTREME HUNGER. Like 14 million households, not getting enough food; like 7 million households, experiencing extreme food insecurity and pain from hunger.

It's hard to quantify starvation. It's hard to quantify malnourishment. It's hard to quantify death. Estimates of 3000+ per year dead in America by starvation stand right next to estimates of almost 50% of deaths under 5 (28,000 deaths under 5 per year in the United States) being caused by malnutrition--that is, we know people were eating, we know the kids were eating, but they weren't eating enough; we can't exactly say they died of ... well, starving to death ... but their bodies did stop functioning simply from stress caused by being hungry all the fucking time, essentially BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T FED ENOUGH. We can't exactly point to this in the muck of complications it causes, which brings other health effects, any one of which can be the killing blow, ultimately caused by chronic hunger but not itself chronic hunger, so not technically death by hunger.

In short: people who die because they don't eat enough may not have technically died of hunger, even though they wouldn't have died if they had adequate food security. In the same way, people who die of heart disease caused by smoking are marked as dying by heart disease, rather than "death by cigarettes".

You can be like this woman and argue that dying of complications caused by and related to chronic hunger aren't the same as starving to death, but you'd be intellectually dishonest and not credible.

You have forgotten that the principle under your theory is looking after all the kids in the school..

Principle is right. I'm not sure if I'm being whooshed or if you actually had a bad teacher.

Let me see... http://blog.oxforddictionaries...

Principle is a noun. Its main meaning is ‘a fundamental idea or general rule that is used as a basis for a particular theory or system of belief’.

A principle is also ‘a rule or belief about what is right and wrong that governs the way in which someone behaves’.

Principle can also be used as an uncountable noun to mean ‘morally correct behaviour’:

Principal is most commonly found as an adjective meaning ‘main or most important’.

Principal is also noun, and its various noun meanings are linked to the adjectival sense (i.e. ‘most important’). A principal may be the head of a school, college, or other educational institution, the leading performer in a concert, ballet, opera, or play, or the most important person in an organization or group:

From the GP sentense, I would expect that he is talking about the head of school?

I think that statement needs qualifying.

For that I'll refer here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

In modern English "female" refers to gender.

That is not correct and I can prove it. I don't know which dictionary you prefer, but in the US, Merriam-Webster pretty much sets the standard for English:

http://www.merriam-webster.com...

If you're British, then Oxford sets your standard:

http://www.oxforddictionaries....

Both dictionaries seem to agree that female refers to the sex that can bear young or lay eggs. The person wouldn't fully meet that definition (and in fact still carries organs that are part of the male reproductive system, such as the prostate.)

Biological sex is not binary

The definition for male may not be, but in terms of female, the definition is pretty straightforward: Must be capable of laying eggs or bearing offspring. In most non-mammalian species, there isn't XY chromosome (reptiles, birds, and fish for example have ZW instead) but there's still a common trait for females: capable of bearing offspring or laying eggs.

Now if you want to look at the extreme and one off examples where a human has XXY (or any other variation) it still boils down to being capable of bearing offspring or laying eggs. If that person can not, or if they can't produce male gametes, then they really aren't either sex.

As far as the cultural impact of everything I've said above: Culturally a person might identify as man or woman, and whichever they choose is their choice of course, however it isn't possible to change one's sex (or at least, the technology doesn't exist.)

That also being said, even if the technology comes along that allows females to produce male sperm or males to bear offspring or lay eggs, that doesn't change the anatomy of a person's brain.

Oxford dictionary lists both couldn't and could care less (could care less being listed as informal). Like it or not, language evolves over time. Idiom or informal, don't go head over heels worrying about it. It's sad that you can lose focus on such a small thing.

http://www.oxforddictionaries....

No need to be so rude--whatever version of OED you are looking at is wrong. The online Oxford English Dictionary quite explicitly states that you are wrong:

The standard plural in English of octopus is octopuses. However, the word octopus comes from Greek and the Greek plural form octopodes is still occasionally used. The plural form octopi, formed according to rules for some Latin plurals, is incorrect.

> he was going to suicide

"Suicide" is not a verb.

Yes, it is.

Definition 4: http://dictionary.reference.co...

verb (used without object), suicided, suiciding.
4. to commit suicide.

Webster says it's a verb: http://www.merriam-webster.com...
As does Oxford: http://www.oxforddictionaries....

You haven't looked into this fully have you?
http://www.oxforddictionaries....

The -ise ending is quite a recent introduction in UK English (c.1950), and from an etymological point of view is just plain wrong, as, incidentally, is the -yze ending in US English.

Actually, GP, had the right etymology - in Italian it would be scenari - but he did blatantly make up a plural that is not used in English. Hypercorrectness is a fault, not a virtue. It confuses your audience and leads them to doubt your accuracy. Kinda silly, really.

You seem to have accidentally posted the wrong link. Perhaps you meant http://www.oxforddictionaries....

Note, it describes it as non-standard even in American English.

You might also like to consider that the reason why people talk about American English is to differentiate it from standard English, something that you septics insist on calling "British" English.

http://www.oxforddictionaries....

And according to http://www.oxforddictionaries....:

derogatory
1A prostitute.

see the derogatory bit there?

What does it mean to "Scotch" a review? Is that just a really stupid and completely unneeded racial slur against the Scots, or...

You should pick up a dictionary some time. They're full of interesting words.

Merriam Webster
transitive verb
2: to put an end to scotched rumors of a military takeover>

First Known Use of SCOTCH
15th century

Oxford
verb
1 [with object] Decisively put an end to: a spokesman has scotched the rumours

Origin

early 17th century (as a noun): of unknown origin; perhaps related to skate1. The sense 'render temporarily harmless' is based on an emendation of Shakespeare's Macbeth iii. ii. 13 as ‘We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it’, originally understood as a use of scotch2; the sense 'put an end to' (early 19th century) results from the influence on this of the notion of wedging or blocking something so as to render it inoperative.

they

2 [singular] Used to refer to a person of unspecified sex: 'ask a friend if they could help'

Source

Oh really? Exactly how is one's JavaScript supposed to be able to tell if a post comes from a mobile device? Is there a slash post page that logs the useragent, IP, OS, or whatever that us plebs have access to? Also, I don't particularly expect a reply from you since you obviously only wanted to insult the first AC for asking for a simple request.

Since you wanted to play the Grammar Nazi card and took extra care to fluff up your response to sound as pretentious and educated as possible, allow me to critique it: The Oxford Dictionary says that your claim of phone being an abbreviation is incorrect. Its origins come from telephone, as noted, however common usage has made it become officially recognized as its own word. That argument is invalid.

Seriously, dude, you forgot the second comma. -10 points

Because you have decided -at least for this post- that we are writing a thesis, let me point out that your use of the contractions "you're" and "don't" are too informal. -10 points each.

Again, since Slashdot somehow became a repository for advanced writings, I'd like to note that you did not use a double space at the beginning of your second sentence. -10.

I'm also very torn on the issue of starting both of your sentences with introductory modifiers. They may be syntactically correct, I can't recall at this moment, but I'd suggest any student rewrite them. They just seem clunky to me. I won't mark off for those at this time.

So how did our AC Grammar Nazi stack up this time? 60%- a failure in American schools. Not surprising in the least. Typically the bigger of a grammar ass you are, the more you fuck up your own post. I'm sure mine is not perfect in the least, but remember that THIS. IS. SLASHDOT! We aren't in school and we aren't even filling out a damned TPS report so really "Lighten up, Francis!"

Read the:
USENIX System Administrators' Code of Ethics
LOPSA System Administrators' Code of Ethics

You're an IT PROFESSIONALl now. Act like it. Ignore the politics.

With "root"/"Administrator" account access to IT systems, you're basically God and have access to everything in IT. TRUST IS EVERYTHING between IT administrators and your users.

There was a time when bankers and accountants were highly respected because they had a fiduciary duty to their clients/customer. Following the recent economic crash of the Great Recession and Enron-type scandals, the reputations of companies like Goldman Sachs and Arthur Anderson were significantly tarnished and people's perception of them have noticeably changed. Sure, there's always been other scandals/incidents before but most people only remember the most recent big ones.

Physicians have their Hippocratic Oath, Professional Engineers have their Obligation of the Engineer, and lawyers have their professional code. Yes, every day, there's some new news story of a medical doctor, engineer, or lawyer violating all or some part of these oaths. The intention is that we all like to think/hope that as professionals, we can strive to maintain these goals and call out the ones who have gone astray.

All workplaces have some sort of internal office politics. This is what happens in any size or type of company or organization of humans due to company/organizational policies and just the nature of individuals (which tends towards being selfish or fiefdom-protecting). Being a "non-profit" is ultimately more of a tax status issue and does not automatically mean the entire non-profit organization or that all of its workers are 100% perfect, selfless, always altruistic individuals who all agree on everything.

More criminal minds might call such altruistic people "suckers" depending on the situation. Or what sometimes happens is that the altruistic individuals in charge made false assumptions about the costs or labor involved for operations and refuse to believe that we can't just all work for free or get stuff/materials for free just for the "good of the children blah blah blah". How many rich donors can you really get?

The goal is to find a job that has office politics which you can reasonably tolerate. Since you said you're new, there may be other background history in your organization that you're not aware of that you're just stumbling across now.

And yes, there's always 1 (or more) "crazy people" in any company/organization. Be cautious in dealing with them. Do your job (e.g. fix their computer if broken) but don't get looped into whatever personal agenda they're advancing.

Really doing something about any of the office politics sometimes might mean getting your manager involved (or becoming a manager). A good manager can serve as your "shield" (or "scapegoat" depending on your viewpoint) so you can defer/blame certain things to them ("I'd like to help you but my boss lady said I can't. Talk to her about it."). This is not a path to be chosen lightly.

All that being said...always keep your resume/CV up-to-date and your co-worker and business relationships cordial. Separate your work stuff from your personal stuff. Getting too entangled in this can turn into utter poison for yourself and your future career.

Sometimes, you've just go to bail. Really. If you can describe your workplace with the one word of "miserable" and you've made reasonable efforts to deal with it in a reasonable time period (maybe 3-6 months?), it's really time to go.

Even though it's kind of really targeted towards managers, Patrick Lencioni's book

They are so literally retarded that by seeing them you forget what the term literally means.

Criticism of the use of literal when it is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true literally needs to stop.

Ah, the old may/may not can/can not confusion.

In case you didn't notice, you didn't reply to what the GP said. You replied to a twisted version of it. A straw man version of it, one might even say.

Your complaint about my word choice is wrong too. Strawman indeed.

Please carry on and don't take anything I wrote here as an admonition to cease expressing yourself. I would recommend that you give a little more thought to the things you say, folks might take you a bit more seriously if you did.

Justice Brandeis was and is correct that "... the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

Tolkien may have reinvented the world, or he may have read it and forgot it and then reinvented it (as he said himself when asked).

The word "Hobbit" appeared as a fantastic creature name in 1854.
---
http://blog.oxforddictionaries...

Then, after Tolkienâ(TM)s death, an example of the word did turn up, in a long list of âsupernatural beingsâ(TM) appearing in the so-called Denham Tracts, compiled by the Yorkshire merchant M. A. Denham (1800 or 1801-1859). Denham was an amateur folklorist who published many books and pamphlets, including twenty Minor Tracts on Folklore (1849-c.1854). The majority of these Tracts were collected in an edition prepared for the Folklore Society in the 1890s, and the word hobbit appears in the second volume (1895) of this edition.

The discovery of the word in the Denham Tracts was reported in The Times on 31 May 1977. The article records that Tolkien, when asked whence he had got the name, âreplied that he could not remember: perhaps he invented it; or âoeI may have picked it up from a nineteenth century sourceâ.â(TM) (Perhaps Tolkien still recalled that exchange of letters in 1938.) The Times writer rather boldly asserted that this ânineteenth century sourceâ(TM) had now been identified as Tolkienâ(TM)s inspiration. But could Tolkien have read the relevant Denham Tract? It certainly seems an unlikely origin for âburied childhood memoriesâ(TM).

http://www.oxforddictionaries.... - here's the british version. Maybe you could be less lazy and look for the huge link that says british on it.

Assuming you're English, it is utilized in your language too - http://www.oxforddictionaries....

Good point, the word "exploration" includes the sense of searching, examining, or looking for discoveries which includes any manner.

However, I was using "exploration" in the sense of the first definition: http://www.oxforddictionaries.... :
"The action of traveling in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it"

Some history
near earth space exploration:
1: sputnik
2: Yuri Gargarin ...
ISS

exploration of moon:
1: Luna series; Ranger series ...
2: Apollo 8

exploration of Mars:
1: Cosmos, Mars, Mariner projects, etc ...
2: year 2036, Sir Richard Branson's wheelchair gets stuck halfway up Olympus Mons, thus ending his second attempt to be the first to climb it. (joking)
However, many people believe (hope) the robotic exploration of Mars is to be eventually supplanted by human exploration.

venus, mercury, gas giants
1: well, yes, all robots. I don't believe we'll ever want to send a volunteer human there.
2: perhaps we'll send someone to the Jovian moons. I hope that someday our space exploration ability will allow that.

stars:
1: telescopes: radio, microwaves, infrared, visible, UV, X-ray, and gamma. also looking for extra-solar neutrinos
Will we ever get humans out of the solar system? Who would _not_ want that?

So, counting the number of planets explored by robots and those explored by humans, then historically robots outnumber humans.
You got me there.

As for the egregious insults, AC, why did you do that?

... attempt to falsify any claims...

Falsifying claims is the worst thing a scientist can do. Once they're caught their career is over.

This a misunderstanding of the the term "falsify". Unfortunately, there are two well-understood meanings for the word:

• to alter in a misleading way, to lie
• to prove that a statement/theorem/idea/claim is false

In the sciences, we use the second meaning of the word a lot. It is considered a good thing. We propose an idea, or make a claim, then find ways to test the idea/claim. A useful idea in science is one which is said to be "falsifiable", that is, one which it is theoretically possible to disprove. If you can find a way to test your claim, and state beforehand which results will prove that your claim is wrong, then your claim is falsifiable, and is now a scientific claim. Then you run the test, and see what results it gives. If you get any results which don't falslify your claim, then the claim stands for a little longer. If you get results which falsify your claim, you throw the claim away and come up with a new claim. So science moves forward when we make claims and attempt to falsify them.

Using the first meaning of the word, you might say that someone "falsified some data". That would be a bad thing. This is not the common usage of the word in the scientific community, but is a popular understanding of the word elsewhere, so the distinction is worth calling out.

Notably, you can lie about data, but you generally can't lie about a claim; so context is essential in determining whether the verb "falsify": lying about data/evidence/results is bad, but attempting to disprove claims/ideas/hypothesis is good.

It is indeed, although it's probably not a physical activity that would be considered to improve your physical fitness.

This is why "normal" people hate nerds & geeks.

Obviously, 12oz curls are a physical activity, but no one in their right, non-Aspergers minds actually calls it a "physical activity" in the sense used by everyone except pedantic ass-wipes. (No, that is not an ad hominem attack, because I have facts and definitions on my side.

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/phys/ Physical activity is any body movement that works your muscles and requires more energy than resting.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sport an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/sport An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others

I don't have the exact numbers

Right, because there are no numbers showing what you are hoping can be pulled out of your arse.

Some of the stupid interviewing criteria that my colleagues and me [sic] had to deal with boggles my mind

That [sic] was unnecessary. That is actually proper grammar .

IF I said "My colleagues and me" - then you would be correct.

I am not normally a grammar Nazi, but when I am right ....

Weather - The state of the atmosphere at a particular place and time as regards heat, cloudiness, dryness, sunshine, wind, rain, etc. ( http://www.oxforddictionaries.... )

Climate - The weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period ( http://www.oxforddictionaries.... )

In exactly what way? I gather that shrug has to do with your general state of confusion.

Lets be blunt the Swedish farmer argument is the "I'm Alright Jack" argument http://www.urbandictionary.com...! with just a bit of dressing up.

Weather - The state of the atmosphere at a particular place and time as regards heat, cloudiness, dryness, sunshine, wind, rain, etc. ( http://www.oxforddictionaries.... )

Climate - The weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period ( http://www.oxforddictionaries.... )

In exactly what way? I gather that shrug has to do with your general state of confusion.

Lets be blunt the Swedish farmer argument is the "I'm Alright Jack" argument http://www.urbandictionary.com...! with just a bit of dressing up.

Boughten is perfectly cromulent.

<grammar police>That site lists it as an adjective. He used it as a verb. I don't think that qualifies as cromulent in that case.</grammar police>

Boughten is perfectly cromulent.

1. Microchip is a brand name. Calling an IC a Microchip is like calling a moving staircase an Escalator.

Factually correct, but doesn't answer the question of "Why not?" We do it all the time. We xerox documents. We google for results. And besides, it is already too late .

Actually...

Some folks in Oxford would like to have a word with you, mate.

Not sure where you got your numbers from, nor how many words you think the english langue has...

http://www.oxforddictionaries....
lemmas - Instead of talking about words, it's more useful in this context to talk about lemmas, a lemma being the base form of a word. For example, climbs, climbing, and climbed are all examples of the one lemma climb.
If we talk about the base of 95% of common lemmas, we are looking at over 50,000 words for a strength of 3 chosen randomly VS 1 printable ascii chrs(of 95)
125,000,000,000,000 VS 95

Sure, your 11 chrs = (and that's if you accept all 95 chrs) strenght comes in at VS 4 random lemma
5,688,000,922,764,599,609,375 VS 6,250,000,000,000,000,000
5.688e+18 VS 6.250e+19

But 5 lemma will rock your world for
312,500,000,000,000,000,000,000
3.125e+20

And i have no idea how 10 acsii chrs beats 10 lemma ..
90,765,625,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, VS 59,873,693,923,837,890,625
9.765e+46 VS 5.987e+16

And let me reiterate, this is based of just lemma's, build a list of common lemmas, throw in common names, and other common words and you coudl be looking a list will over 150,000 to base your calculations on.

English is a mish-mash of other languages, which also gives it more words than other languages. Its spelling and pronunciation are non-standard because most of those borrowed words retain part or all of their spelling or pronunciation from their native language. You even get words which retain spelling from their original language, but whose pronunciation gets shifted to a phonetic reading using rules from another language (e.g. niche = nitch instead of neesh).

In the US, maybe. In the UK, niche is pronounced the French way, ie neesh.

English is a whole different matter, the English phonetics changed drastically from their Germanic roots during/ due to 'The Great Vowel Shift'. Strange enough the spelling remained basically Germanic but the pronunciation is nothing like it used to be.
This vowel shift is even more pronounced in American, the (a?) reason they have great difficulty in comprehensively speaking European languages, including Church-Latin.

English is a mish-mash of other languages, which also gives it more words than other languages. Its spelling and pronunciation are non-standard because most of those borrowed words retain part or all of their spelling or pronunciation from their native language. You even get words which retain spelling from their original language, but whose pronunciation gets shifted to a phonetic reading using rules from another language (e.g. niche = nitch instead of neesh).

English spelling and pronunciation will become standardized when all the world's languages decide to conform their languages to a universal spelling and pronunciation standard.