Some peeves.
May. 25th, 2007 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelle1. Listen, kids, you don't make a plural with an apostrophe. The plural of "mom" is not "mom's." The plural of "ear" is not "ear's".
2. Learn the differnce between "it's" and "its." likewise, "your" and "you're." And let's not forget "their," "there," and "they're." Didn't learn it in school? You're an adult now. Look it up. Making grade-school mistakes in your writing makes you look like, well, a grade-schooler.
3. When someone posts a little quiz that everyone's doing? It's a meme. Pronounced MEEM. Not MeMe. Such as:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/meme
WordNet - Cite This Source
meme
noun
a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation); "memes are the cultural counterpart of genes"
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
Free On-line Dictionary of Computing - Cite This Source
meme philosophy
/meem/ [By analogy with "gene"] Richard Dawkins's term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do.
Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.
The term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex" denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion. However, "meme" is often misused to mean "meme complex".
Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.
See also memetic algorithm.
[The Jargon File]
(1996-08-11)
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
4. If you have to pull over for a second to load or unload someone or something, look for a safe place to do it: not only for you, but for everyone else who has to navigate around your sorry ass. Take an extra forty seconds out of your useless existence and PARK-- especially if there's a space right there in front of you. Stopping your useless minivan in the middle of Lansdowne Road? Not remotely safe. Not at all. ESPECIALLY since you were doing it at the tail end of rush hour, a couple of yards from an intersection.
5. If you need your car to tell you when you're getting too close to another car, perhaps you should take a basic driving course. Relatedly, if the person in front of you isn't riding the ass of the person in front of them, it's possible they're doing it for a reason. Those of us who know how do drive call it "leaving a safe driving distance." It's not something for which you need to A. ride OUR asses, or B. whip around and get in front of us.
6. Equal time for opposing points of view is nice, but only if the opposing point of view has actual, you know, merit. In other words, just because someone's religion says G-d created the world in a week doesn't mean we have to talk about that in a scientific debate. Please stop trying to gunk up the works with extraneous matter. If thousands of scientists with decades, if not centuries, of study, training and field work say this is how it is, perhaps those of us who never got past high school biology should take their words for it. Science and G-d are not mutually incompatible. Science and Creationism are. Also, if the scientific community says we're ruining our ecology, and will soon be past the point of no return, that's not the time to say, "Well, we need more study." No, asshole, we need more work on the problem. We need to DO something.
And while I'm thinking about it? No. Never mind. I had something to say about Iraq, but I'm just gonna stop here. Most of the people who read my journal probably know what I'd say already.
Besides, I finally had Coldstone Creamery ice cream tonight, and it made my tummy pretty happy. And for once? It was a good hair day.
2. Learn the differnce between "it's" and "its." likewise, "your" and "you're." And let's not forget "their," "there," and "they're." Didn't learn it in school? You're an adult now. Look it up. Making grade-school mistakes in your writing makes you look like, well, a grade-schooler.
3. When someone posts a little quiz that everyone's doing? It's a meme. Pronounced MEEM. Not MeMe. Such as:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/meme
WordNet - Cite This Source
meme
noun
a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation); "memes are the cultural counterpart of genes"
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
Free On-line Dictionary of Computing - Cite This Source
meme philosophy
/meem/ [By analogy with "gene"] Richard Dawkins's term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do.
Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.
The term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex" denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion. However, "meme" is often misused to mean "meme complex".
Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.
See also memetic algorithm.
[The Jargon File]
(1996-08-11)
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
4. If you have to pull over for a second to load or unload someone or something, look for a safe place to do it: not only for you, but for everyone else who has to navigate around your sorry ass. Take an extra forty seconds out of your useless existence and PARK-- especially if there's a space right there in front of you. Stopping your useless minivan in the middle of Lansdowne Road? Not remotely safe. Not at all. ESPECIALLY since you were doing it at the tail end of rush hour, a couple of yards from an intersection.
5. If you need your car to tell you when you're getting too close to another car, perhaps you should take a basic driving course. Relatedly, if the person in front of you isn't riding the ass of the person in front of them, it's possible they're doing it for a reason. Those of us who know how do drive call it "leaving a safe driving distance." It's not something for which you need to A. ride OUR asses, or B. whip around and get in front of us.
6. Equal time for opposing points of view is nice, but only if the opposing point of view has actual, you know, merit. In other words, just because someone's religion says G-d created the world in a week doesn't mean we have to talk about that in a scientific debate. Please stop trying to gunk up the works with extraneous matter. If thousands of scientists with decades, if not centuries, of study, training and field work say this is how it is, perhaps those of us who never got past high school biology should take their words for it. Science and G-d are not mutually incompatible. Science and Creationism are. Also, if the scientific community says we're ruining our ecology, and will soon be past the point of no return, that's not the time to say, "Well, we need more study." No, asshole, we need more work on the problem. We need to DO something.
And while I'm thinking about it? No. Never mind. I had something to say about Iraq, but I'm just gonna stop here. Most of the people who read my journal probably know what I'd say already.
Besides, I finally had Coldstone Creamery ice cream tonight, and it made my tummy pretty happy. And for once? It was a good hair day.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 05:09 am (UTC)And no. We won't go on about Iraq and Bush. Already stressed out enough as it is this week.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 01:15 pm (UTC)So what you're saying is that the plural of tooth isn't teeth, it's teet'h?
-snort-
no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 07:00 am (UTC)otherwise i swear i'll pronounce it correctly should i have the chance to ever use in the proper context.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 09:48 am (UTC)So hurray to the integrity of the English language, Coldstone ice cream and the environment, and boo to fundies of any religion and bad drivers.
Bwahahaha...
Date: 2007-05-25 10:59 am (UTC)You're right, not enough folks have read Strunk and White, and so many of us need editors.
'specially me.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 03:19 pm (UTC)