Yeah, I read that, and I think it's correct that 'that' refers to 'bands', but I'm not sure that 'that' controls the verb. But 'are' really sounds wrong.
(Much easier to say 'one of the bands participating in Ozzfest 2006.)
9: How about "One of the boys who were in the park winked at me"?
In the original, I think "are" is right, but it doesn't sound right. It's the kind of sentence that only my 9th-grade English teacher could love, and then only for the purpose of making us diagram the damn thing, and since I've forgotten how to diagram sentences I'd just revise it to something less awkward.
Or maybe the right answer is "Why the hell are we talking about this when we could be at Ozzfest fucking?"
You're not describing Avenged Sevenfold as (one of the set of all bands) and also (one that is playing in OzzFest); you're describing them as one of (the set of all bands playing in OzzFest).
because why would bother to specify that Avenged Sevenfold is one of the set of all bands? You would just call them "a band"; you would say "I have had sex with each and every member of Avenged Sevenfold, a band that is part of Ozzfest 2006."
Well, if you select 'is,' then you get [one of the bands] [that is part of OzzFest 2006], where [one of the bands] basically means [a band]. But that's silly; you are describing Avenged Sevenfold as an element of the [set of bands]. Makes much more sense to be describing it as an element of the [set of bands that are playing OzzFest], which is actually descriptive. Thus, 'are' is correct.
It really is structurally ambiguous, people. It doesn't matter whether you consider the object of the preposition to be "bands" or "bands that are part of Ozzfest 2006". The latter is a perfectly valid noun phrase, and thus can make an object of the preposition. On the other hand, if you think the restrictive clause beginning with "that" attaches to "one", which is also a valid analysis, then you have the phrase "one [...] that is part of Ozfest 2006." I don't think one or the other is wrong, and I don't see how either could really be preferable.
OK, about which is preferable. If you have the restrictive clause modifying "one" instead of "bands", then technically the restriction doesn't apply to the group of bands as a whole, so you're not saying that all the bands are playing at Ozzfest, only that one particular one is. But, most likely, you do mean to imply that they're all playing at Ozzfest, so "are" would make that unambiguous.
In reality, conversational implicature makes sure that the hearer understands that all the bands are playing at Ozzfest, so it doesn't really matter.
The last argument that can be made, I think, is that one really does intend to attach the restrictive clause to "bands", whether one says "is" or "are", and if that's true, then "are" is correct.
Well, since we're on the subject of grammar -- I'm sitting at work (yes, eastern time, yes it sucks, blow me) staring at a legal contract that has the following sentance:
[The parties] agree that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment.
Can someone help me figure out what exactly this means? I mean, I understand it's a typo, but what does it mean as written? If you had to assume it was deliberately written that way, what would it be saying? I can't figure it out, but then again I've been staring at contracts all day so my brain is mushy.
Well, since we're on the subject of grammar -- I'm sitting at work (yes, eastern time, yes it sucks, blow me) staring at a legal contract that has the following sentance:
[The parties] agree that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment.
Can someone help me figure out what exactly this means? I mean, I understand it's a typo, but what does it mean as written? If you had to assume it was deliberately written that way, what would it be saying? I can't figure it out, but then again I've been staring at contracts all day so my brain is mushy.
Bitch- I appreciate the solidarity. Have you any thoughts on my sentance? Sorry to be so purpose-driven, I just want to get through this garbage and go home and go to bed.
[The parties] agree that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment.
Lessee. Honestly I don't think it makes sense at all, as written.
I have to finish a paper I should have finished weeks ago, that is woefully overdue and I've agreed to deliver it by Friday, and I am ashamed to admit how many hours I've spent sitting around not writing it. I truly hate myself right now.
38- I think you missed my point, which was if we assume that this couldn't possibly be a mistake and must mean exactly what it says, what does it mean? Because there's a strong presumption that it's not a mistake, so if it could possibly have some sort of meaning as written, then that's the interpretation it would be given.
That being said, I think it's gibberish and would be recognized as a typo.
If I had to assume it was written deliberately that way, it would mean that the author thought that "no earlier" here was the same as "any earlier", and that it should be interpreted as if it so read, and that the author thinks that colloquial double negatives are appropriate in legal documents.
Anyway, 40, I think you missed my point, which is that it doesn't always make sense to assume as you describe, and that there isn't always a fact of the matter as to what something means under that (possibly inapplicable) assumption.
What it would mean is "The rule disallowing party A from terminating the agreement will not go into effect any earlier than from 15 months from the time that this agreement went into effect, and possibly later or never."
"Are" was drummed into me in 10th grade English and also happens to be correct. Whenever I try to construct a reading on which the subject of 'is' is singular I wind up with "Avenged, one of the bands, which is playing Ozzfest...." The analysis in 27, "one [...] that is playing Ozzfest," is maybe grammatical, but I don't see how it makes sense -- can anyone construct a natural sentence that would contain "one that is playing Ozzfest" with no intervening modifier? Though of course it is natural and from a descriptive point probably OK to say "is."
Urple, if it made any sense I think it would literally say "If A terminates it A must terminate it within 15 months." But I kind of think it makes no sense, though I can't come up with a good argument why not.
I have a punctuation question for all of you. What is the appropriate punctuation mark to use after the phrase "To answer your question?" That's a pretty casual usage, not likely to appear in formal writing, but the phrase "To respond to Wissenshaft's criticism of Nietzsche" might.
I have always felt that a comma was teh right choice, but I am not sure why. Perhaps it seemed modest. Would a colon be more appropriate? Please justify your choice.
"The French pair is edging ahead in the race", etc.
That grates? Weird, for me the "are" would really grate. Would you say "Everyone are doing fine today"? Now, it's true there are some situations where collectives can be grammatically plural. E.g. "Some of the class is attentive" compared with "Some of the class raised their hands."
can anyone construct a natural sentence that would contain "one that is playing Ozzfest" with no intervening modifier?
"Of all the bands from [wherever AS is from], Avenged Sevenfold is one that is playing in Ozzfest." Of course, this probably wouldn't naturally occur as is, because if you're just trying to say that AS is playing in Ozzfest, it makes no sense to mention the set of all bands from their hometown. But it is makes good sense. And if you add a "the" before "one", it changes the sense a little (and probably isn't what you meant to ask) but could occur naturally.
Testing to see if I can get rid of the extra "Bostoniangirl" by leaving the Name section blank.
The answer is "no."
There is a conspiracy against Safari users on this site. That can be the only explanation.
There's another technical issue that I'd like to bring up. Sometimes at the bottom of the comment box I see this:
Odd number of elements in hash assignment at lib/MT/App Comments.pm line 68.
Use of uninitialized value in list assignment at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 68.
58: That's a good one. And you could have the following dialogue:
A: Have you slept with all of the members of any band?
B: I've slept with all of the members of one that is playing in Ozzfest
Which seems to me to expand easily to "one of the bands that is playing in Ozzfest," so I withdraw my objection to 'is'.
bg: I say a comma, though a colon is also possible. "To answer your question" is (I think) an utterance modifier like "To speak frankly" or just "Frankly" or "In all honesty," which says something about the speech act performed rather than anything in it. "In all honesty, I am going to kick apostropher's ass" means that when I say "I am going to kick apostropher's ass" I am speaking in all honesty, not that I am going to kick his ass in any honest way (I intend to fight dirty). Hence, a comma is at least fine.
BostonianGirl BostonianGirl, either a comma or a colon could be appropriate following that phrase; your choice should depend on the intonation you are trying to communicate. Write it out both ways and then read it aloud. One or the other will seem obviously right.
which at least on preview seem to preserve the blockquote typeface in subsequent paragraphs. Apostropher's ass is kicked, except I didn't quite do the <p> tagging like he said.
Testing
blockquotes
enclosed in <p> tags
On preview that eliminates the sans-serif font. OK if you like that sort of thing I guess.
You can't have "of the bands that are playing ozzfest" as a single phrase, because then you could take it out and have "...., one." And that makes absolutely no sense.
"Who are the bands playing Ozzfest?"
"Well, I don't know all of them, but Genius Dude is one of them."
I know it's way too late for Urple's question, but revising, harmonizing and making consistent boilerplate was one of my major tasks for years.
[The parties] agree that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment.
I would replace "no" with "at any time"; the parties intend that the amendment shall be in force and binding for at least 15 months — which seems reasonable.
Unlike all of you disciplined, organized workers I was a major procrastinator and did much of my revising in the early hours. One time after many hours work, I can remember myself weeping at the beauty of Ravel's Mother Goose. God knows what my stuff reads like.
I have no stutter in Firefox (see 63), but I did encounter an Internal Server Error this time around. And Firefoz sux in this respect (no flamewars, please!): I can't get the navigation bar in a pop-up box, so I can't click back.
75 and Urple's question: I'd say that a literal reading of the quote ends Party A's right to terminate the agreement at 15 months. But what I'd really say is that the double negative renders it ambiguous -- any court is going to allow parol evidence to establish what that sentence really meant.
bgbg, hold down the control key and click in the window; you will get a menu that includes 'back'.
The non-hyphen in 54 was deliberate, since all the previous words modify "fest," but it should have been an en dash.
73: Welcome back, tweedledopey! We were asking about you. I think you're wrong, though -- "one" makes sense there: "I don't know all of them, but Genius Dude is one"; or in 60, "I've slept with all the members of one."
73: It's not true that a sentence has to make sense without its prepositional phrases, any more than it has to make sense without its subordinate clauses. For example, "The toaster is between the microwave and the oven." Take out the prep. phrase, and you get "The toaster is."
Also, what do you call nouns or adjectives whose only purpose is to attach a prepositional phrase to? If that's the only purpose a particular noun is serving, of course it doesn't make sense if you delete the prepositional phrase. Another example: "Tia is one of the posters at Unfogged." "at Unfogged" attaches to "posters", pretty obviously, even though "Tia is one" doesn't make sense.
79: Mine is obviously the opposite meaning. I usually expect the meaning to be in the more unusual and colloquial phrase, so I'm forgrounding "no earlier" and also "not terminate" Of course, I haven't seen the rest of the clause, or, God help me, the amendment, but I'll bet I'm right.
A lot depends on Urple's function. If he's rivising, it should be possible to find out what the intent is. If this thing's been signed, they may need another amendment or rider.
Look at 40. I think it's signed, and there's already a dispute. If it were still being drafted, he wouldn't be asking questions about what it sounds like it means, he'd be fixing it.
And my guess would be the same as yours about what was meant, but I believe you're correcting for an assumed typo, not reading literally. I'd bet that parol evidence gets to your interpretation.
I can see the difference in our perspectives: I was always a drafter, trying to avoid disagreement and ambiguity. Even when a mistake is in our favor, I almost unconsciously think "should have been..." My brother-in-law, a litigator, would find the ambiguity and hoot with joy.
86: Yeah, the sentence can make sense in certain contexts, as can "The toaster is." (What's between the oven and the microwave?) But in those cases the meaning of the prepositional phrases is understood to be imbued in the declaration through the magic of conversational implicature, or something, so it's beside the point in this thread, in which we're considering sentences out of context.
To all those posts in the 70s and 80s that responded to my query:
LB got it right, I'm just reviewing this thing and trying make sense of it. Obviously if I were drafting I would be more clear. And I realize there's a 99% chance that this will be recognized as ambiguous and straightened out with parol evidence (and, in case it's unclear, a single negative was the intended drafting). I was just trying to wrap my head around what exactly it would mean if interpreted as written. (And it was late so I wasn't thinking so clearly.) And the fact that the answer is pretty much "it means nothing -- it's crazy gibberish" of course really helps my confidence that it will be sorted out by parol evidence, anyway. If it had some plausible meaning that would be a lot less likely. Although I'm not sure why I'm bothering to say that, since I doubt anyone other than the lawyers has cared enough to read this far, and you lawyers of course already know that.
Silvana, LB, and I have the "correct' reading, insofar as it must be understood as written, though Ben was right way up above about which "from" I meant to strike.
Silvana, LB, and I have the "correct' reading, insofar as it must be understood as written, though Ben was right way up above about which "from" I meant to strike.
Wrong! As I said above, your reading is no more compelling than mine or I don't pay's. You seem to think that because you've accomodated the "no earlier" in a particularly tortuous way, you've come up with a reading of the passage "as written", if it were written that way deliverately, and because I and Idp have interpreted the "no earlier" as, essentially, a mistake, we haven't. But you're wrong. Your reading, even if we suppose that the sentence were written that way on purpose, strains credulity far more than does mine and Idp's.
It's not about straining credulity, it's about taking it as a premise that the sentence was written accurately and intentionally. This is an unlikely premise, but under some circumstances a court will make that assumption.
You've rejected that premise, which is probably the right thing to do, but doesn't answer the question asked.
Ben, your reading of the sentence if it was written that way on purpose (42) assumes that "no earlier" was written to mean something other than what "no earlier" most commonly would be taken to mean, in or out of context. Mine doesn't, so I'm not sure why mine is more tortuous.
if we suppose that the sentence were written that way on purpose
That is, in fact, the supposition that is usually made about contracts, since they are legally binding documents, and they often contain (as I bet this one does) clauses that say the contract represents the full intention of the parties, or something like that (there's a name for this type of clause... anyone know?).
When I was in school, we were taught that multiple negatives cancel one another. So, to my reading, that means they can void the agreement up to 15 months into it.
Ben, your reading of the sentence if it was written that way on purpose (42) assumes that "no earlier" was written to mean something other than what "no earlier" most commonly would be taken to mean, in or out of context. Mine doesn't, so I'm not sure why mine is more tortuous.
Since, in context, "no earlier" doesn't make sense, and since the context you propose for understanding it is (wait for it) tortuous, I don't see how you can make that claim. In fact, here's a context in which "no earlier" means exactly what I take it to mean: "I told him he'd better not come back no earlier than five or we'd make him squeal like a piggy." Exactly.
Your reading is only plausible if we mentally rearrange the sentence to read thus: "[The parties] agree, no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment, that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement." (Or perhaps the "no earlier ..." part could be moved to the very beginning of the sentence.) I maintain that your interpretation relies on someone looking at the sentence, and seeing that it could be so rearranged, and thus is not actually an interpretation of the sentence "as written" at all. And even after this plausibility-increasing operation is performed, it's still doesn't make that much sense; you still have to puzzle it out and say, "oh, what the author must have meant is X (which isn't what's written).".
So what I want to know is, how obvious would the fact that there's a mistake have to be, in order to forestall the question "but what would it mean?" If there were no nouns or verbs in a sentence, would that be enough? Because it seems to me you've got the following process going on:
1. The obviously mistaken sentence A is produced.
2. Because there's a strong presumption against just saying there's a mistake, people try to find out what it would mean if it were supposed to have been written like that.
3. An interpretation, which any honest person would admit is completely ad-hoc and unreasonable, is produced, which if you squint just right and try real hard might seem to fit with A. This production occurs not because anyone actually thinks that's what A means, but because "there's a strong presumption", &c.
4. When the slightly more mistaken sentence B is produced, the fact that A was able to be corralled into sense-making is used as evidence that B should be treated similarly, even though it, too is obviously mistaken.
The problem with LB's comment: You've rejected that premise, which is probably the right thing to do, but doesn't answer the question asked. is that under the logic seemingly at play, if there is an answer to the question asked, then rejecting the premise (that it's not mistaken) is the wrong thing to do. And everyone seems to be more or less acknowledging that it's mistaken, but trying to come up with an interpretation anyway. But you can't simultaneously claim (or so it would seem) both that it's mistaken and that if it weren't, it would mean X, because in arriving at X you're admitting that there's a reading on which it isn't mistaken, and at least from the way everyone's acting in-thread, the mere existence of such a reading suffices. So it seems like there's lots of pressure to come up with some kind of tortuous reading (and w/d's claim that his isn't tortuous is, frankly, laughable), which will almost always be possible, even in egregiously wrong sentences (it's not so hard to come up with an interpretation of "colorless green ideas sleep furiously", after all, though that does have the advantage of being grammatical). So when do you just say, nope, this is plainly a mistake? Is the answer … never?
I think you're wrong about point 2; everyone knows it's just a mistake, but we're trying to figure out if any literal sense can be made of it, kind of as a game. But in legal contexts it may be that you have to see if any sense can be made of it because it is a binding agreement, and if not you go to other stuff like this parol business the lawyers are talking about. In that case it seems like they're saying that this document is on the other side of the "it must be mistaken" line (which is part of the reason I saw the "What's the literal reading?" stuff as a game).
I'm not sure what there is to be confused about.
1) The allegedly mistaken sentence A is produced, but
2) In order to show that it's mistaken, we need to show that a) there is a (however tortuous) mistaken reading and b) other evidence (like other documents) indicates that the parties who signed the contract recognize it as mistaken, i.e., they don't accept the tortuous reading.
One wouldn't expect that anyone would accept such a tortuous reading, but then again, one would expect that parties would read agreements carefully and catch typos and errant commas that change the intended meaning before signing them.
So, I think, Urple needs to show that the mistaken reading is clearly fubarred ('This sentence would mean that they could only terminate agreements for 15 months afterwards, but all our other provisions talk about litigation in month 16') , so he has grounds to bring in the other evidence that says, 'Um, so yeah, this is what we meant.'
I wouldn't have disputed the existence of ambiguity; I think my gloss is what the drafter probably intended, but it isn't what she wrote. Urple may not feel free to reveal any more of the circumstances. If there is a dispute, this clause is important and governs a crucial detail.
I'm rusty; isn't there a rule resolving ambiguities against the drafter?
It's not a game (well, here it is, but you do the same thing in the real world). The general rule (this is all very rough, I'm just sketching it out for you) is that you interpret contracts literally as written, and you mayn't appeal to evidence from anywhere outside the 'four corners of the document' to change that literal interpretation. Saying 'that's a silly thing to have agreed to; look at this letter showing I meant to agree to something else entirely,' anything like that from outside the contract document itself is 'parol evidence' and you mayn't bring it in to contradict the words of the contract.
That only holds up so long as the contract is unambiguous. Once it's ambiguous, you can use parol evidence to resolve the ambiguity.
Here, you've got a couple of steps. First, you look at it -- any fool can see there was an error that makes the sentence ambiguous gibberish, and can guess at what was meant. So we know we should turn to parol evidence as to what the parties meant to agree to to resolve it.
But.
There's no guarantee (although with something this glaring, it's very likely -- say, better than 90%) that a judge is going to agree with you about the ambiguity and allow the parol evidence. The judge might say "No, that's not ambiguous, just read what it says literally. Stay within the four corners of the contract." And so you really want to know what the sentence would be taken to mean reading it absolutely literally, silly and improbable as such a reading is, because there is some chance that you will get stuck with the literal reading.
About paper not being two-dimensional. Back in the day, cars that had gone too long without tuneups would fail to start because their ignition points, in the distributor, had gotten too far out of adjustment. This could happen when you were miles from anywhere, without tools. Supposing you could get the cap off — I used a popsicle stick once — you would file the points flat with the carborundum strip on a book of matches, set the gap by number of folds of a sheet of paper, using a formula I forget, employing a dime pinched between thumb and forefinger as a screwdriver. Gave rise to some McGyver-like, my-hero moments. Mansfield really ought to be writing about the blow electronic ignition has dealt to manliness.
Okay, I'm not free to go into details here, but LB's basically got it all right as for the main ideas. The problem is that it's not this clause of the contract that's causing issue, it's another perfectly unambiguous but totally wrong provision in the same contract (leaving out a single "not") -- which has the somewhat comical effect that Party A basically promised in their contact to give better deals to all of Party B's competitor's than they were giving to Party B (instead of "not" giving them better deals). Poor drafting. High comedy.
119: Ah, but not all pieces of paper with marks on them are contracts. A contract is an *idea* through which the marks on a particular piece of paper are invested with the power to affect human action. Therefore, the one side of the paper is the contract; the other side is just paper.
I think that in order to think that you can distinguish the top corners and bottom corners of a sheet of paper, you must think that the corners are much more well-defined than they are. (123: No.)
130: I'm trying to figure out what constitues an indivisible harm caused by multiple defendants in order to establish joint & several liability under Rule 10b-5 (plus the PLSRA).
130: I'm trying to figure out whether corporations can be held to a heightened duty of care pursuant to their own adoption of a Corporate Social Responsibility policy.
I'm doing all the fiddly stuff pursuant to filing a motion -- supportive declaration, exhibits, notice of motion... I hate this -- it's dull, and I'm not particularly good at it (not so much with the persnickety attention to detail here), and it fills me with fear of massively screwing it up.
I'm opening hundreds of SAS programs, one at a time in Notepad, then searching for the %include statements, to make sure that every macro that was actually used in a particular project gets included in the big archive transfer to the client.
I'm working on debugging a windows service that processes x9.37 and XML data from internet clients via a web service and various ad-hoc semaphore protocols and makes it available for further automatic and manual processing in a variety of formats. I get to use EBCDIC!
151 -- who was offering the bribe? Your schizophrenic neighbor? The cops? The landlord? The super? Or was it unconnected to the prostitution investigation? (Am I remembering right that you work for the housing authority or something like that?)
I started a footnote then deleted it. I'm working on the paper that I'm supposed to give in two weeks -- right now I'm on the parts of the argument that suck and are not in fact going to get read at the conference.
The only thing that I hate about this job is not being able to listen to music while working. I am so used to music being on while writing or researching that this is truly painful.
157- I manage a government subsidized building. I am routinely offered money to get people on the waiting list, move them up the list illegally, and transfer people to the nicer apartments.
The going rate seems to be $30,000, actually. At least that's the number everybody else seems to throw around. These $10,000 people don't know what they're doing.
Well, I finally started working on this thing again. Somehow it helps enormously to have all you all working on boring shit too. Really. I often think the hardest part of writing is having to do it by oneself.
I've just summed up the English Revolution in less than a hundred words. Now I have to somehow recall and find out how many fucking newspapers were published in London by 1710. Ideally without having to drag my ass to our (shitty) library, which almost surely doesn't actually have that information.
163: I dunno. I guess I could, but it seems like bad policy. Even so, my options would be 1) listen to ipod (whose battery doesn't last that long these days 2) bring CDs to work (unlikely).
Or I guess I could listen to pandora.com.
Also, I would need a different set of earphones/earphone extenders, because the headphone jack is very far from my face.
I ran away to the circus for a night once. He was acrobatist from Equador, and we had no languages in common. It was a surrealist circus, so there weren't any animals, but I came home the next day with about a thousand mosquito bites, everywhere. I can't recommend staying very long if you go.
'Neither' is singular, right? 'Neither of which is applicable'? I just told some punk summer associate to bluebook and citecheck a memo for me (neat pro-bono stuff: proposed NY sex-trafficking ban!), and while, like most people can, he improved my bluebooking, he's saying that the above should be 'Neither of which are applicable'.
I'm sitting here reading what other people are doing because the server I use to manage a couple hundred customer devices is down and I can't do anything to help fix it. My thumbs are twiddled to death already.
Also, if I had ac's job, I'd be the most corrupt bastard in town.
In standard English, neither on its own is used with a singular verb: Do not attempt to bring livestock or plant material into the country; neither is permitted. But in colloquial English, it is completely acceptable to use a plural verb: Neither are permitted. Similarly when neither is followed by of, it is common to use a plural verb: Neither of her parents are alive, but a singular verb is more appropriate for formal writing: Neither of her parents is alive.
Hmph. Anybody want to talk about sections 404, 419, and 419A of the Internal Revenue Code and their application to a section 401(h) health benefits account in a pension plan?
Excellent. I will smite the summer like unto a lightning bolt. (Actually, he's been very good, and I'm a slob so I love having another set of eyes on my stuff -- my writing is pretty clean, but the picky stuff like extra spaces, punctuation inside or outside brackets, all that nonsense, I have a terrible eye for -- I just don't see it. I miss working with Idealist: the man can see a misplaced comma from across the room.)
I strongly suspect that the most interesting parts of any of our jobs are also the parts absolutely least advisable for us to chat about on the webbertron. Just sayin'.
It isn't that the comments weren't just, it's that they were coming with both barrels from major names. I suppose it's conceivable he doesn't know that. If it had been me, I'd have crawled into a hole, and maybe lost my lunch.
So, wait... does no one here have an interesting job??
Sure, I do. Not every second of every day, but sure. Being a lawyer is fun (although it can be way too much work, and that is not fun, but that does not make it uninteresting).
Yeah, my job is sometimes interesting. Like, when I get to write libraries that use code generation (no tweaking allowed, of course) to make statically typed and multiply scoped preferences frameworks. (If you don't see how that could be fun, then you obviously aren't a programmer.)
Or that time I write a patching and uprading program for our clients' application files. Figuring out how to make something very robust when there are tons of different ways to fail can be fun. Plus, binary diffs are intriguing.
Also, I like spending time thinking about how our support calls could be reduced by making our interface more intuitive, self-explanatory, and powerful. It's a good feeling when no one needs help to use your software because it's Just That Good.
Alas, the current product I'm developing is a real bitch.
So, wait... does no one here have an interesting job?
I'm a peon in the curatorial division of an old, mid-sized art museum with a great collection. My job isn't as interesting as some of the higher beings here, but it's still pretty interesting. Yesterday we examined a new painting by a major American Impressionist that arrived as a gift; this afternoon, wanting a break, I joined the curator of Asian art and a conservator as they debated which incoming Japanese scrolls to show to bring up for acquisitions soon. We hung them all over the walls and gushed about them.
But yeah, when it gets really interesting--I can't talk about that.
Is.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:16 PM
'One' controls the number of the verb. 'Is.'
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:19 PM
People are making compelling cases for 'are', though.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:26 PM
I say 'are,' on the grounds that 'part of Ozzfest 2006' describes 'bands,' not 'one.' But I talk funny.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:28 PM
It's structurally ambiguous, so both are possible.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:31 PM
Yeah, I read that, and I think it's correct that 'that' refers to 'bands', but I'm not sure that 'that' controls the verb. But 'are' really sounds wrong.
(Much easier to say 'one of the bands participating in Ozzfest 2006.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:31 PM
I thought it was "are". If I were speaking, I'd say "is", but I'd consider it an incorrect colloquialism. But what do I know?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:31 PM
I diagram "bands that are part of ..." as a single phrase, and like to keep it consistent. So I vote for are.
Close, though. For instance.
One of the men who have peed in the sink
vs.
One of the men who has peed in the sink
Both sound ok to me, put it's not my sink.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:33 PM
One of the boys that was in the park winked at me.
One of the boys that were in the park winked at me.
I think the second is right, which means "are" should be right in the sentence.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:35 PM
One of the in Ozzfest 2006 playing bands.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:40 PM
It depends on the referent of "that". I say either way.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:42 PM
Don't go all morally relativist on us now, Wolfson.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:45 PM
9: How about "One of the boys who were in the park winked at me"?
In the original, I think "are" is right, but it doesn't sound right. It's the kind of sentence that only my 9th-grade English teacher could love, and then only for the purpose of making us diagram the damn thing, and since I've forgotten how to diagram sentences I'd just revise it to something less awkward.
Or maybe the right answer is "Why the hell are we talking about this when we could be at Ozzfest fucking?"
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:45 PM
One of the boys that was in the park winked at me.
Right, 'cause nonrestrictive clauses need commas.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:09 PM
Wolfson's 11 (which is basically the same as my 5) is correct. To demonstrate with Tia's examples:
One [of the boys] that was in the park winked at me.
One [of the boys that were in the park] winked at me.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:17 PM
"Who," dammit.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:23 PM
Does it make any difference if Avenged Sevenfold is an Japanese rapist glitter-group octopoid, and each member belongs to a single entity?
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:34 PM
I have shaken each hand of Pandering Politician, one of the speakers who [is | are] part of votefest 2006.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:37 PM
You're not describing Avenged Sevenfold as (one of the set of all bands) and also (one that is playing in OzzFest); you're describing them as one of (the set of all bands playing in OzzFest).
because why would bother to specify that Avenged Sevenfold is one of the set of all bands? You would just call them "a band"; you would say "I have had sex with each and every member of Avenged Sevenfold, a band that is part of Ozzfest 2006."
So: "are".
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:41 PM
Internal Server Error--where's my kitten?
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:44 PM
Internal Server Error--where's my kitten?
Your kitten works for me now.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:52 PM
Well, if you select 'is,' then you get [one of the bands] [that is part of OzzFest 2006], where [one of the bands] basically means [a band]. But that's silly; you are describing Avenged Sevenfold as an element of the [set of bands]. Makes much more sense to be describing it as an element of the [set of bands that are playing OzzFest], which is actually descriptive. Thus, 'are' is correct.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:01 PM
Or, um, I should fucking preview.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:03 PM
But maybe that just means I'm correct.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:05 PM
I think silvana and mcmc just schooled all y'all is advocates.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:07 PM
silvana rocks!
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:13 PM
It really is structurally ambiguous, people. It doesn't matter whether you consider the object of the preposition to be "bands" or "bands that are part of Ozzfest 2006". The latter is a perfectly valid noun phrase, and thus can make an object of the preposition. On the other hand, if you think the restrictive clause beginning with "that" attaches to "one", which is also a valid analysis, then you have the phrase "one [...] that is part of Ozfest 2006." I don't think one or the other is wrong, and I don't see how either could really be preferable.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:20 PM
OK, about which is preferable. If you have the restrictive clause modifying "one" instead of "bands", then technically the restriction doesn't apply to the group of bands as a whole, so you're not saying that all the bands are playing at Ozzfest, only that one particular one is. But, most likely, you do mean to imply that they're all playing at Ozzfest, so "are" would make that unambiguous.
In reality, conversational implicature makes sure that the hearer understands that all the bands are playing at Ozzfest, so it doesn't really matter.
The last argument that can be made, I think, is that one really does intend to attach the restrictive clause to "bands", whether one says "is" or "are", and if that's true, then "are" is correct.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:26 PM
26: That's a lot nicer than "pwned!" which was my first thought.
All of the things I said being said, I'm 95% sure I would say "is" in conversation.
But it's still a poor choice, though not necessarily ungrammatical.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:30 PM
Well, since we're on the subject of grammar -- I'm sitting at work (yes, eastern time, yes it sucks, blow me) staring at a legal contract that has the following sentance:
[The parties] agree that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment.
Can someone help me figure out what exactly this means? I mean, I understand it's a typo, but what does it mean as written? If you had to assume it was deliberately written that way, what would it be saying? I can't figure it out, but then again I've been staring at contracts all day so my brain is mushy.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:48 PM
Well, since we're on the subject of grammar -- I'm sitting at work (yes, eastern time, yes it sucks, blow me) staring at a legal contract that has the following sentance:
[The parties] agree that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment.
Can someone help me figure out what exactly this means? I mean, I understand it's a typo, but what does it mean as written? If you had to assume it was deliberately written that way, what would it be saying? I can't figure it out, but then again I've been staring at contracts all day so my brain is mushy.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:48 PM
Sorry for the double-post, but: Internal Server Error?
I thought we were beyond these problems. Did Alameida steal our server money??
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:50 PM
Bleah. I'm still working too.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:57 PM
Bitch- I appreciate the solidarity. Have you any thoughts on my sentance? Sorry to be so purpose-driven, I just want to get through this garbage and go home and go to bed.
Also, in response to the main post: are.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 11:06 PM
Sooner or later I will successfully type 'sentence' as "sentence" instead of "sentance". I mean it's bound to happen eventually if I try enough times.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 11:07 PM
I just want to get through this garbage and go home and go to bed.
And yet here I am reading unfogged. I know, I know...
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 11:09 PM
[The parties] agree that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment.
Lessee. Honestly I don't think it makes sense at all, as written.
I have to finish a paper I should have finished weeks ago, that is woefully overdue and I've agreed to deliver it by Friday, and I am ashamed to admit how many hours I've spent sitting around not writing it. I truly hate myself right now.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 11:23 PM
Can someone help me figure out what exactly this means? I mean, I understand it's a typo, but what does it mean as written?
What it means "as written" is that the author made a mistake. Not everything has a meaning "as written".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 11:53 PM
the clause modifies bands, not one. are.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 11:53 PM
38- I think you missed my point, which was if we assume that this couldn't possibly be a mistake and must mean exactly what it says, what does it mean? Because there's a strong presumption that it's not a mistake, so if it could possibly have some sort of meaning as written, then that's the interpretation it would be given.
That being said, I think it's gibberish and would be recognized as a typo.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:01 AM
What it means "as written" is that the author made a mistake. Not everything has a meaning "as written".
Someone needs to take a Contracts class.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:05 AM
If I had to assume it was written deliberately that way, it would mean that the author thought that "no earlier" here was the same as "any earlier", and that it should be interpreted as if it so read, and that the author thinks that colloquial double negatives are appropriate in legal documents.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:16 AM
Anyway, 40, I think you missed my point, which is that it doesn't always make sense to assume as you describe, and that there isn't always a fact of the matter as to what something means under that (possibly inapplicable) assumption.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:19 AM
What it would mean is "The rule disallowing party A from terminating the agreement will not go into effect any earlier than from 15 months from the time that this agreement went into effect, and possibly later or never."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:42 AM
fromthe first time it appears in 44Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:53 AM
fromthe first time it appears in 44I think you mean "second". And I don't think that reading is any more plausible than the double-negative reading; in fact, less.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:58 AM
In my idiolect it's definitely 'are'.
I can see the grammatical case that can be made for the acceptability of 'is' but there is no way I'd say it.
The analysis of 'bands that are part of Ozzfest' as a single unit given by I Don't Pay in 8 probably explains why 'are' just seems more natural to me.
I have a general problem with 'singular' noun phrases that are used to refer to collectives being followed with 'is'.
"The French pair is edging ahead in the race", etc.
In lots of cases it may be grammatically acceptable but it just grates.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:29 AM
"Are" was drummed into me in 10th grade English and also happens to be correct. Whenever I try to construct a reading on which the subject of 'is' is singular I wind up with "Avenged, one of the bands, which is playing Ozzfest...." The analysis in 27, "one [...] that is playing Ozzfest," is maybe grammatical, but I don't see how it makes sense -- can anyone construct a natural sentence that would contain "one that is playing Ozzfest" with no intervening modifier? Though of course it is natural and from a descriptive point probably OK to say "is."
Urple, if it made any sense I think it would literally say "If A terminates it A must terminate it within 15 months." But I kind of think it makes no sense, though I can't come up with a good argument why not.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 5:59 AM
I have a general problem with 'singular' noun phrases that are used to refer to collectives being followed with 'is'.
Think this is a UK vs. US thing.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 6:00 AM
Yes, I'm sure it's some kind of godless commie collectivism that leads us to prefer 'are' -- to emphasise the collective nature of the enterprise.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 6:54 AM
TRICK QUESTION, SUCKERS!
Ozzfest 2006 hasn't started yet. The correct answer is "will be."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:00 AM
But I kind of think it makes no sense, though I can't come up with a good argument why not.
Heh.
Also, I endorse 44.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:06 AM
I was gonna say, "throw up the Language Log bat-signal." But it looks like they're already on the case.
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:12 AM
51: That's bogus. Present tense for future planned events makes sense. For instance, the following:
makes sense even though that hasn't started yet either.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:22 AM
I have a punctuation question for all of you. What is the appropriate punctuation mark to use after the phrase "To answer your question?" That's a pretty casual usage, not likely to appear in formal writing, but the phrase "To respond to Wissenshaft's criticism of Nietzsche" might.
I have always felt that a comma was teh right choice, but I am not sure why. Perhaps it seemed modest. Would a colon be more appropriate? Please justify your choice.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:24 AM
Damn my stupid stutter.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:25 AM
Modulo an extra 'as' or so.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:25 AM
"The French pair is edging ahead in the race", etc.
That grates? Weird, for me the "are" would really grate. Would you say "Everyone are doing fine today"? Now, it's true there are some situations where collectives can be grammatically plural. E.g. "Some of the class is attentive" compared with "Some of the class raised their hands."
can anyone construct a natural sentence that would contain "one that is playing Ozzfest" with no intervening modifier?
"Of all the bands from [wherever AS is from], Avenged Sevenfold is one that is playing in Ozzfest." Of course, this probably wouldn't naturally occur as is, because if you're just trying to say that AS is playing in Ozzfest, it makes no sense to mention the set of all bands from their hometown. But it is makes good sense. And if you add a "the" before "one", it changes the sense a little (and probably isn't what you meant to ask) but could occur naturally.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:26 AM
Testing to see if I can get rid of the extra "Bostoniangirl" by leaving the Name section blank.
The answer is "no."
There is a conspiracy against Safari users on this site. That can be the only explanation.
There's another technical issue that I'd like to bring up. Sometimes at the bottom of the comment box I see this:
Odd number of elements in hash assignment at lib/MT/App Comments.pm line 68.
Use of uninitialized value in list assignment at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 68.
Posted by Bostoniangirl Bostoniangir | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:31 AM
58: That's a good one. And you could have the following dialogue:
Which seems to me to expand easily to "one of the bands that is playing in Ozzfest," so I withdraw my objection to 'is'.
bg: I say a comma, though a colon is also possible. "To answer your question" is (I think) an utterance modifier like "To speak frankly" or just "Frankly" or "In all honesty," which says something about the speech act performed rather than anything in it. "In all honesty, I am going to kick apostropher's ass" means that when I say "I am going to kick apostropher's ass" I am speaking in all honesty, not that I am going to kick his ass in any honest way (I intend to fight dirty). Hence, a comma is at least fine.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:31 AM
54: Sez you.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:33 AM
BostonianGirl BostonianGirl, either a comma or a colon could be appropriate following that phrase; your choice should depend on the intonation you are trying to communicate. Write it out both ways and then read it aloud. One or the other will seem obviously right.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:36 AM
This is a test post using Firefox.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:36 AM
58: What makes blockquotes get formatted like that? Your structure is
blockquote
-- text
-- p
---- bigger text
-- /p
/blockquote
Would it fix it to have
blockquote
-- p
---- text
-- /p
-- p
---- text
-- /p
/blockquote
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:37 AM
Testing
which at least on preview seem to preserve the blockquote typeface in subsequent paragraphs. Apostropher's ass is kicked, except I didn't quite do the <p> tagging like he said.
Testing
On preview that eliminates the sans-serif font. OK if you like that sort of thing I guess.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:37 AM
Weiner, you keep spelling "kiss" incorrectly.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:38 AM
61: It has started? Damn my absent-mindedness.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:39 AM
Thanks for vindicating me, Matt. Apstropher is pwnd!
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:39 AM
"Kick apostropher's kiss" makes no sense.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:40 AM
It isn't 2007, yo.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:40 AM
We like to get a jump on things.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:40 AM
Mine especially, eh?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:42 AM
You can't have "of the bands that are playing ozzfest" as a single phrase, because then you could take it out and have "...., one." And that makes absolutely no sense.
"Who are the bands playing Ozzfest?"
"Well, I don't know all of them, but Genius Dude is one of them."
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:42 AM
Wonder if I should bother pointing out the egregious em-dash-abuse in 54. Nah.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:43 AM
I know it's way too late for Urple's question, but revising, harmonizing and making consistent boilerplate was one of my major tasks for years.
[The parties] agree that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment.
I would replace "no" with "at any time"; the parties intend that the amendment shall be in force and binding for at least 15 months — which seems reasonable.
Unlike all of you disciplined, organized workers I was a major procrastinator and did much of my revising in the early hours. One time after many hours work, I can remember myself weeping at the beauty of Ravel's Mother Goose. God knows what my stuff reads like.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:44 AM
I have no stutter in Firefox (see 63), but I did encounter an Internal Server Error this time around. And Firefoz sux in this respect (no flamewars, please!): I can't get the navigation bar in a pop-up box, so I can't click back.
Posted by Bostoniangirl Bostoniangir | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:44 AM
74: I was going to, but I didn't want to dissuade Weiner from jumping on my thing.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:44 AM
B'grl B'grl: have you tried alt + left arrow?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:47 AM
75 and Urple's question: I'd say that a literal reading of the quote ends Party A's right to terminate the agreement at 15 months. But what I'd really say is that the double negative renders it ambiguous -- any court is going to allow parol evidence to establish what that sentence really meant.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:48 AM
bgbg, hold down the control key and click in the window; you will get a menu that includes 'back'.
The non-hyphen in 54 was deliberate, since all the previous words modify "fest," but it should have been an en dash.
73: Welcome back, tweedledopey! We were asking about you. I think you're wrong, though -- "one" makes sense there: "I don't know all of them, but Genius Dude is one"; or in 60, "I've slept with all the members of one."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:51 AM
78: backspace is another option which B'Girl B'Girl ought to consider.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:53 AM
73: It's not true that a sentence has to make sense without its prepositional phrases, any more than it has to make sense without its subordinate clauses. For example, "The toaster is between the microwave and the oven." Take out the prep. phrase, and you get "The toaster is."
Also, what do you call nouns or adjectives whose only purpose is to attach a prepositional phrase to? If that's the only purpose a particular noun is serving, of course it doesn't make sense if you delete the prepositional phrase. Another example: "Tia is one of the posters at Unfogged." "at Unfogged" attaches to "posters", pretty obviously, even though "Tia is one" doesn't make sense.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:53 AM
79: Mine is obviously the opposite meaning. I usually expect the meaning to be in the more unusual and colloquial phrase, so I'm forgrounding "no earlier" and also "not terminate" Of course, I haven't seen the rest of the clause, or, God help me, the amendment, but I'll bet I'm right.
A lot depends on Urple's function. If he's rivising, it should be possible to find out what the intent is. If this thing's been signed, they may need another amendment or rider.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 7:55 AM
Look at 40. I think it's signed, and there's already a dispute. If it were still being drafted, he wouldn't be asking questions about what it sounds like it means, he'd be fixing it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 8:07 AM
And my guess would be the same as yours about what was meant, but I believe you're correcting for an assumed typo, not reading literally. I'd bet that parol evidence gets to your interpretation.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 8:10 AM
82: Who are the posters at Unfogged? Tia is one.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 8:10 AM
I hope he gets to come in late this morning so it'll be a while before we find out.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 8:11 AM
I can see the difference in our perspectives: I was always a drafter, trying to avoid disagreement and ambiguity. Even when a mistake is in our favor, I almost unconsciously think "should have been..." My brother-in-law, a litigator, would find the ambiguity and hoot with joy.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 8:16 AM
86: Yeah, the sentence can make sense in certain contexts, as can "The toaster is." (What's between the oven and the microwave?) But in those cases the meaning of the prepositional phrases is understood to be imbued in the declaration through the magic of conversational implicature, or something, so it's beside the point in this thread, in which we're considering sentences out of context.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 8:17 AM
"'I am', I cried..." --N. Diamond
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 8:29 AM
Damn that intransitive "be". Muddying up my points.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 8:34 AM
To all those posts in the 70s and 80s that responded to my query:
LB got it right, I'm just reviewing this thing and trying make sense of it. Obviously if I were drafting I would be more clear. And I realize there's a 99% chance that this will be recognized as ambiguous and straightened out with parol evidence (and, in case it's unclear, a single negative was the intended drafting). I was just trying to wrap my head around what exactly it would mean if interpreted as written. (And it was late so I wasn't thinking so clearly.) And the fact that the answer is pretty much "it means nothing -- it's crazy gibberish" of course really helps my confidence that it will be sorted out by parol evidence, anyway. If it had some plausible meaning that would be a lot less likely. Although I'm not sure why I'm bothering to say that, since I doubt anyone other than the lawyers has cared enough to read this far, and you lawyers of course already know that.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 9:18 AM
Silvana, LB, and I have the "correct' reading, insofar as it must be understood as written, though Ben was right way up above about which "from" I meant to strike.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 9:45 AM
Oh, whatever you say, counselor.
So Urple, is this going to impact the dispute, if there is one, in any way? Does one party want out, or some change?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:03 AM
Silvana, LB, and I have the "correct' reading, insofar as it must be understood as written, though Ben was right way up above about which "from" I meant to strike.
Wrong! As I said above, your reading is no more compelling than mine or I don't pay's. You seem to think that because you've accomodated the "no earlier" in a particularly tortuous way, you've come up with a reading of the passage "as written", if it were written that way deliverately, and because I and Idp have interpreted the "no earlier" as, essentially, a mistake, we haven't. But you're wrong. Your reading, even if we suppose that the sentence were written that way on purpose, strains credulity far more than does mine and Idp's.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:26 AM
It's not about straining credulity, it's about taking it as a premise that the sentence was written accurately and intentionally. This is an unlikely premise, but under some circumstances a court will make that assumption.
You've rejected that premise, which is probably the right thing to do, but doesn't answer the question asked.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:34 AM
Ben, your reading of the sentence if it was written that way on purpose (42) assumes that "no earlier" was written to mean something other than what "no earlier" most commonly would be taken to mean, in or out of context. Mine doesn't, so I'm not sure why mine is more tortuous.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:43 AM
if we suppose that the sentence were written that way on purpose
That is, in fact, the supposition that is usually made about contracts, since they are legally binding documents, and they often contain (as I bet this one does) clauses that say the contract represents the full intention of the parties, or something like that (there's a name for this type of clause... anyone know?).
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:45 AM
98 -- Is that the Sanity Clause?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:49 AM
I remembered. Integration clause.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:49 AM
100!
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:50 AM
Damn you Silvana -- shot me down twice in a row.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:50 AM
When I was in school, we were taught that multiple negatives cancel one another. So, to my reading, that means they can void the agreement up to 15 months into it.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:52 AM
Ben, your reading of the sentence if it was written that way on purpose (42) assumes that "no earlier" was written to mean something other than what "no earlier" most commonly would be taken to mean, in or out of context. Mine doesn't, so I'm not sure why mine is more tortuous.
Since, in context, "no earlier" doesn't make sense, and since the context you propose for understanding it is (wait for it) tortuous, I don't see how you can make that claim. In fact, here's a context in which "no earlier" means exactly what I take it to mean: "I told him he'd better not come back no earlier than five or we'd make him squeal like a piggy." Exactly.
Your reading is only plausible if we mentally rearrange the sentence to read thus: "[The parties] agree, no earlier than 15 months from the implementation of this Amendment, that [Party A] may not terminate the Agreement." (Or perhaps the "no earlier ..." part could be moved to the very beginning of the sentence.) I maintain that your interpretation relies on someone looking at the sentence, and seeing that it could be so rearranged, and thus is not actually an interpretation of the sentence "as written" at all. And even after this plausibility-increasing operation is performed, it's still doesn't make that much sense; you still have to puzzle it out and say, "oh, what the author must have meant is X (which isn't what's written).".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:53 AM
In conclusion, lick deez nutz.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 10:55 AM
So what I want to know is, how obvious would the fact that there's a mistake have to be, in order to forestall the question "but what would it mean?" If there were no nouns or verbs in a sentence, would that be enough? Because it seems to me you've got the following process going on:
1. The obviously mistaken sentence A is produced.
2. Because there's a strong presumption against just saying there's a mistake, people try to find out what it would mean if it were supposed to have been written like that.
3. An interpretation, which any honest person would admit is completely ad-hoc and unreasonable, is produced, which if you squint just right and try real hard might seem to fit with A. This production occurs not because anyone actually thinks that's what A means, but because "there's a strong presumption", &c.
4. When the slightly more mistaken sentence B is produced, the fact that A was able to be corralled into sense-making is used as evidence that B should be treated similarly, even though it, too is obviously mistaken.
The problem with LB's comment: You've rejected that premise, which is probably the right thing to do, but doesn't answer the question asked. is that under the logic seemingly at play, if there is an answer to the question asked, then rejecting the premise (that it's not mistaken) is the wrong thing to do. And everyone seems to be more or less acknowledging that it's mistaken, but trying to come up with an interpretation anyway. But you can't simultaneously claim (or so it would seem) both that it's mistaken and that if it weren't, it would mean X, because in arriving at X you're admitting that there's a reading on which it isn't mistaken, and at least from the way everyone's acting in-thread, the mere existence of such a reading suffices. So it seems like there's lots of pressure to come up with some kind of tortuous reading (and w/d's claim that his isn't tortuous is, frankly, laughable), which will almost always be possible, even in egregiously wrong sentences (it's not so hard to come up with an interpretation of "colorless green ideas sleep furiously", after all, though that does have the advantage of being grammatical). So when do you just say, nope, this is plainly a mistake? Is the answer … never?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:18 AM
105 was the perfect conclusion to a painfully silly and not till then amusing grammar spat. 106 ruins it.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:20 AM
Sorry, Weiner.
I'm honestly curious, though.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:21 AM
I think you're wrong about point 2; everyone knows it's just a mistake, but we're trying to figure out if any literal sense can be made of it, kind of as a game. But in legal contexts it may be that you have to see if any sense can be made of it because it is a binding agreement, and if not you go to other stuff like this parol business the lawyers are talking about. In that case it seems like they're saying that this document is on the other side of the "it must be mistaken" line (which is part of the reason I saw the "What's the literal reading?" stuff as a game).
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:27 AM
I'm not sure what there is to be confused about.
1) The allegedly mistaken sentence A is produced, but
2) In order to show that it's mistaken, we need to show that a) there is a (however tortuous) mistaken reading and b) other evidence (like other documents) indicates that the parties who signed the contract recognize it as mistaken, i.e., they don't accept the tortuous reading.
One wouldn't expect that anyone would accept such a tortuous reading, but then again, one would expect that parties would read agreements carefully and catch typos and errant commas that change the intended meaning before signing them.
So, I think, Urple needs to show that the mistaken reading is clearly fubarred ('This sentence would mean that they could only terminate agreements for 15 months afterwards, but all our other provisions talk about litigation in month 16') , so he has grounds to bring in the other evidence that says, 'Um, so yeah, this is what we meant.'
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:32 AM
I wouldn't have disputed the existence of ambiguity; I think my gloss is what the drafter probably intended, but it isn't what she wrote. Urple may not feel free to reveal any more of the circumstances. If there is a dispute, this clause is important and governs a crucial detail.
I'm rusty; isn't there a rule resolving ambiguities against the drafter?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:35 AM
It's not a game (well, here it is, but you do the same thing in the real world). The general rule (this is all very rough, I'm just sketching it out for you) is that you interpret contracts literally as written, and you mayn't appeal to evidence from anywhere outside the 'four corners of the document' to change that literal interpretation. Saying 'that's a silly thing to have agreed to; look at this letter showing I meant to agree to something else entirely,' anything like that from outside the contract document itself is 'parol evidence' and you mayn't bring it in to contradict the words of the contract.
That only holds up so long as the contract is unambiguous. Once it's ambiguous, you can use parol evidence to resolve the ambiguity.
Here, you've got a couple of steps. First, you look at it -- any fool can see there was an error that makes the sentence ambiguous gibberish, and can guess at what was meant. So we know we should turn to parol evidence as to what the parties meant to agree to to resolve it.
But.
There's no guarantee (although with something this glaring, it's very likely -- say, better than 90%) that a judge is going to agree with you about the ambiguity and allow the parol evidence. The judge might say "No, that's not ambiguous, just read what it says literally. Stay within the four corners of the contract." And so you really want to know what the sentence would be taken to mean reading it absolutely literally, silly and improbable as such a reading is, because there is some chance that you will get stuck with the literal reading.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:47 AM
I swear, this kind of thing makes me hate the law.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:51 AM
A contract actually has eight corners per page. Just sayin'.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:51 AM
You obviously think a statue is different from its constituent lump of clay, what with your double-counting the corners.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:54 AM
You obviously think a statue is different from its constituent lump of clay, what with your double-counting the corners.
You obviously think paper is two-dimensional, if you think I got to eight by double-counting.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 11:56 AM
You obviously think paper is two-dimensional, if you think I got to eight by double-counting.
You obviously failed to realize that you can subdivide the breadth of the paper infinitely, if you stopped at eight.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:00 PM
Ah, but the contract itself only exists on one side of the paper.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:00 PM
A contract is just a piece of paper with some marks on it.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:06 PM
About paper not being two-dimensional. Back in the day, cars that had gone too long without tuneups would fail to start because their ignition points, in the distributor, had gotten too far out of adjustment. This could happen when you were miles from anywhere, without tools. Supposing you could get the cap off — I used a popsicle stick once — you would file the points flat with the carborundum strip on a book of matches, set the gap by number of folds of a sheet of paper, using a formula I forget, employing a dime pinched between thumb and forefinger as a screwdriver. Gave rise to some McGyver-like, my-hero moments. Mansfield really ought to be writing about the blow electronic ignition has dealt to manliness.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:07 PM
106: I was thinking about "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" right after I posted 45 and decided I was done for the night.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:08 PM
Okay, I'm not free to go into details here, but LB's basically got it all right as for the main ideas. The problem is that it's not this clause of the contract that's causing issue, it's another perfectly unambiguous but totally wrong provision in the same contract (leaving out a single "not") -- which has the somewhat comical effect that Party A basically promised in their contact to give better deals to all of Party B's competitor's than they were giving to Party B (instead of "not" giving them better deals). Poor drafting. High comedy.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:09 PM
Am I think only one that thinks 'sleep furiously' makes a reasonable amount of sense?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:10 PM
119: Ah, but not all pieces of paper with marks on them are contracts. A contract is an *idea* through which the marks on a particular piece of paper are invested with the power to affect human action. Therefore, the one side of the paper is the contract; the other side is just paper.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:13 PM
OH FOR THE LOVE OF LITTLE GREEN APPLES.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:15 PM
Except that party B also signed it: poor drafting and poor contract review.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:15 PM
124 gets it exactly right. How could there be multiple copies of a contract if the contract were exactly one of the copies?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:15 PM
Also all this business about how many corners has a contract igores totally the possibility of its running several pages.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:16 PM
I think that in order to think that you can distinguish the top corners and bottom corners of a sheet of paper, you must think that the corners are much more well-defined than they are. (123: No.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:19 PM
I can't imagine how dreary y'all's work must be that you're avoiding it via this conversation.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:23 PM
I bet Cala's going to sleep furiously tonight.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:29 PM
130: I'm trying to figure out what constitues an indivisible harm caused by multiple defendants in order to establish joint & several liability under Rule 10b-5 (plus the PLSRA).
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:30 PM
130: I'm trying to figure out whether corporations can be held to a heightened duty of care pursuant to their own adoption of a Corporate Social Responsibility policy.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:53 PM
133 sounds like an interesting question.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:54 PM
I'm doing all the fiddly stuff pursuant to filing a motion -- supportive declaration, exhibits, notice of motion... I hate this -- it's dull, and I'm not particularly good at it (not so much with the persnickety attention to detail here), and it fills me with fear of massively screwing it up.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:00 PM
It actually is pretty interesting. The case that it arises from is fucking crazy, but I guess, you know, confidentiality and all that crap.
And we're hoping a lot that the answer is 'no.'
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:03 PM
I'm opening hundreds of SAS programs, one at a time in Notepad, then searching for the %include statements, to make sure that every macro that was actually used in a particular project gets included in the big archive transfer to the client.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:04 PM
I'm working on debugging a windows service that processes x9.37 and XML data from internet clients via a web service and various ad-hoc semaphore protocols and makes it available for further automatic and manual processing in a variety of formats. I get to use EBCDIC!
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:05 PM
137: Don't you have a better editor?
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:07 PM
I'm writing an essay that I already know what it's going to say, so that the actual writing part is really, really boring cut and paste crap.
You'd think this would be easy but it's like pulling teeth.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:10 PM
I'm looking for a document, a needle in a haystack, which will save a lot of time, trouble and embarassment if I can find it.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:10 PM
My word, but is this thread dry.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:12 PM
I just got done talking to a cop investigating whether there is a prostitution ring in my building.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:12 PM
I'm trying to figure out what the hell my point is. So far, 400 words, and no sign of a thesis.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:12 PM
You know, Smasher, you could try not blaming that on the thread for once and do something to get it wet.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:13 PM
I'm printing out documents to assemble into a binder.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:14 PM
139: I'm not editing, just looking for the %include statement. I could do it with any program, but right now all that matters is that it open quickly.
143: Did they clear you?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:14 PM
141: How many corners does it have?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:15 PM
ac, you should start demanding a cut of the prostitution ring's take.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:15 PM
147- There is no prostitution ring. There is a schizophrenic who is convinced her neighbor is a prostitute.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:16 PM
I have actually already turned down a bribe of $10,000 today.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:17 PM
There is no prostitution ring. There is a schizophrenic who is convinced her neighbor is a prostitute.
The cops always fall for that one.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:17 PM
What services were they asking for?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:18 PM
Apostropher -- have you got Cygwin on your desktop? Because you could do that way less cumbersomely with grep in a script.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:19 PM
What services were they asking for?
A room with a view.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:20 PM
154: No. But I'm nearly done now anyhow.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:21 PM
151 -- who was offering the bribe? Your schizophrenic neighbor? The cops? The landlord? The super? Or was it unconnected to the prostitution investigation? (Am I remembering right that you work for the housing authority or something like that?)
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:22 PM
156 -- you should get it. Totally worth your while.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:23 PM
I started a footnote then deleted it. I'm working on the paper that I'm supposed to give in two weeks -- right now I'm on the parts of the argument that suck and are not in fact going to get read at the conference.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:27 PM
Also listening to this.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:29 PM
The only thing that I hate about this job is not being able to listen to music while working. I am so used to music being on while writing or researching that this is truly painful.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:30 PM
157- I manage a government subsidized building. I am routinely offered money to get people on the waiting list, move them up the list illegally, and transfer people to the nicer apartments.
The going rate seems to be $30,000, actually. At least that's the number everybody else seems to throw around. These $10,000 people don't know what they're doing.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:31 PM
Headphones/earplugs against the rules? Or just not good policy?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:32 PM
Well, I finally started working on this thing again. Somehow it helps enormously to have all you all working on boring shit too. Really. I often think the hardest part of writing is having to do it by oneself.
I've just summed up the English Revolution in less than a hundred words. Now I have to somehow recall and find out how many fucking newspapers were published in London by 1710. Ideally without having to drag my ass to our (shitty) library, which almost surely doesn't actually have that information.
Ah, the wages of procrastination....
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:34 PM
Okay, I quit, I'm running away to join the circus.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:34 PM
163: I dunno. I guess I could, but it seems like bad policy. Even so, my options would be 1) listen to ipod (whose battery doesn't last that long these days 2) bring CDs to work (unlikely).
Or I guess I could listen to pandora.com.
Also, I would need a different set of earphones/earphone extenders, because the headphone jack is very far from my face.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:37 PM
Mood: irritable >: [
Currently listening to: Don Cab
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:43 PM
I ran away to the circus for a night once. He was acrobatist from Equador, and we had no languages in common. It was a surrealist circus, so there weren't any animals, but I came home the next day with about a thousand mosquito bites, everywhere. I can't recommend staying very long if you go.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:53 PM
Mosquitos are animals. That isn't much of an act, though.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:55 PM
It's an unusual feature for a flea circus.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:56 PM
acrobatist from Equador
Not to be confused with an acrobat from Ecuador, which would have been hott.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:57 PM
'Neither' is singular, right? 'Neither of which is applicable'? I just told some punk summer associate to bluebook and citecheck a memo for me (neat pro-bono stuff: proposed NY sex-trafficking ban!), and while, like most people can, he improved my bluebooking, he's saying that the above should be 'Neither of which are applicable'.
Is that right? I don't think it is.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 1:58 PM
The trainer of insects is crouched on his knees
And frantically looking for runaway fleas
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:00 PM
171. Oh, hell.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:00 PM
I'm sitting here reading what other people are doing because the server I use to manage a couple hundred customer devices is down and I can't do anything to help fix it. My thumbs are twiddled to death already.
Also, if I had ac's job, I'd be the most corrupt bastard in town.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:03 PM
One of my predecessors retired with millions.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:04 PM
It appears that either is acceptable.
from
In standard English, neither on its own is used with a singular verb: Do not attempt to bring livestock or plant material into the country; neither is permitted. But in colloquial English, it is completely acceptable to use a plural verb: Neither are permitted. Similarly when neither is followed by of, it is common to use a plural verb: Neither of her parents are alive, but a singular verb is more appropriate for formal writing: Neither of her parents is alive.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:05 PM
172 -- you are correct.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:05 PM
here. damnit.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:06 PM
Cala and her Googling skills have saved my lazy ass. Thanks, Cala!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:07 PM
Nefarious millions, that is.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:07 PM
Hmph. Anybody want to talk about sections 404, 419, and 419A of the Internal Revenue Code and their application to a section 401(h) health benefits account in a pension plan?
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:10 PM
"Nefarious" is such an incredibly awesome word.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:13 PM
National health care NOW!
There. Does that help?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:15 PM
177: So neither are unacceptable?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:15 PM
So, wait... does no one here have an interesting job??
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:17 PM
I think that question answers itself. Or, at least, the person who does probably won't answer.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:19 PM
Excellent. I will smite the summer like unto a lightning bolt. (Actually, he's been very good, and I'm a slob so I love having another set of eyes on my stuff -- my writing is pretty clean, but the picky stuff like extra spaces, punctuation inside or outside brackets, all that nonsense, I have a terrible eye for -- I just don't see it. I miss working with Idealist: the man can see a misplaced comma from across the room.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:20 PM
Depends what you mean by "interesting."
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:20 PM
I strongly suspect that the most interesting parts of any of our jobs are also the parts absolutely least advisable for us to chat about on the webbertron. Just sayin'.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:21 PM
"Interesting" "job"
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:23 PM
smite the summer like unto a lightning bolt
LB, you're scaring me.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:24 PM
And with headphones on, he won't hear her coming.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:26 PM
Depends what you mean by "interesting."
I'm thinking it's going to take a remarkably idiosyncratic definition to get many of our jobs to "interesting."
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:26 PM
Also all this business about how many corners has a contract igores totally the possibility of its running several pages.
That's why I said "per page".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:29 PM
Oh, missed that. You're all good then.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:31 PM
the most interesting parts of any of our jobs are also the parts absolutely least advisable for us to chat about
Yeah, banging the executive assistants in the freight elevator is interesting, but I probably shouldn't mention it here.
Oops.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:39 PM
I get to go see Bill Clinton speak next week; and possibly a handshake at a reception beforehand. Consider me giddy with anticipation.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:50 PM
I get to go see Bill Clinton speak next week; and possibly a handshake at a reception beforehand.
Question for everyone: if we imagine that the quoted sentence were deliberately so written, what would it mean?
I apologize in advance for giving the appearance, possibly not false, of testiness.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:52 PM
handshake s/b "handshake"
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:55 PM
Fuck you, clown!
See, that's a classy acceptance of a richly deserved critique.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:55 PM
Question for everyone: if we imagine that the quoted sentence were deliberately so written, what would it mean?
That LB was chumming the shark tank?
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:56 PM
Nah, that was innate slovenlyness.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 2:59 PM
Well, if a life ring is not in order, I'll try tossing an anvil: you might want to have a look at the spelling of that last word in 203.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:05 PM
I think LB might have been making a funny.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:06 PM
I thought that the first time.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:09 PM
It isn't that the comments weren't just, it's that they were coming with both barrels from major names. I suppose it's conceivable he doesn't know that. If it had been me, I'd have crawled into a hole, and maybe lost my lunch.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:11 PM
Psst ... Idp ... wrong thread.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:12 PM
Sorry, wrong thread.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:12 PM
I may actually be having a transient ischemic attack. Perhaps I should get some coffee.
(That is, none of this has been for comedy effect. I'm just way, way off my game.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:12 PM
Not to scare you or anything, but my writing gets worse every year I practice law.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:15 PM
So, wait... does no one here have an interesting job??
Sure, I do. Not every second of every day, but sure. Being a lawyer is fun (although it can be way too much work, and that is not fun, but that does not make it uninteresting).
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:30 PM
I was asleep when all those boring-job comments were posted.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:53 PM
Yeah, my job is sometimes interesting. Like, when I get to write libraries that use code generation (no tweaking allowed, of course) to make statically typed and multiply scoped preferences frameworks. (If you don't see how that could be fun, then you obviously aren't a programmer.)
Or that time I write a patching and uprading program for our clients' application files. Figuring out how to make something very robust when there are tons of different ways to fail can be fun. Plus, binary diffs are intriguing.
Also, I like spending time thinking about how our support calls could be reduced by making our interface more intuitive, self-explanatory, and powerful. It's a good feeling when no one needs help to use your software because it's Just That Good.
Alas, the current product I'm developing is a real bitch.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 9-06 8:03 AM
the current product I'm developing is a real bitch
Cool! I'm getting way too much backtalk from our cyber-Bitch these days.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 9-06 8:13 AM
the current product I'm developing is a real bitch
Something like a Real Doll, but with a bit of a temper?
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 06- 9-06 10:49 AM
I'm sure B is a real doll, but certainly not a Real Doll.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 9-06 10:59 AM
So, wait... does no one here have an interesting job?
I'm a peon in the curatorial division of an old, mid-sized art museum with a great collection. My job isn't as interesting as some of the higher beings here, but it's still pretty interesting. Yesterday we examined a new painting by a major American Impressionist that arrived as a gift; this afternoon, wanting a break, I joined the curator of Asian art and a conservator as they debated which incoming Japanese scrolls to show to bring up for acquisitions soon. We hung them all over the walls and gushed about them.
But yeah, when it gets really interesting--I can't talk about that.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 06- 9-06 3:25 PM
I'm a bot.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 9-06 3:53 PM