Google deleted my blog for a while, apparently they hired some past Yahoo employees who are used to deleting whatever content they disagree with. Truthfully I don't have any idea what happened, I just know it disappeared and cvame back. For all I know the Obama admin asked for it to be removed or maybe Google cut a deal with the ghost of Genghis Khan. Although what Genghis Khan would have against my blog I have no idea.
I complained and checked back after a week or so and here it is.
One of the big problems that confronts governments and businesses is that while all businesses and governments must maintain the right to remove customers (or allies) this right must be used judiciously or the organization will suffer from alienating their allies (or customers).
I'm just a guy so I figure if I run into a problem somewhere it means other people have also. Here are some personal anecdotes.
I bought some wrenches from Montgomery Wards that had a life time guarantee. I took a wrench back because it had some minor damage and MW refused to replace it because the damage was caused by my "mishandling" the tool. Not true and I never bought tools from Montgomery Wards again.
I used to take my car to a service center at Montgomery Wards. I pulled my car up on ramps and checked the underside before I took it in for some service. I was particularly interested in the exhaust since it was a few years old. I checked the car out and then took it in for a tire rotation, oil change and lube job (so sue me, I hate tracking down somewhere to recycle used oil). I was told my CV boots were torn. I knew they weren't since I had just had them replaced at another place about six months earlier and I had just inspected them. Never went back to Montgomery Wards again. About ten years later they were out of business.
I still buy tools at Sears, and I typically have watch batteries, watch work done at Sears. I don't shop there for anything else. Way too many issues with sales people and their "satisfaction guaranteed". Twice Sears refused to honor their guarantee, many times sales people ignored me. Sales went to commission and then sales people were arguing over who got my sale. Too much, I quit shopping at Sears except for tools and watch stuff.
I used to use Yahoo boards a lot. Yahoo did the same thing, alienating customers and I switched to Google. Yahoo dropped and still can't get it back together and regain market share.
I figure if I feel like a company (or government) is alienating me that company is probably alienating other people also.
That isn't always true, I became fed up with Rite Aid and they didn't go bankrupt or experience large scale failure. I went to Logan's Roadhouse and it was miserable, I never went back. Sometimes problems are coincidence or are one-offs.
In general though, I figure if I am having a bad experience so are others and the first thing a corporation that is going to fail does is alienate customers.
Looks like Google isn't headed down that road yet, maybe they will be one of the companies that doesn't become arrogant and stupid.
Only time will tell.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Sunday, July 07, 2013
GDP, "trickle down" and the economy
President Reagan, or one of his speech writers came up with the term "trickle down economics" and a lot of us call that "piss on the people" economics. The first President Bush called it "voodoo economics".
There isn't a problem with capitalism in this world, there is a problem with selfishness and greed. Some people will accumulate huge amounts of private resources while other people go without. Why?
Some people blame evolution and if the theory of evolution is accurate our species has actually bred itself to be selfish.
Study after study has shown that selfishness and the ability to disregard the welfare of others within a group are primary survival skills. This skill is usually tempered by the fact that homo sapient sapient is a species which uses interdependent social systems to survive. In other words, survival is based on the ability to be selfish, the ability to disregard the wellbeing of others as long as those others are available to provide survival support until the point at which the survival of "others" influences an individuals own survival.
Essentially the evolutionary theory tells us that we have bred ourselves such that people are going to help others survive as little as is possible without the others dying until the point at which our own survival becomes threatened. At the point at which our own survival becomes threatened we will not only cease helping others we eat them.
So what do people need to survive?
That is actually an individual assessment. For example, I have spent weekends living off the land. Sometimes I eat very well, other times I have not. I can survive without external support structures like trade. Others require trade of some sort, the ability to exchange services for goods in some stage of preparedness. Wheat may come in a sheaf, wheat may be threshed and come as seeds in a bag, wheat may be ground and come in a bag as flour or wheat may be prepared with other items and be distributed as bread. There are people comfortable with all of these forms of distribution.
Obviously if someone does not know how to bake bread their survival will require someone to prepare the bread for them. If someone does not know how to grind flour...etc, etc.
Survival skills are based on an individuals ability to use the available resources.
The Donner Party is a great example, a bunch of people who knew nothing about foraging or hunting were trapped in an area where native foods abounded and yet they did not have the ability to utilize those resources so they killed and ate each other.
This is where the phrase, "its a dog eat dog world" came from.
If we accept that the theory of evolution is accurate then we have evolved to look out after ourselves first and once we have achieved what we individually require for our survival we help others survive by helping them have the minimum that we feel they require to survive.
If we examine income demographics across cultures and across the globe I believe that we discover the most selfish people accumulate the most and that they will generally provide minimal support for those which have the least.
Animals, like people, often fight for resources or social position.
This is obvious where we watch groups of social animals like wolves or geese. Some group members accumulate more and other group members accept the bare necessities to survive. Sometimes, during periods of shortage, the least members of the group are ostracized and excluded. Without support of the group they usually, but not always, die.
Sometimes the ostracized form separate groups and attack other groups.
"hackers", "nerds" or "geeks" are an example of a socially excluded group which has developed resources and uses its abilities or resources in an animalistic way to attack and or exclude/ostracize other groups or other individuals.
Groups of bandits, groups of industrialists, all groups who bond together work in a similar fashion, attempting to establish their authority within the social heirarchy.
The over riding theme is one of the groups or individuals within a group or groups, deciding which members survive and which members are left for dead.
Studying animals and cultures it becomes obvious that trickle down economics is an animalistic process inherited through the evolutionary process.
Should people default to such animalistic behavior?
We do, there is no doubt about that. Should we? Should we instead find ways to exploit human resources more efficiently?
We could. The old NAACP slogan, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" is a good example of an attempt to find ways to exploit human resources more efficiently. In fact, working to utilize resources more efficiently is a survival mechanism in itself, one that has not evolved well. Human beings, Homo Sapient Sapients, are a wasteful species.
When a wolf or a chimpanzee kills another animal it rarely makes fully efficient use of the carcass. Rarely do animals other than humans use the skins, the bones or other non-edibles as efficiently as humans do. Are these animals more or less wasteful of resources than humans?
We could argue that the difference is in the ability to understand the waste and this is my point.
The selfish survival model is no longer evolutionarily required. With the current resources available we could very easily support four to six billion people very comfortably. Yet humans continue populating in a selfish desire to increase their survivability by increasing the number of family members to help support each other.
The first step in a non wasteful survival is to reduce the world population to one that can be supported, around 4 billion people.
The second step would be supporting and educating every one of those people to the point where the group can fully exploit the abilities of each of the individuals.
This is unlikely. The probability is that humans will continue to behave as other animals do, expanding their population to the point where resources no longer support it and establishing a social hierarchy based on some individuals receiving more of the resources than others.
The problem is that, since humans have an expanded intellect, we know these animalistic methodologies actually reduce the probability that our species will survive. Yet we continue along the same path because of the selfishness of the group leadership and the basic animal instincts of these leaders to take first for themselves, especially in times of limited resources.
I have no doubt about it, unless the United States and the world begin a process of population control, more efficient utilization of resources including human resources and a more equitable distribution of resources among the global population the global social structure will crash.
How do I know this? Because the same thing happens among all animals when the leadership becomes too greedy, acquiring too many of the resources for itself and leaving the rest of the group without.
Humans are easily tricked, unlike other animals, by their leadership so it may take longer than other groups of animals. It will happen just the same though.
And the leaders won't care, they will just find other means to control the group and keep taking the best and the most for themselves, allowing their greed to control what portions of the kill trickle down to the rest of the pack.
There isn't a problem with capitalism in this world, there is a problem with selfishness and greed. Some people will accumulate huge amounts of private resources while other people go without. Why?
Some people blame evolution and if the theory of evolution is accurate our species has actually bred itself to be selfish.
Study after study has shown that selfishness and the ability to disregard the welfare of others within a group are primary survival skills. This skill is usually tempered by the fact that homo sapient sapient is a species which uses interdependent social systems to survive. In other words, survival is based on the ability to be selfish, the ability to disregard the wellbeing of others as long as those others are available to provide survival support until the point at which the survival of "others" influences an individuals own survival.
Essentially the evolutionary theory tells us that we have bred ourselves such that people are going to help others survive as little as is possible without the others dying until the point at which our own survival becomes threatened. At the point at which our own survival becomes threatened we will not only cease helping others we eat them.
So what do people need to survive?
That is actually an individual assessment. For example, I have spent weekends living off the land. Sometimes I eat very well, other times I have not. I can survive without external support structures like trade. Others require trade of some sort, the ability to exchange services for goods in some stage of preparedness. Wheat may come in a sheaf, wheat may be threshed and come as seeds in a bag, wheat may be ground and come in a bag as flour or wheat may be prepared with other items and be distributed as bread. There are people comfortable with all of these forms of distribution.
Obviously if someone does not know how to bake bread their survival will require someone to prepare the bread for them. If someone does not know how to grind flour...etc, etc.
Survival skills are based on an individuals ability to use the available resources.
The Donner Party is a great example, a bunch of people who knew nothing about foraging or hunting were trapped in an area where native foods abounded and yet they did not have the ability to utilize those resources so they killed and ate each other.
This is where the phrase, "its a dog eat dog world" came from.
If we accept that the theory of evolution is accurate then we have evolved to look out after ourselves first and once we have achieved what we individually require for our survival we help others survive by helping them have the minimum that we feel they require to survive.
If we examine income demographics across cultures and across the globe I believe that we discover the most selfish people accumulate the most and that they will generally provide minimal support for those which have the least.
Animals, like people, often fight for resources or social position.
This is obvious where we watch groups of social animals like wolves or geese. Some group members accumulate more and other group members accept the bare necessities to survive. Sometimes, during periods of shortage, the least members of the group are ostracized and excluded. Without support of the group they usually, but not always, die.
Sometimes the ostracized form separate groups and attack other groups.
"hackers", "nerds" or "geeks" are an example of a socially excluded group which has developed resources and uses its abilities or resources in an animalistic way to attack and or exclude/ostracize other groups or other individuals.
Groups of bandits, groups of industrialists, all groups who bond together work in a similar fashion, attempting to establish their authority within the social heirarchy.
The over riding theme is one of the groups or individuals within a group or groups, deciding which members survive and which members are left for dead.
Studying animals and cultures it becomes obvious that trickle down economics is an animalistic process inherited through the evolutionary process.
Should people default to such animalistic behavior?
We do, there is no doubt about that. Should we? Should we instead find ways to exploit human resources more efficiently?
We could. The old NAACP slogan, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" is a good example of an attempt to find ways to exploit human resources more efficiently. In fact, working to utilize resources more efficiently is a survival mechanism in itself, one that has not evolved well. Human beings, Homo Sapient Sapients, are a wasteful species.
When a wolf or a chimpanzee kills another animal it rarely makes fully efficient use of the carcass. Rarely do animals other than humans use the skins, the bones or other non-edibles as efficiently as humans do. Are these animals more or less wasteful of resources than humans?
We could argue that the difference is in the ability to understand the waste and this is my point.
The selfish survival model is no longer evolutionarily required. With the current resources available we could very easily support four to six billion people very comfortably. Yet humans continue populating in a selfish desire to increase their survivability by increasing the number of family members to help support each other.
The first step in a non wasteful survival is to reduce the world population to one that can be supported, around 4 billion people.
The second step would be supporting and educating every one of those people to the point where the group can fully exploit the abilities of each of the individuals.
This is unlikely. The probability is that humans will continue to behave as other animals do, expanding their population to the point where resources no longer support it and establishing a social hierarchy based on some individuals receiving more of the resources than others.
The problem is that, since humans have an expanded intellect, we know these animalistic methodologies actually reduce the probability that our species will survive. Yet we continue along the same path because of the selfishness of the group leadership and the basic animal instincts of these leaders to take first for themselves, especially in times of limited resources.
I have no doubt about it, unless the United States and the world begin a process of population control, more efficient utilization of resources including human resources and a more equitable distribution of resources among the global population the global social structure will crash.
How do I know this? Because the same thing happens among all animals when the leadership becomes too greedy, acquiring too many of the resources for itself and leaving the rest of the group without.
Humans are easily tricked, unlike other animals, by their leadership so it may take longer than other groups of animals. It will happen just the same though.
And the leaders won't care, they will just find other means to control the group and keep taking the best and the most for themselves, allowing their greed to control what portions of the kill trickle down to the rest of the pack.
Friday, July 05, 2013
Schroedinger's cat, ignorance and evolution
Schroedinger's Cat!
I'm not going to try and review or
discredit the real science of dating fossils which is based on quite
a few assumptions derived through inductive logic. For the most part
this blog addresses ignorance and while the evolution of man is based
primarily on circumstantial evidence, inductions and a refusal to
participate in the scientific process many of these acts are not
necessarily ignorance, just stubbornness.
Not all of it, them though, there is a
lot of ignorance out there.
Schroedinger suggested that we stick a cat in a box with a poison gas, close the box and put the closed box in a room. Is the cat alive or dead?
In pure science we have to admit that we don't know since we have not observed the cat.
Using the circumstantial evidence available we can induce that the cat is probably dead since it is unlikely that the cat can survive exposure to the poison gas. To find out if the cat is alive or dead we must make an observation. Once the observer pierces the closed room and the closed box the observer has become part of the conditions which are being observed. The acts associated with observing an experiment influence the experiment.
In pure science unless we can repeatably observe the outcome of an experiment we can not state “if X than Y”, rather we should say, “If X probably Y”. Many pseudo scientists, like Richard Dawkins, state that human evolution is a fact when it isn't. The adoption of the result of inductive logic based on circumstantial evidence as “facts” undermines science.
Let us look at a website, http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.html where we are told:
Carbon-14 dating helps us date fossils?
That sounds interesting and I suppose that it may be possible some
day, but, in reality that isn't true. Carbon-14 dating works by
measuring residual Carbon-14 left in organic materials. As time
passes the amount of Carbon-14 breaks down. To establish a date with
Carbon-14 we measure the amount of Carbon-14 left in the organic
material, the less Carbon-14 the older the material. At the current
level of technology we can only date back about 60,000 years ago.
Skeletons of modern humans have been
dated, using methods other than Carbon-14, back to around 200,000
years ago. Carbon-14 dating is not going to help us much with dating
human evolution which requires our evaluation of evolutionary
evidence which resulted in modern humans 200,000 years ago and
consists of a fossil record going back millions of years.
Claiming Carbon-14 dating can be used to date fossils is an example of someone attempting to use a well established scientific method to validate assumptions that the method has nothing to do with.
There is a scientific rule called the
rule of “super position” which states, essentially, the deeper
something is buried the older it is. This allows people to determine
or estimate relative dating of objects they discover. This sounds
pretty obvious, but, it isn't always true and dating based on super
position is based on probability. There is nothing wrong with this,
unless, some ignorant idiot teaches people that the result of a
dating analysis based on super position is a fact rather than a
probability.
Science is often about probabilities
rather than absolutes. There is nothing wrong with this until people
teach that probabilities are absolutes.
I'll use a personal anecdote which
illustrates the problem with assuming that probabilities are
absolutes. My direct supervisor was an electrical engineer with a
Masters and he spent four months working on a broken machine. He
hired controls technicians from the company that built the controls.
He just couldn't find the problem.
My supervisor's boss asked me to fix the machine and I did. My supervisor had assumed that the electrical prints were accurate. After he had worked on the machine for a couple of weeks I told him that the prints had to be wrong, he insisted they were all we had to work with. When my supervisor's boss asked me if I could fix the machine she asked how I knew I could fix it and I explained that the prints were wrong. She asked me how I knew and I told her that if the prints had been correct my supervisor would have fixed the machine. I used a multi-meter and checked every wire in the machine manually and found an unfused 24v power circuit that had shorted out. That particular circuit also powered the CNC controller unit. Problem solved.
People make assumptions, they assume probabilities are facts and then, much too often, those assumptions are wrong.
My supervisor's boss asked me to fix the machine and I did. My supervisor had assumed that the electrical prints were accurate. After he had worked on the machine for a couple of weeks I told him that the prints had to be wrong, he insisted they were all we had to work with. When my supervisor's boss asked me if I could fix the machine she asked how I knew I could fix it and I explained that the prints were wrong. She asked me how I knew and I told her that if the prints had been correct my supervisor would have fixed the machine. I used a multi-meter and checked every wire in the machine manually and found an unfused 24v power circuit that had shorted out. That particular circuit also powered the CNC controller unit. Problem solved.
People make assumptions, they assume probabilities are facts and then, much too often, those assumptions are wrong.
In my experience teachers often make
statements of “fact” which are not true to “simplify”
education. For all practical purposes 2+2 always equals 4 so
students are told “two plus two always equals four”. This is a
lie. There are some occasions, binary base number systems for
example, where the number four does not exist.
If a teacher were to accurately teach
that “two plus two usually equals four” it would open a dialogue
concerning what the rules are for determining when “two plus two
equals four” and when “two plus two equals ten”. This kind of
instruction is often used when teachers do not believe their students
are capable of understanding the nuances of the subject.
The same lies are told about many
things including the evolution of humans. The evolution of humans is
always going to be a theory since we cannot observe, unless someone
invents a time machine, the evolution of humans.
Even if we create an experiment where
we evolve humans such an experiment would only prove that humans
could have evolved, it would not prove that humans did evolve.
But people still believe crap like “two
plus two always equals four” or “humans and apes evolved from a
common ancestor” even though neither of these are facts, just probabilities.
I am not saying that evolution of
humans didn't happen, I'm just pointing out that only someone who is
ignorant would claim an inductive probability is a fact and that many
people try to use unrelated and well established facts to prove their
assumptions.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Economics, greed and people who want to blame capitalists
Reagan called it "trickle down economics". The rest of us call it "being pissed on".
The truth is that the world always has, and always will, run on capitalism and trade. Even communist nations need to engage in capitalist trade with their neighbors. No, it doesn't have to be that way, but, it is and it has since the first exchange of a pretty rock for sex began.
I was reading a really ridiculous book called "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" which was supposedly written by a man who was trained by the NSA to be an "Economic Hit Man" or an EHM. Its a pretty stupid book for the most part, filled with ridiculous economic suggestions like:
"Imagine if the Nike Swoosh, MacDonalds Arches and Coca-Cola logo became symbols of companies whose primary goals were to clothe and feed the world's poor in environmentally beneficial ways." (used under Fair Use)
This is typical stupidity from people who don't understand how corporations work. Here is the basic rundown on how it actually works.
Some people come up with a product idea, running shoes, hamburgers, a soft drink. They work with investors to fund a way to produce the product. Sometimes the investor is a government. Sometimes the investor is a private person or group of people.
The people form a company and hire a bunch of other people to do stuff. The people hired spend their money on stuff like houses and food and shoes.
In other words, and anyone who has taken a business or economics class and not slept through it knows this, corporations are already clothing and feeding the world's poor by giving them jobs.
Now don't think I approve of Nike or the rest of those fu*ked up shoe manufacturers who are paying sh*t wages in third world countries to people who stand ankle deep in acid making running shoes. I think Nike and Apple and a lot of other companies who employ people under crap working conditions in third world countries should be ashamed of themselves.
That said, the people do have jobs so they eat. For a while anyway because the third world governments attract scummy companies by not having things like disability or OSHA or social security.
If the moron who wrote "Lies about the US", I mean "Confessions of an asshole", darn, I keep typing that wrong. "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" had a clue he would be lobbying for the entire world to have OSHA like standards, Social Security Retirement, Disability, Workman's Comp, Health Care, etc.
Instead the idiot wants corporations to become public service organizations.
One of the other stupid things this author misses, because he didn't actually write most of this book, is that the United States changed to a Keynesian economic system in the 1930s when we went off the gold standard. Private ownership of gold was made illegal in the States.
Around '69 or '70 the United States changed the way they printed money. After 1933 and before about '69 the United States printed as much money as they had gold, kind of. Its a little more complicated than that, but, that is close enough. In '70 private ownership of gold was made legal and the price of gold jumped from $35 to over $800. The United States printed more money. The money is theoretically based on the stability of the United States Government, in reality the money is based on the value of government property, real and other.
The government has a little over 8 tons of gold stashed that is worth around 2.3 trillion depending on the value of gold. The United States has about 10.5 trillion dollars in circulation. The public debt is about 17 trillion dollars so we can pay about 12 cents on the dollar if the U.S. decided to pay off its debts in gold.
Of course the U.S. has other liquid assets besides gold.
The book misrepresents the liquidity of the United States economy and it misrepresents the actions of people in general.
In fact, the author seems to represent the United States government as some all powerful corporate entity. It isn't. Listen to Congress people on C-span sometime and you might be amazed at how stupid they are. Senate, House of Representatives, Governors, Presidents, etc. The people of the United States elects the best bull sh*t artists, not the best managers.
A "semi-conspiracy" like the one described in this book requires people smarter than the dork writing this book or the people I have seen in the U.S. government.
By focusing on the United States morons like this author miss the big picture, the thieves in their own nations who steal the people blind while they promise great things. If I had to guess, I would think that more than one third world leader has faked his own death and run off with millions after robbing their people blind with false promises.
The truth is most people just believe what they are told so some idiot blames the United States and people grab the torches and attack the "monster" while the bad guy slips out the back door with the cash.
The truth is that the world always has, and always will, run on capitalism and trade. Even communist nations need to engage in capitalist trade with their neighbors. No, it doesn't have to be that way, but, it is and it has since the first exchange of a pretty rock for sex began.
I was reading a really ridiculous book called "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" which was supposedly written by a man who was trained by the NSA to be an "Economic Hit Man" or an EHM. Its a pretty stupid book for the most part, filled with ridiculous economic suggestions like:
"Imagine if the Nike Swoosh, MacDonalds Arches and Coca-Cola logo became symbols of companies whose primary goals were to clothe and feed the world's poor in environmentally beneficial ways." (used under Fair Use)
This is typical stupidity from people who don't understand how corporations work. Here is the basic rundown on how it actually works.
Some people come up with a product idea, running shoes, hamburgers, a soft drink. They work with investors to fund a way to produce the product. Sometimes the investor is a government. Sometimes the investor is a private person or group of people.
The people form a company and hire a bunch of other people to do stuff. The people hired spend their money on stuff like houses and food and shoes.
In other words, and anyone who has taken a business or economics class and not slept through it knows this, corporations are already clothing and feeding the world's poor by giving them jobs.
Now don't think I approve of Nike or the rest of those fu*ked up shoe manufacturers who are paying sh*t wages in third world countries to people who stand ankle deep in acid making running shoes. I think Nike and Apple and a lot of other companies who employ people under crap working conditions in third world countries should be ashamed of themselves.
That said, the people do have jobs so they eat. For a while anyway because the third world governments attract scummy companies by not having things like disability or OSHA or social security.
If the moron who wrote "Lies about the US", I mean "Confessions of an asshole", darn, I keep typing that wrong. "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" had a clue he would be lobbying for the entire world to have OSHA like standards, Social Security Retirement, Disability, Workman's Comp, Health Care, etc.
Instead the idiot wants corporations to become public service organizations.
One of the other stupid things this author misses, because he didn't actually write most of this book, is that the United States changed to a Keynesian economic system in the 1930s when we went off the gold standard. Private ownership of gold was made illegal in the States.
Around '69 or '70 the United States changed the way they printed money. After 1933 and before about '69 the United States printed as much money as they had gold, kind of. Its a little more complicated than that, but, that is close enough. In '70 private ownership of gold was made legal and the price of gold jumped from $35 to over $800. The United States printed more money. The money is theoretically based on the stability of the United States Government, in reality the money is based on the value of government property, real and other.
The government has a little over 8 tons of gold stashed that is worth around 2.3 trillion depending on the value of gold. The United States has about 10.5 trillion dollars in circulation. The public debt is about 17 trillion dollars so we can pay about 12 cents on the dollar if the U.S. decided to pay off its debts in gold.
Of course the U.S. has other liquid assets besides gold.
The book misrepresents the liquidity of the United States economy and it misrepresents the actions of people in general.
In fact, the author seems to represent the United States government as some all powerful corporate entity. It isn't. Listen to Congress people on C-span sometime and you might be amazed at how stupid they are. Senate, House of Representatives, Governors, Presidents, etc. The people of the United States elects the best bull sh*t artists, not the best managers.
A "semi-conspiracy" like the one described in this book requires people smarter than the dork writing this book or the people I have seen in the U.S. government.
By focusing on the United States morons like this author miss the big picture, the thieves in their own nations who steal the people blind while they promise great things. If I had to guess, I would think that more than one third world leader has faked his own death and run off with millions after robbing their people blind with false promises.
The truth is most people just believe what they are told so some idiot blames the United States and people grab the torches and attack the "monster" while the bad guy slips out the back door with the cash.
Monday, June 17, 2013
The word "Liberal" is typically used in a gramatically incorrect way
I can't control the way language is used or the way it develops.
I can point out grammatical errors that others make and they can
point out grammatical errors I make, either to ridicule each other or
to help each other become better writers and speakers.
The movies often used grammatical and pronunciation errors for comic relief, but, this isn't comic relief. This is real and serious and frightening and hilarious all at the same time.
Typically people won't care about facts, challenge their use of words and they will just become angry and defensive ridiculing anyone who dares to challenge their use of vernacular.
There are occasions when people, in general, begin using terms that are grammatically nonsensical and I occasionally find this hilarious.
The word liberal comes from the Greek (maybe it is the Latin, can't remember exactly but that really doesn't matter) root Liber, meaning "free". It is actually a very nice word. When combined with the suffix al, meaning "other than" or "related to", we create a word, Liberal, meaning "related to free".
Strictly speaking Liberal does not refer to a person, but, a state or concept. We can have a "Liberal Idea" or an idea related to the concept of "free". We can have a "Liberal Education" or an education related to "free thinking" or "open thinking".
Strictly speaking a person involved in exploring "free", "free thought", "open ideas" would called a Liber-ist. Strictly speaking if we call a person a "liberalist" that person would be "a person other than free".
But, language is not ruled by grammar. Language is ruled by popular opinion and so grammatical corruptions such as the use of the word "liberal" to describe a persons belief come into popular use. These grammatical corruptions become popular language and people use them in the most ridiculous fashion. Linguistic experts have even thought to define dialects of English based on grammatical corruptions into a separate language called "Ebonics".
Now think about that for a minute. A Global Political Movement claiming superior education, intelligence and understanding which defines itself using a grammatically corrupted word worthy of Ebonics.
I find that pretty hilarious.
It actually becomes even better because there are other grammatical corruptions like “neoconservative”. Neo means “new”, Con means “together”, Serve means “take care of” or “maintain”, Ative means “those who work to” so “neoconcervative” means “new together we work to care for” or “new together we maintain”. Pretty stupid sounding word.
People who cringe at the misuse of “who” and “whom” or “then” and “than” will expound thoughtlessly using terms like Liberal and Neoconservative.
I find it frighteningly ridiculously, as if Leo Gorcy of the “Bowery Boys” has been training political commentators. At least Leo Gorcy usually played a happy, harmless kind of guy.
The movies often used grammatical and pronunciation errors for comic relief, but, this isn't comic relief. This is real and serious and frightening and hilarious all at the same time.
Typically people won't care about facts, challenge their use of words and they will just become angry and defensive ridiculing anyone who dares to challenge their use of vernacular.
There are occasions when people, in general, begin using terms that are grammatically nonsensical and I occasionally find this hilarious.
The word liberal comes from the Greek (maybe it is the Latin, can't remember exactly but that really doesn't matter) root Liber, meaning "free". It is actually a very nice word. When combined with the suffix al, meaning "other than" or "related to", we create a word, Liberal, meaning "related to free".
Strictly speaking Liberal does not refer to a person, but, a state or concept. We can have a "Liberal Idea" or an idea related to the concept of "free". We can have a "Liberal Education" or an education related to "free thinking" or "open thinking".
Strictly speaking a person involved in exploring "free", "free thought", "open ideas" would called a Liber-ist. Strictly speaking if we call a person a "liberalist" that person would be "a person other than free".
But, language is not ruled by grammar. Language is ruled by popular opinion and so grammatical corruptions such as the use of the word "liberal" to describe a persons belief come into popular use. These grammatical corruptions become popular language and people use them in the most ridiculous fashion. Linguistic experts have even thought to define dialects of English based on grammatical corruptions into a separate language called "Ebonics".
Now think about that for a minute. A Global Political Movement claiming superior education, intelligence and understanding which defines itself using a grammatically corrupted word worthy of Ebonics.
I find that pretty hilarious.
It actually becomes even better because there are other grammatical corruptions like “neoconservative”. Neo means “new”, Con means “together”, Serve means “take care of” or “maintain”, Ative means “those who work to” so “neoconcervative” means “new together we work to care for” or “new together we maintain”. Pretty stupid sounding word.
People who cringe at the misuse of “who” and “whom” or “then” and “than” will expound thoughtlessly using terms like Liberal and Neoconservative.
I find it frighteningly ridiculously, as if Leo Gorcy of the “Bowery Boys” has been training political commentators. At least Leo Gorcy usually played a happy, harmless kind of guy.
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