Following recent EC rulings, Apple is considering registering as a religion for tax purposes. They may succeed, as people have been calling them a religion for years.
You wouldn't be mocking it if you hadn't been touched by His Reality Distortion Field.
Besides as a man of principles, I am sure he is anxious for his day in court where he can stare down the corrupt powers-that-be under the unblinking gaze of public scrutiny, [...]
It's flowery language you're using here, but according to Snowden and his lawyer, this is more or less correct. The Espionage Act does not allow Snowden to make a "I did it in the public interest"-type defence.
Whether or not he would actually return, were he charged with something that did give him the possibility of saying in open court why he was motivated to do what he did, is an open question. Still, right now he doesn't have the option of having his day in court. A show trial is never your day in court.
What I'd like to see is Snowden return to the US of his own volition to stand trial.
Stand trial for what, though?
One of Snowden's complaints (and the chief reason, according to him, that he has not returned to the US to stand trial) is that he has been charged on two counts under the Espionage Act, which prevents him from defending himself in open court. Presumably you, too, would prefer that he was allowed to make a public interest defense?
Can you imagine him still alive in China, Russia, etc... if he had been a member of their security apparatus and sold their secrets to another nation.
"Sold" is obviously the wrong word here.
But to answer your question: If he had been a member of Russia's security apparatus, and he had blown the whistle, and he had escaped to the United States, then whether or not he was still alive would largely depend on how famous he was. Solzhenitsyn managed to die of old age.
The hardest and most expensive part of making a AAA-level game isn't the engine, it's the art assets and (to a slightly lesser extent) the gameplay code.
Any decent academic text on Yiddish humour (and there are a lot of them) explains the construction fairly well. One key clue is where the emphasis falls. In the earlier British phrase, the emphasis was on the last word: "I couldn't care less." In the American phrase, the emphasis falls on the verb: "I could care less." Compare with a phrase like "I should be so lucky!"
At any rate, this discussion is beside the point. Linguists are, by their nature, descriptivists. Language is defined by how it is used. One key theme is that idioms don't need to follow any kind of logic. They mutate over time to the point where they roll off the tongue better.
The phrase "head over heels" makes no sense whatsoever, given that this is the normal position for a standing human; one might think that "heels over head" would be a more apt way of putting it. The battle for this one was lost 350 years ago.
If using words of phrases to mean their exact opposite was not common we would not have needed the words "irony" or "sarcasm" (sarcasm is a subtype of irony where the irony is made blatantly obvious through tone).
Uh... no. "Sarcasm" specifically implies mockery, to figuratively inflict a wound. It comes from the Greek word for "flesh"; we also get words like "sarcoma" from there.
The claim was that Americans are not very good at this. I would point to the news satire genre as an obvious counter-example; there's no shortage of sarcasm there.
Plenty of ironic Yiddish constructions have leaked into American English, such as "I should live so long", "you should be so lucky", and "go figure". The phrase "I could care less" is probably not from Yiddish, but may well come from that linguistic pool.
Changes which have happened quite recently: "really" (which used to mean "real", and now is a generic intensifier; cf "literally") and "hopefully" (which still occasionally means "with hope", but now more commonly means "I hope that").
Does that mean if people keep using the phrase "I could care less", then the words could and couldn't officially switch meaning?
Sigh. For the 18 squillionth time, the phrase "I could care less" (to mean "I couldn't possibly care less") is intentionally ironic. If you have a problem with that, you should also have a problem with phrases like "you should be so lucky" (to mean "you could not possibly be that lucky") or "go figure" (to mean "you will never figure that one out").
I don't know how things are in the US, but where I live, claims of efficacy on homeopathic products are extremely carefully worded, and usually quite vague.
You hand in your nerd card right now. Star Trek's impulse drives are magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters powered by deuterium fusion reactors. Basically, they do eject mass.
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Following recent EC rulings, Apple is considering registering as a religion for tax purposes. They may succeed, as people have been calling them a religion for years.
You wouldn't be mocking it if you hadn't been touched by His Reality Distortion Field.
So what's "spirituality but not religion" worth?
A racket is a racket.
Short of breaking up Apple and Google, I'm not sure what you could do about that.
It offsets all the tax they don't pay in Europe, Australia, etc.
They have some B Technology ready to propose just in case we don't like their first proposal.
I'm don't think he should get to grandstand as a substitute for a defense.
Yeah, I'm not in favour of allowing cameras in the courtroom either, but then, I don't live in a country where that happens.
Oh, and FWIW, I don't think politicians should get to grandstand as a substitute for a prosecution, but they do it anyway, just on a bigger scale.
My preference is to follow the letter of the law.
Assuming the law is not an ass, that's also my preference.
Besides as a man of principles, I am sure he is anxious for his day in court where he can stare down the corrupt powers-that-be under the unblinking gaze of public scrutiny, [...]
It's flowery language you're using here, but according to Snowden and his lawyer, this is more or less correct. The Espionage Act does not allow Snowden to make a "I did it in the public interest"-type defence.
Whether or not he would actually return, were he charged with something that did give him the possibility of saying in open court why he was motivated to do what he did, is an open question. Still, right now he doesn't have the option of having his day in court. A show trial is never your day in court.
What I'd like to see is Snowden return to the US of his own volition to stand trial.
Stand trial for what, though?
One of Snowden's complaints (and the chief reason, according to him, that he has not returned to the US to stand trial) is that he has been charged on two counts under the Espionage Act, which prevents him from defending himself in open court. Presumably you, too, would prefer that he was allowed to make a public interest defense?
There is no need to pardon anyone that has not been charged with anything.
He has been charged with one count of theft of government property, and two counts of violating the Espionage Act.
Can you imagine him still alive in China, Russia, etc... if he had been a member of their security apparatus and sold their secrets to another nation.
"Sold" is obviously the wrong word here.
But to answer your question: If he had been a member of Russia's security apparatus, and he had blown the whistle, and he had escaped to the United States, then whether or not he was still alive would largely depend on how famous he was. Solzhenitsyn managed to die of old age.
The hardest and most expensive part of making a AAA-level game isn't the engine, it's the art assets and (to a slightly lesser extent) the gameplay code.
Which means probably no more GPL releases.
Any decent academic text on Yiddish humour (and there are a lot of them) explains the construction fairly well. One key clue is where the emphasis falls. In the earlier British phrase, the emphasis was on the last word: "I couldn't care less." In the American phrase, the emphasis falls on the verb: "I could care less." Compare with a phrase like "I should be so lucky!"
At any rate, this discussion is beside the point. Linguists are, by their nature, descriptivists. Language is defined by how it is used. One key theme is that idioms don't need to follow any kind of logic. They mutate over time to the point where they roll off the tongue better.
The phrase "head over heels" makes no sense whatsoever, given that this is the normal position for a standing human; one might think that "heels over head" would be a more apt way of putting it. The battle for this one was lost 350 years ago.
If using words of phrases to mean their exact opposite was not common we would not have needed the words "irony" or "sarcasm" (sarcasm is a subtype of irony where the irony is made blatantly obvious through tone).
Uh... no. "Sarcasm" specifically implies mockery, to figuratively inflict a wound. It comes from the Greek word for "flesh"; we also get words like "sarcoma" from there.
The claim was that Americans are not very good at this. I would point to the news satire genre as an obvious counter-example; there's no shortage of sarcasm there.
"Go figure" means "you will never figure that out". It's ironic, just like how "you should be so lucky" means "you will never be that lucky".
I don't live in the US, so I pretty much never hear it. Nonetheless, you do that with "go figure", and we'll both report back.
Plenty of ironic Yiddish constructions have leaked into American English, such as "I should live so long", "you should be so lucky", and "go figure". The phrase "I could care less" is probably not from Yiddish, but may well come from that linguistic pool.
Changes which have happened quite recently: "really" (which used to mean "real", and now is a generic intensifier; cf "literally") and "hopefully" (which still occasionally means "with hope", but now more commonly means "I hope that").
Does that mean if people keep using the phrase "I could care less", then the words could and couldn't officially switch meaning?
Sigh. For the 18 squillionth time, the phrase "I could care less" (to mean "I couldn't possibly care less") is intentionally ironic. If you have a problem with that, you should also have a problem with phrases like "you should be so lucky" (to mean "you could not possibly be that lucky") or "go figure" (to mean "you will never figure that one out").
Like the dodos. Or the dinosaurs.
Or the humans.
I agree, the FCC should regulate ghosts.
I don't know how things are in the US, but where I live, claims of efficacy on homeopathic products are extremely carefully worded, and usually quite vague.
Last time I checked, ghost detectors were still legal to buy... What is the FTC doing !
You can't pin this one on the FDA.
You hand in your nerd card right now. Star Trek's impulse drives are magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters powered by deuterium fusion reactors. Basically, they do eject mass.