[LINK] On what ship are we?
post by polymathwannabe · 2014-01-02T01:35:44.290Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 10 commentshttp://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2014/01/06/140106taco_talk_gopnik
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comment by Mestroyer · 2014-01-02T02:19:36.177Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
When someone says, “Ram the iceberg! We can’t afford to let it make us look weak,” it’s time to run for the deck.
That's not what happened on the Titanic.
They tried to steer aside as soon as they saw the iceberg, which caused a glancing collision along the side of the ship, which left a series of holes in 5 of its separate watertight compartments (it was designed to survive a breach of 4).
Replies from: D_Alex↑ comment by D_Alex · 2014-01-02T03:02:47.006Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That's not what happened on the Titanic.
I don't think the article is saying that... what they are saying is that the way WW1 happened was akin to someone saying "Ram the iceberg..." etc, i.e. for clearly stupid reasons.
Replies from: Eugine_Nier↑ comment by Eugine_Nier · 2014-01-02T22:34:03.187Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Then it's a bad analogy, it makes to sense to intimidate icebergs, but other countries can be.
comment by [deleted] · 2014-01-02T02:04:53.109Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What ship are we on? Argh.
Replies from: Creutzer, polymathwannabe, Vulture↑ comment by Creutzer · 2014-01-02T11:23:07.379Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Down-voted for being a hopelessly unclear statement. What exactly are you saying? That the title should read "what ship are we on", or the opposite (in which case the title may have been edited)? In the first case, you're probably right, in the second case, you're very wrong:
Preposition stranding is the normal way of forming wh-question and relative clauses in English; in fact, failure to strand the preposition has been found to sometimes even lead to significantly reduced acceptability of sentences. (reference)
↑ comment by polymathwannabe · 2014-01-02T05:35:01.640Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Normally I don't have any problems with dangling prepositions (it's one of the features I love the most about English), but I wasn't sure about that sentence when I wrote it. May a (minimal) slack be cut to me if we consider it's not my first language?