Whoa

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Michael

Here’s why the misspelling of “whoa” bothers me so much more than other misspellings:

I understand that language evolves. Words spelled one way in the past are spelled another way today. Words spelled one way today will be spelled another way in the future. Language, spelling, grammar, syntax, and other linguistic aspects change over time, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean we should simply ignore the etymology of a word because some people misspell or misuse it. And, of course, we don’t. For instance, few people argue that we should accept “rediculous” as a valid spelling, despite it being a very common misspelling.

This argument changes, however, when we get to certain words. “Whoa” is the one I notice the most; in fact, when it comes to “whoa”, this argument gets thrown out the window completely. Then stabbed with the broken shards of glass for good measure. This particularly bothers me because its most common misspelling – “woah” – doesn’t make any sense. When people misspell “ridiculous” with an “e”, the word is still phonetically correct. The same basic idea goes for difficult-to-spell words. But with “woah”, the logical basis behind the misspelling simply isn’t there. It’s just bad spelling; the phonetics of the word change entirely: “woah” has two syllables and rhymes with Noah. But point out this misspelling and everyone loses their shit. Suddenly we’re suppose to accept it because it’s so common.

That sounds rediculous to me.

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Good job, Goodell

Posted on September 3, 2015 by Michael

Goodell

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Uganda adopts circumcision, finds science works

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Michael

This is no real surprise:

The growing uptake of medical male circumcision by men in the Rakai district of Uganda is leading to a substantial reduction in HIV incidence among men in one of the districts of the country worst affected by HIV, Xiangrong Kong of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health told the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2015) in Seattle, USA, on Thursday…

The study found that circumcision coverage in non-Muslim men increased from 9% during the Rakai circumcision study to 26% by 2011, four years after the trial concluded. Every 10% increase in circumcision coverage was associated with a 12% reduction in HIV incidence (0.88, 95% confidence interval 0.80-0.96).

HIV incidence reduction in women lags behind but is expected to catch up in coming years.

We’ve known for the better part of the past decade that circumcision literally saves lives by acting as a high efficacy vaccine that reduces female-to-male HIV transmission by 60% (which is better than the flu vaccine most years). That we’re seeing the positive results of implementing it as a policy isn’t surprising. Science just works.

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