>> ^Arg:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?
Take there, their and they're as an example. If we were to spell them phonetically then they would all be the same. Now try to make sense of the following sentence:
"There over there with there children."

This phrase is unambiguous because of English's strict word ordering. Every native speaker will intone this sentence as "They're over there with there children" because an English sentence is Subject-Verb-Object. For example, try pronouncing this: "There they're with there children". Most native speaker would be reluctant to pronounce this because it's actually a grammatical conundrum. This last phrase is in fact impossible. If you do pronounce it, you will pronounce it as the equivalent of the the first one, that is "They're there with there children". When you change the word order, you CANNOT contract the subject and the verb. You would naturally say: "There they are with there children". (Here I'm writing "their" as "there" just to show that there's no ambiguity whatsoever between those two words, because they're both words but not verbs)

So, in reality there's no need to "translate". When you pronounce the first phrase, you will understand it just fine. The real problem here is that reading is not the same as speaking, unless you read aloud or subvocalize. But any which way you read, when writing you cannot convey the intonation of the voice. That's one of the greatest pitfalls of alphabets. For example, in this case to be phonetically correct, you would have to specify by a typographic mark that the first "there" is actually a spoken contraction of two originally distinct sounds "they" and "r", so that a reader who doesn't know English very well can put the correct intonation on the correct words. That way the sentence becomes as clear as it needs to be phonetically. Of course, it's not always as easy as that, and to convey pure spoken language in a textual form without all the usual typographical baggage that you find in linguistics is impossible. Even Germans do not always pronounce exactly as they should, but for example all the different nuances of the sound "a" are all rendered as the letter "a" and only that letter. When a whole word is pronounced differently it becomes a matter of dialect and not of pronunciation per se.

Another example: in French, intonation is always on the first syllable of a word, so individual words are easy to separate. Add to that a strict word order plus a plethora of articles and you get yourself a quite clear language that can be written however you fancy.

So spelling, and punctuation, add more information to the meaning of the words than merely how they are pronounced.

They do, but it's a pittance because a spelling not based on pronunciation is too arbitrary. When retracing the origins of a word, pronunciation is much more useful than spelling. If spelling changed without equivalent modification in the pronunciation, it would make the linguists' job harder. But it almost always happens in reverse: the pronunciation changes and then some guy decides he's going to spell it the way he pronounces it. And the linguists thank him. But some old words get spelled in new ways and some others keep their original spellings, and in the end you get the orthographical mess that is known as English (or French for that matter).

I love the music, and voice intonation masterful propaganda.

Can you hear the hope and love when he starts talking about McCain? The raise in the music?

Sounds to me like an intonation issue!

down vote for infuriatingly meandering intonation of narrative. Downvote own comment for overly flowery description of downvote

Man, she sounded a lot like Colbert in her intonations and the like there... interesting...

I come from an upper-middle-class liberal suburban place pronounced Missour-EE within a red state called Missour-UH in the United States of Jesus. My high school had a very high percentage of children of professors at Washington University, and if you added up all the jews, blacks, asians, and mixed people, that was probably over 50%. My mother hails from UCC, which is probably the second most welcoming and nondogmatic of sect of Christianity behind Unitarian Universalism (Barack Obama is in UCC). My father was a woowoo evangelical. Some of my recollections on the subject of religion during childhood are:

1. In third grade, some kid started going around asking everybody, with a dichotomous intonation, "Are you Catholic, or Christian"? I suspect he was an evangelical. I don't recall giving any reply, but even at the time I had doubts due to the lack of any fulfillment of prayer. I had grown to distrust all adults and authority figures as a reasonable extension of my discovery, as a five or six year old, of Santa Claus, the first thanksgiving, Pocahontas, and many other lies. I had also grown to suspect something was terribly rotten in our society due to the cruelty of many homophobic bullies who called me names that weren't even true and the teachers who didn't care. Because of my alienation, I was not inclined to presuppose that the majority opinion was more likely to be correct.

2. Around this time, my (divorced remarried noncustodial) father also took me to see a faith-healer. I don't recall what he was trying to cure me of. He attended some crackpot semirural megachurch, and his business was "no money down" real-estate, another religion.

3. Within two years afterward my father was involuntarily committed to a mental institution for schizophrenia because he believed he could communicate directly with the spirits of Joan of Arc, Jesus, and other saints, and they told him to fight demons by committing arson. He later said the charges were trumped-up and unsuccessfully tried to get out with a religious freedom argument.

4. Teachers from sixth through twelfth grade stressed the importance of critical thinking and incorporated it into the curriculum.

5. In seventh grade, I recall being asked of my religious affiliation, and replying that I was sitting on the fence between agnosticism and atheism. There was no retribution or suprise or stigma. I was already an outcast and had nothing socially to lose, anyway. About a year prior I first acquired persistent unsupervised access to the internet, which I have had ever since. In the following two years I did quite a lot of research online and debating in online bulletin boards. This drew me closer to atheism by gaining a greater understanding of physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, geology, etc. In other words, a greater understanding of how the world came to be the way it is. However, I would still call myself a teapot-agnostic.

6. In high school, I found a clique of atheists and agnostics. Shortly after 9/11, when the Missouri legislature enacted a bill that compelled schools to recite the pledge of allegiance at least once a week, some of my classmates and I openly expressed our disapproval on the grounds of separation of church and state. No gasps were heard. This was long before the Newdow case. When the Bible As/In Literature was taught in English class, several of my classmates and I expressed our disapproval again on the same grounds. In classroom discussions on that book, I recall many viewpoints being expressed with no great gasps of shock. I, the nerd, said openly that I thought the bible was a collection of fairy tales, poems, and forgeries, while the big football jock next to me expressed a predilection for biblical literalism in not so many words. I recall a very hot semi-orthodox Jewish girl who told me she would only date Jews.

I agreed with, or even said openly online, much of what is contained in the God Delusion, before the book was published. I suspect some others have had similar experiences. Not every consensus is a flock.


The ID movement, and the fact that every single suicide hijacker/bomber is faith-based, and the loosening of taboos by (e.g.) the Daily Show, have probably been three of the most important factors that led to the books of Dawkins and Hitchens. In Dawkins' case, the ID movement alone may have been the most important factor because of his biological profession. Hitchens tends to write books extremely quickly (averaging a book a year for the past 24 years), and it's very plausible that he began writing his after, and because of, the success of The God Delusion.

Most nonatheist people's comments on the Sift about Dawkins accuse him of being too shrill. Accusing one's opponent of too much enthusiasm (stridency, shrillness) is irrelevant to the subject matter of the debate. I personally find nothing unpleasant about Dawkins' manner of speech except his affinity for hooptedoodle. His grotesque description of the god of the old testament is spot-on. A book only appears strident in relation to one's perception of orthodoxy, and neither the orthodoxy nor one's perception of orthodoxy are necessarily correct. Rather, debate the substance of the issue. Neither Dawkins nor any of his followers is advocating curtailing the religious freedom of believers, so his opponents have nothing to fear but the holes in their theories.

I TOLD THE thinker247P, THE FOLLOWING....
"I love when the right argues against their polar opposite by stating.."

did you not read the rant, and get from it??-Gar a fellow, deserves it, for one, she's a goddamn comedinne, and a fucking piss poor one, s that-her politics, as I intonated, do not resonate with mine, but that is beside the point.....a spokes cunt like JG, is like letting yer kids, go to a day care with a newbie...outta her bullshit league(oh and, ad hom????-she's a celeb, she knows the territory, and a so-called, comedianne, even more

-and the labels???.

right and left, black or white, this or that mean,you are as unskilled at stating what you mean as the rest of us... Try to roll, non linear, and knock folks off the fence when the hovercraft, would suit them better.....take it home in a box, and care for it if you wish....welcome to the sift!

and by the way..."mean-spirited, vitriol, is a means to an end....just like this shit you voted up, is both MSV and AMTAE....

Excellent find, and amazingly you can still see this kind of hokum on late nite tv. A few even copy Gortner's old time revival techniques right down to the intonation, the 'slaying in the spirit', and speaking in tongues. Sometimes it's actually pretty entertaining, as long as you know it's a con.

One show really creeped me out, it was an episode of Kathryn Kuhlman's tv ministry and it was just so weird and eerie the way she spoke it gave me goose bumps.

nothing, so long as it is recognized as such. but that recognition is rare and this is evidinced here by the decidedly non-frivolous and grave intonation of the narrator. so in these cases where people start to take thier own nonsense seriously, well that's when it deserves a rebuttal.

Dag-Brian, I give one of many, meaningful and reflective dialog streams from me and fedquip, if you haven't read em all already....cause, you have the keys to your kingdom, and i know what the word ":private" means, but not sure about her interpretation here-
from brian cutaia, a human.....being-


[ok man, its like this....the greatest thing since creamed corn is not a bandwagon.....You have your loyal followers, goons, liked-minders etc, your, TAY-TV personal having spilled over here to the site since you joined, and as far as my personal tastes are concerened, the bulk of your posts are from the goddamn tv, about the goddamn tv, and the motherfucking point if yer whole vibe seems to reverberate with some sort of alternate idea of information besides that medium, which...HELLO???!!! IS ALL SHEIT!!!!Your Uni-dimensional, rarely inspired, and redundant posts from the same sources, make you an easy read with regard to your worldview...which, godgammit, I have always tried hard as hell to shove folks ideas, who think they have a fucking clue about what is right or meaningful, or righteous for the world, straight back up their clueless asses, that goes for friends, allies, and, esp. foes....(who are my foes:??-anyone who thinks they have an answer or perspective that they feel is true/false/or meaningless, (but without the false or meaningless)......which is where you fit, in my humble, out-of-touch, perspective...

soooo, i despise the spin of most popular forms of media which you pollute the site with, the perspectives of the pundits, and most of their clever deliveries, and most of all, the comments that follow from their groupies, dupes, fans, and putties.

Uhhhh, you find this pap on all the other viddy-blogs, the biggest difference i can see being the extra vocabulary and fast-food, university perspectives..oh and, more English as a first language types here, too.

The silliest thing to me is the undeniable truth, that in order to have an opinion about world events or causes and solutions for conflicts, one must be armed with all the facts....which, my brother, none of us are or will ever likely be, until the paradigm ends, and this current iteration of civilization, goes the way of all others, the way of the vortex.....the singularity, y'know, collapsing in on itself??? Th world is headed for a shitstorm before it stabilizes, and dumb motherfuckers want to play a blame-game of diversion, by talking about who causes war, the reasons for it, or which team, cut from the same empire-building mentalities, has the better chance for our vote and success......

remember Fight Club??? Find your power animal, and let it slide...........

the world is way more interesting than sitting around, watching television, picking snips from shit, to build a turd, and then spray yer copy-cat version of Armani for Morons on it, so it smells like shit with parfummmm

I mean jeez, how many goddamn fucking atheists do you need t' hear, educated or not, before you are sitting in the church of the innane?(snotty little fuckers with a cob up their ass for another reason besides god, if you ask me) How many clever editorials from comedians who have a staff of writers working to undermine your brain with their politics, morality, and bullshit sensibilities does one have to hear, before it's time to see that bullshit for what it is???
The very thing you intonate when you suggest throwing away your television...Its like you are suggesting, after your trek here, "Tay-TV, and then watch mine!" and, predictably, with that type of formula, of course, one can attract some putties....Joseph Smith did it.....rock stars do it, even half educated dweeeeeebs do it..Let's do it, let's follow fred!!!la la la la

So, you asked why I have made a project of you lately.....I got tired of your bullshit....If you'll notice, the upvotes i do give you, jibe with some of the things i dig about the planet, and the bulk of the downvotes, come for the cry of an annoying, yet pleasing to watch sometimes bird, called the Parrot. I hate birds in cages. Pitiful, most times, schitzoid form being forced out of instinctual surroundings, and they tend to mimic the dysfuntion of their captors.....]

In reply to your comment:
“The grand Siftquisitor awaits.”

Yikes, I just really didn't jive with her flow, and her intonation was really annoying.

As for her message...as LadyBug pointed out to me on another poem I sifted once, it sounds so sincere, but who is she talking to? If NickyP is right, and she's only talking to men who try to explain away rape, then she's just talking big but it doesn't matter. If she's generalizing for all men....then that's just dumb.

Either way....:(

For Winterstar 2007, a crazy hippie SubGenius pagan sexcult philosophical retreat at an Ohio ski resort, I was asked to prepare a ... all » "psychedelic light show" for the "Space Jam Cabin." This is Part One of the hour's worth of visuals, which are geared toward the LSD addict. In this section the music is by me but the video (from the DVD version) is meant to be projected behind any old jam band. (F. LeMur did the opening musical salute.) «
--above per original poster

feb 2 07'-
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: -

Guh! Just once I want to watch a modern science show that doesen't have continuously ominous droning background music, that doesn't end every sentance with penultimate apocalyptic intonation "xxxxxxx...was an EVEN BIGGER SHOCK" or "to thier surprise xxxxxx WAS A KILLER!!". If everything is dramatic then NOTHING is dramatic.

I love this so much. Thanks for posting. It's a good reminded of how art can make us happy. There are some really good arrangements in here as well. Can you imagine trying to sync the rhythm on some of these, not to mention the intonation?

The bit at 3:40 is awesome - I love the intonation in his voice.

Top 15 baby, go! Could this be Simpsons week at the Sift?