07/30/14

Ruthful, funct and doleless


Crazy EnglishWhy can’t someone be clueful, only clueless? Hapful, not simply hapless? Aweless instead of just awful? Ruthful not merely ruthless? Doleless, not just doleful? Gormful, not just gormless?

We can be thoughtful or thoughtless, careful or careless, mindful and mindless. Why not ruthful and gormful? Why not the qualities of ruthiness, gormliness and doleliness?

Can we be kempt or just unkempt? Couth or just uncouth? Gruntled or just disgruntled? Shevelled or just dishevelled?* Maculate or just immaculate? Domitable, or just indomitable? Ruly or just unruly? Can we come ravelled instead of just unravelled? Can we member a corpse instead of just dismember it? Can a Wikipedia entry be an ambiguation rather than a title=”Wikipedia” href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disambiguation” target=”_blank”>disambiguation?

If we’re not disappointed are we appointed? If not distressed are we tressed? If not discombobulated are we combobulated? If not nonplussed, are we plussed? If we’re not impeccable, are we just peccable? Can we be chalant rather than nonchalant? If we don’t want to dismantle something, can we mantle it? If we don’t disfigure a painting, do we figure it? If it’s not inevitable, is it evitable? If an event doesn’t unnerve us, is it nerving? If it’s not defunct is it funct? If an online hoax isn’t debunked, can it be bunked instead?

Can we be placcable, effable, trepid, ert, ane and feckful? can I rupt the proceedings? Can any love be requited? Can any heroes be sung? If I don’t dismiss you, do I miss you? If you stop your incessant chatter, does it become cessant? If I’m not an imbecile in your eyes, am I a becile? Can a tool be wieldy?

Some of these odd-seeming words have been in our language, just fallen out of favour or replaced by other terms. Ruthful, the Word Detective tells us, was in common use in the 12th until the 14th century, although it hung around as an anachronism until the 19th century.** Ruly was coined around 1400 CE, according to World Wide Words. Tools could never be wieldy, but persons could be, in the sense of being nimble (same source).

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07/26/14

Six years ago…


Anniversary cartoonI received a notification last week from WordPress noting that I registered with them six years ago. Six years with their blogging platform… happy anniversary to me… what, no flowers? Party favours? Is this my modern life: email reminders from software companies?

That got me thinking about dates and anniversaries. And in trying to recall them all, keep the dates straight. Pull the weave apart and follow the threads backwards.

Why are we humans fixated with numbers that are easily divisible by five and ten? Is there any more relevance, more importance to an anniversary of 5, 10 or 20 years than one of 7, 11 and 19 years? Is it some biological need for a certain type of mathematical order? A need for a tidy whole number divisor? An innate tidiness?

Or is it really a cultural association that has been artificially built and reinforced by commercial interests to sell certain products at identifiable times of our lives: jewellery, flowers, cards and so on?

Is six years some sort of personal milestone that is somehow different from, say, five or seven years? Is six years a “yeah!” or a “meh…” event? And would ten be a “hooray” event simply because the number 10 resonates better than nine or eleven?

Well, to be fair, it’s not much of an anniversary either way. I didn’t spend the last six years exclusively with WordPress. I set up an account, tinkered with it, and experimented with a test blog hosted on their servers. I spent a lot of time looking at what their product could do, at the merits of self- versus WP-hosted services, and at issues like stability, users, plug-ins, etc.

I also tried some of their competition, too. For my purposes, I felt WP was superior in most aspects. But then I’m a bit of a tinkerer: I like to get at the code and hack a bit, especially the CSS and HTML. Coincidentally, it was the same year I started playing the ukulele (and charango, but that didn’t last, while the uke has).

But despite having kept an account with WordPress, for most of the decade I’ve been blogging, I used a mod installed on my Invision-based tequila forum instead. (I am now curious and must check to see if those early WP test posts are still online somewhere, though as far as I recall they were left in draft mode, not published for public amusement).

After several years with Invision, I was unsatisified with the mod and wanted more features, control, and more stable software. My old archives are still online but all my new material – almost 700,000 words worth – written in WordPress, is here.

I finally made the move to a self-hosted WordPress blog in December, 2011 and after some tinkering, and test posts, I began to blog continually with the WP software here in January, 2012. So perhaps WordPress should have sent me an anniversary remind of that date, instead.

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07/25/14

Gangs of Feathered T-Rex


Packs of tyrannosaurs
Imagine, if you will, an early morning scene in the late Cretaceous. The air is quiet as the day warms. At the edge of a large forest a plain of ferns ripples in the light breeze (grass would not evolve for another 20 or so million years). Under the canopy of the ancient beeches and maples, there is movement. Nothing fast, just a hint. A flash of mottled colour against the background. A glint of light off an eye. A soft snuffling. A feather falls silently to the forest floor.

Among the nearby ferns, a pack of ceratopsians grazes, adults watching the woods carefully, nervously, herding the young towards the safety of the pack’s centre with prods of their heads, honking to get the young ones’ attention. They eat the flowers that dot the plain among the ferns and cycads, chew the horsetails that grow at the edge of the ponds and streams. A youngster sees a tasty patch of moss and, unnoticed, slips out between the elders to get it.

Suddenly the forest explodes. Leaves scatter and branches snap as the muscular forms crash through the cover and converge on the young triceratops, separated from the horned protection of the pack. Two large adults, a teenager and two younger tyrannosaurs running a well-coordinated hunt as they have done many times int he past. Their speed makes them a blur against the trees.

The ceratopsians bellow in fear and rage, and quickly form a circle, heads out, protecting the oldest and youngest within the centre. The pack of tyrannosaurs’ charge sounds like thunder, and they screech in anticipation as they race to surround the doomed youngster. They circle rapidly, darting to avoid the feeble attempts at defence from the surrounded dinosaur.

The herd can’t save it, and they move away, quickly, the outer ring still shuffling backwards to keep their ferocious, horned heads facing the danger. The tyrannosaur pack ignores the herd as it feeds, tearing off chunks of the living flesh as the youngster’s screams get fainter.

Their hunger slaked for the moment, the pack would soon retire to the forest to look for another easy target that might venture close by.

Triceratops vs tyrannosaur

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07/23/14

Those Crazy Creationists


Alien JesusI know, I know, it’s the proverbial fish in a barrel when you critique creationists. They are just so easy to mock. But how can you help yourself when someone like Ken Ham opens his mouth in public? The media just love to pounce all over him. He must take his lessons in PR from Ann Coulter. And like with Ann, the controversy probably helps sell his books.

(And, from what I see, selling books is really what Ken is all about. But that’s not the point of this post.)*

Ken’s latest foray into looniness – a territory he has already explored well and thoroughly – came in reports of his demand for NASA to end the space program searching for signs of alien life because all aliens are going to Hell.

Well, that’s not exactly what he said. But he implied it when he wrote,

“…any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation… You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation. One day, the whole universe will be judged by fire, and there will be a new heavens and earth… An understanding of the gospel makes it clear that salvation through Christ is only for the Adamic race—human beings who are all descendants of Adam.”

The theological argument might be a tad complex for an audience decreasingly schooled in complex ideas and critical thinking, and increasingly schooled in wardrobe malfunctions and nipple slips as “newsworthy” content, so the media boiled it down to a rather simplistic idea. I mean, after all, if you’re saved, you go to heaven, right? So logically in the Christian cosmos where do you go if you’re not saved? Right: hell.

No, Ham didn’t use those exact words, but it’s not hard to get the inference from what he did say. (and he’s almost mild compared to some of his fellow religionists – some Christians  won’t even admit other Christians into their heaven if they aren’t of the same denomination! I suppose it’s not terribly crowded up there, and the line-up for an espresso will be short…)

Aliens, therefore, are all doomed, just as much as any Earthy sinners (not to mention those of other religions or denominations), because Jesus couldn’t save them. Why not? Because Jesus was the saviour for this world only, not other worlds. So any ETs are doomed. Q.E.D.

Well, that is if there are aliens. Ham doesn’t actually believe in them – in fact he doesn’t believe in ANY sort of life outside this planet – and roundly criticized NASA for, as he sees it, wasting millions of dollars in a futile search for non-existent alien life. According to the HuffPost:

…Ham, president and CEO of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., said we probably are alone. He wrote “earth was specially created,” and the entire hunt for extraterrestrials is “really driven by man’s rebellion against God in a desperate attempt to supposedly prove evolution!”

Gosh, our desperate attempt to prove a scientific fact. We’re all damned. Just like ET. Well, maybe not Ham and his fellow creationists, I presume.

To be fair, Ken made a video after his original post, this time encouraging NASA to continue its search (i.e. continue to waste money) because it would prove creationists right by not finding extraterrestrial life:

You have to chuckle over the prop. Looking for aliens in the midday sun using a hobbyist telescope. Cute.

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07/22/14

Me, Myself and I


T-shirtAt council meetings across the province, you will hear someone say “Moved by myself…” when presenting a motion at the table.

To me it’s like nails on a blackboard. The grammatically correct way to present a motion is, of course, to say, “Moved by me…” So why the mistake?

Common misunderstanding and discomfort, it appears, according to the grammar sites I read today.

People often (and incorrectly) think “me” is incorrect or even coarse (well, it is when you say something like “Me and my friends are going dancing” of “I got me a pickup truck…”).

That unnecessary caution is why some people will say things like “It is I” or “It’s for my wife and I” when they really should say “It is me” and “It’s for my wife and me.” And say “between you and I…” when they mean “between you and me…”

“I” is the subjective pronoun, not the objective one. That’s “me.”

So what about myself? That’s called a reflexive pronoun and to be used properly, it needs a reference back to the speaker (reflect = reflexive) – i.e. a use of the subjective pronoun.

For example, when someone says “I made it myself”  they are being grammatically correct. “Myself” reflects back to the subject, “I.” When they say “It was made by myself” they are incorrect and should say “It was made by me.” Same with “Please contact me” – correct. “Please contact myself” – incorrect. Why? because in these two sentences, “myself” has nothing to reflect.

Reflexive pronouns are always the object of a sentence, never the subject. So “Bill and I played ukulele last night” is correct. “Bill and myself played ukulele…” isn’t because “myself” cannot act as a subject. Just like you would never say “Bill and me played ukulele…” or use the pronoun by itself: “Myself played the ukulele…”

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07/21/14

Chemtrails: yet more conspiracy claptrap


Clueless wingnutsA bit of simple math was used to debunk the chemtrail nonsense conspiracy recently. Over at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry’s website there’s a great piece explaining why there simply aren’t enough pilots, planes or chemicals for the chemtrail silliness to be true:

A typical crop duster might use seven ounces of agent diluted in seven gallons of water to cover one acre of land. Chemtrail “people dusters” would use a similar concentration to cover the entire United States, just to be safe. For 2.38 billion acres of land, the pilots would then need—for just one week of spraying—120 billion gallons of these cryptic chemicals. That’s around the same volume as is transported in all the world’s oil tankers in one year. And such an incredible amount of agent would need an incredible number of planes. Considering that a large air freighter like a Boeing 747 can carry around 250,000 pounds of cargo, at the very least, the government would need to schedule four million 747 flights to spread their chemicals each week—eighteen times more flights per day than in the entire US.

Unless a plane could make multiple runs per day, a true chemtrail conspiracy would need 2,700 times as many 747s as have ever been constructed.

And the article continues deconstructing the numbers and shredding the conspiracy. As have so many clear-headed writers in the recent past, all of whom are ignored by the True Believers in this, the nuttiest of  notions.

I wonder if the woman holding the sign in the photo above realizes her tautology. Yes, anyone who is “aware of” (i.e. believes in) chemtrails will be sickened the same way medieval people were infected with disease by believing in demons and fairies as their cause. Belief doesn’t define truth nor does believing in an untruth make it a truth, no matter how many wingnuts believe it.

Despite all the science and the math, despite the explanations, despite careful and considered debunking by people who have experience, education, doctorates and degrees, and basic common sense, chemtrail conspiracists continue their madcap race to prove facts, science and logic don’t matter on the internet. On the internet what matters is being able to have your say, no matter how stupid, pointless or wrong. And to say it more stridently than the level-headed, reasonable folks.

It’s a race to the bottom. Who will get there first: New World Order conspiractists, 9/11 conspiracists, reptoid consipracists, Bigfoot conspiracists, anti-vaccine conspiracists… and with them run the believers in the Illuminati, angels, ghosts, creationism, flat Earth, geocentric universe, homeopathy, reptilians, Atlantis, Lemuria, UFOs? The Net is laden with such claptrap. The tin-foil-hat brigade on the march, defending people from reason.

Why do people need to believe in this stuff? Superstition and gullibility can’t account for all the believers. Nor all those folk who get hoodwinked into tagging along with the bandwagons. In part it’s because the technology of social media allows those bandwagons to roll easily along without the annoying hindrance of science, common sense or critical thinking.

Eric Hoffer wrote in his book, Reflections on the Human Condition,(1973):

One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world’s problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive – it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.

Saner and better-educated people than I have debunked this nonsense many times in the past, and will continue to do so, but unfortunately they are outnumbered by the very vocal, very loud wingnuts who help spread this mind-eating crap. So buckle in and read the rest.

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