I've noticed an interesting hierarchy in American English. The top of the hierarchy is "good" as in "this is good!" Second best is just a little less than good which is "not bad". If we don't want to come right and say something is a good idea, we say "that idea is not bad." In third place is "not good". If something seems to be going poorly but hasn't reached disastrous then we say "that's not good". Finally, we get just plain bad. When a systems administrator says "this is bad", you should probably got a donut and a hug because you are going to need the consolation. So there you have it, an interesting hiearchy in American English.

Good
Not Bad
Not Good
Bad

Your Friendly Philologist
- Worthless

Circular Definitions

Is it just me or is the logical concept of a dictionary circular? Words are described using other words which will eventually lead back to the original word being defined. Of course, there are specialized words that aren't really that circular but, for the most part, it has to be circular. I wish there was a language that was built from basic building blocks. The building blocks are basic tenets of verbs and nouns. In order to describe an object, you simply combine the basic building blocks.

Lie, steal, cheat - why not?

I debated whether I should write this down or not but I thought the topic was interesting enough. In general, I have no issue with lying, stealing, cheating or any other activity that society and hence the law has deemed "wrong" or "illegal". In my opinion, the only deterrent to "crime" is pain. I know the consequence of robbing a bank is going to jail. Since the concept of jail is very painful to me, I don't rob banks. There are a lot of things like this.

Are there conditions to this general condition of disregard? Of course, I do place limitations on my disregard for societal mores. Once someone is in my circle of trust, I attempt to do good things for them and prevent bad things from happening to them. I would avoid any action of my own that would cause someone in the circle of trust pain (sorrow, doubt ...). I may play a joke and cheat at Monopoly but only with the understanding that I will get caught and that in any situation in which it really matters I would not cheat my friends and family.

What causes me to disregard most rules? Unless I have determined differently, I don't trust that anyone is going to follow the rules. It seems more often than not that laws and rules only keep honest people honest. There are some honest people in this world but they are so few and far between that I have to play the odds and assume that anyone that I don't know is a potential threat. To me, even the simplest things are a complete and utter disregard of the polite behaviour especially since we, humans in general, have to share so many things with everyone. For example, smokers who throw their cigarette butts out the window of their cars. Am I wrong or is that not littering? SOMEONE will eventually have to pick-up that trash but is not the smoker's concern. Sure, they have an ashtray in their vehicle where they could store that butt and then dispose of it later. Their trash is someone else's problem. In addition, the hot ash that flies against the paint job of my car is of no concern to them.

Enough of a rant for today. I need to go put punched paper in the printer so EVERYONE gets punched paper print-0uts.

Your neighbourhood curmudgeon,

JPRG4EVR