Am I the only person who finds that headline grammatically odd?
Am I the only person who finds that headline grammatically odd?
Nope. I think I see why, too.
The letters for the word "owl" are found, in order, in the word "knowingly". Also, the word "faulty" contains the letters "faul" which scans like "fowl", or bird; and the last three letters of the word "fowl" are "owl".
It looked odd to me, but I didn't analyze it until you pointed it out.
It's what I call a "hmm...onym". I looks weird but you don't know why at first.
And wouldn't you like to spend a couple of weeks with Gerry Verner?
Previously, a government witness and leading expert on the California spotted owl, Gerry Verner, testified the study was sound. "I came away with the strong impression that it was, in fact, within my gestalt notion of what suitable nesting habitat is after having walked through dozens of places like this throughout the Sierra Nevada and in other parts of the owl's distribution throughout the West," Mr. Verner said.
As he drove through the forest, Mr. Verner said, "I had the feeling I was never outside a stone's throw of suitable foraging habitat at least."
"I said to a couple of fellows there, 'If there's not a pair of spotted owls occupying this site, I'll spring for a Chateaubriand for two.' I was that convinced that there's a pair of owls in there that has not, at this point, been detected yet," Mr. Verner said.
Wasn't "Gestalt Notion" a band from the 60's? I know "I've got a feeling" is a Beatles song.
Am I the only person who finds that headline grammatically odd?
Owl Stats Cooked?
No. The word "knowingly" brings human motives into what would have otherwise been a simple statement of fact.
Adding the word "knowingly" means either that someone knew the data was faulty yet allowed it to be published anyway, or falsified the data for some reason, and now has been discovered. It could also mean that a third party did the discovering. It's impossible to tell whether it was an honest mistake or a conspiracy of some kind from the headline.
A proper headline would have read:
Don't feel bad, such headlines are typical of the dumbed-down "journalists" who "write" for newspapers these days. Their college degrees are equivalent to what people of my generation (I'm 55) learned in grade school, as I point out every day to the 20-nothing graduates I work with, who don't know the speed of light, how many sqare inches are in a square foot, whether the Korean War was before or after WWII, or which is bigger, 1/3 or 1/4.
Don't get me started...