shout out for a great Bourgogne rouge cheapie

[Jayson Cohen]

originally posted by Peter Creasey:

Sorry, Jonathan, I'm not following your gist. You probably know this, but "could care less" is a slang expression that is commonplace in some places (used instead of "couldn't care less").

. . . . Pete

You cannot escape the speck of irony here, Pete.

Your response maybe should have been another gem: “same diff.”

 

[Peter Creasey]

Any irony, speck or otherwise, is escaping me but that is surely on me and not on anyone else. And not a problem! (Apologies in advance for the exclamation point!)

Surely, we have hijacked this thread enough at this point.

Back to "Bourgogne rouge cheapie".

. . . . Pete

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

Well, unlike I could care less, which always means the opposite of what the words say, same difference can be given a context in which the words parse: Imagine four lengths of thread, divided into two pairs, each of which pairs had one thread half an inch longer than the other. One person asks the other whether there are differences between the differences of lengths between the.the two pairs, to which the second person answers, natch, same diff.

 

[Peter Creasey]

Jonathan, I must scan content here (what little I read) way too rapidly as some (many?) of your postings are beyond my comprehension.

. . . . Pete

 

[Jayson Cohen]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Well, unlike I could care less, which always means the opposite of what the words say, same difference can be given a context in which the words parse: Imagine four lengths of thread, divided into two pairs, each of which pairs had one thread half an inch longer than the other. One person asks the other whether there are differences between the differences of lengths between the.the two pairs, to which the second person answers, natch, same diff.

While technically correct, and well played, you are applying an accurate usage I have never heard from anyone who has actually used this inane expression in real life. Put mathematically, your correct usage seems to me a point of measure zero with vanishingly small integral in the usage probability distribution.

 

[BJ]

My stepdad used to try to get me to stop saying "how come" instead of "why". He said it was farmer talk. I think he was actually taking disguised jabs at my Mom's family. But I always thought if it was farmer talk, it was a good thing.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Well, unlike I could care less, which always means the opposite of what the words say, same difference can be given a context in which the words parse: Imagine four lengths of thread, divided into two pairs, each of which pairs had one thread half an inch longer than the other. One person asks the other whether there are differences between the differences of lengths between the.the two pairs, to which the second person answers, natch, same diff.

Good one, begs no questions.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Well, unlike I could care less, which always means the opposite of what the words say, same difference can be given a context in which the words parse: Imagine four lengths of thread, divided into two pairs, each of which pairs had one thread half an inch longer than the other. One person asks the other whether there are differences between the differences of lengths between the.the two pairs, to which the second person answers, natch, same diff.

While technically correct, and well played, you are applying an accurate usage I have never heard from anyone who has actually used this inane expression in real life. Put mathematically, your correct usage seems to me a point of measure zero with vanishingly small integral in the usage probability distribution.

Playing with language is its own reward. It's one of the reasons I particularly like pointless rules. They make the game worthwhile. Playing with language also teaches you more about how language works. I recommend it. In this case, the game has a point: same difference is not inherently meaningless nor used, as I could care less is, to mean what its syntax does not mean. I could care less is an only slightly interesting case of the evolutionary contortion that our frequent inattention to negatives in any grammatical formulation more complicated than a simple declarative can cause. Same difference, even when used as it usually is, actually works according to a basic syntax: the issue is worthy of being dismissed as same difference because any conflicts involved, though logically actual, don't amount to much The more acceptable version is a distinction without a difference, an equally oxymoronic phrase that nevertheless conveys a real meaning.

 

[Peter Creasey]

Your point is valid. Even so, the case can perhaps be made that "could care less" conveys more of an "attitude" than does "couldn't care less" and thus has found a place in fairly common usage in some communities.

. . . . Pete

 

[Jayson Cohen]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Well, unlike I could care less, which always means the opposite of what the words say, same difference can be given a context in which the words parse: Imagine four lengths of thread, divided into two pairs, each of which pairs had one thread half an inch longer than the other. One person asks the other whether there are differences between the differences of lengths between the.the two pairs, to which the second person answers, natch, same diff.

While technically correct, and well played, you are applying an accurate usage I have never heard from anyone who has actually used this inane expression in real life. Put mathematically, your correct usage seems to me a point of measure zero with vanishingly small integral in the usage probability distribution.

Playing with language is its own reward. It's one of the reasons I particularly like pointless rules. They make the game worthwhile. Playing with language also teaches you more about how language works. I recommend it. In this case, the game has a point: same difference is not inherently meaningless nor used, as I could care less is, to mean what its syntax does not mean. I could care less is an only slightly interesting case of the evolutionary contortion that our frequent inattention to negatives in any grammatical formulation more complicated than a simple declarative can cause. Same difference, even when used as it usually is, actually works according to a basic syntax: the issue is worthy of being dismissed as same difference because any conflicts involved, though logically actual, don't amount to much The more acceptable version is a distinction without a difference, an equally oxymoronic phrase that nevertheless conveys a real meaning.

Lawyers love to say “distinction without a difference” and it always has in my experience at least a purported and non-oxymoronic meaning in context (or please explain why not): Party 1 tries to distinguish one legally operative circumstance from another, and Party 2 asserts that Party 1 has raised a distinction without a difference, the circumstances presenting no difference legally or in terms of the legal consequences.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

The lawyers mean that the distinction in question has no legal relevance. If there is a distinction, then, by definition, there will be a difference. If there is no difference, the two things are identical. I have no problem with lawyers giving technical definitions of their own to terms (here a difference doesn't mean just a difference but a difference that is legally pertinent). God knows philosophers and literary critics do it all the time. But that doesn't mean they aren't changing dictionary definitions for your own purpose. If I were persnickity about syntax, I could argue that "distinction without a difference" is far more a contravention against it than same difference. I won't argue that because the phrase's meaning is resonant enough so that one of my professors in grad school once gave a talk (since become a chapter in a book) in which he spoke of a difference without a distinction and everyone knew what he meant.

 

[Jay Miller]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Jayson Cohen:

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
So goes the neighborhoodSo many people use compliment when they mean complement that soon Merriam-Webster will record the usage as a second meaning.

Puns aside, this can’t be true. Really? I’ve never seen this.

My biggest peeve is incessant improper use and proliferation of the pronoun “I” in prepositional phrases. It drives me crazy.

You need to be assigned to grade more student papers--or read more widely on the internet, or even just read more newspapers.

I'm also ticked by such phrases as between he and I. I think it results from all the people who were corrected in grammar school when they said Him and me went to the store and overcorrected, a primary cause of grammatical errors. Since no one seems to know when to use whom, the result is that one occasionally sees it as the subject of a sentence.

But if I am to judge from the movies, Quakers use thee when they should use thou, so these things pop up everywhere.

Shirley thee jest!

 

[Jay Miller]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I assume you mean they couldn't care less, thus demonstrating William Empson's claim that no one really pays attention to negatives.

Lord Chancellor. "Allow me, as an old Equity draftsman, to make a suggestion. The subtleties of the legal mind are equal to the emergency. The thing is really quite simple the insertion of a single word will do it. Let it stand that every fairy shall die who doesn’t marry a mortal, and there you are, out of your difficulty at once!"

don't, not doesn't.

The horrors of an English public school education.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by Jay Miller:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I assume you mean they couldn't care less, thus demonstrating William Empson's claim that no one really pays attention to negatives.

Lord Chancellor. "Allow me, as an old Equity draftsman, to make a suggestion. The subtleties of the legal mind are equal to the emergency. The thing is really quite simple the insertion of a single word will do it. Let it stand that every fairy shall die who doesn’t marry a mortal, and there you are, out of your difficulty at once!"

don't, not doesn't.

The horrors of an English public school education.

Don't as a contraction for does not as well as do not was an upperclass affectation in the 19th century. One finds it all over GS. The same goes for ain't for both first and third person conjugations in the negative of to be, a usage which seems to have lasted up through Dorothy Sayers.

 

[Jay Miller]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by Jay Miller:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I assume you mean they couldn't care less, thus demonstrating William Empson's claim that no one really pays attention to negatives.

Lord Chancellor. "Allow me, as an old Equity draftsman, to make a suggestion. The subtleties of the legal mind are equal to the emergency. The thing is really quite simple the insertion of a single word will do it. Let it stand that every fairy shall die who doesn’t marry a mortal, and there you are, out of your difficulty at once!"

don't, not doesn't.

The horrors of an English public school education.

Don't as a contraction for does not as well as do not was an upperclass affectation in the 19th century. One finds it all over GS. The same goes for ain't for both first and third person conjugations in the negative of to be, a usage which seems to have lasted up through Dorothy Sayers.

Fascinating, I never knew that. Thank you.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by Jay Miller:

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I assume you mean they couldn't care less, thus demonstrating William Empson's claim that no one really pays attention to negatives.

Lord Chancellor. "Allow me, as an old Equity draftsman, to make a suggestion. The subtleties of the legal mind are equal to the emergency. The thing is really quite simple the insertion of a single word will do it. Let it stand that every fairy shall die who doesn’t marry a mortal, and there you are, out of your difficulty at once!"

don't, not doesn't.

The horrors of an English public school education.

I cut/pasted from an online source. I knew it was wrong but I did not have a proper libretto to double-check.

"Banjo serenader", anyone?

 

[Jayson Cohen]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The lawyers mean that the distinction in question has no legal relevance. If there is a distinction, then, by definition, there will be a difference. If there is no difference, the two things are identical. I have no problem with lawyers giving technical definitions of their own to terms (here a difference doesn't mean just a difference but a difference that is legally pertinent). God knows philosophers and literary critics do it all the time. But that doesn't mean they aren't changing dictionary definitions for your own purpose. If I were persnickity about syntax, I could argue that "distinction without a difference" is far more a contravention against it than same difference. I won't argue that because the phrase's meaning is resonant enough so that one of my professors in grad school once gave a talk (since become a chapter in a book) in which he spoke of a difference without a distinction and everyone knew what he meant.

Does your analysis rely on a faulty premise or at least an assumption? That the distinction that is the contextual subject is the same as the difference, or that the observer of the former is the same observer of the latter or can discern the same level of granularity as the latter. If you relax one of those assumptions, it seems to me there is in principle no oxymoron, as in the legal example.

1.4 is distinct from 1.3 to me but not to a computer that truncates decimals. And let’s not even start on quantum mechanical observation. Slippery slope we’ve been down before.

Or do you think by necessity, linguistically or syntactically, distinction and difference must refer to whether somehow objectively A and B are equal or not equal.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

BJ, please change the name of the thread to "shoot out for a great Bourgogne rouge cheapie."

Jayson, interesting how your quotation marks are slanted and everyone else's are straight. Same diff?

 

[Ken Schramm]

Holy shit. Look what I started. And I have actually been on the correct usage side of the fence, but I just blurted that out blithely, much as I selected the bottle.

 

[Jayson Cohen]

More on-point, cribbed from internet, so not sure of accuracy:

“Chitry-Le-Fort, as the name suggests, was once a fortified town and in the Middle Ages the main road, La Grande Rue, formed the boundary between the lands of the Count of Tonnerre in Champagne and the Count of Auxerre in Burgundy. In the 19th century wines of Chitry were sold under the name of Chablis and more recently in 1929 the wines were accorded the name of Bourgogne des Environs de Chablis. Today Chitry is one of four viticultural communes of the Auxerrois and wines are labeled as Bourgogne or Bourgogne Chitry.

The Giraudon family has been farming and making wine in Chitry for centuries, and the current proprietor, Marcel Giraudon, follows very traditional methods in his work. Their vineyards are on hillsides of Kimmeridgian chalky marl as one finds in Grand Cru Chablis. Yields in the vineyard are kept modest and harvesting is done by hand. For the white wines, fermentation is carried out in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks and for the pinot noir mainly fiberglass vats are used with a ‘drapeau d’eau’ for temperature control.”

What is drapeau d’eau?

Oswaldo, I have come to hate straight quotation marks. Personal preference. So not same diff! Just diff.