Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Start one word at a time. "Sequel" is as good as any.

  It's not like *I* would always write perfect English, but at least I'm
willing to learn from my mistakes.

  For instance, for a long time I wrote "piratism" until someone pointe out
to me that it's actually "piracy" (the former could be classified as
Finglish). Likewise for a very long time I wrote sentences in the form
"I wonder what does this do", when the better way of writing it is
"I wonder what this does".

  One of the latest mistakes I have noticed is that I have been writing
for years "truely" when the proper word is "truly". Another is that I have
been writing "substraction" instead of "subtraction" (the former I have
"mislearned" from Spanish).

  Oh, and the latest one has been using "cursive" instead of "italic"
(again, Finglish).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:24:53 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
>> This is pretty close to what someone recently wrote as a review of
>> Avatar. After a brief case of, "Wow, there are vines hanging all over
>> the place.", you forget that you are looking at something CG at all. The
>> problem, as he pointed out, is that the next guy to use what made it
>> amazing will be used to make something that **won't** spend time on the
>> story, and *will* scream CG because of it. It will be all about, "See,
>> we can do this level of CG too!", and not about the story.
> 
> Interesting.  I'm somewhat apprehensive about Avatar myself; my wife's 
> got friends who are disabled, and they're quite unhappy about one of the 
> central the ideas behind the film being that if you're disabled, you 
> couldn't possibly live a normal life and the pinnacle of hope is that you 
> could do something that made you not be disabled.
> 
> Needless to say, my wife's friends who are disabled are fiercely 
> independent and find that premise to be quite offensive.
> 
> I may rent it on Netflix once just to see the effects, but I don't have 
> high hopes for the story.
> 
> Jim
Ugh.. Haven't even seen the film, but they *think* that because it 
offers someone that wants his problem fixed a solution, its 
anti-disability? Have I got that right? Why is it that some people, if 
a) they are born with one, or b) suffer one, but don't want it fixed, 
treat people offering solutions as though they are out to burn down 
their church, and the people that actually take up the offer as though 
they had betrayed the holy religion of disability, and need to be 
excommunicated. They have such massive chips on their shoulders that 
they would rather rob someone who *was*, for example, once sighted, of a 
chance to see again, than actually find themselves confronted with 
someone suggesting, "Don't you ever wonder what it would be like *to* see?"

With all respect to your wife's friends, some of these people are worse 
assholes to "normal" people, than normal people have ever been to them, 
and its a damn movie, in which the character *wanted* to have the 
choice, as a means to work on the front lines, not some frakking
bunch of scientists picking people with missing legs out of a hospital 
wards and beaming them into blue aliens without their bloody permission 
or request. Not every attempt to solve basic malfunctions in the human 
body is a conspiracy to destroy the "specialness" of people who, for 
what ever reason, develop a damn stupid chip on their shoulder about not 
wanting to even have the option, because it makes them feel somehow 
better to be part of a group that where all mistreated by idiots years 
earlier, as a result of their differences.

Yes, there are some that think they *need* fixing. But that just proves 
that non-disabled people can be assholes too, not that the ones 
protesting someone *choosing* to deny the holy writ of the disabled are 
apostates for opting to try the alternative, especially of they are, 
"*gasp*", restoring something they already had, not being asked to be 
given sight, after being born without it, or some other situation, where 
they *might* have a point about it being offensive to try to even offer it.

This is almost as absurd, forgive me saying so, as the protesters 
against the film because they didn't pick **it** as some sort of soup 
box for gay love stories, but went with what *most* other films always 
have, and made the love interests male and female. Its just bloody 
ridiculous.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>   How hard is it to write "sequel"?
> 
>> How hard is it for you to get off my case? I *know* I can't spell for 
>> toffee.
> 
>   At this point it feels like you are doing it deliberately.
> 
>   If you have learned to write words like "how" and "hard", it should be
> quite easy to also learn to write words like "sequel". It's not that
> difficult.
> 
>> I didn't even learn to read until I was about 13 or something. 
>> I've always been rubbish at it. It's not like I can magically fix it in 
>> 20 minutes.
> 
>   Start one word at a time. "Sequel" is as good as any.
> 



there are still lots of words I forget how to spell even when I make a 
point of trying to learn them, although I do take the trouble to use a 
spell checker. (Hint to Andrew :P)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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> there are still lots of words I forget how to spell even when I make a 
> point of trying to learn them, although I do take the trouble to use a 
> spell checker. (Hint to Andrew :P)

Hey, if you can tell me how to make Thunderbird's spellchecker actually 
work, I'm all ears.

(You'd *think* that just installing the right dictionary and turning on 
spell checking would do it... but apparently not.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Stephen <mca### [at] aoldotcom> wrote:
> You obviously don?t know what dyslexia is like maybe the old fashion 
> phrase word blindness is more descriptive.

  I thought that dyslexia is a disorder which manifests as a difficulty
in reading. While this may increase the time which one nees to learn to
write properly, I don't see it described as an absolute impediment which
completely stops the sufferer from learning to write words correctly.
(Basically, if the dyslexic person has difficulties in reading a world
properly and associating letters with sounds, he might learn to write the
word improperly as well, but I don't see anything in the description of
dyslexia which would stop him from being able to correct his mistake and
learn the correct spelling, especially when specifically pointe out.)

  I'm certainly not saying that Andrew is one of them, but I feel that many
people use things like dyslexia as a convenient excuse for laziness to
learn how to write properly.

  Is it medically impossible for a dyslexic person to learn to write a
word like "sequel" correctly? Or is it a question of learning?

  As I said, one word at a time, if nothing else helps.

  (Naturally this requires willingness to learn and to better oneself.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> Ugh.. Haven't even seen the film, but they *think* that because it 
> offers someone that wants his problem fixed a solution, its 
> anti-disability? Have I got that right? Why is it that some people, if 
> a) they are born with one, or b) suffer one, but don't want it fixed, 
> treat people offering solutions as though they are out to burn down 
> their church, and the people that actually take up the offer as though 
> they had betrayed the holy religion of disability, and need to be 
> excommunicated. They have such massive chips on their shoulders that 
> they would rather rob someone who *was*, for example, once sighted, of a 
> chance to see again, than actually find themselves confronted with 
> someone suggesting, "Don't you ever wonder what it would be like *to* see?"

  The attitude that many deaf people have towards people who can get their
deafness cured (even if only partially) has always baffled me. AFAIK deaf
people have a subculture of their own, but this is one part of it which
I think is total crap.

  For example there was a newspaper article here about a small boy who was
born in a family which had a hereditary condition which induced deafness, and
hence a big part of the family consisted of deaf people, and this boy was
born deaf too. However, in this particular case doctors found out that they
could cure the boy's hearing (I don't know if totally or partially, but
cure it nonetheless).

  Guess what, the other family members (except the boy's parents) strongly
opposed this (and this was the point of the newspaper article). They wanted
the boy to remain deaf because they felt he was being removed from the deaf
people subculture if he was cured. IIRC the parents didn't listen to them
and instead went with the operation, but nevertheless I think that strong
opposition from the family was a big bunch of BS. I really think that they
are protesting out of jealousy.

  I'm sure that not all deaf people are like this, but some certainly are.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Hey, everyone's entitled to an opinion.  But I'll give those who are 
actually handicapped taking something like the premise behind this film a 
bit more credence when they stand out and say that the premise of the 
film is flawed because it makes the *assumption* (and therein lies the 
problem) that all people who are handicapped *want* to be "made whole" 
and feel inferior to fully-abled people.

The message that is being received by some in that community is "if 
you're handicapped, you're not a whole person" - and if I were 
handicapped, I'd find that suggestion offensive as well.

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> Hey, everyone's entitled to an opinion.  But I'll give those who are 
> actually handicapped taking something like the premise behind this film a 
> bit more credence when they stand out and say that the premise of the 
> film is flawed because it makes the *assumption* (and therein lies the 
> problem) that all people who are handicapped *want* to be "made whole" 
> and feel inferior to fully-abled people.

  I haven't seen the movie, but is the premise really "*all* people who are
handicapped want to be made whole", or that some handicapped people do?

  (Besides, I'm pretty certain that if a perfect cure for, let's say,
paraplegia was discovered, not many paraplegics would keep up with their
"I'm a normal, whole person, I can live a full life like I am" principle,
if they can be cured easily, and instead they would go and get cured. It
wouldn't make too much sense to keep up such appearances.)

> The message that is being received by some in that community is "if 
> you're handicapped, you're not a whole person" - and if I were 
> handicapped, I'd find that suggestion offensive as well.

  I'm in no way severely handicapped myself, and such I'm not anybody to
talk. However, the worst thing I have is a diminished hearing in my left
ear due to a long history of cholesteatoma and later complications. For
quite many years I had some chronic infection in the middle ear due to
some recurrence of cholesteatoma-like tissue or something like that,
which appeared during my teen years. The chronic infection kept a
punctured whole in my tympanic membrane (not removing hearing completely,
but diminishing it significantly). The worst handicap this caused was that
any significant amount of humidity would trigger serious infectious
complications, requiring medical attention (antibiotics, etc). I had to
avoid going to any humid places without ear protection, and going underwater
when swimming was absolutely out of question.

  I did not consider my condition "normal" or that I was completely "whole"
and healthy. It sometimes severely limited what I could do, and infections
requiring medical attention were common.

  They made corrective surgery to me, removing that extraneous tissue and
repairing the eardrum. After recuperating I have had no infections whatsoever
and I'm fully able to dive without problems. My hearing has not recuperated
completely (which is normal and to be expected), but it's better than
before. While there are certain situations where the impaired hearing is
a bother, I can say that my quality of life has been significantly improved
after the surgery.

  I really wouldn't want to offend any handicapped people, but I honestly
think that when people with incurable handicaps or diseases vehemently
state that they are "whole" and that they can live life to the fullest
regardless of their handicap, they are just denying the truth. If that
makes them happier, then good for them, but I really think that honesty
wouldn't hurt that much (especially when expressing to others about your
condition). Also getting offended because "healthy" people assume that
it would be the dream of the handicapped person to get cured, is a bit
too much. I really think that being offended by something like this is
just a symptom of denial of the truth. I don't think anybody *wants* to
be handicapped.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:


>> there are still lots of words I forget how to spell even when I make a 
>> point of trying to learn them, although I do take the trouble to use a 
>> spell checker. (Hint to Andrew :P)
> 
> Hey, if you can tell me how to make Thunderbird's spellchecker actually 
> work, I'm all ears.
> 
> (You'd *think* that just installing the right dictionary and turning on 
> spell checking would do it... but apparently not.)
> 

I only installed Thunderbird a couple of months ago and the spell 
checking worked as default.:o But even so I still type everything in M$ 
Word.


-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> > Interesting.  I'm somewhat apprehensive about Avatar myself; my wife's
> > got friends who are disabled, and they're quite unhappy about one of the
> > central the ideas behind the film being that if you're disabled, you
> > couldn't possibly live a normal life and the pinnacle of hope is that you
> > could do something that made you not be disabled.
> > Jim
> Ugh.. Haven't even seen the film, but they *think* that because it
> offers someone that wants his problem fixed a solution, its
> anti-disability? Have I got that right? Why is it that some people, if
> a) they are born with one, or b) suffer one, but don't want it fixed,
> treat people offering solutions as though they are out to burn down
> their church, and the people that actually take up the offer as though
> they had betrayed the holy religion of disability, and need to be
> excommunicated. They have such massive chips on their shoulders that
> they would rather rob someone who *was*, for example, once sighted, of a
> chance to see again, than actually find themselves confronted with
> someone suggesting, "Don't you ever wonder what it would be like *to* see?"
>
> With all respect to your wife's friends, some of these people are worse
> assholes to "normal" people, than normal people have ever been to them,
> and its a damn movie, in which the character *wanted* to have the
> choice, as a means to work on the front lines, not some frakking
> bunch of scientists picking people with missing legs out of a hospital
> wards and beaming them into blue aliens without their bloody permission
> or request. Not every attempt to solve basic malfunctions in the human
> body is a conspiracy to destroy the "specialness" of people who, for
> what ever reason, develop a damn stupid chip on their shoulder about not
> wanting to even have the option, because it makes them feel somehow
> better to be part of a group that where all mistreated by idiots years
> earlier, as a result of their differences.
>
> Yes, there are some that think they *need* fixing. But that just proves
> that non-disabled people can be assholes too, not that the ones
> protesting someone *choosing* to deny the holy writ of the disabled are
> apostates for opting to try the alternative, especially of they are,
> "*gasp*", restoring something they already had, not being asked to be
> given sight, after being born without it, or some other situation, where
> they *might* have a point about it being offensive to try to even offer it.
>
> This is almost as absurd, forgive me saying so, as the protesters
> against the film because they didn't pick **it** as some sort of soup
> box for gay love stories, but went with what *most* other films always
> have, and made the love interests male and female. Its just bloody
> ridiculous.

I would never find better wording for it...

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