pet peeve thread

[barmar]

In music it's not always true, there are a few songs where the definitive version is not the original.

 

In movies I'd say it's rarer for the remake to be better.

Sometimes it's just a matter of marketing or timing.

 

Most people probably consider the Whitney Houston cover of "I Will Always Love You" to be the definitive version. Dolly Parton's original topped the country charts, but this was in the 70's, before country music had achieved significant crossover appeal. So when Houston recorded her version in the 90's, and it was used in "The Bodyguard", most of the audience had never even heard the original, and this version went on to become one of the best selling singles of all time. Interestingly, Dolly also sang her version in a movie, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas". I think I've even heard Dolly say in interviews that she likes Houston's version better.

 

Then there's the movie "Little Shop of Horrors". The original was a no-budget, black-and-white B movie, seen by few except for devotees of camp sci-fi (it was a perennial favorite when played in the middle of the night at MIT's annual Science Fiction Marathon). When it was turned into a broadway musical, and then into a movie version of the musical, then it became well known to the masses. The original is a curiosity, the latter is lots of fun.

[gwnn]

Whenever anyone uses "exponentially" improperly (which happens about 99% of the time) outside science. Yes yes I know words are defined by usage.

[helene_t]

Whenever anyone uses "exponentially" improperly (which happens about 99% of the time) outside science. Yes yes I know words are defined by usage.

And "axiomatic". And "inversely proportional".

[gwnn]

It's funny, somehow "inversely proportional" does not really get me, unless it's something like "his good looks are inversely proportional to his football ability" (i.e., using a single data point, much like in the misuse of "exponentially") - or maybe that's what you mean?

[Zelandakh]

Just catching up with the last 2 years of peeves... B-)

 

Hmmmm, apparently so many that BBF will not let me post it in one go...

 

There is a commercial on Tv about a detergent that is imitating a sound that is related to social networks when you have a new message (simialr to new messages on BBO in old browser as well). It plays it many times and it drives me nuts.

My suggestion would be to write to the TV station carrying the ad and explain to them that you will not be watching their programming until they do something about it. It probably will not have any effect but it would if enough people were to follow suit.

 

 

Well something really strange has happened. 3 groups of ex CoH players got together (2 as volunteers, one professionals reskinning another game) to produce separate attempts at making a successor game. Ours (we are missingworldsmedia, our game is City of Titans

That is awesome! Do you know if they will be following the same subscription model or moving over to the more modern micro-transactions? It would be great if you could post here when the successor game is ready to go.

 

 

In my new place of employment, roughly 20% of the people I work with have an annoying habit of adding a superfluous "right" at the end of sentences.

This is a little like living in Aberdeen, where the locals like to add "ya ken" to the end of nearly every sentence.

 

 

Replying to "X is a jerk." with "He has always been nice to me." as if it disproved the former statement.

The implication is often that he may well be a jerk with you because you yourself are a jerk. I personally like to make my own mind up about people and never take such a statement at face value.

 

 

Most corners seems pretty weird. Refs would have to track this now?

This has commonly been used as the tie-breaker in village games for generations so it is not a major factor. Scoreboards for football at fetes often have a marker for the number of corners and sometimes they even count directly with a certain number being worth a goal (like Behinds in Australian Rules Football).

 

 

How about a penalty shootout with penalties taken from the edge of the 18-yard box?

I also think this is the best option at the current time but for whatever reason I have never heard it seriously put forward at international level.

 

 

That's the same here. Reminds me of a time many years ago when I was living in Milwaukee. I was in my twenties and learned that there was a weekly duplicate game at the downtown YMCA. After the first time I played there, I walked out to the intersection with some of the other players. There was not a car to be seen anywhere, so I started to cross the street.

 

I heard a woman call in a stern voice, "Young man, it says DON'T WALK!" I rejoined the group on the curb.

When I came to Germany I was amused to find out that the local town had a special law that made crossing the main street at the main traffic light a criminal offence if the pedestrian crossing was not green regardless of the time or whether there were cars about. You could cross the street anywhere else, just not at that point.

[Zelandakh]

Most folks would never consider jumping a line when on foot at a bank or store or whatever, but put 'em behind the wheel of a car and it's a different story. :(

You need to travel abroad more often Ed. Some cultures barely respect queuing "rules" at all. And some cultures use different rules to the ones we would be used to.

 

 

Yes, negations are often ambigious in English. In most other languages I know of it would be clear that it means "Do not (exercise until the heart is pounding)". If they meant "(Do not exercise) until the heart is pounding" they would have said "Do not (exercise before the heart is pounding)"

It is very rare that I disagree with you on a point of language but to me this has the opposite meaning. If "Do not (exercise...)" had been meant, it could have been phrased using a construction along the lines of "Do not continue exercising once the heart starts pounding".

 

 

People pronouncing Toni Kroos like Toni Cruz. I still can't get used to it, pisses me off every time.

This is nothing. I regularly watch ECL on UK TV and during a Dortmund game found it very distracting that "Ray-oos" was playing on the left wing (aka Reus). There were actually a number of strange names in that game. Surprisingly the same commentators have less difficulty with Toni and say his name as "Crows", pretty close by English standards.

 

 

You wouldn't think a person, at least a fellow American, could do much with Berg but they do. I am sometimes addressed as Berge, sort of like barge with an e sound where the a is. I usually try to mention how sad it was that the Titanic was struck by an iceberge.

There are several parts of the world where Berg is pronounced Bairg rather than Burg, Ken. I would hazard a guess that this was probably the original pronunciation in your family too!

 

 

Getting back to the sub-thread about traffic, I wonder what people think about this situation:

Another one for you. A well known junction in SW London sees 2 roads coming together in an X, which is completely chock-a-block during rush hour. Cars coming from the left generally need to get to the right and those from the right to the left. To make matters worse there are traffic lights further along meaning that no smooth zipping action is possible. If no one gives way at all then no one gets anywhere. It is quite simple - when everyone drives with respect, as opposed to the letter of the law, it works. I daresay it is stressful for the drivers though!

 

 

A young woman was driving her boy friend's stick shift

This kind of sounds a bit dirty, Ken! :P

 

 

I wasn't aware that the renown of that old cult film reached so far afield, but give me the straw man every day!

Christopher Lee commented once that it was the best film he ever made. Given his body of work that ought to count for something.

 

 

And "axiomatic". And "inversely proportional".

If we are going on little phrases then my addition to the list is "very unique". Something is either unique or not.

[blackshoe]

You need to travel abroad more often Ed. Some cultures barely respect queuing "rules" at all. And some cultures use different rules to the ones we would be used to.

Oh, I've traveled - and lived - abroad quite enough, thank you. I wasn't talking about other cultures, I was talking about ours.

[helene_t]

It is very rare that I disagree with you on a point of language but to me this has the opposite meaning. If "Do not (exercise...)" had been meant, it could have been phrased using a construction along the lines of "Do not continue exercising once the heart starts pounding".

Oh sure I agree with you. I was just saying that in English you actually sometimes do hear phrases with an ambigious negation. It could be said clearly, yes, but the problem is that it doesn't always happen.

 

I even avoid the construction "may not" in English. I was taught that the negation relates to the main verb unlike in German, which means that although you have

may ~ darf

must ~ muss

 

when negating it becomes the opposite:

 

may not ~ muss night

must not ~ darf nicht

 

but lots of people use the negation the German way for "may" and the traditional English way for "must" so that both become "darf nicht". So I always use either "might not" or "must not". When someone else uses "may not" I will try to guess what it means.

[gwnn]

If we are going on little phrases then my addition to the list is "very unique". Something is either unique or not.

We had this discussion already in this thread*. In practice, everything is unique except identical quantum particles or various stuff fully described by integers (two chess games or bridge sequences can be identical, two cars cannot). So yes, I am unique in my class for being 179.53 cm, a height shared by no one else, but my classmate could be more unique (unique by a more compelling criterion) if she has won an Olympic gold. It's always relative.

 

*Not this thread but: http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/55270-trivial-but-good-grief/page__st__40__p__663815#entry663815

Edited July 3, 2015 by gwnn

[blackshoe]

We had this discussion already in this thread*. In practice, everything is unique except identical quantum particles or various stuff fully described by integers (two chess games or bridge sequences can be identical, two cars cannot). So yes, I am unique in my class for being 179.53 cm, a height shared by no one else, but my classmate could be more unique (unique by a more compelling criterion) if she has won an Olympic gold. It's always relative.

 

*Not this thread but: http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/55270-trivial-but-good-grief/page__st__40__p__663815#entry663815

Apples are not oranges.

[kenberg]

 

 

 

 

There are several parts of the world where Berg is pronounced Bairg rather than Burg, Ken. I would hazard a guess that this was probably the original pronunciation in your family too!

 

Sure, I once had a prof named Berg, pronounced Bairg, among other instances. But the people who might have known a Berg-bairg are not the ones who are pronouncing it Berge. I don't mind, but I still find it surprising.

 

 

This kind of sounds a bit dirty, Ken! :P

 

 

This could be the explanation for the accident.

 

 

 

We got back from Oregon on Wednesday. We enjoyed ourselves greatly, particularly on the coast, but I had maybe three driving experiences where I thought I should thank the person for complimenting me on my driving. They want to pull out into traffic, so they just pull out into traffic. As long as I am paying attention and my brakes are working, it all goes well. I was particularly impressed by the trust shown by the guy who stepped into the street in the middle of the block without looking. I am confident about my driving but even I lack such blind faith in my ability.

[Thiros]

Those guys who are on campus on weekday university holidays (like this one) looking for people to get into a discussion with about religion. They ask for a minute of your time, and if you give it to them they will take 10. Or however long until you put your foot down and say that you really have to get going. Whatever they're trying to accomplish, they might be more successful at it if they didn't take so long to get to their point.

[gwnn]

Apples are not oranges.

Well, no, they aren't. All I was saying that under the strictest definition, everything is like an orange inside a basket of apples. For example, Earth is unique in the Solar system for hosting life. But Neptune is also unique for being the furthest planet or Saturn for its rings! But not all "orangenesses inside apple baskets" are equal. I would say that all the planets are unique but Earth is more unique.

 

Also: a bowling bowl inside a basket of apples is more unique than an orange inside the same basket of apples.

 

Maybe I misunderstood your one-line however so let me know if my examples are missing the point.

[Zelandakh]

Maybe I misunderstood your one-line however so let me know if my examples are missing the point.

Well to me you are - Earth is not more unique than the other planets but rather unique in a way that you personally find more special. It might be that we find out that Earth-like worlds are common in the universe and Neptune-like worlds rare. Similarly, the bowling ball has less in common with the apples than the orange but it is (at a non-molecular level) not unique whereas the orange is.

[gwnn]

Well yes that's my point exactly. You always have to first define what you mean by unique (the criteria based on which you will decide and the class of stuff you want to compare to: In my example, I was just comparing the eight planets of the Solar System and changed my criteria, whereas you apparently want to redefine it to all planets in the universe**) to decide whether or not something fulfills it. In practice, each and every object will be able to stake a claim to uniqueness but some of the claims will be very uninteresting and some will be very interesting*. It stands to reason that in standard conversation you will not be able to define unique every single time before using the word, so saying "this song is very unique" is a useful shortcut to "the claim to uniqueness that this song can build up is more compelling than the ones most other songs can." If for just a second we agree to categorize every song based on only 3 dimensions, you can imagine all songs to be represented by a point in space. Some songs' points will be surrounded by lots of other points and some points will be rather more distant from other songs. No two songs will have identical coordinates (if there were we could just add a few more variables or just consider these two as a single song) so based on these three criteria you can always say that every song is unique.

 

*-whether or not it is interesting will often be a subjective matter but that doesn't make the concept of very unique meaningless, just at times subjective.

 

**-You even go on to say that there could be more Earth-like planets than Venus-like ones! Surely if we accept that, for the sake of the argument, you'd agree that Venus is more unique than Earth?

[blackshoe]

Terra may or may not be the only planet in the solar system to "host life". How can we know? We've only visited one other planet, and not much of that one.

 

From my Oxford Dictionary:

 

"usage: There is a set of adjectives—including unique, complete, equal, infinite, and perfect—whose core meaning embraces a mathematically absolute concept and which therefore, according to a traditional argument, cannot be modified by adverbs such as really, quite, or very. For example, since the core meaning of unique (from Latin ‘one’) is ‘being only one of its kind’, it is logically impossible, the argument goes, to submodify it: it either is ‘unique’ or it is not, and there are no in-between stages. In practice the situation in the language is more complex than this. Words like unique have a core sense but they often also have a secondary, less precise sense: in this case, the meaning ‘very remarkable or unusual’, as in a really unique opportunity. In its secondary sense, unique does not relate to an absolute concept, and so the use of submodifying adverbs is grammatically acceptable."

 

So usage changes meaning. What else is new? :)

 

Personally, if I wanted to say something is remarkable or unusual, I would use that word, not "unique".

 

"'Contact' is not a verb!" -- Nero Wolfe

[gwnn]

Well of course no one knows for sure whether or not Earth is the only planet on which there is life (BTW there is still no clear definition about life). However, there is no evidence for life anywhere else in the Solar System or anywhere else. If you like you can change my post to "the only planet in the solar system that is known to host life." I don't see how this distinction addresses my point other than nitpicking.

 

My point was that in practice, actually everything is one of its kind, if we define kind in a particular way. Similarly, nothing is one of its kind if we make the kind large enough. It's a question of gradation whether we like it or not.

[MrAce]

Isn't it almost always ?

 

I doubt it. It is all about seeing the first time and the feelings it created at the time you watch it imo. For example to me Original Star Trek is the best. This is true for most of the old timers. But if you ask it to a kid now, who watched the later versions of star Trek, and then if you make them watch the older version, they will say the new ones are much better. That is just my guess though, not have strong opinions about it.

[barmar]

I was an enthusiastic fan of the original Trek (although I didn't start watching it until reruns, as I was only 5 years old when it debuted), and I still have a nostalgic fondness for it. But I can recognize that TNG and DS9 were significantly better: the writing was more literate and adult, the characters were more well rounded.

 

And the remake of Battlestar Galactica turned hoky space opera into a drama that explored deep philosophical questions.

 

But these may be the exceptions that prove the rule. Cyber did say "almost".

[Zelandakh]

**-You even go on to say that there could be more Earth-like planets than Venus-like ones! Surely if we accept that, for the sake of the argument, you'd agree that Venus is more unique than Earth?

What Ed wrote - you mean unusual here rather than unique.

 

 

For example to me Original Star Trek is the best.

The third series of ST:TOS is rubbish, worse than any of the series of TNG. The first series of TNG is also very bad, worse than series one and two of TOS. Overall I think TNG is probably better - episodes in series 3-7 have a generally higher quality than TOS 1-2. But arguing about which ST is best is about as nerdy as it comes! :lol:

[gwnn]

My claim is that there's no substantive difference between unusual and unique. Or are you really saying that expressions such as "this girl is unique" are incorrect, too? You can say Rafael Nadal has a unique career (can't you?) but there are other players that have careers that are at least a little bit similar. I know that philosophically you can say that only things that are completely incomparable to anything else are unique but then there are precious few things left for us to use the word for.

[kenberg]

I would like it if "unique", "very unusual", and "weird" all had different meanings. Donald Trump is weird but not unique. Being dealt a hand with a ten card suit is certainly unusual, but not unique.

 

I may not be able to precisely pin down the difference, but I still think that there is one. You might expect that, with these stringent restrictions, I don't often use the word "unique". I think that's true.

 

Take the Tom Stoppard play Travesties. The plot (I saw it long ago but I think I am right) centers around the simultaneous presence of James Joyce, Tristan Tzara (a founder of Dada, if, like me, you had no idea who this is) and Vladimir Lenin in Zurich in 1917. Stoppard takes advantage of this unique opportunity to imagine them meeting and discussing events. My understaning is that the interactions Stoppard portrays never in fact happened, but the simultaneous presence of the three main characters presents a unique opportunity for imaging how their interactions could have gone. Not a "very unique" opportunity, a "unique" opportunity.

 

I do think that "very unique" is weird, but it is not unusual and I don't let it bother me. As with many things I figure my effort is best put to use correcting my own grammatical shortcomings.

[blackshoe]

People tend to overuse words like unique. Why? For the greater emphasis, I think. Still, overusing words tends to degrade their usefulness in describing things that truly fit the meaning.

[GreenMan]

... there's no substantive difference between unusual and unique.

 

This is incorrect. Even when people use "unique" to mean something other than literally sui generis, it connotes a greater degree of difference or individuality than "unusual." The meaning of "unique" may be drifting away from its literal sense, but even so, no one uses them interchangeably.

 

As an easy example, plenty of people would say the weather where I live has been unusually mild. No one would call the recent weather unique, even loosely.

[gwnn]

Yes it's a question of degree, not a question of a completely different concept. That's all I was saying, that it's just another "7 colors of the rainbow fallacy." I'm glad we agree on that and sorry if I expressed myself unclearly (I didn't mean to write "no substantive difference" but "no fundamental difference" and I just meant that in practice when people use unique, except a few special cases, it is actually the same as "very (very) unusual") I definitely don't think unique and unusual are interchangeable in all contexts. I'm just saying that there are degrees of uniqueness and nothing truly fulfills the purist's definition of unique in practice.

 

Sorry, I wrote both of these posts from my phone so if my point is still unclear, I will have to blame it on my autocorrect.