Monday's Most Active Threads

The thread that I discussed yesterday about the wife who is rigid about being on time led as the most active thread yesterday. Skipping that one, the next most active thread was titled, "A teacher who pronounces library as ‘liberry’" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. In her original post, the original poster simply says that hearing "library" pronounced as "liberry" is "like nails on a chalkboard". Despite the brevity of her post, the original poster touched on two separate issues, both of which provoked considerable response. Because the post appeared to be criticizing a teacher, many posters addressed that aspect. This often resulted in defenses of teachers and expressions of sympathy for the things with which they must put up. Others thought that this mispronunciation was more egregious because it was done by a teacher who is expected to be well-educated and might pass the mistake on to her students. The other aspect of the topic was about the pronunciation itself. Many posters argued that this pronunciation reflects a regional dialect or accent, something that some posters greatly appreciate. Others, including the original poster, argued that the pronunciation revealed an accent that demonstrated a lack of education. Some saw racial connotations in criticism of the pronunciation, while others said that individuals of various races said "liberry". Posters also brought up other words that are commonly pronounced differently depending on the accent of the speaker. Given the nature of language, especially English, in which the "rules" are often arbitrary or extremely flexible, I am not sure that pronunciations should necessarily be described as "correct" or "incorrect". Rather, I think it would be better to discuss "accepted" or "standard" pronunciations. In a subsequent post, the original poster herself seemed to find the regional pronunciation of certain words acceptable and not reflective of poor education, but continued to take issue with "liberry". This was clearly a subjective and personal conclusion. I was thinking about the topic of pronunciation recently after I started a new hobby that involves soldering electronic components. In the US, we pronounce "solder" as "sod-er". Those with a British accent pronounce it as "sold-er". Based on the spelling of the word, the British would appear to have the stronger argument with regard to the correct pronunciation. However, "solder" apparently came from the French word "souder", which has no "L" letter or sound. So, perhaps a point for the Americans. But the bottom line is that if you want to be understood and not thought to be mispronouncing things, you should probably adopt the accepted pronunciation of your environment. Conversely, if you think that someone else has mispronounced something, you might not want to immediately jump to conclusions.

The next most active thread was posted in the "Elementary School-Aged Kids" forum. Titled, "My kids are only 4 and 7 but they eat SO MUCH", the original poster details the food eaten by her two young children in a single day. While it is a prodigious amount of food, a significant portion is fruit. Overall, there is notable variety and I think most parents would be thrilled if their kids were satisfied with such a diet. The original poster's concerns are twofold. Their pediatrician has told her that the kids are overweight (they are in the 99 percentile) and their grocery bill from so much food is getting out of hand. Most of the posters responding note that the diet seems low on carbohydrates and extremely high in fruit. The original poster thinks this is contradictory because the fruit contains carbs. Posters then advise that they are the wrong kind of carbs. There is considerable contention in the thread between those with the belief that limits should not be placed on the quantity of healthy foods and those who support such limits. The original poster, who has been told not to limit the amount, allows her kids to eat an entire container of grapes as a snack. Since grapes are healthy, she thinks this is not a problem. Others are appalled due to the amount of suger in grapes and several posters advise replacing the grapes with apples. A number of suggestions were provided, but the most common was to cut the fruit in half at least. There were so many recommendations for steel cut oatmeal that by the end of the thread I was ready to adopt it as a staple of my own diet. There is also considerable discussion about the original poster's desire to limit grains in her kids' diet. She says this advice comes from her pediatrician, but she also seems to have a personal hangup about grains which she blames for her own weight problems. Posters go to great lengths trying to convince her to serve more oatmeal, brown rice, and whole wheat. In addition, the original poster was repeatedly urged to consult a nutritionist.

Next was a thread titled, "anyone get unexpected / surprise results in DNA test?" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster says that her son took a DNA test and it showed Maori heritage. While her husband was adopted, this was still a big surprise. There have been several threads about ancestry discoveries as a result of DNA testing and posters tend to have some interesting stories. But, initially, this thread was somewhat sidetracked by a dispute over just how comprehensive common DNA tests actually are. There is a poster who is convinced that these tests don't provide women with information about their fathers' side. The original poster argued that new tests use a different methodology and are able to trace both maternal a paternal sides. But, this does not convince the other poster who continued to argue that information can only be provided about the maternal side. This argument continued for quite a while. I received several reports asking me to remove the posts that argued that only the maternal side could be traced. But I simply don't know enough about the topic to know which side is correct. I was not prepared to take the word of one anonymous poster over that of another anonymous poster, so I didn't remove the posts and left them to fight it out. In addition to a few stories about surprise discoveries, posters found a number of other issues to discuss. For instance, after one poster reported that she and her sister who both have the same parents were shown to have markedly different ethnic compositions in their DNA, posters discussed how children receive a "grab bag" of genes from their parents rather than identical compositions. Posters also discussed privacy concerns with the tests with some posters saying that they would not take DNA tests due to such fears. Posters also debated the accuracy of mapping specific genetic data to ethnic groups. Some considered this to be guess work at best.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum and titled, "Why do people go to another state’s public university?" The original poster poses the question that is included in the title, adding several reasons that she believes such choices don't make sense. Recently I discussed a very similar thread to this, but that one asked specifically about out-of-state flagship universities. Due to how close the two threads are to one-another, someone reported this thread with the suggestion that I lock it and refer posters to the other one. But, since this thread went beyond flagship universities, I decided it was different enough to leave it alone. Nevertheless, many of the responses were very similar. One poster pointed out that the best state schools can be very competitive for applicants from certain parts of the state and, therefore, they may have better chances in another state's universities. Another poster pointed out that state universities sometimes provide scholarships to out-of-state students which closes the cost gap. A third said that as a District of Columbia resident, her family didn't have much choice. Another reason cited is that a university in another state might have a program, or have a stronger program, in a specific major than that available in-state. It was also pointed out that the out-of-state tuition at some schools is competitive with the in-state tuition of some other states. In other words, a student might attend another states's university and pay out-of-state tuition that is nearly the same that he would pay for in-state tuition in his home state. There are a number of sidetracks in the thread as posters discuss such things as the admission rates of various universities. Almost every thread in the college forum these days has to contend with various University of Virginia boosters and this thread was diverted by a poster claiming that students pursue out-of-state options because they can't get into UVA. In the view of this poster and those like him, the only sane option is UVA and choosing any other school is an indication that you are either foolish or lack the qualifications for UVA.