What I don't get...

[itadakimasu]

I was watching Dateline last night and they were going over the whole mortgage meltdown and talking about how all of these people were just pushing through fraudulent loan applications so they could earn commissions, and those were then bought up by wallstreet investors as being valid loans and then the billion / trillion dollar loans become worthless when welfare mom's can't pay their million dollar mortgage...

One thing I don't get, is why they haven't had any publicity about actively trying to put people in jail for this fraud. I think they can trace back alot of those falsified applications and give people jobs at the same time.

Secondly... Especially in california I don't see how somebody can commit to a mortgage when they know they don't make enough money. They had one lady on the show who was making $1,600 / month and while they did falsify her income on the loan apps... she should have realized right away that she couldn't be paying $2000+ per month for a mortgage.

They also had this other lady who they showed as having a negative income and a history of filing for bankruptcy but somehow had over a million dollars worth of mortgages, and she refused to take any responsibility... she was a victim somehow.

I think they need to investigate all the people who were falsifying these documents and give them stiff penalties. I think they also need to re-visit people who have already been evicted because of things like adjustable rate mortgages balooning and give them a home @ a standard fixed rate.

[Stitch]

Adjustable rate mortgages would get you beheaded at the local supermarket in front of your own children in Iran or any other middle eastern country.

The Old Testament/Quran are some kooky ass pieces of literature, but some of it is definitely on the money (har har, get my pun?) about what is "sinful."

Anyway, I caught 60 Minutes last night for the Steve Kroft interview with President Barack Obama. That motherfucker Kroft actually had the gumption to catch an attitude and get smart with Obama about smiling and laughing at a time of financial crisis. It was the most asinine question ever when our glorious President was asked if he was punch drunk.

I want to know where this asshole suddenly gets the gumption when he certainly didn't have the balls to catch an attitude and get smart with George W. Bush. That's probably because George W. Bush was a stupid motherfucker who'd never grant an interview in fear of pulling a Sarah Palin vs. Katie Couric.

So if Obama is granting you an interview, appreciate the opportunity and ask your questions nicely. And while he's graceful enough to answer your questions, shut your mouth and know your role, jabronie.

[Assertn]

The rationale of sub-prime loans was that the equity your house builds would compensate for your sub-par income. This was quite appealing when houses in the area increased in value, say, $50k - 100k per year. Just like the old adage, people are greedy when they should be fearful, and fearful when they should be greedy.

[KitKat]

Ugh, I should be able to answer this off the top of my head, but I can't.

I'm pretty sure it has to do with The Great Vowel Shift in the English language and just the changes made from Old to Middle to Modern English in general, but I'm too tired to remember the specifics.

I think the older forms of those words would have been different, but changed over time. Some, like house and spouse, didn't change, and some, like mouse and louse, did. I'll give you a more thorough answer when I can.

Well, I'm a bit late to this question but....other forum resident linguist to the rescue!

Xan, as far as I know, the great vowel shift was a phonetic/phonoligical change, whereas the matter of plurals is a grammatical change. From what I've learned in historical linguistics, English used to have a number of different ways of marking plurals (woman-women, child-children, mouse-mice, sheep-sheep, word-words). Each of these different strategies was used for a certain subset of words, but the -s class was the largest, so over time when people forget what kind of plural a word takes, they make a guess that it takes the -s version. Multiply this by hundreds of years, and you see the -s plural taking over most of the words, and only a few words holding on to their old archaic plurals. Incidentally, the ones that don't change tend to be ones that are used very frequently (like woman and child) whereas the first ones to change are typically words that aren't used so much.

[XanBcoo]

Well, I know that "mice" and "lice" and so on exist because of a phonological change. I may be slightly wrong, but I think the forms were something like (singular first, then plural):

[mu:s] - [mu:si]

and then after time, the [i] from the plural caused the [u] to move farther forward:

[mu:s] - [mysi]

and then at some point the GVS or some other change happened and then the [i] was lost in the plural, resulting in the forms we know today. I think it was something like that at least??

[mu:s] - [mi:s]

[maus] - [mais]

I'm still curious as to why it would affect some words and not others, especially since "house" is such a common word.

[itadakimasu]

another wtf rant brought on by watching dateline.

Dateline did online scams this sunday and highlighted a scam targetting job hunters online in which nigerians are enlisting gullible americans to do their dirty work and send out fake checks to other gullible americans who are then asked to cash the fake check and send the balance minus their "pay'' and then it eventually gets sent back to nigeria.

i actually had this happen from craigslist last year. I was selling a computer, they sent me a probably fake check for $3500 and wanted me to deduct $300 and give them $3200 back. I wasn't about to cash the check...

So, what I don't get, is that all of these scams are now well known. They mostly utilize western union because western union is one of the only ways you can quickly move cash from the US to Africa, or other places like the UK. They know its a problem too... why isn't anything being done to western union to force them to impose some sort of red flag system when they know that it's very unlikely anybody is honestly sending thousands of dollars to nigeria when they have no ties to anyboy in nigeria.

I think western union is liable to some extent for enabling and aiding in this type of fraud that is happening all over the internet.

/wall of text

[KitKat]

I'm still curious as to why it would affect some words and not others, especially since "house" is such a common word.

I think it depends on the order that the processes occurred historically. If the plural [i] was lost before causing the vowels to move forward, that would explain it. I couldn't be sure though without looking at some historical data to be sure that 'house' actually did take the same kind of plural as 'mouse' in the past.

[XanBcoo]

I think it depends on the order that the processes occurred historically. If the plural [i] was lost before causing the vowels to move forward, that would explain it. I couldn't be sure though without looking at some historical data to be sure that 'house' actually did take the same kind of plural as 'mouse' in the past.

If the old plural of house didn't take the same kind of plural as mouse in the past, then that's a little less interesting. Still raises the question of why that plural was different in the first place, but I guess that's probably just an issue of it belonging to a certain class of nouns or something?

[itadakimasu]

I'm taking this sociology class online, and we do a discussion board assignment where you answer questions in forum fashion, then respond, etc. Definitely not the most effective way to learn things in a class.

anyhow, there was no such assignment for this chapter on religion and it just doesn't make sense that you would avoid the topic when you have a class of adults. if such a topic would make people question their beliefs, i think that's the whole idea of the class anyhow.

[Nadouku]

What does amoxicillin do? I started taking it recently, but I feel no different.

[Ryllharu]

It and other penicillin-family antibiotics prevent bacteria from surviving their divisions by attacking the cell walls, slowing down their spread in your system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-la...Mode_of_action

It's a medium-strength antibiotic, so you don't wreak as much havoc on your healthy systems as the stronger ones do, and there is less of a risk of creating resistant bacteria strains.

It's really only helping you naturally fight off infection. Just make sure you take it all, regardless of when you start to feel better.

[Nadouku]

Oh, that is really nice information. Guess I'll know the results when I see a change. Thanks!

[Buffalobiian]

Why are banned members like GodVIAGRA allowed to sign in? I'll assume they can't post anymore, but is there a rationale in keeping them here? Does it somehow trick them into thinking they're still "functional", and who/whatever's at the other end doesn't try to send any more bots this way?

Is that also what happens when we get banned as well?

[Nadouku]

Banning rather than deleting them helps so that they can't remake the same account and spam again, since they can't post anything. These bots come at a rather slow pace, but are easy to detect and it will trick them into thinking that they are still functional, like you said.

And we have a new bot coming up too: Phorse

[enkoujin]

If irony is commonly defined in these simple terms (but not necessarily correct) as a "situation opposite of what the audience expects" and your audience is all-knowing (specifically, your audience are a bunch of intellectuals who expect everything and/or anything to happen and there were not any plot devices that gave away dramatic irony), could your story having irony despite not meeting the requirements of the outlined definition above?

[Kraco]

Hmm... Maybe it's because I've always live in a country without much stand-up comedy, but I don't tend to think quite so purely externally about things like irony. You can't control what an audience might or might not predict, so it's a poor technical standard for any definition. A person facing a twisted outcome could easily judge it ironic in RL by him/herself, without any audience. In fiction the ultimate purpose of course remains: It was all written for an audience to witness, but nevertheless it's opposite to what the particular character was expecting, even if a part of the audience predicted it (which probably always happens).

I think the good old Tree of Irony is still a perfect example of irony:

[enkoujin]

While that is a very good picture of irony right there (shame that PBF has irregular updates), I seem to have derived my conundrum from a difference source, but this example should suffice:

http://www.brawlinthefamily.com/comic157.html

While it is the dentist informs the patient that he is about to "clean his [the patient's] teeth", one initial audience response would immediately think that the dentist would be thinking of performing physical assault on the patient. The other would be inclined to think that the dentist literally does clean up the patient's teeth. The last one would be that the audience would expect anything, including non sequitur humor to occur.

In all three scenarios, according to the poor-technical definition of irony above, they all satisfy the irony presented in the story. I guess that that is the beauty of clever writing - to entangle the threads of double entendre and [double] irony into such a scenario.

Maybe I have been overlooking and analyzing simple literary devices and I should enjoy them for what they are. Thank you, Kraco!

[Ryllharu]

Why music isn't sold everywhere, and has more restrictive region locking than DVDs. At least you can purchase DVDs (in your own regional format).

Try to buy a foreign album. Doesn't matter what language. Japanese, French, Spanish, whatever. Try and buy it legally for it's fair price (ie. not import for 6x the cost of the cd in country of origin). You can't.

I like the album enough to want to give them my money. Try as I might, I literally can't. They have a chance to take my money, and there is no legal avenue that will allow me to purchase the album. I could "import" it, but in many cases it would cost me less to drive to Canada, buy 5 albums, and drive home the same day. I could fly to Japan round trip, buy 15 albums, and it would still cost me less than import those same cds.

I want to give the modern Robber Barons my money, and they will not take it.

[Xelbair]

I would love to get, for example, Kamelot CDs but well - the only way to get them here is to import them. guess the price for their second from the end CD, nearly 50$ + shipping.
i hope i don't have to mention that usually CD's here cost 3 to 4 times less.

[Assertn]

While that is a very good picture of irony right there (shame that PBF has irregular updates), I seem to have derived my conundrum from a difference source, but this example should suffice:

http://www.brawlinthefamily.com/comic157.html

While it is the dentist informs the patient that he is about to "clean his [the patient's] teeth", one initial audience response would immediately think that the dentist would be thinking of performing physical assault on the patient. The other would be inclined to think that the dentist literally does clean up the patient's teeth. The last one would be that the audience would expect anything, including non sequitur humor to occur.

In all three scenarios, according to the poor-technical definition of irony above, they all satisfy the irony presented in the story. I guess that that is the beauty of clever writing - to entangle the threads of double entendre and [double] irony into such a scenario.

Maybe I have been overlooking and analyzing simple literary devices and I should enjoy them for what they are. Thank you, Kraco!

I wouldn't call that irony, its just a play on dramatic context. The classic example my jr high english teacher liked to use was a farside comic where a fuel truck runs out of gas.