06.26.08
Posted by 3 at 1:14 pm in "reality", Toys, Justice, Domestic Abuse, grammar
The results of DC v. Heller are finally in, and it seems to be a momentous victory for owners of both firearms and a sound understanding of the English language. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States reaffirmed the Second Amendment of the Constitution as an individual right to bear arms rather than a collective, a distinction that Justice Antonin Scalia outlines in a rather unsubtle verbal jab at fellow Justice John Stevens in his writing of the majority opinion.
In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petitioners
and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (sometimes)
idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a
hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the
actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an
idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No
dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have
been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried
that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy
to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the
hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic meaning
would cause the protected right to consist of the right
to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that no
commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of
the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase
“keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word
“Arms” would have two different meanings at once:
“weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of
“bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying
“He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled
the bucket and died.” Grotesque.
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04.01.08
Posted by Varies at 1:24 am in grammar
Here’s a list of real headlines where the writers had way too much to drink before sitting down to work. If you have trouble reading things in more than one way, you will likely not find this funny at all.
Some choice cuts for your lazy unclicking selves:
LBJ Giving Bull To Mexican People
Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder
New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
Beating Witness Provides Names
Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Ax
Police Can’t Stop Gambling
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10.25.07
Posted by Varies at 7:09 pm in grammar
Today there was an exercise that we did wherein we were to supply the punctuation for sentences that lacked it. One of the sentences was as follows:
Did Jon ask Where are they
Can you fix it?
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10.23.07
Posted by Varies at 11:50 am in grammar
The other day in Grammar, we took the writing section from a practice THEA test. This test is used for teaching certification, and was amusing simply because it was so facile. I probably could have passed the thing in 10th grade! Anyway, I’ve often enjoyed the short essays that they put in standardised tests, and I found one on this test that was fun in more ways than one. Okay, maybe funny’s not the right word. I mean, I found it to be funny, but the joke can only be described as inscribed – which is to say, “you probably won’t get it.” Nonetheless, it’s a poor man’s version of a lesson in rhetoric that might teach you a thing or two. It says some of the things I wanted to write about, but it does it using language that is probably more accessible than what I would have said. Oh, and it’s most definitely less insulting that I would’ve been. You’ll find the test item after the break. Read and learn.
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09.30.07
Posted by Varies at 8:30 am in grammar
Surprisingly, this sentence contains a nonstandard grammatical device! (Can you spot it?) Normal people like you and I don’t care that the adverb at the start of that sentence does not describe a verb, adjective, or adverb; but a ‘good’ prescriptivist probably would.
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