Are you really going to compare graffiti -- a nuisance of a chosen action -- to a civil rights struggle? Based on the color of a person's skin?
I think the protest sounded kind of dumb, but that response is far dumber. A comparison between graffiti and a civil rights struggle is like one between apples and monkey wrenches, but that's not what the OP was saying. He's making a comparison between refusing to give up a seat on a bus in defiance of the law with graffiti, i.e., the act of defiance itself. In a large context, the comparison is between the civil rights struggle in the US and the struggle against Chinese occupation of Tibet, which does seem a bit more comparable.
His methods weren't opening people's eyes, they are alienating people like me who would rather see a message sent to the Chinese government that makes them think about their injustices.
Ah, yes. The definition with "-- Idiom" just above it, to section it off from the proper ones. Strike two.
Strike two? Does label idiom somehow confer ungrammaticality on the phrase? No! the definition of idiom from that same dictionary:
-noun 1. an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket or hang one's head, or from the general grammatical rules of a language, as the table round for the round table, and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics. 2. a language, dialect, or style of speaking peculiar to a people. 3. a construction or expression of one language whose parts correspond to elements in another language but whose total structure or meaning is not matched in the same way in the second language. 4. the peculiar character or genius of a language. 5. a distinct style or character, in music, art, etc.: the idiom of Bach.
Under any applicable definition, the label of idiom does not indicate ungrammaticality or unacceptability of a phrase. You lose again. And speaking of lose:
But I presume, from your stated attitude, that you also happily regard "loose" as a valid synonym for "lose".
Not at all! I regard it as a misspelling. It's odd, though, that you're talking about a spelling error, whereas I'm discussing a syntactic variation that's not merely possible in many modern speakers' dialects of English, but is attested for quite some time (at least 134 years), your example is about someone inserting or failing to insert the letter "o" in a word. We're addressing different matters; you're hung up on trivia and I'm pointing out a significant fact about the nature of language - it changes. In the case of this particular word, a new usage has been established. You're huffing and puffing about correctness, and I'm talking about fact.
Bearing that in mind, when you say,
if not, you are simply saying that your arbitrary line is better than my arbitrary line, which isn't even worth arguing about.
I'm a little puzzled. You assert the correctness of your position, but fail to provide any indication as to why it might be superior. Allow me to provide an argument as to why my descriptive approach is better - its actually scientific (treating the thing as it is and occurs, rather than pushing it into a received mold of acceptability). As such, it's empirically based - it accounts for real facts about the world (the existence of language change as an ongoing and active process, being a salient fact for this discussion) using real language data of native speakers, and not the fussy arbitrary pronouncements of self-appointed experts.
Either way, this discussion has reached an end.
Yes, the discussion is at an end, and I appear to have won on points. I've bothered to provide 2 citations for the currency of my word choice, and a justification as to why my chosen attitude towards language is superior. You've brought nothing.
It's not been a fair fight, though; I suspect I have a far better education in linguistics and human language than you do.
Yes, but you're resorting to definition 8 of a dictionary which sets out to be comprehensively documentary rather than prescriptive, which it means it's down in the "encountered usage, not correct English" department.
Well, I find the notion that the OED citation is somehow less acceptable because it'd descriptive rather than prescriptive to be a bit bizarre, but I found the same citation from a more "mainstream dictionary":
4. be comprised of, to consist of; be composed of: The sales network is comprised of independent outlets and chain stores
Regarding the supposed superiority of prescriptive grammar and lexicography - why is it better to have a self-appointed someone make an arbitrary decision about acceptability than to report the actual definitions and usage of terms in living language? Do you also hold to that foolishness about the supposed unacceptability of split infinitives or ending sentence with prepositions, despite the fact that these usages are perfectly acceptable in common use and are attested (at least in the written language) for hundreds of years?
Sorry, kiddo. Your "correction" is nothing but a baseless prejudice drilled into you by an anal retentive schoolmarm or some bullshit culled from a cranky old curmudgeon's compendium of grammatical nonsense. You may not prefer the usage, but that fact makes it no less acceptable.
Somewhat, but I think national government is a bit more powerful Germany.
(btw, it's "is composed of" or "comprises" rather than "is comprised of")
For what it's worth, the online version of the OED 2nd Ed. has the following definition:
8. Of things:
c. pass. To be composed of, to consist of.
1874Art of Paper-Making ii. 10 Thirds, or Mixed, are comprised of either or both of the above. 1928 Daily Tel. 17 July 10/7 The voluntary boards of management, comprised..of very zealous and able laymen. 1964 E. PALMER tr. Martinet's Elem. Gen. Ling. i. 28 Many of these words are comprised of monemes. 1970 Nature 27 June 1206/2 Internally, the chloroplast is comprised of a system of flattened membrane sacs.
The usage of the word found "comprise" as found in my original post has been current in the English language for at least 134 years.
Now where did I say that non-physical things didn't have value? You're either being intentionally dishonest or you've got a problem with properly drawing inferences from written material.
And whenever someone uses this stupid statement I always like to point out that if this was truly the case, why do the geeks get mad when someone takes the code to Linux and uses it in an appliance without posting modified source? Can't have it both ways.. sorry.
I'm not trying to have it both ways, and you're reading something that I just didn't write. I never said that copyright violation was a good thing. I just said that the analogy to car theft is stupid. And it is.
In both the case of the car being stolen and the 100 million dollar movie being pirated what is REALLY being stolen is the time and money of the people who made them/owned them. You don't get a free pass just because you can easily make a copy.
No, you're completely wrong.
What's stolen when someone steals a car is a car. It's a physical object, and once it's stolen, the person it's stolen from is deprived of the car. To say you've actually deprived them of their time and money is moronic - you've deprived them of their car. You have not duplicated the car, you've taken actual, physical property.
When a person copies a movie, nothing is actually stolen. A copy is made of a copyrighted work, but the owner still the work. This is not theft.
Why? Almost every foreign poster on this site refers to the US Government as if it were monolithic and parliamentarian in form, totally missing the federal form of government and the independence of the executive and the legislature.
Your defense for being an ignoramus is that other people are too? That's kinda dumb.
And, anyway, it seems like you've got other issues going on.
You're comparing theft of actual property with making duplicates of intellectual property.
In the former case, you deprive the owner use of said property. In the latter, the owner still has the property.
The slippery slope is actually people like you making stupid analogies about this kind of thing, prompting ever more draconian laws and malicious prosecution.
Germany is a federal state, comprised of multiple independent states with their own governments. According to TFA, this only counts for prosecutors from the Nort-Rhine Westphalia.
Come on. Learn a little something about the rest of the world.
One use of the verb embargo means just to prohibit. It's common in newspaper publishing where wire stories are sometimes sent out a few days ahead, but are embargoed from publication till a specified date. And that use of the verb has been around at least since 1824 (the OED cites an example from Lord Byron's Don Juan).
Actually, I have no idea what caused it - the systems folks were running around in a panic and I could never get a straight answer about it. There had been some recent maintenance (SAN expansions, a newer version of DB2, I think), but I was consulting in a different area of the company and wasn't directly involved.
I did hear someone say that it'd happened a year before, though, which made me wonder what the hell are their systems programmers doing wrong that the mainframe crashes, and that it's done it more than once in recent memory.
No, you're wrong, I used the correct word for the intended meaning - "effected," in the sense of to bring something about. My usage becomes a bit clearer to the inattentive when the agent isn't elided:
And they don't have to stick, either - the arrest can still be effected [by a police officer].
"Affected" wouldn't make much sense in that sentence frame, or the paragraph as a whole.
An interesting point, but it's only a view with respect to a single aspect of medical care.
Taking a less narrow focus, consider the overall life expectancy at birth for the US vs. other countries - you'll find that a number of European nations are ahead, including France, the UK, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, among others.
Clearly insurance companies are accidentally doing something right, though perhaps because dead people do not pay premiums.
I don't know that you can draw that conclusion from the site you cite. It might be a matter of medical training, drug availability, or other factors.
Healthcare rationing! Long waiting lists! Socialism!
Of course, healthcare in the US is already rationed (just according to your ability to pay for it) and you already have to wait for procedures and tests (like the week and a half it took my wife to get the insurance company and various doctors involved to schedule an MRI that everyone agreed she needed).
Insurance companies are probably the worst type of organization to have making healthcare decisions.
Assuming this system allows them to reliably identify a person, so what? Do they do extensive background checks and continuous monitoring to ensure that the people aren't involved in terrorism? Or if I have no obvious problems in my background and enough money to pay for it, can I get treated differently too?
Does it basically come down to people paying to not have to stand in line with the rest of humanity at the airport?
At any given moment, you're breaking some law. Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, etc. etc. Charges are easy to make up. And they don't have to stick, either - the arrest can still be effected. Then there's either some resisting arrest or an accident that results in the cart getting tipped over and all the equipment breaking.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the protest sounded kind of dumb, but that response is far dumber. A comparison between graffiti and a civil rights struggle is like one between apples and monkey wrenches, but that's not what the OP was saying. He's making a comparison between refusing to give up a seat on a bus in defiance of the law with graffiti, i.e., the act of defiance itself. In a large context, the comparison is between the civil rights struggle in the US and the struggle against Chinese occupation of Tibet, which does seem a bit more comparable.
This is almost certainly true.
I wouldn't say stuff like that in public, dude.
Ah, you're British. That explains the need to cram the language into an arbitrarily derived mold, in ignorance of reality.
Strike two? Does label idiom somehow confer ungrammaticality on the phrase? No! the definition of idiom from that same dictionary:
Under any applicable definition, the label of idiom does not indicate ungrammaticality or unacceptability of a phrase. You lose again. And speaking of lose:
Not at all! I regard it as a misspelling. It's odd, though, that you're talking about a spelling error, whereas I'm discussing a syntactic variation that's not merely possible in many modern speakers' dialects of English, but is attested for quite some time (at least 134 years), your example is about someone inserting or failing to insert the letter "o" in a word. We're addressing different matters; you're hung up on trivia and I'm pointing out a significant fact about the nature of language - it changes. In the case of this particular word, a new usage has been established. You're huffing and puffing about correctness, and I'm talking about fact.
Bearing that in mind, when you say,
I'm a little puzzled. You assert the correctness of your position, but fail to provide any indication as to why it might be superior. Allow me to provide an argument as to why my descriptive approach is better - its actually scientific (treating the thing as it is and occurs, rather than pushing it into a received mold of acceptability). As such, it's empirically based - it accounts for real facts about the world (the existence of language change as an ongoing and active process, being a salient fact for this discussion) using real language data of native speakers, and not the fussy arbitrary pronouncements of self-appointed experts.
Yes, the discussion is at an end, and I appear to have won on points. I've bothered to provide 2 citations for the currency of my word choice, and a justification as to why my chosen attitude towards language is superior. You've brought nothing.
It's not been a fair fight, though; I suspect I have a far better education in linguistics and human language than you do.
Well, I find the notion that the OED citation is somehow less acceptable because it'd descriptive rather than prescriptive to be a bit bizarre, but I found the same citation from a more "mainstream dictionary":
Regarding the supposed superiority of prescriptive grammar and lexicography - why is it better to have a self-appointed someone make an arbitrary decision about acceptability than to report the actual definitions and usage of terms in living language? Do you also hold to that foolishness about the supposed unacceptability of split infinitives or ending sentence with prepositions, despite the fact that these usages are perfectly acceptable in common use and are attested (at least in the written language) for hundreds of years?
Sorry, kiddo. Your "correction" is nothing but a baseless prejudice drilled into you by an anal retentive schoolmarm or some bullshit culled from a cranky old curmudgeon's compendium of grammatical nonsense. You may not prefer the usage, but that fact makes it no less acceptable.
Somewhat, but I think national government is a bit more powerful Germany.
For what it's worth, the online version of the OED 2nd Ed. has the following definition:
The usage of the word found "comprise" as found in my original post has been current in the English language for at least 134 years.
Don't bother - he's being thick on purpose, or he's intellectually challenged. In either case, he's a waste of effort.
Now where did I say that non-physical things didn't have value? You're either being intentionally dishonest or you've got a problem with properly drawing inferences from written material.
I'm not trying to have it both ways, and you're reading something that I just didn't write. I never said that copyright violation was a good thing. I just said that the analogy to car theft is stupid. And it is.
No, you're completely wrong.
What's stolen when someone steals a car is a car. It's a physical object, and once it's stolen, the person it's stolen from is deprived of the car. To say you've actually deprived them of their time and money is moronic - you've deprived them of their car. You have not duplicated the car, you've taken actual, physical property.
When a person copies a movie, nothing is actually stolen. A copy is made of a copyrighted work, but the owner still the work. This is not theft.
Your defense for being an ignoramus is that other people are too? That's kinda dumb.
And, anyway, it seems like you've got other issues going on.
You're comparing theft of actual property with making duplicates of intellectual property.
In the former case, you deprive the owner use of said property. In the latter, the owner still has the property.
The slippery slope is actually people like you making stupid analogies about this kind of thing, prompting ever more draconian laws and malicious prosecution.
Germany is a federal state, comprised of multiple independent states with their own governments. According to TFA, this only counts for prosecutors from the Nort-Rhine Westphalia.
Come on. Learn a little something about the rest of the world.
Is this all fallout from 9/11? If so, did OBL ever think in his wildest dreams he'd be able to fuck us up this seriously?
The correct adjective form is Democratic.
If you strike down these reviews, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
One use of the verb embargo means just to prohibit. It's common in newspaper publishing where wire stories are sometimes sent out a few days ahead, but are embargoed from publication till a specified date. And that use of the verb has been around at least since 1824 (the OED cites an example from Lord Byron's Don Juan).
If Lucas really wants those bad reviews out there front and center, he's doing a bang up job of ensuring that.
Ya dumb fuckers - was it that hard to try to identify the language involved? Even just the alphabet, if you weren't sure of the specific language?
Sigh.
Actually, I have no idea what caused it - the systems folks were running around in a panic and I could never get a straight answer about it. There had been some recent maintenance (SAN expansions, a newer version of DB2, I think), but I was consulting in a different area of the company and wasn't directly involved.
I did hear someone say that it'd happened a year before, though, which made me wonder what the hell are their systems programmers doing wrong that the mainframe crashes, and that it's done it more than once in recent memory.
All computers crash - I've made Linux, BSD, OSX, and Solaris machines kernel panic. Hell, I've witnessed a newer zSeries mainframe crash.
The fact that it happened at an inopportune moment is unfortunate, but that's life.
No, you're wrong, I used the correct word for the intended meaning - "effected," in the sense of to bring something about. My usage becomes a bit clearer to the inattentive when the agent isn't elided:
And they don't have to stick, either - the arrest can still be effected [by a police officer].
"Affected" wouldn't make much sense in that sentence frame, or the paragraph as a whole.
An interesting point, but it's only a view with respect to a single aspect of medical care.
Taking a less narrow focus, consider the overall life expectancy at birth for the US vs. other countries - you'll find that a number of European nations are ahead, including France, the UK, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, among others.
I don't know that you can draw that conclusion from the site you cite. It might be a matter of medical training, drug availability, or other factors.
Healthcare rationing! Long waiting lists! Socialism!
Of course, healthcare in the US is already rationed (just according to your ability to pay for it) and you already have to wait for procedures and tests (like the week and a half it took my wife to get the insurance company and various doctors involved to schedule an MRI that everyone agreed she needed).
Insurance companies are probably the worst type of organization to have making healthcare decisions.
Assuming this system allows them to reliably identify a person, so what? Do they do extensive background checks and continuous monitoring to ensure that the people aren't involved in terrorism? Or if I have no obvious problems in my background and enough money to pay for it, can I get treated differently too?
Does it basically come down to people paying to not have to stand in line with the rest of humanity at the airport?
At any given moment, you're breaking some law. Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, etc. etc. Charges are easy to make up. And they don't have to stick, either - the arrest can still be effected. Then there's either some resisting arrest or an accident that results in the cart getting tipped over and all the equipment breaking.