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The Mutant Genes Behind the Black Death
An anonymous reader writes: Each year, 4 million people visit Yosemite National Park in California. Most bring back photos, postcards and an occasional sunburn. But two unlucky visitors this summer got a very different souvenir. They got the plague. This quintessential medieval disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and transmitted most often by fleabites, still surfaces in a handful of cases each year in the western United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its historical record is far more macabre. The plague of Justinian from 541 to 543 decimated nearly half the population in the Mediterranean, while the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed one in every three Europeans.
Now researchers are beginning to reveal a surprising genetic history of the plague. A rash of discoveries show how just a small handful of genetic changes — an altered protein here, a mutated gene there — can transform a relatively innocuous stomach bug into a pandemic capable of killing off a large fraction of a continent.
The most recent of these studies, published in June, found that the acquisition of a single gene named pla gave Y. pestis the ability to cause pneumonia, causing a form of plague so lethal that it kills essentially all of those infected who don't receive antibiotics. In addition, it is also among the most infectious bacteria known. "Yersinia pestis is a pretty kick-ass pathogen," said Paul Keim, a microbiologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. "A single bacterium can cause disease in mice. It's hard to get much more virulent than that."
Now researchers are beginning to reveal a surprising genetic history of the plague. A rash of discoveries show how just a small handful of genetic changes — an altered protein here, a mutated gene there — can transform a relatively innocuous stomach bug into a pandemic capable of killing off a large fraction of a continent.
The most recent of these studies, published in June, found that the acquisition of a single gene named pla gave Y. pestis the ability to cause pneumonia, causing a form of plague so lethal that it kills essentially all of those infected who don't receive antibiotics. In addition, it is also among the most infectious bacteria known. "Yersinia pestis is a pretty kick-ass pathogen," said Paul Keim, a microbiologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. "A single bacterium can cause disease in mice. It's hard to get much more virulent than that."
"decimated nearly half the population"
So it killed 5%?
decimated nearly half
...in today's environment?
Weaponizing in 3..2..
"Decimated nearly half the population" means less than 5%. You can't just ignore the prefix 'deci' because everyone uses it incorrectly, dictionary.
"Decimate" hasn't meant "killed every tenth man by lot" for a lot of years. It's usually not used with exact percentages, but it's often used for percentages other than ten.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is no right and wrong. There's only fun and boring.
When Europeans arrived to colonize the New World, their small population should have been wiped out by the diseases unfamiliar to them in the New World. But they were not. Instead the much larger (than the colonists) New World population got devastated by the Old World diseases.
This explanation came out as a 12 page (The arrow of disease) article by Jared Diamond in 1992 in the Discover magazine. Later it was expanded into a Pulitzer winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
We know what "decimated" means:
1) To reduce by 1 tenth, Roman military practice
2) To reduce by a significant amount. Modern usage.
The Romans haven't been decimating for about 1700 years now. We don't think there's much doubt as to which definition most people are using these days.
"A single bacterium can cause disease in mice. It's hard to get much more virulent than that."
So, is it a virus or a bacteria? Make up your mind, man!
"Now researchers are beginning to reveal a surprising genetic history of the plague. A rash of discoveries show how just a small handful of genetic changes â" an altered protein here, a mutated gene there â" can transform a relatively innocuous stomach bug into a pandemic capable of killing off a large fraction of a continent."
And people say we have nothing to fear from the biohacking movement.
The plague of Justinian from 541 to 543 decimated nearly half the population in the Mediterranean, while the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed one in every three Europeans.
Don't forget to include the American Indians. The plague decimated them, too.
No, I will not work for your startup
People seem surprised that a single gene could transform an innocuous microorganism into a deadly one.
But this is exactly like software, where a single line of code can turn a secure protocol implementation into an exploitable attack vector.
We have plenty of examples of tiny changes leading to huge headaches in the software world - the apple goto bug, the Debian openssl debacle, etc.
So this isn't surprising.
You can't just ignore the prefix 'deci' because everyone uses it incorrectly.
Yes, you can; that's how language works.
The plague wiped out China as well.The reason Europeans were susceptible to the plague was that they were human.
You can't just ignore the prefix 'deci' because everyone uses it incorrectly.
Yes, you can; that's how language works.
Well said! I'm just going to choose to interpret your "yes" as "no" and "that's" as "that's not", if that's okay. What? You object? How dare you? My feelings about language are just as valid as anyone's! QUIT OPPRESSING ME, YOU SEMANTICS NAZI!
You have no idea what you're yacking on about. What you call a "European" circa 500 CE is some admixture of Mediterranean, Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, Eurasian, Russian , Ukrainian and Maikop. The LAST thing the European continent was ever is "isolated" at least not since 2500 BCE.
If you want to see what happens with genes when they're isolated, go to the Galapagos Islands.
Tried too hard, friendo. Try some more subtle bait next time.
Well said! I'm just going to choose to interpret your "yes" as "no" and "that's" as "that's not", if that's okay. What? You object? How dare you? My feelings about language are just as valid as anyone's! QUIT OPPRESSING ME, YOU SEMANTICS NAZI!
Words mean what most of the speakers of the language mean. So your tirade is pointless, unoriginal, and wrong. Utterly wrong.
We don't think there's much doubt as to which definition most people are using these days.
This whole discussion proves otherwise. Nerds love their pointless pedantry.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The entire text of this article was lifted directly from the first linked article, but not attributed to its author Carrier Arnold at Quanta Magazine.
I don't generally want to be the /. stereotype complaining about editing, but this is just flat out unethical. If you are going to post or excerpt the unmodified content of someone else's work, you should at least credit them properly. Unless the "Anonomous Reader" was actually Carrie Arnold, that was not done here.
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself. And the Plague. That shit will kill us all!"
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Oh, this concept has legs:
The reason that Europeans are so susceptible to totalitarian government, war, and genocide is that they, being Europeans, are more vulnerable to bad logic and political fallacies than any other people in the world.
Words mean what most of the speakers of the language mean. So your tirade is pointless, unoriginal, and wrong. Utterly wrong.
I am aware that any language's mapping of letters and sounds to meanings is completely arbitrary, and furthermore that these mappings evolve continuously. So yes, if enough people start thinking that "chartreuse" means "pink", then indeed it does, at least to them. But for the rest of it, it still means greenish-yellow. The end result is a failure of communication. What I and people like me--pedants--are trying to do is preserve the integrity of communication by nipping some of these uglier and less consistent forms in the bud, before they metastasize and spread throughout the meme pool, and we all just have to live with them. That is literally all I'm saying.
The reason Europeans were so susceptible to the plague is that they were Europeans, just as the reason Native Americans were so susceptible to small pox was that they were Native Americans. Inbreeding leads to weakness, crossbreeding leads to strength.
I agree that crossbreeding builds a strong population and pure bloodlines (aka. inbreeding) leads to weak populations but the rest of your post is wrong. There was steady gene flow between Asia and Europe for millennia whereas the aboriginals of the Americas were isolated after the end of the last ice age and the submergence of Beringia which cut the land bridge between Asia and North America. There were some old-world diseases that caused devastation among Native American populations and there were some new world diseases that caused devastation in the Old World. However, some of the pandemics that wiped out the native populations of the Americas (and that were previously thought to have been introduced pathogens) would in the light of modern research seem to have been entirely home grown. For example the pandemic that wiped out the Aztecs after the Spanish invasion seems to have been a hemorrhagic fever endemic to the Americas. Scholars in the past wrote a whole lot of stuff about pandemics without having the foggiest notion of which pathogens had been involved and those writings unfortunately remained gospel until very recently. Until only a couple of decades ago we had only a limited idea of whether the Black Death pathogen was the same as the modern plague bacteria, there were divided opinions. Some thought he plague of 1346 was an influenza. The last time I looked plague DNA had indeed been found in ancient remains but we still do not know if the Black Death and the Justinian plague were the same or not, the Justinian plague could have been something else altogether. There is also this persistent myth, born out of the 19th and early 20th century fascination with the orient, that all culture flowed from the east (i.e. Ex oriente lux = From the east the light), that medieval Europeans were somehow dirtier, more ignorant and more primitive than oriental people and that that is why the plague spread so rapidly in Europe. Roman bathing culture did not just evaporate with the fall of the old empire and throughout the Middle Ages there were bathhouses in many cities and towns in Europe (in the 13th century Paris had 32 bathouses). If the Medieval European really was so dirty and Asians so clean why did a pandemic spread by fleas spread from Asia to the West? You'd think it would originate among the dirty Europeans and then travel east and dissipate when it reached Asia because of the supposedly superior hygiene of medieval period Asians who would not, or so the conventional theory goes, have had fleas. In actual fact the Plague ravaged Europe and Asia pretty much equally and Asians of the 14th century seem to have been just as flea ridden as their European contemporaries. For example in 1334, a pandemic that was probably the same black death that ravaged Europe a decade later killed 5 million people in Hebei Province China with a death toll of about 90%.
If you want to see what happens with genes when they're isolated, go to the Galapagos Islands.
Warm beaches and tacky tourist trinkets? I don't understand.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yes exactly!
Or Texas.
There was no distinction between Russians and Ukrainians (and Belarusians too, by the way) until the late Middle Ages, when the Old East Slavic language started to drift apart into Old Russian and Ruthenian due to the area being divided by Lithuanian and Mongolian conquerors. The Lithuanian part much later became the Ukraine and Belarus, the Mongolian part later became Russia after Mongols were overthrown.
Then again, circa 500CE there were neither, it is way before Kievan Rus' was even founded, so at that time that area was just settled by Eastern Slavic tribes and Finns with some Viking settlements along the large waterways.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
So, you're saying that at the time, there were less than 50 Europeans in Europe?
So it reduced nearly half the population by a "significant" amount? What does that even mean?
"chartreuse" [...] still means greenish-yellow
Except there appears to be confusion as to whether it's greenish yellow or yellowish green. An sRGB triplet such as #7FFF00 or #DFFF00 is a bit more precise, but it requires to be familiar with sRGB.
The reason that US Americans are so susceptible to firearm-induced deaths is that they, being Americans, are more vulnerable to bad logic and NRA fallacies than any other people in the world. .
Clearly, they must've been anti-vaccers!
there is nothing like a good joke and that's nothing like a good joke
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Also really big turtles.
Worked on a research team back in 1980 to try and find the iron-uptake chemical in this bug. To do so we had to feed it Iron 57. Most of the team was simply hyper-aware. Some were downright jumpy.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Is anyone else thinking of the Captain Tripps virus from "The Stand"? Sounds just like it - get pneumonia, fever, contagious as all get out, then you die, drowning in your own snot after around 5 to 7 days. Maybe not exact, but close enough for me, anyway.
Now all we need is for the government to weaponize it, and history follows fiction.
Decimate must always mean a tenth, just like December is always the tenth month.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Survivors of the Back Death seem to acquire part of a beneficial genetic mutation that gets passed on in full if they breed with another Black Death survivor - resistance to most known forms of HIV.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
But in the case of the "decimate" you'd be wrong. It absolutely does NOT mean killing a tenth of anything.
Meriam-Webster says:
Decimate: v
: to destroy a large number of (plants, animals, people, etc.)
: to severely damage or destroy a large part of (something)
You're about 400 years too late on the "literally" thing, and much later than that on "decimate". If you're really concerned with nipping things in the bud, you might go for some more recent potential changes. Like singular "you" instead of "thou/thee", and maybe "terrific" for things that don't cause terror.
Simple fact: people don't like being misunderstood, so the circumstances under which your highly contrived chartreuse-means-pink example might arise are basically nonexistent!
It is not pedantry when they are wrong. It is just ignorance coupled with ineducability.
Point taken. Russian means very north Russia, just sub-Siberia. I use the names of the countries as they stand today. My point is, the whole notion of distinct "races" like dogs have breeds is pure (dangerous c.f 20th Century) folly that can't be left to go unanswered wherever it's encountered.
Dogs do have breeds with distinct morphological and also psychological characteristics *because we deliberately bred them that way over some generations* and moreover given just a few generations of free breeding , which is what humans do and have always done amongst themselves, those distinctions disappear and they become 35-40 lbs with small sagging ears, curly tails and short coats, which is what you see if you go to places in which they're not considered pets by the human population .
There is no meaningful discussion on slashdot when there's a typo or a grammatical error in the summary. Ever.
How about you use the OED and return with your wisdom...
Pronunciation: Brit. /dsmet/ , U.S. /dsmet/
Etymology:
That is the first definition. The second is also killing 10 people. I stopped at that point. Seeing as it's not an esoteric word we default to the most common meaning. There you have it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Bah, it ate it...
1. trans.
Thesaurus
Categories
a. Chiefly Roman Hist. With reference to military punishment: to select by lot and put to death one in every ten of (a body of soldiers found guilty of desertion, mutiny, or other crime). Also occas. intr.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
OED still lists the definition as the GP defines it - one in ten, dead, etc... In fact, it's the first definition given.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You're about 400 years too late on the "literally" thing, and much later than that on "decimate". If you're really concerned with nipping things in the bud, you might go for some more recent potential changes. Like singular "you" instead of "thou/thee", and maybe "terrific" for things that don't cause terror.
Sure, but these battles are never really over. My uncle's still mad about Nixon. China's still griping about the Gilded Age. ISIS is still miffed about the Reconquista. Anti-Semites are still trying to pin the rap for Jesus's execution on the Jews at large.
So if I can change just one person's mind, it's one more point for our team. In a hundred years, we'll have won some battles and lost some. And sure, I'm all for bringing back "thee". And, for that matter, "ye", and by extension the letter called "thorn". Oh, and "ash". And that vulgar "you" genie hath been out of the bottle long enough!
Simple fact: people don't like being misunderstood, so the circumstances under which your highly contrived chartreuse-means-pink example might arise are basically nonexistent!
You think my hypothetical scenario is implausible? Try imagining if Kim Kardashian looked at a pink dress and said, on TV, that it was chartreuse. If you don't find that thought as sadly believable as it is chilling, well, I'm nothing but envious.
The OED lists its definitions in historical order. The Oxford Online Dictionary, by comparison, lists "kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage"as the first definition, and only has "kill one in ten" as the second definition. Which is marked as "historical". It also includes a usage note that says, "This sense has been superseded by the later, more general sense."
http://www.oxforddictionaries....
Collins Dictionary also has the one-in-ten meaning listed second: http://www.collinsdictionary.c...
As does dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.co...
Wiktionary lists the historical meaning first, but also presents evidence suggesting that this sense is basically never used any more, except when complaining about the change in meaning (at least in the British National Corpus): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki...
"decimated nearly half the population in the Mediterranean"
So unless it really killed 1/10 of half the population of the Med basin, you don't know what 'decimated' means?
It's ok, it's not like this stuff is edited.
So it didn't decimate but semimated the Europeans, not to be confused with inseminated.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
So if I can change just one person's mind, it's one more point for our team.
Yuck. Certainly not my team. I will fight you on the beaches, I will fight you on the landing grounds. I will fight you on the fields and in the streets. I will fight you on the hills. I shall never surrender.
You think my hypothetical scenario is implausible? Try imagining if Kim Kardashian looked at a pink dress and said, on TV, that it was chartreuse. If you don't find that thought as sadly believable as it is chilling, well, I'm nothing but envious.
I think if that happened, social media would instantly be full of people mocking her, just as they mocked Jessica Simpson for the Chicken-of-the-Sea incident. And if social media didn't instantly fill up with mockery, I would say that that demonstrates that the current meaning of the word is not important enough to bother preserving (much like "terrific" or "decimate"—we survived the change in meaning of those terms just fine).
Frankly, I don't see much difference between someone who insists that decimate must mean one-in-ten, and someone who insists that chartreuse is pink. They're both idiots, they're both wrong, and they both have a minor potential to influence the language in possibly-unfortunate ways. Different types of idiots, admittedly, but both still idiots whose influence is mostly bad.
So yes, if you're honestly suggesting that decimate should still only mean kill-one-in-ten, then my respect for you is equal to my respect for Kim Kardashian.
I stick with the OED. It's actually the legal dictionary in my country though I think they've now changed to the American English version. They too go in order from the top down where there is no ambiguity. In this case there's no ambiguity because the word is not being used correctly - that is not ambiguous.
However, feel free to use it however you want. I'll know what you mean.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
From TFS:
The plague of Justinian from 541 to 543 decimated nearly half the population in the Mediterranean,
So, it killed almost 5% of them? That's strange, I thought it would have been a lot more.
I used to live in Tahoe.
Occasionally during the summer months, someone would contract bubonic plague after their house cats were outside and near ground squirrel burrows.
It is transmitted by fleas of the common ground squirrel in the area. Don't remember the species.
The infestation of infected fleas usually gets worse in drought years.
Plague fleas are found all over the sierras, Yosemite as well.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
You have no idea what a dictionary is or how language works, do you?
An English dictionary is a document of observed usage. It's basically "We've seen people using this word this way", and the particularly large and prestigious ones - like OED also have "and it's been used these ways in the past, and we think it first came about like this".
Every single dictionary that mentions the old Roman origins of the word says it's a historical, or obsolete, or old usage. The order of definitions has nothing whatsoever to do with "correctness".
The Oxford Online Dictionary is made by the same people who make the OED. The main differences are that the online version is slightly more up-to-date, and has a slightly lower bar for including neologisms. (Those may migrate to the OED if they prove to have some staying power.)
They too go in order from the top down where there is no ambiguity.
What do you mean "in order?" In order of what? The meanings have to go in some order. The OED generally lists meanings in order by age. Other dictionaries frequently list more common meanings above more rare ones, but they're not particularly consistent about it. (Especially since that's a hard thing to measure, even with the modern technology that is revolutionizing the study of language.) And in no dictionary does listing a meaning second (or fifteenth) mean it's wrong.
If the newer meaning were "wrong", it wouldn't be listed at all. If it were colloquial, it would be listed as colloquial. If it were slang, it would be listed as slang. Ditto for nonstandard, dialect, archaic, etc. It's listed as none of those things, in any dictionary. That's because it's not only not wrong, it's perfectly standard.
Heck, if you look up "bit", you'll see a bunch of meanings. A small amount. A piece of metal that goes in a horse's mouth. The business end of a drill. A binary digit. Are all-but-the-first wrong there? Sheesh!
Looks sound to me.
Yeah, I know, guns don't kill people. Schools kill people.
>> You can't just ignore the prefix 'deci' because everyone uses it incorrectly.
> Yes, you can; that's how language works.
Only at your house. In any other place on Earth, one is free to use a word in its current meaning and in its old, archaic meaning.
It's actually a sign of culture, because most uneducated people who don't know etymology will protest it's wrong.
So decimated is killing a large portion and is also killing 10%, as well as meaning take a tenth of something. It's in the dictionary exactly like that, so no dispute. But even if it was not, since once it has been, it would be valid use. Language only dies when nobody speaks it anymore.
Also, language is not a property. It's not even owned by a majority. The poorest of us can have his own language to speak as he sees fit -- whether others will understand or jump like angry apes is something to ponder by he who speaks.
And each derived from context where it is ambiguous. They start with the most common definition and work their way down in order if there's ambiguity or the word isn't already defined clearly from prior legal cases. They actually sit up there and talk about it for quite some time - I've even seen them go into recess and return to jabber about it some more.
Hmm...
Do you accept that Obama is from Kenya? Is Hawaii now Kenya? Both seem to be in pretty common use. I dare say that using either makes one an idiot and that the definition didn't change. You can guess what I think about the rest.
In this case, there's no ambiguity. It's just wrong. People type "alot" frequently and have no idea what "fewer" means. I suppose you'll want to insist they're correct too? No, they're just wrong.
Either way, those who are aware of the difference should also be smart enough to know it's wrong but know what the author intended. Lots of stupid people get to write, some of them even get to write professionally.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I bet you feel wise when you type "alot."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Siberia is not north Russia, it is east Russia. In fact, Siberia is Asia and in 500CE would not see Russians for another 1000 years.
Actual northern Russia was settled by Finn tribes back then, not Slavs.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I agree that proper paragraphing builds an easier to read response and failing to do so leads to a huge mess that will make most people not even bother...
That's not doubt, however. That's - as you say - pointless pedantry.
I believe in precision as much as anyone, but they need to tow the line. If we give free reign to endless repetition's of the pointless, their burying us in irrelevancies and the discussion looses it's meaning.
See subject: ...On hosts adding speed, security, reliability & anonymity - doing so using LESS yet doing FAR MORE than weak slow usermode messagepassing, RAM, & CPU overuse overheads (vs. hosts in kernelmode, native to your system vs. "bolting on 'MoAr'")
FACT:
It can't be done & you know it - Plus, YOU downmodding this same post TWICE before http://slashdot.org/comments.p... AND http://slashdot.org/comments.p... & running from a fair challenge says it all for me, weasel - you "talk big" on discussion, but you can't face that one, now can you? NOPE! You fail...
APK
P.S.=> You wanted opinions on my program? Ok, here's a couple:
"I like your host file system." - by Karmashock (2415832) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:57PM (#50489401)
+
"his hosts program is actually pretty good" - by xenotransplant (4179011) on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:34PM (#50287195)
Where's YOUR PROGRAM (it's not) that others like & find effective that YOU created, hmmm?
... apk
*golf clap*
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
And each derived from context where it is ambiguous.
No, there's nothing ambiguous about it. The word you're searching in vain for is polysemy. Means that a word has multiple meanings. (Related to semantics, the study of meaning.) It's a common feature of words in many languages, particularly English. And there frequently is no "most common meaning". There's nothing ambiguous about, e.g., using "can" as a verb vs. a noun, because it's impossible to confuse them in context.
If you really think that "kills one in ten" is the most common meaning of "decimate", though, then it should be easy for you to find some examples of people using it in that sense. Real examples of real people using it that sense, not something you made up. I contend that it hasn't been used to mean that for at least a century. If you just google the word itself, you'll mostly get definitions and people discussing the word. I'm looking for examples of them using the word in what you seem to be claiming is the most common sense. I've checked Google books and Google news, and I can't find a single example. Just find me one, and I'll be impressed (though one example will hardly prove your point).
In this case, there's no ambiguity. It's just wrong. People type "alot" frequently and have no idea what "fewer" means.
Define "wrong". If it's wrong, why does it appear in every dictionary? Including the OED? (Even if they don't list it first, for whatever reason.) Dictionaries don't list things that are "just wrong". They don't list "alot", for example. So, why should I trust you, some random person on the Internet, over actual lexicographers and linguists, who all disagree with you?
(And "alot" is a spelling mistake, which is a whole different kettle of fish. Standardized spelling is much more recent than words having meaning. Words have had meanings for probably tens of thousands of years, if not more. Standardized spelling is only a couple of centuries old. There's a lot of reasons that spelling doesn't shift the way meanings do, but that's getting off topic, and it's really not my field. Bottom line: bad analogy.)
As for "fewer", pretty much everyone knows exactly what it means. The word that cause confusion is "less". Some idiots believe that because "fewer" is only used with countable nouns, that that means that "less" can only be used with non-countable nouns. That would make sense if the words were designed to complement each other, but they're weren't designed, and they're completely unrelated. Less is much older and has been used with both countable and uncountable nouns for over a thousand years. Claiming that it's "wrong" to say "10 items or less" is simple linguistic ignorance. Saying "10 items or fewer" is also acceptable, of course, but more stilted.
Any more dumb linguist superstitions you want to throw at me? No splitting infinitives? No ending sentences with prepositions?
So you're saying Obama's a Muslim terrorist because that's common use and it must be true even if it's wrong... You can support these people using the word inappropriately, incorrectly even, if you want. I'll just remember you as the guy who calls Obama a terrorist.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Do you even know what you're discussing any more? "Decimate" has many definitions, the one you like the most is the oldest, most archaic. Its meaning has since changed to mean "destroy by a lot, usually by killing". Definitions change over time. The order they are listed in dictionaries is arbitrary, but each dictionary usually has its own system. The one you chose has the oldest definitions first, hence it being on top.
As we are discussing words and not entire sentences, your Obama/Muslim/Kenya thing is just bizarre, and only serves to make you look really confused about the difference between "word", "sentence", and "bullshit".
Muslim is not a word? Kenya is not a word? Sheesh. They've obviously redefined those. That makes them right. You might as well use "alot" and say, "I have less dollars."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."