Interesting Links for 06-01-2015

[andrewducker]

• How to make Piñata cookies!
  (tags: food awesome )
• Tips from experts on how to fall asleep at night
  (tags: sleep funny )
• Which Medieval English Cathedral are you?
  (tags: funny quiz history religion UK )
• This is what happens when people starting taking ethics too literally.
  (tags: morality logic )
• Devon farmer who owns Britain's only Nazi cows

Comments

On the evils of The Oxford Comma

[cartesiandaemon]

I think I've had this rant before, but I'm annoyed by so many pro/anti arguments (maybe not Scalzi's?), which seem to follow a pattern of:

1. With absolutely no justification whatsoever, I will pull the assumption out of my hat that there is a single "correct" form of English rules which allow you to write any sentence unambiguously, and assume my readers will go along with this tempting but false premise without proof.
2a. I have found at least one particularly striking example where using an oxford comma is ambiguous, or:
2b. I have found at least one particularly striking example where not using an oxford comma is ambiguous.
3. Therefore my usage is always correct and unambiguous and everyone who disagrees with me is wilfully stupid and destroying the English language.

I think the problem is in #1, not in whether you choose #2a or #2b...

Re: On the evils of The Oxford Comma

[andrewducker]

#1 is _definitely_ the problem. Personally, I like the Oxford Comma, but I don't delude myself that it actually makes that much of a difference. English don't work that way.

Re: On the evils of The Oxford Comma

[ipslore]

I'm not sure I've ever encountered any examples of 2a.

Re: On the evils of The Oxford Comma

[andrewducker]

"To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God"

[ticktockman]

I can't get the scene out of my head from The Meaning of Life in which John Cleese chastises a school's students for rubbing linseed oil into the school's cormorant. If the school was at Oxford instead of [quick internet check] Sudbury, they would have been talking about the Oxford Cormorant.

But since they weren't, I don't actually have anything to say just now.

'Sounds Of Sodomy': Ireland Explodes In Laughter Over Anti-Gay Christian Campaign

[drdoug]

These campaigns can backfire. Now I'm thinking "Well, I *think* I have a pretty good idea what sodomy sounds like, but really I've been mostly paying attention to other things at the time, so I now need more sodomy so I can listen carefully." Which is probably not what the people who made the flyer wanted. At least, consciously wanted.

Oh and assuming Poe's Law doesn't apply.

[rhythmaning]

The guy with ethical offsets has way too little to worry about!

Now, what happens if some of the animals saved because he's converted everyone to vegetarianism turn out to be Nazi cows?!!

[andrewducker]

I know! It's a worry!