Posted on 03/09/2010 2:40:31 PM PST by Hodar
A woman with a petition went among the crowds attending a state fair, asking people to sign her petition demanding the banning of dihydroxymonoxide. She said it was in our lakes and streams, and now it was in our sweat and urine and tears.
She collected hundreds of signatures to ban dihydroxymonoxide — a fancy chemical name for water. A couple of comedians were behind this ploy. But there is nothing funny about its implications. It is one of the grim and dangerous signs of our times.
This little episode revealed how conditioned we have become, responding like Pavlov's dog when we hear a certain sound — in this case, the sound of some politically correct crusade.
People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators.
(Excerpt) Read more at jbs.org ...
It was once the proud declaration of many educators that "We are here to teach you how to think, not what to think." But far too many of our teachers and professors today are teaching their students what to think, about everything from global warming to the new trinity of "race, class and gender."
And this is the crux of the matter; too many idiots champion ideas they neither understand, nor have any interest in learning about. Consider the Nuclear industry - we have battleships that have been carrying reactors into war zones for nearly 50 years. Yet, we allow these uneducated people protest and shut down reactors in America.
Yeah that video was very telling. Pathetic sheep signed it like mad.
Maybe she was cute. Maybe she was a hottie.
Me: “dihydro - what? Never mind. I’ll sign it!”
LOL...okay, maybe not BATTLESHIPS, but your point is well taken.
Sowell, as usual, hits it out of the park. I think the election of Barack Obama is the concentrated expression of this sentiment.
I have some instant dihydroxymonoxide pills for sale.
Reminds me of a video I saw where a guy walked around a college campus saying that ‘woman are suffering all over the world, will you sign our petition against weans suffrage?’ They did; well, at least the people they showed in the clip.
Thomas Sowell watched the Penn and Teller BS episode on Environmentalism???
COOL!
Brilliant!
Yeah. Like ten years ago.
Each year I assign my students to circulate this same petition around the school. The results are amazing!!!
Seeing an episode of “Jaywalking” scares me more than amuses me.
This is at least a little bit understandable, up there with knowing the difference between “i.e.” and “e.g.”.
->OK, grammar warriors, where in the heck was I supposed to put the ending period in that last sentence? (LOL)
The period at the end of “e.g.” would complete the sentence. So you have a redundant period. —citation! Department of Redundancy Department
“->OK, grammar warriors, where in the heck was I supposed to put the ending period in that last sentence? (LOL)”
The one after the “g” was sufficient; i.e. the difference between “i.e.” and “e.g.”
A period never comes after a quote in the US. The British do not follow this rule, however.
Hank
Outside the quotes. Always, outside the quotes.
I learned that lesson right here on FR.
Thanks — it is worse when you are trying to do instructions: (e.g. When you see the prompt, type “Go.”)
Of course, there is no “.” when entering and bolding doesn’t work since a bold dot looks like a regular one. I usually try to add something like “and then press the Return key.”
It always makes me shudder when I see the period (or comma) after the trailing quote.
>>Outside the quotes. Always, outside the quotes.<<
I was born at night but not LAST night LOL!
Never was much of a student.
=;^D
I think that's an outdated "rule" which was born of necessity. I've read that it began because the typesetter's metal "." piece, being fragile, needed the extra support provided by the more sturdy double quote piece.
To me, it seems to make more grammatical sense for the period to reside outside the quotation.
cf. Lynn Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves, arguably the most useful, and certainly the most hilarious, book on common punctuation ever written.
Some of us also prefer i.e. and e.g., italicised, in order to denote foreign origin.
Did this to my old Congresscritter some years ago, sending him a letter railing against the hazards of dihydrogen monoxide. About six months later, I get a very snotty phone call from his office asking me “if I was trying to make the Congressman look like a fool.”
Okay, maybe I am not as smart as I thought. What is weans suffrage?
"Don't give up the ship!", "You may fire when you are ready, Mr. Gridley.", and "Millions for defense, but not a penny for tribute." are three famous phrases in American history.
Ne c'est pas? ;^)
Now, whether or not the 'Oxford comma' is appropriate seems to be a matter of one's location and personal taste.
A fairly serious typo...g!
Penn and Teller did this a few years ago and it was hilarious.
It's here.
Yes, the above is punctuated correctly, according to the usage common where I grew up.
That kind of thing always makes me hesitate — sets of quotes that are self-contained.
That ...tribute.” part always throws me since to me, the period ends the entire sentence but I understand how what you did works.
I would have chickened out and just made them bullets. (LOL)
BTW, how badly have we drifted this thread?
A more dangerous form of this stuff is anhydrous dihydrogen monoxide. It’s primarily what Obama’s cranium is filled with, which is why he’s such a threat to our nation.
[translation: he’s a brainless airhead]
my bad.
Each year I assign my students to circulate this same petition around the school. The results are amazing!!!
“I think that’s an outdated “rule” ...”
It could be, but all such rules are arbitrary. I base my opinion on the “Chicago Manual of Style,” which is the Bible in the printing and publishing industry, which I’ve been involved in for many years.
Hank
OK, now I get it. Typo. We’ve all done them, FRiend.
Just for fun, try this one:
Punctuate the following to make ONE grammatically correct sentence:
Jim Robinson where John Robinson had had has had had had had had had had had had the teacher's approval.
Yes, this can be done. Care to have a go?
Interested in triple homophones? Well, perhaps not, but:
What kind of a noise annoys an oyster? (Oddly perhaps, this is the tagline from an old tune from the 1930's.)
ABCD goldfish? MNO goldfish! OSMR! (clearly, I spent far too long in assorted linguistics classes...)
FReegards!
>>Interested in triple homophones?<<
Nah, I’m straight.
>>Battleships with nuclear reactors????<<
Dreadnought class.
Dandy answer...heh heh heh!
Actually, we don’t have and have never had battleships that had nuclear reactors, though we have had warships and submarines with them.
But nitpicking aside, I agree. I am all in favor of developing modular pebble bed nuclear reactors that are scalable and can be used for municipal to regional power needs.
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