Pie Serendipity

Griffin Ceawlin wrote: Because it was in violation of Community Guidelines, no doubt. As is this thread. IBTL

According to Fark, Florida has the highest concentration of loonies in the USA.

Madeline Blackbart wrote: It's hard to say though since there english is deffinatly broken. And you, of all people should know!

Ads? What ads?

Madelaine McMasters wrote: I recommend Matt Ridley's book "The Rational Optimist" for a countervailing perspective. I wouldn't take any notice of a word Ridley said. As has been pointed out by an innocent bystander: "As chairman of Northern Rock, he was responsible, according to parliament's Treasury select committee, for a "high-risk, reckless business strategy". Northern Rock was able to pursue this strategy as a result of a "substantial failure of regulation" by the state. The wonderful outcome of this experiment was the first run on a British bank since 1878, and a £27bn government bail-out." Not someone whose views on society, morals and business I would trust.

The "American" entrant was 8-1 down when they replaced their American tactician (the most important single guy in the competition, if you exclude the fanatics who finance the teams) with Englishman Sir Ben Ainslie, probably the best yachtsman in the world for the last 20 years. The result was not really in doubt thereafter. ETA Arsenal are considering renaming themselves l'Arsenal, having named a completely non-English squad for a Premier League game for the first time in 2005, although Chelsea fielded a team of eleven foreigners as far back as 1999. Their team against Southampton, on Boxing Day (the English players probably had hangovers) was: Ed de Gooey - The Netherlands Albert Ferrer - Spain Celestine Babayaro - Nigeria Emerson Thome - Brazil Franck LeBoeuf - France Dan Petrescu - Romania Didier Deschamps - France Gus Poyet - Uruguay Roberto di Matteo - Italy (Actually he was born in Switzerland) Gabrielle Ambrosetti - Italy Tore Andre Flo - Norway. The Chelsea Manager, by the way, was Gianluca Vialla, another Italian.

Profaitchikenz Haiku wrote: A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it? Hmmm, do people nowadays really still use snail mail when ecards are so much more convenient?

Madelaine McMasters wrote: Given your own apparent senescence, your Mom's letter must be very long, or she's an extremely slow typist . . . ETA: Hell, I just used another one of those supposedly superfluous words that will confuse people and make them pick up a dictionary, just to make me look smart; like "superfluous" - which, in my opinion, is just unnecessary.

AveryGriffin wrote: People who use non-conversational language in a well...message board usually are the same ones who use superfluous words in essasys to make them look longer/make the writer look smarter is all I'm saying. :B Erm, and your evidence for this far-fetched product of an apparently jealously inferior mentality is what, exactly? Perhaps you are recommending that literate forum participants should dumb down their contributions to the sub-literate reading level of the majority, deliberately peppering posts with mis-spellings, grammatical howlers and typos, as you have done? Sorry, I have no intention of satisfying the lowest common denominator, and will continue using the right words to communicate my specific meanings, polysyllabic or otherwise. ETA: I have just discovered that you are a kid avatar; your desire for short words and simple sentences now makes sense. Congratulations on beating your lisp though.

AveryGriffin wrote: Whoa, I'd hate to be your teacher. o-o Purple prose isn't all it's cracked up to be and teachers can smell BS from miles away. What on earth makes you think that my style in these forums relates in any way to that which I used for 45-minute dissertations? You're right about hating to be my teacher though; the smell of BS was principally emanating from their unthinking sausage-machine "listen and regurgitate - and don't you dare think for yourself" approach to exams, and I let them know I knew, diplomatically of course, by asking them questions they couldn't answer. AveryGriffin wrote: And the 'multiple-choice tick-the-box examinations' are literally only there so the tests can get graded faster and more accurately (via machine). You don't say! Did you know that the most venerable examination board in the UK is called OCR, and that when I worked for them they didn't understand why some people (yes, I was one) laughed at their name when computerised marking was discussed. (For those who may not understand: the OCR organisation was created by a merger of the Oxford & Cambridge and the Royal Society of the Arts examining boards, and OCR is also a standard IT abbreviation for Optical Character Recognition.) AveryGriffin wrote: Idk how long it's been since you've been in school, but there are still in-class essays and short answers on tests. Really? Like the ones they have in the International Baccalaureate where the teachers don't follow the guidelines in the hope that they will impress the Senior Management Team by getting good results and end up by screwing over the pupils who get downgraded because the IBO can see through transparent attempts at cheating by teachers better than they can more professional exploits by the students themselves. It's at least half an hour since I was in school, by the way.

I ascribe a considerable element of my academic success to the fact that I could write quickly, clearly and in a manner pleasing to the eye for the three hours non-stop that used to be a comprehensive test of rational thinking ability in the days before the "equalisers" started using multiple-choice tick-the-box examinations to bolster the continuous assessment of parental competence. ETA: Occasionally I wrote short sentences.

I must admit, my experience of even supposedly well-educated Americans is that very few use "joined-up" wriing, and even those who print legibly find difficulty in distinguishing the correct use of lower and upper case letters.

I have always written beautifully. My words deserve to look good as well as being meaningful Unlike many of the content-free posters here Whose words would be as empty or nonsensical, whatever they used to transcribe them.

Madelaine McMasters wrote: I love the little girl's pauses, with eyes piercing into the imagined fireworks. I think that little one has a future on the stage. ;-) She could be the next Britney Spears, or maybe even Miley Cyrus, then wouldn't her Dad be proud.

Tex Monday wrote: Pie Serendipity wrote: If anybody is really desperate I have a few spare avatars, complete with last names, in "storage" that a high enough offer might tempt me to sell... It is funny that you say that. I was thinking quite some time ago about selling my first avatar...but I don't think you're allowed to do it. Found this in the ToS..(but have to preface that by saying I am not an attorney and I may not be reading it correctly. My apologies if I'm wrong). 11.2 You may not assign your Account; we may assign this Agreement. You may not assign this Agreement or your Account without the prior written consent of Linden Lab. You may not transfer or sublicense any licenses granted by Linden Lab in this Agreement without the prior, written consent of Linden Lab, except solely to the extent this Agreement permits transfer of any applicable Linden Dollar Licenses. There did used to be something about being able to transfer avatars to another person if the user has died, but didn't see that when I was poking around the Tos. Tex, they don't know who I am, so how would they know if I was someone else?

Perrie Juran wrote: You already stated the obvious: Wasted could. Touché ETA And thank you Storm and Dres; I'll have to try harder.

Perrie Juran wrote: You could also, if LL were able to track down your where-abouts, be held accountable for any thing done with those accounts. Homeland Security and the IRS have been trying to determine my whereabouts for as long as I have had an SL account, and nobody has come knocking on my door yet, so I am not too worried about LL; hell, not only can't they stop a bunch of amateur subcontinental spammers, it took them half a lifetime to put a stop to Wasted, and he published his home phone number on his website. ETA: Do you really think somebody else could behave more badly than I have?

braylasana wrote: Dearest Lindens: Look. This is something the community wants - the ability to have a last name on "newer" characters. This is an opportunity that thus far as a company (who wants to make money, I presume) you all have squandered. You could develop last name reimplementation - and charge for it. Normally, I wouldn't suggest such a thing - but sometimes I feel as though developments that are not fixing world-braking bugs need profit potential in order to get done. you could charge like $500 linden or require permium membership in order to get or change a last name. Thoughts? If anybody is really desperate I have a few spare avatars, complete with last names, in "storage" that a high enough offer might tempt me to sell... ETA You may not be able to use them to post to these forums though.

It's threads like this that make me want to lobby LL for a sub-adult forum section.

Storm Clarence wrote: Dhuanolil wrote: "... There are many... too many...stories of the tragic after-effects of online bullying; they prove that it does indeed happen. If it did not...many children/teenagers would still be alive" Approximately how many is many? I have read a few stories, but many, many? And this is the Internet... I don't believe 99.9% of what I read, and for reasons like writing 'many, many' to replace 2. The last big story in this regard disappeared from the press when it was discovered that 99% of the malicious posts to the suicidal girl had been made by the girl herself . . .

I did some research on this topic, Perrie, a little while ago, when these forums were migrated to Lithium outsourcing, which suggested that the legal position even then was that you could require a forum owner to remove all of your posts when you unsubcribed. I am not a nal though. Or something like that.

Dhuanolil wrote: Storm Clarence wrote: PPS Although I don't believe you can be bullied on the Internet. You do not have to believe it, but it is what happens. There are many...too many...stories of the tragic after-effects of online bullying; they prove that it does indeed happen. If it did not...many children/teenagers would still be alive. It is not the written word which is what causes the pain, but the perceived maliciousness behind it. The same goes for spoken words. Whether written or spoken, if something is meant to be cruel and cause needless pain, then that is bullying; and if it is done through Internet, then it is Internet bullying. FIFY! And of course, everybody recognises that it is only the weakest of masochistic wimps idiotic enough to bite off more than they can chew by voluntarily entering an antagonistic arena, who have the psychic powers to be able to discern accurately the underlying motivation and actual intent of a remotely located anonymous poster. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. If you're immature, but participating in a mature environment, don't expect any tolerance. Stay over there in Club Penguin. You definitely can't be bullied online unless you ALLOW yourself to be bullied. You can also FEEL bullied at any time, if you perceive yourself as being bullied, but hell, Billy Bob Thornton has a phobia about antique furniture, and there's nowt so queer as folk, so why should everybody metaphorically perambulate around online communities as if they were walking on virtual eggs? If I claim that I have an unreasonable fear of the letter "e" does that man you all have to find ways to xprss yourslvs in a ridiculously rstrictd fashion? Nah, I own my feelings, and don't blame others for my personal reactions to whatever nonsense they write about, like the existence and validity of online bullying. Now, victimisation of reasonable and cogent posters by semi-literate part-time home-working monitors with inappropriately excessive authoritative powers, THAT's an online issue which makes me feel really annoyed!

It appears that the role of humour in online marketing is unlikely to be a topic covered by the seminar . . .

I tried to get in but I couldn't - the place was filled with LL Marketing staff desperately trying to find out what they should be doing.

Griffin Ceawlin wrote: @OP: Doubtful anyone at LL will read your post unless it's flagged for the mods. I have tried being rude about the Mods in this thread to try and attract them here. But so far, no warnings, no bans, and no statement that all email addresses are written in invisible ink on the gossamer wings of magic dragonflies and could not possibly be hacked. Ain't it always the way, when you need their attention they are looking in the other direction.