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To play video games in the 1980s, most of us went to the arcade. For me it was a half mile hike and climbing over a brick wall. Or you rode your bike over to a friend's house who had a home video game console (which weren't as good as the arcade games).

TV viewing has been ramping up steadily. It didn't suddenly spike in the 1980s. In fact it flattened out in the 1980s due to video games.

Actually, thinking back to my trips to the arcade, I'd say the biggest change is that parents don't let their kids play outside alone anymore. My parents gave me a bike as a present, and would let me go anywhere as long as I told them where I was going, and was back in time for dinner. My friends and I made several 10+ mile bike trips around the city. So I'd place more blame on the media for exaggerating the danger of child abductions by strangers.

Yeah, um. https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/...

All sorts of plants will be royally fucked by that.

I think the whole thing's a hoax, but that's Poe's Law for ya.

I'm shocked that the issue of Global Wobbling hasn't been addressed!

"Global Wobbling" is a real. It's called precession. It's even been linked in changes from the Sahara oscillating between desert and grassland.

Hmm... That is an interesting question, so I went to Google "gasoline fuel cell".

This is what I found:

Gasoline Fuel Cell Would Boost Electric Car Range

WSU researchers develop fuel cells for increased airplane efficiency

It looks like there are serious people working on it, but there's still a way to go.

Oh and I forgot to say that this website is very useful, I've used it quite a lot and it explains the source of the apostrophe confusion, and it's by an American! (I think)

Actually the parent was correct. This is probably nothing to do what the fact the skin happens to be black, but more likely an artifact of what Black Culture has become (gangsta, edgy).
Also contrary to what you're likely be indoctrinated into believing, though people feel more threatened by a black presence (with the 8 times as likely to kill, and a definite skewing of violent offending towards the upper scale of violence, this may be warranted, especially if you're black, as the majority of killings are intra race, not inter race), they take longer to actually pull the trigger, showing a net bias in favour of a person of colour over one that's white.
The Black Lives Matter movement isn't actually about saving black lives. It's about Black Power (and is recognised as a Black Power movement). This has nothing to do with racial equality, and everything to do with attempted justification of unjustified hate.

"Anyone attempting to use 915 MHz microwave to sterilize food while retaining the food's texture and taste will have to pay royalties to the following patents"

Those patents aren't for using 915mhz.

"Hundreds of 2450 and 915 MHz systems between 10 to 200 kW heating capacities are used in the food industry for precooking bacons (e.g., used in Subways restaurants), tempering deep frozen meats when making meat patties, and precooking many other foods products [2, 3, 4, 5]. Commercial systems performing microwave pasteurization and/or sterilization of foods are currently available in Europe (e.g. TOP’s Foods); however, the use of microwaves in USA to produce shelf stable low acid (pH>4.6) foods requires FDA acceptance."

https://labs.wsu.edu/microwave...

https://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodS...

Citation needed. I'm pretty sure this is not true.

It is not easy to determine fair use; however, for most part research is fallen into fair use category. However, most of the time, fair use is a case-by-case basis, so the issue may be tested in court. You can go here.

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use, the factors to be considered shall include:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. The effect upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.The fact that a work is unpublished shall not by itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

It's OK to refuse to tolerate intolerance. Indeed, it's something you need to do.

The Paradox of tolerance:

"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."

Votaire had a few things to say about that, however he is more passionate about it.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html#between

What do you have against Cougar Gold and katsuobushi?

Youre probably a peasant too. It would explain why you don't know the difference between a dictionary and a usage guide.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/...

http://www.quickanddirtytips.c...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserv...

It's "scot free," not "Scott free.".

ending sentences with prepositions

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put!

source

driven by Big Agrochem trying to make shitloads of money,

You mean like every other conventionally bred seed they also sell? Better take a stand against conventional breeding. Or maybe you mean Golden Rice, developed by the International Rice Research Institute, or the Rainbow Payaya, developed by the University of Hawai'i, or any number of other GMOs I could mention that have bugger all to do with corporations and are developed by independent university, public, or NGO scientists (who nonetheless are likewise opposed while anti-GMO people ignore them or have the gall to accuse them of being corporate or even vandalize publicly funded GMO research).

acquire copyrights and patents on key food crops

You mean like conventional breeding already does and has been for a long time? You mean the patents that expire and are used in public domain works? By the way, do you have a fair alternative?

'bundle' their own special seeds with their own special pesticides and weedkillers.

Like conventional breeding? Also, selling two products that go together is immoral now? Really? Guess Nintendo must be absolutely abominable for selling gaming systems and the games that go with them for decades, those monsters. By the way, are you referring to the special herbicide (not insecticide as you wrongly imply) that went off patent in 2000? And furthermore, did it ever occur to you that maybe farmers have adopted the herbicide tolerant crops in such large number for a good reason?

You don't even want to take a tiny, tiny risk of killing off pollinating insects or having 'terminator' genes or antibiotic markers jump species.

The refusal to accept any risk at all is a flawed ideology. That's the kind of thought that leads people to refusing vaccines on a 'risk aversion basis.' When one considers your rational of terminator genes (never even been used) and horizontal gene transfer (common only on an evolutionary time frame, and no more or less likely to happen to a transgene than any other gene; maybe I say we ban conventional breeding because I don't want rice sd-1 to jump species hmm? What risk do you see the NPTII gene you refer to having anyway?), your argument falls apart completely.

only if you own shares in big agro (unless you think buying expensive seed and complimentary chemicals from multinationals and not being able to re-plant harvested seed is somehow going to cure third world hunger).

You forgot increased yield, decreased insecticide, safer for farmers and consumers, lower environment impact by replacing harsher herbicide and soil degrading tillage, and saving an entire industry from a devastating virus. You mean beside those benefits you conveniently neglected to mention? And even if none of that were the case, you'd still be wrong because you'd be saying that the present use of a technology is not good therefore there is no good use for it. That's completely absurd, and made all the mor

The Unites States of America are a country

A group is considered a single entity if all the members of the group are addressed together. You cannot have a group of "United States" be a country without including all 50 of them so they are addressed as a single group. The capitalization of United States of America also indicates you are referring to the collection of all 50 states together.

In contrast, if you said "The Red States are more conservative." then you are referring to the individual states in that group so they are treated as a plural subject.

Other examples: The Pit Crew is efficient, but the pit crew members are tired. The choir is rehearsing, but the choir singers are upset. http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/...

~~

In my opinion this begs a whole set of other security questions first....

No, it doesn't. It raises questions.

"Begs the question" means something entirely different than what you meant. Please don't misuse this term.

http://begthequestion.info/
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/...

... everyone will start printing at home, things will be cheaper, more available, better, faster, stronger ...

When in reality everyone will just start using pretentious newbie phrases such as "steep learning curve".

I think that the good Mr. Brians might actually have stumbled across the correct answer, possibly not recognized it, then dismissed it in his enthusiasm to accuse users of being mathematically unsophisticated idiots.

If you think of using a tool as being a mixture of doing whatever it is you wanted to do and 'learning' (ie. swearing at the tool itself, and having things that seem like they should work not work for reasons you don't understand rather than getting what you wanted done, done), the 'learning curve' that people draw for various things ends up being (fairly consistently) the curve whose slope, at time X, represents the amount of 'learning' that the user is suffering at time X, and whose X axis is time.

The Y value doesn't directly represent mastery, difficulty, or any other task-related parameter, it's just that people always seem (quite possibly because of the hill-climbing analogy he proposes, and the fact that humans find pain to be a salient experience) to draw the graph such that its slope at each point correctly represents the intensity of the 'learning' at that point. The derivative of the learning curve is the one that actually has a nice task-related variable on each axis, and a relationship between them. The learning curve's Y axis isn't directly task-related at all (and the constant of integration depends on how thick the learner is).

Given that even people who haven't taken calc do it this way, I don't think that it's conscious in most cases; but it squares with what I've always observed people to mean about a task based on the "learning curve" they draw for it: The curve they draw does differ between tracking 'time' on the X axis and tracking 'degree of mastery' (if they implicitly assume that learning will occur with experience, it is time, if they acknowledge the possibility of the user quitting or being inadequate to further learning, it's degree of mastery, but no specific learning curve requires equivocating here, there just isn't a standard); but it seems to be consistently the case that the Y value means nothing directly; but emerges because the slope at each point is chosen to be meaningful, and subsequent Y values are what they are just to keep the line continuous.

... everyone will start printing at home, things will be cheaper, more available, better, faster, stronger ...

When in reality everyone will just start using pretentious newbie phrases such as "steep learning curve".

When it comes to climate change he recognizes that the major tenants, increasing global temperature due to man-made release of heat trapping gas into the atmosphere. The evidence is in such that we are 99.998% sure of that.

(emphasis added) tenets

The attention to detail in the sets, costumes, and even lighting is incredible.

Just by the way, if it's incredible I won't bother watching.

Incredible

Ob. Inigo Montoya

From your link:

In the DDC [Diverse Double-Compiling] technique, source code is compiled twice: the source code of the compiler's parent is compiled using a trusted compiler, [...]

So the supposed work-around to check whether you can trust the compiler you are using is to compare its output to that of a trusted compiler? That is the very definition of begging the question

I sure hope the candidate didn't get his doctorate based on that dissertation.

most people have already decided on the PS4, and will be leary of signing up since you're just a firmware update away from returning to putting 'em over a barrel

I'm sure Timothy is glad you're still thinking of him but he's probably worried that that word doesn't mean what you think it means...

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html

It's actually an Americanism and not "wrong", so much as "superfluous" (i.e. unnecessary, not incorrect).

It's reined in. http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/reign.html

Starting a sentence with a conjunction You might have been taught that it’s not good English to start a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but. It’s not grammatically incorrect to do so, however, and many respected writers use conjunctions at the start of a sentence to create a dramatic or forceful effect. For example: What are the government’s chances of winning in court? And what are the consequences? Beginning a sentence with a conjunction can also be a useful way of conveying surprise: And are you really going? But didn’t she tell you? It’s best not to overdo it, but there is no reason for completely avoiding the use of conjunctions at the start of sentences.

http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/conjunctions
http://www.writing-skills.com/resources/e-bulletin/october-2011/hit-or-myth-you-cant-start-a-sentence-with-and-or-but
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html
http://grammarist.com/grammar/conjunctions-to-start-sentences/
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/01/can-i-start-a-sentence-with-a-conjunction/

Flout, not flaunt. http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/flaunt.html

There's nothing good about energy beets. We already know we can use algae, and that it is superior in a variety of ways.

Do not cheer this. There is nothing good about this. It is merely less evil than using corn as a fuel feedstock.

Correct and since bio algae is already certified at all levels and WSU/UoW received > $140 million in recent DoE money to expand moreso with the WSU research [jointly with Oregon State and others]: Bio Algae is here. http://www.tricity.wsu.edu/bsel/pnnl.html

Impacts The collective goal at BSEL is to move science to industrial processes in a manner that improves energy security, reduces petroleum imports and decreases the impact of fuels on the environment. PNNL currently has approximately 60 issued and pending patents in the area of biobased processing (30 issued US patents, 19 issued in the last six years). These have resulted in ten commercial licenses and license options. This work has also resulted in one R&D 100 Award Presidential Green Chemistry Award, and provided the basis for creation of a new company.

The advances at WSU, UoW, Oregon State and all the Public/Private patent pending research is probably one reason for this grant to do something alternative--they have to as the other areas are mature and highly patented.

$80 Million to WSU/UofW and later more: http://www.cantwell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2011/9/biofuel-research-at-uw-and-wsu-to-help-power-the-economy

This is long overdue.

Then the BioJetFuel project of WSU with Alaska Airlines: http://researchnews.wsu.edu/environment/338.html

There's nothing good about energy beets. We already know we can use algae, and that it is superior in a variety of ways.

Do not cheer this. There is nothing good about this. It is merely less evil than using corn as a fuel feedstock.

Correct and since bio algae is already certified at all levels and WSU/UoW received > $140 million in recent DoE money to expand moreso with the WSU research [jointly with Oregon State and others]: Bio Algae is here. http://www.tricity.wsu.edu/bsel/pnnl.html

Impacts The collective goal at BSEL is to move science to industrial processes in a manner that improves energy security, reduces petroleum imports and decreases the impact of fuels on the environment. PNNL currently has approximately 60 issued and pending patents in the area of biobased processing (30 issued US patents, 19 issued in the last six years). These have resulted in ten commercial licenses and license options. This work has also resulted in one R&D 100 Award Presidential Green Chemistry Award, and provided the basis for creation of a new company.

The advances at WSU, UoW, Oregon State and all the Public/Private patent pending research is probably one reason for this grant to do something alternative--they have to as the other areas are mature and highly patented.

$80 Million to WSU/UofW and later more: http://www.cantwell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2011/9/biofuel-research-at-uw-and-wsu-to-help-power-the-economy

This is long overdue.

Then the BioJetFuel project of WSU with Alaska Airlines: http://researchnews.wsu.edu/environment/338.html

China this and China that.
That is only diverting the discussion from the fact that there is nothing wrong with doing something yourself.

By the way: http://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380American%20Consumption.htm

Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy.
On average, one American consumes as much energy as
2 Japanese
6 Mexicans
13 Chinese

Wasn't this solved in 1951 as shown in that documentary "The Day The Earth Stood Still"?

LAst line for those who don't get the joke

Yeah. Can you guess why?

You don't read much?

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/intensive.html

Their college grads, not hippies.

"They're college grads,"

Too bad you aren't.

Here's your shirt.

"epidemic" (e.g. widespread or extremely prevalent)

Learn.

I can stick a branch from an lime tree on a lemon tree trunk and get both limes and lemons from the "same plant", but that doesn't yield any kind of a cross, like lemony limes.

Graft a tomato plant onto tobacco root stock and you'll get nicotine-laced tomatoes. In fact, grafting to infuse produce with anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and even anti-viral compounds is an active area of plant research and commercial production (this article is a nice summary). As noted in the linked article, grafting to the wrong rootstock has yielded poisonous produce.

Now, should we subject grafting to the same regulations as GMOs? What about requiring labeling for produce yielded by grafted plants?

all of the sudden

Speaking of warping language...

P.S.S.? What is this world coming to? http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/pss.html

No, "could care less" is simply wrong

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/care.html

The author of "Common Errors in English Usage" happens to agree.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/intensive.html

I know someone who has the opposite problem. Large vocabulary and excellent grammar, but because she reads a lot and doesn't get the chance to talk to people who use those words, she mispronounces a relatively large number of otherwise impressive words. you might call her uneducated if you didn't think about it - how else can someone know large words but be unable to pronounce them?

It's fairly easy to tell when people learned things aurally, and when they never saw it in writing enough to correct their mistake. For all intensive purposes, escape goat, "The thing is, is ..." If you read enough, you will recognize where the things in your head don't match what is on the paper. Or if you read a lot and are not well educated, you may not make the connection that what you say is wrong.

Language evolves, and idioms like "begging the question" are commonly misused even by people who do read a lot. Both because they learn by context and don't understand it in the context presented, and because it is so common. But it does not have a discoverable meaning, if you take the words one at a time. "Should of" on the other hand does not make any grammatical sense, and an otherwise educated person would have to question whether that is the correct usage.

I am all for allowing language to evolve, otherwise we would be speaking Old English, or some sort of German maybe, or even no language at all. But that does not preclude gaining insight into a personality through such misuses. Dating and hiring are good places to do this, and you can ask the person how much they read, and what they read last. On the internet, this conversation is less interactive.

The metaphor is "carrot on a stick"

Do you have any evidence to back up that assertion?

He's right. But, it showed poor judgement to say as much. The beer swilling, football watching masses don't get nuance. That "as long as" qualifies as nuance for that crowd. Now he's tarred as a pedophile sympathizer for life, at least on the idiot side of the house.

By whom? Certainly not by you, that's clear. But nevertheless, in spite of the fact that you agree with him, you're willing to distance yourself from difficult arguments (e.g. the full implications of individual freedom of conscience and belief) for fear of bringing the disapproval of the ignorant on your own head.

Discretion is the better part of valor.

Quoth Falstaff, shortly before be was abjured by his king and left to die in penury.

I want to love RMS but he makes it really hard to do so.

Yes, it is hard. If virtue came easy, there wouldn't be a sinner in the world.

It's because of cowardice like yours that I admire Stallmann all the more. I, for one, welcome my quirky, bearded overlord....

... because he's right[*].

------------
[*] I mean to say he's right to let the logic - rather than prejudice - lead him. And he's right to discuss these things, no matter how unpopular they might be.

He's wrong on the details of this argument, though, because he hasn't considered a couple of critical points concerning the rights and property of others (necrophilia) and the nature of consent where children are concerned. Many countries have defined the age by which most humans are capable of knowing the implications of their choices. They do so explicitly to defend children from a situation in which they are led to agree to acts whose repercussions they cannot know. I know someone who had a 'consenting' sexual relationship from a very young age (8) and it scarred that person for life, causing (among other things) an inability to distinguish between love and sexuality, which led to a great deal of pain and suffering.

Umm... with computers it does, as they were named by their creators. IBM called them hard disks, so everyone uses that terminology, including the British. Similarly, Philips (Dutch) and Sony (Japanese) called their products compact discs. Before that, the BBC used the different spellings to refer to different types of audio media, so it appears the two terms were always subtly different words rather than just a difference in the spelling of the same word.

First four hits on Google:
What's the difference between a "disc" and a "disk?"
Grammar Girl : Disc or Disk? :: Quick and Dirty Tips
Spelling of disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
disc/disk (From the book: Common Errors in English Usage)

And if that isn't enough, skim the article comments. It seems ~90% of slashdotters are using the spellings in this manner.

Basically, before, you used to have editors who'd mold everything into U Chicago style guidelines or some such.

Now, everybody is his own editor. Is it web server or webserver? Web site or website? You decide.

You'll probably also see stuff where editors once had their fingers in the dike (like preventing the spread of "snuck") deluge the linguistic landscape.

Also people are free to verb nouns as they please.

Finally, I've noticed people are a lot more comfortable spontaneously making up portmanteaus.

And they seem to make a cheaper TV that for all intensive purposes is as good as the Sony...

It is early. I'm grumpy. I haven't had my coffee yet.

So I'm being my nicest and suggesting that you might not have that part right.

FTFA: "LkCa 15 b is the youngest planet ever found, about 5 times younger than the previous record holder," said astronomer Adam Kraus of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy.

WTF is 5 times younger? Does he mean 1/5 as old? At the moment the planet first started to form, was it infinitely times younger? You'd think a scientist would know better.

Picky picky, do you have anything intelligent to add or are you just going to argue semantics rather than acknowledge good science?

This is actually a very important discovery, the circumstellar disk surrounding the young star has been found to have a deficit of emission ~55 AU in radius. The cause of holes or gaps in proto-planetary disks has been a matter of intense debate in recent years, some people favor planets clearing gaps, others favor emission from the star causing the disk to evaporate. This seems to be clear evidence that planets are actually doing the gap opening and play a key role in the dissipation of disks around stars.

FTFA: "LkCa 15 b is the youngest planet ever found, about 5 times younger than the previous record holder," said astronomer Adam Kraus of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy.

WTF is 5 times younger? Does he mean 1/5 as old? At the moment the planet first started to form, was it infinitely times younger? You'd think a scientist would know better.

A nice summary of the situation. It will keep you from looking silly: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/affect.html

Yes, "begging the question" is a type of fallacy and now it also means, "to elicit a question logically as a reaction or response".

Even the Wikipedia article you cite presently describes the modern usage as well. The Wikipedia article cites thefreedictionary.com entry, which includes a reference to the Cambridge Idioms Dictionary, 2nd ed, that lists the modern usage first, before the definition of the fallacy ("if a statement or situation begs the question, it causes you to ask a particular question").

The other internet-based citation from the Wikipedia article is even more damning: "...most people now suppose the phrase implies something quite different: that the argument demands that a question about it be asked—raises the question. Although using the expression in its original sense is now rare, using it in the newer sense will cause irritation among traditionalists." Ouch.

So, you're correct that language is fluid. It's just that the burden is now upon you to stamp out a commonly accepted idiom that makes perfect sense in its modern, "incorrect" form vs. the traditional, regrettable English translation of the petitio principii fallacy. This is obviously what you are attempting to accomplish, but I don't believe your goal is worthy. Furthermore, I believe it is disingenuous to refer to the modern usage as incorrect at this stage.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/all-intents-and-purposes.html

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/intensive.html

and of course, Wikipedia:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/for_all_intents_and_purposes

In the spirit of fair play, I did due diligence of searching for opposing opinions that would support your view, but came up empty handed.

::Digitac