Timewaster's Guide Archive

Czanos can't fool me.  I know you read all the library copies of Maxim.

So he needs to find someone in the LA area who will go to a thrift store that has a used library copy of Mistborn so that Mr.U can then borrow it and get it autographed while Sanderson sings.

That's a mouthful.  A mystery, nonetheless.  What a web!

It's that 100% that throws me.  If your mean just words then that’s one thing, but if your talking whole sentences or paragraphs, well, that’s another thing altogether.  As a music lover and writer I could take the same chords from say, "House of the Rising Sun", and make a new song out of it, but every thing else has to change with it, for it to be "my" song.  In addition, someone who has --"A talented creative force”-- would, I think, just make their own masterpiece in lue of plagiarism.

Yeah I mean sentences or paragraphs.  Paragraphs would make it a lot easier but a truly creative person could use sentences.  Yes you could take the same chords from that song...then if you took the same drums from another song by the same artist, then the same x from another song, so on and so forth.  It's how a lot of techno is made, these days, too.  You take prefabricated sounds and put them together in a way that sounds nice.

Heck.  I can do that on the simplest level.

As far as the country, I just feel that we have totally strayed from what the original founders intended for the government to be.

That's a strange statement considering what very little I know of you doesn't exactly interact very well with exactly what the founding fathers believed and intended for their Nation to be...

I'm not sure you could even do a cited list and get away with it.  In writing it would be like taking Mr. Sanderson's stories, chopping them up, then creating a new story 100% from the text within Brandon's books or from his blog.  It's all Sanderson's writing but it's not in the order, nor does it tell the same story, as Sanderson ever did...  What then?

It seems you lovelies have misinterpreted my post.  I am not an English hater (I did not say so) nor am I an America hater (I did not say so).

All I said was in response to SarahG's knee-jerk "WELL ENGLISH IS AWESOME YO!" reply.  That was-I'm hoping, now that I see her list of studies- simply a mistake.  Perhaps a bit overboard?  I don't know how to explain what I'm hoping from that post...I guess I'm just hoping it wasn't well thought out.

I have my own thoughts on miyabi's statement.  He finds Japanese to be quite amazing.  Someone else mentioned Japanese winning simply because it's "cool".  My personal opinion is that most people who find Japanese "cool" are people who are part of the mass of American teens that only care about Japanese because it's cool.  I'm not putting anyone into this box, of course, I'm saying it's a pretty common thing to happen.

I also note that a lot of people who just love Japanese also just hate English.

I've been taking English-specific courses as long as I can remember.  I've been writing and reading as long as I can remember.  There's a lot to English and when you know how to use the tools it can be a beautiful thing - but woefully few people know how to use these tools.

We are on a subforum here dedicated to Brandon Sanderson, an English-writing author who knows how to use the tools.  It seems most of us are capable to understand this type of thing but how many of us can produce anything on the same level?  Not me and I've been writing for twenty years.

I think people need to learn their home language with fluency, whether that be Mandarin, English, French or some obscure and dying dialect of a long-forgotten language, prior to focusing more attention on a second or third.

My comment about America was, if you couldn't figure it out (sorry), supposed to be the fact it was originally bad analogy (my apologies for harshness).  It was like the pot calling the kettle black when in reality the kettle is more of an ivory color.  SarahG said people who hate America but have never been here .... whereas miyabi and myself quite obviously know English and have preference otherwise.

I'm still taking English Lit courses and I still intend an English degree.  It's not that I hate it or have a problem with it.  I know the uses and there are days when I'm quite profound with it.  The large palette of words with which to draw make for interesting art, but it's not aesthetically pleasing to the eye nor the ear.

There is no perfect language but to nearly deride one for their preference is pretty failing in my opinion.

to GreenMonsta:  Pointing out flaws in an argument, as I could have done without the harsh anti-everything tone, doesn't always work.  If I said only one thing, she could have replied with one thing that cancels out my statement and we'd continue.  If I just bluntly state a lot of issues at once then the other person has to either reply to them all, pick one or two, or ignore it completely.  It gets more information out quicker for rebuttal.  Strangely, it appears that now I'm the one providing equal positive thinking for English as I provided negative thinking.

In the way that if a student in my class did that I would fail them outright, and the university would support me in it.  You might own it, but that doesn't make it okay in an academic setting.

I wonder how many researchers and scientists would lose their authorship of material merely because they had to pay someone else to take dictation and/or copy notes.

Oh my wow.  I just looked them up and like . . . I've had them backwards for . . . quite some time. ha ha.  Thanks for that.

hehe np!