If I had mod points you'd get some. An illiterate can't read at all, an aliterate has to sound the words out. Ambiguity is easy to avoid for the literate writer who doesn't sound words out when he reads as long as he's proofread what he's written. The aliterate can't understand this, not realizing that the literate not only don't hear the words unless they're in quotes, they don't see them -- they see and hear what the words convey rather than the words themselves.

The spoken word is indeed ambiguous. Did the Beatles sing "Lets all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born, though she was born a long long time ago. Your mother should know" or did they sing "Lets all get up and dance to a song. That was a hippie four. Your mother was born, though she was born a long long time ago. Your mother should, no?"

The written word can be ambiguous (like the title, and like a lot of headlines in mainstream newspapers) but it doesn't have to be if properly edited.

I got a yahoo mail address a decade ago because I was tired of changing email addresses every time I changed ISPs, and kept it for the same reason I got it, I hate changing email addresses. If you send mail to my mcgrewbooks.com domain, it gets forwarded to my regular email (or will, it's a new domain and I haven't set up mail forwarding yet).

The US? You think we in the US actually LIKE that horse shit commercialism? It's not US, it's the very rich who run the entire world. They don't give two shits about America, they just use it for their own evil ends.

America pretends to be a Christian nation when most worship at the Church of Mammon on Wall Street. The Muslims really fucked up when they gave the Mammonites 3000 martyrs. Morons. Giving a rival religion martyrs is stupid.

the thing with american holidays is that most are relatively new and based on some other culture's ancient celebration

Well, the country itself is relatively new, only two centuries old. It's a toddler compared to European and Asian countries.

while nearly every holiday is tainted with capitalistic greed, i think halloween is probably fairly low on the list. candy and costumes for the most part.

That's how it was fifty years ago, but some people spend hundreds of dollars on lawn decorations and lights these days. The house across the street from me has a dozen tombstones, spiderwebs and a giant spider, some ghosts... it's ridiculous. Better Halloween be taken over by mammon-worshipers than Christmas, which was alas taken over long, long ago by the church of Wall Street. All hail the mighty god named "wealth".

PS- capitalization counts to the truly literate. Join us.

Cool, thanks. As to the transcript guy, MeTV has obviously been using computer voice recognition for their captions from the way the captions are mangled. Use the computer for the transcripts and have the transcript guy just edit that, it should be a lot faster and easier. When voice recognition gets better your transcript guy will have to do something else...

Seconded (thirded? Ninethid?). Videos are fine for animations that show how something works, or demonstrating something cool, like that Q8k guy that flew his rocket to the edge of space, but I'm visually oriented, not aurally oriented. I don't want talking heads, I'm literate. Give me the written word or STFU.

Do you seriously believe that the rich pay less in tax than the poor?

In absolute dollars the rich pay far more, but in terms of percent of income they pay much less than the poor when you add up all taxes. The poor are paying little Federal income tax, but in Illinois the state income tax is flat. The poor spend a far higher percentage of their income on taxable goods than the rich, especially when you add in road taxes and other excise taxes. They're paying property tax for their landlords when they pay rent. When you get slightly above the poverty line, Mitt Romney is paying 13% of his income in tax while the poor are paying twice that in income tax alone, since his income is taxed as capital gains rather than income.

That's possibly generational.

I think you nailed it, the OP is probably in his twenties or younger -- the MyFaceBook generation. For me, email is the handiest method of communication (yes, I still use the phone as a phone, too). My youngest daughter (26) emails me almost exclusively (becuse I'm not on FaceBook) and my older daughter (28) Textes me... when she knows I'm asleep or when I'm otherwise not answering my phone. When I get a text or email, the phone beeps. I seldom return texts because I hate typing on a touch screen; if I get an email the phone beeps, I read the message and respond when I can get on a device with a real keyboard, or just call.

"But with facebook I can talk to everybody at once!"

Talk to ME, kid. Fuck facebook.

I think it's unlikely that this is the only (or first) planet to have life, bot otoh so much has to be just perfect for it to begin that I do think it's rare.

But no way am I certain one way or the other.

It takes no thought or reading to glance at the speedometer, it does with a GPS. The speedometer takes your eyes off the road for a split second, GPS takes both your eyes and mind off for several seconds. After all, if you know where you are you don't need GPS and if you don't, why are you moving?

Yes, with FLAC you need good output transducers.

some headsets boost certain frequencies.

I don't want any frequencies boosted or attenuated, I want a flat frequency response. I don't want it to "sound good" I want it to faithfully reproduce the original performance. I want it to sound like the musicians are in the room with me, and you won't get that with MP3s.

ah, I see, you are from the 'B' ark.

Unless your headphones are wireless, water won't hurt them, they'll dry. Of course if there's a battery and electronics getting them wet isn't a good thing.

From reading that National Geographic article I suspect this kind of thing is more common than they think. It wouldn't even need a collision, just a close call with a larger body.

When I listen to the 1812 Overture, I want the cannons to rattle the windows. When I play rock music I want the neighbors to think there's a live band in my living room!