The idea that human cells die constantly, while the human being continues to exist, is scientific fact... that's why that person's opinion is invalid. But to determine at which point a human being exists is something that science cannot answer.
So your first statement tells me that you recognize some difference between a collection of human cells and a human. That's a good start. The focus of your last statement is wrong-headed to me, though. Of course science doesn't answer exactly at what point a collection of cells turns into human life worth protecting. So what? If we're to err on the side of protecting human life, the relevant question is: is there a point at which we know to a reasonable certainty that it is still just a collection of cells? Certainly before significant structures of a brain develops we're not there yet.
It seems to me that many on the pro-life side aren't interested in this question. A "pro-life" stance, though, to me, means one ought to be very concerned with this question, and let it guide one's decision making. If that's not the case, what is guiding one's decision-making? (Usually religion...I'm very glad I live in a country that doesn't allow other people to practice their religion on me.)
Way to beg the question... Currently it is both a medical procedure and a political issue. Your statement implies it should only be a medical issue.
Well, I wasn't quite begging the question, though I don't guess I made my argument as explicit as I perhaps should have.
And ethics boards of experts approved eugenics programs around the world.
Should I take this to mean that you object to the ethics boards that currently make decisions in hospitals about such sticky issues? And the logic motivating this objection is—well, let's just say you're dangerously close to Godwinning your argument here.
Your wording "when a unique human life begins". A tumor is "unique human life" too...that doesn't mean it's worth protecting. Your phrase is a semantic placeholder for a vague notion. This is a foundation of sand.
Heck, if you leave a baby alone with canned food and a can opener, the baby will starve. Stupid baby.
Yes, this does sum up my post—you got my point exactly. Except you seem to be arguing my own point back to me, which I can't figure out. I think babies are worth protecting, even stupid ones that can't figure out how to use a can opener.
I'll do you one better. In the development of every fetus, there is a point where if the mother were to tragically die, surgeons could deliver & save the baby with little more than fluids and an incubator. This seems to me to be life worth protecting. (To be clear, this is not a definitive argument, though...someday we have the technology to remove the uterus containing an implanted zygote and bring a baby to term. Letting our technological capability guide us here is clearly wrong, too...technology is a tool and a tools don't dictate their use, we do, based on understanding on when and where to apply them.)
Somewhere between a fetus that can be delivered and a collection of cells is a grey area, and science certainly has much to tell us about where this grey area begins and ends. But again, science is just a tool, and it's the judicious use of that tool that we are after. If we're to have a consistent stance on this issue, we neither want to go off the precipice of rationalizing murder any more than we want to end up defending the sanctity of a mole.
The original problem comes out of a weekly trip I used to make on a rural two-lane highway (US-12 in southern Michigan) passing through some small town (where it widens to four lanes, but you can expect a strictly enforced speed limit) about every ten miles. I would not infrequently come up behind someone doing 50 in a 55, and start the "can I pass this guy" dance.
When I drive from SF to LA on I-5, that's a two lane road as well. When slower traffic camps out in the left lane, it creates a dangerous situation. No offense to you personally—but when someone like you pulls up behind that person and slows down without encouraging them to get out of the way, the situation gets more dangerous, not less. Now that's two cars everyone else has to figure out how to get around.
The solution is to raise speed limits to a reasonable level and have police ticket people that are not actively passing on the left, as they do in many European countries. (In other words, if you're driving the same speed as the cars on your right for any significant length of road, get over or get a ticket.) Of course, this presumes that our road laws exist to make our trips as convenient and safe as possible, not raise revenue.
I am against abortion as birth control (note the difference; sometimes they are medically necessary and then there are cases of rape, etc.) but that has zero to do with any mythical dude in a beard sitting up in the clouds.
And someone else might be against the destruction of any form of human life, including human tissue comprising a mole or a tumor.
So what? Why should anyone regard that person's opinion as more or less than relevant than yours or mine?
Hospitals have ethics boards of experts tasked with making these kinds of medical decisions. Abortion is a personal medical procedure, not a political issue, not unlike embryonic stem cell research.
Consider my hypothetical person that is against destruction of any form of human life. Clearly, that is not reasonable. So, based on the state of latest medical knowledge, which forms of human life are ok to destroy and which are not? I think it has to be based on some best (conservative) guess of when sentience is present. (If you think a good argument can be made around the idea of mere "potential for life," please rethink it. Before fertilization an egg & sperm have "potential for life," and conversely, a fetus removed from the womb does not have "potential for life" until fairly late in development—so late, in fact, that it may have already developed sentience, whatever that means. To be completely consistent, you would have to accept that every egg that is allowed to go unfertilized is equivalent to murder.)
In any case, there is no one I've yet encountered that has made an argument consistent with their own views that would also prohibit embryonic stem cell research.
Travelling at speed on the highway is not about getting to your destination marginally faster. It's about keeping the flow of traffic up to prevent marginally more deaths and injuries.
I know it doesn't directly say it, but your sig implies that it's perfectly reasonable to merge onto the highway at 60 when everyone else is doing 80. No, that's not ok, it's not safe, people won't slow down, they'll go around you and it'll cause an avoidably dangerous situation. AND everyone gets to their destination 2 minutes faster.
Slower != safer. Every country that's studied it has figured this out except the US.:-/
I'm for this system in principle, but can we trust our government to not get creative about where to draw that line in a budget crunch? Somehow, I think at some point anything Navy SEALs could survive would be billed.:-/
Should all public information be so readily available that it doesn't require even a modicum of effort to access?
It's true that we have recently undergone a shift from data scarcity to data abundance, and there will be a necessary adjustment period. This leads directly into my next point...
If you took the time to drive over to my place then sure, look to your heart's content. Flew a thousand miles? Enjoy harassing the locals for photo opportunities. But just pulling it all up with the click of a button? That seems qualitatively different somehow.
I think you have this exactly wrong. It's not qualitatively different, what's bothering you is that it's quantitatively different. In principle, public is public (qualitative). In practice, even though something was "public" it may have been greatly obscured simply by means of the effort required to access it. In this way, technology is holding our feet to the fire and asking us to consider whether we have made law based on how we really feel about this issue or based on what was expedient and convenient at the time with little thought for the future.
I believe we have spent too little time when it comes to things like this thinking about and understanding things in principle, and this has always cast off a number of different side effects that may or may not have been undesirable. For example, you may not like the idea of Google Street View because of the reduction in effort—but consider this: if something in principle is public about you before GSV came along, then your only privacy protection in those matters depends upon the good will of others. You're simply relying on someone else to not have a good enough reason to hire a private investigator to go digging.
This difference between laws that stand on practice v. principle is exploitable by anyone that wants to and has the means to exercise control over someone else. At the governmental level, it is used by tyrannies to keep the people in order: make it impossible to comply with the law and most people won't mind; in practice, those laws won't apply to them or they won't get caught. But god help you if you run afoul of a powerful person's sensibilities in a non-illegal way. Violating non-law can very quickly bring scrutiny on all of the laws for which you (and everyone else, but more importantly you) are not in compliance. (North Korea does this. So does the DMV.)
This is the definition of caprice. When we democratize our policies on privacy and make them exploitable by everyone, we bring transparency. When we bring transparency, we bring recognition to the state of the system. Principle and practice fall into alignment, it doesn't matter which one we're discussing, they've become one and the same. Because the information is democratized, at least we are free to use it against those that would have previously had the means to use it against us.
Nothing I've said above is unique to GSV...it pertains to the freedom of information in general.
Yea, you're right. Even without Google Street View I don't like the idea of someone 3000 miles away being able to just hop on a plane and be looking at my house in a couple of hours. Screw that, ban people from looking at my stuff if they're not from around here.
But...oh wait. That's stupid.
Public view is public view. It means anyone, on any given day, can see it. 1 person or 1000 people, what's the difference? Facades are meant to be seen by other people...they're designed for it. I don't have a problem with Google making the deision to be courteous to a few people here and there that don't want their home on there, but if too many people started making that request I hope and expect that they would say, you know, now it's starting to hurt the reason for having it in the first place, so sorry, we're doing away with that and now everything will be visible.
This isn't about Google's right to collect and show information, either. It's about my right to see it. If I can go there and see it, then I can have a friend with a smartphone show it to me live (iPhone Facetime, for instance) or take a photo and show it to me. If my friend can do it, why can't Google?
I might just as well say I don't want people to see my face when I go out in public either, but I'm not willing to wear a burqa, so you'll just have to look away to respect my nonexistent right to privacy. It's silliness. Something is either allowed or it's not. This is.
Unless Wolfram is right about the underlying generator of the most complexity possible is as simple as rule 30, and the simplest universal computational device is rule 110 (well, we already know rule 110 is Turing complete)...
The difference between "unassigned value" and 0 is pretty inconsequential for most people in most real-world situations...
Really? So ( )*9=72, you think the difference between treating ( ) as x vs. 0 is "pretty inconsequential"? Remember, this study is about the development of the students' understanding...that is, the ability to move on to other kinds of more complicated math than in the problem presented...like multiplication.
By the way, can I posit that this is actually not a problem with US students so much as a problem with US teachers? Most people, including teachers, seem to think that knowing a subject marginally better than the students is all there is to teaching. TFA closes with: Parents and teachers can help the students. The two researchers suggest using mathematics manipulatives and encourage teachers "to read professional journals, become informed about the problem and modify their instruction." How many people reading this that grew up in the US can honestly say that they can imagine their grade school teachers reading a professional journal and keeping up with the latest in their field? (I can say a small sampling of my teachers were committed in this way, but my public school was in the top 4% in the country and they represented the exception, not the rule.)
That was precisely my point. The poster I was responding to argued that data is plural because "data can suggests" is incorrect grammar.
The point of my post is that "data can suggests" is incorrect because "can suggests" is wrong—it has nothing to do with the subject being singular or plural.
This is going to be a difficult thread if people don't carefully read the posts and understand them before responding. At least you had the intelligence to not associate your username with this post.:-)
You missed the point. When the zoo suffers "monkey loss," it's the loss of multiple monkeys. Still, in that construction, it is correct to use the singular form of "monkey" because it describes the type of loss. Likewise, it is proper to say "data loss" specifically because the word data is singular, not plural. Most people would agree that "data loss" is a fine thing to say, but then those people will turn around and argue that data is plural, not realizing that this conflicts with their own prior statement.
Let us consider data to be a plural, as you seem to like it. Could one speak about a data disaster? Can you present even one example of another plural form that would fit there? Are we likely to see a story tomorrow about a "meteors disaster" or hear about how Oklahoma suffers from a "tornadoes problem"?
We begin reading the summary and we barely get our trousers off we come across "a surge in data loss incidents". If a bunch of monkeys catch a fatal disease, is the zoo suffering a surge in "monkeys loss," or "monkey loss"?
I contend there is nothing wrong with the/. article I reference above. If we accept your position, however, we could only speak about how "datum disasters" are more likely in summer, and how summer weather leans to a surge in "datum loss incidents."
I know your comment was simply a pretext to make a joke about me b-hole, but I thought it was worth unpacking your first statement for the sake of levity. I take the liberty thusly: "It is very useful. With 16-digit precision of PI you could actually err by less than 1cm with the orbit of Uranus (assuming for a sec it is round[, which it is not, therefore meaning that this level of precision is not actually useful in this example]).":-)
Not like errata and erratum. Common usage of errata maintains the separate identity of the individual items within the group: We've collected errata for this textbook over a 12 month period. (Each erratum trickled in from readers; the entire set didn't show up all at once.) On the other hand, if you refer to them as a group: The errata is ready for formatting. (Each individual item is not going to be formatted independently—the formatting will be applied to the errata as a whole, all at once. The implied measure word is "section," as in the errata section of a book that is to be formatted.)
But when you have multiple points, you have data, which can possibly suggest something.
One may also have venereal disease, which can possibly suggest something about that person. Would you argue that "venereal disease" is plural because it is proper to say "suggest" in that sentence instead of "suggests"?
Many dictionaries, including dictionary.com, do not exist to define the language, but rather to reflect it. When linguistic travesties like scan or biannual happen, they are perfectly content to add both conflicting definitions. In other words, they do not exist as an authoritative source on what language should be, only what is in common use today.
That doesn't mean common use is sensible, though. Take scan: I quickly scanned the police report to see why the deputy had been out in the field for a full two hours. It used to be that this would have been improper use of the word scan, which meant to examine closely (scan still retains this definition). What happened to this word, which now also has a conflicting definition, to look over or leaf through hastily?
I'll bet that technology is to blame for that second conflicting definition. When the first grocery store checkout scanners came out, the technologists probably titled them scanners because they closely examine UPC symbols—that they do so rapidly is nice, but cannot be the point of the original title or else they would have been called skimmers. But to a customer, the scanner was a jump forward not because it was marginally more accurate than a checkout clerk, but rather because it was vastly faster. So the association was set in people's minds, and now we have an ambiguous word.
I cannot bring myself to this kind of usage just because it has become "proper" according to the dictionary. Consider the prefix bi-. Does this mean two or half? Well, what does bisect mean? It means to divide into two parts, or cut in half. So this doesn't help us nail it down because it's ambiguous as to whether the bi- signifies two-ness or half-ness. What about bisexual or bicycle? I would argue that, in these two cases, it is clearly two-ness being expressed...half-ness just doesn't make sense in the case of a bicycle, since unicycles and tricycles exist and the comparison is clear, and I don't even want to know what your perception of bisexuality is if an interpretation based on half-ness makes sense to you. This leads me to think, for the sake of consistency, I should consider bi- prefixes to refer to two-ness. This approach does not exclude any case which might also be construed as half-ness, for all such cases can just as validly be interpreted as instances of two-ness as in the case of bisect. The reverse is not true.
Ok, so we're agreed, then. Words prefixed with bi- imply two-ness, and rely on the stem of the word to define the thing that has taken on two-ness. Bisect, for example, means to section, or divide, into two parts. The fact that a bisected object is associated with halving, as opposed to doubling, has to do with the fact that the object is being sect-ed, and nothing to do with being bi-ed.
What about biennial, then? What should this mean: twice per year or every two years? Well, the stem -ennial means year, and bi- means two, so I arrive at an expected definition of occurring every two years. Bingo—that's exactly what it means.
What about biannual? The same argument applies, right? Wrong! Well, not wrong, but not necessarily right. This word can mean either twice per year or every two years (likewise with biweekly and bimonthly). How fickle! But, I am forced to admit that there is simply no other available way we could, in a single word, refer to something that happens twice per some period of time, so I'll grudgingly let it go.
Except...there is such a word available to us, and it doesn't have an alternative, conflicting definition. Furthermore, it has no conno
Well, and more to the point, just because someone's name is mentioned doesn't mean they're endangered by it, and even if they are endangered by it, not necessarily incorrectly so. Sometimes people do things that put them in dangerous situations, and in cases where they perhaps should not have been doing those things in the first place, the public's need to know outweighs the natural consequence's of one's own decision.
I'm not saying that in general it's people's own problem, obviously it has to be approached with care when lives are at stake. But at the same time, it is not correct to say in general that the safety of individuals always trumps transparency, particularly if those individuals were acting in a way that depends specifically upon not being held to account.
From dictionary.com: "Even though less has been used before plural nouns ( less words; less men ) since the time of King Alfred, many modern usage guides say that only fewer can be used in such contexts. Less, they say, should modify singular mass nouns ( less sugar; less money ) and singular abstract nouns ( less honesty; less love ). It should modify plural nouns only when they suggest combination into a unit, group, or aggregation: less than $50 (a sum of money); less than three miles (a unit of distance). With plural nouns specifying individuals or readily distinguishable units, the guides say that fewer is the only proper choice: fewer words; fewer men; no fewer than 31 of the 50 states."
It's no surprise that people don't understand this distinction. Look at the confusion around the word data, which has become popular over the last decade or two to treat as a plural ("The data suggest..." when it should be "The data suggests..."). I'm quite certain that many people will protest this post, that "data" is plural, and treating it as such is correct.
If "data" is plural, then so are the following: sugar, information, hair, media, agenda... The agenda are prepared. My hair are blonde.
I hear from all of these governments and other organizations that wikileaks is most definitely endangering civilians and troops. This fact is so readily apparent that wikileaks must be shut down immediately and Assange arrested. It doesn't matter if wikileaks is attempting to be transparent to its critics by allowing them to contribute by assisting in document redaction, so dangerous is their effect.
Danger, fear, everyone is exposed, our country is in jeopardy, we're on the precipice and completely vulnerable! We're being menaced and we're in immediate peril!!!
Read that fear mongering again and feel the effect of the words. Now, once you've done that, ask: have I presented even one specific danger of wikileaks to anyone? What matters to you more, that I feel strongly about this, irrational though it may be, or that wikileaks is actually endangering people? Do we want to feel secure, or do we want to be secure?
Perhaps in this case specific answers as to how specific individuals are really being endangered is pedantic and beside the point, maybe because it's just so obvious??? (Even so, I think I'd feel better having the specifics pointed out to me nonetheless.)
"I have a great idea!" exclaimed a Discovery Network top executive. "It's a new postmodern marketing strategy called whiplash marketing. It works like this: we make everyone like us and act cool and spend a lot of money appearing one way, and then we suddenly pull a 180 in a separate area of the company and inexplicably negate those expectations. In the process of realizing the essentially futile nature of pursuing one's interests in a humanly pointless effort to feel a sense of advancement, it will have the side effect of really getting the Discovery brand out there. Vote?"
Ah well, maybe you're right. The problem is apparently not that I was expecting too much of people that responded, but perhaps too much of what we often have to respond to...you're right about that. Perhaps I'd do better to consider the forum and include the open source equivalent of the sarcmark next time (whatever that is these days).
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So your first statement tells me that you recognize some difference between a collection of human cells and a human. That's a good start. The focus of your last statement is wrong-headed to me, though. Of course science doesn't answer exactly at what point a collection of cells turns into human life worth protecting. So what? If we're to err on the side of protecting human life, the relevant question is: is there a point at which we know to a reasonable certainty that it is still just a collection of cells? Certainly before significant structures of a brain develops we're not there yet.
It seems to me that many on the pro-life side aren't interested in this question. A "pro-life" stance, though, to me, means one ought to be very concerned with this question, and let it guide one's decision making. If that's not the case, what is guiding one's decision-making? (Usually religion...I'm very glad I live in a country that doesn't allow other people to practice their religion on me.)
Well, I wasn't quite begging the question, though I don't guess I made my argument as explicit as I perhaps should have.
Should I take this to mean that you object to the ethics boards that currently make decisions in hospitals about such sticky issues? And the logic motivating this objection is—well, let's just say you're dangerously close to Godwinning your argument here.
Your wording "when a unique human life begins". A tumor is "unique human life" too...that doesn't mean it's worth protecting. Your phrase is a semantic placeholder for a vague notion. This is a foundation of sand.
Yes, this does sum up my post—you got my point exactly. Except you seem to be arguing my own point back to me, which I can't figure out. I think babies are worth protecting, even stupid ones that can't figure out how to use a can opener.
I'll do you one better. In the development of every fetus, there is a point where if the mother were to tragically die, surgeons could deliver & save the baby with little more than fluids and an incubator. This seems to me to be life worth protecting. (To be clear, this is not a definitive argument, though...someday we have the technology to remove the uterus containing an implanted zygote and bring a baby to term. Letting our technological capability guide us here is clearly wrong, too...technology is a tool and a tools don't dictate their use, we do, based on understanding on when and where to apply them.)
Somewhere between a fetus that can be delivered and a collection of cells is a grey area, and science certainly has much to tell us about where this grey area begins and ends. But again, science is just a tool, and it's the judicious use of that tool that we are after. If we're to have a consistent stance on this issue, we neither want to go off the precipice of rationalizing murder any more than we want to end up defending the sanctity of a mole.
When I drive from SF to LA on I-5, that's a two lane road as well. When slower traffic camps out in the left lane, it creates a dangerous situation. No offense to you personally—but when someone like you pulls up behind that person and slows down without encouraging them to get out of the way, the situation gets more dangerous, not less. Now that's two cars everyone else has to figure out how to get around.
The solution is to raise speed limits to a reasonable level and have police ticket people that are not actively passing on the left, as they do in many European countries. (In other words, if you're driving the same speed as the cars on your right for any significant length of road, get over or get a ticket.) Of course, this presumes that our road laws exist to make our trips as convenient and safe as possible, not raise revenue.
You're saying most roads in the US do not have average traffic speeds faster than the posted limits? Show me these roads, that I may drive on them.
And someone else might be against the destruction of any form of human life, including human tissue comprising a mole or a tumor.
So what? Why should anyone regard that person's opinion as more or less than relevant than yours or mine?
Hospitals have ethics boards of experts tasked with making these kinds of medical decisions. Abortion is a personal medical procedure, not a political issue, not unlike embryonic stem cell research.
Consider my hypothetical person that is against destruction of any form of human life. Clearly, that is not reasonable. So, based on the state of latest medical knowledge, which forms of human life are ok to destroy and which are not? I think it has to be based on some best (conservative) guess of when sentience is present. (If you think a good argument can be made around the idea of mere "potential for life," please rethink it. Before fertilization an egg & sperm have "potential for life," and conversely, a fetus removed from the womb does not have "potential for life" until fairly late in development—so late, in fact, that it may have already developed sentience, whatever that means. To be completely consistent, you would have to accept that every egg that is allowed to go unfertilized is equivalent to murder.)
In any case, there is no one I've yet encountered that has made an argument consistent with their own views that would also prohibit embryonic stem cell research.
I object to your sig.
Travelling at speed on the highway is not about getting to your destination marginally faster. It's about keeping the flow of traffic up to prevent marginally more deaths and injuries.
I know it doesn't directly say it, but your sig implies that it's perfectly reasonable to merge onto the highway at 60 when everyone else is doing 80. No, that's not ok, it's not safe, people won't slow down, they'll go around you and it'll cause an avoidably dangerous situation. AND everyone gets to their destination 2 minutes faster.
Slower != safer. Every country that's studied it has figured this out except the US. :-/
I'm for this system in principle, but can we trust our government to not get creative about where to draw that line in a budget crunch? Somehow, I think at some point anything Navy SEALs could survive would be billed. :-/
It's true that we have recently undergone a shift from data scarcity to data abundance, and there will be a necessary adjustment period. This leads directly into my next point...
I think you have this exactly wrong. It's not qualitatively different, what's bothering you is that it's quantitatively different. In principle, public is public (qualitative). In practice, even though something was "public" it may have been greatly obscured simply by means of the effort required to access it. In this way, technology is holding our feet to the fire and asking us to consider whether we have made law based on how we really feel about this issue or based on what was expedient and convenient at the time with little thought for the future.
I believe we have spent too little time when it comes to things like this thinking about and understanding things in principle, and this has always cast off a number of different side effects that may or may not have been undesirable. For example, you may not like the idea of Google Street View because of the reduction in effort—but consider this: if something in principle is public about you before GSV came along, then your only privacy protection in those matters depends upon the good will of others. You're simply relying on someone else to not have a good enough reason to hire a private investigator to go digging.
This difference between laws that stand on practice v. principle is exploitable by anyone that wants to and has the means to exercise control over someone else. At the governmental level, it is used by tyrannies to keep the people in order: make it impossible to comply with the law and most people won't mind; in practice, those laws won't apply to them or they won't get caught. But god help you if you run afoul of a powerful person's sensibilities in a non-illegal way. Violating non-law can very quickly bring scrutiny on all of the laws for which you (and everyone else, but more importantly you) are not in compliance. (North Korea does this. So does the DMV.)
This is the definition of caprice. When we democratize our policies on privacy and make them exploitable by everyone, we bring transparency. When we bring transparency, we bring recognition to the state of the system. Principle and practice fall into alignment, it doesn't matter which one we're discussing, they've become one and the same. Because the information is democratized, at least we are free to use it against those that would have previously had the means to use it against us.
Nothing I've said above is unique to GSV...it pertains to the freedom of information in general.
Yea, you're right. Even without Google Street View I don't like the idea of someone 3000 miles away being able to just hop on a plane and be looking at my house in a couple of hours. Screw that, ban people from looking at my stuff if they're not from around here.
But...oh wait. That's stupid.
Public view is public view. It means anyone, on any given day, can see it. 1 person or 1000 people, what's the difference? Facades are meant to be seen by other people...they're designed for it. I don't have a problem with Google making the deision to be courteous to a few people here and there that don't want their home on there, but if too many people started making that request I hope and expect that they would say, you know, now it's starting to hurt the reason for having it in the first place, so sorry, we're doing away with that and now everything will be visible.
This isn't about Google's right to collect and show information, either. It's about my right to see it. If I can go there and see it, then I can have a friend with a smartphone show it to me live (iPhone Facetime, for instance) or take a photo and show it to me. If my friend can do it, why can't Google?
I might just as well say I don't want people to see my face when I go out in public either, but I'm not willing to wear a burqa, so you'll just have to look away to respect my nonexistent right to privacy. It's silliness. Something is either allowed or it's not. This is.
Yes, because we know that it's not possible for all different kinds of complexity to arise from a simple system.
(For those of you that can't be bothered to click the links, they depict different kinds of complexity arising from the simplest possible system.)
Unless Wolfram is right about the underlying generator of the most complexity possible is as simple as rule 30, and the simplest universal computational device is rule 110 (well, we already know rule 110 is Turing complete)...
If it is fine to use data as a singular, as you suggest, then how would I be making up another rule?
Really? So ( )*9=72, you think the difference between treating ( ) as x vs. 0 is "pretty inconsequential"? Remember, this study is about the development of the students' understanding...that is, the ability to move on to other kinds of more complicated math than in the problem presented...like multiplication.
By the way, can I posit that this is actually not a problem with US students so much as a problem with US teachers? Most people, including teachers, seem to think that knowing a subject marginally better than the students is all there is to teaching. TFA closes with: Parents and teachers can help the students. The two researchers suggest using mathematics manipulatives and encourage teachers "to read professional journals, become informed about the problem and modify their instruction." How many people reading this that grew up in the US can honestly say that they can imagine their grade school teachers reading a professional journal and keeping up with the latest in their field? (I can say a small sampling of my teachers were committed in this way, but my public school was in the top 4% in the country and they represented the exception, not the rule.)
That was precisely my point. The poster I was responding to argued that data is plural because "data can suggests" is incorrect grammar.
The point of my post is that "data can suggests" is incorrect because "can suggests" is wrong—it has nothing to do with the subject being singular or plural.
This is going to be a difficult thread if people don't carefully read the posts and understand them before responding. At least you had the intelligence to not associate your username with this post. :-)
You missed the point. When the zoo suffers "monkey loss," it's the loss of multiple monkeys. Still, in that construction, it is correct to use the singular form of "monkey" because it describes the type of loss. Likewise, it is proper to say "data loss" specifically because the word data is singular, not plural. Most people would agree that "data loss" is a fine thing to say, but then those people will turn around and argue that data is plural, not realizing that this conflicts with their own prior statement.
Irony's a bitch, what can I say?
As if to prove my point, providence has afforded me yet one more log to toss on the flames.
From a /. article: Data Disasters More Likely To Strike In Summer : "The turbulent summer weather leads to a surge in data loss incidents, according to industry experts..."
Let us consider data to be a plural, as you seem to like it. Could one speak about a data disaster? Can you present even one example of another plural form that would fit there? Are we likely to see a story tomorrow about a "meteors disaster" or hear about how Oklahoma suffers from a "tornadoes problem"?
We begin reading the summary and we barely get our trousers off we come across "a surge in data loss incidents". If a bunch of monkeys catch a fatal disease, is the zoo suffering a surge in "monkeys loss," or "monkey loss"?
I contend there is nothing wrong with the /. article I reference above. If we accept your position, however, we could only speak about how "datum disasters" are more likely in summer, and how summer weather leans to a surge in "datum loss incidents."
Sorry. I refuse to speak that way.
I know your comment was simply a pretext to make a joke about me b-hole, but I thought it was worth unpacking your first statement for the sake of levity. I take the liberty thusly: "It is very useful. With 16-digit precision of PI you could actually err by less than 1cm with the orbit of Uranus (assuming for a sec it is round[, which it is not, therefore meaning that this level of precision is not actually useful in this example])." :-)
Not like errata and erratum. Common usage of errata maintains the separate identity of the individual items within the group: We've collected errata for this textbook over a 12 month period. (Each erratum trickled in from readers; the entire set didn't show up all at once.) On the other hand, if you refer to them as a group: The errata is ready for formatting. (Each individual item is not going to be formatted independently—the formatting will be applied to the errata as a whole, all at once. The implied measure word is "section," as in the errata section of a book that is to be formatted.)
Data is actually more like agenda and media.
:->
One may also have venereal disease, which can possibly suggest something about that person. Would you argue that "venereal disease" is plural because it is proper to say "suggest" in that sentence instead of "suggests"?
Many dictionaries, including dictionary.com, do not exist to define the language, but rather to reflect it. When linguistic travesties like scan or biannual happen, they are perfectly content to add both conflicting definitions. In other words, they do not exist as an authoritative source on what language should be, only what is in common use today.
That doesn't mean common use is sensible, though. Take scan: I quickly scanned the police report to see why the deputy had been out in the field for a full two hours. It used to be that this would have been improper use of the word scan, which meant to examine closely (scan still retains this definition). What happened to this word, which now also has a conflicting definition, to look over or leaf through hastily?
I'll bet that technology is to blame for that second conflicting definition. When the first grocery store checkout scanners came out, the technologists probably titled them scanners because they closely examine UPC symbols—that they do so rapidly is nice, but cannot be the point of the original title or else they would have been called skimmers. But to a customer, the scanner was a jump forward not because it was marginally more accurate than a checkout clerk, but rather because it was vastly faster. So the association was set in people's minds, and now we have an ambiguous word.
I cannot bring myself to this kind of usage just because it has become "proper" according to the dictionary. Consider the prefix bi-. Does this mean two or half? Well, what does bisect mean? It means to divide into two parts, or cut in half. So this doesn't help us nail it down because it's ambiguous as to whether the bi- signifies two-ness or half-ness. What about bisexual or bicycle? I would argue that, in these two cases, it is clearly two-ness being expressed...half-ness just doesn't make sense in the case of a bicycle, since unicycles and tricycles exist and the comparison is clear, and I don't even want to know what your perception of bisexuality is if an interpretation based on half-ness makes sense to you. This leads me to think, for the sake of consistency, I should consider bi- prefixes to refer to two-ness. This approach does not exclude any case which might also be construed as half-ness, for all such cases can just as validly be interpreted as instances of two-ness as in the case of bisect. The reverse is not true.
Ok, so we're agreed, then. Words prefixed with bi- imply two-ness, and rely on the stem of the word to define the thing that has taken on two-ness. Bisect, for example, means to section, or divide, into two parts. The fact that a bisected object is associated with halving, as opposed to doubling, has to do with the fact that the object is being sect-ed, and nothing to do with being bi-ed.
What about biennial, then? What should this mean: twice per year or every two years? Well, the stem -ennial means year, and bi- means two, so I arrive at an expected definition of occurring every two years. Bingo—that's exactly what it means.
What about biannual? The same argument applies, right? Wrong! Well, not wrong, but not necessarily right. This word can mean either twice per year or every two years (likewise with biweekly and bimonthly). How fickle! But, I am forced to admit that there is simply no other available way we could, in a single word, refer to something that happens twice per some period of time, so I'll grudgingly let it go.
Except...there is such a word available to us, and it doesn't have an alternative, conflicting definition. Furthermore, it has no conno
Well, and more to the point, just because someone's name is mentioned doesn't mean they're endangered by it, and even if they are endangered by it, not necessarily incorrectly so. Sometimes people do things that put them in dangerous situations, and in cases where they perhaps should not have been doing those things in the first place, the public's need to know outweighs the natural consequence's of one's own decision.
I'm not saying that in general it's people's own problem, obviously it has to be approached with care when lives are at stake. But at the same time, it is not correct to say in general that the safety of individuals always trumps transparency, particularly if those individuals were acting in a way that depends specifically upon not being held to account.
From dictionary.com: "Even though less has been used before plural nouns ( less words; less men ) since the time of King Alfred, many modern usage guides say that only fewer can be used in such contexts. Less, they say, should modify singular mass nouns ( less sugar; less money ) and singular abstract nouns ( less honesty; less love ). It should modify plural nouns only when they suggest combination into a unit, group, or aggregation: less than $50 (a sum of money); less than three miles (a unit of distance). With plural nouns specifying individuals or readily distinguishable units, the guides say that fewer is the only proper choice: fewer words; fewer men; no fewer than 31 of the 50 states."
It's no surprise that people don't understand this distinction. Look at the confusion around the word data, which has become popular over the last decade or two to treat as a plural ("The data suggest..." when it should be "The data suggests..."). I'm quite certain that many people will protest this post, that "data" is plural, and treating it as such is correct.
If "data" is plural, then so are the following: sugar, information, hair, media, agenda... The agenda are prepared. My hair are blonde.
Idiots. :-p
I hear from all of these governments and other organizations that wikileaks is most definitely endangering civilians and troops. This fact is so readily apparent that wikileaks must be shut down immediately and Assange arrested. It doesn't matter if wikileaks is attempting to be transparent to its critics by allowing them to contribute by assisting in document redaction, so dangerous is their effect.
Danger, fear, everyone is exposed, our country is in jeopardy, we're on the precipice and completely vulnerable! We're being menaced and we're in immediate peril!!!
Read that fear mongering again and feel the effect of the words. Now, once you've done that, ask: have I presented even one specific danger of wikileaks to anyone? What matters to you more, that I feel strongly about this, irrational though it may be, or that wikileaks is actually endangering people? Do we want to feel secure, or do we want to be secure?
Perhaps in this case specific answers as to how specific individuals are really being endangered is pedantic and beside the point, maybe because it's just so obvious??? (Even so, I think I'd feel better having the specifics pointed out to me nonetheless.)
"I have a great idea!" exclaimed a Discovery Network top executive. "It's a new postmodern marketing strategy called whiplash marketing. It works like this: we make everyone like us and act cool and spend a lot of money appearing one way, and then we suddenly pull a 180 in a separate area of the company and inexplicably negate those expectations. In the process of realizing the essentially futile nature of pursuing one's interests in a humanly pointless effort to feel a sense of advancement, it will have the side effect of really getting the Discovery brand out there. Vote?"
"Aye."
"Aye."
"Aye."
"Aye."
Ah well, maybe you're right. The problem is apparently not that I was expecting too much of people that responded, but perhaps too much of what we often have to respond to...you're right about that. Perhaps I'd do better to consider the forum and include the open source equivalent of the sarcmark next time (whatever that is these days).