Horseshit, knave.
Not that it really matters, because I don’t really think you guys are accomplishing anything by only posting “questions” to elucidate the points of others. One can quite easily make his own opinion known ecen tho’ one limits oneself to posting interrogatories, can’t one?
Out of curiosity – what do you think the end result was?
A good life’s lesson is employing subterfuge to futher self-aggrandizement?
And see? Another “question” which makes my personal opinion quite transparent.
Don’t you think it’s stupid to say that you can’t make your opinion known only through interrogatories?
Can one?
And you can get more tips like this in Jesus’s new book, How to Win Friends and Rise from the Dead! Buy it today!
This is silly. I have agreed with you by name on both occasions when you have been right on this board.
You still fail to read for comprehension.
Let’s now return to those thrilling days of yesterpost and review the thread.
So. In a thread in which you were taken to task for blaming Hollywood for a change to a word’s meaning, I provided (or was supported by) citations by no fewer than four other persons that the word had a pejorative meaning in some cultures within the computer industry in the 1970s. I then demonstrated that the earliest possible dissemination of the word by Hollywood occurred no earlier than 1982. In response, in this thread, you have claimed a “victory” over me in a discussion in which you have misrepresented a single question by another poster as having overturned my evidence.
Quotations from Is it CRACKER or HACKER? which Scott dismissed (probably without reading–or, perhaps, understanding).
[Note ftg’s reference to “wheel.” Wheel was appearing in magazine articles in 1979 about programers at universities breaking into other college’s computers. He dates hacker as a pejorative to the period “long” before that–placing the pejorative date more than five years prior to the Hollywood portrayal.
So, tomndebb, which is winning: Your head or the brick wall?
Before, you just linked to something without looking. This time, I can only conclude that you’re lying. Not only does the page you linked to not say anything about whether it’s “okay”, the site is not a usage guide. It is based upon observation of a linguistic phenomenon. The two perspectives on grammar - descriptivism and prescriptivism - are subtler than you seem to think, and while I am purely descriptivist in my views of grammar, that shouldn’t be taken to mean that it’s valid to pretend that there is no such thing as language error.
The word “eggcorn” and the observance of them (along with the initial sighting of “social morays”) comes from the fine folks at Language Log, which is a delightful read if you’re interested in linguistics, and the credentials of the authors are quite good. So I’ll use their methodology for quick-and-dirty evaluation of “social morays”. That is, I’ll Google it. “Social mores” is 95 times more common. Further, many of the links on the first page (at least) of results on “social morays” are references to it as an error, or humor based on puns (as in the old Far Side cartoon, captioned “Social morays”, depicting eels schmoozing at a party.)
Spellings can change, over time, but not very rapidly. This is still very clearly an error - you misanalyzed a word that you first heard in speech as a different word. That’s a common phenomenon, but it doesn’t make it somehow “equally correct” to misanalyze it that way (especially since everyone’s misanalyses will be slightly different.) I don’t mean to push prescriptivism, but the idea that there’s no right or wrong is very limited when you refer to writing, because writing is by its very nature a learned activity. It’s something taught, and something agreed upon, in a more or less explicit way; it’s not part of a person’s natural linguistic abilities. It’s not really valid, then, to apply standards of grammar (which is very much inherent to the human mind) to writing (and especially not spelling.) Your misspelling of the word does not reflect a regional word usage, or a word no longer used in standard English, or anything of the sort. It was a mistake, pure and simple.
And while mistakes in writing are acceptable, you make more of them than the average Doper. I would guess that you make dozens of times more of them, frankly. It interferes constantly with our ability to understand you.
You have to understand, as well, how foolish it makes you look when you decide you’re going to inform another person of something you think they aren’t aware of - and not only are they aware of it, but they’re able to point out just how much you screwed up in your attempt to explain it. You took a superior tone with Sauron, presuming to correct his understanding of something - acting as though he confused the words “morals” and “mores” - but in the process, you revealed that you don’t even really know the word “mores”. And Sauron did. It’s not just the mistake you made - it’s the presumptuousness of thinking to school someone else in something you very clearly don’t understand.
You do that a lot, Scott, and it makes you look far more foolish than you probably are. (And I’m mentioning once again, for emphasis, that your claim that the link suggests that “social morays” is an acceptable usage, is false. The link made no such claim. And the Language Log folks, who are professors of linguistics, don’t explain their occasional sightings of eggcorns as anything but pure and simple mistakes.)
Do you get what we mean, then, when we say you’re not showing that to be the case? If you are smart, then start writing like someone with your abilities. Stop imitating the worst of teenage IRC idiots when you write. Take the time to freaking punctuate and capitalize like you’re supposed to. Why, if you’re able to write like an adult, do you persist in writing like a mentally-challenged child? You can see that people here have high standards for clear, readable, correct writing. Why would you think that your writing doesn’t have to be up to par?
If you’re smart, try showing it sometime.
That’s too bad. I had chalked up a lot of your problems to age and inexperience. Trouble writing coherently is understandable in an adolescent. In an adult, it’s much sadder. And your insistence that your constant writing mistakes are somehow not a problem is stubborn, and peculiar as well, since we’ve told you time and again that your writing is often simply very, very difficult or impossible to understand.
Agreeing with your viewpoint and claiming that your argument is valid are entirely different things. Your politics are those of most Dopers, Scott. And frankly, there’s no shortage of people around willing to flame others just for disagreeing on political issues. Obviously in virtually any argument, you’ll have folks agreeing with you. Don’t construe that as endorsement of your argument, just of your opinion. The fact that many of us whose politics agree with yours are still not fond of your arguments should be particularly troubling to you.
You ain’t the only one waiting, brother. (I’ve been ridiculously excited all summer. I’m a nerd.)
Except it wasn’t a debate in the first place. I asked a straight-up factual question. And you didn’t manage to support a single one of your statements - you repeated something over and over, and you happened to have someone who already had the same opinion. You made up “facts” with no support, and you couldn’t support your claims in the logical points I challenged you on, either. I wouldn’t even call what you did “debate” so much as pointless bickering. You certainly didn’t “win” a damn thing.
Scott, I mean it when I say that if this is what you consider a victory, you entirely lack the ability to judge those things.
That Jesus was a pretty smart dude.
So, Excalibre, which is winning: Your head or the brick wall?
It occurs to me now that Scott Plaid attempted to argue in this thread that “social morays” was correct because lots of people use it (although they actually don’t), but in the “hacker” thread he was trying to argue on the basis of some amorphous authority that one usage of a word is right while another is wrong, even if the wrong usage is actually the commoner one.
That’s all. I was just noticing the inconsistency. Move along now.
So, Excalibre, which is winning: Your head or the brick wall?
Excalibre, you’re accusing Scott of inconsistency?
::: gasp :::
Next, you’ll be accusing him of incoherence.
Gosh, remember when that sentence was interesting? You know, the first time someone said it? :rolleyes:
Scott:
People may agree with your position (especially here on the SDMB, which leans the same way you appear to lean, politically - for the most part).
Those same people do not agree with your ARGUMENTS.
If you are pointing at the people that hold the same position you do, and using that as a tool to judge whether or not your arguments are valid, then you are using the wrong method.
Here’s a for-instance:
Joe may post a thread saying that the minimum wage should be raised. When asked why, Joe says that a decent society owes all people an above-average wage.
And Joe might point out how many people agree with him that raising the minimum wage is a good idea - therefore, he has won!
But while many people - here, especially - may agree that raising the minimum wage is a good idea, no one (except, possibly, you) would argue that all workers can get an above-average wage.
Let me ask you this: you think of yourself as pretty smart.
Do you think anyone else on this board thinks of you that way?
So are you. I love Him very much, and your speaking kindly of Him means a great deal to me. Thank you.
Please do your witnessing elsewhere, Lib. The main page says posts of this nature should be in GD exclusively.
Oh, for the love of shortbread. That wasn’t witnessing.
Anyway, Lib, I’m not Christian, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t see just how much wisdom Jesus had. A quick glance through the Gospels shows just how many great things Jesus said. I hope I’ve never suggested otherwise.
I don’t know what could account for the problems I’ve had with you in the past, other than my own judgmentalism and myopia. I owe you more apologies than I can likely recall.
And a quick glance thru a “higher criticism” text, or one of Gerhard Lüdemann books, shows just how many of the great things attributed to Jesus by the Bible are bullshit. Lib’s professing his adoration of his savior and proclaiming His greatness. If that ain’t witnessing, witnessing doesn’t exist.