I was just reading Cecil’s 1996 column on the research about teleportation conducted by IBM (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_198.html)
when I took a closer look at the illustration by Slug Signorino.
There it was on p. 198 of Triumph of the Straight Dope, written in big letters on one of the teleportation devices:
RECIEVE.
I do not want to get into the dozens of rules here (Cecil’s nemesis David Feldman has already done this exhaustively),
but I am surprised that Cecil would let a book go to print with such an egregious error. Maybe I can RECEIVE an answer as to what happened.
It’s “artistic voice”. Is the dialogue in “Huckleberry Finn” the same as Mark Twain’s own speech? Of course not. SS’s drawings reflect his impression of the writers to the SD. (Which is, ahem, an entirely different issue.)
BTW: Don’t hit “enter” so much. It makes your paragraphs look bad. Even worse than screwing up “receive”.
Actually, I’d say that in humans, it’s both. Failure to expel will kill faster than failure to retain. Many organisms completely lack any significant ability to retain wastes; none lack an ability to expel wastes. The anus is more than just a sphincter.
As far as I know it is just a sphincter. “Just” being the weasel word here. A sphincter is a very a sophisticated opening and as you point out many animals get by without one (coelenterates, echinoderms and many politicians manage to combine mouth and anus very effectively). The risk of retention must be outweighed by the risks of uncontrolled excreation for it to be such a common feature. Just a sphincter indeed, all this and tuneful too!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, Underpaid Teacher, glad to have you with us.
No, Slug is not illiterate. I would have to proclaim someone illiterate based on one misspelling. Seems to me that genuine illiteracy is a significant enough problem, without trivializing it.
Slug does have a very … um… peculiar sense of humor. He recently drew an African-American in a pilot’s uniform to represent a “black ace.” His humor ranges from the grotesque to the bizarre, and sometimes very subtle. So, the misspelling of “receive” could be deliberate. And could just be a misspelling that no one bothered to correct. As I say, when you’re dealing with someone who routinely draws pictures of people popping zit, urinating, or picking their nose… well, it’s kind of petty to pick on spelling.
I do not know if we can summarily dismiss ignorance of spelling rules or sloppiness as being “petty”; this smacks of killing the messenger at best and blaming the victim at worst. Such an atitude is even more frightening when we look at the lack of basic English skills exhibited by the average college freshmen (and believe me, I have experience with that). Isn’t The Straight Dope fighting to eradicate ignorance? The last post suggests its purpose may have shifted to make excuses for ignorance instead.
UT, on this issue you’re right and Dex is wrong. (Although your logic is silly at best and paranoiacally defensive at worst. :D)
Welcome to the Boards.
You’ll learn to fit in, right after you learn that whenever you make a post about someone else’s language skills you will make a solecism equal to the one in your last sentence.
Heh. Petter cites Gaudere’s Rule: whenever someone posts complaining about someone else’s spelling, that post inevitably contains a spelling error itself.
I also had an awkward misspelling: << I would have to proclaim someone illiterate >> should have been << I would hate to proclaim someone illiterate >> Sigh.
So, Underpaid, do we conclude that you are illiterate because of your inability to spell “attitude”? < grins >
I have now looked at the illustration, and I think this is a deliberate Slug-type joke. The “scientist” depicted is obviously a slob, and I think Slug is making the comment that he can’t even spell.
