In
<cae1xxdfkms1d9p+emdpioapnugq-rvtanjcvxo+uuz99r8s...@mail.gmail.com>,
on 05/04/2013
at 08:56 AM, John Gilmore <jwgli...@gmail.com> said:
>In situations of this kind the needs of the unlettered must come
>first. The word 'inflammable' does not mean 'cannot be set aflame';
>some of the unlettered nevertheless sometimes judged that it did;
>the case for disambiguation, for using 'flammable' instead, was
>thus compelling; and the change was made. As Quine put the
>matter, "Semiliteracy, however offensive, is not a capital
>offense".
Sometimes it is, e.g., reading "inflamable" as "nonflamable" and
lighting a match near an open container.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
Atid/2 <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
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