Category: Education

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Incurious Subliteracy

As I have often said here, I read a lot. No, more than what most folks think is “a lot”–much more. I have done for a little over 56 years now, and as a result have read a few thousand more books alone than anyone else I have yet met.

Now, that’s not in any way some sort of boasting, just a setting of the stage, as it were, OK? In fact, such addiction to reading is nothing to boast about at all, and, like other addictions, it has some undesirable or even simply irritating consequences.

One of the consequences of so very much reading is that I’ve observed a general diminution of literate use of English (I don’t read much in other languages any more and haven’t for a couple of decades *shrugs* It’s just worked out that way) in more and more recent works, and not just in the recent deluge of self-published (or “indie”) books. I’ll just cite one example of many in a recent book that I finished despite the fact that I wrote deprecating margin notes at least once per page, sometimes as many as four per page, expressing my disgust at egregious word misuses, inexcusable grammar errors, etc. The example?

“He was the exception that proves the rule,” misused to mean, in context of the rest of the passage, that this exceptional person demonstrated the validity of a particular “rule” by violating it and succeeding anyway.

*sigh*

That alone would have convinced me of the author’s obstinate, arrogant, obdurate incuriosity and ignorance. (Don’t assail me for redundancy–obstinate/obdurate. I’d add more synonyms with slightly variant meanings, but you have your own Thesaurus *heh*) Many, many decades ago, or so it seems to me now *heh*, I wondered at a use of “prove” that puzzled my childhood brain, as it did not seem to match up with the meaning I knew–show the truth of a thing via evidence or argument.

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. — Malachi 3:10

As my curious search discovered then (thank heavens for a LARGE “library” style two-volume dictionary in our family library), “prove” is used in the verse as translated in the KJV text above to mean “test”. And just so is “prove” used in the phrase, “exception that proves (tests) the rule.”

And so is the richness and diversity of the English language–a language of which it has been said that it’s quite happy to drag other languages into a dark alley to mug ’em for as little as a useful participle–degraded by thousands upon thousands of subliterate, dim-witted, incurious dumbasses who never bother to read outside their own little box and so never discover that what they “know” just ain’t so. . . in spades, doubled and redoubled.

BTW, the book that garnered so much red ink from me is one I became convinced was written, proof-read and edited by a congress of bare-assed baboons. I had to cleanse my mental palate with some Shakespeare.

Continue reading “Incurious Subliteracy”

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Oh, Come On! My Standards Aren’t That High!

Well, not an auspicious beginning to the New Year. I decided to clear out the underbrush in my ebook backlog a bit and started in reading some books I’d been meaning to get to for a while.

So far, it’s not noon, yet, and I’ve started three of ’em. Put two down. Deleted them from my devices. Not going to finish them.

An example: after wading through multiple problems in noun-verb agreement, pronoun confusion and even misuse–“their” for “its” one too many times in descriptive narrative (not dialog, where it is remotely possible I might excuse such things, depending on the character), for one, and anachronisms in a 1920s setting–I saw “balled out” used for “scolding” and just couldn’t take any more of that book.

And this was an ebook from an established publishing house, not an “indie” so there were NO possible excuses for such incompetent editing. Are there just fewer and fewer literate “proofreaders” and editors, or are publishing houses just shoving unedited “advance reader copies” out the door, thinking that ebook readers are less literate than hardcopy readers?

Maybe it’s even worse, but I don’t want to contemplate that. *sigh*

So now I’m reading a book that was touted/blurbed as sci-fi which appears to really be a “slapstick comedy sci-fi romance novel”. *sigh* Please, next time just give an accurate description. At least it’s amusing and written halfway literately.

*sigh* At least I have more than a few hardcopy books also stacked up in my “to read” list to take refuge in–books not published in these days of illiterate boob “proofreaders/editors”.

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Nuh-uh! Watch your language!

I see a dumbass construction so often that I now just gag, spew and go on. *sigh* Here’s the situation: a writer (or speaker) is attempting to say

“Some members of [Class A] are also [Class B]; some are not.”

But they write/say,

“All [Class A] are not [Class B],” as in, “…a distribution center was set up under a former S4 proving that all S4s are not lame-brain[…s].”

What the author said there is not what he meant, if the preceding text (wherein it had been asserted that S4s are characteristically “lame-brained”) is to be believed. No, what the author meant was very distinctly different to what he wrote, namely, “…a distribution center was set up under a former S4 proving that not all S4s are lame-brain[…s].”

It’s NOT a subtle difference at all. It is a profound difference. “All are not” is NOT “Not all are” by any stretch of the imagination. One says very plainly, “NONE of A are B” and the other says, “Some of A are not B.”

This kind of widely-spread lack of sense in writing and speaking says to me that those who use these formulations have a logic circuit that’s broken, or firing only intermittently. This sort of widely-spread butchering of sense in language is a definite indicator that popular culture is, simply and bluntly put, stupid.

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Where to Go From Here

Romney’s message was fine. It was not as conservative or hard-hitting as I might have liked, but it was good, strong and put forth ideas that would have been seriously beneficial as first steps to restoring some sort of sensibility in the federal machine.

It was widely and loudly misrepresented by Barry Soetoro’s unofficial campaign (the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind), which is where most people–especially those who don’t really do their own homework but rely on the media to do their thinking for them–got their view of his message.

Romney was “out-messaged” almost 10-to-1 by the steady drumbeat from “Bylines for Barry”–the so-called “legacy media” which served Barry by unrelentingly lying, obfuscating and distracting from anything of substance, anything true and just and worthy and praiseworthy in those opposed to Barry’s policies and actions and by incessant lies and obfuscations about Barry’s policies and actions.

And then there’s the “Stupid Factor”. Face it: America is NOT Lake Wobegone. The electorate is NOT “all above average”. In fact, if multi-year, well-designed surveys run by ISI have any validity at all (and the actual data in the NALS from the fedgov Dept of Ed are useful for anything) and multiple other metrics, surveys and even just common observation by well-informed and literate individuals, Americans, on average, are virtually illiterate as to civics, economics and current events–let alone simply NOT understanding the printed word.

Add to that the massive, pervasive voter fraud and blatantly illegal activity almost entirely engaged in by Dhimmicraps alone, and it’s almost miraculous that Romney/Ryan came within a hair of winning, let alone that Republicans held the House.

The only way to win against such massive odds against is to seriously improve the ground game, turn out a vote that is so large it doesn’t matter that they cheat and (metaphorically) BURN DOWN THE HIVEMIND’S HOUSE.

All that said, I am going to be much, much more gracious in defeat than the Dhimmicraps were in 2000 and 2004. In other words, I will unceasingly hammer every single damn*d lie issuing from leftists’ organs, NEVER shut up about Benghazi, Fast & Furious, et al, encourage everyone I know to hammer at these through their congresscritters, etc. And… encourage LOCAL involvement to begin NOW to get the ground game going for 2014 and exert as much influence on local, state and national nomination procedures for ALL elective offices.

The People CAN take back their government, but with the deck stacked against them, it’ll take a lot more work than it might have 60 years ago when Robert Heinlein wrote the book on how to do it (“Take Back Your Government!” bundled here in ebook formats with the Sharon Cooper and Chuck Asay book, “Taxpayers’ Tea Party: A Manual for Reclaiming Our Government”. Highly recommended.)

N.B. Edited out some typos. You’re welcome.

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The Verbal Intelligence of a Trained Parrot

While I appreciate the effort my health plan providers make to keep me informed of benefits, I do with they’d hire better-trained parrots to write the notices.

“Please note that all pharmacies may not be providing… “

Really? “[A]ll pharmacies” followed by “may not”? Nonsensical*, but if the parrot were better-trained, it might have pecked out,

“Please note that not all pharmacies may be providing… “

…although the passive voice construction in this case is an abomination. A better construction altogether would have helped clarity and, probably, have avoided mocking, but then,

“For additional information about this benefit, please see the frequently asked questions on the reverse side of this letter,” would have assured loud guffaws and raucous mocking anyway. The “reverse side of this letter” was, of course, blank.

Idiots.

*Semantics (meaning) is not as sensitive to syntax in English as in some languages, but this is one of a significant class of examples where it is.

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Drawbacks of a Long Infancy

Infant product class, that is. eBooks. I read a lot of ’em. So far, very few eBooks seem to take advantage of the medium to expand beyond print format, and many are weaker products than hardcopy books. Here’s a brief blurb of my consumer-of-print viewpoint.

Many books can benefit from maps, tables and other reference materials. With hardcopy books, these are often included, and if not I often have the material to hand (or nearby) to fill the gaps. eBooks that can benefit from such addenda need them even more than print works, because they’re often read in locales where such things are unavailable even to someone like me who has a wide-ranging reference library at hand. Such things should be included in eBooks that would benefit from them, and they should be, at the very least, context sensitive. For example, when maps are called for, scalable, zoomable satellite or aerial maps (with helpful labeling, perhaps) could be included with little more trouble than simple line-drawing maps. Use your imagination to supply supplementary materials lists eBook authors should include. You’ll have to, though, because so far very few authors have used theirs in that manner.

As to those eBooks that are weaker products than corresponding print works. *sigh* One of the worst examples I can think of offhand was a novel written by a very good writer before eBooks had really taken off. I read it expecting not great but good fun. The story was OK, as were the characters, descriptive narrative and dialog, but… he’d apparently just scanned it–or had it scanned–and converted to electronic format and apparently had not even had it proof read. Too many obvious scanning errors ruined enjoyment of the book. But that’s just one of the worst. Self-published, author edited or proofread (or author edited AND proofread) eBooks seem to be about 85% POORLY edited and proofread. Good lord, folks! Execrable grammar, spelling and punctuation just barely scratches the surface of many crap-laden plots, dialog, descriptive narrative and characters crudely drawn in crayon from B-movie central casting descriptions!

Yes, there are a lot of well-written, well-edited/proofread “Indie” published books available, but the numbers of well-written “Indie” books is only because so very much chaff is out there to winnow the well-written books out of. It’s a real pain in the neck (although the pain’s really quite a bit further south of there) to be reading along thinking, “Interesting story–OH CRAP! GETCHER SYNTAX OUTA YOUR ASS!” or “SPELLCHECK, DUMBASS, SPELLCHECK!!” or “WTF! YOU DIDN’T JUST ‘THERE’S’ ME AGAIN! over and over again.

I’m sure both the crap writing and the features blocks will work themselves out in time, though. eBooks are still in a development phase, and some writers, at least, seem to be thinking seriously about some of these things. Thank heavens. *sigh*

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Details Add Verisimilitude… or Not

In fiction, the less descriptive details detract from creating suspension of disbelief, the less they might drag a reader out of the story to say, “Nuh-uh! No way! Not so!” and so getting the little things right can make a difference in verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief, let alone simple enjoyment of a story well told.

Let me offer a very small example (one of, sadly, more than a few from a book now in hand):

Speaking about an event in Atilla’s life tied to a specific town in Italy in 452 A.D., a learned gentleman intones,

“The town was founded in the first century, so it was already three hundred years old when Atilla arrived.”

Really? Any (and I do mean ANY) literate person knows that the first century A.D. began with year 1 and went through 100 A.D. 452 A.D. was squarely in the middle of the FIFTH century. It would have made sense to have said, “The town was founded in the first century, so it was already FOUR hundred years old when Atilla arrived.”

When a novel that relies heavily on historical citations (and legends tied to history) begins to pile up errors like that, it starts to seriously detract from the story.

No, before you ask, it’s not a book by Dan Brown. It’s not within several orders of magnitude of being THAT bad. In fact, apart from niggling little things like the one noted above, and quite contra a Dan Brown prose atrocity, it’s actually pretty good reading, which is what makes these niggling little problems… problems.

Continue reading “Details Add Verisimilitude… or Not”

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Just One–of Many–of the Dangers of Democracy

[N.B. I’ve seen ironically elitist criticism of José Ortega y Gasset for being an elitist. Most folks who criticize him for noting some of the serious problems that must necessarily ensue from allowing democratic memes too much cultural influence are pseudo-intellectual snobs who don’t even bother–or are unable–to read and grasp some of the core ideas in his most scathing rebuke of “Mass Man” in “The Revolt of the Masses”. Here, I am not going to make direct reference to Ortega, but just note that his articulations of issues do inform what I want to try to convey here, in some very small part. The deficiencies in this blogpost shouldn’t be attributed to his influence though. No, those deficiencies are all mine.]

 

 

 
Democracy as a political system has its own problems. One, of course, is that time worn warning that once some of the People discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public purse, corruption inevitably ensues, and the road to the failure of democracy as a political system is not long following. But societal effects can be harmful, too. When popular culture is ever more democratized, the process of dumbing down society to the lowest common denominator becomes a process of self-perpetuating debasement.

Let me illustrate this debasement using a very, very limited example which the reader may use to draw his own examples. Lexicographers eventually bow to even the basest misuses of words and finally legitimize the misuse by denoting it in a dictionary entry. Here is one such example: “healthy”. “Healthy” was once a word–and still is among literate persons–with a primary denotation of an organism that enjoyed good (vigorous, robust) health. Its misuse for years has now brought it to the point where is is used to refer to both live and dead materials that may promote (often only in the minds of the promoters) good health. Whereas once, in referring to the health of an organism, it referred primarily to the state of being or condition of something that was alive, now it may refer to some inanimate material to be consumed or even inanimate object designed to act upon or be used by some animate being to promote that being’s health. Once, the word used to denote that latter meaning was “healthful” and so the two words provided useful information in distinction to each other when used. Not so nowadays.

Losing useful distinctions means losing useful meanings, and language is first and foremost about conveying meaning (here I usually insert my rant about those utter idiots who blather about semantics as though distinctions in meanings were… meaningless, useless twaddle, but I am to tired to the bone to deal with useless idiots right now), and anything that broadens distinctions to the point of removing useful distinctions dumbs down the exchange of meaning.

Every time someone is allowed to misuse a word without being corrected, allowed to spread its misuse, society becomes stupider. And that, dear reader, is especially dangerous in a society governed via any elements of democracy. People who do not even have the words to express themselves with clear and full meaning will not be able to rule themselves wisely… or chose wisely when selecting/electing those they represent.

Oh, this thing with dumbed down language as a result of validation of misused is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were, that wrecks overly-democratic societies. Largely, it’s not so much the misuse of words that destroys communication but the very democratic tendency to accept that just because many people do such and so then that makes such and so acceptable. (Didn’t your mother ever warn you about jumping off a cliff just because “ALL” your friends were doing so? Hmmm?)

This dumb-down spiral applies all across the board: clothing fads that make slovenly (or slutty or stupid… or slutty and stupid and slovenly *sigh*) attire normative, popular entertainment–whether it be the mindless circuses of spectator sports, the pernicious drivel of TV and movies or the musicless grunts and moans and banging around of most contemporary fake music–the acceptance of stupid expressions of stupid people as (graphic) “art”: all this and more works to debase society in a society that values the opinions of stupid and subliterate people as highly–and in many cases nowadays more highly–as someone who can actually tell the difference between a well-written book and what Holly Lisle calls “Suckitudinous” writing–or even just badly-written schlock; someone who can actually hear the difference between music and… top 40 crap, someone who has actually read The Founders and can tell when such as Nancy Pelosi is blowing smoke up folks’ skirts defending unconstitutional legislation as a legitimate exercise of governmental authority, etc.

Yes, it does make a difference that fewer and fewer people in our society can discriminate between classes of objects, events, statements… or even know that there can be good things about discrimination.

I could have used more politically charged examples than the less than life-threatening “healthy” word misuse, but discussing the misuse (and even misunderstanding by subliterate morons) of “racist”–for example–probably would have resulted in some SPAM comments accusing me of racism. Oops. *heh*

DGARA. Accuse away. 😉

Continue reading “Just One–of Many–of the Dangers of Democracy”

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Why Good Grammar?

And why word usage that reflects understanding of the words used, or proper spelling and punctuation?

Neither can his mind be thought to be in tune, whose words do jar;
Nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous;
Nor his elocution clear and perfect,
Whose utterance breaks itself into fragments and uncertainties.
– Ben Johnson, Discoveries, 1641

Well-written prose is a reflection of clear thought. It’s just that simple. Continue reading “Why Good Grammar?”

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The Zero Fears His Superpower

Or, at least The Zero would if he could count to five without taking his shoes off.

 

 

 

 

Check out The Zero’s face in this video. “WTF?!? What’s he talkin’ ’bout, Willis? Is that MATH?!?” If you’ve ever wondered what Odumbo’s face looks like when confronted with numbers, well, here ya go:

http://youtu.be/o1yTY2MciOk

Oh, and during all the demonizing of Ryan and his budgetary proposals, do remember that they guy who was THE ZERO’S PICK to head up his “deficit committee” and represent the administration’s policies, Erskine Bowles (Clinton SBA head, later WH chief of staff), über-Democrat, had a different view:

Just sayin’. Serious policy wonks don’t share the views of Mass MEdia Podpeople like Rachel Maddow and Michael Moore. *sigh* The only real negative I can see in having Ryan as a vice presidential candidate is that he’ll be wasted “debating” Cwazy Unka Joe (if The Zero’s campaign even lets that massacre happen). At the top of the ticket, he’d have a chance to obliterate The Zero, metaphorically nuking him from orbit.

Oh, fun. Jerry Pournelle suggests (in my words, not his) that with the Romney/Ryan strengths on  economic policy against The Zero’s (and zero-cubed, Cwazy Unka Joe) profound weaknesses, some Dhimmicraps might be tempted to play the “no foreign policy experience” card… and that that would be a real tarbaby for the Dhims, as

 

“…anyone including Elmer Fudd has more experience in foreign affairs than the current President had on taking office.”

Bazinga!