What are you reading?

[sophist]

Here is the tougher challenge.  There is a piece of ceramic next to the north arrow in this picture.  It is Chinese related.  Can you name the type of ceramic and infer a function.

I will imply, you can infer. 
It has the function of the pointing variety.
:-P

huh? are you suggesting he should have written "can you name the type of ceramic and IMPLY a function"?

i sure hope not.

nab used 'infer' correctly above.

You do know mr. Minor is an English teacher? 

[VDB]

Now, if you want to see someone going ga-ga over cosmic revelations and jumping to wild conclusions about what we know, don't know, should know, think we know and good lord we can change the world if we only knew, check this one out:

I read that earlier this year.  The logic can be a little flawed at times, but overall it was a good read.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the heck out of reading it. Some of the things he described were very exciting, though I can't trust that all of his anecdotes are entirely accurate. Consider, for example, Talbot's breathless, exhilarated accounting of the "mystic" Sai Baba's ability to cause ash and objects to materialize out of thin air. Yet Talbot makes no mention of criticisms of Sai Baba and evidence that appears to reveal him as a charlatan.

[cactusfan]

Here is the tougher challenge.  There is a piece of ceramic next to the north arrow in this picture.  It is Chinese related.  Can you name the type of ceramic and infer a function.

I will imply, you can infer. 
It has the function of the pointing variety.
:-P

huh? are you suggesting he should have written "can you name the type of ceramic and IMPLY a function"?

i sure hope not.

nab used 'infer' correctly above.

You do know mr. Minor is an English teacher?

and your point is what? that he should be fired?  :wink:

if i am looking at a mysterious object, trying to figure out what its purpose is, i can, using my clever brain, infer that purpose from, for example, its shape, its color, my knowledge of ancient implements, whatever. that is what the word means. that is what it is for.

if i then talk to YOU about it, but i don't want to say straight out what i inferred from my observations, because maybe i'm just difficult that way, i might refer to my inference in a roundabout way, thereby merely implying to you what i think that use is.

indeed, you might then say you had inferred my implied inference.

[sophist]

Here is the tougher challenge.  There is a piece of ceramic next to the north arrow in this picture.  It is Chinese related.  Can you name the type of ceramic and infer a function.

I will imply, you can infer. 
It has the function of the pointing variety.
:-P

huh? are you suggesting he should have written "can you name the type of ceramic and IMPLY a function"?

i sure hope not.

nab used 'infer' correctly above.

You do know mr. Minor is an English teacher?

and your point is what? that he should be fired?  :wink:

if i am looking at a mysterious object, trying to figure out what its purpose is, i can, using my clever brain, infer that purpose from, for example, its shape, its color, my knowledge of ancient implements, whatever. that is what the word means. that is what it is for.

if i then talk to YOU about it, but i don't want to say straight out what i inferred from my observations, because maybe i'm just difficult that way, i might refer to my inference in a roundabout way, thereby merely implying to you what i think that use is.

indeed, you might then say you had inferred my implied inference.

I would say both definitions work. 

One of the definitions of imply is

4 : to express indirectly <his silence implied consent>

So Mr. Minor was right in that we could imply the meaning of the artifacts.  I also think we could infer meaning from them too.  I don't see the two terms as completely mutually exclusive in this case. 

[cactusfan]

Here is the tougher challenge.  There is a piece of ceramic next to the north arrow in this picture.  It is Chinese related.  Can you name the type of ceramic and infer a function.

I will imply, you can infer. 
It has the function of the pointing variety.
:-P

huh? are you suggesting he should have written "can you name the type of ceramic and IMPLY a function"?

i sure hope not.

nab used 'infer' correctly above.

You do know mr. Minor is an English teacher?

and your point is what? that he should be fired?  :wink:

if i am looking at a mysterious object, trying to figure out what its purpose is, i can, using my clever brain, infer that purpose from, for example, its shape, its color, my knowledge of ancient implements, whatever. that is what the word means. that is what it is for.

if i then talk to YOU about it, but i don't want to say straight out what i inferred from my observations, because maybe i'm just difficult that way, i might refer to my inference in a roundabout way, thereby merely implying to you what i think that use is.

indeed, you might then say you had inferred my implied inference.

I would say both definitions work. 

One of the definitions of imply is

4 : to express indirectly <his silence implied consent>

So Mr. Minor was right in that we could imply the meaning of the artifacts.  I also think we could infer meaning from them too.  I don't see the two terms as completely mutually exclusive in this case.

well, no. that is incorrect. they are mutually exclusive terms because they mean different things. they are in no way interchangeable.

YOU cannot imply the meaning of an artifact, unless you are speaking to someone else about that artifact, and you manage through what you are saying to imply to them what the artifact 'means'.

the artifact may certainly include an implied meaning. which meaning you, if you are clever, may perhaps be able to infer from it.

but just you and the artifact? you cannot 'imply' anything from it. you may only infer.

[gainesvillegreen]

For those that may be interested, this is a very recent interview with Cormac McCarthy in the Wall Street Journal. Although these are becoming more common as of late (he was on Oprah for christ's sake!), he hasn't given all that many interviews over the sum total of his career. For those who are reading, or are about to read, The Road, it is especially relevant:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572.html

[Gol D. Roger]

Walden: Or, Life in the Woods - Henry David Thoreau
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

[Mr Minor]

Here is the tougher challenge.  There is a piece of ceramic next to the north arrow in this picture.  It is Chinese related.  Can you name the type of ceramic and infer a function.

I will imply, you can infer. 
It has the function of the pointing variety.
:-P

huh? are you suggesting he should have written "can you name the type of ceramic and IMPLY a function"?

i sure hope not.

nab used 'infer' correctly above.

You do know mr. Minor is an English teacher?

and your point is what? that he should be fired?  :wink:

if i am looking at a mysterious object, trying to figure out what its purpose is, i can, using my clever brain, infer that purpose from, for example, its shape, its color, my knowledge of ancient implements, whatever. that is what the word means. that is what it is for.

if i then talk to YOU about it, but i don't want to say straight out what i inferred from my observations, because maybe i'm just difficult that way, i might refer to my inference in a roundabout way, thereby merely implying to you what i think that use is.

indeed, you might then say you had inferred my implied inference.

I would say both definitions work. 

One of the definitions of imply is

4 : to express indirectly <his silence implied consent>

So Mr. Minor was right in that we could imply the meaning of the artifacts.  I also think we could infer meaning from them too.  I don't see the two terms as completely mutually exclusive in this case.

well, no. that is incorrect. they are mutually exclusive terms because they mean different things. they are in no way interchangeable.

YOU cannot imply the meaning of an artifact, unless you are speaking to someone else about that artifact, and you manage through what you are saying to imply to them what the artifact 'means'.

the artifact may certainly include an implied meaning. which meaning you, if you are clever, may perhaps be able to infer from it.

but just you and the artifact? you cannot 'imply' anything from it. you may only infer.

I am glad my comment was the source of such an intriguing debate.  My thought was nab wanted us to imply meaning for the rest of us to discuss. 
The idea of imply vs. infer is one cannot infer with a comment, but imply.  The person hearing the comment would then infer it's meaning.  Hence, I implied what I thought it was and you could all infer the meaning of implication in your own minds.

But I digress, as discussion of the differences in the English language is not one I enjoy to have over the internet.

[phuzzyfish12]

just borrowed The Lost Symbol from the buddy lets see how it really is.

Just picked this up also, hope I'm not disappointed.

me too, altho the person i borrowed it from said it took awhile to get into.  :|

This book took me FOREVER to get into (90 pages in), the middle of the book was great though....I can't however get through the last 40 pages of the book, I don't even think I'm gonna read them.

[sprobeck]

The Illustrated
Jane Eyre

[gainesvillegreen]

Still on the Nat Turner at the moment, but can hopefully finish up by 12/1 so I can start this trilogy:

Book Description:

Your Face Tomorrow, Javier Marías's daring novel in three parts culminates triumphantly in this much-anticipated final volume. Poison, Shadow, and Farewell, with its heightened tensions between meditations and noir narrative, with its wit and and ever deeper forays into the mysteries of consciousness, brings to a stunning finale Marías's three-part Your Face Tomorrow. Already this novel has been acclaimed "exquisite" (Publishers Weekly), "gorgeous" (Kirkus), and "outstanding: another work of urgent originality" (London Independent). Poison, Shadow, and Farewell takes our hero Jaime Deza—hired by MI6 as a person of extraordinarily sophisticated powers of perception—back to Madrid to both spy on and try to protect his own family, and into new depths of love and loss, with a fluency on the subject of death that could make a stone weep. .

About the author:

Javier Marías is an award-winning Spanish novelist. He is also a translator and columnist, as well as the current king of Redonda. He was born in Madrid in 1951 and published his first novel at the age of nineteen. He has held academic posts in Spain, the US (he was a visiting professor at Wellesley College) and Britain, as a lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University. He has been translated into 34 languages, and more than six million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. In 1997 he won the Nelly Sachs Award; the Comunidad de Madrid award in 1998; in 2000 the Grinzane Cavour Award, the Alberto Moravia Prize, and the Dublin IMPAC Award. He also won the Spanish National Translation Award in 1979 for his translation of Tristram Shandy in 1979. He was a professor at Oxford University and the Complutense of Madrid. He currently lives in Madrid.

[gainesvillegreen]

Also, for the Bolano-philes of the paug, here are excerpts of an interview he gave before his death:

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/stray-questions-for-roberto-bolano/

[sprobeck]

Just finished She Devil in The Mirror. Great read! Thanks for the suggestion!! Now I'm about to start The Skating Rink by Bolano.

[gainesvillegreen]

That's great Sprobeck - his Senselessness is even better imo.

I have The Skating Rink at home on the TBR pile. I think other than that one and By Night In Chile, I've read everything (sans poetry) they've published of Bolano's. Let me kno what you think of TSR.

[sprobeck]

That's great Sprobeck - his Senselessness is even better imo.

I have The Skating Rink at home on the TBR pile. I think other than that one and By Night In Chile, I've read everything (sans poetry) they've published of Bolano's. Let me kno what you think of TSR.

I'm enjoying it so far Gainsville. Story told by three different people.  Cool stuff.  That interview was interesting too, thanks!