am I the only one who doesn't know what this "shotgun" approach is ?

 

am I the only one who doesn't know what this "shotgun" approach is ?

Apparently.

John

 

I must disagree on the mandatory education issue. If we allow a large segment of our population to "opt out" of a basic education, there will be a surge of under-employed , unemployable people relying on public assistance for their survival. Mexico may find the illegal alien issue reversed...

hmmm
Make unemployment aid directly proportional to education?
or tell them they can go back top school when they realize they cant get a job without it.

And theres already people out there living on unemployment too lazy to get a job when the govt. just gives them money.

 

You mean like learning to capitalize and to punctuate in high school. They can be important to communication.

John

hey, i can, online i usually do...
not as much in off topic, less when typing with one hand.
at least i always spell everything right.

 

Are you kidding? What's wrong with working for a living? What's wrong with competition?

John

 

hey, i can, online i usually do...
not as much in off topic, less when typing with one hand.
at least i always spell everything right.

I don't care how many hands use to keyboard on your computer. I think the matter of literacy, or absence thereof, is relevant as you were criticizing people who supposedly answered an oversimplified survey question "wrong." Even assuming the desired answer to the survey was correct, literacy is far more important than knowing the "earth rotates about the sun." Why is that even important to know for 99.9% of the population?

John

edit: And I suspect this is an example of good spelling and punctuation:

Nope, a line is a one dimensional object, always.
no matter what angle you view it from it only has length, it hat two dimensions on an (X,Y) graph because its endpoints are not constrained to one dimension, its a one dimensional object in a two dimensional graph, there is a one dimensional line between the two points, if that makes sense.

Come on, you have a lot to offer. Just make it a little easier on those of us who don't text-speak all day long.

John

 

I agree that literacy is important to express and communicate ideas correctly, but I also consider knowledge of basic truths is imperative.
Truths such as the shape of the earth, the center of our solar system, the existence of gravity and the origin of the species define the existence of a human on earth.

 

But I thought we rotated about the center of mass of the solar system. Are you sure the Gallop pollster appreciated the difference? Do you know how these polls are/were conducted in the US (at least)? What was the non-response rate? What day were they done on? If Saturday, how were the responses corrected for people just being silly secondary to dihydroacetaldehyde ingestion?

John

 

am I the only one who doesn't know what this "shotgun" approach is ?

And apparently you are the only one that has never heard of Google.

 

Originally Posted by magnet18
hey, i can, online i usually do...
not as much in off topic, less when typing with one hand.
at least i always spell everything right.

I don't care how many hands use to keyboard on your computer. I think the matter of literacy, or absence thereof, is relevant as you were criticizing people who supposedly answered an oversimplified survey question "wrong." Even assuming the desired answer to the survey was correct, literacy is far more important than knowing the "earth rotates about the sun." Why is that even important to know for 99.9% of the population?

I am very literate. My lexile score maxed out the test last year. I am by no means criticizing those with less than perfect literacy skills or with physical jobs, many of my family members have jobs like that.
In addition, I agree that it is not important to know that the earth revolves around the sun, for all we know, maybe both are stationary and time-space is warping drastically in unfathomable ways, for that matter, what is "stationary". I sure don't know.

And you may want to re-read your first sentence there.

edit: And I suspect this is an example of good spelling and punctuation:

Originally Posted by magnet18
Nope, a line is a one dimensional object, always.
no matter what angle you view it from it only has length, it hat two dimensions on an (X,Y) graph because its endpoints are not constrained to one dimension, its a one dimensional object in a two dimensional graph, there is a one dimensional line between the two points, if that makes sense.

Come on, you have a lot to offer. Just make it a little easier on those of us who don't text-speak all day long.

John

I fail to see how this is "text-speak"
I accidentally said "hat" rather than "has", and I failed to capitalize the N in no.

It may be a run-on sentence, I apologize for that.
I was distracted and rushing; nobody's perfect.

Also, for the record, I almost never abbreviate or use common teen "text-speak" or "leet-speak". It bothers me.

[EDIT]
I edited it, better?

Nope, a line is a one dimensional object, always.
No matter what angle you view it from it only has length.
It has two dimensions on an (X,Y) graph because its endpoints are not constrained to one dimension; it's a one dimensional object in a two dimensional graph, if that makes sense.
There is only a one dimensional line between any two points.

 

How about the difference between "it's" and "its?" One includes a verb; the other is simply a possessive. My point, as already stated, is that you have a lot to offer. Please don't dilute that with raunchy grammar.

John

 

Sorry, I missed that one, you'll see I corrected it in the edit though.
I'm still confused as to where my grammar is "raunchy", other than a few little mistakes.
As for thinking I have a lot to offer, thanks
I try to only post where I actually know what I'm doing though; which isn't often.

 

magnet18, it is generally a good practice to submit any written text in a form that would be suitable for an exam or a semi-formal letter.

This way, the passage is easily read and doesn't need to be re-read to make sense. As a result the reader stays relaxed and doesn't get frustrated, trying to make heads or tales out of the text.

Now, I don't say that any of your posts are obscure. On the contrary, I wish all of the posts on this forum had at least the quality of yours. But you know very well that good is the enemy of the best, and in these times of image and sound, it is for the best to hone our writing skills continuously.

 

Yea, I know.
Part of it is taking shortcuts and letting auto-correct do the work, like capitalizing I and common spelling mistakes.
Among other teens I see that often, the general mindset being "who cares".
Unfortunately it seems that most of my generation has this mindset with many things, usually caring about the unimportant things and blowing off the important things.

As for the clarity of my posts, I always try to correct any spelling mistakes, and re-read at lest once.
Occasionally the teenager, go-go-go mentality leads me to just shoot off a quick response without proofing it, but I try not to.
In any case, you are correct.


This leads me to another topic i find interesting, the creation of a sub-language for communication.
For example, I have a friend, and at lunch we'll be talking about something nerdy, and after a while we realize that some of the girls at the table are looking at us funny(most of our friends are girls). Apparently we just start mumbling and barely making noise, we can understand perfectly and discuss really complex topics, but to anyone else its almost not even speech.

Same thing goes for if we are working late on a project in his barn and have the music up loud, eventually we realize that were getting just as much info from general tone and body language as we are from the actual vocalization. When his mom comes out or something and we don't realize shes there, she just looks at us funny and is amazed were even communicating, while we talk about black holes, lasers, the cold war (thats a story on its own), ect.

epic digression

 

Some people (especially younger ones) take joy and pride when managing to communicate with a code obscure to third parties. It makes them feel unique, I guess, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Personally, I 'm for the distribution of information, so when I talk "science-speak" or "nerd-speak" and someone from my company has a wondering look in his face, I offer to explain. Usually they reject the offer, however.

 

@ Georacer: As you say and as I started this small digression, the key is communication. Technical jargon and so forth work fine in a restricted group. The same can be said for abbreviations. But go international, and even the best human translators will stumble. Technical terms that we may think are universal, are not, particularly when their abbreviations are used. I learned that lesson years ago in Seville, Spain. The translator started frantically waving her hands. We all got a chuckle out of it, but it was a lesson learned well.

We have a large number of international members on this site.

Another aspect that comes into play even with native English speakers is the difficulty in reading something without punctuation or with irregular spelling (including capitalization). Some people claim that doesn't affect them, but I doubt that assertion has ever been put to the test across a broad population. I know am affected by it as are many people with mild to moderate reading difficulties. It takes me several times longer and multiple reads to try to understand what is intended, and even then, I am sure I miss some. That is why I made my comment several posts back.

This forum frowns on text-speak and by extension of that policy would frown on other written forms that impede communication. It may take a little longer for someone to put their thoughts into decent English, but it is simply selfish of a person to refuse to do that at the inconvenience of many others who need to decipher that person's comments.

John

 

John, I couldn't agree more.

I would just like to add, that since there is a specified language for this forum, that is English, one can demand from a poster to make correct use of that language and that language only. It is in the discretion of the reader to acknowledge any non-English and English-ish post.

 

Well said.