The CBB

For as long as I can remember, I've been unable to spell "medieval" without looking it up. I thought it was "midevil" when I was younger, but nowadays I usually go through several weird, failed attempts at spelling it (like "mideaval", "medaevil", etc.) befor...

Very interesting and convincing ideas. This is becoming a collaborative country almost. Several ideas here I wouldn't have thought of. Yes, sorry about that. I am prone to meddling... ...and speaking of which! Korean War. You're right that they'd be too weak to meaningfully take part, but that does...

People start stressing words in different places. Eventually, this generalises into a new habit. In more specific instance, there may be more specific motivations, of course. For instance, imagine a language stressed on the first syllable, and then secondary stress on every second syllable after: CO...

I used to struggle with bureaucracy , because I kept wanting to spell it beginning with beau-, like 'beautiful', or at least with 'beu-'. I also struggle with some -ent/-ant and -ence/-ance spellings. But since I learnt most words from reading rather than hearing, its much more common for me to expe...

I think the technical term for the non-unruly hair is... straight. The volume and density of the hair - almost everything other than colour - is mostly just the result of the degree of twistiness in the hair. From perfectly straight and dense through slightly wavy (like that medalist), through fully...

There is no glide-equivalent of /e/. To be an approximant, the tongue (or lips) needs to be near to closing the airway, but /e/ is a mid vowel. Apparently, in a few languages there are non-syllabic mid-vowel onsets, so you could have a non-syllable /e/ onset to a diphthong - is that what you mean by...

Probably because things like /j/ > /i/ > /e/ just aren't that likely. Once you've reduced it all the way to a glide, it's not likely to come back again. Can you imagine saying "tune" as /tiun/ or 'news' as /niuz/? If it does come back, I suspect it would be more likely as /ij/ (simplifying...

[Fun fact? The people who experience most domestic abuse are bisexual people in relationships with homosexual people. Apparently, the idea that bisexuals are either homosexuals in denial, or else heterosexuals experimenting, is very frequently used to harrass and shame them.] That almost definitely...

Unfortunately, due to the political climate it can be difficult to raise these issues - anything more nuanced than "gay people intentionally and willfully choose to be gay because they're evil and/or stupid and/or led astray by evil secular society" or "gayness didn't evolve, it was c...

I can't distinguish political philosophies from religions, no. True, theism is a potential difference. But it's hardly an absolute ones. There are religions without deities (some forms of Buddhism) or an afterlife (some forms of Judaism), and on the other hand there are many political philosophies w...

Does homosexual behavior exist in all human cultures (without learning from other cultures)? I don't have anywhere near enough information about all cultures on the planet to answer definitively, but seeing as how it is an innate predilection and not a learned behavior, I'd say yes. Well now... tha...

"Black" is very similar to "gay" imd. You CAN say 'blacks' and 'gays', but you need to do it sensitively (I think squall suffered by using the word in the context of an already seemingly-homophobic comment) and in the right environments. And if you say 'the blacks' or 'the gays',...

However, I find the fact that homosexuality doesn't even exist to be really implausible unless your con-culture doesn't exist on Earth. There is a long history of homosexual behavior in human and non-human species alike on this planet, so to say it doesn't exist seems really weird, but that is comp...

I don't understand where this argument has come from. Ahzoh says he's only denying that theistic belief systems are a good ground for knowledge about the material universe. Well obviously, everybody agrees with that (including proponants of theistic belief systems). Moving on? [You may as well have ...

Great, you make it sound like a religion... You make it sound like an insult... To suggest science is a religion opens doors to many wrong assumptions, especially by the scientifically illiterate. "Science is a religion, so it's no more true than mine" is a position some people actually h...

my philosophical views aren't particularly in fashion at the moment Out of curiosity: what are your views? If you’re comfortable sharing, of course. Broadly Wittgensteinian. Anti-essentialist, deflationist, quietist, anti-metaphysical, etc. Also perspectivist. On the question of science, I see scie...

I'm sorry to hear your health is not good. I am, it is true, pedantic in theoretical discussions; I view this as being helpful, since being wrong is not in anybody's interests, and being unclear about things is perhaps even worse than being wrong. I'm not sure why you view me as the aggressive one i...

my philosophical views aren't particularly in fashion at the moment Out of curiosity: what are your views? If you’re comfortable sharing, of course. Broadly Wittgensteinian. Anti-essentialist, deflationist, quietist, anti-metaphysical, etc. Also perspectivist. On the question of science, I see scie...

There's a lot of stuff there, but, Salmoneus, a lot of it seems to rest on the idea that conceptual metaphors are consciously formed and decided upon. Yes, that's a big part of what defines a metaphor. They're not, any more than we need to decide upon and actively think about grammar to use it. Whi...

@elemtilas: Sal isn't arguing what you think he's arguing, hence the confusion. (Please correct me if I've misinterpreted you, Sal.) You made a claim: "Sex is only tangentially and circumstantially related to marriage, which is a way of regulating the transmission of property." I countere...