Wednesday 7 October 2015

Rule of the Grammar Queens

There's this company.....Grammarly....which has a unique business angle.  They say or claim that they (as a private company) are the world's authority and leading automated proofreader.

In essence, they are a grammar-checker company, and someone (hard to imagine it not being English literature freaks or CEO).....to check the grammar of folks across the spectrum.

So, they say they've covered the 19 folks running for President and found that enthusiasts for Republicans make more grammatical screw-ups than enthusiasts for Democrats. Republican enthusiasts also use fewer unique words.....a key method that tells stories over your 'intelligence'.  And finally, there is this claim that Trump enthusiasts are the worst of the worst on grammar usage.

It's hard to imagine that 'grammar queens' have turned a business idea like this into something that actually pays a profit.

The idea that someone walks around and notes grammar usage of folks?  I've been around a number of folks who carried a listing of a thousand words to always throw into evaluations.....sparking them a bit and making a guy look 'special'.  After a while, I came to realize.....like a lot of Air Force people....that the words on an evaluation were pretty bogus and made the guy look often fabricated or phony.

What Grammar issues for the Hillary folks?  Well....they didn't say.  It might have been interesting to hear what the Obama grammar situation is for his folks, or if Al Gore enthusiasts were 'rocket-scientists'.   But they left that out of the whole story.

I'm guessing if you brought up this type of measurement with George Washington.....he probably would have started laughing, and noted the bulk of American residents were barely able to read and you'd best not worrying them over their position in life or their political status, or their usage of pseudo verbiage to attract attention.

Robbery in the Neighborhood

We had an unusual robbery in my region (here in Germany) over the weekend.  A grocery got robbed.....after hours.

If you've never been to Germany.....most buildings have a tile roof....not just houses, but most stores and regular buildings.  Tile roofs are an odd factor in construction.

Years ago....for twenty-odd minutes one afternoon....I stood and watched this crew put up a tile roof.  One guy on the ground would pile tiles on an escalator-like device and it'd go up to the roof and deliver the loose tiles to two big strong and husky guys.  The two guys would walk across the roof and simply pop the ceramic tiles into place.  No nails.  No glue.  No tar.  Just popping them onto a wood plank, and putting another tile on top of that.  A regular roof deal probably wouldn't take more than six hours for two guys to throw up into place.

So, we have this grocery in the nearby town.....four miles away....with a tile roof.

The break-in guy figured out that once you get on a roof.....you just slide your hand under a tile, and you can remove it.  Once he removes a dozen tiles and there's this opening. He slides in....gets past the false ceiling, and he can rob the place easily.

Cops won't say how much, but you can figure that he carried out booze, smokes and maybe some cash.

Here's the thing.....there's almost no way for the grocery guys to figure some protection against another robbery like this.  You could throw up sensors......but for a store like this?  You'd have to figure $20,000 spent on the sensors.  A security guard?  Well....for seven nights a week.....that's a cost item.  Leave a dog in the place?  Sanitation requirements would fall into play.

It'll be curious if this gets repeated several times and it's a gang with one smart roofer in the mix.