(no subject)

[cellio]

I used to think I wanted the internet in my brain, but I've reconsidered.

The phone rang around 8:30 this morning. That was early enough to be plausibly important, so I answered. The caller butchered my name (my last name doesn't even have several of those morphemes); my suspicion that it was a junk call was soon confirmed.

She was calling from "Concerned Women for America". She got about three more words out before I said "don't call me again" and hung up. That was based on the rudeness of a solicitation at that hour, but I also had a negative reaction to the name of this group I'd never heard of before, and I found myself wanting to look them up while on the phone, with no computer immediately to hand. Every word in that name except "for" set off a warning bell (and "for" is on probation due to proximity). Taking them in the order the alarms sounded:

• "America": in a political context, high correlation with rabid right-wingerss
• "Women": you're going to try to categorize my beliefs, interests, and priorities, and you will be wrong
• "Concerned": you have a crusade

If you want to see how I did, check Google. It's not hard.

Maybe I don't want a neural link to the internet. It's much easier to scrub the pollution from a browser cache when it's on disk.

Comments

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

"high correlation with rabid right-wingerss"

That pretty much sums up this outfit.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

No internet without quality firewall and spam processing.

Not to my computer, definitely not to my brain.

[hlinspjalda.livejournal.com]

I've read about these people. Two words: "bad craziness." Kinda makes you worry whose list they had to hijack in order to get your name, doesn't it?

I am familiar with the group

[rob-of-unspace.livejournal.com]

You don't want to get me started on them. I wish I could do a brain scrub, but stuff seems to be in there permanently.

Sometime I should tell the story about Phyllis Schlafley and the Washington University Lecture Series sponsored by the Student Union -- and her comments about us a couple years later.

Snarl.

[cellio]

Oh, definitely. But even with all that, I don't want to expend my precious brain cells on storing their tripe.

[cellio]

For phone calls, I assume they just hit everyone. For physical jumk mail, I seem to get stuff from all parts of the spectrum, though I've done nothing to encourage most of it. Both the Democrats and the Republicans send me mail that starts off "dear fellow [party]". Aside from the month I spent as a Democrat for tax purposes [1], I've never been registered in either, nor have I given them money.

[1] I once crossed party lines to vote in their primary, which locally was the election, trying to prevent a reckless spender. This raises all sorts of interesting questions both ethical and practical; I felt fine on the ethics part because I did it after the Dems mounted a campaign to get their people to cross-register as Republicans to influence that primary. Sauce for the goose and all that...

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>># America": in a political context, high correlation with rabid right-wingerss
# "Women": you're going to try to categorize my beliefs, interests, and priorities, and you will be wrong
# "Concerned": you have a crusade.<<

Nailed it in one. CWA was the group Beverly LaHaye (wife of one of the coauthors of the LEFT BEHIND series of Revelation-as-written-by-Tom-Clancy novels) back in 1979 to help Phyllis Schlafly stop the Equal Rights Amendment (which, sadly, they were all too successful in doing) and has stuck around ever since to go after basically anyone who disagrees with their constricted, literalist reading of the Bible and application thereof to social policy.

A crusade, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing; what you want to be careful of is just what the crusaders in question are crusading for. Personally, I'm on a crusade to stop people from putting an apostrophe where it shouldn't be because they think it means "beware of oncoming 'S'." But that's just me. :-)

[cellio]

A crusade, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing

Right. You need to look more closely, as you say; it's a warning bell, not a full-blown "run away now" siren. I approve of your crusade, and think it might be slighly less doomed than one of mine: to stamp out use of "email" as a counting noun.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>to stamp out use of "email" as a counting noun.<<

I wasn't at all aware nouns could even think, much less count. :-) Splainy?

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

I think that means the usage "I got three emails today".

I send lots of e-mails each day.

[rob-of-unspace.livejournal.com]

Email is a mass noun. But when used to mean an "email message" it's a counting noun.

There's still quite a bit of debate, but most authorities seem to at least acknowledge both positions have possible merit.

It's sort of like arguing e-mail vs. email: a lot depends upon your style manual.

[sebastianm.livejournal.com]

Ugh. After the election in 2004, I started getting lots and lots of mail from all sides -- and I only ever actually supported financially one.

The "Concerned Women for America" website is scary.

[cellio]

Like the others said. Water is a mass noun [1]. Raindrop is a counting noun.

[1] I mean the conventional usage, not, e.g., "the waters of Babylon".

Re: I send lots of e-mails each day.

[cellio]

Email is a mass noun. But when used to mean an "email message" it's a counting noun.

People use it that way, but that doesn't make it a sound usage. "Email" (with or without hyphen) is analogous to "mail", that paper stuff you get most days in your physical mailbox. Do you get "a mail" or "three mails"? No, of course not -- you get a letter, a bill, a notice, an advertisement, a dire threat, a package, or whatever, but you don't get "a mail". You do get "mail", however. I want people to use "email" in the same way. I recognize that I am doomed in this regard.

Re: I send lots of e-mails each day.

[rob-of-unspace.livejournal.com]

The problem is, there's no analogous word to "letter." "Message" doesn't work, especially since it's used for text messaging (which is making e-mail obsolete anyway).

Words that are mass nouns for one meaning often are counting nouns for others, usually beginning in a technical context. For example, "I drank a water at every other water stop during the marathon. I drank seven waters total" would be a common thing to hear at a marathon.

And, as you point out, there's the whole "Waters of Babylon." It's not a common usage, but it is acceptable because it's a different meaning. It's quite similar, though not exactly the same as "There were three different waters available at the Fish Show setup: low osmolarity, brackish, and saltwater."

This is how languages grow and change.

Firefox is marking "osmolarity" as incorrect. Sigh.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

For the apostrophe crusade, http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif is a holy text.

[(Anonymous)]

i know this is off-topic, but i wanted to let you know i finally posted a little bit about High Holidays in Alaska.

hope you're well!

http://zahavalaska.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

[ariannawyn.livejournal.com]

Hee-hee! Several months ago I printed that out and tacked it up in my cube at work.

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

Interesting thought. Certainly 'mail' is a mass noun. But if one wanted to quantify their great quantity of mail, one would use something like 'letters'. However, to say 'letters' when you mean 'email' seems odd. 'Messages' works.

Why is 'email' being a counting noun while 'mail' is a mass noun so unacceptable? They are clearly related, but why must they be in the same grammatical category?

[cellio]

*laugh*

Re: I send lots of e-mails each day.

[cellio]

"Message" is the word I use, actually. If I really need to convey that it was an instant message I can say that, but usually it doesn't matter -- the point is usually the communication, not the medium. "I received a message from Joe this morning" is usually sufficient. If the interactivity of IM is important, I'll probably say "I chatted with Joe this morning" -- who cares if it was voice or text? (If that's important, I'll say "spoke".)

I drank a water at every other water stop

You're using "a water" as shorthand for "a {serving, bottle, glass} of water", like when people talk about drinking "a Coke". "Waters of Babylon" is correct in that kind of context, but it doesn't make "waters" as a plural noun correct globally. Context matters.

I can't dictate usage nor am I trying to. I just think it costs very little to be precise and precision reads a heck of a lot better.

[cellio]

I use "messages" to refer to the countable instances.

Why is 'email' being a counting noun while 'mail' is a mass noun so unacceptable?

The former is clearly a closely-derived form of the latter, so I expect it to follow consistent patterns absent a really good reason for variance. I guess I'm reversing your question: why shouldn't they be the same grammatical category? Patterns in language are useful; why violate them when we don't need to?

Re: I send lots of e-mails each day.

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

"You're using "a water" as shorthand for "a {serving, bottle, glass} of water", like when people talk about drinking "a Coke". "

So if you acknowledge the shorthand possibility, say "an email" is shorthand for "an email message". Problem solved, no?

Re: I send lots of e-mails each day.

[cellio]

I don't actually like the shorthand; I was just diagnosing it. I think shorthand works in specific contexts (at the counter at Starbucks, for instance); the difference between "a water" and "an email" is that the former isn't common usage across the board. An analogue of the marathon might be a customer-service center that receives, and needs to track, complaints via email, phone, and web form; when tallying them up you might say "3000 emails, 2000 phones" as shorthand. Still feels sloppy, which means this probably isn't a good example. But my point is that specialized contexts shouldn't be justifications for general usage patterns.