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Illiteracy
Nov. 9th, 2008 11:44 amA common riposte when those who care about grammar and spelling criticize the errors of others is that "well, it's obvious what I meant, innit?" before they go on to accuse you of pedantry. Well, they would, if they knew what the word meant, innit.
The argument in favour of proper grammar and spelling is that, although the English language is superb in its redundancy (most vowels can be eliminated with no loss of meaning; many letters can be reveresed without comprehennsibility being lost), on occasion the rules are in place because a failure to follow them results in miscomprehension. The most classic recent case was when an idiot was talking to an idiot at the time of the 9/11 attacks. One of them (a glass half-empty kind of person) said that the US Airways plane had crashed, but could only think of the word "down" — crashed being clearly a far too complex term. So she said that the flight was "down". Listener B, clearly too dumb to appreciate that "down" did not necessarily imply "down safely", took this to mean that the flight had landed ok.
Thus, for several rather important seconds, we had two people whose job it was to communicate unambiguously talking at cross-purposes. Yeah right innit well so but no but so, well, really.
Party Poker, writing in a field where lives might not be at stake, but where finance is, has rephrased its announcement when you sit down at a jackpot table. I'm not sure why, as the previous pop-up was unambiguous, correctly spelt and, for Party, a paragon of clarity.
The new pop up is not. Indeed, I seriously considered not playing any jackpot tables when I first read it.
It now states that
I had to watch a table for 10 minutes to see how much was being taken out of the pot (Party does not show you how much is being raked -- you have to work it out from the amounts bet and the size of the final pot). Eventually it became clear that the rake had not changed from what was being charged before. What Party meant to say was that "A fee of 50¢ per raked hand for the funding of the jackpot will be charged in addition to the standard rake". It's a good example of where the rules of grammmar are there for a reason. More worryingly is, what kind of commercial organization allows this to go out without getting someone who can read to check it for ambiguity (hell, they have an ex Fleet Street professional — Simon Young — as their blogger -- he would spot it in an instant.)
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Took my first tentative steps at a "proper" $400 buy-in session last night (after doubling up from $200 to $400 at $1/$2 with set over set). Half an hour three-tabling. I deliberately bought in for $200 rather than $400. This forces you to adapt in a couple of ways. First, you play much more tightly and aggressively pre-flop. So, why you can put in gambling 3x raises with 76s with a full stack, with only a half-stack your range needs to be narrower and your raises need to be larger (4x becomes my standard). With the 3x raises full-stacked you have to be able to get away from hands, with the 4x raises half-stack, you want to stop the other player getting implied odds, rather than giving them to yourself.
Not much happened in 120 hands -- range went from $50 to $50 up (when I quit). Game played rather like the $200 buy-in on Stars. Few limped pots, more reraises, but nothing I would call particularly "clever" play. Just fewer egregious errors.
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I took some St John's Wort and vitamins yesterday and this morning, which worked well to reduce the depression. I'm not sure how much of this is a placebo effect (placebic?) and how much is a genuine chemical effect. I normally take my vitamins most mornings annyway, but when depression sinks in you get into a "what's the point of anything?" mood, and so stop taking them, which exacerbates the chemical downturn.
________________
The argument in favour of proper grammar and spelling is that, although the English language is superb in its redundancy (most vowels can be eliminated with no loss of meaning; many letters can be reveresed without comprehennsibility being lost), on occasion the rules are in place because a failure to follow them results in miscomprehension. The most classic recent case was when an idiot was talking to an idiot at the time of the 9/11 attacks. One of them (a glass half-empty kind of person) said that the US Airways plane had crashed, but could only think of the word "down" — crashed being clearly a far too complex term. So she said that the flight was "down". Listener B, clearly too dumb to appreciate that "down" did not necessarily imply "down safely", took this to mean that the flight had landed ok.
Thus, for several rather important seconds, we had two people whose job it was to communicate unambiguously talking at cross-purposes. Yeah right innit well so but no but so, well, really.
Party Poker, writing in a field where lives might not be at stake, but where finance is, has rephrased its announcement when you sit down at a jackpot table. I'm not sure why, as the previous pop-up was unambiguous, correctly spelt and, for Party, a paragon of clarity.
The new pop up is not. Indeed, I seriously considered not playing any jackpot tables when I first read it.
It now states that
A fee of 50¢ per raked hand will be charged in addition to the standard rake for the funding of the jackpot".
I had to watch a table for 10 minutes to see how much was being taken out of the pot (Party does not show you how much is being raked -- you have to work it out from the amounts bet and the size of the final pot). Eventually it became clear that the rake had not changed from what was being charged before. What Party meant to say was that "A fee of 50¢ per raked hand for the funding of the jackpot will be charged in addition to the standard rake". It's a good example of where the rules of grammmar are there for a reason. More worryingly is, what kind of commercial organization allows this to go out without getting someone who can read to check it for ambiguity (hell, they have an ex Fleet Street professional — Simon Young — as their blogger -- he would spot it in an instant.)
____________
Took my first tentative steps at a "proper" $400 buy-in session last night (after doubling up from $200 to $400 at $1/$2 with set over set). Half an hour three-tabling. I deliberately bought in for $200 rather than $400. This forces you to adapt in a couple of ways. First, you play much more tightly and aggressively pre-flop. So, why you can put in gambling 3x raises with 76s with a full stack, with only a half-stack your range needs to be narrower and your raises need to be larger (4x becomes my standard). With the 3x raises full-stacked you have to be able to get away from hands, with the 4x raises half-stack, you want to stop the other player getting implied odds, rather than giving them to yourself.
Not much happened in 120 hands -- range went from $50 to $50 up (when I quit). Game played rather like the $200 buy-in on Stars. Few limped pots, more reraises, but nothing I would call particularly "clever" play. Just fewer egregious errors.
____________________
I took some St John's Wort and vitamins yesterday and this morning, which worked well to reduce the depression. I'm not sure how much of this is a placebo effect (placebic?) and how much is a genuine chemical effect. I normally take my vitamins most mornings annyway, but when depression sinks in you get into a "what's the point of anything?" mood, and so stop taking them, which exacerbates the chemical downturn.
________________
