Variety Show!
You know those little static shocks you get every now and then on doorknobs and whatnot? I swear to the heavens I've been consistently getting at least 10 per day, every day, for the last two weeks. It's too the point where I dread opening doors or touching metal things in general. The shocks, as you know, are just painful enough to be really irritating.
Anyway, is this a medical problem? Is there an illness for which an excessive bodily static charge is a symptom? I'm baffled by this one... Some have suggested to me that it is the dry weather, and others think it may be my new socks for some reason... I just don't know.
-------
Do you ever think that people spend more time worrying about what words to use in description of their romances than they spend actually enjoying their time together? Why all this pressure to move from 'dating' to 'seeing' to 'relationship', and to declare 'love'? What does it change? How is one to define the word? Can feelings be quantified? Can't we just leave words out of the game altogether when it comes to the really important things? Emotions have a certain natural progression, and it seems to me our words at best make a crude attempt to quantify and signpost the progression, and at worst disrupt it by pushing or pulling too hard.
-------
And on a related note, why can't people just use their consensus and good judgement while playing scrabble? I despise those moments when someone, out of complete luck, guesses a uselessly esoteric word that happens to be in the scrabble dictionary, while I'm allegedly wrong to place a word that, while slangy, is known and regularly used by many people. That kind of dictionary worship ruins the fun of the game.
And I might point out, the dictionary is /always/ at least one year old in terms of when it was compiled and written. Dictionaries are just statistics books, that track word usage and make an average of the many subtly-differentiated definitions people use of words daily. The dictionary isn't right or wrong about a word any more than a market analysis is right or wrong about the value of a currency in a free market society of which negotiation and bartering are parts.
Not that the scrabble dictionary is useless. I'm just saying that the human beings upon whose language usage the dictionary is written in the first place should have power to make their own additions to the game.
-------
They say in quantum mechanics that the very fact of the observation effects the outcome of the experiments. What an odd problem for the scientific method.
And it occurred to me that there is a similar paradoxical issue in a more earthly situation. I know guys who've told me stoies about having a sex life with an ex, but that the ex insisted it be a secret. So, let's say you're in this position, and your partner is assumed to be able to find out if you tell anybody. That means, for your friends: (1) that if they believe you're having sex with your partner, it'll stop and they'll be wrong, and (2) that if they believe you're not having sex with your partner, they'll be wrong as you'll still get the sex.
Therefore, even though there is an objectively true answer to the question of whether or not you're having sex, no matter what your friends believe, their belief will be wrong. Of course, if they take note of this fact and simply assume the opposite of whatever they formerly believed, your partner will find that out, and then you'll have to start telling your friends the opposite of what you formetly did, and the logical spiral will never end!
Anyway, apparently quantum physicists have this problem. Probably not with sex so much, being physicists and all, but anyway with the scientific stuff.
-------
"I like people, I do. But I like them in short bursts. I don't like them for extended periods of time. I'm alright with them for a little while, but once I get up past a minute.. minute-and-a-half, I gotta get the fuck out of there. My reason for this is one that you might share, possibly. I have a very low tolerance level for stupid bullshit. And everyone wants to tell you their stupid bullshit!"
- George Carlin -
Anyway, is this a medical problem? Is there an illness for which an excessive bodily static charge is a symptom? I'm baffled by this one... Some have suggested to me that it is the dry weather, and others think it may be my new socks for some reason... I just don't know.
-------
Do you ever think that people spend more time worrying about what words to use in description of their romances than they spend actually enjoying their time together? Why all this pressure to move from 'dating' to 'seeing' to 'relationship', and to declare 'love'? What does it change? How is one to define the word? Can feelings be quantified? Can't we just leave words out of the game altogether when it comes to the really important things? Emotions have a certain natural progression, and it seems to me our words at best make a crude attempt to quantify and signpost the progression, and at worst disrupt it by pushing or pulling too hard.
-------
And on a related note, why can't people just use their consensus and good judgement while playing scrabble? I despise those moments when someone, out of complete luck, guesses a uselessly esoteric word that happens to be in the scrabble dictionary, while I'm allegedly wrong to place a word that, while slangy, is known and regularly used by many people. That kind of dictionary worship ruins the fun of the game.
And I might point out, the dictionary is /always/ at least one year old in terms of when it was compiled and written. Dictionaries are just statistics books, that track word usage and make an average of the many subtly-differentiated definitions people use of words daily. The dictionary isn't right or wrong about a word any more than a market analysis is right or wrong about the value of a currency in a free market society of which negotiation and bartering are parts.
Not that the scrabble dictionary is useless. I'm just saying that the human beings upon whose language usage the dictionary is written in the first place should have power to make their own additions to the game.
-------
They say in quantum mechanics that the very fact of the observation effects the outcome of the experiments. What an odd problem for the scientific method.
And it occurred to me that there is a similar paradoxical issue in a more earthly situation. I know guys who've told me stoies about having a sex life with an ex, but that the ex insisted it be a secret. So, let's say you're in this position, and your partner is assumed to be able to find out if you tell anybody. That means, for your friends: (1) that if they believe you're having sex with your partner, it'll stop and they'll be wrong, and (2) that if they believe you're not having sex with your partner, they'll be wrong as you'll still get the sex.
Therefore, even though there is an objectively true answer to the question of whether or not you're having sex, no matter what your friends believe, their belief will be wrong. Of course, if they take note of this fact and simply assume the opposite of whatever they formerly believed, your partner will find that out, and then you'll have to start telling your friends the opposite of what you formetly did, and the logical spiral will never end!
Anyway, apparently quantum physicists have this problem. Probably not with sex so much, being physicists and all, but anyway with the scientific stuff.
-------
"I like people, I do. But I like them in short bursts. I don't like them for extended periods of time. I'm alright with them for a little while, but once I get up past a minute.. minute-and-a-half, I gotta get the fuck out of there. My reason for this is one that you might share, possibly. I have a very low tolerance level for stupid bullshit. And everyone wants to tell you their stupid bullshit!"
- George Carlin -
Comments
The whole point of using a dictionary when playing Scrabble is because you need an unbiased reference when a consesus cannot be reached. Therefore, your solution to simply use "consensus and good judgement" doesn't really make a lot of sense; If a consensus had been/could be reached then why would you be reaching for the dictionary in the first place?
Also, although I get what you're "trying" to say about dictionaries being a somewhat poor reference because the English language is always evolving, your statistics argument falls flat. I'm pretty sure that the main arguments that occur during a game of Scrabble have little to do with the meaning of the word and everything to do with whether or not the word exists and whether or not it is spelled correctly. As a result of this, although imperfect, the dictionary OBVIOUSLY needs to be a part of the game because if it isn't assumed that most words have finite spelling then what exactly would be the point of playing Scrabble? The whole point of the game is to show off your large vocabulary and spelling prowess so if both of those components of the game become 100% open to interpretation then the game would be pointless. Why not just put all your letters down each turn and call it a word? Assuming a one-on-one dictionary-less game that form of play would be perfectly acceptable to you. One player would claim it's a real word, the other would challenge it, and the game would be done, kind of like your dictionary-less Scrabble theory is now...
Hell, even the good people at Scrabble have to write a new dictionary every year. Should the '07 version be considered wrong? On what day did it become wrong?.. was it the day the '08 version was published?... but it's almost '09 now! Seems to me the '08 version is out of date by nearly a year, and surely the language has evolved since then! Whatever will we do??
If we rely heavily on a dictionary to tell us what our language should be and how it should be spelled, we've made ourselves a considerably less fun game.
But I'll repeat, the dictionary is not useless, when there is a rare word, or when people aren't sure of a spelling. It can be a necessary aid when people aren't sure, or genuinely disagree. My objection is to people who wave around the book gloatingly as a means to preculde a word that everybody knows and uses just because it's not within the pages. And yes, this has happened to me more times than I care to recall, and the folly of it - denying one's own language for the sake of depriving the opponent of a few points - is infuriating. But I still, usually, win :P