Studying another language, especially a radically disparate one, reveals nuances in your native tongue that are hard to come upon otherwise. If you accept even a weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, then it's desirable to be aware of these nuances, as they may color your understanding of the world.
As far as the sciences are concerned, seeing alternate ways to encode information into language is extremely useful for people working in knowledge representation, ontology building, etc.
EDIT: I would also say that ""it gives us different ways of thinking" is all the justification needed for language preservation. That sounds pretty valuable to me.
The rules you've consciously learned about language constitute a tiny fraction of the rules that govern our use of language. Many of them ("don't split infinitives!", "no prepositions at the end of a sentence!") fail to be descriptive.
Not that it matters, but "biweekly", "biannually", and "bimonthly" have always only had a single meaning for me. I've heard the debate about them, but I don't think I've ever actually seen them used to mean "once every two weeks/months/years".
Drawing grammar rules for English from Latin might be a bad idea, but it tells us nothing about the value of rules as such.
Every dictionary gives multiple definitions of biweekly, etc. To professional linguists, this is an example of the wonderful flowering of the diversity of language or whatever and is probably much more exciting to study. Everyone else just cares about when to pick up their paycheck.
My point is that if you think the rules we learn in school about language are the same rules that allow us to communicate and understand each other, you're failing to realize the massive complexity of language.
As for those "bi-" words, there seems to be more consistency with "biannually", than with "biweekly", or "bimonthly". Oxford only gives a single definition for "biannual":
I've yet to hear an argument for why the needs of professional linguists should take priority. If you don't standardize the language, then it evolves to become unpredictable, inconsistent and impossible for non-natives to learn without years of immersion.
The language you prefer is also exclusionary. Imagine if Ivy League universities used a complex idiosyncratic dialect that was opaque to anyone who didn't grow up in an upper-middle class New England suburb. It would create a barrier for outsiders to gain access to those colleges, and a lot of other elite institutions. Standardizing and simplifying rules eliminates that barrier, allows the language to be taught to people who would be otherwise marked as outsiders.
I am not following much of what you're saying. I think you are deeply out of touch with what it is that linguists actually do -- this has nothing to do with the "needs of professional linguists".
If you don't standardize the language, then it evolves to become unpredictable, inconsistent and impossible for non-natives to learn without years of immersion.
Imagine if Ivy League universities used a complex idiosyncratic dialect
English and all other languages on the planet are idiosyncratic, inconsistent, and impossible to learn without years of immersion. You can try to prescribe away some surface irregularity ("the singular of data is datum!"), with maybe limited success among a small network of people, but that won't even make a dent in the overall complexity of a language.
Typically ecstasy is MDMA pressed in pill form together with an amphetamine, although as you noted MDMA is often changed out for some other 'research chemical' that is cheaper to source, and sometimes very dangerous.
Yet another obvious reason to legalize all recreational drugs...
'Typically' seems unlikely to me. I am not up to speed (no pun intended) on drug manufacturing/distribution, but years ago I wrote a psychopharmacology meta-study on the topic and most research I remember found that 'mixtures' or 'cuts' with two 'mainstream' active drugs were very uncommon due to increased costs and independent value. Most often, the active ingredient would be wholly substituted or mislabeled.
Perhaps that's changed, but it seems far more likely that cheaper substitutes would be used (ephedrine, 'research chemicals', etc).
She says people who commit suicide are losers can't apologize properly and work hard to make up for their mistake, or people who don't have the guts to weather through the hard times.
Charming attitude.
I doubt that many suicidal people have anything much to atone for, more likely they had some horrible things done to them or are just wired in a way that makes them deeply unhappy.
I don't see suicide as brave or cowardly. Depending on the situation, suicide can be in an individual's best interest -- a terminally ill patient in extreme pain who chooses to undergo a painless physician-assisted suicide would be a good example.
Even beyond terminal illness, I imagine that there are some people who have either been through such massive trauma, or are wired so badly, that suicide is a better option than living in misery. Granted, depressed individuals may not be capable of making decisions in their long-term self-interest, but I still wouldn't condemn every suicide as a "bad" decision, let alone "cowardly", "shameful", or any of the other pejoratives that come up around this topic.
Harmless Harvest explains it on the bottle and their website. They suggest that it shouldn't be pink when harvested, but if it turns pink later that's natural and okay.
http://harmlessharvest.com/results/coconut-water#pink
In freshly cracked coconuts, pink water can be a symptom of spoilage. This is not the case with Harmless Harvest which is completely clear when bottled.
All of our coconut water is clear when bottled. However, some bottles turn pink with time due to varying levels of antioxidants, or phenols, interacting with light. We could use additives to hide the color change, but the pink bottles are just as delicious and safe to drink as the others. Variation is a part of nature. It’s ok to be pink.
Marijuana is illegal right now. That didn't stop that bad stuff from happening to you or your sister. Turn it into a public health issue and people like your sister-in-law will have more resources to get help.
I also have skepticism that marijuana caused someone to crash into your car. It has not been proven that weed has much if any effect on driving ability, especially for those experienced with the drug.
You don't know what you're talking about, I bet that you are not a stoner.
I've been smoking for many years, and have many friends that do. The majority of stoners will tell you that it's very safe to drive while high. Why? When you're high each and every one of your senses are heightened, making you more 'aware' of things going on around you, making you a safer driver. And in addition, the feeling of slight paranoia usually makes you drive pretty slow and careful. I have no studies to back that up, but most stoners generally agree on this.
Never heard of one single incident of smoking and driving causing accidents. Alcohol and driving on the other hand, oh boy, been there done that, never doing that again (irresponsible teenager at the time). Vision blurry, misjudgement is distance, etc., very dangerous side effects for driving usually only associated with alcohol, and not marijuana.
Btw, I'm one of those productive stoners, can't stay away from my programming hobbies when I'm high. I enjoy marijuana, but I'm not exactly an advocate of legalization. There are many dangers with Marijuana from my experience, but driving certainly isn't one of them.
I am completely in favor of legalization. That said, I feel obligated to point out that "the majority of stoners will tell you it's very safe" and "most stoners generally agree on this" does not a convincing argument make.
My own anecdote: sitting passenger in a car with someone stoned and thinking traffic was going too fast, racing by him. On I-95 in the middle lane, going approximately 25 mph. And he insisted he was actually safer when driving stoned due to that slight paranoia you'd mentioned. I mention this here only to underscore the reliability (or lack thereof) of the source you're using.
Many retrospective studies of crash incidents have not found an increased risk with marijuana use. In my personal experience, it's effects are slight but drivers appear to compensate for their impairment by driving slower and being more careful in other ways, hence the findings of the recent survey study below (the lead researcher is quoted in the NY Times article).
The study’s lead author, Eduardo Romano, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, said that once he adjusted for demographics and the presence of alcohol, marijuana did not statistically increase the risk of a crash.
Based only on the abstract (the text is behind a paywall), it appears the first paper only discusses "the drivers' risk of being killed in a fatal crash", and not overall crash incidents, which is the point of your first sentence.
In addition, the abstract's conclusion starts "Although overall, drugs contribute to crash risk regardless of the presence of alcohol, such a contribution is much lower than that by alcohol." (Emphasis mine.) This seems to contradict your statement that there is not an increased risk with marijuana use. (The NYT article seems to confuse the two when it talks about "risk of a fatal accident" in one paragraph then "risk of a crash" in the second.)
> Experimental studies have shown modest functional impairment, but debate exists over how well these experimental studies translate into real-life driving situations (41). Epidemiologic studies, however, have shown contradictory results (39, 42, 43). ... it is unclear whether marijuana plays a significant role in crash causation.
The paper itself is a meta-analysis. They write:
> Results of this meta-analysis indicate that marijuana use by drivers is associated with a significantly increased risk of crash involvement. Specifically, drivers who test positive for marijuana or self-report using marijuana are more than twice as likely as other drivers to be involved in motor vehicle crashes.
It then very emphatically points out that this conclusion is not strong enough for public policy decisions, and that there are many possible confounding factors.
This conclusion is also mentioned in the NYT link you posted: "Still, it is clear that marijuana use causes deficits that affect driving ability, Dr. Huestis said. She noted that several researchers, working independently of one another, have come up with the same estimate: a twofold increase in the risk of an accident if there is any measurable amount of THC in the bloodstream."
Thus, I think it's enough to suggest that your first line is likely incorrect.
I took the NYT quote from Eduardo Romano to mean that after controlling for some of those confounding factors, there was no evidence of increased risk. I posted the NYT article because the abstract didn't mention much about marijuana specifically.
Specifically, drivers who test positive for marijuana or self-report using marijuana are more than twice as likely as other drivers to be involved in motor vehicle crashes.
Without having read the study, do you know if this statistic controls for age or anything else? If so, I stand corrected.
Thanks for your polite tone, it's not every day I get called a "fucking moron" before 7 a.m. :)
Like I said, I think the NYT quote confuses two points - no evidence for increased driver fatalities; and evidence for increased number of accidents. While I can understand how you made the inference you did, as I pointed out, elsewhere in the same NYT article points out that the accident rate is 2x that of other drivers, so there is an internal inconsistency. The simplest correction which makes it match external evidence is assume that the Romano quote omitted the "fatal" accidents context.
The study I linked to says: The data were stratified and analyzed according to study design, type of drug assessment, study time period, study location, or age of the study subjects. A more than 2-fold increased crash risk associated with marijuana use was found in each of the subsets of studies
I urge you to give it another shot too. After I few episodes I barely stuck with it, but by the end of the 3rd season I already preferred it to TNG/DS9 and just about any other sci-fi show. I think some of the characters are intentionally painted as one-dimensional early on, so that they can grow later (Londo and G'kar especially). There are many campy and lame parts too, but if you can get in the mindset of "enjoy the good, make fun of the bad" then it's highly enjoyable. I take the same mindset with most sci-fi.
The last 1.5 seasons of B5 were a letdown though. They had problems throughout with actors leaving abruptly, imminent cancellation, etc. that threw the plot arch off track a little. It could have been a lot better. The six or seven movies that were produced after the show's run... couldn't get through more than a few minutes of those.
As far as the sciences are concerned, seeing alternate ways to encode information into language is extremely useful for people working in knowledge representation, ontology building, etc.
EDIT: I would also say that ""it gives us different ways of thinking" is all the justification needed for language preservation. That sounds pretty valuable to me.