Natural selection was not a conscious choice. There have been many choices in grammar that have been decided almost arbitrarily by higher authorities. Sure, many of these choices may have been based on their own experiences, but they were not necessarily the best choices. They were decided by a small group of individuals, but again, the choice was not strictly a natural selection of grammar rules. Language more often follows this pattern than grammar because people are more likely to argue over grammar than language itself, excluding etymology, of course.
> There have been many choices in grammar that have been decided almost arbitrarily by higher authorities
Just because somebody makes a decree about grammar doesn't mean it'll be widely accepted, any more than an organism obtaining a genetic mutation means it'll become spread throughout the population in subsequent generations.
My point is just that there wasn't any overarching plan. People design their own use of it, but whether or not that becomes popular enough to be considered "the rule" is analogous to natural selection - messy, convoluted, frequently arbitrary, but good enough.
Also, it makes it easier to determine when a sentence ends that contains an abbreviation. (This refers to when most people would use periods at the end of abbreviations.) I still use double spacing even though standard HTML does not display the double spacing on web pages.
The following sentences are an example of what I was saying:
"I sent the N.D.A. to N.Y. It arrived three days later."
The single space after the "A" in "N.D.A." indicates that the sentence has not ended even though there is a period.
The harder case is an [A-Z]. [A-Z] which is not a sentence ending. Consider the following:
"When we compare the use of mistakes in speech in the Saga of St. Olaf with some of the other Old Norse literature, we can see that there is, in fact, a pattern of use of errors in speech being a sort of death omen."
The single space there identifies that there is no end of sentence between St. and Olaf. Of course when you are working in LaTeX you have to tell LaTeX that this is a word break and not a sentence break or else it will kern it as an end-of-sentence.
I actually could not find exactly what I wanted years ago so I created some time clock software for a company where I worked in some of my spare time. They became the first 'customer', but I allowed them to use it at no charge.
I got one paying customer for it a while later so I decided to go ahead and make it more asthetically pleasing. That is the reason I decided to focus on this instead. I am working on numerous projects, but this is the only one that I actually have some people using so I thought I would put more effort into it and wanted some feedback.
I am certain the users do not get confused about the arrows. However, if you can wrap your head around it, it might actually look like it is pointing at the message itself, but that would have no actual meaning to a person.
It might be mistaken for a collapse/expand option, but people have been conditioned that + and - or the down arrow and right arrows are for that.
If it had a stick indicating the bottom protruding from it, it would appear to be a direction rather than an action link.
By the time someone aquires 500 points, they will likely have spent enough time on the site to learn the distinction between the two. While using text labels would be fine, I do not think that would be better than using the symbols.
The reasons for clicking may not be symmetrical, but the actions when clicking are symmetrical. The points go down with the down arrow and the points go up with the up arrow. This is symmetry even if the reason (agree, disagree, quality, spam, etc.) for the increase and decline of the points is asymmetrical.
The profits for a drug to cure every kind of cancer would be astronomical. You seem to have the assumption that when cancer is killed it cannot return. But, it can. Mutations happen often and because of this, cancer would happen often. Cancer kills people. You do not want your customers to die. It would be more profitable to release a cure and have people take it whenever cancer is found because it is certain to return.
You mentioned that changing your lifestyle has made you healthier, but that has been mentioned to me by my doctor every time I visit! Eat healthy, get plenty of rest, and exercise. We have heard this many times before. This is not some magical secret to a healthy life. Many people simply do not possess the willpower to do it. There are companies that profit from unhealthy choices because our bodies crave those unhealthy choices, but it does not mean there is some conspiracy by scientists to prevent drugs from reaching the market that can cure cancer.
The cure would be more profitable because over a long enough time line, cancer returns. People that get cancer are often predisposed to getting it in the first place.
Well, I won't argue any longer if cure for cancer would be more profitable or not. I'd need some professional analysis. I'm not proffesional so I don't know. Anyway they already take much money for treatments that doesn't realy work. It's quite good bussines. For sure it's very easy and safe strategy to keep status quo. What if cause of cancer would be found and it would no longer come back after treatment? Working cure wouldn't be so profitable then.
Yes. I wrote that everybody know that people should live healthier. But there is big problem. Telling is not enough. How people who never had proper lifestyle and diet can know what "healthy" realy mean? They only can assume that if they feel like they felt before they are healthy. Maybe not perfectly, but they are. This assumption is simply wrong.
Do you know people who live healthy? It seems to be highly addictive and spread quite fast. The only condition is that people have to see that those one who live healthy are far more healthy than they ever asumed. For example one of my frieds i live with in one flat needed only few weeks of watching how do I eat to decide to improve his diet. He's happy he did that. He loves oatmeal for breakfest too (also my habit). I doubt if someone who live healthy would like to stop. If you go to doctor you don't see what to expect so you don't change anyhting.
You put this wonderfully. People are very little more than our experience with the world itself. Without external stimuli, we would be trapped within our own minds and only be capable of evaluating a limited set of possibilities. Merely the act of touching an object generates complex cognitive experiences. This is not possible by abstraction alone.
