Jose Carillo's English Forum - Time Out From English Grammar

TIME OUT FROM ENGLISH GRAMMAR

This section features wide-ranging, thought-provoking articles in English on any subject under the sun. Its objective is to present new, mind-changing ideas as well as to show to serious students of English how the various tools of the language can be felicitously harnessed to report a momentous or life-changing finding or event, to espouse or oppose an idea, or to express a deeply felt view about the world around us.

The outstanding English-language expositions to be featured here will mostly be presented through links to the websites that carry them. To put a particular work in better context, links to critiques, biographical sketches, and various other material about the author and his or her works will usually be also provided.

I hope you’ll enjoy the new selections that will be presented here each week.

Joe Carillo

Invention of Gutenberg press is voted human history’s most important year…

This week we present two highly provocative readings. The first is about the results of an online poll conducted by the Economist magazine’s More Intelligent Life.com on this question: What was the most important year in human history? And the second is a look on how the electronic reader Kindle might finally get rid of the Achilles heel of the printed word—factual mistakes.

The More Intelligent Life.com poll is still open and you can still cast your vote if you would like to, but so far, the tally puts the invention of the Gutenberg press on top with 1,116 votes (35%), followed by the birth of Jesus Christ with 693 votes (22%) and by the discovery of the DNA with 284 votes (9%).

Take a look at this summary of the popular vote so far:

TOP TEN MOST IMPORTANT YEARS IN HUMAN HISTORY
(By popular vote so far)

1. 1439 - Gutenberg's press: 35% (1,116 votes)
2. 5BC - Jesus's birth: 22% (693 votes)
3. 1953 - DNA is discovered: 9% (284 votes)
4. 1945 - Nazism falls, bomb dropped, new world order: 8% (264 votes)
5. 1776 - United States is born: 6% (197 votes)
6. 2009 - Copenhagen climate summit: 3% (97 votes)
7. 1791 - Telegraph and Morse code are invented: 2% (59 votes)
8. 1989 - Berlin wall falls, World Wide Web rises: 2% (53 votes)
9. 1204 - Christianity split by Crusades: 1% (43 votes)
10. 1944 - Modern ideological warfare takes off: 1% (38 votes)

Read “Poll Results: Gutenberg Pips Jesus” now for the full story!

…and the Kindle bids fair to eliminate errors of the printed word for keeps

In an article also for More Intelligent Life.com, “Facts, Errors and the Kindle,” Anthony Gottlieb speculates that electronic reading gadgets like Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader could finally put an end to the problem of printed errors in newspapers, magazines, and books—errors that are potential sources of misinformation. In this new better world of instantaneous correction, he says, the digital reading matter in your hands could be readily updated as soon as a mistake is discovered by the publisher.

Read Anthony Gottlieb’s “Facts, Errors and the Kindle” now!

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