Posts by Emma Hart
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Is yelling offensive comments at someone because of their race worse than making qualified, obviously generalised observations about a broad area?
Yes, obviously.
Sorry, obviously unclear, I was likening 'Cantabrians are racist' to 'Asians are bad drivers'. A generalised assertion, which people feel they can back up with anecdotal evidence.
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I would suggest that's a Cantabrian thing (the racism).
Is it just me, or can someone else detect irony in this statement? It's okay to make offensive generalisations about a province, but not a race?
CHCH has seen fit to empty its central city of people (friday night 7.30 pm and you can almost see the tumble weeds roll down manchester street)
Those aren't tumbleweeds, those are prostitutes. I'd suggest heading two blocks over to Oxford Tce, where the bars are.
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The only thing that differentiates him from the left is that he feels the solutions should all be 'faith based'.
And being fervently anti-abortion and opposed to gay marriage. He talks about a 'culture of life' but
When asked what Jesus would do about the death penalty: "Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office, that's what Jesus would do."
Ha ha. Now answer the bloody question, how do you reconcile being 'pro life' and 'pro death'? He wants Creationism taught in schools, but believes science has proved bumblebees can't fly, and uses that as a metaphor for his campaign.
Seeing him represented as a smart, moderate candidate just goes to show how low the bar is.
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Of course, if you were a cricket commentator, you would talk about it being "very average".
Ah, a sport I can care about in December... I wrote a blog once about the unique vocab of cricket commentary. I think we're beyond 'very average' and into 'decidedly average' at this point, 'decidedly average' meaning 'abysmal', and coming just above 'poor' meaning 'somebody's arm just fell off'.
But I think it reflects a grain of laconic understatement in our game which compares very well (for vocab purposes, not game results) with Australia's brashness and England's formality before their players started forgetting words like 'bus' and calling Tony Blair a twat.
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Emma, despite the truth of all that, that doesn't make them useless. They're good at the subset of proofreading that they do.
Well, it's a combination of poor tool (in that they can't read context, which is the main thing that tells you whether you've used the right word or not), and PEBKAC. I've had people who call themselves writers tell me they don't need to proof-read, because they've used the spelling and grammar checkers. If those tools weren't there, they would proof-read, and end up with a slightly better end product.
But that throwing in some John Donne and accepting all the 'corrections' is a genuinely fun game, at least for literature nerds.
No, actually on consideration, I don't even accept the 'subset' thing, because they're wrong about as often as they're right. They're only useful if you have a functioning intelligence in the chair to begin with.
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Grammar checking in MS Word used to do a sterling job for that...
I have nothing but obscenities for Grammar Checker. Allow me ( cause how're you gonna stop me) to share from Language Log on the subject:
For the most part, accepting the advice of a computer grammar checker on your prose will make it much worse, sometimes hilariously incoherent. If you want an amusing way to while away a rainy afternoon, take a piece of literary prose you consider sublimely masterful and run the Microsoft Word™ grammar checker on it, accepting all the suggested changes.
I designed a writing exercise for our group last year that was full of grammar errors. Too/to, stripped/striped (okay, yeah, it was erotica), and for a laugh, I ran it through MS's grammar and spelling checkers to see what it would pick up correctly. Answer? Nothing at all.
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and there's the Eggcorn Database, where you can revel in the linguistic craziness of others.
OMG! Ex-potential! I've been wanting a word for that. Y'know, like the way Chris Cairns had tonnes of potential and just needed to realise his potential and then he retired.
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Then it really will carry all the hallmarks of an addictive drug, better than sex...
Dude, one of us is doing SOMETHING wrong.
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Bamping will soon be a leading search term, with people trying to figure out what the hell it is.
I've been telling people kiwi bamping is our equivalent of quokka soccer.
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Actually, Hilary will be the first person to freeze their tits off.
Throughout history, every other American President has frozen something else.
'Would be', surely...
And what are the odds on her being the second President to actually catch their death on Inauguration Day?