Re: Mediocre Lenses ( wasRe: Takumar 85/1.8 price)

[Peter J. Alling]

It's been done that way for years though my favorite example was the 
turn of the century politician who smeared his opponent by calling him a 
know philatelist, (I think I mentioned this before but it bears repeating).

graywolf wrote:
On the other hand, if I said a lens is OK, you would probably figure 
it was acceptable, but if I said it was mediocre you would probably 
think it was less than acceptable. Though in fact both statements are 
the same.

Just as saying your bunny ears are puerile would make many folks think 
there is something sexually offensive about them, when all I said was 
they are childish.

Media types use this connotative kind of stuff all the time.
--
frank theriault wrote:
On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 11:05:13 -0400, graywolf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:

Another one of those Latin words that get bad connotations just for 
being Latin.
As Peter says, mediocre is actually synonymous with OK. Not great, 
not bad, just OK!

Well, Tom,
I agree with you and Peter, insofar as mediocre likely means "of
medium or ordinary quality".  Which really isn't a bad thing, is it?
Of course, in the way in which it's currently used, mediocre means "of
barely acceptable quality", or worse.
My guess is that we (at least we in the West) live in a world of
superlatives.  So, if it's not "the best", it must be bad.  Middling
is not good enough.  In fact, Good Enough is not good enough, if you
catch my drift.
It used to be that to put forth a supreme effort was to "give 100%". 
But since that phrase is so overused, it's now no longer meaningful to
us.  Now, we must give "110%", "200%", or as I heard from a sports
commentator during the Olympics, "1000%!"  <vbg>

I won't go into the reasons for all of the above (OT, plus not nearly
enough room here for that sort of discussion), but suffice to say that
since everything new is touted as "the best", then in order to
distiguish between all these things that are "the best", we have to
come up with new "super-superlatives".  In the meanwhile, "ordinary"
words, like mediocre and "nice", end up being insults, when they are
in reality anything but that.
cheers,
frank the ordinary



--
Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is a virtue. Fleas are interested 
in dogs.
   P. J. O'Rourke