Subject: Re: "Well, I want to switch over to replace EMACS LISP with Guile." From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 25 Oct 2002 19:45:19 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3244563919110042@naggum.no> * Erik Naggum | The really smart can yet stop the Revenge of Mediocrity from | destroying human civilization by reverting to short-range, | non-thinking brutality. * Thien-Thi Nguyen | i find this sentence ambiguous. please clarify: who is to promulgate | this brutality, the mediocre or the would-be really smart? the former is | consistent w/ the rest of the post, but the latter is indicated given | normal binding patterns for "by". Strange. It is self-contradictory when it is read as "stop by", and does have pretty clear meaning when it is read as "destroy by". Yes, it is ambiguous the same way "time flies like a banana" is, but if you already noted the consistency part, what could have been ambiguous? Is it because the Revenge of Mediocrity is not an agent in your view that you think actions can be taken only by the really smart, which obviously are an agent? Would it have changed meaning in your eyes if it had been "the Revenge of the Mediocre", like that expression went when it was written but before editing and posting? -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.