the dearth of knowledge that we are suffering from

[Irishman]

JJohanPallen said:

To the Irishman,
You made this statement in your message_

“Humane: you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”.

I am asserting that you are a liar.

1. It’s a movie paraphrase, from The Princess Bride. If you don’t recognize it, that is your loss.

2. How am I lying? Exactly how have I stated something I know to be untrue? From everything I can gather in this thread (and the two other internet links others have provided), you do not appear to understand what the word means. You keep using it in an unusual way, not consistent with normal use for that word. Either you are not sure what that word means, or you are choosing to use it [del]incorrectly[/del] in a novel manner for your own purposes. Be advised by doing so you risk not communicating clearly with your target audience.

3. You might want to read up on the rules of this message board. Calling people names is not allowed. If you want to insult me, you may post in The BBQ Pit. In that forum, you are free to insult me any way you wish. However, I must caution you that (a) the people reading that forum tend to weigh in on threads there with their own opinion of whom it is that deserves to be insulted. You might just bite off more than you can chew. (b) I have no desire to get into an insult war with you. If you start a thread, I likely will ignore it.

4. If you wish to assert that I am incorrect, and that you actually do know the meaning of the word “humane”, you are welcome to do so and do not require using the word “liar” to make your point. I would gladly accept a demonstration that you do actually know the standard definition of the word. I would also accept an explanation for why you are using it the way you are.

5. My point was not really to complain about how you are using the word “humane”. It is awkward, but it is not especially troubling. What bothers me is your behavior of coming in here and lecturing everyone else on a language that is not your first language and you are clearly not an expert in. (See, I just ended a sentence with a preposition, and yet my meaning is clear and to restructure the sentence to be grammatically “correct” would make it colloquially cumbersome and sound awkward to the ear. That’s one of the things that a language actually does in practice - breaks all the “rules” when it is convenient.)

I am offering you a £100.00 bet that you can never prove your statement true.

How exactly would I be able to prove that point? What point am I proving? That you do not know the meaning of the word “humane”? Well, other than the evidence you have provided by your continued use of the word, what other evidence would I be able to provide? It’s not like I can see into your head.

Or is the point I actually made that I think you do not know the meaning of the word? How would I prove that assertion? What would constitute proof of my thoughts? Can I just restate: “No, it’s true, I do not think you know the meaning of the word.” Will you send me my £100.00 now?

Will you accept the bet?.

If you prove your statement true, I will pay £100.00 into your PayPal account within one hour.

I can’t accept the bet until we clarify the rules. For instance, who will be the judge? You? Me? The other posters in this thread? Cecil? A random sampling of strangers that you find and show the thread to, that conveniently none of us can verify actually exist? Santa Claus? My mother? And as I said, we need to clarify which statement it is that I have to prove, what will be considered proof, etc.

Or we can agree that your “bet” is an empty rhetorical tool because you know there is a priori no way for me to ever prove the assertion, because the assertion is unfalsifiable. “Prove that pink is not my favorite color. Go on, I dare you.”

I suggest that you lighten up, realize that you are taking comments intended as jokes to be personal remarks, and that you concede that you are not the expert on English that you pretend to be.

Now to address what appears to be one of your essential points - it has dominated your comments here and entered your posts elsewhere.

You take issue with the use of the pronoun “it” for addressing babies. You feel that doing so dehumanizes the infants, making them less because it fails to acknowledge gender, which is a human trait and is expected when speaking of adults or even older children (children older than infants, i.e. toddlers and up). You apparently are concerned that by our language choice we are subconsciously framing our thoughts in such a way that we dehuminize babies, and that lessens us as people. I’m not sure what you think the result of this would be - is it the feeling that it would trickle over into other behaviors rather than just word use, and affect how we treat babies? Maybe make it easier to abuse or discard them or something?

Notice that I am drawing all of this out of what little you have posted. I do not think you have done a clear job of explaining why it is important. You have not done a good job of describing what is wrong and why. You have framed your argument in terms of how the English language works rather than how you feel we should use the language to frame our thoughts, including our unconscious assumptions. You have turned this into an argument over grammar and idiom when it appears to me that your real point is the psychology of how we think and how that affects our behavior in unexpected ways. That could be an interesting discussion and a valid point, but you have yet failed to get the conversation on that topic, primarily through your choice of framing the context of this discussion, but also through oddities of your use of words and grammatical errors of your own.

Canadjun said:

It seems the English language isn’t the only thing he has interesting ideas about. He also doesn’t believe you can have fractional percentages of anything.

I would balk at using “33 and 1/2 percent”, but am fully comfortable with decimal percentages (33.5%). It’s just decimal notation. Percent is a standard level of scaling. On could adjust to perthousand (335/1000), but it doesn’t sound as smooth and doesn’t have a handy symbol (at least not on a standard keyboard).

JJohanPallen said:

To Mr. Canadjun,
I am deducing from your comments that you have zero intention of engaging either my intellect or my humanity.
Is this deduction of mine about your intention accurate?.

Are you willing to replace your insults, your innuendo and your indictment with your money?.

I have no idea if Mr. Canadjun wishes to address you directly rather than speak about your ideas, but I fail to see any insult from him.

Exapno Mapcase,

Cheshire Human said:

Grandma knows how to suck eggs!

Why would Grandma wish to suck eggs? (I know it’s an expression, but one that’s always baffled me.)

[Irishman]

From the link posted by Klaus_K:

There is no “war” between the breast feeding and the bottle feeding of a child. The composition of breast milk makes us human. The feeding of a child at a woman’s breast influences the psychology of the woman and the child. That also makes us human. If a mother puts breast milk in a bottle and feeds her child with it while he/she is at her breast, there will be minimal psychological loss to either one of them from the absence of the contact between the mother’s breast and her child’s mouth. The feeding of cow juice to a human child is a perverting of biology. The function of the composition of bovine milk is to nurture a calf into either a cow or a bull. European women refer to their pets as he or she. They refer to their own children as it. It is not surprising that they are not sensitive to the difference between their own milk and cow juice. They claim that they are more intelligent than African women. With such dulled maternal, feminine and humane instincts, I do not see how tha

Cow juice - how funny. However, you are incorrect in your assertion about baby formula. True, it uses cow milk as a base, but it is not strictly cow milk, it is adapted with additives to more closely correspond to human milk and more appropriately match the dietary needs of human babies.

But even if it were just cow milk, it’s not like that would somehow transform the baby into a cow. Plenty of human children and adults drink cow milk (and goat milk and yak milk and many other forms of milk) throughout their lives and remain fully human.

I will also say another point about babies and “it”. English allows the use of the pronoun when talking about hypotheticals or babies that you do not specifically identify, do not know of the gender. However, I doubt there is more than a handful of women alive who would speak of her own baby as “it”. In those cases, a specific baby is intended and the gender is known.

[Cheshire_Human]

@Irishman

Why would Grandma wish to suck eggs? (I know it’s an expression, but one that’s always baffled me.)

After that, and you still don’t know what “Grandma sucking eggs” means? Let’s pretend I never used that idiom, OK? :rolleyes:

[John_W.Kennedy]

I think everyone in this thread (with one obvious exception) knows what the idiom means – but Irishman has a point. I’ve wondered for nearly half a century what the literal referent is. The best guess appears to be the automatic expectation, several centuries ago, that granny would be toothless.

[Czarcasm]

I think Mr. Borat has left the building.

[Chefguy]

@Czarcasm

I think Mr. Borat has left the building.

To have sexy with #4 prostitute in village, no doubt.

[Irishman]

See, I’ve connected it with trying to hollow out eggshells to make empty eggs for some reason. Put a tiny hole and then suck the egg.

[Vlad_Igor]

Hmmm. Reminiscent of Kurt Stocklmier, with Mark Peeters added judiciously for seasoning. On the finish, subtle overtones of Coberst. It is refreshing to see that addition of Archimedes Plutonium has been left out; that is so overused. MD 20/20 would be the wine to choose with this dish.

[Cheshire_Human]

@Irishman

See, I’ve connected it with trying to hollow out eggshells to make empty eggs for some reason. Put a tiny hole and then suck the egg.

Referring back to your earlier post, as well as this one, yes it’s based on the assumption that Granny would be toothless. Poke a hole in the raw egg, and Granny would suck out the egg’s innards. Yummy raw egg! Actually, I quite like them raw, so I’m all set when I wind up toothless!

Still, the basic idea of the idiom is that Granny gets old and has to eat her eggs that way. Young “wippersnapper” tries to tell Granny how to do it “properly”, as though she’s never done it before, nor seen anyone else do it, and thus needs instructions on something that’s blatantly obvious to anyone who tries to do it. Hence “Don’t try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs, junior!”

It’s a rather old idiom, but anyone who has parents who remember that particular “way back when” [subsistance farming, etc.] knows what it means.

[Cheshire_Human]

@Cheshire_Human

It’s a rather old idiom, but anyone who has parents who remember that particular “way back when” [subsistance farming, etc.] knows what it means.

And GHOD help us kids! Damn but they get …

Let’s just drop this… :p:D

[Rico]

<mod>

Think we’ve covered enough ground here?

I do.

Closed.

</mod>