Comments on: These Are A Few (More) Of My (Least) Favorite Things

By: Furrfu

Furrfu — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 09:51:40 +0000

My personal pet peeve here is when people think that text running to 10,000 words makes it a “long read” or “long form”. Good God, if they were to encounter an actual novel, let alone a textbook, I fear they’d die of the shock! Perhaps they have been raised in caves with cellphones, and their only previous exposure to literature has been in the form of SMS messages with no punctuation.

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By: Furrfu

Furrfu — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 09:41:41 +0000

Dismayingly often, as extensively documented and lamented on Language Log, the “whichever authority” is purely the self-proclaimed authority of the individual prescriptivist, unrestrained by humility or indeed any knowledge whatsoever.

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By: Omegaile

Omegaile — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 00:57:56 +0000

The link died, so if anyone is interested in the Psychological Entitlement Scale, here’s what I found:
http://questionpro.com/t/AGotDZLgRi

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By: Protagoras

Protagoras — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 15:33:47 +0000

Sadly, it’s not only amateurs who mingle fact and rumor in history. Particularly with ancient figures, but also with those who are just minor figures, where there’s a lack of information and it’s not always easy to distinguish fact from rumor, you often find professional historians confidently reporting barely sourced facts that are disputed by their colleagues, and you’d never know about the dispute if you hadn’t read other historians writing on the same subject.

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By: Pierre Menard

Pierre Menard — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 07:05:20 +0000

As others above have said, Wikipedia’s accuracy is very subject-dependent. If you want to know the name of Mao’s widow or see a list of movies starring your favorite pop star, the information will be 100% accurate. As the subject become more politicized, the information begins the reflect the thoughts of whichever wiki-faction won the latest edit war.

Additionally, I think a lot of the historical entries are written by amateurs who tend to mingle fact and rumors. This is less a problem in biographies of major historical figures, but as soon as you read the entries on minor historical characters the information becomes extremely questionable.

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By: Tropylium

Tropylium — Sun, 01 Feb 2015 20:40:33 +0000

As a music genre it’s even more ill-defined, more a general term of contempt for music deemed sentimental and inauthentic.

Nah, there’s a pretty good-sized bundle of artists who consistently get filed in a category “New Age”. One large chunk being music that’s too synthetic to be called “rock”, too lively to be called “ambient”, too ethereal to be called “pop”. Relatively clear examples including artists like Enigma or Vangelis. And if you dig a bit, there’s a whole bunch of subculture that no one ever even attempts to file elsewhere.

Many of us fans don’t exactly love the term, nor do the musicians (since for the most part we have nothing to do with the spiritual movement), but no one’s proposed anything better either. So, the same deal as goes for a bunch of other out-of-the-mainstream genres too, say “intelligent dance music” or “post-rock”.

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By: James fishery

James fishery — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 00:39:20 +0000

https://therosethatgrewthroughconcrete.wordpress.com

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By: Sara

Sara — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 00:24:27 +0000

11. This blog?

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 01:50:25 +0000

That story seems to be from this speech, reprinted in the Salmon of Doubt. pdf

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By: Vulture

Vulture — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 01:41:14 +0000

That’s a fantastic story.

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