Couldn’t hurt.
Grundlepuck, welcome to SDMB.
Typical English teacher response: Would “rhetorical posts” have been less awkward and just as appropriate?
(aging retired local school marm with Zoro complex)
~ Z ~
Well, that’s a novel experience. I’ve been accused of being an anarchist before, but never because I spoke out in favor of rule-following.
So, since you seem so wise and all-knowing, what with your thirty day free trial and everything, why don’t you tell me how the SDMB is defined?
It couldn’t hurt any.
Funny hats are always crowd pleasers.
Even tin foil ones.
It has a name, a tag line, and a long history of columns to define it. If you haven’t read any of those things yet, I recommend starting with the name, it’s short, and should require minimal effort on your part.
How very awfully good of you to give your permission. I’m sure the mods were extremely grateful.
And thank you for speaking for the mods, as they have no mouths. Hypocrite.
Thanks Zoe! There is an amazing amount of quality here – I’ve lost whole afternoons to poking through old threads.
I would think so. But on the other hand, I suspect that most compound nouns sound awkward to some degree when first encountered. You may have noticed this phenomenon if you’ve studied a foreign language, where you tend to “hear” both parts of a compound noun more than native speakers, who tend to hear it as a whole.
For instance, I remember a Portuguese friend of mine who found the word 'skyscraper" to be pretty silly sounding, and I’ve got to say he had a point when I looked at it with fresh eyes.
Armed and literate – definitely got no beef with you!
Hambil, I don’t particularly “want flame”. I’d like to see you walk away from this particular thread, and go post about kittens in MPSIMS or something. There’s nothing being achieved here, it’s just boring sniping.
I think perhaps simple, direct statements would be the way for you to go, Hambil. These gnomic declarations and instructions do not seem to be communicating quite as well as you seem to think. For example, you seem to think that pointing out the name of the board somehow refutes my first post in this thread. How so, exactly? The board is called The Straight Dope. As an idiom, this means “the truth” or “the real story.” So are you saying this board should only allow “truthful” posts? What would that mean, in this context? That opinion (such as “Bush sucks!”) has no place on the boards? An odd statement, considering there’s an entire forum dedicated to such. (More than one, depending on how you define and diferentiate between “truth” and “opinion.”)
But you also say I should read the board’s tagline, so perhaps you are saying that only posts that serve to help move the debate towards “the truth,” posts that “fight ignorance,” should be allowed? In that case, who’s truth are we talking about, here? I suspect that both Shodan and Reeder believe their posts about the Bush administration to be absolutely truthful, and the positions against which they argue to be “ignorant.” In a larger sense, how can we know if we’ve found “the truth,” or something like it, if we limit what sort of opinions can be offered? I do not, by way of example, believe that Bush is worse than Hitler. But the only way I can “know” this is by examining the arguments for and against the proposition that “Bush is worse than Hitler.” The only way to refute an argument is to examine it: ignoring it only lends it more credibility. If every thread making such a comparison is greeted only by silence from anyone with any sense, then those of us without much sense (and, as a registered American voter, there’s a damn good chance I fall into that category myself) are more likely to be misled into thinking that the comparison is irrefutable. So if that’s the over-all point you’re trying to make here, then your OP in the locked thread is completly wrong. Instead of urging us to ignore the partisans, you should be urging us to engage them more fully, to answer their misleading generalizations with established fact, and their emotional appeals with cold logic.
But you also say I should read the columns. Setting aside the fact that the columns are not the message board, and in reality have very little overlap outside of a tacit agreement that Cecil is almost always a reliable cite, what does this advice mean, exactly? Only posters who agree with Cecil should be allowed? That seems an unlikely position for you to be advocating. Perhaps you mean that only posts that meet Cecil’s standards for accuracy and completness be allowed? That’d be nice, I suppose, but it seems unlikely. Since you brought this up in the context of a complaint about overly partisan posters, perhaps you are suggesting that everyone should follow Cecil’s lead in excising political bias from their posts? If that’s the case, I suggest that you are the one who needs to spend more time reading the columns.
So, there’s your object lesson in clear communication. You’ve only posted four sentences in direct response to me, and yet you have been so totally incapable of communicating any sort of an actual point, I’ve been able to interpret a bible’s worth of possible meaning out of them, and that’s without even trying. I think clear, declarative setences are much more your style. Trying to be clever just doesn’t suit you.
[QUOTE=Grundlepuck]
Thanks! 
Sigh.
Well that didn’t hurt too much. I expected better than an ad hominem attack. If you really believe this why did you even continue this post?
Well all I had to work with was Hambil’s assertion that “it is acceptable to name something for what it is” which is either blindingly obvious or incoherent, but certainly no defense for his “rhetoric thread” construction, and your examples which were all noun+noun combinations. I was simply pointing out that there are other ways to form compund nouns and that simply stringing two together is insuffucient in and of itself.
Well I may have been sloppy with my turn of phrase here but it seems to me that the two phenomena I was linking both fall under the category “ways to form compound nouns,” so I’m unconvinced that they are totally unrelated. Are you sure you meant to use such an absolute term? And by the way, I look like a fool most of the time. You should have said “look more like a fool.”
Now Grundlepuck, (man I love that name) I admit I felt a tremor of trepidation when you kindly advised me to back away from the fire, but this is just some lameass shit here good buddy. All I did was take your three examples and show how **Hambil’**s example was different. I made no assertion, implicit or otherwise, concerning “a general rule encompassing the entire English language” and for you to claim so is frankly stupid. That fire is getting cooler and cooler.
Show me where anyone but you, including the OP, claims this was not a serious example. Are you a mind reader?
.Actually I did look it up. Perhaps you could provide me with yours?
This has only been dismissed by you and the dismissal took the form of “nuh uh.” Not even the OP has claimed it was a joke.
Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! Only a dime one tenth of a dollar! See the only Feral Adhomineus Telepathic Pufferpud in captivity. She walks, she talks, she reads your mind at a hundred paces!
Where did he make his case? The bark dog example was him making his case. You know, you can take a button and sew a vest on it with the best of them. Once again you have insulted me rather than attempt to make a point. Doesn’t all that bile back up on you after awhille?
Ok I admit you’ve left me in in the dust on this one. You do understand the difference between *example *and artifact don’t you?
I can find plenty. Draw what conclusions from that you will.
Try these:
Ok in the spirit of full disclosure I tend to use those old fashioned hard bound non hyper kind of dictionaries. You have shown me a couple of definitions I had not found. I am one of those guys who believe that if you can dredge up 10 different definitions of a word and 5 of them contradict the other 5 then you pretty much have a useless word, but I will concede that it is possible to use the word “rhetoric” to mean “empty political speech.” The preponderance of the definitions would suggest the opposite meaning but, as the Firesign Theatre would say, “Yes, understanding the problems of today’s world is a bit like having bees live in your head, but, there they are!” My feet got a liittle toasty but damn, girl, it wasn’t as bad as you made it out to be! (Smiley Face)
Hambil wrote:
Hambil, you’re new so possibly you aren’t aware of this rule. We don’t permit deliberately misquoting other posters, i.e. creating “quotes” boxes that attribute something to another poster that actually wasn’t said.
The reason for the rule is that the practice caused serious confusion in the past, not to mention wholesale flamouts. For that reason we don’t allow creating quotes that never existed.
You did label your ‘quote’ clearly, but in all fairness I must warn you against doing this again in any manner.
TVeblen
Pit Mod
Thanks trandallt – I’m certainly willing to my have my post stand against that and let anyone who still happens to be be reading this thread form their own judgments.
Just between you and me since we’re buds now and everything you gotta admit that your boy Hambil is is kinda gettin in a tailspin back there, n’est ce pas?
Well, your life has probably conditioned you to consider polite tolerance as being “buds”, so I’ll give you that one. But otherwise, if you’ve got something to say to Hambil then say it to him you cowardly sniping fucktard.
And learn how to use tags so that people have to actually read your posts to figure out that you are an idiot. Blather on all you want “bud”, I’m done with your sorry ass – life is too short.
Completely untrue. Scientists don’t ‘examine all the options’ - they’d never accomplish anything - much like your post. They start with the most likely posibility. If it turns out to be inconclusive they widen their search. The same basic concept not only can be applied to everyday ‘facts’ you here, but is applied by everyone all the time. It’s the natural way the brain works - by associating something unknown with it’s closest known things.
Feel free to pretend that my words exist in a vacuum and call them vague and unclever, but don’t think it’s me you’re making look stupid.
I apologize. I was responding to this post in this same thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5276186&postcount=42
I didn’t think I had to. But, I’ve once again over estimated humanity.
Ah, I apologize to you for missing that, Hambil. Your reply makes more sense, even though the form is still prohibited.
Ace, you’re relatively new here as well but deliberately creating deceptive quotes is not permitted. You are warned in turn not to do this again.
TVeblen
Pit Mod
OK well I have to admit I did not see that coming. In all seriousness and not trying to get the last word in here I did misconstrue polite tolerance for friendliness. Consider me forewarned.
I have sniped at Hambil but he has chosen not to respond.
You can be done with my sorry ass all you want but until you are able to construct an argument without resorting to ad hominem attacks and lamely derivative name calling I suggest you be done with it at a distance. I seem to have gotten under your skin somehow, which was truly never my intention, but I grow weary of your childish, repetitive slanderous insinuations and am left to wonder why in 16 months at the SDMB fully 18% of your posts have been spent making inferences about my private life and insulting my intelligence. Life is indeed too short and I suggest you grab a slice as soon as you can for it is surely pasing you by.