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Re: living with the vernacular (was RE: Beliefs and passions- new job requirements
Subject:Re: living with the vernacular (was RE: Beliefs and passions- new job requirements From:john -dot- x -dot- posada -at- us -dot- hsbc -dot- com To:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> Date:Tue, 6 Nov 2012 17:28:09 -0500
Hi, guys...while I wait for a review so I can get out of here...
I may be a minority, but I really don't see me as the vernacular police.
Honestly, I can't get worked up over issues such as "bold-faced lie" to and
"bald-faced lie". Sorry.
[...]
>
> The politics of the issue -- We own and control our technology,
> whether we care to admit it or not. Don't blame technology for the
> state of things, blame yourself and other members of your
> species... Just because the gun is on the mantlepiece, that doesn't
> mean it has to go off before the final curtain. Letting doubt on that
> issue creep into the vernacular is a very, very bad thing.
Good luck with that.
This is the same vernacular that pushes "bold-faced lie" to
replace "bald-faced lie", or that has execrable web, TV, and
radio 'personalities' saying things like "... attended the gala
with John and I...".
The vernacular, it seems, is largely driven by ignorance, laziness,
arrogance, and possibly embarrassment.
People start misusing a saying, a part of speech, or the
descriptors of a concept out of ignorance, and then they
continue to do so out of one-or-more of the other conditions.
They're too lazy, arrogant, or embarrassed to accept correction
when it comes by, and to stand up to other perpetrators.
They latch onto other people making the same 'mistakes' and
use that reinforcement as their justification to continue, because...
who wants to be wrong? ... or, retroactively, to have been wrong?
"I got all these people to agree with me, so I'm not wrong.
Every opinion is as valid as every other, especially when
lots of people think so.
If I'm not wrong, then I wasn't wrong.
So there.
Logik. "
And, fergawdsake, don't get me started on "from whence".
That should be a shooting offence. :-)
And the next moron who quotes "The first thing we do, we
shoot all the lawyers" to imply "lawyers are bad"... well, see
previous paragraph.
Aaaargh! It's endless! It's slopping in from all sides!
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