rattus rattus’ blog

[Ratta says she’d better use the word true only if it is not true.]

[WP]

[Ratta says she is wrong.]

Words ought not to be trusted – you can never be sure if they mean what they say.
— Ashleigh Brilliant

Let’s assume that when people say something they generally mean something different. Then, the question “What do you mean?” generally makes no sense at all.

If you think that some people at least sometimes do say what they mean, well, I anyway do understand something different from what they say let alone what they mean.

So, what does it mean when someone says that she or he makes a lot of use of dictionaries and thesauruses searching for word origins? Like Dave Pollard just wrote? Or like half of my own blog?

What does it mean if someone is especially picky about words, if we try to be precise, if we try to avoid obfuscation and ambiguity, and if we moreover foster meaning with references?

Experts of wording driving away from their audience, burying augury of knowledge in wisdom, the paradox of communication, blatant honesty about lying.

Of course, this makes sense to us, anyway.

“Fantasies are free.”
“NO! NO! It’s the thought police!”

It’s paradoxical to say one is not free to think what one thinks. On the one hand, and as a destined liar anyway, since I think that I am not free to think what I think I’d never tell anyone. On the other hand, if we were all free to think what we think I’d prefer to think that we are not.

[Ratta says, just because you read something on a blog does not mean it is true.]

Someone has to say it all:

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
— Bertrand Russell.

Useless, but true (fun).

The film “An Inconvenient Truth” shall come to local theaters in September 2006. What will it be? The Weisslog (weblog in German by Die Zeit) pointed to a related article by Slate Magazine:

Bigger Smash: Hurricanes cause more damage because there’s more for them to wreck. By Gregg Easterbrook, posted Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Being wrong or at least being contradicted always charmingly embraces my
confidence in being right.