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Political Opinions / Re: free mason and religious... TORTURE?
« on: June 28, 2008, 06:08:07 PM »
For the sake of BizB, this post will have undergone three different spellcheckers.
STILL:
WARNING DESPITE MY GREAT EFFORTS, THERE MAY STILL BE MISTAKES IN THIS POST!
IF ENCOUNTERING A SINGLE MISSPELLED WORD OFFENDS YOU, DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT CONTINUE READING!
(Unless of course, you are BizB to whom part of this post is addressed. In your case all I can do is apologize for the offense, the "possible" mistakes may cause. Worry not for your eyes shan't be offended by the butchery of the English language after this post. At least not by me.)
This will be my last post, on this, or any other matter here.
I will begin by addressing Joe Sixpack:
Thank you Joe. Seriously thank you (without irony!) I appreciate this post very much. It's absolutely true (with a slight twang of opinion) but you have said nothing false in it.
That said, the attitude it describes may be common practice, but this doesn't make it right.
It is said that one must learn history, or be doomed to relive it.
On December 25 1991 the iron curtain fell, and Russia was no longer the Soviet Union. On this year Russian high school and university exams were stopped. The Soviet Union had decided, during it's reign, to put soviet Russia in a more favorable light when it came to social sciences, current affairs, discoveries, and history. According to them, Russia had discovered the potato, Russia had invented the light bulb, Russia had invented the telephone. There were even numerous scientific theories that were simply invented out of thin air to be different from the west. Scientists were supposed to work with these theories. Clearly, experiments that involved these theories were utter failures.
You can look it up.
I have found in western society that individual countries tend to do this sort of thing, be it intentional or not. Details are left out of information which can lead to people believing things which are not true. A very common example for this is:
If you've been brought up in the united states and you are asked who invented the light bulb, you are almost certain to answer Thomas Edison. But it's not true.
http://thehistoryof.net/the-history-of-the-light-bulb.html
I've see people go into mad fits, appalled that any one could question something which is such common knowledge. "how dare you question something I hold to be so true!" (correction) "...that Is true without doubt!"
We must always question our reality and surroundings. Things are constantly being proved and disproved. Just because we think something is mad doesn't automatically prove that it's false. It was mad to think that people could walk on the moon. It was mad to think that cinema could have both image and sound. It was mad to think that the earth is round. Yet some how all these things that were considered to be mad came to be true. Perhaps we do not need to believe in things we think to be mad. But maybe we should observe them and discus what it is that makes us believe that their mad. And perhaps we can also try to see and understand why someone could believe such things are true. After all, it is the things that were once considered to be mad that dominate our everyday lives today, and the things that were once so true that are mow false.
On to BizB:
You may not realize exactly what you are saying. So I will tell you. I will also explain to you why it is so profoundly wrong for you as a moderator to say it, and why it can be seen to be so offensive.
Before I continue I have to say I was left uncertain in what regards an integral part of your post.
Perhaps it was due to a spelling error (one that slipped passed the spellchecker?), or else you decided to take artistic license and personify the English language as a woman. To be honest I do not think that would work here. It's a little too unexpected. I actually began by thinking that you were referring to me butchering somebody in the forum. Still I deduced from the bulk of your text that what you are most troubled by is language. MY written language in particular.
The last I looked, the internet and this forum in it, are not a grade school. The internet is a place for ideas to run free. (at least up until, and for now.)
Ideas are funny things. They differ from the words we see on our screens and the words we read on paper. Often many of us are forced to ask ourselves:
"What's the word for that?" or "Is there a word for that?" This is because the thought had difficulty associating with the spoken word. (not even starting to imagine the written) word. Thoughts come from a different place that has nothing to do with language. To the point that we manage to produce thoughts and emotions that do not even have a name in any language, let alone English. I can say that "I cannot find any words to describe what exactly it is that I am feeling for you at this moment BizB." and no one will ever be able to know what exactly is going on in my mind.
With that out of the way, I am sure that you cannot deny that the realm of thought and expression should be open to all the world. Not just English speakers. And it is. But not everybody speaks the same language. For people to communicate across different cultures, they employ the present day "lingua franca": English. Of course these people, more often than not, don't speak English perfectly. They make spelling mistakes, and grammatical mistakes. All the same, they manage to communicate. This is because any one with a reasonable amount of intelligence, can deduce, through the spelling mistakes, through the bad grammar, and understand the meaning, and the thought, that the person wishes to convey. It is due to one of the very few good things about the English language. Its flexibility. Authors, musicians, and poets have deformed, reversed grammar, and invented words, to suit their needs. (Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Tory Amos)
Another point that has to be addressed is that English, along with French, are the worst languages in the world to learn. (I love English and French, but it's true.) You will find that, country with the highest percentages of people with dyslexia are those who are either English or French speaking. This is because of the ridiculous word construction that these two languages possess. Who else would dream of having eight ways to spell a word that sounds the same. Full of spelling rules and grammatical rules that are constantly broken! With so much rule breaking, why even have the rule to beguine with. (BEGUINE is a great example. Why the FUCK does it have an e at the end! It must have lost itself. It probably fell off the end of "find".) I won't even start on the madness of double letters.
These two languages are the least "user friendly" of all. Yet some how they have both been lingua franca.
(Lingua franca is chosen as the language which is most convenient for commerce. With the way the American economy is going, I think you should prepare yourselves to learn Spanish, Portuguese or Japanese, because Cantonese will be hell.)
It would seem that the English language begs for us to undermine it when written.
I am dyslexic. Do you have any idea what it is to be laughed at, at school in the United States, just because one is a bad speller and a slow reader? Do you know how many hours of tutoring people like me require in school? I am not the only one. There are many. And unfortunately with the English language the way it is, there will only be more. Should all these people be cast out of society? Contrary to what many people think, dyslexia is not synonymous with mongolism, or autism. What often happens is that, while someone who is dyslexic may have trouble in what involves spelling, they often tend to excel in math and physics, and logic. The main trouble seems to have to do with the written character in general.
But wait, I have been correcting my mistakes. My computer shows me each time I use an incorrect spelling. I do my best to correct it, and if I cannot, I go to look it up. Still some manage to slip through, either because they are another word, or they just skip passed the correction. And I have not noticed my self making significantly more spelling mistakes than anybody else...
Is it possible that you find the fact that I do not capitalize, a massacre of the English language? I refer you back to the beginning of what I've been telling you BizB. We are not in school here any more. And what we discus here is ideas, opinions and occurrences. What matters here is being understood (the meaning). Capitalization is not essential to being understood. We are on the internet and living in a time where things are VERY fast paced. The simple act of righting and correcting this post for you (on top of being dyslexic), takes far much more time than I care to spend righting any thing, any where on the internet. Least of all here. We are not writing a novel here. If it offends you to see non capitalized and misspelled text, and you are forced to read it, then perhaps you are not suited to being a moderator. The very concept of you threatening me with ban for bad spelling and non-capitalization goes against everything the internet and this forum stand for. Make no mistake, being ban from this forum is significantly better than being ban from a concentration camp.
Are you seriously telling me that, because my, or anybody else's posts, contain spelling/grammar mistakes, or do not have capitalized letters, that our participation here is less important than others?
As you can probably tell I have no intention of coming back. So I demand that you take whatever steps you do, completely to eliminate my account, permanently from this forum. The simple observation of your(plural) attitudes and reactions is an insult to my good willed nature, and an insult to humanity in general.
This forum is wrongly named. It should not be called "the geeks forum".
It should be called:
Blase condescending and snooty ubersnobs "R" us.
Don't think it hasn't been a little slice of heaven, cause it hasn't.
If I never see this site again, it will be too soon.
Farewell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHCL6-GqyRk
STILL:
WARNING DESPITE MY GREAT EFFORTS, THERE MAY STILL BE MISTAKES IN THIS POST!
IF ENCOUNTERING A SINGLE MISSPELLED WORD OFFENDS YOU, DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT CONTINUE READING!
(Unless of course, you are BizB to whom part of this post is addressed. In your case all I can do is apologize for the offense, the "possible" mistakes may cause. Worry not for your eyes shan't be offended by the butchery of the English language after this post. At least not by me.)
This will be my last post, on this, or any other matter here.
I will begin by addressing Joe Sixpack:
It's not just new people who get made fun of. You could have a thousand posts and if you come in here posting about how the Bushes and the British Royals are reptilian aliens who devour the flesh of human babies, or Hitler escaped to Antarctica where he built his army of Nazi UFOs, and then have the gall to say "prove me wrong", of course people will think you're an idiot and not take you seriously, because you've just shown that you're an idiot and not to be taken seriously.
Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I don't think that's necessarily true. They require the same evidence as anything else, and nothing you have said here approaches anything beyond speculation. That's not evidence, proof, or a reason at all to form a belief to belief to have to disprove in the first place (read it again).
Thank you Joe. Seriously thank you (without irony!) I appreciate this post very much. It's absolutely true (with a slight twang of opinion) but you have said nothing false in it.
That said, the attitude it describes may be common practice, but this doesn't make it right.
It is said that one must learn history, or be doomed to relive it.
On December 25 1991 the iron curtain fell, and Russia was no longer the Soviet Union. On this year Russian high school and university exams were stopped. The Soviet Union had decided, during it's reign, to put soviet Russia in a more favorable light when it came to social sciences, current affairs, discoveries, and history. According to them, Russia had discovered the potato, Russia had invented the light bulb, Russia had invented the telephone. There were even numerous scientific theories that were simply invented out of thin air to be different from the west. Scientists were supposed to work with these theories. Clearly, experiments that involved these theories were utter failures.
You can look it up.
I have found in western society that individual countries tend to do this sort of thing, be it intentional or not. Details are left out of information which can lead to people believing things which are not true. A very common example for this is:
If you've been brought up in the united states and you are asked who invented the light bulb, you are almost certain to answer Thomas Edison. But it's not true.
http://thehistoryof.net/the-history-of-the-light-bulb.html
I've see people go into mad fits, appalled that any one could question something which is such common knowledge. "how dare you question something I hold to be so true!" (correction) "...that Is true without doubt!"
We must always question our reality and surroundings. Things are constantly being proved and disproved. Just because we think something is mad doesn't automatically prove that it's false. It was mad to think that people could walk on the moon. It was mad to think that cinema could have both image and sound. It was mad to think that the earth is round. Yet some how all these things that were considered to be mad came to be true. Perhaps we do not need to believe in things we think to be mad. But maybe we should observe them and discus what it is that makes us believe that their mad. And perhaps we can also try to see and understand why someone could believe such things are true. After all, it is the things that were once considered to be mad that dominate our everyday lives today, and the things that were once so true that are mow false.
On to BizB:
I'm sorry. I've tried. I just can't do it.
There are some who would argue that you're our future and that this is just the way things will be. It's evolving, after all. It always has been. It always will be. It's clearly different today than it was many many years ago. However, while I'm on guard, I will not allow you to butcher her the way you do.
Please allow me to refer you to a link that I find as entertaining and enlightening as you find these conspiracies to be.
http://www.geekforum.org/index.php/topic,3080.msg48914.html#msg48914
I am a moderator here, so even if there were an ignore function build into this forum, I would be unable to use it. I'm required to read your posts. I have but one way to eliminate the requirement of reading your posts.
If you cannot stop my eyes from bleeding every time I see you butcher the English language, I will do it for you.
You may not realize exactly what you are saying. So I will tell you. I will also explain to you why it is so profoundly wrong for you as a moderator to say it, and why it can be seen to be so offensive.
Before I continue I have to say I was left uncertain in what regards an integral part of your post.
However, while I'm on guard, I will not allow you to butcher her the way you do.
Perhaps it was due to a spelling error (one that slipped passed the spellchecker?), or else you decided to take artistic license and personify the English language as a woman. To be honest I do not think that would work here. It's a little too unexpected. I actually began by thinking that you were referring to me butchering somebody in the forum. Still I deduced from the bulk of your text that what you are most troubled by is language. MY written language in particular.
The last I looked, the internet and this forum in it, are not a grade school. The internet is a place for ideas to run free. (at least up until, and for now.)
Ideas are funny things. They differ from the words we see on our screens and the words we read on paper. Often many of us are forced to ask ourselves:
"What's the word for that?" or "Is there a word for that?" This is because the thought had difficulty associating with the spoken word. (not even starting to imagine the written) word. Thoughts come from a different place that has nothing to do with language. To the point that we manage to produce thoughts and emotions that do not even have a name in any language, let alone English. I can say that "I cannot find any words to describe what exactly it is that I am feeling for you at this moment BizB." and no one will ever be able to know what exactly is going on in my mind.
With that out of the way, I am sure that you cannot deny that the realm of thought and expression should be open to all the world. Not just English speakers. And it is. But not everybody speaks the same language. For people to communicate across different cultures, they employ the present day "lingua franca": English. Of course these people, more often than not, don't speak English perfectly. They make spelling mistakes, and grammatical mistakes. All the same, they manage to communicate. This is because any one with a reasonable amount of intelligence, can deduce, through the spelling mistakes, through the bad grammar, and understand the meaning, and the thought, that the person wishes to convey. It is due to one of the very few good things about the English language. Its flexibility. Authors, musicians, and poets have deformed, reversed grammar, and invented words, to suit their needs. (Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Tory Amos)
Another point that has to be addressed is that English, along with French, are the worst languages in the world to learn. (I love English and French, but it's true.) You will find that, country with the highest percentages of people with dyslexia are those who are either English or French speaking. This is because of the ridiculous word construction that these two languages possess. Who else would dream of having eight ways to spell a word that sounds the same. Full of spelling rules and grammatical rules that are constantly broken! With so much rule breaking, why even have the rule to beguine with. (BEGUINE is a great example. Why the FUCK does it have an e at the end! It must have lost itself. It probably fell off the end of "find".) I won't even start on the madness of double letters.
These two languages are the least "user friendly" of all. Yet some how they have both been lingua franca.
(Lingua franca is chosen as the language which is most convenient for commerce. With the way the American economy is going, I think you should prepare yourselves to learn Spanish, Portuguese or Japanese, because Cantonese will be hell.)
It would seem that the English language begs for us to undermine it when written.
I am dyslexic. Do you have any idea what it is to be laughed at, at school in the United States, just because one is a bad speller and a slow reader? Do you know how many hours of tutoring people like me require in school? I am not the only one. There are many. And unfortunately with the English language the way it is, there will only be more. Should all these people be cast out of society? Contrary to what many people think, dyslexia is not synonymous with mongolism, or autism. What often happens is that, while someone who is dyslexic may have trouble in what involves spelling, they often tend to excel in math and physics, and logic. The main trouble seems to have to do with the written character in general.
But wait, I have been correcting my mistakes. My computer shows me each time I use an incorrect spelling. I do my best to correct it, and if I cannot, I go to look it up. Still some manage to slip through, either because they are another word, or they just skip passed the correction. And I have not noticed my self making significantly more spelling mistakes than anybody else...
Is it possible that you find the fact that I do not capitalize, a massacre of the English language? I refer you back to the beginning of what I've been telling you BizB. We are not in school here any more. And what we discus here is ideas, opinions and occurrences. What matters here is being understood (the meaning). Capitalization is not essential to being understood. We are on the internet and living in a time where things are VERY fast paced. The simple act of righting and correcting this post for you (on top of being dyslexic), takes far much more time than I care to spend righting any thing, any where on the internet. Least of all here. We are not writing a novel here. If it offends you to see non capitalized and misspelled text, and you are forced to read it, then perhaps you are not suited to being a moderator. The very concept of you threatening me with ban for bad spelling and non-capitalization goes against everything the internet and this forum stand for. Make no mistake, being ban from this forum is significantly better than being ban from a concentration camp.
Are you seriously telling me that, because my, or anybody else's posts, contain spelling/grammar mistakes, or do not have capitalized letters, that our participation here is less important than others?
As you can probably tell I have no intention of coming back. So I demand that you take whatever steps you do, completely to eliminate my account, permanently from this forum. The simple observation of your(plural) attitudes and reactions is an insult to my good willed nature, and an insult to humanity in general.
This forum is wrongly named. It should not be called "the geeks forum".
It should be called:
Blase condescending and snooty ubersnobs "R" us.
Don't think it hasn't been a little slice of heaven, cause it hasn't.
If I never see this site again, it will be too soon.
Farewell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHCL6-GqyRk
