Then you raise the tax. What's the downside? It's not like people are going to consume less gas if the tax goes up.
Actually, yes, if the price of gas (and tax is part of the price) goes up enough compared to people's incomes, they do drive less. That was demonstrated rather dramatically in the recent period of very high gas prices, and may be demonstrated again with not-as-high gas prices as incomes are threatened in the economy.
OTOH, because behavior takes time to change in response to prices, and because even in the long term you expect the drop in use to not fully offset the increase in taxes, you should be able to make up the difference by increasing taxes, unless you are concerned about distribution of the taxes more than total revenue.
Now, if the real motive isn't "fuel efficient vehicles are decreasing total revenue" (to which "increase the rates" is the appropriate response), but "drivers of fuel efficient vehicles aren't being taxed enough, while drivers of gas guzzlers are being taxed too much", then "switch to a mileage tax" makes some sense.
Ok, so now you can tell me exactly when the last life-resetting asteroid collision occurred?
Never. Major asteroid collisions or other environmental catastrophes may lead to mass extinctions, they don't (that is, none that have occurred have) reset life on Earth to square one.
The reverse prophetic powers of you evolutionists never ceases to amaze me! I used the average because it is the only number we have.
Uh, wrong. Any average we have is probably the result of taking a series of actual intervals between particular events and averaging them. The most recent mass extinction event, the K-T event, was approximately 65.5 million years ago. (And "reverse prophetic powers" -- the power to "predict" the past -- aren't all that amazing.)
So, it's only 'by definition' that you can explain this?
It is important to understand the definitions of words to communicate. A "beneficial" mutation is one that has a very particular kind of impact -- that is, it increases biological fitness.
What about actual empirical evidence?
What about it? There is considerable empirical evidence that changes within species result from the spread of particular traits which impact the mean number of offspring an organism will have that survive to reproduce.
The 'chicken and egg' problem is this-- natural selection cannot be the raison d'Ãtre for the original self-replicating cell
This isn't a "chicken and egg" problem. Evolution doesn't claim to be an explanation of the origins of the first life, its an explanation of the development of the diversity of life from its origins. There are, of course, theories which cover the origin of life, and they are consistent with evolution and invoke some of the same lower-level mechanism that are involved in understanding evolution, but they have a different subject matter.
Fact: We have far more space to cover than most countries, and we cover it with highway, not rail. The auto industry knew, and knows, this.
The auto industry not only knows this, it spent lots of money lobbying to make it happen, and continues to spend money lobbying against efforts to deploy high-speed rail. Its not some kind of immutable fact of nature, its a policy choice that automakers have promoted in their own self-interest, and continue to promote.
As for rail, land is too expensive / valuable in the US for any real rail development.
Rail doesn't take more land for the same capacity than roads do, so it is impossible for this to be true unless land is also too expensive/valuable in the US for any real road system.
Two problems with that-- 1) 100 million years (the average time between catastrophic asteroid collisions with earth) is not nearly enough time to produce the current scenario.
I'm not sure (a) where you get that average from, or (b) why you think it is relevant. Even if catastrophic asteroid collisions each (or at least, the most recent one, which is the only one that matters) reset life on Earth to the beginning, or at least eliminated everything with even the most primitive brain, you would use the most recent catastrophic collision, not the average. In fact, fairly complex creatures -- with, on the grand scale, fairly well-developed brains -- survived the most recent asteroid collision, so its completely irrelevant.
2) Even a beneficial mutation must be so beneficial that it entirely dominates a given species.
The reason evolution is characterized as "survival of the fittest" is that if a mutation has a benefit in fitness, it will come to predominate. A "benefit in fitness" is, after all, defined by increasing the number of offspring that survive to reproduce.
What if the species is already quite populous?
What if it is? Heritable traits with a fitness advantage will still spread if they arise.
It seems that such beneficial mutations would be few and far between and would simply die out before dominating a given species.
"Beneficial mutations" are those with produce a fitness benefit. Fitness is defined by offspring surviving to reproduce. The definition of which mutations are "beneficial" is not consistent with them simply dying out the way you describe.
A problem with that too (in addition to the second problem above)-- Just where do you get these simple brains which have some utility?
They start out as single signaling systems that aren't at all brain like, just useful in simple stimulus and response. They develop into decentralized nervous systems still without processing nodes like those in certain invertebrates today (e.g., jellyfish). You eventually, in animals where this is beneficial, get simple processing nodes -- ganglia. Over many, many generations, one of these ganglia gets more developed and you've got something worth calling a brain.
Until these clumps of cells become a functional brain, they are a detriment instead of a benefit and thus not advantageous to pass on to successive generations.
Wrong. The ability to respond to stimulus is (or at least, can be in the right circumstances) a fitness advantage. Even incrementally refined ability also can be. You don't need to go from no nervous system to advanced brain to get an advantage.
The 'chicken and egg' problem so to speak.
What 'chicken and egg' problem? You've articulated no actual problem that meets that description that actually applies here.
How is it that a slight mutation could produce anything other than a reduction of fitness (in the short term)?
A slight genetic change may not result a slight change in results, and vice versa. And any mututation is extremely unlikely to result in anything other than a reduction in fitness; most mutations are either without outward effect or fatal. With a sufficiently large population and a sufficiently large time, the chance of eventually getting a beneficial mutation increases to the point of being reasonable.
And, fully-functional brains do not just come about all at once (in a single mutation), do they?
Uh, no. But once you have creatures with simple brains -- which have some utility -- incremental increases in particular capacities could come as small mutations.
In my view, this is one of the single biggest problems with evolutionary theory (and I'm actually quite surprised that you brought it up here).
Personally, in the case of this particular phrase, I found it to be a stupid, nonsensical, and annoying phrase before I even discovered that there is a correct usage.
The "correct" usage is in a different grammatical context (intransitive vs. transitive) and is also stupid, nonsensical, and annoying, being made acceptable only by the extreme age of the stupid, nonsensical, and annoying bad translation that brought it into usage.
There's no need to avoid the Latin name of the fallacy (we use ad hominem or reductio ad absurdam without problem, why not petitio principii?), and if an English name were needed, "Assuming the premise" would be more accurate and clear, rather than a word-by-word translation that ignores the meaning of the words in context.
I just prefer it when people use words that actually mean what the speaker is trying to say, and the word "beg" simply does not mean what the speaker is trying to make it mean in that context.
This is no less true of the "correct" meaning. Neither "beg" nor, especially, "question" usually means what is used to mean in that phrase. Of course, that's why either use is an idiom -- a phrase in which the phrase has a meaning as a whole which is not simply the meaning of the words that make it up.
Is it too much to ask that people say what they mean?
It is if you are defending the older use of "beg the question" against the newer use.
I suppose it all depends on how you view language. If it's just a tool that you use to accomplish the tasks in your everyday life, then don't worry about all the complexities. But if you see virtue in mastering it and feel that it can help you more fully express the person you truly are, then learning the subtleties of languages is vital.
Since one use is transitive and must always specify the question being "begged" (the newer one), and one is intransitive and cannot (because its not really about "questions", despite the words in the phrase), there is no room for confusion between the two uses, and no reason for anyone who understands the older, more established, intransitive form to complain about the use of the newer transitive form.
Its like the verb "hurt", which can mean "experience pain" when used intransitively ("I hurt") or "cause [someone or something] pain" when used transitively ("I hurt you"). The two meanings coexist, and there is no confusion between them.
If you do, your misunderstanding belies your attempt at sophistication.
I would argue that if you complain about usages that don't conflict, both of which are well-established even if one is older, the same is true.
Using "begging the question" incorrectly does convey the meaning that the user intended. But it also conveys a lesser understanding of the English language that is likely to manifest itself in other ways.
To me, fighting over someone using a phrase in a transitive sense as "wrong" because the phrase means something different when used in an intransitive sense which is impossible to confuse with a transitive use revealse a lesser understanding of the English language that is likely to manifest itself in other ways.
Personally, when I see people mispronouncing words and misusing phrases like the one in question, I use them as subtle queues that the person using them is less intelligent and adjust my behavior accordingly.
The use of "subtle queues" in this sentence is precious.
It may be that their misuse is the only area in which they lack intelligence and the impact of their misuse is almost entirely mitigated.
Misuse may be a sign of simply a different regional background and dialect, or of ignorance, assuming that any misuse must be a large or small sign of "lack of intelligence" is, at best, a rather hasty and poorly thought-out conclusion.
When I hear someone talk about someone's forte and pronounce the word correctly (the 'e' is silent, not accented), it's almost always an indicator that the person is well-read and deserving of my attention to whatever they say.
Both are, per most dictionaries, correct in English, and the monosyllabic form you hold out as the one true pronunciation has the potential for ambiguity with the more common English noun "fort", while the disyllabic form is unambiguous in English, which is often desirable.
The media has been rooting for a recession since Clinton left office.
The media was talking the economy up through 2001 right up until 9/11, so much that many people still blame the 2001 recession, which lasted from March through November of 2001, on 9/11. Likewise, up until the NBER, which officially dates the beginning and ends of recessions, declared last month that a recession had begun in December of 2007, the media was largely talking about whether certain events going on in late summer and into fall of this year might pose some threat of causing a recession.
Yet, everywhere I go I see people driving SUV's to the various outlets to buy crap they don't need.
Hmmm. On the one hand, I have your subjective impression, on the other, I have the economic statistics, the waves of retail bankruptcies, etc. Which to believe, which to believe...
Its not the media that caused the two closest recessions to each other since the Great Depression to occur in the last few years, and its not the media that caused the expansion in between to feature decline for the bottom four income quintiles, with growth only in the top quintile (and mostly in the top 5%).
The phrase "begs the question" in the context that it is all-too-frequently used simply makes no sense. How do you beg a question, exactly?
That's an odd defense of the old, "correct" version, which uses "beg" and "question" in ways even farther from their normal English senses, as what it is really about is about assuming the point in discussion, not "begging" anything that resembles a "question".
I know how to raise one, but I have no idea how to beg one.
The new, transitive sense of "beg the question" uses the words in their normal meanings, eliding a few. That is, it means "beg [an answer to] the question". This has, as noted above, a much closer relation to the use of the words in english than their use in the old, intransitive, "correct" sense to refer to the petitio principii fallacy.
Absolutely nothing is gained by using the word "beg" to mean "raise" -- something it never does in any other context.
Actually, quite a lot is gained. For one thing, it provides a framework that is quite sensible in English and readily understood, and in which the old, "correct" definition actually makes sense; the intransitive "beg the question" becomes a specialized case of the new, transitive form, where one "begs [the answer to] the question [underlying the debate]."
This is why many of us continue to point out the actual meaning of that phrase.
The so-called "actual" meaning of the phrase can only be used in an intransitive sense. There is no confusion with the new and more common use transitive use of the phrase, and the two actually fit together nicely. You seem to be engaging in reflexively pedantry that has nothing to do with communication, and everything to do with wishing youngsters would, figuratively, stay off your lawn.
Just because a lot of people regularly use those words to mean something that they don't actually mean, doesn't mean everyone else should just accept it as meaning that.
"those words" is not a proper antecedent for the pronoun "it". If you are going to obsess about people using words correctly, you should work harder on the basics yourself.
Sure, we understand what they're saying when they use the phrase, just like we understand what is meant when someone writes "alot", or "loose" instead of "lose", or "would of", or "prolly".
Its not "just like that" at all. We're not talking about nonstandard spelling, or choosing wrong but phonetically-similar individual words. We're talking about using an idiomatic phrase with a clear meaning that emerges very naturally from the meanings of the individual words, which can be used only in contexts grammatically distinct from those in which an older meaning of the same phrase can be used, and which has a clean, obvious relationship to the older meaning (likely because the newer meaning is a modern back-formation from and rationalization of the older use, which does not naturally fit the normal meanings of the words except as viewed through the new meaning.)
Language may change over time, but it seems these days that the new meaning is already represented by an existing expression and that the old meaning doesn't have a new or alternate expression.
So what? Languages have multiple ways of expressing the same ideas all the time, and since the new use of "beg the question" only is used in a transitive context (a particular question must be the direct object of the expression), and the old use of "beg the question" can only be used in an intransitive context (it doesn't take an object) there is no ambiguity between the two uses. The new use doesn't interfere with the old use at all.
It's this loss of expression that drives me to correct people's writing and speaking.
Actually, it hasn't changed. The phrase just has an additional meaning when used in a transitive context which has no possibility of confusion with its meaning used in an intransitive context, since it is always clear whether the context is transitive or intransitive (and, additionally, the new transitive definition has a neat relationship to the old intransitive definition: "to beg the question" [using the intransitive sense] is exactly "to beg the question at issue" [using the transitive sense].)
(And, frankly, the new definition makes the old one make some sense in English; the original source of the intransitive use is a poor translation from Greek through Latin to English, the intransitive use is more natural use of English words, and so provides a more natural English framework for the old, intransitive use.)
Netscape was, at one time, very closed. But once things got going, Firefox came out of it. Perhaps the same might happen with this?
It seems, if not downright improbable, at least less probable than with a web browser; a lot less people willing to work with a second-best groupware server without professional support than their would be for a web browser.
But perhaps a project that starts with working code, just as Firefox started out, could turn into something a lot better... something that could kick Exchange and MS Office to the curb.
Firefox, for all that it runs on more platforms, is more standards compliant, etc., hasn't done that to MSIE; I don't see "OpenNotes" doing that to Exchange and Office.
If you think the Bible is just poetry (which it is, at best) you shouldn't call yourself a Christian.
The idea that the Bible, read literally, is somehow the pinnacle of Christianity is rather new doctrine of a subset of Protestant sects; if you are going to exclude people from the group "Christian" on the basis of their beliefs about the Bible, excluding those who adhere to to the doctrine of a literal, inerrant Bible that is the sum of general revelation (and who, therefore, worship a book) rather than those who do not would make more sense.
How long did astronomers look at the stars before they decided to stand up and say that the Earth was not the center of the Universe?
A while, but almost twothousandyears less than your use of "Gallileo" (which is spelled wrong and should be "Copernicus" anyway if you are looking for the person who reintroduced heliocentrism to the Christian West in the Renaissance) in the subject suggests that you think it took.
It seems that it has taken us about 150 years post-Darwin to stand up and say that the human brain is not the center of intelligence on Earth.
"Center of intelligence on Earth" doesn't even make sense.
Anyone that looks at (fat, wasteful) modern society in proportionate cross-section should see that the vast majority of today's humans are just random actors following mostly reflex / instinct without much cleverness involved.
Not "anyone" that knew much about what the word "random" means.
Then maybe you can answer me one question, and it's a honest one, I couldn't find it: How do you print in MSO 2007?
I do it by clicking the little printer icon on the quick-access toolbar.
Of course, its not there by default, but then it took me less time to customize the MSO 2007 interface to get it where I liked it -- just taking a few commands that are usually under the Office Orb and putting them on the quick-access bar -- then it took to do the same with MSO 2003 and earlier, which required turning on a bunch of optional toolbars, adding commands that weren't usually assigned to a toolbar to one or another toolbar, etc.
Excuse my ignorance, but what happened in 1926, 1939 or 1942? I always thought Australia became a nation in its own right in 1901 with federation and the passing of the british Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act.
Australia became an independent nation for most practical purposes with the passing of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act. But formally it was still subject to the British Parliament, the Crown and the British Government were both represented locally by the same person (the Governor-General), and there were a number of other entanglements. These were eliminated gradually: the 1926 Balfour Declaration established that the UK and the various Dominions were co-equal communities within the British Empire and prompted the division between the Governor-General as local representative of the Crown and High Commissioners as local "ambassadors" of the British Government (they still couldn't be true ambassadors, since they would be ambassadors from the monarch to him or herself.) The British Statute of Westminister Act (1931) further established the independence of the dominions to which it applied, when they adopted it: Australia did so in 1942, but declared it retroactive to 1939 (it adopted the Act largely for clarity in regards to war powers.)
And most of the few remaining loose ends (mostly regarding the Australian state governments and the Constitution in relation to the British Government) were cleared up in the 1986 Australia Acts.
Please don't call those people "right wing." Personal liberty has always been a conservative ideal.
No, personal liberty has always been the defining liberal ideal, which is where both "liberal" and "libertarian" (an ideology which, as its adherents see it, seeks to reclaim the ideals of classical liberalism) get their names. Conservatism originated as a reaction against liberalism and its ideas about personal liberty, and in the defense of the special privileges of the monarchs and aristocrats as essential to protect the common people from themselves. It wasn't until historically fairly recently that conservatives tried to seize hold of "personal liberty" rather selectively as a rallying cry against policies that restrict the domination of society by narrowed moneyed interests (while supporting state power against "personal liberty" in all kinds of other areas.)
I think you're forgetting that Australia is part of the U.K.
Since 1926, Australia was clearly not a part of the U.K., but an autonomous member of the British Empire co-equal with the other members and the U.K. itself; currently (since either 1939 or 1942, depending on how you look at it) it isn't that, either, but, like Canada, a separate commonwealth realm with its own monarchy, even though the monarch is the same person (and the law of succession is the same) as that of the United Kingdom.
Some people (mostly, the people that don't have the particular information in question) want particular bits of information to be free.
Some people (mostly, the people who put resources into making the particular bits of information available) want particular bits of information to be not free.
What matters are the interests of those people, not the completely fanciful descriptions of the interests of the information itself.
It's like trying to contain anti-matter indefinitely, ain't gonna happen.
OTOH, this suggests a very good point; were the terms under which distribution of information were restricted (particularly, copyright) more restricted, particularly in time from creation, there'd be a lot less reason for people to complain about the existence of any restrictions. With a term chosen reasonably, it would have negligible effect on the realizable profits of most works, while greatly enriching the public domain.
Our nanites will be building objects based on open source patterns.
Unfortunately, under the Nanosafety Act, only nanites whose manufacturers have had them cleared through very rigorous (or, at least, expensive) mandatory certifications will be legal for use, and the manufacturers of those will lease them under terms that prohibit use to manufacture anything not licensed from the nanite manufacturer. These provisions, of course, will be to insure the safety and quality of the produced goods, the effect of outlawing use of "free" designs will merely be an unavoidable but necessary inconvenience.
The old 1964 Star Trek foretold flat screened voice activated computers
The ones where you could tell had display devices that were distinctly CRT-shaped, so they seem to have gotten things quite backwards (having us using something very much like CRTs for display, while having computers that had little problem with processing input and producing output in spoken natural language.)
No, civil courts are primarily for compensation. They exist to make those harmed "whole", not to punish wrongdoers.
Criminal court is for rehabilitation.
No, criminal court is, almost entirely in practice, and in large part in theory, for punishment. That's why we have "penal codes", and criminal "punishments", and why the "penalties" for crimes are scaled to the perceived moral repugnance of the offense, not to what is most reasonable, appropriate, and likely to be effective in rehabilitating the particular offender.
Its true that additional reasons for the criminal justice system exist, including rehabilitation and incapacitation of dangerous criminals (which are distinct from punishment), and even the "making whole" function of the civil courts is served by the criminal system at times (via restitution), but punishment is the principal function.
Personally, I find in amusing how the newly elected officials are loved at the start and folks can't wait for them to leave when their time is up.
Clinton left with higher approval ratings than when he came in. Reagan, left modestly lower than he came in, but still above 50%, so hardly "hated" by any reasonable definition. Eisenhower and Kennedy both left (Kennedy, of cousre, mid-term)significantly lower than they came in, but still nearly 60%, so hardly hated. Johnson left much lower than when he took office in 1963, but not much lower than when he was started his first elected term in 1965; and, of course, Ford was never elected to any national office at all. Of US Presidents who were elected post-WWII, your contention might remotely be argued to hold for Truman, Nixon, and both Bushes, though for the latter two it takes viewing approval ratings in the mid-50s as being "loved".
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Actually, yes, if the price of gas (and tax is part of the price) goes up enough compared to people's incomes, they do drive less. That was demonstrated rather dramatically in the recent period of very high gas prices, and may be demonstrated again with not-as-high gas prices as incomes are threatened in the economy.
OTOH, because behavior takes time to change in response to prices, and because even in the long term you expect the drop in use to not fully offset the increase in taxes, you should be able to make up the difference by increasing taxes, unless you are concerned about distribution of the taxes more than total revenue.
Now, if the real motive isn't "fuel efficient vehicles are decreasing total revenue" (to which "increase the rates" is the appropriate response), but "drivers of fuel efficient vehicles aren't being taxed enough, while drivers of gas guzzlers are being taxed too much", then "switch to a mileage tax" makes some sense.
Never. Major asteroid collisions or other environmental catastrophes may lead to mass extinctions, they don't (that is, none that have occurred have) reset life on Earth to square one.
Uh, wrong. Any average we have is probably the result of taking a series of actual intervals between particular events and averaging them. The most recent mass extinction event, the K-T event, was approximately 65.5 million years ago. (And "reverse prophetic powers" -- the power to "predict" the past -- aren't all that amazing.)
It is important to understand the definitions of words to communicate. A "beneficial" mutation is one that has a very particular kind of impact -- that is, it increases biological fitness.
What about it? There is considerable empirical evidence that changes within species result from the spread of particular traits which impact the mean number of offspring an organism will have that survive to reproduce.
This isn't a "chicken and egg" problem. Evolution doesn't claim to be an explanation of the origins of the first life, its an explanation of the development of the diversity of life from its origins. There are, of course, theories which cover the origin of life, and they are consistent with evolution and invoke some of the same lower-level mechanism that are involved in understanding evolution, but they have a different subject matter.
The auto industry not only knows this, it spent lots of money lobbying to make it happen, and continues to spend money lobbying against efforts to deploy high-speed rail. Its not some kind of immutable fact of nature, its a policy choice that automakers have promoted in their own self-interest, and continue to promote.
Rail doesn't take more land for the same capacity than roads do, so it is impossible for this to be true unless land is also too expensive/valuable in the US for any real road system.
I'm not sure (a) where you get that average from, or (b) why you think it is relevant. Even if catastrophic asteroid collisions each (or at least, the most recent one, which is the only one that matters) reset life on Earth to the beginning, or at least eliminated everything with even the most primitive brain, you would use the most recent catastrophic collision, not the average. In fact, fairly complex creatures -- with, on the grand scale, fairly well-developed brains -- survived the most recent asteroid collision, so its completely irrelevant.
The reason evolution is characterized as "survival of the fittest" is that if a mutation has a benefit in fitness, it will come to predominate. A "benefit in fitness" is, after all, defined by increasing the number of offspring that survive to reproduce.
What if it is? Heritable traits with a fitness advantage will still spread if they arise.
"Beneficial mutations" are those with produce a fitness benefit. Fitness is defined by offspring surviving to reproduce. The definition of which mutations are "beneficial" is not consistent with them simply dying out the way you describe.
They start out as single signaling systems that aren't at all brain like, just useful in simple stimulus and response. They develop into decentralized nervous systems still without processing nodes like those in certain invertebrates today (e.g., jellyfish). You eventually, in animals where this is beneficial, get simple processing nodes -- ganglia. Over many, many generations, one of these ganglia gets more developed and you've got something worth calling a brain.
Wrong. The ability to respond to stimulus is (or at least, can be in the right circumstances) a fitness advantage. Even incrementally refined ability also can be. You don't need to go from no nervous system to advanced brain to get an advantage.
What 'chicken and egg' problem? You've articulated no actual problem that meets that description that actually applies here.
A slight genetic change may not result a slight change in results, and vice versa. And any mututation is extremely unlikely to result in anything other than a reduction in fitness; most mutations are either without outward effect or fatal. With a sufficiently large population and a sufficiently large time, the chance of eventually getting a beneficial mutation increases to the point of being reasonable.
Uh, no. But once you have creatures with simple brains -- which have some utility -- incremental increases in particular capacities could come as small mutations.
What "problem" are you referring to?
The "correct" usage is in a different grammatical context (intransitive vs. transitive) and is also stupid, nonsensical, and annoying, being made acceptable only by the extreme age of the stupid, nonsensical, and annoying bad translation that brought it into usage.
There's no need to avoid the Latin name of the fallacy (we use ad hominem or reductio ad absurdam without problem, why not petitio principii?), and if an English name were needed, "Assuming the premise" would be more accurate and clear, rather than a word-by-word translation that ignores the meaning of the words in context.
This is no less true of the "correct" meaning. Neither "beg" nor, especially, "question" usually means what is used to mean in that phrase. Of course, that's why either use is an idiom -- a phrase in which the phrase has a meaning as a whole which is not simply the meaning of the words that make it up.
It is if you are defending the older use of "beg the question" against the newer use.
Since one use is transitive and must always specify the question being "begged" (the newer one), and one is intransitive and cannot (because its not really about "questions", despite the words in the phrase), there is no room for confusion between the two uses, and no reason for anyone who understands the older, more established, intransitive form to complain about the use of the newer transitive form.
Its like the verb "hurt", which can mean "experience pain" when used intransitively ("I hurt") or "cause [someone or something] pain" when used transitively ("I hurt you"). The two meanings coexist, and there is no confusion between them.
I would argue that if you complain about usages that don't conflict, both of which are well-established even if one is older, the same is true.
To me, fighting over someone using a phrase in a transitive sense as "wrong" because the phrase means something different when used in an intransitive sense which is impossible to confuse with a transitive use revealse a lesser understanding of the English language that is likely to manifest itself in other ways.
The use of "subtle queues" in this sentence is precious.
Misuse may be a sign of simply a different regional background and dialect, or of ignorance, assuming that any misuse must be a large or small sign of "lack of intelligence" is, at best, a rather hasty and poorly thought-out conclusion.
Both are, per most dictionaries, correct in English, and the monosyllabic form you hold out as the one true pronunciation has the potential for ambiguity with the more common English noun "fort", while the disyllabic form is unambiguous in English, which is often desirable.
The media was talking the economy up through 2001 right up until 9/11, so much that many people still blame the 2001 recession, which lasted from March through November of 2001, on 9/11. Likewise, up until the NBER, which officially dates the beginning and ends of recessions, declared last month that a recession had begun in December of 2007, the media was largely talking about whether certain events going on in late summer and into fall of this year might pose some threat of causing a recession.
Hmmm. On the one hand, I have your subjective impression, on the other, I have the economic statistics, the waves of retail bankruptcies, etc. Which to believe, which to believe...
Its not the media that caused the two closest recessions to each other since the Great Depression to occur in the last few years, and its not the media that caused the expansion in between to feature decline for the bottom four income quintiles, with growth only in the top quintile (and mostly in the top 5%).
That's an odd defense of the old, "correct" version, which uses "beg" and "question" in ways even farther from their normal English senses, as what it is really about is about assuming the point in discussion, not "begging" anything that resembles a "question".
The new, transitive sense of "beg the question" uses the words in their normal meanings, eliding a few. That is, it means "beg [an answer to] the question". This has, as noted above, a much closer relation to the use of the words in english than their use in the old, intransitive, "correct" sense to refer to the petitio principii fallacy.
Actually, quite a lot is gained. For one thing, it provides a framework that is quite sensible in English and readily understood, and in which the old, "correct" definition actually makes sense; the intransitive "beg the question" becomes a specialized case of the new, transitive form, where one "begs [the answer to] the question [underlying the debate]."
The so-called "actual" meaning of the phrase can only be used in an intransitive sense. There is no confusion with the new and more common use transitive use of the phrase, and the two actually fit together nicely. You seem to be engaging in reflexively pedantry that has nothing to do with communication, and everything to do with wishing youngsters would, figuratively, stay off your lawn.
"those words" is not a proper antecedent for the pronoun "it". If you are going to obsess about people using words correctly, you should work harder on the basics yourself.
Its not "just like that" at all. We're not talking about nonstandard spelling, or choosing wrong but phonetically-similar individual words. We're talking about using an idiomatic phrase with a clear meaning that emerges very naturally from the meanings of the individual words, which can be used only in contexts grammatically distinct from those in which an older meaning of the same phrase can be used, and which has a clean, obvious relationship to the older meaning (likely because the newer meaning is a modern back-formation from and rationalization of the older use, which does not naturally fit the normal meanings of the words except as viewed through the new meaning.)
So what? Languages have multiple ways of expressing the same ideas all the time, and since the new use of "beg the question" only is used in a transitive context (a particular question must be the direct object of the expression), and the old use of "beg the question" can only be used in an intransitive context (it doesn't take an object) there is no ambiguity between the two uses. The new use doesn't interfere with the old use at all.
There is no loss of expression, so please stop.
Actually, it hasn't changed. The phrase just has an additional meaning when used in a transitive context which has no possibility of confusion with its meaning used in an intransitive context, since it is always clear whether the context is transitive or intransitive (and, additionally, the new transitive definition has a neat relationship to the old intransitive definition: "to beg the question" [using the intransitive sense] is exactly "to beg the question at issue" [using the transitive sense].)
(And, frankly, the new definition makes the old one make some sense in English; the original source of the intransitive use is a poor translation from Greek through Latin to English, the intransitive use is more natural use of English words, and so provides a more natural English framework for the old, intransitive use.)
It seems, if not downright improbable, at least less probable than with a web browser; a lot less people willing to work with a second-best groupware server without professional support than their would be for a web browser.
Firefox, for all that it runs on more platforms, is more standards compliant, etc., hasn't done that to MSIE; I don't see "OpenNotes" doing that to Exchange and Office.
The idea that the Bible, read literally, is somehow the pinnacle of Christianity is rather new doctrine of a subset of Protestant sects; if you are going to exclude people from the group "Christian" on the basis of their beliefs about the Bible, excluding those who adhere to to the doctrine of a literal, inerrant Bible that is the sum of general revelation (and who, therefore, worship a book) rather than those who do not would make more sense.
A while, but almost two thousand years less than your use of "Gallileo" (which is spelled wrong and should be "Copernicus" anyway if you are looking for the person who reintroduced heliocentrism to the Christian West in the Renaissance) in the subject suggests that you think it took.
"Center of intelligence on Earth" doesn't even make sense.
Not "anyone" that knew much about what the word "random" means.
I do it by clicking the little printer icon on the quick-access toolbar.
Of course, its not there by default, but then it took me less time to customize the MSO 2007 interface to get it where I liked it -- just taking a few commands that are usually under the Office Orb and putting them on the quick-access bar -- then it took to do the same with MSO 2003 and earlier, which required turning on a bunch of optional toolbars, adding commands that weren't usually assigned to a toolbar to one or another toolbar, etc.
Australia became an independent nation for most practical purposes with the passing of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act. But formally it was still subject to the British Parliament, the Crown and the British Government were both represented locally by the same person (the Governor-General), and there were a number of other entanglements. These were eliminated gradually: the 1926 Balfour Declaration established that the UK and the various Dominions were co-equal communities within the British Empire and prompted the division between the Governor-General as local representative of the Crown and High Commissioners as local "ambassadors" of the British Government (they still couldn't be true ambassadors, since they would be ambassadors from the monarch to him or herself.) The British Statute of Westminister Act (1931) further established the independence of the dominions to which it applied, when they adopted it: Australia did so in 1942, but declared it retroactive to 1939 (it adopted the Act largely for clarity in regards to war powers.)
And most of the few remaining loose ends (mostly regarding the Australian state governments and the Constitution in relation to the British Government) were cleared up in the 1986 Australia Acts.
No, personal liberty has always been the defining liberal ideal, which is where both "liberal" and "libertarian" (an ideology which, as its adherents see it, seeks to reclaim the ideals of classical liberalism) get their names. Conservatism originated as a reaction against liberalism and its ideas about personal liberty, and in the defense of the special privileges of the monarchs and aristocrats as essential to protect the common people from themselves. It wasn't until historically fairly recently that conservatives tried to seize hold of "personal liberty" rather selectively as a rallying cry against policies that restrict the domination of society by narrowed moneyed interests (while supporting state power against "personal liberty" in all kinds of other areas.)
As opposed to "Rare Google"?
I think you mean "Come on, Google, ..."
Since 1926, Australia was clearly not a part of the U.K., but an autonomous member of the British Empire co-equal with the other members and the U.K. itself; currently (since either 1939 or 1942, depending on how you look at it) it isn't that, either, but, like Canada, a separate commonwealth realm with its own monarchy, even though the monarch is the same person (and the law of succession is the same) as that of the United Kingdom.
Information doesn't want anything.
Some people (mostly, the people that don't have the particular information in question) want particular bits of information to be free.
Some people (mostly, the people who put resources into making the particular bits of information available) want particular bits of information to be not free.
What matters are the interests of those people, not the completely fanciful descriptions of the interests of the information itself.
OTOH, this suggests a very good point; were the terms under which distribution of information were restricted (particularly, copyright) more restricted, particularly in time from creation, there'd be a lot less reason for people to complain about the existence of any restrictions. With a term chosen reasonably, it would have negligible effect on the realizable profits of most works, while greatly enriching the public domain.
Unfortunately, under the Nanosafety Act, only nanites whose manufacturers have had them cleared through very rigorous (or, at least, expensive) mandatory certifications will be legal for use, and the manufacturers of those will lease them under terms that prohibit use to manufacture anything not licensed from the nanite manufacturer. These provisions, of course, will be to insure the safety and quality of the produced goods, the effect of outlawing use of "free" designs will merely be an unavoidable but necessary inconvenience.
The ones where you could tell had display devices that were distinctly CRT-shaped, so they seem to have gotten things quite backwards (having us using something very much like CRTs for display, while having computers that had little problem with processing input and producing output in spoken natural language.)
No, civil courts are primarily for compensation. They exist to make those harmed "whole", not to punish wrongdoers.
No, criminal court is, almost entirely in practice, and in large part in theory, for punishment. That's why we have "penal codes", and criminal "punishments", and why the "penalties" for crimes are scaled to the perceived moral repugnance of the offense, not to what is most reasonable, appropriate, and likely to be effective in rehabilitating the particular offender.
Its true that additional reasons for the criminal justice system exist, including rehabilitation and incapacitation of dangerous criminals (which are distinct from punishment), and even the "making whole" function of the civil courts is served by the criminal system at times (via restitution), but punishment is the principal function.
Clinton left with higher approval ratings than when he came in. Reagan, left modestly lower than he came in, but still above 50%, so hardly "hated" by any reasonable definition. Eisenhower and Kennedy both left (Kennedy, of cousre, mid-term)significantly lower than they came in, but still nearly 60%, so hardly hated. Johnson left much lower than when he took office in 1963, but not much lower than when he was started his first elected term in 1965; and, of course, Ford was never elected to any national office at all. Of US Presidents who were elected post-WWII, your contention might remotely be argued to hold for Truman, Nixon, and both Bushes, though for the latter two it takes viewing approval ratings in the mid-50s as being "loved".