I can't tell if you are denying the similarity between ducks and geese, have not seen a duckwalk in open ranks, or just have some sort of humor aversion.

GM has managed to garner additional positive attention by going back and fixing so many things, as well as by admitting that they should have found (or in some cases did find) the problem and identified a solution. It may have led some other car companies to do something similar, as even without GM, recalls are at record or near-record levels for several companies. Suddenly, recalls seem like the responsible thing to do and appear to help the brand image.

I've never used sling. Does it have a DVR function?

Articles from last year suggest that the Facebook posting was exactly what led to it. After the defense attorney saw the post by the judge, he motioned for recusal and mistrial. Slaughter was removed from the case, and soon after, the new judge declared a mistrial.

http://www.houstonchronicle.co...

The accused was found not guilty, and looking at the details of the case, it's not hard to see why. The child was (and probably still is) severely disturbed, allegedly killing small animals, making threats against his parents, and hiding knives.

http://www.khou.com/story/news...

Michelle Slaughter
Earl Gallows
Trigger Winchester
Otis Hangem
Billy Bob Guilty

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They will in vacuum. Helium is lighter than air. It is not an anti-gravity gas.

To be fair, the US military does have a duck walk. Similar animal, just as goofy.

I have to pay for a monthly subscription to DirecTV because my wife wants HGTV. I would gladly pay for the "Binge Watch House Hunters and Fixer Upper Online On Demand" subscription if it existed.

But ... the administration says that slightly reducing the rate at which we add on trillions more in debt is a proud accomplishment. So, this has to be similar.

I get it. It's just too much trouble for you to choose between multiple ways of saying something in order to be succinct instead of vague. People who don't value clarity never realize that they people they're talking to - every time that happens - value that communication (and the person attempting it) less and less over time.

What's so hard to understand? This forum is full of people correcting others' poor use of communication when talking about everything from natural selection to global warming to employment demographics. Someone makes a sloppy choice of phrase, and the simple thing they're trying to convey turns into a four-step back and forth during which everyone from trolls to the merely dim decide to screw up the thread or just rant because the OP couldn't trouble themselves to just speak clearly in the first place.

This particular lapse in clarity, which comes up regularly in lazy science and technology reporting, isn't the point. The larger point is the grinding erosion in careful communication, and the erosion in clear and critical thinking of which that is an indicator. You think this is about ego? It's about understanding the power and value of properly nuanced communication, especially in the shortened format that venues like this tend to encourage.

I need to learn English? What you're really saying is, I need to forget English, because it's just too much trouble to quickly sort through the differences found in several ways to say the same thing, each of which contributes to a more quickly digested communication of different ideas. You're cranky because I'm not a fan of lazy thinking, and the fact that you think "learning English" means forgetting how to distinguish between different words is exactly the larger problem I'm pointing out.

What's blindingly obvious is that both sides are horrible. I was only saying that I could see why the Catholics wanted to prevent commoners from doing their own interpretation, because it leads directly to fundamentalism; I never said the Catholics were models of virtue themselves.

The best answer is to not have any "holy books" at all, because as soon as you believe something like that, you get all kinds of twisted logic and justifications for stupid and horrible things. ("It says XYZ here, and we can't question that, so it follows from that that we need to do ABC in this situation.")

No, no constraints in that sense. Just the larger constraints introduced by the fact that the purpose of saying anything at all, in that context, is to communicate something meaningful about A's size. And by choosing the "ten times more" construction, part of what you're communicating is the fact that B, the thing to which you're comparing A, is by implication already considered small. That format (rather than saying, "A is a tenth B's size") is a choice of words that communicates the understand that B is small, and A is even more small. The phrase "ten times smaller" is using the word "smaller" in the sense of "more small."

The words "ten times" is a multiplier. It's used, in a comparison, to say that one value is LARGER than another. In this usage, the smallness of A is ten times larger than the smallness of B. Trotting out that multiplier is a deliberate choice made to focus on smallness in both A and B, with A having ten times more of it. That doesn't describe the size of B, but it communicates that notion that B is already - in the scheme of things - considered small, and A more so.

It's a shame that your own literacy is so limited, and that your own ability to parse the differences between words is disabled by a lack of vocabulary breadth. That's got to be frustrating. Or maybe not, since perhaps ignorance is bliss in some way, right?

Saying that something is "ten times smaller" is like saying "ten times more small." The phrase "ten times" is a multiplier. It means that you're describing an aspect of something, and saying that there is ten times as much of that aspect. In that usage, the aspect you're describing and comparing is the smallness.

By choosing that construction ("A is ten times smaller than B"), you're deliberately focusing on B's size, and implying that the smallness of B is the thing that's being multiplied ... that B's smallness is important in what you're communicating, and that it's of note because A's size is even more so (small, that is). If we're not trying to convey B's smallness as part of the concept being communicated (perhaps B isn't really thought of as small at all, in the scheme of things), a different construction makes more sense. Makes for better communication: "A is tenth of B's size." We're still describing the relationship, but doing so without including words that suggest B's size is already considered small.

That you don't have the cognitive and communication skills to understand the difference, or that you DO, and prefer to have communication dumbed down and muddied, and require more back and forth to clarify what you mean, says a lot about you. Which is unfortunate. That you think you have to insult someone else in order to feel better about it is just kind of pathetic, really.

Don't know why you think it's God's domain. The article doesn't pretend that they are alive. It's not any different than the G.I. Joe dolls or even the merchandise Hollywood puts out resembling movie characters.

For the same reason that people walk around wearing Che Guevara t-shirts while buying $5 cups of coffee.