From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.physics.relativity,alt.sci.physics.new-theories
Subject: Re: NASA ... Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Selections
Date: 10 Sep 1999 18:54:44 GMT

In <37D8E9D6.173818D5@hotmail.com> Chuck Stewart <zapkitty@hotmail.com>
writes:

>> So I say again take you and your IQ of
>> 60-65 you autistic inbread mule and leave.
>
>Should say "take yourself and your IQ of 60-65, you autistic
>inbred mule, and leave."
>
>Since mules are sterile how can one be inbred?

  Can we all get in on this pedantic pissing contest?

   Female mules, actually, are not always sterile.  But they pass on
only horse genes, so inbreeding using mules is indeed more difficult,
and you need horses (stallions) all along the way to participate.


>> An added note get a spellchecker for your 386 computer "pwoer" is
>>spelled POWER I again bring you back to your IQ.
>
>Two two run-on sentences for the price of one.
>And the last fragment makes little sense...
>Should start with "As an added note...".
>
>> I hope the termonology in this letter doesn't escape you if it does
>> get your dog to read it.
>
>Terminology.
>Please, just one semi-colon... just one...


   I would think that would better be a period, or a dash.  A semicolon
is best used to join phrases in balance or oposition.  I like
semicolons; my editors all hate them.  I think modern editors think
many punctuation marks were invented by Neanderthals in the olden days,
and have now become obsolete. Semicolon among them.  The same goes for
dashes, by the way.  If you put them in a manuscript, they will not
survive a modern edit.  And yet, dashes also have a place in writing--
or, rather, they do if you know what you are doing.  The problem is
that your modern editor is likely to be some new grad from some liberal
arts program, who was raised on TV, Nintendo, and Gloria Steinem.  The
long traditions of writen English will be as foreign to him/her/it as a
game of Scrabble.