Danny ChaiHonestly, I don’t have time for these pages, and that’s the truth. It’s just I read Dave and Henry’s pages and I get so riled up because they are just so wrong wrong wrong that I have to respond. Ack. It’s frustrating. So I just can’t help myself.
Anyway, yesterday, Andrew, Henry and Eddie all updated their pages. Don’t read Andrew’s however. It’s disturbing.
So the title of mymind today is basically Why Henry Is Wrong. This may take a while.
Henry is both right and wrong about grammar. Right that correct grammar is more “efficient” in communication, to a certain degree. But pretty much wrong about everything else. By the way, here’s what annoys me about Henry’s pages. For such a stickler for grammar, he’s so sloppy with spelling it drives me crazy. It wouldn’t if I knew that he wrote Dave Hong/dchai style, which is just type whatever and then never ever go back and fix mistakes. See that’s my philosophy. That way it gives a snapshot of my thoughts at that moment. It’s not necessarily coherent, or logical, or consistent, but is my true thought process. Anyway, Henry edits his, I think, so why don’t you use a freaking spell check? His most common mistake is switching the double letters in words. For example, most recently, he wrote exxagerated. Ack. So ugly. Now that is frustrating.
OK, here’s how he is wrong. First, I actually tried to generate different parse trees for his first example sentence, and I’m sorry, there is no more ambiguity than with the second sentence. The interesting thing too is that it doesn’t even take longer to understand it; ie, you will understand the meaning of both sentences at the same time. Because you don’t need to do a second run through. So it’s a bad example. Not that his main point is wrong, but his example is faulty. At least purely syntactically. He’ll need to explicitly state the ambiguity otherwise, but I can’t find it.
The second thing is that his main point is also wrong. Well not wrong, just, you know, a different philosophy than mine. Because his philosophy regarding writing I believe is most efficient communication or you know, ou get the idea, and proper grammar facilitates this best. Because it minimizes the need for contextual cues. And goody for him. But to me context is everything, because my philosophy is that context is huge in communicating. Like, I write the way I write because it’s not just the ideas expressed here that tells about me, but how I express them that tells about me. Thus I could choose to use aloof, proper language, or whatever, for the same ideas, but you would learn different things about me. It’s intentional. You know, a gestalt like thing, and I want the way my words go together, not just the ideas contained therein, to say something about me, and it does.
My point is, that what I write being easily comprehendable is you know, important but not my primary goal. My primary goal is to convey who I am, and the choice of language is important in that, even if it may obscure the understanding a bit. But you know, that’s what literature is all about. You don’t just want straightforward accounts, you want different ways to convey feeling, like poetry, and song, and Faulkner, and whatever. That’s why I don’t really care about grammar too much and you know, it doesn’t bother me. That’s the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.
Next thing is Henry is wrong about me. Actually, he’s right about me, and why my thoughts on church are kind of wrong. I mean, the individual mindedness of it all. That’s true. And that’s also why I don’t really (I mean really) complain about things and I’m cool with whatever happens. But he based his correct conclusion on certain incorrect assumptions, and the pride in me must correct those assumptions.
First of all, Henry doesn’t know the leadership of KCPC, and I promise you, I’m not saying I totally know them well, but I hear comments and get glimpses of the motivation behind their decision making processes, and promise you, they honestly haven’t thought about a lot of the things I mentioned. I shouldn’t write them all off, but a good portion. You really need to see the behind the scenes stuff to understand. Which is why I feel, my opinion, that my beliefs on this issue are valid ones.
Second thing I should clarify is that my beliefs regarding the house church don’t just apply to KCPC YAG but every church in general, and this has come from a lot of thought and examination of different churches. OK, that’s a lie. A lot of it comes from my dad, but it’s an informed view, and so I think it’s the best system. Thus, I think it’s good for every church in general, which includes KCPC. Which is also why I believe it would be optimal for KCPC, regardless of what the elders think, because I believe it is the optimal system, period, in every circumstance. Therefore, my myopia regarding KCPC is irrelevant, because it’s objectively the best system for every church.
Ooh, I hate this right now because Henry makes me so huffy. I find that I take on the personality of the thought page I’ve just read. So Dave makes me overly analytical and misguided, Andrew makes me woozy, and Henry makes me huffy. Ack.
You know, I shouldn’t defend myself so much. Why am I so defensive? Gosh, that sucks. Oh well. No more thought pages until after CS 143 and EE282. Unless someone riles me up again.