RE "Shoot beaver"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

It may well be that we on the list have little of real interest to share
with the world or even with fellow specialists.

This troubles me, though it's surely hard to compete with runaway deficits,
emergent pandemics, near-earth asteroids, a Sarah Palin reality show,
and mad bombers in Yemen reaching out to touch someone.  Now those things
are interesting!

If Ron would tell us directly what sort of communications he'd prefer to
see, I for one would try to oblige.

JL


On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 7:54 PM, Sam Clements <SClements at neo.rr.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Sam Clements <SClements at NEO.RR.COM>
> Subject:      Re: RE "Shoot beaver"?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ronald Butters" <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
>
> > Aboout 95% of what gets posted here is just rambling anecdote or comment
> > on somebody or other's typographical error or grammatical or lexical
> > "mistake," or some regional or social dialectal feature that could be
> > found in a dictionary. Or worse, just somebody saying something like, "I
> > agree" or "Thanks for that" or "How clever I am, I studied Latin 50 years
> > ago." I spend a considerable part of each day just deleting messages
> > without opening them: after you have read one entry in a thread, it is
> > gnerallyu pretty clear that the rest is not worth bothering with.
> >
> > I guess this just means that I need to go the way of Roger Shuy, Dennis
> > Preston, etc., and sign off from the list. The occasional interesting
> item
> > is increasingly buried in a sea of trivial anecdote. A lot of people seem
> > to find the list as it has become is really what they want to do in their
> > retirement or  in their cups or whatever. Assuming that my dues in the
> > American Dialect Society are not being horribly strained by the cost of
> > recording all this junk for posterity in the University of Georgia's
> > computer archive, I should just slink away in silence.
> >
>
> But, you won't, just as you didn't when your comments drove away posters
> such as Barry Popik.  Not that Barry wasn't carrying things to extremes,
> but
> your comments at that time certainly influenced his postings as well as
> mine.
>
> Sorry to be such a burden.
>
> Sam Clements
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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