Someone posted a witnessing thread for the Raelians religion over in GD. I only skimmed it, but it seemed like pretty standard witnessing fare.
I was wondering why it was removed. Sure it was witnessing. Sure it was almost certainly a drive-by. But witnessing is tolerated in GD isn’t it? And the thread hadn’t been around for long enought to reasonably assume it was drive-by.
Seems odd that we get Christain witnessing threads from time to time and they are permitted, but Raelian witnessing is deleted. Was it the content that was inappropriate, or something else? Useless link to the thread
If you, a member, would like to join the Raelians, then return to the board bringing a testimony of your higher consciousness, I would leave your post alone as witnessing.
When some spam-bot trolls through leaving nothing but a teaser and a link to the Rael site where they are pushing books, seminars, and other money generating items, I am going to treat it as the spam it is. We do the same thing for a couple of recurring Christian spam-bots, as well.
When we describe witnessing, we are discussing the personal expressions of real (not Rael) SDMB members in regard to their beliefs, not advertising.
Fair enough. As I said I hadn’t actually read the post, much less followed the links, so I didn’t relaise it was a spambot. Apparently neither did the several people who actually posted responses.
Does this count as evidence of machine intelligence by the Turing test?
You did. My spelling was both deliberate and perfectly correct.
The question itself is an adaptation from a famous peice of literature, so famous that I can’t even remember the source. But in the context ‘wither’ is the correct spelling. Wither is a somewhat archaic form of ‘whither’ which simpy reflects the age of the original. Of Whither itslef is now considered obsolete and archaic.
Not at all. I routinely make spelling mistakes. Syntax less so.
Just to clarify, the OED is referring to all spellings of “whither” when it says “in all senses, only archaic or literary”. Which was precisley my point. “Whither” itself is archaic and no longer in common usage. So suggesting that a slightly older spelling of “wither” is somehow less correct is meaningless.
Fair enough. No offense meant. It is odd, however, that of the two spellings of an archaic word you would choose the one that has another, modern meaning.
And, believe it or not, I did not know that “whither” was archaic. I read a lot of poetry. Maybe that’s why.
FWIW, the reason I know about your routine spelling errors is I make a point of reading what you post. You have taken a few chunks out of my wall of ignorance.
And as I took pains to point out above, that is because it is a play on an old literary source that spells it in that manner. Just as I would say " A pox on thy software" and not “A pox on your software”. I am well aware that "thy"has not been common English at any time since software was invented. I am simply being faithful to the original source.
Unfortunately those sorts of things don’t work if the audience doesn’t understand that there is an original source. They simply assume any word not in the modern dictionary is a typo, rather than being an accurate transcription of the original.
Whither this or whither that is a stock phrase in pre-20th century English literature. I’d like to see this cite you refer to so often. And I’d particularly like to see whether it’s spelled in the way you suggest in this ‘famous’ quote. One could make almost any typo imaginable and produce a spelling of whither to match from the OED, there’s a proliferation of variants, as there is with a majority of words in the big dic.
Until you produce the cite I’ll go with typo, plain and simple.
Did you even bother to read my posts? You know, where I said I couldn’t remember what the original was. FCOL I couldn’t tell you what the source of “A pox on ???” is either. Nonetheless I know that the original exists in classical literature, I know I have seen the original (presumably Shakespeare). I have simply forgotten what it was.
Now you are just being obtuse, ignorant and rude. I have stated in no uncertain terms that it was not a typo. You are simply calling me a liar.
I have no further inclination to discuss this or anything else with you. Good day.
