by Carl Howard | Nov 4, 2014 | Atheism and Religion, Atrocities and Oppression, Ethics, Feminism and LGBT, Language, Philosophy
I have a pet peeve: the use of the term “offensive”. Ok, it’s more than a pet peeve – I think its use in public discourse is misleading and harmful. To start, here are some uses of “offensive” that are particularly cringeworthy: You don’t have a right not to be...
by Carl Howard | Jan 13, 2014 | Language
I’ve posted about some of the difficulties non-Chinese speakers may face with the language before. Recently I’ve read a wonderful 1991 piece called Why Is Chinese So Damn Hard? by none other than Moser, a professor of Chinese studies. It’s very interesting and worth a...
by Carl Howard | Dec 12, 2013 | Blog Topics, Language, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
A while ago, I saw a full page ad for Rosetta Stone (a language learning software company) in the Scientific American in an Istanbul hostel. I had to take a photo because I was so shocked at the content. (Transcript is on this page.) I’ll ignore the wordiness. It...
by Carl Howard | Jun 5, 2012 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Feminism and LGBT, Language, Science and Skepticism
Ages ago, it occured to me that some words are just red flags for ridiculous arguments. Not exactly groundbreaking, I know. Yet it was surprising that there’s quite a lot of them. In my biased experience, when someone uses one of these words in an argument, this is...
by Carl Howard | Jan 12, 2012 | Blog Topics, Language, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
It’s very common to mention Orwell’s 1984 when criticising a tyrannical/repressive/linguistically manipulative government/corporation/individual. This is often followed by praise of Orwell and how wise and prophetic his 1984 was. I find these comparisons ridiculous...
by Carl Howard | Jul 8, 2011 | Blog Topics, Interesting Stuff, Language, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
I’ve recently realised that not everyone is aware of this wonderful sentence. Having unrestricted access to a blog, I might as well introduce it. But first, a bit about garden path sentences. These are a lot of fun. They’re sentences which while grammatical have...
