Confession: while I despise the word “smirk,” primarily because subliterate 20-somethings misuse it so much, I confess to smirking (appropriate use notice! *heh*) whenever I see some company tout a product as “military grade.” (Too often – once is too often, but sadly it seems to be more often than that – “military grade” means “low bid from the company offering the most graft.”)
Does “Constitutional Heresy” Count?
Ain’t Got Time for This Crap
Any writer that wants to be paid for their work and yet
- Disrespects their readers by typing crap and
- NOT hiring a literate proofreader/editor
should be taken behind the woodshed for a wee bit of “education.”
(The spur this time was “Senor” for “Señor”. . . after too many other execrable stupidities. Just not going to read anything else by this producer of stuff unworthy of even being used for fertilizer.)
Practice Makes Perfect?
Nope. “Practice makes perfect” is common misconception. Practice makes PERMANENT. Only perfect practice can make perfect, so BETTER practice simply makes being BETTER a permanent stepping stone on the path of improvement. Sooner or later, though, one meets one’s physical or mental limits (or both) and consistent best practice just makes permanent the best that one can be.
Lacks a Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi
Severe cold discovery: The Phlegm Diet™® is quite nutritious, but the flavor profile isn’t quite five star quality. Maybe 1/8 star. . . Texture? Well, if you like raw oysters. . . it’s a little less appealing than that.
To Sum Up. . .
I am constantly amazed at folks who just see no benefit from even such simple maths as algebra, trig, geometry, etc., in their daily lives. There was a brief point in my life, college calculus classes, when I could pretty much just look at a simple math problem and know the answer. (Gave my prof fits, ‘cos I rarely wrote down the steps to achieve the answer. . . cos I hadn’t thought of ’em.) But. . . word problems in that class that attempted to use semi-sorta “real world” situations where different calculus functions could be used to solve things were not so much my metier at the time.
Time passed, as is its wont, and everyday circumstances took on “math meaning” in my perceptions more and more often, until not a day passes that something doesn’t trigger algebraic, “trig-ic” *heh*, differential. . .-ic ?, or whatever thoughts.