Category: Do the Right Thing

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Racing Pell–Mell Toward Harrison Bergeron’s World. . .

Bedtime Stories Help Kids—So Ban Them?

Yeh, this sort of thing pops up in the Every Child Left Behind bunch every now and then. Key bots from the article:

“Evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t—the difference in their life chances—is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t. . .

“This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion that perhaps—in the interests of leveling the playing field—bedtime stories should also be restricted. . . ”

And,

“I don’t think that parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children. . . ” but he does think that, from what is presented.

[N.B. The quoted material isn’t from the writer of the article at Intellectual Takeout but quoted from the article she references, Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?, a 2015 ABC, Australia, article..]

Yes, there really are people who seem to think that parents should be less loving and offer fewer opportunities for bonding and for intellectual stimulation to their children, because. . . reasons (that are inhuman and unimaginable by anyone who does very rightly care for their children).

Screw ’em with a rusty chainsaw. Do the right thing instead of listening to such monsters.

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Tell Me About It. . .

. . . No, don’t. Really.

In another forum, after I had used “sic” correctly in quoting a text with an error, some lame brain just HAD to chime and tell me what it meant. . . while demonstrating they had not read the linked article from which the text was quoted AND saying incorrectly that the error I noted was a misspelling, when it was a correctly spelled word that was misused.

Well, the commenter learned a lesson, yeah, and hopefully two.

#gagamaggot

1. Never try to instruct someone on words when you don’t know what you are talking about. Instead, ask and learn. Or at least get a dictionary and learn how to use it. *duh*
2. If the quoted material that is from a larger text that’s available to you, READ THE LARGER TEXT before making a fool of yourself. If you then want to go ahead and make a fool of yourself anyway, be prepared to be “schooled.”

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Over-Regulated?

Just re-read our town ordinances on one short topic (long story; just suffice it to say I was right, and citing the ordinance did the trick 😉 ). In the very short topic covered by the ordinance, I noted six grammar/usage errors that might affect some other folks and invalidate those portions as the subsection applies to them.

Will I tell the town council what those errors are and what the implications might well be? Heck no! The section involved is stupid and invasive and needs to be challenged by someone who’s being oppressed by “The Man.” *heh* If I hear of someone who’s been cited under that subsection, I will point out to them the errors that make the language nonsensical.

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How to Lie to Stupid People

How can one lie to stupid people, specifically people made stupid by their own choice of laziness resulting in ignorance and an inability to reason?

Here’s an example of one way, of many. Watched a video which I refuse to link) about erradicating humanity with nuclear war. It began with an estimation of deaths in a major metropolitan area of the US from a posited nuclear strike, as:

Note: “267,000 Casualties” (A “casualty” is injury or death, as properly used in this context.)

This morphed rather quickly (a couple of frames later) into

The dialog stated, along with this strong graphic, “Almost 300,000 deaths.”

*sigh*

Suckers most of the public) will buy that second graphic and never see the differences between “267,000 casualties” and “300,000 deaths.”

And, of course, all the slanted scaremongering that follows will also be convincing to the self-enstupiated.

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Stupid Information for Dunning-Kruger-ites

Saw a silly article, “Science reveals why your shoelaces come untied.” Silly. Tie them correctly and they won’t come untied until you want them to.

But I’m sure the wide-spectrum incompetents who have inflicted Dunning-Kruger Syndrome on themselves (and who then inflict everyone else with their undeservedly confident incompetent behavior) would find the article comforting.

#gagamaggot

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“Lucy”

Amusing to watch a movie on TV (I’m also reading a book and slipping out to do this during commercial breaks. a close approximation of my typical TV-watching habits for about. . . 6 decades) and watch, during a gunfight scene, one character’s wound move from one side of his body to another. Yeh, continuity shoulda caught that. But then, that was the least of the continuity errors and other flubs and wildly laughable mistakes in the film.

Suspension of disbelief was irrevocably broken in the first five minutes though, so all the errors, laughable mistakes of anatomy, mechanics, procedural “bind-moggling,” etc., were more amusing than distracting, because NOTHING about the film was in any way, shape, fashion, or form believable, even within its own framework, right down to the protagonist’s hair color.

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Parenting Tip

Tip, do not “purchase” a free book with even one error like this in the TITLE:

“The Unmotivated Child: Learn How to Motivate Your Child to Be Succeed [sic]”

“. . .to _be succeed_”?!? If you feel you don’t have a support group that can help, just wait for a book written by someone with basic competence in English, mmmK?

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“Irks Me” #3,642

More and more often of late I have seen constructions (in supposedly “professionally written/edited” text) like,

“I would have sung along, if I knew the words.”

“If I would have known the words, I would have sung along.”

Both are horribly wrong, and evidence of serious subliteracy*. Neither should see the light of day in literately edited text.

Correct:

“I would have sung along, if I HAD KNOWN the words.”

If I HAD KNOWN the words, I would have sung along.”

Even worse are those illiterates who add to one or the other of those disgustingly egregious (for a writer who expects to be paid) assaults on the English language an attempt to gag a maggot by writing, “have sang.”

#gagamaggot

That is (nearly) all. . . for now.

*I define “subliteracy” as being the condition of being able to decode/encode those funny lil squiggles that comprise written language, while stubbornly maintaining a very, very poor understanding of what is written/what one writes. This condition is primarily due, I think, to a lazy a-literacy: refusing to take the time to become both fluent and literate by means of reading a great deal of well-written text.

I find that in every single case of subliteracy I have ever run across the person is a self-imposed victim of Dunning-Kruger Syndrome; they think they are literate, they “play” a literate on the Internet (and elsewhere, succeeding only in fooling other subliterates and seriously illiterate folk), and they have no interest whatsoever in improving their literacy. In fact, most are offended at being corrected, instead of taking the opportunity to learn from correction.

Note: in casual daybooks, journals, or emails, etc., not written for pay lapses in orthography are certainly excusable. But people who accept pay for wordsmithing should be corrected, and excoriated in the strongest language if they take offense at correction.

And THAT is all. . . for now. 😉