RIP , photojournalist James Foley

[eustacetilley]

swampy wrote:
"Optics" are for shallow people.

Which, of course, is why you used it.

Okay, let's start with Obama's Greek columns.

Ionic, Doric, or Corinthian? You really must be more specific.

Eustace

[Lemon Drop]

eustacetilley wrote:
[quote=swampy]
"Optics" are for shallow people.

Which, of course, is why you used it.

Eustace
I don't think I'm particularly shallow Eustace. That was me you quoted there.

[eustacetilley]

Lemon Drop wrote:
[quote=eustacetilley]
[quote=swampy]
"Optics" are for shallow people.

Which, of course, is why you used it.

Eustace
I don't think I'm particularly shallow Eustace. That was me you quoted there.
Oh, I'm very sorry. You are among the least shallow voices around here. I was quoting Swampy specifically:
*****************************
"Optics" are for shallow people.

Okay, let's start with Obama's Greek columns.

*****************************
I regret that Swampy took your quote entirely out of context, and without attribution, and I regret any offence that my response elicited from you. I wasn't paying enough attention. My main point, and I'm sticking with it, is that the word "Optics" has no place in this discussion.
I'm just here defending a worthy word. Nothing more.

Eustace

[Lemon Drop]

eustacetilley wrote:
[quote=Lemon Drop]
[quote=eustacetilley]
[quote=swampy]
"Optics" are for shallow people.

Which, of course, is why you used it.

Eustace
I don't think I'm particularly shallow Eustace. That was me you quoted there.
Oh, I'm very sorry. You are among the least shallow voices around here. I was quoting Swampy specifically:
*****************************
"Optics" are for shallow people.

Okay, let's start with Obama's Greek columns.

*****************************
I regret that Swampy took your quote entirely out of context, and without attribution, and I regret any offence that my response elicited from you. I wasn't paying enough attention. My main point, and I'm sticking with it, is that the word "Optics" has no place in this discussion.
I'm just here defending a worthy word. Nothing more.

Eustace
no worries friend -

You'll enjoy this http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazi...age-t.html

the term "optics" weaseled its way into politics a few decades ago.

[eustacetilley]

Lemon Drop wrote:
[quote=eustacetilley]
[quote=Lemon Drop]
[quote=eustacetilley]
[quote=swampy]
"Optics" are for shallow people.

Which, of course, is why you used it.

Eustace
I don't think I'm particularly shallow Eustace. That was me you quoted there.
Oh, I'm very sorry. You are among the least shallow voices around here. I was quoting Swampy specifically:
*****************************
"Optics" are for shallow people.

Okay, let's start with Obama's Greek columns.

*****************************
I regret that Swampy took your quote entirely out of context, and without attribution, and I regret any offence that my response elicited from you. I wasn't paying enough attention. My main point, and I'm sticking with it, is that the word "Optics" has no place in this discussion.
I'm just here defending a worthy word. Nothing more.

Eustace
no worries friend -

You'll enjoy this http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazi...age-t.html

the term "optics" weaseled its way into politics a few decades ago.
Thank you.
That NYT piece depresses the hell out of me, all the more so for the fact that it is so well written, and so well documented.

(Come along now, Optics, I've kept a place for the likes of you. You can sit there with Decimate and Deprecate. They are still miffed about how they have been so thoroughly abused recently. Since you are all about Light, maybe you can cheer them up a little.)

Eustace

[hal]

I like this use of 'optics' here - it says a lot in six letters.

Since you're not a chemist, I suppose you have no issues with the way 'organic' has been used in recent decades....

[Wild eep]

eustacetilley wrote:
[quote=swampy]
"Optics" are for shallow people.

Which, of course, is why you used it.

Okay, let's start with Obama's Greek columns.

Ionic, Doric, or Corinthian? You really must be more specific.

Eustace
Major burn there!

[eustacetilley]

hal wrote:
I like this use of 'optics' here - it says a lot in six letters.

Since you're not a chemist, I suppose you have no issues with the way 'organic' has been used in recent decades....

Oh, I do have issues. "Organic" is fairly down on the list, but it's on there, along with that loathsome Newage word "Biologic" .
None of these words have been tainted by the Body Politic as yet; any candidate describing their views as "Organic" would be hooted off the platform, and once accused of being a "Biologic", people would start reaching for their gas masks.

Eustace
(Yes, I'm not a Chemist, but I was one of the first to synthesize Helium Hydride in large quantities. It's really a quite simple process, (Actually it is horribly complex...), but until I had done it, nobody felt the need for any Helium Hydride. Al Ghiorso was quite taken with Helium Hydride, or rather with its Brutish Brother ³He³H, which is of interest to those studying Aneutronic Fusion.)
(I would like to let Al chirp in about the abuse his "Cold Fusion" has suffered, but Al went up and died on me a couple of years back. To put it simply- "Cold Fusion" is Fusion that happens just at or just below the Coulomb Barrier. A Quantum Mechanic could explain the details, I'm not one of those either, but it involves probabilities rather than certainties. It's certainly too complex a subject for two fraudulent Electrochemists from Utah, who stole Al's phrase, wrapped it in mumbo-jumbo, and set out to fleece the world.)

[silvarios]

Deprecate as in to abhor or express disapproval of instead of a synonym for depreciate? Hmmm…guilty as charged.

[eustacetilley]

silvarios wrote:
Deprecate as in to abhor or express disapproval of instead of a synonym for depreciate? Hmmm…guilty as charged.

You are using the words correctly. "Deprecate" and "Depreciate" are two entirely different words, from different roots.
I was referring to the nauseating tendency of Code Monkeys to use the word "deprecate" to merely indicate old or no longer supported software. They suck all the Life out of the word, leaving just a convenient husk to store their old bad code in. (Their new code is usually just as bad, if not worse.)
They get very defensive when I point out their error, (It's even happened here...), and inevitably, unknowingly, revert back to Lewis Carroll's droll assertion- "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

I once traced the misuse to a paper on Java, written by somebody whose grasp of English wasn't the best.
It was roundly ridiculed on USENET, and then quickly forgotten. I can't find the paper or the discussion- so much of USENET has been just tossed away.

To say "Version 3.1.1 has been deprecated, update to Version 3.2.2." is just thoroughly wrong. To say "Version 3.1.1 has been depreciated and will no longer be supported" is better, but not by much.
To say "Version 3.1.1 was just bloody awful. Don't use it." conveys the right use of "Deprecate", without actually using the word.
"Deprecate" in its original, true, sense is usually used these days as part of a specific phrase-"Self-Deprecating Humor". Most people recognize the concept, if not the actual phrase.
I would say more, but this prose is already far too prolix.

Thanks, silvarios.

Eustace
(Can I actually turn this ship around? Can I get some actual discussion about words, and how they are used or misused, especially in a political context, instead of the usual sniping and Bad Writing? Nah.)