I'm finishing an MA in English Literature myself, so I was simply wondering what kind of kindred spirit you were
In reply to this comment by messenger:
ESL (English as a second language) teacher and ESL teacher trainer. I also write bits and bobs as an on-and-off hobby and take form quite seriously. The 12 years I referred to also includes my undergrad in Linguistics. Now that I think about it, it's only 11 years.

Any particular reason this got your interest?In reply to this comment by hpqp:
You've piqued my curiosity: are you a teacher? Journalist? Scribe?

ESL (English as a second language) teacher and ESL teacher trainer. I also write bits and bobs as an on-and-off hobby and take form quite seriously. The 12 years I referred to also includes my undergrad in Linguistics. Now that I think about it, it's only 11 years.

Any particular reason this got your interest?In reply to this comment by hpqp:
You've piqued my curiosity: are you a teacher? Journalist? Scribe?

If I feel it was worth my time to watch, upvote.

I downvote if:

* it's unfunny
* the video or title/description are mean-spirited
* it's uninformed bullshit in an area that I'm passionate about

I don't downvote if I don't think something is regulation. Rather, I sent it to siftquisition and let the collective decide.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'minutephysics, linguistics, english, robin hood' to 'minutephysics, linguistics, english, robin hood, rune, thorn' - edited by calvados

@longde

Right, the exact science is that people can't claim they know he said something in order to support a pick and choose narrative.



"It doesn't make them gang affiliated."

Right, but people will use their brains and assign a probability that if you look like you like gangs, you might be involved in illegal activity, as Trayvon was.



"That's the thing about racism: it is based solely on appearance."

Definitely... appearance including attire, body mannerisms, linguistic mannerisms, and signals of what culture they belong to.

When Chris Rock says he looks over his shoulder at the ATM at night, he's not looking out for guys who look like Obama or Herman Cain's son.

(Advice for smart people: Be proactive and design your appearance and personal culture based on what works, not on what will make life harder for you.)

So heres the current list with my own interpretation of the subjects of each.

COFFEE MAKES ME POO = bowel movements
Eddie Izzard - Do you want a cup of coffee? = mating rituals
The Most Expensive Coffee in the World = civet droppings
South Park on Coffee = caffeine's affect on kids
Charlie Brooker vs. Nescafe - (VideoSift Coffee Mug Compo) = commercial/advertising
The latte zoo- (mixed animal latte pours) = drinkable art
Kramer CaffeLatte -- Seinfeld = caffeine's affect on racist comedians
The Office - Coffee and Cocaine = caffeine's affect on business quotas
The Simpsons - Beer Coffee = stereotypes of Aussies
Wish I had this coffee maker! = middle American consumerism
Coffee Snobs - snobby hipsters
This is Coffee (1961) = **coffee**
How to make Iced Coffee = what ice is used for
Six million dollar man coffee commercial = commercial/advertising
The Clover Coffee Machine - Hand Built By Stanford Engineers = Engineering
Denis Leary - Coffee = douchebag
How Sherlock Likes His Coffee (Sherlock BBC) = a fictitious characters taste/preferences
Dr. Cox and the Coffee (Scrubs) = flirting
How to make cold brew coffee the homemade way! = how to throw off the shackles of consumerism
Chad Vader Coffee = Star Wars copy right infringement
Austin Powers' coffee mix-up = the old Switcheroo comedy bit
History of Coffee = average joes bid for youtube attention
Join the Coffee Achievers! (Weird1984 coffee ad with Bowie) = commercial/advertising
Mad TV Coffee Maniac = caffeine's affect on Keanu Reeves
Coffee Panda = drinkable art
Charlie Chaplin Drinking Coffee = bowel movements
La recette des cupcakes jamais vus... au tiramisu = Tiramisu
Vodka & Coffee = alcoholics
Latte Art - Swan Lake = drinkable art
How To Cold Brew (COFFEE) = commercial/advertising
How to Pronounce Cappuccino = Linguistics
Strange To Meet You = caffeine's affect on European Directors/Actors
Columbian Coffee Crystals = commercial/advertising parody
Juan Valdez ~ Colombian Coffee 1982 = commercial/advertising
Coffee and the Brain = health benefits of caffeine
Milk With Your Coffee? = how boobies lactate
"The Coffee Wars" - (Mockumentary) = dangers of caffeine addiction
60 Cups, 1 Bald Head = how German scientists are full of shit!
It puts the coffee on its skin... = dangers of caffeine addiction
The Journey of the Coffee Bean = **coffee**

Oops. Thought I had been more clear than that in my previous explanation. In fact on rereading it I'm fairly convinced that I was. I'll restate my position in different terms to maybe clear up the confusion.

I suspect the kernel of our misunderstanding lies in your previous post. Thank you for helping me to crystallize my view.
"Liberals love to try to have thier rhetorical cake and eat it too. I do nothing but point out the naked, blatant obviousness of it. Obama directly uses religion for purely political reasons, but the neolibs have dutifully taken thier so-called "indignation" about the wall of seperation and tucked it away. "

A-Obama uses religion for political reasons.
B-Santorum would implement policy for religious reasons.

I don't think I can make it much more clear than that. I would immensely prefer that religion be mishandled in the pursuit of politics, than the country be mishandled in the pursuit of religion. If that means I'm a hypocrite, than I proudly am.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

If you actually believe (Obama) is setting laws based on his belief in Jesus, based on that link, you're an imbecile... What Santorum said was on a whole other level of idiocy.
Ding! This proved my whole point. Of course the liberal, leftist, progressives don't have a problem when when Obama uses religion to make a point. But when a conservative mentions religion to make a point, well it's "a whole other level of idiocy". It is a study of hypocrisy in at its purest, most basic level - and also a fine example of just how people allow political partisanship to annihilate thier own intellectual credibility.
Liberals love to try to have thier rhetorical cake and eat it too. I do nothing but point out the naked, blatant obviousness of it. Obama directly uses religion for purely political reasons, but the neolibs have dutifully taken thier so-called "indignation" about the wall of seperation and tucked it away.
Either you believe in the wall of seperation absolutely, or you don't. Me - I have no problem with political figures who have religious faith. Obama can say Jesus is driving his tax policy, tell churches to vote for him, and bow on his knees in front of crazy fundie kook preachers, and I'm OK with it. Progressives don't have a problem with Obama's blatant use of religion either. I'm just pointing out (rather smugly) the hypocrisy of liberal outrage when Santorum does nothing but mention he disagrees with the progressive re-interpretation of Jefferson's statement. Denying such clear-cut hypocrisy fools no one except those who are already "lost" in the mental sense.
And that's what I think has happend to leftists, really. After a certain point, some people become so invested in a particular position that they will agree with any snake-oil liar who says the sky is pink and the moon is cheese as long as that person parrots the right lines at them. Such is the case with the neolib Videosift progressives who see no problem when Obama uses religion to push his agendas, but then shrivel up like a vampire next to garlic when any conservative even mentions the word 'faith'.
Such linguistic gesticulation fools no one. Liberals should at least be honest and admit that they're just trying to have it both ways here. That would at least give them some degree of honesty, even if they aren't fair.

If you actually believe (Obama) is setting laws based on his belief in Jesus, based on that link, you're an imbecile... What Santorum said was on a whole other level of idiocy.

Ding! This proved my whole point. Of course the liberal, leftist, progressives don't have a problem when when Obama uses religion to make a point. But when a conservative mentions religion to make a point, well it's "a whole other level of idiocy". It is a study of hypocrisy in at its purest, most basic level - and also a fine example of just how people allow political partisanship to annihilate thier own intellectual credibility.

Liberals love to try to have thier rhetorical cake and eat it too. I do nothing but point out the naked, blatant obviousness of it. Obama directly uses religion for purely political reasons, but the neolibs have dutifully taken thier so-called "indignation" about the wall of seperation and tucked it away.

Either you believe in the wall of seperation absolutely, or you don't. Me - I have no problem with political figures who have religious faith. Obama can say Jesus is driving his tax policy, tell churches to vote for him, and bow on his knees in front of crazy fundie kook preachers, and I'm OK with it. Progressives don't have a problem with Obama's blatant use of religion either. I'm just pointing out (rather smugly) the hypocrisy of liberal outrage when Santorum does nothing but mention he disagrees with the progressive re-interpretation of Jefferson's statement. Denying such clear-cut hypocrisy fools no one except those who are already "lost" in the mental sense.

And that's what I think has happend to leftists, really. After a certain point, some people become so invested in a particular position that they will agree with any snake-oil liar who says the sky is pink and the moon is cheese as long as that person parrots the right lines at them. Such is the case with the neolib Videosift progressives who see no problem when Obama uses religion to push his agendas, but then shrivel up like a vampire next to garlic when any conservative even mentions the word 'faith'.

Such linguistic gesticulation fools no one. Liberals should at least be honest and admit that they're just trying to have it both ways here. That would at least give them some degree of honesty, even if they aren't fair.

>> ^dag:

I really enjoyed those Wilson books too. It was a SF subject, but didn't read like SF - maybe because, like you say, he focused more on the characters' reactions than the technology itself. The first one, Spin, is a great "almost end of the world" kind of book.Yeah, the view point of the story is very "bottom up", with incredible technology presented like a force of nature, accessible to humans, but never controlled by them. His writing style is not typical of SF either. Some words that come to mind regarding his style are plain, solid, easy flowing. He's never trying to impress you with linguistic finesse, just keeps the text moving right along. Sort of the opposite extreme of Stephenson, where word play, sentence construction and all that is very much a part of the show.



Speaking of end of the world books, I had read Lucifer's Hammer for the first time a few months ago. It was published in 1977, so it's a little dated, but a great read nonetheless.

You quote The Blind Watchmaker and The Origin of Species but I highly doubt that you’ve read them yourself. If you haven’t then you’re not better than someone who is contesting the bible without having read it. You quote a LOT of scientists that you say are hostile to your position but again, have you actually read the works that you’re quoting from in their entirety? I doubt it.

Well, I have read them and I think it's fairly obvious that I understand the subject matter.

Here are just two things that I read recently that I think are worth repeating:

...degree of thermodynamic disorder is measured by an entity called "entropy." There is a mathematical correlation between entropy increase and an increase in disorder. The overall entropy of an isolated system can never decrease. However, the entropy of some parts of the system can spontaneously decrease at the expense of an even greater increase of other parts of the system. When heat flows spontaneously from a hot part of a system to a colder part of the system, the entropy of the hot area spontaneously decreases! The ICR (Institute for Creation Research)...

....illustrate a fact, but they are not the fact itself. One thing is certain: metaphors are completely useless when it comes to the thermodynamics of calculating the efficiency of a heat engine, or the entropy change of free expansion of a gas, or the power required to operate a compressor. This can only be done with mathematics, not metaphors. Creationists have created a "voodoo" thermodynamics....

I never made the argument that entropy can never decrease in a system. I made the argument that even if you want to use the energy of the sun to explain why life is becoming more complex, you haven't explained the information that makes that possible. More energy does not equal more order. I also don't know why you keep bringing up articles from the institution of creation research and expect me to defend them. I am more than willing to admit that there are some terrible theories by creationists out there, just as there are terrible theories by secular scientists.

For myself, I am only a materialist because there isn’t any demonstrable, non-anecdotal, reproducible evidence for the existence of anything non-material. I hope you can understand that. There is the appearance of design and there is DNA, and we don’t know how everything got started but that’s not good enough for me to believe that it was designed, I need something more concrete because that is the criteria for which I will justify something as believable. I’d be very interested in some sort of evidence like that but it hasn’t happened yet and conjecture just doesn’t work for me so I’ll reserve judgment but maintain doubt and that’s all there is to it.

I can understand your position as a materialist, having formally been one. I did not see any evidence for God or spirit either, and it really rocked my world to discover that there was more, and that material reality is only a veil to a larger reality. It is mind blowing to discover that everything that you know is in some way, wrong.

I think there is some very good evidence pointing towards a Creator, but that isn't going to get you there necessarily. It seems to me though, after talking with you a bit, that if there is a God, you would want to know about it. Maybe you're not terribly interested in pursuing the subject at the moment but you now strike me as someone who is open to the truth. If He does exist, would you want to hear from Him? If He let you know, would you follow Him?

On the scope of evidence, I think the two of the most powerful arguments are the information in DNA and the fine-tuning of physical laws. There is no naturalistic process which can produce a code, and that is what DNA is. It is a digital code which stores information and is vastly superior to anything we have ever designed. It is a genetic language which has its own alphabet, grammar, syntax, and meaning. It has redudancy and error correction, and it is an encoding and decoding mechanism to transmit information about an organism. Biologists actually use linguistic analysis to decode its functions. You also have to realize that the message is not the medium. In that, like all information, you can copy the information in DNA to storage device like a hard drive, and then recode it later with no loss in information. This is a pretty good article on the information in DNA:

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/read-prove-god-exists/language-dna-intelligent-design/

The fine tuning evidence is also very powerfully because it is virtually impossible for the laws to have come about by chance. It's important to understand what fine tuning actually means. I'll quote Dr Craig:

"That the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life is a pretty solidly established fact and ought not to be a subject of controversy. By “fine-tuning” one does not mean “designed” but simply that the fundamental constants and quantities of nature fall into an exquisitely narrow range of values which render our universe life-permitting. Were these constants and quantities to be altered by even a hair’s breadth, the delicate balance would be upset and life could not exist."

So it's not a question whether the Universe itself is finely tuned for life, it is a question of how it got that way. In actuality, the odds of it happening are far worse than winning the powerball lottery over 100 times in a row. Random chance simply cannot account for it because there are dozens of values that must be precisely calibrated, and the odds for some of these values happening by chance is greater than the number of particles in the Universe! For instance, the space-energy density must be fine tuned to one part in 10 to the 120th power, an inconceivably huge number. That's just one value out of dozens. Many scientists understand this.

Here are some quotes from some agnostic scientists, which a couple of Christians thrown in:

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word."

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming".

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose".

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in."

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory."

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."
Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics Of Christianity.

Just because the universe and life might have the appearance of design doesn’t mean it was designed. After all, we might all be brains in vats being experimented on by hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings and all of this is simply like the matrix. Maybe Déjà vu is evidence that it’s true but there simply isn’t any reason to believe it just like there isn’t any reason to believe in any gods.

But if that were true then the Universe is designed, and this is simply some kind of computer program. In any case, although we could imagine many scenerios I am talking about something very specific; That Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead. Moreover, that you can know Him personally, today.

All of the concepts of god and gods have been moved back every time we discover naturalistic explanations where once those gods were accredited. What makes you think that it’s any different with these things? Just because we don’t know what’s behind the veil doesn’t mean that the idea of someone pulling the levers is a better explanation than a currently unknown natural, non-agency explanation. If we don’t know, then we don’t know and putting a god in the place of “we don’t know” isn't a good way of helping us learn more about our universe

The primary question is whether the Universe has an intelligent causation. You believe that Universes, especially precisely calibrated and well-ordered ones just happen by themselves. I happen to think that this is implausible to say the least. You're acting like it's not a valid question, and because we can describe some of the mechanisms we see that we can rule out an intelligent cause, which is simply untrue. You could describe every single mechanism there is in the Universe, but until you explain how it got here, you haven't explained anything. The real question is not how they work but why they work and that question can only be answered by answering why they exist in the first place.

It is also just a fallacy to say that because some peoples beliefs about God have been proven false, that means all beliefs about God are false. Scientists used to believe that there were only seven planets and that the Earth was flat. Does that mean that all ideas scientists have are false? No, and neither does it mean that all beliefs about God are false because people have had ridiculous beliefs about God.

The God I believe in is not ridiculous, and the belief in His existence has led to ideas that formed western civilization and propelled modern science itself. The idea that we can suss out Universal laws by investigating secondary causes is a Christian one, that came from the belief that God created an orderly Universe based on laws.

It is also not a brake to doing science to believe that God created the Universe. Some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived believed in God. People like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Max Planck, Mendel and Einstein. It certainly didn't stop them from doing great science.

Also, as I have explained, it is not a God of the gaps argument when God is a better explanation for the evidence.

We know that the universe, space-time, matter had a finite beginning but we can’t say anything at all about that beginning with any certainty. We can’t even say that whatever was that caused the universe is spaceless, or timeless. We just don’t know. This is the god of the gaps argument that started this whole thing. You’re putting a god in as the explanation for what is effectively a gap in our knowledge without anything solid to go off of. It would not be a god of the gaps argument if we eventually could know with a high degree of certainty that there is a god there fiddling with the controls but we don’t. That is the crux of this whole debate. That is why “I don’t know” is a better answer than “A god did it” because it’s absolutely verifiably true where as a god is not.

The ultimate cause of the Universe must be timeless because it must be beginningless, according to logic. I'll explain. You cannot get something from nothing, I think we both agree on that. So if the Universe has a cause, it must be an eternal cause, since you cannot have an infinite regress of causes for the Universe. The buck has to stop somewhere. This points to an eternal first cause, which means that cause is timeless. If it is timeless it is also changeless because change is a property of time. If it is changeless it is also spaceless, because anything which exists in space must be temporal, since it is always finitely changing relation to the things around it. It's timelessness and spacelessness makes it immaterial, and this also makes it transcendent. I think it is obvious that whatever created the Universe must be unimaginably powerful. So we have something which already closely describes the God of the bible, and we can deduct these things by using logic alone.

We just don’t know if the universe is entirely regressable into some sort of endless loop which folds in on itself, or something else, or even if there is a god or not. Furthermore, I hope you look into what physicist mean by “out of nothing” because it doesn’t mean what I think you think it means. It took me a while to understand what it meant and to be honest, it is a bit of a deceptive word play but it’s only that way because there isn’t another way to describe it. I don't actually believe that the universe came from "nothing". I don't know how it all started, so therefore, I have no belief. I don't need an answer to the big questions. I can say "I don't know" just fine and leave it at that.

“A proponent of the Big Bang Theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing.” Anthony Kenny

British physicist P.C.W. Davies writes, “The coming-into-being of the universe as discussed in modern science…is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization or structure upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing.”

Physicist Victor Stenger says “the universe exploded out of nothingness the observable universe could have evolved from an infinitesimal region. its then tempting to go one step further and speculate that the entire universe evolved from literally nothing.

In the realm of the universe, nothing really means nothing. Not only matter and energy would disappear, but also space and time. However, physicists theorize that from this state of nothingness, the universe began in a gigantic explosion about 16.5 billion years ago.

HBJ General Science 1983 Page 362

the universe burst into something from absolutely nothing - zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything.

discover April 2002

I think we can both agree that it is better to know than not to know. That's been one of your primary arguments against the existence of God, that we simply cannot rest of the laurels of God being the Creator because that will lead to ignorance. I have already demonstrated that there is no actual conflict with belief in God and doing good science, so your argument is invalid, but I think it's ironic that on the other side of it, you are arguing that ignorance is a good thing and leads to better science. That you're even intellectually satisified with not knowing. I hope you can see the contradiction here.

The reason why I personally don’t find the whole god argument all that interesting, and the reason why I don’t actually care about it, is because it makes a heck of a lot of claims regarding the nature of god and it’s properties which just can’t be verified. There is nothing that we can concretely discover about god and no predictions that we can make which could eventually be verified meaningfully. How can we possibly know if creator is timeless, or spaceless, unimaginably powerful, transcendent, unembodied, etc? Is it rational to believe that; do you have an equal ratio of evidence to belief? What predictions can we actually make about this god(s). All we have are books and stories written and passed down throughout history. Everything else is just unjustified belief to me.

As I explained above, we can make several predictions about God based on the evidence. Belief in God is rational and can be justified. However, I understand that until you have a personal experience, it is probably going to be unconvincing to you, since this is way you see the world. You demand evidence, and lucky for you, God provides evidence. If you asked Him to come into your life, He would demonstrate it to you. He provided evidence to me, and I know you He will provide to you, especially if you take a leap of faith ask Him for it.

>> ^IAmTheBlurr:

While you were checking out the comments, did you notice that the uploader lists both high school and university education and a job? So, the child has chosen married parents, and an employed and educated father. Although things could still go wrong for him, to me it looks like he's off to a good start.

Aren't educated people allowed to have fun any more? I seem to have missed that memo.
>> ^chilaxe:

@dystopianfuturetoday
The comment was pretty funny. You're just describing what it feels like to disagree with someone, but debates are good and part of life. Post the comment on a video of people celebrating Rush Limbaugh or Justin Bieber instead of a video celebrating bad values, and then you'll see the humor.
The comment also appears to be correct. (Check the uploader's linguistic skills in his commenting history.)

@dystopianfuturetoday

The comment was pretty funny. You're just describing what it feels like to disagree with someone, but debates are good and part of life. Post the comment on a video of people celebrating Rush Limbaugh or Justin Bieber instead of a video celebrating bad values, and then you'll see the humor.

The comment also appears to be correct. (Check the uploader's linguistic skills in his commenting history.)

Anti-realism is not a term that is conventionally applied to language. You were employing a metaphor. That's fine; that's how all language works. There would be no words, and no dictionary to look them up in, if we didn't use metaphor.

This belief that a word can have only one narrow and arbitrary meaning, which its enforcers have memorised and to which they will allow no opposition, is dangerous and stifling to discourse. It's particularly bizarre in the context of this discussion since I'm sure, if we could be bothered to check, we would find many examples in dictionaries and other scholarly instruments of the term 'fascist' applied much more loosely than I've proposed here. It's often used, legitimately, as a simple synonym for 'bully'.

You'll notice that far from insisting on my own, I allow your meaning, and Webster's and mine all together. I only say that mine is better, being a pruned and perfected incarnation of its relatives. If we didn't prefer our own ideas to those of others there would be no point to independent thought at all.

I think you ought to read my posts more carefully and assume, for the sake of scientific inquiry, that I might be as smart as you are.>> ^Kofi:

Yes, I am calling you a linguistic anti-realist. This fails for although all language is an artificial creation it none the less is functional insofar as it appeals to a common ontology within the cultural paradigm of any given language. In other words, despite the notion that language only represents a idea of an impression and can never actually directly communicate that impression itself, it is reasonable and viable to believe that language, specifically the English language, is adequate to convey a moderately complicated term such as 'fascism'.
I am also implying that you are unable to grasp the necessary condition of assuming a commonality of language appropriate for meaningful communication. It appears that you are aware of it but have failed to admit that you made a mistake for fear of looking silly.
Instead you are insisting on a revisionist interpretation of a political terminologies that failed to fulfil any semblance of general mutual agreement, a necessary condition for cohesive discourse, in a deliberate effort to harness its rhetorical impact.

Yes, I am calling you a linguistic anti-realist. This fails for although all language is an artificial creation it none the less is functional insofar as it appeals to a common ontology within the cultural paradigm of any given language. In other words, despite the notion that language only represents a idea of an impression and can never actually directly communicate that impression itself, it is reasonable and viable to believe that language, specifically the English language, is adequate to convey a moderately complicated term such as 'fascism'.

I am also implying that you are unable to grasp the necessary condition of assuming a commonality of language appropriate for meaningful communication. It appears that you are aware of it but have failed to admit that you made a mistake for fear of looking silly.

Instead you are insisting on a revisionist interpretation of a political terminologies that failed to fulfil any semblance of general mutual agreement, a necessary condition for cohesive discourse, in a deliberate effort to harness its rhetorical impact.

dry, boring, and flat-out hard to read (e.g. three names for every individual, all sounding so similar as to be virtually impossible to differentiate)

Reading is all in the eye of the beholder, so I won't say you're WRONG but I will say you are looking at them with an incorrect expectation (were then, and still are).

DRY & BORING: Tolkien wrote the book with a 'high' style. He makes no apologies for it. He did not write the novel in such a way as to please the varying sensibilities of people. Some people today want 'grit', others want speed, or breathless action, or any one a hundred different tastes. If you read the books and want those other things, then your experience will be lacking.

HARD TO READ: Tolkien was a professor of philology, and wrote accordingly. Like Wells, Lewis, and others of his stripe - he did not pull his linguistic punches (much). As far as the names are concerned, you just have to deal with that because he was using the same time-honored literary device as was used in Beowulf where the recitation of a person's many names/titles is done with a reverence akin to reciting one's lineage and history. He doesn't do it to be redundant or repetitive. He does it for a reason - to tell you the person's story.

I've had this conversation with many. Not everyone likes Tolkien, and that's fine. But I dispute the statement that his work was boring, hard to read, or dry. JRR was a craftsman of the language the like of which simply does not exist today. That isn't idle brag. He had a skillset that has been lost to us. No one exists that can do what he did. Many try to ape his style, but they come off as pale shadows. And not only was he a master of the language in a technical sense, but he was also highly skilled at writing as well. You only get that combination once in a thousand years.

When you read - you have to look at the beauty of the language, the power of the words, and the light and depth of the setting & themes. There are passages and words in LOTR that never fail to send chills through me from top to bottom. I have not found any modern writer who comes close to that. Yes, I've read many who told excellent stories, or could write great characters, or who could generate good atmosphere, or good settings, et al. But none have used language so powerfully or with such light in such a way as to move the soul. LOTR is a work in which there is a true 'aura' beyond the typical book trance from other works. Again, if you go in looking for something else then, brother, you're just looking at it the wrong way.