Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 11:25 AM, Parks, Raymond rcpa...@sandia.gov wrote: My wife hates New and Improved and news-stories about vehicular homicide that state the car hit the group of children at the school bus stop. The first has been a staple of language comedy - how can something be new and improved at the same time? Would it help to think of the phrase as a shortening of renewed, and improved in the renewal? Her gripe with the second is that a car (or truck or ...) has no volition - it must be controlled by someone. The driver hit the group of children with the car under their control. This will still be true for autonomous vehicles - even if the passengers in the car have no control (unlikely), the software developers who program the algorithms of the autonomous vehicle will be liable when the car hits the school children - the programmers hit the school children. No, that is the opposite of what happened - the car physically contacted (hit) the children, while the driver was shielded from physically contacting the children by the shell of the car, or the programmer from the indirection of the technology. However, the discussion on how the cause-effect relationship can be parsed as relates to liability in auto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU#http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/19-related accidents is a good one, especially amusing is the idea of software-wrangling using the doctrine of the elemental. On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 10:14 AM, Owen Densmore o...@backspaces.net wrote: If I *was* should be If I were, subjunctive. Loan is a noun so I can not loan you something .. lend (verb) you something. Less - Fewer. It goes on. The was/were thing keeps coming up on alt.usage.english and the English Stack Exchange - it seems like there is not a strong enough grammar in this context for English for there to be a hard-and-fast rule either way; trying to compare English to other languages results in pointless rules like the 'no split infinitives' dogma. I do not think I have heard people say I will loan you something, but I will lend you something seems like it would be rarer still (that is the usage I favour, however). Sometimes I notice people mix up 'lend' and 'rent', oddly enough. -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
Glen - Useless anecdote: I opened the fridge one day and noticed the CO2 regulator on the keg was broken. I asked my office mate about it. He said: Yeah, the regulator broke. I asked: It just spontaneously broke all by itself? He didn't respond. And the keg _in the office_? It just got there all by itself? What are you implying? Are you saying that the alcohol (materially) caused the broken regulator? And hence the efficient blame lies on the agent who placed the alcohol there? Pfft! If anything, alcohol is a depressant and would stabilize the motor control system of the consumer so as to make regulator breakage _less_ likely. Something like carbonated kombucha is way more dangerous, in my not so humble opinion. I have not yet seen you staggeringly drunk, but beyond stabilization of the motor control system, there is a mode where one is likely to lose one's balance and in trying to catch themselves, can tear the tap or regulator from the keg, or the keg from the fridge or heck, the fridge from it's upright position if you are as big and clumsy as I am... And besides, who said that the keg in the fridge in the office had alcohol in it, it *could have been* Kambucha, maybe even with Chia Seeds in it! - Sieve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
Glen- Useless anecdote: I opened the fridge one day and noticed the CO2 regulator on the keg was broken. I asked my office mate about it. He said: Yeah, the regulator broke. I asked: It just spontaneously broke all by itself? He didn't respond. This sounds like a scenario that would happen if XKCD was drawn by Steven Wright. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
On 08/06/2015 12:08 AM, Steve Smith wrote: I don't think that's true at all. It's not the voluntary movement that concerns most. It's the involuntary movement that concerns most, especially liberals, because most liberals (I think) tend to give more weight to unintential or coincident circumstances than most conservatives. Would these be the canonical knee jerk liberals? Or the neologistical knee jerk conservatives? Although I appreciate the pun (is it a pun? can a 2 word phrase be a pun? I was surprised that a 2 word phrase can be an oxymoron.), I'd guess it might be related to the DRD4 gene and the preference some have for new exploratory experiences. I can imagine that anyone open to new experiences would tend to give more weight to coincidences and happenstance than someone less open to new experiences. The latter would be the ammunition, not the guns, right? Once, dynamite was a weapon of choice until the industry came up with a way of tagging it such that even after rapid disassembly one could determine the stick or case of Dynamite it came from and with good record keeping who purchased it and therefore used it or allowed it to be (stolen and?) used. Is there an equivalent for ammunition? I suppose anyone can pour their own bullets, so that doesn't work well... One might be able to design signature rifling that causes new guns to always throw a tagged slug (what about metal-jacket slugs?)... or perhaps tagging the gunpowder (similar to dynamite?) with mixing your own powder being similar in challenge to making your own high explosive to avoid the tagging problem? Yes, ammunition is also part of the material cause. Regulating ammunition is, I think, in the same category as regulating guns, except for the added environmental aspect. Parts of the forest up here are absolutely loaded (!) with slugs from idiots firing their guns for no reason ... as if they were toys. -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella So pour some coins in my crater FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
