P.J. Alling wrote: >Not all of it, a sampling, enough really. For every pithy comment, >there's a ton of dross, and it's quite enjoyable to read the ODE at >times, at least it can be educational, not that I expect that most >students actually open to a random page and read a few citations for >fun. There's one thing I can say about the OED that I can't say about >twitter, no dross.
The point is your statement that you have "read Twitter" is as valid as the student's claim to have read the OED. For every academic who uses the OED there is indeed plenty of superfluous material (and, yes, even errors), as far as far as his/her individual area of expertise is concerned, but they have the sense not to dismiss the whole simply because they aren't interested in some of the parts. The Twitter feeds I follow include the Paris Review and the London Review of Books. Both frequently have useful and concise pointers to articles that I would otherwise miss. And never any dross. For all the undoubted silliness in Cotty's Twitter feed, he and other journalists find it a valuable tool for business purposes, keeping clients and peers appraised of important matters. I know of physicians who use it similarly. If you're going to write off any medium that supplies dross as well as value I recommend you delete all web browsers from your computer, too. -- Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
