overnegation again

[Laurence Horn]

On Feb 4, 2013, at 4:42 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 2/4/2013 03:22 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> I agree with your esthetic judgment, Mark, but could you be more
>> precise as to the folk etymology you had in mind? The proposals in
>> the comments for deriving "f*ck"?
>
> And where is the overnegation?

I was going to ask that, but then figured that Mark was referring to the title of the post, "The myth that not all Muslims are terrorists", since he does concede that proposition, and hence presumably doesn't regard it as a myth, although his larger point is that it doesn't really matter how many Muslims are terrorists, since so many of them are so evil, or whatever.

>
>> I guess I don't have the patience or stomach to read all the fine
>> print to get there.
>
> I'm with Larry, but I did somehow happen to run across the following
> refutation of a refutation that "The Zero" ws invented by Muslims:
>
> "Er, not quite. The concept of zero did come from India but the
> Summarians had it long before the Indians."
>
>
Ah, missed that.  I like the Summarians.  A nation I've been encountering a lot on the sports networks and radio talk shows since the Super Bowl, explaining what happened and shouldn't have, what didn't happen and should have, and so on.  The Summarian pundits also maintained a very large practice during in the political season.  And, poetically enough, a lot of their work did add up to a convincing illustration of the concept of zero.

LH
>>
>> On Feb 4, 2013, at 3:09 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>>
>> > Another case of overnegation, this time pretty disgusting: a blog post
>> > titled "The Myth that not all Muslims are
>> >
>> Terrorists"<http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2010/09/the_myth_that_not_all_muslims_are_terrorists.html>.
>> > This one has an extra twist, because while semantically it's the opposite
>> > of what the writer intended, what it implies about the author's views is
>> > far more accurate than what he wanted it to say. The blog itself (which I
>> > looked at because of a folk
>> >
>> etymology<http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2013/01/muslims_did_not_invent_algebra_1.html#comment-787036370>)
>> > is virulently anti-Islam. I don't want to quote from it, but if
>> you go to the
>> > post in
>> question<http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2010/09/the_myth_that_not_all_muslims_are_terrorists.html>you
>> > will see more than enough evidence.
>> >
>> > Mark, now going to wash his hands
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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