"Some advice from a blog saying we shouldn't bother correcting each other's grammar online: ..."
"*You're as in you're making this too easy for me."
I could definitely spend hours on a blog with jokes like that! I agree it's futile to try to get others to change their ways when it comes to grammar and spelling, which is probably why I make a blog post complaining about how people using improper grammar and spelling on my server. I'll concede this is the way new languages form, but I certainly don't like the idea of this... language... being a derivative or form of English.
As for how a trench warfare server holds up to real life trench warfare, the answer is simple: not at all. The trench warfare server I host has several things which quite obviously rip it away from reality: floating buildings, the capability to 'eat' huge amounts of dirt, putting into virtuspace and then just pulling it back out again, and above all respawning. The ability to simply die, respawn, and take revenge sucks all the seriousness out of any form of warfare, trenches or no. However, it does possess some of the same basic strategies: trench warfare is basically hiding in a giant line in the ground, waiting for the enemy to get near you then jumping up and lobbing grenades and shooting guns at the other side.
"Two contrasting viewpoints on how the Internet is affecting language ..."
Guns don't murder people. Guns are tools which merely happen to have a connotation of killing people. The same is true of Twitter: very few properties are inherent of a tool. I could (and for a recent blogpost, did... for demonstrative purposes) use this blog to vomit incoherent, unintelligible Internet text, but I don't. In much the same way, Twitter doesn't force people to use unintelligible text, it just makes it easier to keep your posts under the 140 character limit - especially if you want to link to something!
Again, guns don't murder people. You'll never see a gun actively acting by itself to kill someone. In much the same way, you'll never see Twitter actively acting by itself to make the Internet 'kill' proper English - people use it the same way they use Facebook, Myspace, or my blog: they use it to spread their thoughts, opinions, and ideas. The language they do this in has no relevance with the tool itself. I could make a Twitter post in English, Spanish, French, German, Latin, or Internet. This doesn't mean Twitter is promoting or demoting any of these languages!
However, if Twitter actively blocked any of its users who failed to use properly incorrect English, I would agree it's promoting incorrect English. The thing is, it's not, in the same way no gun has ever whispered "Hey... kill that guy over there with me..." to anyone! Guns can even be used for constructive purposes: one can use them to hunt for meat which can feed a society.
"Here's another one: ..."
This ties into the above comment, so I believe I've already covered it. However, I must say the shortest of words can have far, far more meaning than the longest thereof. For example, a simple "NO." carries far more weight than a technical treatise describing in a thousand words why the answer is no.
Soldiers, Armies, Wars, Death, Destruction, Chaos, and General Universal Entropy
What is war?
Well, simply put, it's two enormous organisms, which we call "civilizations" or "nations", having at one another over something which they both want. For now, I'll call them nations Joe and Bob.
Bob wants something Joe has - a box. Now, Bob is a fighting man (an aggressive civilization), so he asks Joe politely for Joe's box one time. Joe refuses, because it just so happens the box is what Joe's economy runs on. (Think of a country which makes its commerce solely on gold.)
This is where the armies come in. In this extended metaphor, armies are fists, feet, and teeth. Bob really wants that box, so he throws a punch at Joe. Joe can either block it with his arm or let it hit his face (the face being the civilians), so he blocks the punch.
Well, what are armies?
Armies are the instruments of war. This time, think of a chess board. Joe is white and Bob is black. The white pieces all start in one inert, enormous mass which plunderously starts moving from Joe's innermost protection (his side of the board is closer to his 'cities') to attack the other side. The same is true of all the black pieces. Then, the two sides approach and finally clash into each other, destroying each other in a massacre of marble pieces which are placed to the side of the board for future use. Okay, so extended metaphors aren't always perfect - or ever perfect, for that matter.
In this case, the king represents the box in the sense of being the goal: when it's captured or taken in chess parlance and destroyed in mine, the war is won.
What are soldiers, then?
From the army's perspective, they're the same as skin cells to a human: they do their job, they do it well, and sometimes one becomes cancerous. They do their job for about two weeks, then they die and are sent away.
From the country's perspective, they're cold, hard, detached people who want to shoot guns at other people.
From their family's perspective, they're living people with three-dimensional personalities who either joined the army or got recruited (and in the latter case, they probably come back drastically changed in an incredibly short period of time, shocking the family who could still remember how they were before they left.)
Soldiers who serve any number of tours in war will undoubtedly experience death, destruction, chaos, and general universal entropy, from greatest to least importance. It's amazing soldiers can even cling on to even the thinnest strand of humanity after having been shot at, bombed on, blasted, maimed, and generally forced to endure death as a daily thing and destruction as a constant of life. (Chaos and general universal entropy happen everywhere on Earth regardless of conditions, so I doubt that's really so horrible. Six point nine billion people seem to have managed to survive them so far.)
What is death?
From a purely definitional standpoint, death is the moment where an organism ceases to be, or, more precisely the instant at which the cells cease to operate in unison. (In laymans terms: death is when all your organs stop agreeing on what to do next.)
However, from a more philosophical standpoint, no one really knows what death is or feels like, because everyone who went through it is dead now. We haven't figure out a way to talk to dead people yet, but I'm sure this will be one of the first questions we ask them when we finally figure out how to do so.
From the eyes of the living, death is usually pretty traumatic. Now, in this context I mean death we know about... thousands of deaths are occuring all over your body as you read this and you don't even care! How cruel a person you must be!
As a general rule of thumb, trauma is a factor of the scale of the death times the inverse of the distance. For example, if your car hits a bird, it's a fairly sad event for most people: You'll say "Oh no!!!", stop, and wish you hadn't hit the bird. However, you won't be a completely different person because of it, and you won't hold a funeral for the corpse of the bird.
Another example is a war on the other side of the planet. There's an incredible amount of death going on, but you're so disconnected from it you may not even know there is a war. If someone tells you about it, you may go "Really? Oh, wow, that's terrible! Why don't they just end the war?" but unless you know personally know someone who's in the war you probably won't lay awake every night tossing and turning about it.
What is destruction?
Destruction is the ending of a structure: fission is destruction of atoms, disassembly is the destruction of assembled parts, and war is the destruction of hopes, dreams, lives, places, and nations. Everything can be thought of as causing the destruction of something else: every time you eat you're destroying solid chunks of food so you can restructure them into something useful to you.
What is chaos?
Chaos is comparable to total randomness. For example, when two atoms collide into each other at near-light speeds, there are an infinite number of almost-identical paths they can take, which can end up leading to very different points over a long period of time, such as one millenium.
An example of chaos could be a twenty-sided die. When you roll it, there's theoretically an equal chance there will be a one or an eighteen. The same is true of chaos. However, another function of chaos is that things will always either converge or diverge as a result of it. Chaos is not stationary.
What is general universal entropy?
General universal entropy (better known as: "entropy") is any action which is easy to do and extremely hard to undo. For example, energy released as heat is a form of entropy because it's incredibly difficult to ever get that work energy back. You can get it back by using a cold object, like ice - but creating the ice will in fact create more entropy than what you harness by using the ice.
An example could be as follows: you have a pot of water and a shaker of salt. You shake salt into the pot of water and let it dissolve, and for your one unit of work you get a pot of slightly salty water.
If you want the salt back, you'll have to boil off all the water in the pot, scrape the solidified salt off the bottom of the pan, and grind it back into table salt. However, in the act of doing so you expend 500 units of work and empty your pot of water.
To get the water back, you could set up an enormous collection net going into the pot, and then chill the room to below zero degrees Celsius. However, the amount of work to do this is in the ten thousands, as you have to keep an enormous area chilled, which requires more work elsewhere. As an end result, you finally get the kitchen back to the way it was, as long as you're willing to ignore the chilliness.
...and on that note, I draw my post about somewhat-connected topics to a close.
Well, simply put, it's two enormous organisms, which we call "civilizations" or "nations", having at one another over something which they both want. For now, I'll call them nations Joe and Bob.
Bob wants something Joe has - a box. Now, Bob is a fighting man (an aggressive civilization), so he asks Joe politely for Joe's box one time. Joe refuses, because it just so happens the box is what Joe's economy runs on. (Think of a country which makes its commerce solely on gold.)
This is where the armies come in. In this extended metaphor, armies are fists, feet, and teeth. Bob really wants that box, so he throws a punch at Joe. Joe can either block it with his arm or let it hit his face (the face being the civilians), so he blocks the punch.
Well, what are armies?
Armies are the instruments of war. This time, think of a chess board. Joe is white and Bob is black. The white pieces all start in one inert, enormous mass which plunderously starts moving from Joe's innermost protection (his side of the board is closer to his 'cities') to attack the other side. The same is true of all the black pieces. Then, the two sides approach and finally clash into each other, destroying each other in a massacre of marble pieces which are placed to the side of the board for future use. Okay, so extended metaphors aren't always perfect - or ever perfect, for that matter.
In this case, the king represents the box in the sense of being the goal: when it's captured or taken in chess parlance and destroyed in mine, the war is won.
What are soldiers, then?
From the army's perspective, they're the same as skin cells to a human: they do their job, they do it well, and sometimes one becomes cancerous. They do their job for about two weeks, then they die and are sent away.
From the country's perspective, they're cold, hard, detached people who want to shoot guns at other people.
From their family's perspective, they're living people with three-dimensional personalities who either joined the army or got recruited (and in the latter case, they probably come back drastically changed in an incredibly short period of time, shocking the family who could still remember how they were before they left.)
Soldiers who serve any number of tours in war will undoubtedly experience death, destruction, chaos, and general universal entropy, from greatest to least importance. It's amazing soldiers can even cling on to even the thinnest strand of humanity after having been shot at, bombed on, blasted, maimed, and generally forced to endure death as a daily thing and destruction as a constant of life. (Chaos and general universal entropy happen everywhere on Earth regardless of conditions, so I doubt that's really so horrible. Six point nine billion people seem to have managed to survive them so far.)
What is death?
From a purely definitional standpoint, death is the moment where an organism ceases to be, or, more precisely the instant at which the cells cease to operate in unison. (In laymans terms: death is when all your organs stop agreeing on what to do next.)
However, from a more philosophical standpoint, no one really knows what death is or feels like, because everyone who went through it is dead now. We haven't figure out a way to talk to dead people yet, but I'm sure this will be one of the first questions we ask them when we finally figure out how to do so.
From the eyes of the living, death is usually pretty traumatic. Now, in this context I mean death we know about... thousands of deaths are occuring all over your body as you read this and you don't even care! How cruel a person you must be!
As a general rule of thumb, trauma is a factor of the scale of the death times the inverse of the distance. For example, if your car hits a bird, it's a fairly sad event for most people: You'll say "Oh no!!!", stop, and wish you hadn't hit the bird. However, you won't be a completely different person because of it, and you won't hold a funeral for the corpse of the bird.
Another example is a war on the other side of the planet. There's an incredible amount of death going on, but you're so disconnected from it you may not even know there is a war. If someone tells you about it, you may go "Really? Oh, wow, that's terrible! Why don't they just end the war?" but unless you know personally know someone who's in the war you probably won't lay awake every night tossing and turning about it.
What is destruction?
Destruction is the ending of a structure: fission is destruction of atoms, disassembly is the destruction of assembled parts, and war is the destruction of hopes, dreams, lives, places, and nations. Everything can be thought of as causing the destruction of something else: every time you eat you're destroying solid chunks of food so you can restructure them into something useful to you.
What is chaos?
Chaos is comparable to total randomness. For example, when two atoms collide into each other at near-light speeds, there are an infinite number of almost-identical paths they can take, which can end up leading to very different points over a long period of time, such as one millenium.
An example of chaos could be a twenty-sided die. When you roll it, there's theoretically an equal chance there will be a one or an eighteen. The same is true of chaos. However, another function of chaos is that things will always either converge or diverge as a result of it. Chaos is not stationary.
What is general universal entropy?
General universal entropy (better known as: "entropy") is any action which is easy to do and extremely hard to undo. For example, energy released as heat is a form of entropy because it's incredibly difficult to ever get that work energy back. You can get it back by using a cold object, like ice - but creating the ice will in fact create more entropy than what you harness by using the ice.
An example could be as follows: you have a pot of water and a shaker of salt. You shake salt into the pot of water and let it dissolve, and for your one unit of work you get a pot of slightly salty water.
If you want the salt back, you'll have to boil off all the water in the pot, scrape the solidified salt off the bottom of the pan, and grind it back into table salt. However, in the act of doing so you expend 500 units of work and empty your pot of water.
To get the water back, you could set up an enormous collection net going into the pot, and then chill the room to below zero degrees Celsius. However, the amount of work to do this is in the ten thousands, as you have to keep an enormous area chilled, which requires more work elsewhere. As an end result, you finally get the kitchen back to the way it was, as long as you're willing to ignore the chilliness.
...and on that note, I draw my post about somewhat-connected topics to a close.
Now For Another Topic Entirely!
Now for a topic which I can really sink my teeth into, because I've had extensive experience doing it: hosting a server. (Please note: For this post, I will use the term "server" in place of "gaming server". There is a difference: not all insects are ants, but all ants are insects.)
Hosting any public gaming server on any even moderately popular game is equatable to Hell on Earth for the hoster. The more popular the server, the worse it is. I should know: I've hosted a server for about two years now.
The only thing I can say to try to convey how absolutely painful hosting a server is "y r u shootign @ me???!!!" Imagine having to read this form of... communication, for lack of a better word...constantly. That's just the start. Not only do you have to read text which looks like it was made by a brain-dead monkey having at the keyboard, but you also have to endure people ordering -- yes, ORDERING you to take administrative action on others for playing the game as it is meant to be played. I have had people tell me to ban people because someone else killed them while they were building. (I host a trench warfare server. You kill others and build cover.) What I don't understand is how this comes to pass. When a player spawns, a large popup with an "OK" button at the bottom appears. One of the items reads "2. Buildkilling is allowed, spawnkilling is not."
That's another thing almost any game server will have unless it has no killing at all: spawnkilling. In my eyes and on my server, spawnkilling is the killing of someone who has neither left the spawn area nor drawn a weapon or other item, such as the trench items used to dig and build dirt. Even though this seems like an incredibly logical definition, some people still yell "SPAWNKILL" when they die thirty yards away from the spawnroom's entrance while trying to kill me.
The solution may seem obvious: Don't host a server with combat on it. Well, the game I host on has two basic forms of server. Combat and non-combat. The non-combat servers are building servers, and are generally called "freebuilds." The problem is, for some reason which I will never quite entirely understand, a lot of the people who join my server seem to think this literally means "do anything building-related you want to, including creating as many of the largest brick as you possibly can." Other people will join my server and say "kan u maek this b a kombat servur" or sometimes "wat hapend 2 ur trench warfar servur??????"
That's another thing I hate. For some reason which is beyond my capacity to understand, some people will replace all c's with a k sound with k's. I've even seen some people (one of whom was me, mocking the fad) do it to c's with an s sound. An example server name is "Mortal Kombat's Kamoflauged Kombat."
I don't even get how that came to be. With "combat" I may be able to pretend I understand, because most Internet words are shortenings of their English counterparts when you look at a keyboard. For example, shortening "to" to "2" only saves time if you're typing. The same is true with "for" and "4", "ate" and "8", "at" and "@", and several others.
Let's rate "combat" and "kombat" based on the number of inches you would need to move your one beak over my keyboard to peck out the words. "combat" comes in at 14.00 inches, whereas "kombat" is only 10.75 inches. For "hunt and peck" typists, this shortening may signifigantly cut down the length of time required to type the word, especially since the human brain would start looking at the keys immediately surrounding the last-pressed key before looking further away.
However, I can't describe hosting a server with words, in much the same way a soldier cannot describe fighting a war with words. I'm not claiming hosting a server is in any way comparable to being shot at, but they both have in common the trait of not truly being explainable to someone who hasn't had those experiences.
4 exampul, if i wus 2 typ dis whol paragraeph in teh way i cunsidr thes pepl 2 typ, my paragraephs wud look sumting liek dis. its hardly a plesunt site 2 luk @ n the only wai 2 red it iz 2 eider sae it out loud r think abot teh fonetiks of da bootchurd text ur reading.
"For example, if I was to type this whole paragraph in the way I consider these people to type, my paragraphs would look something like this. It's hardly a pleasant sight to look at, and the only way to read is it so either say it out loud or (to) think about the phonetics of the butchered text you're reading."
For the record, it took me about a fifth of the time to write the proper English paragraph. Why people would use improper typing techniques when they could save so much time typing properly is beyond me, especially when they complain about the time others are wasting them when they get shot and have to go all the way to whatever they were doing when they probably got shot because they were too busy typing with two fingers. I know how long it takes to type that way, it used to be my method of typing. It's incredibly slow, cumbersome, and prone to mistakes, especially when you want to capitalize a key.
In conclusion: Servers are hellholes for the host. The host has to put up with people who can't type, people who can't play the game, people who can't understand pecking order, people who get a high out of angering others, and people who are just downright dumb. Why, then, do I still host? Here's the answer: there is no logical, emotional, intellectual, or biological reason I continue to host my server. It would be far more constructive if I didn't. I have had several periods of time where I stopped hosting entirely, but for some reason which even I cannot comprehend, I always return and start hosting the server again.
Hosting any public gaming server on any even moderately popular game is equatable to Hell on Earth for the hoster. The more popular the server, the worse it is. I should know: I've hosted a server for about two years now.
The only thing I can say to try to convey how absolutely painful hosting a server is "y r u shootign @ me???!!!" Imagine having to read this form of... communication, for lack of a better word...constantly. That's just the start. Not only do you have to read text which looks like it was made by a brain-dead monkey having at the keyboard, but you also have to endure people ordering -- yes, ORDERING you to take administrative action on others for playing the game as it is meant to be played. I have had people tell me to ban people because someone else killed them while they were building. (I host a trench warfare server. You kill others and build cover.) What I don't understand is how this comes to pass. When a player spawns, a large popup with an "OK" button at the bottom appears. One of the items reads "2. Buildkilling is allowed, spawnkilling is not."
That's another thing almost any game server will have unless it has no killing at all: spawnkilling. In my eyes and on my server, spawnkilling is the killing of someone who has neither left the spawn area nor drawn a weapon or other item, such as the trench items used to dig and build dirt. Even though this seems like an incredibly logical definition, some people still yell "SPAWNKILL" when they die thirty yards away from the spawnroom's entrance while trying to kill me.
The solution may seem obvious: Don't host a server with combat on it. Well, the game I host on has two basic forms of server. Combat and non-combat. The non-combat servers are building servers, and are generally called "freebuilds." The problem is, for some reason which I will never quite entirely understand, a lot of the people who join my server seem to think this literally means "do anything building-related you want to, including creating as many of the largest brick as you possibly can." Other people will join my server and say "kan u maek this b a kombat servur" or sometimes "wat hapend 2 ur trench warfar servur??????"
That's another thing I hate. For some reason which is beyond my capacity to understand, some people will replace all c's with a k sound with k's. I've even seen some people (one of whom was me, mocking the fad) do it to c's with an s sound. An example server name is "Mortal Kombat's Kamoflauged Kombat."
I don't even get how that came to be. With "combat" I may be able to pretend I understand, because most Internet words are shortenings of their English counterparts when you look at a keyboard. For example, shortening "to" to "2" only saves time if you're typing. The same is true with "for" and "4", "ate" and "8", "at" and "@", and several others.
Let's rate "combat" and "kombat" based on the number of inches you would need to move your one beak over my keyboard to peck out the words. "combat" comes in at 14.00 inches, whereas "kombat" is only 10.75 inches. For "hunt and peck" typists, this shortening may signifigantly cut down the length of time required to type the word, especially since the human brain would start looking at the keys immediately surrounding the last-pressed key before looking further away.
However, I can't describe hosting a server with words, in much the same way a soldier cannot describe fighting a war with words. I'm not claiming hosting a server is in any way comparable to being shot at, but they both have in common the trait of not truly being explainable to someone who hasn't had those experiences.
4 exampul, if i wus 2 typ dis whol paragraeph in teh way i cunsidr thes pepl 2 typ, my paragraephs wud look sumting liek dis. its hardly a plesunt site 2 luk @ n the only wai 2 red it iz 2 eider sae it out loud r think abot teh fonetiks of da bootchurd text ur reading.
"For example, if I was to type this whole paragraph in the way I consider these people to type, my paragraphs would look something like this. It's hardly a pleasant sight to look at, and the only way to read is it so either say it out loud or (to) think about the phonetics of the butchered text you're reading."
For the record, it took me about a fifth of the time to write the proper English paragraph. Why people would use improper typing techniques when they could save so much time typing properly is beyond me, especially when they complain about the time others are wasting them when they get shot and have to go all the way to whatever they were doing when they probably got shot because they were too busy typing with two fingers. I know how long it takes to type that way, it used to be my method of typing. It's incredibly slow, cumbersome, and prone to mistakes, especially when you want to capitalize a key.
In conclusion: Servers are hellholes for the host. The host has to put up with people who can't type, people who can't play the game, people who can't understand pecking order, people who get a high out of angering others, and people who are just downright dumb. Why, then, do I still host? Here's the answer: there is no logical, emotional, intellectual, or biological reason I continue to host my server. It would be far more constructive if I didn't. I have had several periods of time where I stopped hosting entirely, but for some reason which even I cannot comprehend, I always return and start hosting the server again.
Google accused Bing of stealing search results
I recently became interested in a debate which happened at the beginning of this year. Google was accusing Bing of stealing their results, and proved it extensively.
It all started with tarsorrhaphy - an eyelid procedure I would never spell correctly without directly copying it. An interesting mispelling, "torsorophy", returned the correct result on Google.
Later, Bing started showing results for "torsorophy" - without the corrected spelling. Hm.
Torsorophy wasn't the only case where Bing seemed to be imitating Google. Google found many cases where Bing had the same top search result as Google as well as cases where they saw what they would think of as quirks of their own system showing up in Bing's results. Hm.
Google decided to run an operation to prove Bing's result-theft: they made certain queries no one would type return certain search results. For example, "hiybbprqag" returned a result about Wiltern seating tickets. A few days later, Bing showed the same result for "hiybbprqag". This effect was mirrored with several other of the 100 seed searches, such as "mbzrxpgjys", "indoswiftjobinproduction", and "delhipublicschool40 chdjob".
Bing was very quick to deny the accusations and in fact accused Google for trying to catch their hand in the metaphorical cookie jar. Bing claims it was using data from optional features to improve its experience, in much the same way a lemonade stand owner could claim he was using data from similar 'optional features' to find out what the recipe of a competitor is and use that in place of his own.
Google removed the code used to seed the searches, stating it had never had the ability to control searches before and had no plans to keep this ability.
As for who I side with, that's pretty much clear. I'm a Google person in a Google family, and even if I wasn't I doubt I would approve of what amounts to stealing the lemonade recipe. Admittedly, Bing isn't stealing the recipe, but it's quite literally stealing the results - it's like stealing lemonade from your competitor and then selling it as your own, even though you know it's not.
Bing quite conveniently now shows a 'spelling suggestions' message for torsorophy, one very similar to Google's. What's worse is that Bing isn't even doing this in a way Google can retaliate against - it's not as though Google can block anyone who uses Bing Toolbar or has Suggested Sites enabled! I don't believe Bing poses a serious threat to Google as of yet, however: Google's stock is currently worth nearly twenty-five times as much as Bing's!
However, I certainly don't approve of theft and this is theft on a level incomparable to any common form of theft. Bing is heisting diamonds from the Google museum and is outright denying it. This practice is not fair or moral and it should stop now. As Google put it: Innovation is fair game, but theft is not innovation.
It all started with tarsorrhaphy - an eyelid procedure I would never spell correctly without directly copying it. An interesting mispelling, "torsorophy", returned the correct result on Google.
Later, Bing started showing results for "torsorophy" - without the corrected spelling. Hm.
Torsorophy wasn't the only case where Bing seemed to be imitating Google. Google found many cases where Bing had the same top search result as Google as well as cases where they saw what they would think of as quirks of their own system showing up in Bing's results. Hm.
Google decided to run an operation to prove Bing's result-theft: they made certain queries no one would type return certain search results. For example, "hiybbprqag" returned a result about Wiltern seating tickets. A few days later, Bing showed the same result for "hiybbprqag". This effect was mirrored with several other of the 100 seed searches, such as "mbzrxpgjys", "indoswiftjobinproduction", and "delhipublicschool40 chdjob".
Bing was very quick to deny the accusations and in fact accused Google for trying to catch their hand in the metaphorical cookie jar. Bing claims it was using data from optional features to improve its experience, in much the same way a lemonade stand owner could claim he was using data from similar 'optional features' to find out what the recipe of a competitor is and use that in place of his own.
Google removed the code used to seed the searches, stating it had never had the ability to control searches before and had no plans to keep this ability.
As for who I side with, that's pretty much clear. I'm a Google person in a Google family, and even if I wasn't I doubt I would approve of what amounts to stealing the lemonade recipe. Admittedly, Bing isn't stealing the recipe, but it's quite literally stealing the results - it's like stealing lemonade from your competitor and then selling it as your own, even though you know it's not.
Bing quite conveniently now shows a 'spelling suggestions' message for torsorophy, one very similar to Google's. What's worse is that Bing isn't even doing this in a way Google can retaliate against - it's not as though Google can block anyone who uses Bing Toolbar or has Suggested Sites enabled! I don't believe Bing poses a serious threat to Google as of yet, however: Google's stock is currently worth nearly twenty-five times as much as Bing's!
However, I certainly don't approve of theft and this is theft on a level incomparable to any common form of theft. Bing is heisting diamonds from the Google museum and is outright denying it. This practice is not fair or moral and it should stop now. As Google put it: Innovation is fair game, but theft is not innovation.
Thoughts on "All Quiet on the Western Front"
Paul, the group, and other men are in a dug-out: what I assume to be a building built in a hole in the ground but not actually under it. Shells are falling; two land directly on the dug-out, but the explosions are light and the dug-out survives. Then the shells begin to fall behind them, and they get out of the dug-out. The advancing enemy front is almost upon them, and the group repeats a process of lobbing grenades and running.
I can't help but notice the newer the recruits the more I can relate to them. I would certainly be claustrophobic in a small semi-underground building with shells landing directly on it, and I certainly wouldn't be in any fit shape to lob grenades, which weigh more or less the same as a bowling ball, sixty feet or even thirty, let alone seventy-five. Of course, I've already died eight or nine times.
Paul comments on how they weren't attacking the enemy as they ran, they were in a more barbaric, more primitive state. Their only goal was to defend themselves from the enemy fire, which they did quite well.
I think if I was in a situation where there was a direct threat to my own life and I had the capability to destroy as much of the threat as possible, I would act on that capability to the best of my abilities in a way similar to what Paul calls defense against annihilation. I don't think I would be capable of killing my own father, but I've never been in a situation where there was a direct threat to my life in the manner the soldiers were dealing with - and had dealt with many times.
I can't help but notice the newer the recruits the more I can relate to them. I would certainly be claustrophobic in a small semi-underground building with shells landing directly on it, and I certainly wouldn't be in any fit shape to lob grenades, which weigh more or less the same as a bowling ball, sixty feet or even thirty, let alone seventy-five. Of course, I've already died eight or nine times.
Paul comments on how they weren't attacking the enemy as they ran, they were in a more barbaric, more primitive state. Their only goal was to defend themselves from the enemy fire, which they did quite well.
I think if I was in a situation where there was a direct threat to my own life and I had the capability to destroy as much of the threat as possible, I would act on that capability to the best of my abilities in a way similar to what Paul calls defense against annihilation. I don't think I would be capable of killing my own father, but I've never been in a situation where there was a direct threat to my life in the manner the soldiers were dealing with - and had dealt with many times.
"The boots are a symbol for something... what do you think?"
I think the boots stand for something you want but don't need anymore - not necessarily due to death, but for other reasons as well. Kemmerich wanted to keep the boots if at all possible, but when he thought he had no hope of survival he said Müller could have them.
"Why do you think the settings are not often described in detail? ..."
Well, when the question is put to me in that form, the answer is clear, obvious, and irrefutable: Paul's immediate survival doesn't depend on what features of the landscape are half a mile away, but it does depend on how many cannon the enemy has.
Furthermore, when I think about it like that, I can eliminate anything I imagine in the scene which would pose an immediate threat to Paul's survival. For example, he would have mentioned the fog: A fog between you and your enemies would make you unable to watch for any advancing infantry or siege weapons from the other side.
I think the boots stand for something you want but don't need anymore - not necessarily due to death, but for other reasons as well. Kemmerich wanted to keep the boots if at all possible, but when he thought he had no hope of survival he said Müller could have them.
"Why do you think the settings are not often described in detail? ..."
Well, when the question is put to me in that form, the answer is clear, obvious, and irrefutable: Paul's immediate survival doesn't depend on what features of the landscape are half a mile away, but it does depend on how many cannon the enemy has.
Furthermore, when I think about it like that, I can eliminate anything I imagine in the scene which would pose an immediate threat to Paul's survival. For example, he would have mentioned the fog: A fog between you and your enemies would make you unable to watch for any advancing infantry or siege weapons from the other side.
A reply to a reply to a reply
"First of all, I can't believe you [sic]'d me. Second of all, ..."
Now you'll have to [sic] me back; let's just not start a [sic] war!
I admit Kimmelstoss could be a symbol to the group for the military organization itself, but I would disagree if the army hadn't had so much practice in closing the loopholes. I believe that each and every individual of the group is intelligent to find and exploit any and all loopholes they can find in the army regulations. The only problem is there are none to find.
Another thing I can't understand is how an employee of McDonald's would see customers as symbols of McDonald's itself. However, I can certainly connect to it far more than soldiers, I've seen McDonald's employees being jerks to their customers with my own eyes.
As for the number of death symbols, I can't even find individual symbols. Virtually everything in the book so far has been intertwined with death to an amazing degree. It seems as though from the first chapter and there onward, every remark has some connection, regardless how faint, to death.
"hole in the ground = grave .... irony of live soldiers hiding in a grave... thoughts?"
Not only were they hiding in a hole in the ground, they were actually hiding inside a grave the hole uncovered. That's not the only point in that particular chapter in which the irony of soldiers hiding in graves is made obvious - some of their company's soldiers died in the graves they were hiding in to stay alive.
Irony isn't really something I'm capable of explaining. It's like sarcasm, satire, or hyperbole - how can you not get it? If I were to write a satirical post regarding a chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front as a happy and joyous book, how can you not realize I'm not serious?
Of course, then again, I live in a household where sarcasm is a constant instead of an unknown.
Sometimes when our cat is purring contentedly on the couch we'll comment on how we torture her or
how we wish she would learn to relax.
Now you'll have to [sic] me back; let's just not start a [sic] war!
I admit Kimmelstoss could be a symbol to the group for the military organization itself, but I would disagree if the army hadn't had so much practice in closing the loopholes. I believe that each and every individual of the group is intelligent to find and exploit any and all loopholes they can find in the army regulations. The only problem is there are none to find.
Another thing I can't understand is how an employee of McDonald's would see customers as symbols of McDonald's itself. However, I can certainly connect to it far more than soldiers, I've seen McDonald's employees being jerks to their customers with my own eyes.
As for the number of death symbols, I can't even find individual symbols. Virtually everything in the book so far has been intertwined with death to an amazing degree. It seems as though from the first chapter and there onward, every remark has some connection, regardless how faint, to death.
"hole in the ground = grave .... irony of live soldiers hiding in a grave... thoughts?"
Not only were they hiding in a hole in the ground, they were actually hiding inside a grave the hole uncovered. That's not the only point in that particular chapter in which the irony of soldiers hiding in graves is made obvious - some of their company's soldiers died in the graves they were hiding in to stay alive.
Irony isn't really something I'm capable of explaining. It's like sarcasm, satire, or hyperbole - how can you not get it? If I were to write a satirical post regarding a chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front as a happy and joyous book, how can you not realize I'm not serious?
Of course, then again, I live in a household where sarcasm is a constant instead of an unknown.
Sometimes when our cat is purring contentedly on the couch we'll comment on how we torture her or
how we wish she would learn to relax.
@Ms. Cox: Commenting doesn't seem to be working correctly for me, so I'll just answer your comments here!
"Why do you think they chose to make a plan to attach [sic] Himmelstoss? ..."
In my opinion, there's no way they're attacking the military as a whole. The way to attack a system of government of any shape or form is not to attack one person, especially one nowhere near the top of the chain of command. They were attacking a person, not a system: the way to destroy a system is to undermine it or use its loopholes. Beating up one man is neither.
As for what led up to the event of the attack: Himmelstoss treated everyone in the group poorly, but Tjaden especially suffered at his merciless hands. I believe the chain of command which placed him over them and made them unable to safely rebel against his treatment helped to establish their hatred for him, but they have no hatred for the chain of command itself.
"What do you think the effect is on the story of having a first-person narrator? ..."
Although it's indeed true that a single person's view is always going to be biased to have him and his friends in the higher moral standing and his enemies in the lower moral standing, the average person won't have a massively slanted bias one way or the other – although I must admit the events thus far seem to be far more slanted than average. So far, I've seen four groups of characters.
1.) Neutral – Bystanders; people Paul never interacts with directly or indirectly.
2.) Friends – These people are obviously 'the good guys' - Paul always shows them in a positive light.
3.) Enemies – Again, these people are obviously 'the bad guys' - they're always complete jerks.
4.) The Other Side – Paul never actually says he hates the opposing army; he just tries to not get
killed by them.
"Why do you think Remarque chose to have these main characters in a hole in the ground, ..."
To me this seems fairly obvious to even the most oblivious of readers. The hole in the ground in inherent in the setting the characters are in – they're in the middle of a warzone in which cannon shells are falling and making craters in the ground, hence hiding in a hole. As for the coffin falling on the character instead of a happy face bowling ball, the coffin creates a grim tone in which even those who already died aren't safe from the ravages of war. War has no respect for anyone within its reach.
...well, it would also be fairly unlikely for a happy face bowling ball to be in the middle of a warzone anyway.
"Why do you think they chose to make a plan to attach [sic] Himmelstoss? ..."
In my opinion, there's no way they're attacking the military as a whole. The way to attack a system of government of any shape or form is not to attack one person, especially one nowhere near the top of the chain of command. They were attacking a person, not a system: the way to destroy a system is to undermine it or use its loopholes. Beating up one man is neither.
As for what led up to the event of the attack: Himmelstoss treated everyone in the group poorly, but Tjaden especially suffered at his merciless hands. I believe the chain of command which placed him over them and made them unable to safely rebel against his treatment helped to establish their hatred for him, but they have no hatred for the chain of command itself.
"What do you think the effect is on the story of having a first-person narrator? ..."
Although it's indeed true that a single person's view is always going to be biased to have him and his friends in the higher moral standing and his enemies in the lower moral standing, the average person won't have a massively slanted bias one way or the other – although I must admit the events thus far seem to be far more slanted than average. So far, I've seen four groups of characters.
1.) Neutral – Bystanders; people Paul never interacts with directly or indirectly.
2.) Friends – These people are obviously 'the good guys' - Paul always shows them in a positive light.
3.) Enemies – Again, these people are obviously 'the bad guys' - they're always complete jerks.
4.) The Other Side – Paul never actually says he hates the opposing army; he just tries to not get
killed by them.
"Why do you think Remarque chose to have these main characters in a hole in the ground, ..."
To me this seems fairly obvious to even the most oblivious of readers. The hole in the ground in inherent in the setting the characters are in – they're in the middle of a warzone in which cannon shells are falling and making craters in the ground, hence hiding in a hole. As for the coffin falling on the character instead of a happy face bowling ball, the coffin creates a grim tone in which even those who already died aren't safe from the ravages of war. War has no respect for anyone within its reach.
...well, it would also be fairly unlikely for a happy face bowling ball to be in the middle of a warzone anyway.
Thoughts on "All Quiet on the Western Front"
The group heads to the front two days earlier than scheduled due to an offensive being made by the Allies, and as they near the front, they see a wall of a hundred coffins stack in a wall two coffins tall. The English have strengthened their front; bringing more cannon to push the offensive.
Meanwhile, in the trenches, the Axis' own cannon are worn out and their shots are often landing in the trenches of their own. Two of the men in the Second Company are wounded by their own side's shells.
During this time, Paul thinks about how much random chance and luck really do rule soldiers' lives. He notes that in a "bomb-proof dug-out" he may be killed by a shell and may survive ten hours of bombardment totally uninjured. In my opinion, a bomb-proof dug-out in which a soldier can be killed by a single shell is not very bomb-proof.
In the trenches there are numerous rats. The rats nibble at the bread of almost all the soldiers until they put a stop to it. They cut out the gnawed bread, throw it in a heap on the floor, and turn out the lights. After the rats have gathered sufficiently, the soldiers turn the lights back on and strike at the pile of rats. They repeat this process repeatedly until the rats stop gathering, and yet in the morning all the gnawed scraps of bread have been carried off. It's the mystery of the rats.
I'm not a soldier or an accountant, but it seems to me like it would be less expensive to replace the Axis cannon than to buy coffins for all those who end up getting killed by their own side's shelling. Not only that, but if the English are pushing an offensive on the Axis front then I would doubly want to be able to hit them instead of my own men to try to push them back.
Random chance truly does rule soldiers' lives, as it does for everyone. However, the difference is that for everyone else random chance might cause one to be stuck in traffic or to meet an old friend. For a soldier random chance might cause one to have a hole in the head or be slightly grazed by splinters.
As for the rats, I certainly don't pretend to have the slightest understanding as to how rats can appear and disappear so easily from practically everywhere. With human soldiers I can make at least some connection even if I've never had those experiences myself, because they're members of the same race as I am.
However, rats aren't even human beings. How they can both not reappear after a massacre of that scale and simultaneously carry off all the bread is beyond me. Rats may not have brains the size of ours, but they certainly have the ability to navigate small hidey-holes quite effectively.
In this, they're not so different from the soldiers: The rats hide in crevices to stay away from the slashing knives of the soldiers, and the soldiers hide in crevices to stay away from the slashing explosions of the Allies.
Meanwhile, in the trenches, the Axis' own cannon are worn out and their shots are often landing in the trenches of their own. Two of the men in the Second Company are wounded by their own side's shells.
During this time, Paul thinks about how much random chance and luck really do rule soldiers' lives. He notes that in a "bomb-proof dug-out" he may be killed by a shell and may survive ten hours of bombardment totally uninjured. In my opinion, a bomb-proof dug-out in which a soldier can be killed by a single shell is not very bomb-proof.
In the trenches there are numerous rats. The rats nibble at the bread of almost all the soldiers until they put a stop to it. They cut out the gnawed bread, throw it in a heap on the floor, and turn out the lights. After the rats have gathered sufficiently, the soldiers turn the lights back on and strike at the pile of rats. They repeat this process repeatedly until the rats stop gathering, and yet in the morning all the gnawed scraps of bread have been carried off. It's the mystery of the rats.
I'm not a soldier or an accountant, but it seems to me like it would be less expensive to replace the Axis cannon than to buy coffins for all those who end up getting killed by their own side's shelling. Not only that, but if the English are pushing an offensive on the Axis front then I would doubly want to be able to hit them instead of my own men to try to push them back.
Random chance truly does rule soldiers' lives, as it does for everyone. However, the difference is that for everyone else random chance might cause one to be stuck in traffic or to meet an old friend. For a soldier random chance might cause one to have a hole in the head or be slightly grazed by splinters.
As for the rats, I certainly don't pretend to have the slightest understanding as to how rats can appear and disappear so easily from practically everywhere. With human soldiers I can make at least some connection even if I've never had those experiences myself, because they're members of the same race as I am.
However, rats aren't even human beings. How they can both not reappear after a massacre of that scale and simultaneously carry off all the bread is beyond me. Rats may not have brains the size of ours, but they certainly have the ability to navigate small hidey-holes quite effectively.
In this, they're not so different from the soldiers: The rats hide in crevices to stay away from the slashing knives of the soldiers, and the soldiers hide in crevices to stay away from the slashing explosions of the Allies.
Thoughts on "All Quiet on the Western Front" - A Summary Thus Far
Chapter One:
Basic character introduction. Little happens here, although the dynamics between Ginger and all the other men of the Second Company are interesting. Ginger's unwillingness to bring his kitchen to the front line doesn't create a positive image of him in the soldiers' or reader's eyes.
Looking back, the want of Kemmerich's boots wasn't an act of inconsideration on Müller's part, but rather one of self-enhancement. Although Müller would have preferred Kemmerich's survival, his death seemed obvious and Müller didn't want the boots to go to someone who neither deserved nor earned them.
Chapter Two:
The second chapter introduces a contrast and a connection between what Paul thinks and what actually happens in the real world. I can only assume that he's actually in the hospital for the entire second chapter but merely spends the first half thinking.
Paul's conversation with Kemmerich as the latter is dying is interesting to say the least, although I wouldn't want someone to tell me I was going to fine while I was clearly dying. Kemmerich's comment to Paul about taking the boots to Müller shows he knew he was going to die.
Chapter Three:
In chapter three, the pecking order of the army is made clear. Those at the top peck first, and those underneath them peck last. However, if one has plenty of cigarettes and cigars handy, one may peck before his superior. My assumption about poison gas was correct, but the question Paul later asked: "Is it air-tight?" is a rather disconcerting one. If I was issued a gas mask I would assume it had already been tested for airtightness, but to the army soldiers are, well, soldiers: worthless pawns.
Later, Paul&Co. are lying in wait for their superior, Kimmelstoss. As he passes by, they grab him, throw a bedsheet over him, and take their not-so-dignified revenge on him. Their having little or no respect for their superior officer shows up again in Chapter Five when Tjaden insults Kimmelstoss to his face. However, Kimmelstoss seems not to know what to do with the group when they show their disrespect in a way that doesn't violate any army regulations, and this probably fuels their disrespect.
Chapter Four:
Chapter four is the first chapter in which the soldiers head to the front. The number of times I would have died (I counted five) is incredible, especially considering how few of the soldiers in the company actually died. Only eight were killed, although thirteen others were wounded. The quick thinking, reaction speed, and general time to full readiness of the soldiers is not only incredible, it's bordering inhuman. However, the horses' screams aggravating the soldiers shows they still have humanity in them, despite what they've seen.
Chapter Five:
The group's disrespect for Kimmelstoss shows up here again, but here they get punished for the less severe insubordination, in contrast with the beating for which they weren't punished at all. If they hadn't used a bedsheet to ensure Kimmelstoss not knowing who his assailants were, this lack of consistency would be amazing.
In the second half of the chapter, Paul and Katczinsky find two geese, successfully capture and kill one (although Paul makes good "friends" with a bulldog in the process), and cook the dead goose. They feast on the goose and take the rest to Kropp and Tjaden.
General Thoughts:
The settings are often not described in extreme detail, leaving much of it to the imagination. In Chapter Four, for example, what I imagine is an enormous flat area with the Allied batteries on a raised hill. A forest surrounds on one side with an ocean on the other, and a trench and road run side-by-side past a graveyard. There are some destroyed houses along the road, and one intact house with no one living in it. I also imagine a fog between the Germans and the Allies, making it hard for the Germans to see their assailants.
Basic character introduction. Little happens here, although the dynamics between Ginger and all the other men of the Second Company are interesting. Ginger's unwillingness to bring his kitchen to the front line doesn't create a positive image of him in the soldiers' or reader's eyes.
Looking back, the want of Kemmerich's boots wasn't an act of inconsideration on Müller's part, but rather one of self-enhancement. Although Müller would have preferred Kemmerich's survival, his death seemed obvious and Müller didn't want the boots to go to someone who neither deserved nor earned them.
Chapter Two:
The second chapter introduces a contrast and a connection between what Paul thinks and what actually happens in the real world. I can only assume that he's actually in the hospital for the entire second chapter but merely spends the first half thinking.
Paul's conversation with Kemmerich as the latter is dying is interesting to say the least, although I wouldn't want someone to tell me I was going to fine while I was clearly dying. Kemmerich's comment to Paul about taking the boots to Müller shows he knew he was going to die.
Chapter Three:
In chapter three, the pecking order of the army is made clear. Those at the top peck first, and those underneath them peck last. However, if one has plenty of cigarettes and cigars handy, one may peck before his superior. My assumption about poison gas was correct, but the question Paul later asked: "Is it air-tight?" is a rather disconcerting one. If I was issued a gas mask I would assume it had already been tested for airtightness, but to the army soldiers are, well, soldiers: worthless pawns.
Later, Paul&Co. are lying in wait for their superior, Kimmelstoss. As he passes by, they grab him, throw a bedsheet over him, and take their not-so-dignified revenge on him. Their having little or no respect for their superior officer shows up again in Chapter Five when Tjaden insults Kimmelstoss to his face. However, Kimmelstoss seems not to know what to do with the group when they show their disrespect in a way that doesn't violate any army regulations, and this probably fuels their disrespect.
Chapter Four:
Chapter four is the first chapter in which the soldiers head to the front. The number of times I would have died (I counted five) is incredible, especially considering how few of the soldiers in the company actually died. Only eight were killed, although thirteen others were wounded. The quick thinking, reaction speed, and general time to full readiness of the soldiers is not only incredible, it's bordering inhuman. However, the horses' screams aggravating the soldiers shows they still have humanity in them, despite what they've seen.
Chapter Five:
The group's disrespect for Kimmelstoss shows up here again, but here they get punished for the less severe insubordination, in contrast with the beating for which they weren't punished at all. If they hadn't used a bedsheet to ensure Kimmelstoss not knowing who his assailants were, this lack of consistency would be amazing.
In the second half of the chapter, Paul and Katczinsky find two geese, successfully capture and kill one (although Paul makes good "friends" with a bulldog in the process), and cook the dead goose. They feast on the goose and take the rest to Kropp and Tjaden.
General Thoughts:
The settings are often not described in extreme detail, leaving much of it to the imagination. In Chapter Four, for example, what I imagine is an enormous flat area with the Allied batteries on a raised hill. A forest surrounds on one side with an ocean on the other, and a trench and road run side-by-side past a graveyard. There are some destroyed houses along the road, and one intact house with no one living in it. I also imagine a fog between the Germans and the Allies, making it hard for the Germans to see their assailants.
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