"If someone really wanted to push the issue, there can be no legal consent given because the person(s) are in an obvious state of distress."
Bollocks. That isn't the law on consent or on privacy. Distress doesn't automatically prevent someone from giving legal consent; nor is it true that everyone receiving medical treatment is in distress anyway.
Clearly, in an educational setting, part of taking an adequate consent will include explaining to the patient the extent of involvement of students in investigations, discussions and treatment.
Here's a handy hint the next time you discuss a case with a colleague: try doing what most medics do and talk about the "37 year old female presenting with early-onset parkinson's". The patient's name and address are of bugger-all value in discussing the case.
Are you really a doctor of some sort? If you are, why are you talking about "the client's permission"?
Erm, actually there are several different versions of the Quran. Just like the Torah, the Quran was originally written without vowels or diacritical marks. Consequently, differences have emerged over the centuries as marked-up text with vowels and diacritical marks have been produced. For instance, surah 5:54 has yartadda in the Quran according to Hafs, but yartadid according to Warsh.
In general, as well, your contention about the universality of Islam implies that you are closing your mind to the bewildering diversity of Islamic belief and practice, from the Sunni/Shia split to the four traditional Maddhabs to Wahhabism. Not to mention the many religions related in some way or derived from Islam, including but not limited to Sufi'ism, Ahmaddiya, Druze, Nation of Islam, Sikhism, Yazidi, Ismailism, Babism and Bahai'ism.
I really hope that you aren't a health professional. If you are, you should consider whether you are practising in compliance with your duties as a professional. These will include duties in relation to consent and privacy. They will be framed in language like this: "You must respect the confidentiality of your patients, clients and users. You must treat information about patients, clients or users as confidential and use it only for the purpose for which it was given. You must not knowingly release any personal or confidential information to anyone who is not entitled to it,and you should check that people who ask for information are entitled to it. You must only use information about a patient, client or user: 1. to continue to care for that person; or 2. for purposes where that person has given you specific permission to use the information. You must also keep to the conditions of any relevant data-protection legislation and follow best practice for handling confidential information relating to individuals at all times. Best practice is likely to change over time, and you must stay up to date.You must be particularly careful not to reveal, deliberately or accidentally, confidential information that is stored on computers." (This is from standards for some UK health professionals, but the rules are pretty universal.) When you're up before the Conduct Committee for having poked around in someone's medical records, pleading mitigation by way of curiosity is not going to save you from being struck off.
I don't want you peering in my bedroom window and watching me. Your innocent intentions and the fact you haven't got a video camera in your hand make bugger all difference. I want my medical records treated in the same way.
Matey, if you think that the only worthwhile study is research, there are some theoretical physicists, mathematicians and philosophers who'd like to have a chat. Gender differences aren't merely an interesting field of study, they are an important field of intellectual inquiry.
As for the rest of your reply: did you even read the end of her lecture? She finished by saying "I haven't done much more here than give you a potted account of four main positions on the question of sex and gender. They all contain nuances, subtleties and variations within them and between them that simply haven't been mentioned." In the light of that, it's pretty stupid to complain that it's not intersting enough because she hasn't set out her own position. She wasn't trying to. She wasn't writing for you.
As for Kierkegaard: I'm not an arts student, so it's impossible for my response to be typical of arts students. Way back when, I studied science (molecular biology of the cell, to be precise). I have read some Kierkegaard, though.
The irony of your complaint that I haven't explained his ideas for you would really only be apparent to you if you were to read this book. Really. One of its central tenets, and I am doing it no justice at all because it is impossible to do so in a short space, is that there are concepts that cannot be readily understood in a glib sentence or two, that there are ideas and points of view that require a lifetime's study. The point is well made because my paraphrase of this argument is trite. While this is partly down to my abilities as a writer, it is also because some ideas are complex and require effort to explain and to understand. The original is anything but trite.
You appear to contend that an individual should be able to understand pretty much any idea without the need for an understanding of the background or context. This isn't true in science and it isn't true in other fields of human inquiry or endeavour either. What certainly is true is that people regularly make tits of themselves by sneering at the idea of expert knowledge outside their own areas of competence.
Oi! Dipshit! If it's all so fucking obvious to you, how comes you can't even tell the difference between her views and other people's views?
This:
"And that is why men and women live out different gender roles; not because it is in their nature to do so, but because something in the society is causing it. In an ideal society, these gender-neutral rational capacities and so on would mean that men and women would"
set out the liberal feminist position. Previously, she had set out the biological determinist position; later, she sets out other positions. She never said that that was what she believed.
Don't be such a smart-arsed twat and think you have all the fucking answers. The greatest minds the human race has produced, from Aristotle to Darwin, have put time and effort into thinking about gender difference and people will continue thinking about this for the rest of all time. It's only straightforward to simpletons.
Save your comments for when you can understand these ideas, have worked out why he called himself Johannes de silentio, and have worked out what he would have to say about your self-confidence.
It occurs to me that a pretty similar model to the iTunes Music Store would work for movies too. Sure, there's the bandwidth issue -- but that's going to decrease over time as compression gets better and broadband penetration increases.
But you haven't mentioned the aspects that made them design classics: the open platform which, combined with a conductor/driver combo enables passengers to get on and off quickly and conveniently (and none of that godawful pinging that we all now have to live with, as doors open and close).
I understand where you're coming from, but choosing the food as an example of why not to fly on Concorde is pretty silly. My parents-in-law flew last year on a 'cheap' deal (about a grand for a one-way ticket from heathrow to new york) and they thought the food was very very impressive--freshly cooked, innovative and tasty (and the wine cellar was amazing too).
There are cheap tickets available at the moment too: http://www.britishairways.com/travel/celebrateusfa res/public/en_gb
Just a gentle reminder that, unless talking to a purely Christian audience, it is polite to use the terms "CE" and "BCE" in place of "AD" and "BC". (And "AD" is properly positioned ahead of the date to which it refers -- 'In the year of [y]our lord 2003' not '2003 in the year of [y]our lord)
Your comments about the bible aren't really true. Although modern and biblical Hebrew are clearly cognate languages, the semantic ranges of the words constituting the language are very likely to have shifted. For instance, nefesh, lev and dam are usually translated as soul, heart and blood, and this is what they now mean in modern Hebrew. But their semantic range is different, and peculiar, in biblical Hebrew. Lev doesn't appear to mean "heart" -- it appears to mean "seat of emotion" but not to be linked to the particular bodily organ that we now call a heart.
One of the great problems that has confronted scholars throughout the ages in translating the bible has been that it is difficult to get away from contemporary meanings and translations that act as precedent.
But even if you aren't interested in a particular dead language and culture, other people might be. Especially future generations. Linguistic diversity was one of the great wonders of the human mind for the past 5000 years or more -- and now it's dying out. Anyone who's learnt a foreign language, especially one that is fairly unrelated to their native tongue, will vouch for the value and power that learning a different way of thinking provides. Words that are not directly translatable between languages remind us sharply that the little part of the world we grew up in is a tiny part of a much bigger place.
And this is ignoring all the value to be gained for both soft and hard sciences, and indeed other fields of thinking, in understanding other cultures. To take only an obvious example, if we can't translate readily between different dead human languages, we'll find it much more difficult to translate any non-human language we might encounter in a SETI search.
All of this may be true, but it's ignoring the fact that the behaviour is determined application-by-application on the PC. Launch MS Word, and it opens with a blank document. Hit ctrl-w to close the blank doc and there you are -- an application that's running without a document. Same happens in Excel.
I realise that you're pissed off with the previous poster, but nonetheless, I don't think that you can reasonably argue that either European countries or the US have a great human rights records. That said, I think it's also worth bearing in mind that much of the rest of the world's governments restrict their citizens' liberties far more severely. It's not just hate speech that's banned in Zimbabwe, it's criticism of the government; women as well as minorities have restricted rights (e.g. driving, walking unaccompanied in public) in Saudia Arabia; and if the worst failing of the Chinese intelligence agencies was that they didn't operate under democratic supervision, the practitioners of Falun Gong would be very much happier than they are. It's worth keeping things in perspective.
You aren't seriously suggesting that you can't buy a phone that does this in the US at the moment, are you? In the UK at least, this is bog-standard. I have a Nokia 8310. It has a "divert to voicemail" option. It has an "alert via vibrate" option. It will thus vibrate if someone calls and leaves a message on voicemail.
Aesthetics are only a part of design. It is perfectly reasonable to think that an object, despite its ugliness, is nonetheless well designed (albeit not was well designed as it could be). The iMac's movable screen is an example of good design; the same with the easy-open door of the PowerMac. There are, of course, many more examples of how Apple computers are well designed.
Um, Soviet Russia and communist China were and are chock-full of people doing insane and idiotic things, and none of it is or was in the name of religion. All ideologies and none may be corrupted.
I am not sure what you mean by: "I am not sure you fully appreciate the first response I received for my post. You should be nervous as well". So far as I can see, you have (wrongly) conflated the two responses you received for your post. It was the other poster who mentioned being nervous, not me.
Can you give me an example of what you mean by an "English composition handbook"? I have seen many style guides (I was quoting Orwell from the Introduction to "The Economist Style Guide", one of the most famous guides of all), but I've never seen a composition handbook. I've also never seen a book that claims to set down "factual standards". English grammar is notoriously elastic.
I disagree that the phrase "a semicolon should be utilized" constitutes a complete thought. It makes sense only in relation to your preceding phrase, as it means "a semicolon should be utilized in writing the two complete thoughts". I also disagree that the phrase "at the very least" isn't parenthetical. By parenthetical, I mean that it can be omitted without changing the meaning of the sentence. This is clearly possible; you could have written:
"They should be written as two sentences or a semicolon should be utilized."
I cannot see how you could write your single sentence as two sentences merely by omitting the phrase "at the very least", as you suggest. You would have to change the wording as well. If you look at my suggested alternative sentence, you can see that I do not use the comma as a conjunction. You could omit that phrase entirely and preserve the sense of the sentence, without the need for any commas at all:
"They should be written as two sentences or a semicolon should be used."
This sentence does not need to be split into two smaller sentences; it is simple and direct as it stands.
You asked why it was that, when you pointed out your demonstration of the use of a semicolon in your sentence, it obscured your meaning. The reason is that it led to a too-complex sentence. Your sentence didn't become impossible to decipher, but it did become more difficult than it needed to be.
I am unsure what you mean when you write ""Utilize" implies practical use, rather than eloquent use". Utilize is just a longer-winded way of saying use.
By the way, why do you describe George Orwell as being a prolific writer? It is the quality, not the quantity, of what he wrote that has led to the adoption of his principles of good writing. These principles have been quoted and used by journalists and civil servants all across the English-speaking world for the past forty years or more. There are few other figures who have been as influential in shaping modern formal written English.
[Orwell listed six rules: 1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. 2. Never use a long word where a short one will do. 3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. 4. Never use the passive where you can use the active. 5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. 6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. You can find these rules quoted all over the Web.]
Finally, I think you misinterpreted my question. I wasn't asking whether the use of parentheses was part of Standard English. I was asking whether the term I used for them, "brackets", was recognisable to users of American English. You appear to have answered the question indirectly: users of American English use the term "parentheses" instead.
The sentence you have written to demonstrate the use of the semi-colon is weak.
You wrote: "They should be written as two sentences; or at the very least, a semicolon (as demonstrated in this sentence) should be utilized."
You should not have used a semi-colon. Instead, you should have placed a comma at either side of the phrase "at the very least", as the phrase can be omitted without affecting the meaning of the sentence. You should not have included the bracketed phrase in your sentence, as it obscures your meaning. Finally, George Orwell recommended that you should never use a long word where a short one will do. For this reason, you should write "used" rather than "utilized".
Your sentence, once rewritten, would read as follows:
"They should be written as two sentences or, at the very least, a semicolon should be used."
I am not sure if the word 'bracket' is standard usage in American English, as it is in British English. The bracketed phrase I referred to is "(as demonstrated in this sentence)".
In the late 1960s, UK doctors could prescribe heroin to addicts. At that time, there were about 500 such addicts in the whole of the UK. Following pressure from the US government, the prescription of heroin on the NHS was banned. As a result, addicts turned to street dealers for their supplies. The supplies became dirty (cut with paracetamol, drain cleaner, sand, sugar, starch, powdered milk, talcum powder, coffee, brick dust, cement dust, gravy powder, face powder or curry powder), and the suppliers got stinking rich. And demand? Today, the UK government estimates there may be as many as 1,000 times as many addicts! How about that for an effective policy? And here's a really dirty little secret: do you know what heroin's side-effect profile is? Possible nausea, possible constipation, possible addiction and (rarely, and only if huge overdoses are taken) respiratory failure. Paracetamol, which is considered safe enough to be sold OTC, is a more dangerous drug to overdose on -- it causes liver failure. So why do so many people die of taking heroin? Because the heroin is cut with impurities, needles are re-used and shared, and because dosages aren't consistent from batch to batch. None of those problems would exist with if doctors could prescribe heroin.
As we all know from reading too many Tom Clancy novels, we are never really in a position to be able to ascertain the reliability of a source. There could be any number of reasons for why Scott Ritter continues to speak without being arrested/sued, and while the thought that the US government has been knocked into bovine submission by the power of his glorious truth-telling is one possibility, others may be at least as plausible. Don't feed the trolls springs to mind. Without knowledge of the facts, we are likely just to select the theory that fits our opinions of the key players.
The mere fact of a language dying doesn't mean that it becomes inaccessible to humans. It simply restricts access to a subset of scholars. But when they write about what they have read, they'll probably do so in their vernacular. After all, this is what happens with Beowulf or the Dead Sea Scrolls. Of course, there are dead languages that are now completely inaccessible -- but these are primarily spoken-word-only languages. I don't know if there's a single language for which we have (still-legible) text that we, collectively, don't understand.
You're missing my point. Why should I have to justify my buying decision to you or anyone else? If I don't want to buy it, I shouldn't have to buy it, no matter how silly you think my reasoning. No company has the right to my money.
So what if people don't wanna buy the stuff? Why should the legal system be used to support sales? Why shouldn't I be able to exercise my consumer choice and buy what I want to? Who cares if the seller thinks my reasoning is stupid? It's just the workings of the market. Who are you and who are GM manufacturers to try to impose their will on consumers and force them to buy stuff that they wouldn't freely choose to buy?
Slashdot Mirror
"If someone really wanted to push the issue, there can be no legal consent given because the person(s) are in an obvious state of distress."
Bollocks. That isn't the law on consent or on privacy. Distress doesn't automatically prevent someone from giving legal consent; nor is it true that everyone receiving medical treatment is in distress anyway.
Clearly, in an educational setting, part of taking an adequate consent will include explaining to the patient the extent of involvement of students in investigations, discussions and treatment.
Here's a handy hint the next time you discuss a case with a colleague: try doing what most medics do and talk about the "37 year old female presenting with early-onset parkinson's". The patient's name and address are of bugger-all value in discussing the case.
Are you really a doctor of some sort? If you are, why are you talking about "the client's permission"?
Erm, actually there are several different versions of the Quran. Just like the Torah, the Quran was originally written without vowels or diacritical marks. Consequently, differences have emerged over the centuries as marked-up text with vowels and diacritical marks have been produced. For instance, surah 5:54 has yartadda in the Quran according to Hafs, but yartadid according to Warsh.
In general, as well, your contention about the universality of Islam implies that you are closing your mind to the bewildering diversity of Islamic belief and practice, from the Sunni/Shia split to the four traditional Maddhabs to Wahhabism. Not to mention the many religions related in some way or derived from Islam, including but not limited to Sufi'ism, Ahmaddiya, Druze, Nation of Islam, Sikhism, Yazidi, Ismailism, Babism and Bahai'ism.
I really hope that you aren't a health professional. If you are, you should consider whether you are practising in compliance with your duties as a professional. These will include duties in relation to consent and privacy. They will be framed in language like this:
"You must respect the confidentiality of your patients, clients and users.
You must treat information about patients, clients or users as confidential and use it only for the purpose for which it was given. You must not knowingly release any personal or confidential information to anyone who is not entitled to it,and you should check that people who ask for information are entitled to it. You must only use information about a patient,
client or user:
1. to continue to care for that person; or
2. for purposes where that person has given you specific permission to use the information.
You must also keep to the conditions of any relevant data-protection legislation and follow best practice for handling confidential information relating to individuals at all times. Best practice is likely to change over time, and you must stay up to date.You must be particularly careful not to reveal, deliberately or accidentally, confidential information that is
stored on computers."
(This is from standards for some UK health professionals, but the rules are pretty universal.)
When you're up before the Conduct Committee for having poked around in someone's medical records, pleading mitigation by way of curiosity is not going to save you from being struck off.
I don't want you peering in my bedroom window and watching me. Your innocent intentions and the fact you haven't got a video camera in your hand make bugger all difference. I want my medical records treated in the same way.
Matey, if you think that the only worthwhile study is research, there are some theoretical physicists, mathematicians and philosophers who'd like to have a chat. Gender differences aren't merely an interesting field of study, they are an important field of intellectual inquiry.
As for the rest of your reply: did you even read the end of her lecture? She finished by saying "I haven't done much more here than give you a potted account of four main positions on the question of sex and gender. They all contain nuances, subtleties and variations within them and between them that simply haven't been mentioned." In the light of that, it's pretty stupid to complain that it's not intersting enough because she hasn't set out her own position. She wasn't trying to. She wasn't writing for you.
As for Kierkegaard: I'm not an arts student, so it's impossible for my response to be typical of arts students. Way back when, I studied science (molecular biology of the cell, to be precise). I have read some Kierkegaard, though.
The irony of your complaint that I haven't explained his ideas for you would really only be apparent to you if you were to read this book. Really. One of its central tenets, and I am doing it no justice at all because it is impossible to do so in a short space, is that there are concepts that cannot be readily understood in a glib sentence or two, that there are ideas and points of view that require a lifetime's study. The point is well made because my paraphrase of this argument is trite. While this is partly down to my abilities as a writer, it is also because some ideas are complex and require effort to explain and to understand. The original is anything but trite.
You appear to contend that an individual should be able to understand pretty much any idea without the need for an understanding of the background or context. This isn't true in science and it isn't true in other fields of human inquiry or endeavour either. What certainly is true is that people regularly make tits of themselves by sneering at the idea of expert knowledge outside their own areas of competence.
Oi! Dipshit! If it's all so fucking obvious to you, how comes you can't even tell the difference between her views and other people's views?
This:
"And that is why men and women live out different gender roles; not because it is in their nature to do so, but because something in the society is causing it. In an ideal society, these gender-neutral rational capacities and so on would mean that men and women would"
set out the liberal feminist position. Previously, she had set out the biological determinist position; later, she sets out other positions. She never said that that was what she believed.
Don't be such a smart-arsed twat and think you have all the fucking answers. The greatest minds the human race has produced, from Aristotle to Darwin, have put time and effort into thinking about gender difference and people will continue thinking about this for the rest of all time. It's only straightforward to simpletons.
Save your comments for when you can understand these ideas, have worked out why he called himself Johannes de silentio, and have worked out what he would have to say about your self-confidence.
It occurs to me that a pretty similar model to the iTunes Music Store would work for movies too. Sure, there's the bandwidth issue -- but that's going to decrease over time as compression gets better and broadband penetration increases.
But you haven't mentioned the aspects that made them design classics: the open platform which, combined with a conductor/driver combo enables passengers to get on and off quickly and conveniently (and none of that godawful pinging that we all now have to live with, as doors open and close).
I understand where you're coming from, but choosing the food as an example of why not to fly on Concorde is pretty silly. My parents-in-law flew last year on a 'cheap' deal (about a grand for a one-way ticket from heathrow to new york) and they thought the food was very very impressive--freshly cooked, innovative and tasty (and the wine cellar was amazing too).
a res/public/en_gb
There are cheap tickets available at the moment too: http://www.britishairways.com/travel/celebrateusf
I think we are essentially in agreement.
Just a gentle reminder that, unless talking to a purely Christian audience, it is polite to use the terms "CE" and "BCE" in place of "AD" and "BC". (And "AD" is properly positioned ahead of the date to which it refers -- 'In the year of [y]our lord 2003' not '2003 in the year of [y]our lord)
You're not seriously suggesting that anyone believes that this would be possible in, say, the next thousand years, are you?
Your comments about the bible aren't really true. Although modern and biblical Hebrew are clearly cognate languages, the semantic ranges of the words constituting the language are very likely to have shifted. For instance, nefesh, lev and dam are usually translated as soul, heart and blood, and this is what they now mean in modern Hebrew. But their semantic range is different, and peculiar, in biblical Hebrew. Lev doesn't appear to mean "heart" -- it appears to mean "seat of emotion" but not to be linked to the particular bodily organ that we now call a heart.
One of the great problems that has confronted scholars throughout the ages in translating the bible has been that it is difficult to get away from contemporary meanings and translations that act as precedent.
But even if you aren't interested in a particular dead language and culture, other people might be. Especially future generations. Linguistic diversity was one of the great wonders of the human mind for the past 5000 years or more -- and now it's dying out. Anyone who's learnt a foreign language, especially one that is fairly unrelated to their native tongue, will vouch for the value and power that learning a different way of thinking provides. Words that are not directly translatable between languages remind us sharply that the little part of the world we grew up in is a tiny part of a much bigger place.
And this is ignoring all the value to be gained for both soft and hard sciences, and indeed other fields of thinking, in understanding other cultures. To take only an obvious example, if we can't translate readily between different dead human languages, we'll find it much more difficult to translate any non-human language we might encounter in a SETI search.
All of this may be true, but it's ignoring the fact that the behaviour is determined application-by-application on the PC. Launch MS Word, and it opens with a blank document. Hit ctrl-w to close the blank doc and there you are -- an application that's running without a document. Same happens in Excel.
I realise that you're pissed off with the previous poster, but nonetheless, I don't think that you can reasonably argue that either European countries or the US have a great human rights records. That said, I think it's also worth bearing in mind that much of the rest of the world's governments restrict their citizens' liberties far more severely. It's not just hate speech that's banned in Zimbabwe, it's criticism of the government; women as well as minorities have restricted rights (e.g. driving, walking unaccompanied in public) in Saudia Arabia; and if the worst failing of the Chinese intelligence agencies was that they didn't operate under democratic supervision, the practitioners of Falun Gong would be very much happier than they are. It's worth keeping things in perspective.
You aren't seriously suggesting that you can't buy a phone that does this in the US at the moment, are you? In the UK at least, this is bog-standard. I have a Nokia 8310. It has a "divert to voicemail" option. It has an "alert via vibrate" option. It will thus vibrate if someone calls and leaves a message on voicemail.
Aesthetics are only a part of design. It is perfectly reasonable to think that an object, despite its ugliness, is nonetheless well designed (albeit not was well designed as it could be). The iMac's movable screen is an example of good design; the same with the easy-open door of the PowerMac. There are, of course, many more examples of how Apple computers are well designed.
Um, Soviet Russia and communist China were and are chock-full of people doing insane and idiotic things, and none of it is or was in the name of religion. All ideologies and none may be corrupted.
Hmmm.
I am not sure what you mean by: "I am not sure you fully appreciate the first response I received for my post. You should be nervous as well". So far as I can see, you have (wrongly) conflated the two responses you received for your post. It was the other poster who mentioned being nervous, not me.
Can you give me an example of what you mean by an "English composition handbook"? I have seen many style guides (I was quoting Orwell from the Introduction to "The Economist Style Guide", one of the most famous guides of all), but I've never seen a composition handbook. I've also never seen a book that claims to set down "factual standards". English grammar is notoriously elastic.
I disagree that the phrase "a semicolon should be utilized" constitutes a complete thought. It makes sense only in relation to your preceding phrase, as it means "a semicolon should be utilized in writing the two complete thoughts". I also disagree that the phrase "at the very least" isn't parenthetical. By parenthetical, I mean that it can be omitted without changing the meaning of the sentence. This is clearly possible; you could have written:
"They should be written as two sentences or a semicolon should be utilized."
I cannot see how you could write your single sentence as two sentences merely by omitting the phrase "at the very least", as you suggest. You would have to change the wording as well. If you look at my suggested alternative sentence, you can see that I do not use the comma as a conjunction. You could omit that phrase entirely and preserve the sense of the sentence, without the need for any commas at all:
"They should be written as two sentences or a semicolon should be used."
This sentence does not need to be split into two smaller sentences; it is simple and direct as it stands.
You asked why it was that, when you pointed out your demonstration of the use of a semicolon in your sentence, it obscured your meaning. The reason is that it led to a too-complex sentence. Your sentence didn't become impossible to decipher, but it did become more difficult than it needed to be.
I am unsure what you mean when you write ""Utilize" implies practical use, rather than eloquent use". Utilize is just a longer-winded way of saying use.
By the way, why do you describe George Orwell as being a prolific writer? It is the quality, not the quantity, of what he wrote that has led to the adoption of his principles of good writing. These principles have been quoted and used by journalists and civil servants all across the English-speaking world for the past forty years or more. There are few other figures who have been as influential in shaping modern formal written English.
[Orwell listed six rules:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
You can find these rules quoted all over the Web.]
Finally, I think you misinterpreted my question. I wasn't asking whether the use of parentheses was part of Standard English. I was asking whether the term I used for them, "brackets", was recognisable to users of American English. You appear to have answered the question indirectly: users of American English use the term "parentheses" instead.
The sentence you have written to demonstrate the use of the semi-colon is weak.
You wrote:
"They should be written as two sentences; or at the very least, a semicolon (as demonstrated in this sentence) should be utilized."
You should not have used a semi-colon. Instead, you should have placed a comma at either side of the phrase "at the very least", as the phrase can be omitted without affecting the meaning of the sentence. You should not have included the bracketed phrase in your sentence, as it obscures your meaning. Finally, George Orwell recommended that you should never use a long word where a short one will do. For this reason, you should write "used" rather than "utilized".
Your sentence, once rewritten, would read as follows:
"They should be written as two sentences or, at the very least, a semicolon should be used."
I am not sure if the word 'bracket' is standard usage in American English, as it is in British English. The bracketed phrase I referred to is "(as demonstrated in this sentence)".
In the late 1960s, UK doctors could prescribe heroin to addicts. At that time, there were about 500 such addicts in the whole of the UK. Following pressure from the US government, the prescription of heroin on the NHS was banned. As a result, addicts turned to street dealers for their supplies. The supplies became dirty (cut with paracetamol, drain cleaner, sand, sugar, starch, powdered milk, talcum powder, coffee, brick dust, cement dust, gravy powder, face powder or curry powder), and the suppliers got stinking rich. And demand? Today, the UK government estimates there may be as many as 1,000 times as many addicts! How about that for an effective policy?
And here's a really dirty little secret: do you know what heroin's side-effect profile is? Possible nausea, possible constipation, possible addiction and (rarely, and only if huge overdoses are taken) respiratory failure. Paracetamol, which is considered safe enough to be sold OTC, is a more dangerous drug to overdose on -- it causes liver failure. So why do so many people die of taking heroin? Because the heroin is cut with impurities, needles are re-used and shared, and because dosages aren't consistent from batch to batch. None of those problems would exist with if doctors could prescribe heroin.
As we all know from reading too many Tom Clancy novels, we are never really in a position to be able to ascertain the reliability of a source. There could be any number of reasons for why Scott Ritter continues to speak without being arrested/sued, and while the thought that the US government has been knocked into bovine submission by the power of his glorious truth-telling is one possibility, others may be at least as plausible. Don't feed the trolls springs to mind. Without knowledge of the facts, we are likely just to select the theory that fits our opinions of the key players.
The mere fact of a language dying doesn't mean that it becomes inaccessible to humans. It simply restricts access to a subset of scholars. But when they write about what they have read, they'll probably do so in their vernacular. After all, this is what happens with Beowulf or the Dead Sea Scrolls. Of course, there are dead languages that are now completely inaccessible -- but these are primarily spoken-word-only languages. I don't know if there's a single language for which we have (still-legible) text that we, collectively, don't understand.
You're missing my point. Why should I have to justify my buying decision to you or anyone else? If I don't want to buy it, I shouldn't have to buy it, no matter how silly you think my reasoning. No company has the right to my money.
So what if people don't wanna buy the stuff? Why should the legal system be used to support sales? Why shouldn't I be able to exercise my consumer choice and buy what I want to? Who cares if the seller thinks my reasoning is stupid? It's just the workings of the market. Who are you and who are GM manufacturers to try to impose their will on consumers and force them to buy stuff that they wouldn't freely choose to buy?