"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."
“It” above refers to what? “Wars”. Hello! “It” is singular; “wars” is plural.
OK, so the article does actually contain a few useful tips. . . for folks who’ve not been paying any attention for the past 10 years or so, like,
Tip: You can preview shortened URLs to see their true destination. For example, with bitly addresses, simply paste them into your browser, add a + after the URL (for example, //bitly.com/13LRaF4+ [Solera Networks page]), and press Enter. Adding the plus sign takes you to the bitly site first, where you’ll see a stats page for the destination site.
For tinyurl addresses, add “preview” before the address. For example, enter //preview.tinyurl.com/{xxxxx}, and the uncloaked address will appear at the tinyurl site.
For snipurl addresses, add “peek” before the shortened address. For example, //peek.snipurl.com/26kl5qy takes you to the Snipurl site and displays the full URL:
Ever notice that when a wildflower volunteers in a garden it’s a weed, even though it’s the same flower that’s viewed with pleasure in a meadow? Why? Is it not still as beautiful when it blossoms in the garden as when it grows in the wild?
. . .probably written by the author of the book. Here’s how the blurb starts out (read it with a faux “Texas” redneck accent in your mind’s ear, wouldja?):
No matter how hard she tries to escape her Texas roots–and her mother–Jolene Jackson finds herself dragged back to Kickapoo to deal with both. . .
Oh, please. Please, someone, stop me before I “buy” the thing (for $0.00) and read it. “Jolene Jackson” is NOT going to “escape her. . . roots” until she changes her name, publishes “Jolene Jackson’s” obituary and moves above a garage in Buffalo (where Really Leary, Timothy Leary’s brother *cough*–according to George Carlin–taught that our souls go when we die).
*sigh* Too late. Now, I just have to know what “turkey ranch road rage” is. It’s now become essential to my continued sanity, urm, something-or-other–I’d say “Je ne sais quoi” but that just doesn’t go down well with a dose of protest rallies, naked lizard girls in cages, iced tea and a chicken basket.
I do these sorts of things so you don’t have to. Thank me. Thank me very much.
For at least a couple of decades now, anyone who has watched the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind so-called “news” shows has been programmed to eliminate the ability to discern clear distinctions as to many things, but the most egregious–and most consistent–destruction of reason has been the twisting of time. How many times have you heard *cough* “news” *cough* readers refer to events that occurred some time in the past as happening contemporaneously with the reader’s babbling?
Past tense for past events, idiots. But no, in *cough* “news” *cough* readerland present tense is fairly consistently used to refer to past events. And so an essential anchor of reason is eroded daily and common folk attempting to be writers begin to write such drivel as,
The sun rose rose over San Antonia [sic] de Bexar as a Blood [sic] red omen of what the day will [sic] bring to the men of the Alamo.
Good Sharkey, Colonel god! Past tense, properly used, mixed with future tense speaking of a (long) past event! Oh, why not. *sigh* If the past is present, then surely the past is future as well. Time means nothing.
OTOH, any literate person who’s not been lobotomized by watching *cough* “news” *cough* shows would have written,
“The sun rose rose over San Antonio de Bexar as a blood red omen of what the day would bring to the men of the Alamo.”
It’s still a bit overwrought for me, but at least the conditional is dealt with properly. It’s not just aspiring web “journalists” committing such gagamaggot faux pas with English, no. Such superbly dumbass writing abounds in traditionally published works, from newspapers to books from traditional publishing houses (which at one time employed literate proof readers and editors) and in the speech of *cough* “news” *cough* readers inhabiting the Hivemind, the political and entertainment classes and even Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries.
Is it any wonder these dumbasses who consider themselves an elite that’s fit to rule the hoi polloi are making a mess of everything they touch? They cannot consistently deal with speaking clearly and rationally on simple subjects.
And the sheeple eat it all up with a spork (because they cannot be trusted with a real fork).
I’d be all for gun control that means removing guns from the hands of politicians *gag-spew* and bureaucraps. . . and maybe even most law enFARCEment ossifers. Of course, it’d be good to have a codified way to distinguish between law enFARCEment ossifers and law enforcement officers who really do seek to PROTECT and SERVE and enforce laws EQUALLY with no differences between persons. . . including rigidly enforcing laws by regularly, consistently and vigorously arresting law enFARCEment ossifers, politicians *gag-spew* and bureaucraps who do not.
Whether one considers social networking forums, specialty forums focused on whatever topic, blogs, or even professional “news” outlets and “scholarly” articles posted on the Internet, I’ve come to the conclusion that well over half the people that present themselves as English speakers would benefit greatly from buying and religiously using Rosetta Stone English Level 1 for as long as it takes to master basic–very basic–English.
*sigh* It’s just one more thing in a long, long list of dirty laundry issuing from an increasingly dumbed down popular culture, but it’s one of those things that irk me even more than people who have apparently been jamming a fork behind their eyeballs and stirring long enough to miss the first R in FebRuary. *sigh*
Whadafug you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?
OK, I’ll just let that one slide and answer the question anyway.
This A.M. I woke hearing a children’s song–well, almost always sung as a children’s song–in my mind’s ear. A real earworm the thing is. Anywho, After a couple of hours, I thought, “Hmm, Self, I wonder if folks have posted any YouTube videos of this song?” So, in answer to my question to Self, I did what any moderately curious person asking such a question of Self might do and input a lil searcherooo.
Yep. Lots of folks have posted videos of the song, and of the first page of searches returned EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM RENDERS THE TUNE DIFFERENTLY AND ALL OF THEM WRONG. “Why,” I asked Myself, “would these people who can play guitar or piano (well, keyboard) get the tune wrong–sometimes by one note in a phrase, sometimes by several?”
They’re illiterate. The song isn’t some folk song but has an actual composer and actual written music and lyrics still under copyright. Sure, anyone can get a mechanical license to produce a version of the song, but any even semi-musically-literate person should AT LEAST be able to GET THE NOTES RIGHT–at least ONCE!
Searching instead for the first recording of the song–by Peggy Lee of all folks!–yields someone who WAS musically literate actually singing the notes that Arthur Hamilton wrote:
Any moderately musically literate person will hear many, many examples of performers (I refuse to call them “artists”) rendering otherwise well-known tunes wrong–usually in ways that limit the range of notes, narrowing the tune to eliminate intervals that either the singer or his audience can’t discern.
Yeh, yeh, it’s just a kids’ song, and most of the other music butchered by pop ears and performances is just pop fluff, but it’s also another area where our culture is getting dumber and dumber.
Think about two common meanings of “dumb” there. When the culture becomes UNABLE to express certain things because it’s both dimmer-witted–lacking the wit to express something–and “mute” as it were, lacking the actual means of expressing a thing, then that area of the culture is drifting into a “dark age” where not onl;y does it not know how to do something but it is losing the memory of once being able to do a thing.
And it’s not just music that this applies to in our culture, folks. A widespread Dark Age coming. . . maybe.
Sure, when I was a wee tad, I occasionally heard strange word pronunciations (strange to my ear because I lived in a somewhat literate family environment and began reading at an early age), like “warsh rag” for “wash cloth” (“warsh” never seemed to be accompanied by “cloth” for some reason) and “drore” for “drawer”. Somehow, though, I was never exposed during my formative years to people who simply could not pronounce the months of the year correctly. Hence my least favorite month of the year, a time of the year nowadays when I have to continually bite my tongue to keep from shouting
