Supergrunch

Seems there're multiple birthdays every day now... Happy birthday to those who have theirs today.

After making 1000 posts.

That's not cut of you. And by not cut, I of course mean the "proper" meaning of nice.

Happy birthday to assorted people.

Linguistically, it most definitely is, simply because some people think it's correct.

Yep, so it's all good.

Undivided second, but 2:1 based on percentages. To be honest, provided I can do linguistics, I'm not too bothered.

Touché. You know, this thread title makes me think of the Japanese version of "Gotta Catch 'em All", ゲットだぜ！, which translates as something like "It's get!"

No, I'm a native English speaker, so I'd just be speaking a different dialect to you. But yeah, people saying "would of" would be (and are!) correct for the dialect they speak.

It's the spoken, rather than the writen form, that is instrumental in the variation of language. Both "'ve" and unstressed "of" are pronounced identically as [əv], and so in some dialects the auxilliary changes. I don't know; the only difference between the pronunciations of the two words is the initial vowel - [æ] rather than [ə] for accept. In fast speech, [æ] can easily become [ə], and so there's some lexical confusion. It's worth noting that the people who speak English natively are those who define the language.

It's really horrible when you don't know when you're going to get them, I had it for the last few days.

Oh yes, to avoid paraphrasing myself:

*cough* *cough* Also, just be happy people only make pedagogical errors, so you can still understand them; things have can are much worse.

An Eee PC perchance? They do look pretty awesome. Edit: Or not, seems the "eee" is simply the sound of your glee. :wink: Anyway, today I finally found out that I'd done sufficiently well in my exams to do linguistics next year. I'm so happy right now... I don't think results have ever had this effect on me before.

The numerical values aren't representative of how scary punishments are, they're representative of the unpleasantness of the punishments. Someone who does not exist experiences nothing whatsoever, and so by definition the payoff is 0. Sure, the person might be worried before being killed, but then they blink out of existence and no longer have anything to worry about. You may be right about the scores for a rehab camp, but I disagree with the whole approach - surely there should be some form of punishment for those who commit crimes? Note: The whole model is likely to be very flawed, as it's far too simple for a start, and it doesn't really correspond to real world issues - for instance, level of punishment is by no means linear. It was just handy to demonstrate my reasoning.

In what way is that needlessly added? By your reasoning anything added to food is needlessly done so, including but not limited to adding cheese to bread. And yeah, this thread makes me hungry.

The view that all fat is inherently a bad thing is essentially flawed - fats are simply another food group, and though eating large quantities of them (especially saturates) can have bad consequences, you do actually need some for a balanced diet. And some fats can have all sorts of good effects, like the monounsaturates that are present in olive oil, omega-3 (they've done this one to death in adverts, but it's another monounsaturate), and polyunsaturates, including those that are conjugated.

Nope, I think euthanasia is a good thing, provided you can be sure the person wants it, which can be difficult. It's like Eenuh says - death isn't really a punishment - indeed, for some people, it is the opposite.

My argument isn't entirely founded on humanitarianism, but is more to do with how much of a penalty the death penalty actually is. Let's say we assume that prisons are unpleasant in some way, which is presumably the theory, even if it arguably isn't the practise. This unpleasantness could stem from guilt, lack of freedom, isolation from family or the real world, etc. Given this axiom, simply being in prison itself is a form of punishment. Now, let's introduce the death penalty. Things get complex here because reasoning depends on belief, but lets consider the possible payoffs in terms of type of punishment: Dying takes you to a:_Better place_Worse place_Indifferent place_You no longer exist Prisoner lives:__________standard_____standard_____standard_________standard Prisoner dies:___________lesser_______worse_______standard__________none Let's apply a numerical value to this in terms of degree of punishment, the higher the worse: Dying takes you to a:_Better place_Worse place_Indifferent place_You no longer exist Prisoner lives:__________0.5__________0.5___________0.5_______________0.5 Prisoner dies:___________-1___________1____________0.5________________0 So, for the harshest possible punishment, we need to choose a strategy which will give us the largest punishment. The best thing to do here is to let the prisoner live, as this way one will be sure to have a punishment of 0.5, and though you can't achieve a one of 1, there is no chance of 0 or -1. This analysis suggests the death penalty is a flawed strategy, but of course it is subject to change based on what you believe. As someone who thinks nothing after death is by far the most likely scenario, I am even more sure that the death penalty is a bad idea. There is nevertheless one humanitarian element to my argument, that I mentioned earlier. An authority ordering the death of an individual, even if based on a trial, seems far worse than the actions of the individual themselves, whatever these actions may be.

Yeah, that's just pointless. Proper seasoning is salt, pepper and the like; things that actually make a difference to the flavour of food.

Yes, and the babarism is magnified a hundred fold because it's carried out by an authority, rather than a lone and crazed individual. In addition, killing someone is only arguably a punishment - what does killing a murderer actually achieve? Yes, it "stops them from doing any more damage", but that reeks to me of a easy yet dubious way out. It's true that keeping people alive saps money from the state, but if the alternative is killing them, then I'd rather some taxes be spent on prisoners.

That's not a seasoning, that's just a silly decoration.

I've always thought of the death penalty as uncalled for and somewhat barbaric. It reminds me of the actions of rioting crowds and so on.

'tis indeed a great site. I found out the guy was eerily similar to me - for instance, we both did (or in my case, am doing) the same course at the same university, and both used the obscure Futurama reference "Things of Interest" as a blog title. (mine had like two posts) Edit: Wait, I lie, he did maths.

Wikipedia is your friend.