Socrates' ideas, or rather Plato's representations thereof, belong to a cultural context radically different from our own and have absolutely no relevance. Greece was undergoing a transition from orality to literacy at the time. It was also in the early stages of actual educational institutions. What the distribution of a few manuscripts in that context meant relates to nothing in our modern world.
Not to be a jerk about it, but the misuse of history is characteristic of very pernicious rhetoric.
Wow chalk one up on "completely missing the point." Gone35 was drawing a comparison between the Greek's transition from orality to literacy and our transition from literacy to a more digital communication media.
Books are clearly worse in virtually every context than one on one dialog with the author.
The advantage of contact with people separated in space or time seem less meaningful at the time. But, venerating books over one on one contact is a huge mistake.
> Books are clearly worse in virtually every context than one on one dialog with the author.
This is not the case with fiction or poetry, where what is communicated is often precisely what cannot be communicated socially or even explicitly. The experiences of both writing and reading are often in a different realm altogether than those of speaking and listening face to face -- one is not a watered down version of the other. They have different qualities.
And even in the case of scientific and mathematical exposition, where your statement is more often true, there are many exceptions. For example, I think of professors I've had who could write lucidly but were poor teachers, both in the classroom and in office hours. Either their social skills stood in the way of their communication, or their verbal skills were not as good as their written ones. They needed time and solitude to express their thoughts clearly.
People can recite books just fine, let alone poetry. Granted, it's something of a lost skill, but one on one interactions are not limited to dialogs even if they may enhance exposition.
So, you gain absolutely nothing by writing the spoken word down as a skilled orator can speak with a nuteral tone when desired but the written word can't add inflection.
"Sturdy roads, aqueducts, buildings, and military equipment are basically the things you want to have in order to consolidate and maintain power over a large area for a long period of time." The first three are also the things you want to have, well, civilization. You know, clean water, the ability to conduct trade outside of your immediate area, etc. It's about economics, not control.
Strangely, policing roads is a major factor in civilization. If you can't get your goods to market in the next town because of road bandits, then the towns are effectively cut off from one another.
There's even an argument (somebody's thesis) that patrolling roads was the single greatest event (invention?) that led to the end of the so-called dark ages and the beginning of the Renaissance.
Let me see if I can remember the chain:
Safe roads led to trade, the return of currency as a valuable resource, the need of Lords for gold instead of cattle, oxen and straw which led to the rewriting of traditional peon contracts. Following that, inflation drove the Lords out of the counties to the cities, lifting the yoke of the local despots and freeing the country.
That was covered in the article. Disrupting the default order allows you to put emphasis on certain words, in your case, you'd want the color adjective to stand out. The other option, which I don't think the article covered, would be to change the rhythm and speed of the phrase slightly and put an audible emphasis on red.
Keep mind that Google was initially installed as the default search engine years ago, because FF users voted for it to be so. Only after Google saw how many search referrals they then got from FF, did they, that is Google, suggest an actual deal (which paid, incidentally, only a few percent of the market value for those referrals.). That deal doesn't include anything preventing users from changing the defaults.
Consider as well the Awesome Bar. The ability to search your history easily resulted in fewer users going back to Google and generating search referrals. Mozilla implemented it anyway, because it was good for the user.
You seem to be missing the point that overthrows your assertion. Yes, there is still a deal with Google, but Mozilla doesn't care if doing and advocating what's good for the user makes that relationship less and less valuable for Google. They are, in fact, sacrificing potential financial gain for the sake of their principles.
Mozilla has numerous, egregious faults, but this kind of hypocrisy and ethical lapses aren't among them.
> Mozilla doesn't care if doing and advocating what's good for the user makes that relationship less and less valuable for Google. They are, in fact, sacrificing potential financial gain for the sake of their principles.
Ahh, No. They're biting the hand that feeds them while they're still being fed, which just makes them look tacky. They admittingly see the writing on the wall, with declining mind and marketshare to Google which is what's prompted this post - which isn't in the users best interests, it's what's in their own. Users also end up using what they believe is the best or most convenient choice. Which is fine, everyone has the right to do what's best for themselves.
Perpetuating the illusion that there are innumerable grave threats that require resource-intensive responses is a useful tool for ensuring that more anti-terrorism money from the federal government gets poured into the city. It's not all incompetence.
It seems to me that if someone is just honestly interested in meeting people and hearing whatever about them, then they are by nature rather social and extroverted and scarcely need advice on how to start conversations.
For most people who aren't social butterflies, conversations are either simple social gestures or they actually have a point. When they have a point, you should ask what interests you, and if it interests them too, then you've found someone with whom a conversation could be worthwhile.
> For most people who aren't social butterflies, conversations are either simple social gestures or they actually have a point.
I think that's only partly true. In my life I've gone from extremely shy, 'introverted' and lonely to socially active and 'extraverted'. Both were not optimal and thankfully I think I've found a balance that works for me.
An important part of finding that balance was to accept that for a lot of my friends, especially the extraverts, 'simple social gestures' and small-talk type conversations do have a point. They need those.
And I'd be a bad friend if I didn't learn to do that occasionally, in the same way that they'd be bad friends if they wouldn't let me monologue about some subject I just spent a week reading about in isolation (where 'bad' means partly 'not a nice person', and partly 'just not a great match as friends).
How do you generalize more than a billion people with "they"?
I think we're reaching the limits of the English language with that one. I'd say it's hard for an outsider to determine how the majority of a billion people view a particular product.
I'm sorry, but you generalized about the same billion people and even offered a completely imaginary 90% statistic to boot. And I'm not an outsider, not to the industry, not to web services, not to social networks, not to FB itself. I've been a user and an employee and a consultant for all of those things.
And what exactly do you think you mean by "I think we're reaching the limits of the English language with that one."? The semantic "limit" of the 3rd person plural pronoun is that there is an explicit or implicit, antecedent substantive referent. Your nonsense compounds itself.
"Indispensably useful" has positive connotations, yet most people I speak to (even outside the HN/tech crowd) do not speak of Facebook in positive terms.
Some use it simply because it's addictive. They don't want to use it, they don't enjoy using it, but they're eventually drawn back in after trying to quit. In this sense, it's "indispensably useful" in the way crack cocaine is indispensably useful.
Rules like these aren't really good guide to style though. They are the sort of guidelines suited to curing teenagers of bad habits. That's the problem I have with articles like these. They aren't adult discussions of language; they do not teach effective writing, and do not promote an understanding of language. One should ideally outgrow such pedagogy by one's second year of college.
Ideally. But when I took my cross-discipline gen-ed requirements, I was pretty amazed how little & how low-quality writing was expected of at least some of the humanities first & second years. Not much chance for growth when assigning a two-page paper is enough to provoke upset.
I also noticed this in my undergrad. In my second semester gen English, a 5 page minimally researched paper was enough to get people pretty upset, while in my hard science courses, it wasn't uncommon to turn in 20-30 pages every couple weeks.
Just as a clarification: Why do they ask for a minimum word count (or space count for that matter) and not for a minimum quality of the content. If students can accomplish the same with less words, then so be it.
I once had a professor who assigned regular essays with a maximum length of one properly formatted page. He was quite demanding, and I think I probably learned more about writing from those than most other multi-page assignments. He was also probably the most brilliant professor I'd had.
I understood that as a temporary constraint, not as a rule. More like "you used this style a lot during the last assignment, this time, try something different". Working under temporary constraints does promote learning different aspects of a skill.
The key is to learn to write well before becoming a staff writer at the Economist. These guidelines are fine, but all of these nonos have good uses when used appropriately. Some of these guidelines even create imprecision or run counter to general usage.
My father (an ex-English teacher) used to always say something like "concision is rarely wrong, unless it ruins precision."
In this case, the rule is just not to use the word "very." I can't think of a single context where "very" doesn't degrade from the semantics and syntax of a sentence. I think this rule is appropriate to any and every style.
Oh, please, then you should broaden your thought process. Sure, "very" is overused/misused. But there are all sorts of places where it is the perfect word, especially when playing like you are talking to a child:
"And when she was bad, she was very, very bad."
Let's all agree that using "malicious" or "malevolent" would "degrade the semantics and syntax" of the sentence.
The number of absolute statements you can make about the English language is very close to the null set.
"Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don't be too particular."
Or perhaps more appropriately:
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"
"Very" is a fine word. There's nothing about it that inherently "degrades semantics and syntax." In fact, I think that's probably a meaningless statement. How could it possibly degrade syntax?
It can also be used quite stylishly. Most words can.
That's a much more coherent claim, if subjective. I agree with the weak claim ("it is usually best to drop the very and possibly replace the word it modified"). I disagree with the strong claim ("it is always best ...").
Not to be a jerk about it, but the misuse of history is characteristic of very pernicious rhetoric.