mustachecrossing

Really beautiful, but I'd have a hard time believing these haven't been photoshopped

A great essay, I remember using it a few years back in a paper I was writing on this topic. I remember getting that feeling of "thank God, I'm not the only one that thinks this."

This part is good:
"Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

It's absurd that academia prefers the "modern English" version. To quote him again, "It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious."

People associate larger words with greater intelligence, when larger words usually just mean less concise ideas and breaking down any flow writing might have. The six rules at the end are essential. I wish more people really thought this through, especially when translating to English.

is this a joke?