Tag: stupid is as stupid does

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Readability quotients

This link at Boudicca’s Voice leads to a site that calculates readability quotients for just about any html document… including your blog, if you want
 
Here are two sites compared.  Well, one’s a site and the other’s a representative sample of an author’s work. Now, which is Shakespeare’s and which is mine?
 
(Jeopardy music plays in background—ok, imagine it is.) 
 
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If you thought the “more difficult read” was Shakespeare, go to the back of the class.  The Shakespearean sonnet I selected (semi-random, just clicked on first one my mouse rode over) was this one:
 
SONNET 6 
Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface 
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d: 
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place 
With beauty’s treasure, ere it be self-kill’d. 
That use is not forbidden usury, 
Which happies those that pay the willing loan; 
That’s for thyself to breed another thee, 
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one; 
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art, 
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee: 
Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart, 
Leaving thee living in posterity? 
Be not self-will’d, for thou art much too fair 
To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.
 
It’s almost a rule: great writing is easy to read. Suckitudinous writing is most often the opposite.
 
NOTE: I am not asserting that because my blog features generally short sentences and easy vocabulary that it’s great writing. Accessibility is just the entry level for writing that’s worth reading.
 
UPDATE: If I don’t have my sidebar fixed by now, locate it at the bottom of the page.  And if you want to show me where I’ve fragged my template, fee free.  🙂

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LLMB vs the real military

Woody’s News and Views cites an article pointing out the scotoma afflicting the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade and their ilk
 
You’d think the LLMB might have two brain cells to rub together somewhere among its membership, but sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. At least the LLMB seems not to have two brain cells to spare when examining its own preconceptual biases.  See the citation and link at Woody’s News and Views . 

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The Anti-Sylph

So ya wanna be a sylph?
 
Well, Bou says Sissy’s assigning a word a week to use in blogs, kinda a bloggish Word Power thingy.  This week’s is “sylph” and anyone who knows me knows it’s not a word I’d characteristically use, so here, with profound, but insincere, apologies to Joyce Kilmer for semi-stealing his beat (though not so much his rhyme scheme):
 
The Anti-Sylph
 
I think that I shall never be
The slender, sylphid nymph you see
Bending e’er so gracefully
‘Gainst the gentle breeze.

For I am rough and hard, though fat,
An’ graceful just ain’t where I’m at,
Cos no durn wind’ll even blow my hat
With it’s pernicious wheeze.

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Aww.. Grow Up: Kipling Tuesday

 A portion of what is missing from the generations of perpetual adolescents we are producing via “public education” and pop culture: the desire to take a responsible place in adult society:

The Children’s Song

Puck of Pook’s Hills

Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee
Our love and toil in the years to be;
When we are grown and take our place
As men and women with our race.

Father in Heaven who lovest all,
Oh, help Thy children when they call;
That they may build from age to age
An undefiled heritage.

Teach us to bear the yoke in youth,
With steadfastness and careful truth;
That, in our time, Thy Grace may give
The Truth whereby the Nations live.

Teach us to rule ourselves alway,
Controlled and cleanly night and day;
That we may bring, if need arise,
No maimed or worthless sacrifice.

Teach us to look in all our ends
On Thee for judge, and not our friends;
That we, with Thee, may walk uncowed
By fear or favour of the crowd.

Teach us the Strength that cannot seek,
By deed or thought, to hurt the weak;
That, under Thee, we may possess
Man’s strength to comfort man’s distress.

Teach us Delight in simple things,
And Mirth that has no bitter springs;
Forgiveness free of evil done,
And Love to all men ‘neath the sun!

Land of our Birth, our faith, our pride,
For whose dear sake our fathers died;
Oh, Motherland, we pledge to thee
Head, heart and hand through the years to be!

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Hooey

My score wasn’t bad, but that’s because I suspected that the spelling on one word choice was the “newer” spelling, although both spellings were correct… And I “missed” one punctuation question… that the test had wrong. Other than that, not a bad short quiz.

 

Your English Skills:
Grammar: 100%
Spelling: 100%
Vocabulary: 100%
Punctuation: 80%
 
Of course, I cheated. Years ago. I grew up with our family’s encyclopedia and two-volume dictionary under my bed for night-time reading material… Can’t beat the dictionary for reading.  Not much plot or character development, but it’s a great vocabulary builder.

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Dirty Lil Meme Part Deux–UPDATE

Kris’ Revenge
 
OK, so Kris has taken up the gauntlet… and slapped me with more vivid imagery than I… really wanted. Really. (Dan, it’s all your fault, you know… at least I like to tell myself that.)
 
“eeewwww” indeed. (But I deserved that; after all Kris’ mom reads her blog. heh)
 
Two of the folks Kris tagged have responded.  Each dealt the assignment some very poetic blows. See Kris’ post for the links. (Are they vying for Poet  Laureate of the Punchbowl or something?)

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Global Warming, again…

It’s May 2, for heaven’s sake! ::sheesh!::
 
Scraped ICE off the windshield this a.m.  ICE. On May 2 in America’s Third World Countyâ„¢,  ICE .
 
It’s global warming, I tell you…
 
(And the sad thing? I was stupid enough to put the pineapple tree back outside thinking, “It’s MAY, how bad can it get?” without checking a forecast… Poor pineapple.  It may die back like it did last year. ::sigh:: Oh. Well.)

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On being a man

  What is missing in today’s quest for eternal adolescence?

I can recall how, as a young boy, I would often read this piece at night, after our evening Bible readings and night-time prayers were done, and I was in bed.  It was on a plaque, hanging near my bed, and in the dim light from the hall or even moon- and star-light, I’d read these words and wonder if I would ever be such a man.

 
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If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run —
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!

 
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“Kipling Tuesday” is tomorrow, but I’m anticipating tomorrow’s selection with this one.  They are of a piece, I think.