Stupid Is the New Smart

[lysleder]

There can be no doubt - ..and this is something everyone can agree on. - that the world is round.

The question seems to be wether it is round like a melon or round like a pizza.

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

9 hours ago, lysleder said:

There can be no doubt - ..and this is something everyone can agree on. - that the world is round.

The question seems to be wether it is round like a melon or round like a pizza.

 

                                                   

[Tom Geiger]

On 2/4/2018 at 12:18 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

They ARE voting. How do you imagine that things got to be the way they are? 

The great majority of what's under the bell-curve is running the show. And you can tell.

I am waiting for the election where Oprah becomes president... only because the other party was running Kim Kardashian!

[slusher]

20 hours ago, Tom Geiger said:

I am waiting for the election where Oprah becomes president... only because the other party was running Kim Kardashian!

Kim Kardashian would be a nightmare with any power. lol

[espo]

17 hours ago, slusher said:

Kim Kardashian would be a nightmare with any power. lol

Has anyone ever figured out what any of the Kardashians really do that makes them so well known. I mean anything truly productive contributors to society as a whole.  

[Tom Geiger]

58 minutes ago, espo said:

Has anyone ever figured out what any of the Kardashians really do that makes them so well known. I mean anything truly productive contributors to society as a whole.  

I believe their function is to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide

[Snake45]

1 hour ago, espo said:

Has anyone ever figured out what any of the Kardashians really do that makes them so well known.  

We needed something after Mike Judge got tired of writing and producing Beavis and Butthead. Nature abhors a vacuum.

[Ace-Garageguy]

3 minutes ago, Snake45 said:

... Nature abhors a vacuum.

Then how do you account for what's in the heads of people who watch "reality" TV?

[Dragline]

Reality TV doesn't exist. Except maybe that Cops show.

[Rob Hall]

2 hours ago, Snake45 said:

We needed something after Mike Judge got tired of writing and producing Beavis and Butthead. Nature abhors a vacuum.

I like his current series, Silicon Valley.   His movie Idiocracy from 2006 was a fun flick, now kind of feels more like a prescient future documentary about the dumbing down of America. 

[Rob Hall]

The Kardashians are famous for being famous, .from their 'reality' TV series to various product endorsements and branded products, they are quite the successful marketing machine..

[Ace-Garageguy]

3 hours ago, Rob Hall said:

The Kardashians are famous for being famous, .from their 'reality' TV series to various product endorsements and branded products, they are quite the successful marketing machine..

I'm not certain if that's more damning of the whole concept of marketing, or of the mindlessly-consuming moronic masses.

I mean...really...what kind of person thinks "oh boy oh boy, I have to run out and buy something because it's associated with the Kardashians"?

Brain-dead, for all practical purposes.

Edited February 9, 2018 by Ace-Garageguy

[slusher]

11 hours ago, espo said:

Has anyone ever figured out what any of the Kardashians really do that makes them so well known. I mean anything truly productive contributors to society as a whole.  

I have yet to figure it out myself but it must keep E from going Bankrupt. I have never watched a minute but what is on the news tells you they are really strange!

[Ace-Garageguy]

Hate being taken for granite?

"Recently a fellow teacher told me about a high school senior who wrote in a college application essay that she did not “want to be taken for granite,” meaning, of course, she did not “want to be taken for granted.” The author of this embarrassing blunder carried a 4.0 GPA, was enrolled in honors English, and attended a highly rated northeast school.
How could this happen?"

Quoted from:   https://mrdad.com/blog/the-incredible-shrinking-vocabularies-of-todays-students/

[Rob Hall]

The spell check in MS Word or whatever program the student wrote the document in found 'granite' to be valid.  The problem is the student didn't know the difference between using 'granted' or 'granite'.  I had a 4.0 GPA throughout high school, was in the National Honor Society, took college prep classes, and I would have found that error...but that was the 1980s, different time and place... 

[Mark]

Too much reliance on spellcheck, particularly in publishing.  If you pore over a copy of Rodder's Journal for example, you can find one of those "wrong word that sounds like the correct one" errors...

[Rob Hall]

Yes, you can't exclusively rely on tools to get your prose correct.  I just a few minutes ago saw someone confused 'quite' with 'quiet' in a car review...saying 'the interior was very quite at highway speeds'...

[Ace-Garageguy]

1 hour ago, Rob Hall said:

The spell check in MS Word or whatever program the student wrote the document in found 'granite' to be valid.  The problem is the student didn't know the difference between using 'granted' or 'granite'.  I had a 4.0 GPA throughout high school, was in the National Honor Society, took college prep classes, and I would have found that error...but that was the 1980s, different time and place... 

 

45 minutes ago, Mark said:

Too much reliance on spellcheck, particularly in publishing.  If you pore over a copy of Rodder's Journal for example, you can find one of those "wrong word that sounds like the correct one" errors...

 

22 minutes ago, Rob Hall said:

Yes, you can't exclusively rely on tools to get your prose correct.  I just a few minutes ago saw someone confused 'quite' with 'quiet' in a car review...saying 'the interior was very quite at highway speeds'...

Which was the entire point of the article I linked to...

"It happened because she never saw these words in print because she does not read; she hears. And even then, she does not listen. She acquired the incorrect phrase the way she learned the majority of her language – from broadcast media. The result is that this student, like most of her peers, does not have a traditional print vocabulary, but an electronic one."

While young people are complaining about the difficulty of being able to find employment that has responsibility, good pay, and the possibility for advancement, it might be good to remember that jobs with those attributes also usually require the ability to communicate clearly and accurately. You learn to write by reading.

And texting just makes it worse.

"Electronic vocabularies dominating the minds of our country’s student population contain fewer words and many incorrect ones. This inferior language skill affects both the writing and reading abilities of its victims. An underdeveloped vocabulary makes it difficult for a person to clearly communicate a verbal or written message and, more importantly, makes it impossible for kids to understand complex text, which is another way of saying that they can’t read."

[MarvinGardens]

^^ All of which were written about/predicted in the short stories of Isaac Asimov.  ^^  

[High octane]

I remember using "spell check"  back in the 50's and it was called using a dictionary. It still works today also.

[Dragline]

As a student of language I am bombarded with this weekly in my perusal of the Internet. I DO NOT have a Masters degree in English. I am several points short of that. My continuing education has come through reading largely. My occupation on the counter at my NAPA store affords me an opportunity to speak with people of almost all education levels. I hear words and phrases horribly mutilated on a daily basis. I do correct those I work with if I have the space to do it. I do it privately and they thank me. They all know I am there to make them better in this respect. They understand I'm not "coming down from the mountain" to scold them on their diction or application of words.

Gentle reminders or corrections if done with tact can avoid shame or even anger from those you wish to elevate.

[Modeltruckbuilder]

27 minutes ago, High octane said:

I remember using "spell check"  back in the 50's and it was called using a dictionary. It still works today also.

"Look it up in the dictionary" was the standard answer whenever anyone would ask the question "How do you spell ......" in school as a kid. Every teacher I ever had would always answer the same way.

[Jim N]

Proofreading is a skill that is not taught anymore.  It used to be that newspapers were impeccably proofed before they went to print.  In the local newspaper, there will be spelling or grammatical errors that occur with enough frequency that it is no longer humorous.

I also read an article recently where businesses are having to train new hires to write letters and memos.  The person quoted in the article said that schools are not teaching this skill with enough frequency that it is making a lasting impression.  The person went on to say that one new hire, who was a college graduate, used "cuz" instead of "because" in an internal company memo.  This was the company's "aha" moment that they had to start a training program to address this.

How this decline has happened in the span of only two generations is as breathtaking as it is sad.

[Dodge Driver]

23 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

 

 

Which was the entire point of the article I linked to...

"It happened because she never saw these words in print because she does not read; she hears. And even then, she does not listen. She acquired the incorrect phrase the way she learned the majority of her language – from broadcast media. The result is that this student, like most of her peers, does not have a traditional print vocabulary, but an electronic one."

 

"Electronic vocabularies dominating the minds of our country’s student population contain fewer words and many incorrect ones. This inferior language skill affects both the writing and reading abilities of its victims. An underdeveloped vocabulary makes it difficult for a person to clearly communicate a verbal or written message and, more importantly, makes it impossible for kids to understand complex text, which is another way of saying that they can’t read."

 All of this seems quite familiar...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

[peteski]

How about people like me?  I came to U.S. as a 16-year-old kid and had to learn a new language. English is a very strange language (if all you spoke before was Polish and some Russian). I'm still learning (after over 30 years of living in the U.S.). Understanding puns was another problem I had, but I got pretty good at it. I also see that the way people are communicating nowadays (using computer devices) seems to be devolving the English language. It is sad to see it happening.

I dislike when people verb a noun, like "I was gifted a model kit".  It also grinds on me when I see people using "ask" instead of "question". Like in "what the ask is?". 

And for some amusement (like that "taking for granite" story), for the longest time, I thought that the saying was "wreck your brain", Or maybe "rake" or "rack" (like the torture device).  But it really is "wrack" (I word I was not even familiar with).  English language has lots of similarly sounding words with totally different meanings.  Very confusing.