Domain: usingenglish.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to usingenglish.com.
Comments · 34
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Re:Horrible grammar
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Re:False premise
Buy yourself a dictionary, son.
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Re:Lobbying and Contributions
take your trash elsewhere republican. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... http://www.usingenglish.com/re...
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Re:BASICally
If I can direct you to this reference http://www.usingenglish.com/re.... Are computers causing education problems, very bloody likely as computer geeks and nerds, a minority, are the only ones that really effectively thrive on that interaction and in that environment. For the rest, they very likely are not exploring that computer educational environment but doing the very same dopey social interactions over and over and over again, like wired up monkeys getting a jolt from a joy buzzer each time they get another like or make a 'friend' or what ever other socially manipulative interaction designed by some shit head doctorates in psychology, working for social network companies, to keep their victims seeing and clicking adds.
All the older geeks and nerds should fully appreciate by now that computers on their own are not the best educational environment for the majority and that their use needs to be limited and properly implemented and logically adjusted to suit the psychology and personality as well as of course existing measured outcomes of each student.
Stop thinking only about what works for you and demanding that everyone else aligns with you and start focusing about what works for each individual and how computers can be used to tailor the educational environment for each student and ensure human social interaction still remains dominant, we are humans after all not machines. Computers should augment the education of the majority not dominate. For us computer geeks and nerds, the story would be different, leave us in the computer lab with the other geeks and nerds and we'll be happy and thrive.
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Re:Highway Robbery
I did not make that definition up. Below are a few random examples from the internet of my definition being confirmed. I challenge you to find one definition that matches your bizarre use of the phrase.
1. Success obtained through dumb luck.
2. A rare moment of high achievement from an individual/team/company that is usually unsuccessful.
"I can't believe that Johnny took home that chick last night!""Yeah, well even a broken clock is right twice a day."
The origin is apparently from the Chinese proverb saying "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while":
http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/even+a+blind+squirrel+finds+a+nut+once+in+a+while.html
This expression means that even if people are ineffective or misguided, sometimes they can still be correct just by being lucky.
Read more at http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/even+a+blind+squirrel+finds+a+nut+once+in+a+while.html#XxyDt8zIwgsX5oCy.99http://www.clichesite.com/content.asp?which=tip+2144
1. Even people who don't know what they are doing can be successful sometimes.
2. LuckySorry, but face it. You ignorantly misused the colloquialism and are now having a hard time admitting it.
If you just stop and think about it...it makes sense. Even if a broken clock is right twice a day, it still doesn't mean you should consult the broken clock, right? Thus, the meaning is, if something TOTALLY USELESS occasionally is right, a single single success should not be read into too much.
Good luck to you in your future education.
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Re:Highway Robbery
I did not make that definition up. Below are a few random examples from the internet of my definition being confirmed. I challenge you to find one definition that matches your bizarre use of the phrase.
1. Success obtained through dumb luck.
2. A rare moment of high achievement from an individual/team/company that is usually unsuccessful.
"I can't believe that Johnny took home that chick last night!""Yeah, well even a broken clock is right twice a day."
The origin is apparently from the Chinese proverb saying "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while":
http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/even+a+blind+squirrel+finds+a+nut+once+in+a+while.html
This expression means that even if people are ineffective or misguided, sometimes they can still be correct just by being lucky.
Read more at http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/even+a+blind+squirrel+finds+a+nut+once+in+a+while.html#XxyDt8zIwgsX5oCy.99http://www.clichesite.com/content.asp?which=tip+2144
1. Even people who don't know what they are doing can be successful sometimes.
2. LuckySorry, but face it. You ignorantly misused the colloquialism and are now having a hard time admitting it.
If you just stop and think about it...it makes sense. Even if a broken clock is right twice a day, it still doesn't mean you should consult the broken clock, right? Thus, the meaning is, if something TOTALLY USELESS occasionally is right, a single single success should not be read into too much.
Good luck to you in your future education.
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That's not what the idiom means.
How about you counter GP's claim by actually naming the dog? [...] If you can not name the dog, just admit Israel has no dog in the fight.
I don't think you understand what the phrase means. It doesn't mean to have a favored side. It just means that you "have a stake in the outcome of the problem at hand" or if you have no dog in a fight, then "you are not concerned and will not be affected either way by the outcome of something." Here, have a few more citations.
The "dog" doesn't have to be a favored side that they're betting on. Neither side may be appealing to them, but they most certainly care about the progress of the civil war and whether or not it turns into a greater regional conflict that will suck them in.
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Re:The standards are published in English
Well, let's see. I counted a dozen of them commonly used in programming language keywords and function names. Most of these are also irregular in French and Italian.
The presence of irregular verbs does matter, though, since we're discussing the suitability of a natural language to be used for a programming language. The more complex and irregular the vocabulary of that language, the more difficult it is for a non-speaker to guess keywords.
Accents are bad primarily because we don't have the tools to deal with them in programming properly. If you leave them out, then that's violating the orthography of the language (and possibly confusing), which is not ideal. If you make them optional, then you can't use search and replace reliably. If you make them mandatory, then where do they go on the keyboard? The US-International layout uses deadkeys to insert accented letters, i.e. you press shift+' and then A to get a-diaresis. But no character appears until the a is typed. That means, to insert a quotation mark into pre-typed code, you need to type shift+' and then space. A similar problem occurs if you want to start a quoted message with a vowel; you need to put in an extra space to avoid the accented character.
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Re:Not to be a grammar nazi or anything but...
not to be a web nazi or anything,(you missed this comma btw) but learn to properly link your links...
1. http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/abject+lesson.html
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Re:Not to be a grammar nazi or anything but...
not to be a web nazi or anything,(you missed this comma btw) but learn to properly link your links...
1. http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/abject+lesson.html
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Re:Thats cheating
It's "spelt".
Actually, both forms are allowed.
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Re:How would that work
This is almost like a new pizza place would open in the town square and people would be lining to try it out.
No, it's almost like you don't know how to use the conditional tense correctly. http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/english-conditionals-an-introduction.html
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Re:What are you guys talking about?
"cut your teeth" is a general expression used to refer to your initial experiences with something. Possibly comes from baby's teething (where they cut their teeth on life itself)
for example: I cut my teeth on learning about idioms by using Google.
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Re:Some Quotes to Reflect Upon
"At a fundraiser in Philadelphia where he was flanked by PA governor Ed Rendell, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter, and Sen. Bob Casey, Barack Obama said, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I've seen Eagles fans."
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I think that it is quite a stretch to claim that this Obama comment is evidence that Obama is nothing new."
http://www.politicususa.com/en/Obama-Phillyhttp://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/bring+a+knife+to+a+gunfight.html
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Re:Spore
He had lead everyone to believe....
This is off topic, but it's been driving me nuts for a while because I'm seeing it everywhere. The past tense of lead (the verb to lead) is led.
Sorry.
Thank you for your time.
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You're out of time
I still slice bread with knife, a technology which has been around for thousands of years
Haven't you heard it? You can buy pre-sliced bread. And this innovation is considered so good that it has been used as a standard for comparing other inventions
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Re:Prof Connes also a Fields medalist
"spelled honor wrong" is perfectly correct, idiomatic American English. I did some quick searches to back this up:
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/101-wrong-wrongly-spelled-spelt.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=wrong
See the many examples of "wrong" used as an adverb in the dictionary reference. I think it's clear that the original poster is used to British English, and it sounds like you are too.
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Re:Shitty web design is not a "blind" problem
A List Apart is a great site. I learned a lot about design, style, and usability. There is quite an archive of articles going years back - some of those were critical in my (somewhat enhanced) understanding of how to design a site.
Yea, several years ago I visited A List Apart regularly. But I haven't in the last couple of years.
As far as SEO and webcrawlers, that is quite a complex subject once you dig down a layer or two.
A big thing, especially with Google's Page Ranking, is getting good quality links to your website. Then the text, for links as well as well as the body, has to be relevant. And there's the Fog Index or as wiki calls it the Gunning fog index. You almost have to hire an SEO to get a good search ranking but not just anything will work as a website may be penalized by search engines.
Falcon -
Re:Sure, but
Are you serious? I hope you realize that it's actually a Moot Point. I did google "Moo Point," and found that you may be quoting an episode of "Friends," which doesn't seem like a show that an average slashdotter might watch. That sure is odd...
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Re:I am what I am and it is what it is.
Well said. And some may say I'm just as pro-linux as Twitter et al and I have in the past fallen into the same trap. Unfortunately, if they say anything significant, it is destroyed by the childish manner in which they argue. The nature of humanity is such that mis-informed behaviours actually work against the proclaimed purpose. One does wonder if that may be the true intended purpose of such posts.
On another note, I'm just about ready to take up the forms lu, lus, and lun
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That is what This deserves!
This ambiguity comes from this This (and all Thises). These Thises should know better than to be named for a demonstrative pronoun like "this".
This is another example of misnominy, the practice of naming people in really unfortunate ways. Movie stars started this trend by naming their kids after fruit and physical abstractions ("Apple", "River", "Moon", etc.) Now it's spreading to scientists and cooks.
Someone, please stop the insanity! For the children!
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Re:Old Law Applied More Broadly With New Technolog
that's not an accurate description of what i said.
If someone agrees to 80% of the views of a Nazi but disagrees w/ 20% then labeling them a Nazi is NOT hyperbole because no one fits any descriptive phrase 100% there are too many specifics that figure into that phrase. By your line of logic everything that is ever said is Hyperbole, the question is if a reasonable person can see how two things could be likened to one-another then doing so is not hyperbole. If i were to make the statement that Kittens are Satan then THAT would be Hyperbole because it's an obvious exaggeration which is the definition of Hyperbole, if it's not an obvious exaggeration then it's not hyperbole. The fact that we are arguing over whether or not the comparison is accurate means that it is by definition...NOT.....waaait for iiiiit.....HYPERBOLE! YAAAAAAAY!
here are a few links to check out before you use that term again i've added multiple in the spirit of variety in case you don't trust one or the other:
http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/hyperbole.htm l
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/en try/hyperbole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole
and before you even TRY to point out that one of the sites mentions the use of Hyperbole to make a story sound more important than it is look at the example which equates a boxing matches decision to the "crime of the century"
oh yah and lastly. Hyperbole doesn't exist in percentages to say that something is "20% Hyperbole" is only accurate if 20% of the words in a statement exist within the Hyperbole as Hyperbole itself is a literary term describing a specific statement, NOT describing an authors intent or accuracy. word to the wise kids. don't use big words that you don't really understand in order to seem cool we can deal with you using your native language of leetspeak if it will make your word choice less shaky. -
Re:Sloppy reporting.
It seems obvious to me that they meant "span" (the past tense of "spin"):
http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/irregular-ve rbs/spin.html -
ChessBackgammon, Go, etc.
Games are shouldn't be considered childrens activities, they improve the mind. More sophisticated games have never been primarily children's activities. I remember I was recently in Atlanta's Chinatown and two people in a Chinese restaurant were playing Xiangqi (these were adult men). I believe Hiroshi Yamauchi himself is a top ranked Go player, and lest we forget, Nintendo got it's start manufacturing HanaFuda cards, especially profitable because the Yakuza insisted on a fresh deck for each game they played. (Yakuza itself means something like busted flush in a game played with HanaFuda cards.)
On the other hand, games for adults have always had a seedy and disreputable reputation, either because of gambling or "devil worship" (in the case of the original RPGs, which were definitely intended for adults at the time check the art in the game manuals if you don't believe it.). So, I'm not sure if that's much better.
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Re:Contend? Face it, you get nothing!
Which means it will drag the entire nation down with it. It is the, well - one of the, albatross(es) around the neck of the US Gov.
If you don't know what that means - Idiom: Albatross around your neck
Another analogy would be:
It is the gold that they refuse to let go as they sink ever deeper. -
Re:quarantine?
To "send someone to Coventry" means to shun or ignore them - hence, the users who have this applied to them are ignored by the rest of the forum. (Reference: here)
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Re:Bigger Fish to Fry...*Laughing* - Boy your wit and prose are site to behold, you must be pretty boardto harp on a simple typo. Just in case you didn't notice, "Loose" and "Lose" are one "o" apart, so, I guess what I'm trying to say is GET A LIFE!
Perhaps you should find a new forum like Using English. There you could bitch all you want and not come across like such a "CrankyOldBastard".
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Re:40 lashes with a dictionary
Here's a couple of links explaining that in fact the OP's usage was correct:
http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/knock +your+socks+off.html
http://www.word-detective.com/021804.html -
Re:As a Google fan
No, I mean a hypopthetical question.
=Smidge= -
Re:As a Google fan
I think you mean rhetorical question?
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nitpickingparish
- a local church community
- the local subdivision of a diocese committed to one pastor
perish- die: pass from physical life and lose all all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life; "She died from cancer"; "They children perished in the fire"; "The patient went peacefully"
perish the thought- an expression meaning that you really hope something will not happen.
- a local church community
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Re:Why stop there?
I also too sex-ed in the mid nineties however pregnancy was barely mentioned in comparison to STD's. Maybe it was just your school that didn't choose to highlight the true dangers.
Abstinence isn't a solution either. Projects encouraging these seemingly have an extremely high rate of failure. In this case (http://www.usingenglish.com/speaking-out/silver-r ing-thing.html) 88% failure with these 20% less likely to use protection.
The only way to avoid these issues is to educate in an adult and realistic way at an early age, not to encourage the practice, but encourage a 'best-practice' if a person chooses to have sex.
Please could you also qualify you assertion that 75% of under 20's have an STD. This is certainly not backed up by the mainstream media. The only UK figures I can find indicate an infection level of 9% - 15% of those under 25.
Back up your claims.
And yes I only have one partner but I resent these false statistics that are so often use to back up puritan programs (which I personally believe are actually detrimental to the sexual health of those involved) -
Re:PC vs Console - TCO
consoles just don't cut the muster
Did you intentionally mix this metaphor? If not, you probably meant 'pass muster'. Alternatively, you might have meant 'cut the mustard'. Either way, you don't 'cut the muster'.
Cut the mustard
Pass Muster
Please don't flame me. I'm just trying to help; I'm not intending any disparagement whatsoever. You are, of course, free to ignore my advice entirely. -
whorf-sapir
These guys said that you can't hold ideas for which you don't have words. Maybe losing the language also lost the memories (ideas)?