"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Because what comes out of a Dhimmicrap’s mouth is deceptive… always.
Hmmm, kinda reminds me of some Mass MEdia Podpeople as well (although, what are the real differences between Dhimmicrap politicians *gag-spew* and Mass MEdia Podpeople apart from the size of audiences?).
Son & Heir spent about $7 on a new hardback novel recently ($4 of that in shipping!). He let me read it first. Nice guy. It was well-written by just about every metric. I spent about $7 for a paperback the other day and found gripe after gripe to make about the writing:
Wrong words abound, e.g., “brake cables” instead of “brake lines” when speaking about the possible sabotage of a car. (Cars have only emergency brake cables; the main brakes are hydraulic and served by lines, not cables. Not a quibble.)
Bafflingly stupid grammar in a published work, e.g., “have rode” where “have ridden” is de rigueur. (“Rode” is simple past tense; the past perfect takes the helper, “have” and requires the use of “ridden”.)
With these kinds of things scattered all over the place, my primary “enjoyment” of this book has been using a red pen to correct the errors.
And this thing made the NYT book list.
No, I’m not naming the author or citing the book title. I wouldn’t want to let Google find those here. Just check page 176 on new paperbacks you’re considering buying, Mmm’K?
Neither do I. So, why do you believe the weather man?
Yes, I meant to write that. And I know that the words are “Fractured Phrases”. So, why? Simple. Most people I see and hear botching common words and phrases do so unwittingly. And therein lies a stealth danger to society, especially a society built, as ours once was, on shared cultural memes that cut across multiple imported ethnic and cultural traditions, enabling the kinds of cross-cultural communications that created the Melting Pot Society.
The single largest factors in the destruction of a healthy common culture here in the US are the growth of illiteracy* in the US and the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind. The illiterate among us aren’t limited to those who cannot read at all but include those who simply do not read and those who, when they do read, read only crap and scarcely understand even that. Having not read much at all, they are easy prey for the lies about current events, history and civics that are the toxic stew served up daily by the Hivemind in entertainment (“news” and other crap on TV as well as movies and manufactured “music”) that is designed to misinform and twist values away from those which made America, at one time, a great nation.
But what’s this gripe I have against fractured phrases and words? Simple, really. I see an apparently growing trend toward the subliterate and illiterate who simply do not know the meanings of common words (look for consistent uses of “then” for “than” or “affect” for “effect” in a person’s writing, for a couple of common examples: subliterate tending toward illiterate) or are so lacking in grounding in any broader culture than the simplistic, twisted culture presented by the Hivemind that they botch even simple child’s games.
Really? Yes. I ran across a long, massively stupid, “discussion” on a social media site recently where someone asked why paper beats rock, rock beats scissors and scissors beats paper. About one in four answers made any sense at all. No, seriously. A failure of both basic literacy and any sense of a culture beyond the Hivemind. (BTW, rock-paper-scissors has been around for thousands of years. Apparently, it takes a modern American Hivemind-dominated culture to denude it of any coherence.)
Minor examples of a major problem. “Major problem” because these minor examples are much, much less than the tip of the iceberg.
Sure, I think Apple is evil, what with all the i-Crap, the i-tracking, the Apple Straitjacket®, etc., but I’m really only posting the following because it’s humorous:
Poor puppy. Well, at least maybe that’ll deal with the constipation…
“OK, what’s with the excrement humor two posts in one day?” they all ask. And I answer, “Well, at least they weren’t inappropriate.” *heh*
My thanks to The Right Scoop
This would be the appropriate answer to Cwazy Unka Joe Biden’s slanderous fat mouth, if more people had as much intestinal fortitude as Sarah Palin:
If we were really domestic terrorists, shoot, President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us wouldn’t he? I mean he didn’t have a problem with paling around with Bill Ayers back in the day when he kicked off his political career in Bill Ayers apartment, and shaking hands with Chavez and saying he doesn’t need any preconditions with meeting dictators or wanting to read US Miranda rights to alleged suspected foreign terrorists. No if we were real domestic terrorists I think President Obama wouldn’t have a problem with us.
Oh,wait, she did say that. At least she has the guts to tell the truth. Indeed. Best answer to Cwazy Unka Joe Biden and other dhimmicraps calling anyone who disagrees with their intent to spend the US into a grave “terrorists”.
The two people credited in a byline for an article that included the following should be whipped with a dangling participle, along with any editor who passed on their work:
“…the recently re-ignited 40-year-old cold case that has haunted the FBI for years.”
?!? OK, I don’t get paid to write anything, but even I know that is unnecessarily awkward. How about, “…the recently re-ignited cold case that has haunted the FBI for 40 years” instead? It’s even easier to write than the other, too. Clarity, simplicity, brevity: watchwords for reporters to observe carefully, IMO.
Of course, now that I think of it, where would the “journalists” of today find such writing to emulate? (And I’ll admit they’d not find it here, but then I don’t take anyone’s money for this gig.)
Just another small piece of the “literacy means more than just being able to painfully puzzle out those weird chicken scratches on paper” puzzle, along with idiot Hiveminders who don’t know such things as the difference between “affect” and “effect” or “than” and “then” (and don’t pretend you haven’t seen such abortions of literacy in print or heard them from Podpeople Pie Holes).
Such people don’t even qualify as subliterates in my book. That would be giving them too much credit.
OK, OK, these sorts of things have been around forever, I suppose. I just notice them more and more often nowadays. But… re-reading (and taking very little time to do so *heh*) a book from the so-called “Golden Age of Science Fiction” authored by one of its pillars, I ran across,
“…according to their desserts.”
Where the author meant, “according to their deserts.”
Yes, the first instance is incorrect and the second is correct. Check me, if you wish. I’ll wait. 🙂
OK, back now?
Now, that incorrect word usage may have been a slip of the typewriter 61 years ago, though since I’m conversant with this author’s work in print, and he was more literate than 99% of fair-to-middlin’-to-pretty darned good contemporary authors, even given the space opera-ish tone of his work, I suspect an error in transcription crept in along the way to the eBook edition.
And naturally, it went flying right past any proofreader or editor with nary a pause.
Chaps my gizzard, it does… *heh*
(Stolen from a FB post)
It’s called SUMMER, for those crybabies who can’t deal with the heat. Of course, it’d help if Weatherbuggy and others would get their forecasts closer. *heh*
