Everything currently wrong with my term paper.

Passive voice. This kills me. For years my teachers have harangued me for use of passive voice and I haven't got the faintest idea of what they're talking about. They mark me off for it without properly explaining what it is.

Apparently one small error of MLA format (a double space in one place that should be single) can get 1/4 of the Grammar grade cut.

Use of acedemic language. The expletive was part of a quote, and the quote was to show how stories are perceived differently based on words chosen to tell them.

Citations. I could easily find some person somewhere that's said everything I've said before and cite them to augment my sources, but if I add more citing then it ceases to be my paper and becomes a jigsaw puzzle of other people's words taken from context and made to seem like they're all talking about the same thing.

Theses. Yes... my thesis has an issue: when the professor said that "the thesis on a research paper is found at the conclusion of the introduction," I totally missed out on the "of the introduction" part of the statement. My paper's official conclusion is currently playing host to my thesis and my professor thinks it's non-existent because it's not on one of the first two pages of my paper.

My professor's issue with my friend's paper can also go to Mordor. I can assign this issue because it's because of me that she's got the issue, and I don't find it to be an issue at all. In her term paper, she discusses linguistic taboos. She uses profanity, but she uses it acedemically in terms of why these expletives are considered taboo. Our professor wants her to bleep out the words, or at least most of the words. It's not like she's randomly swearing for the heck of it, she uses curse words in terms of "And in England, 'X' means something entirely different than it does in the States." How lame is that? I want to go argue my friend's case to the professor to convince her to let the words stay in all of their naughty splendor. Besides... it's not like we can't use words like "transubstantiation" and "cannibalism" and "bubble" and "acetone" and "rhetoric". Words are words. Anybody who has an issue with a certain word can go become a Knight of Ni and hang out in Mordor.

So there.

Agreed, Fea, agreed. I can't stand all this MLA or APA or whatever they want us to do. I'd like to toss them into Mount Doom.

I'd like to add portfolio projects to the general homework hate pile.

And Fea just listed all the reasons why I failed argumentation. :rolleyes: Silly stylesheets.

Also, to Mordor with Alexander Pope's entire oeuvre. Endlessly dull.

I'm a little rusty, but I believe passive voice is when something is being done to the subject rather than subject doing an action.
Passive voice: "The bag was carried along by the little girl." (something done to the subject (the bag))
Active voice: "The little girl carried along the bag." (The subject (the little girl) doing something.)

Passive is acceptable in small doses just to change the tone when necessary, and to add a little variety, but it's not supposed to be used to excess. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Back on topic, to Mordor with PC. Merry Christmas.

PC?
Personal computers? Police Constables?

Political Correctness.

There is this thing at the moment about not calling the winter celebration Christmas because it is insulting to other religions. To me this seems the tiniest bit insane, but then I already assigned overzealous political correctness so I can ignore it :D

Oh Fea, I hear you!! but I think we should cast all essays to Mordor. Specially for us, science students. I know, I have to learn how to comunicate but.... do I REALLY have to write an essay on something I don't care about written by someone who is not really THAT relevant?

Also, I'll cast essay writers who try to sound really smart and use big words to say simple things. For example "the subconscious tendency of the main character in this segment of the plot..." to say "What Frodo really thinks...


Edit, posted at the same time than Kath

Politically Correct speech should skip the Mordor stage and be sent right to heck!! (see? I should have said hell yet I'm censoring myself because someone might find it offensive) The "Winter Celebration" is obviously Christmas... and hey, Jewish people have Hanukah usually around the same time of the year (and it really upsets me that Hanukah has become a Jewish Christmas) and I don't really think other religions would find it offensive. If anything, they'll enjoy the day off work!!

Or for example, a topic I always struggle with. A person with black skin is called an "African American" yet what if they are from the Middle East? or if they came from Europe? furthermore, what do you call an "african american" who does not live in America? African? so you'd have an European African woman or an Asiatic African man? I mean, I honestly don't know if being called "black" can be found offensive but at least, find a different word to replace it for!!

[/End_rant]

Teachers who memorise long words to sound intelligent, and use them repeatedly or out of context. E.g. "My notes today aren't very expletive."

Teachers who manage to bring their children into every single cursed topic. Sigh.

English teachers who do not understand the English language. The sentence was something like "During the Revolutionary War, some colonists wanted to break away from England, while others did not." My English teacher was trying to tell us that the dependent clause "while others did not" was also an adjective clause modifying the infinitive "to break" - no! Dependent clauses don't modify anything! And when I tried to explain this to her, she basically told me I was wrong and that she could understand why I was confused. :rolleyes:

This is known as "in your face" up here in the N.A. :D

Well now, that will be handy to have in Mordor. Check out ATM, coming soon to a BD Thread near you! :p

Not being able to turn down a good RPG. Ever. Even if you're missing all your fingers, or, worse yet, your creativity.

;)

Teachers who memorise long words to sound intelligent, and use them repeatedly or out of context. E.g. "My notes today aren't very expletive."
Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Also those who don't actually know the phrase they are trying to use. It's 'the be all and end all' not the 'end be all' - what kind of sense does that make! The explanation? I'm Northern therefore it's dialect. Oh no it isn't! My mother comes from the same place as you oh wise one and she knows how to say it!

Ahem, apologies. I had psychology today.

I love Christmas! But I don't like the radio coming out with Christmas music, and Christmas sales, on November 14. That's ridiculous. Off to Mordor with early Christmas for the sake of the almighty (name your currency here).

Argh! Passive English! The bane of my life. When I write up minutes I have to try and put them in as passive a voice as possible and when you've got to five or six pages it becomes nigh on impossible to sustain it. What really gets to me is that if I don't use it then someone higher up will 'have words' but there on our Intranet is a link to the Plain English Society (who we are meant to emulate in our writing), an organisation which deplores the use of passive English!

Ah well, while you're all out battling the hordes on Christmas Eve in Argos for the last packet of batteries and standing in a two hour queue in Tesco then I shall be sat at home, feet up, feasting on chocolate liquers and smoked salmon whilst enjoying a few festive films on the box, knowing I've got everything done early. :p

I'm sending to Mordor the newspapers that always exaggerate these stories about political correctness! The infamous tale of the local authority diktat that said Christmas Lights were to be known as Winter Lights turned out to be written by a junior official and was not actual policy. I bet the poor beggar thought he (or she, let's not be gender exclusive ;) ) was doing 'the right thing' after being sent on endless Equal Opps Awareness courses and then got a real drubbing off the boss! Sometimes you just can't win... :(

Au contraire! I'll have it all done a good week before. It's the crass commercialism again, deadening the spirit of the thing for the sake of the almighty (here) dollar.

My English teacher does that. I really don't like her. Hey, while we're on the topic of English and those who teach it, I'll send her right off to Mordor, along with all the irritating things she's done.

English teachers should not misspell things. Everyone makes mistakes, but those who nitpick about their students' spelling have absolutely no right to make any.

Additionally, they should not make things up, nor should they think that they can get away with making things up because we're ignorant teenagers. They should not claim that a character in Canterbury Tales is practicing necromancy, and then they should not try to make excuses when a certain student (*coughmecough*) asks them to show where it refers even remotely to necromancy and they cannot provide a satisfactory answer. How one gets necromancy from astrology I shall never know. (Oh, that was a fun day... I was the hero of the class for that one. :cool: )

Yes, she does this too. Once she meant to say "picturesque" but she said "picaresque" instead... and did either one of two things: 1) failed to notice, or 2) assumed, again wrongly, that we, the ignorant teenagers, would not know what the word means. Describing tranquil scenery as picaresque somehow creates a very unusual image in my mind. :rolleyes:

Plus, English teachers should not spend a good month discussing a novella, nor should they take up an entire class period discussing the symbolism of rotting hippo meat. (So Heart of Darkness can go off to Mordor, too.)

And lastly, all English teachers ought to read Tolkien so they understand that "worm" can be used in place of "dragon" if you really need the "w" sound for alliterative purposes, or just want to fit in with the style of Beowulf (and sound really awesome at the same time).

(Somehow my teacher reports that I have an "above average attitude" and gave me an A... I have no idea how that happened. :D )

I won't comment on Christmas as I've had a friend pretty much yell out loud on a lecture in which there are at least another hundred people "WHY DO YOU HATE CHRISTMAS?" and I actually had to explain to the very friendly girl sitting right in front of me that no, I don't HATE Christmas, I just hate chirstmas music and commercials as they start mid-november and by the time Christmas is really around, they became dull and repetitive!!!!!

Plus, Santa never brings me anything.... =(

But I'm not sending Santa to Mordor, this time I'll go off a tangent and send people who won't go to the back of the Bus when it starts to fill up. I mean, why do I have to be squished between the fat guy and the girl who glares at me as if I was actually trying to squish her for some weird sexual pleasure? (I mean, by literally pressing my body against hers having about three layers of clothing in between us trust me, I don't get the least bit exited)

Edit: posted at the same time as Encantaire.... and yes, I agree, I'm sure that Sauron reads Heart of Darkness every night before going to bed.... my that's a torture.

Hey, I'm supposed to have half of that read for tomorrow's class! Guess how many pages I've currently completed? Yeah... not half, that's for sure. But black hens, right 'Cai? ;)

I assign... um... when you cough up too much money for a peach smoothie from Starbucks and it wasn't even that good. I could have grabbed an Odwalla smoothie for less and been healthier and happier about it. :cool:

My Phonetics teacher does that and I actually love it. Anything not directly related to phonetics is a most welcome relief during those lectures...

To Mordor with my vocal coach (though just for a day, I suppose). Even after casting him several wounded looks and sniffing desperately, he still insisted I should be able to produce a clear high 'C', which is hard enough as it is and becomes quite impossible when you have such a bad cold you can only speak in a whisper.

Also, my pronunciation teacher who turns out to be quite an evil dictator. His teaching methods seem to be taken straight out of My Fair Lady, he looks at you as if he will smash your head in when you accidentally say laft instead of left or fail to voice your final d-s and called me 'silly' and said I sounded like 'a valley girl'. I'm not quite certain what a valley girl is, but I don't think I should feel flattered.

I seem to be sending a lot of people to Mordor lately. Perhaps I should try meditation. :rolleyes:

I'm not certain what it is either, but my dad has told me that I sound like one occasionally... usually if I'm annoyed about something. So I'm willing to assume that it's not a compliment.

I assign active and passive voices. Yes, I know I already did it once, but now I actually know they are and can conassign them in all of their illogical glory. Who in the world writes about a dead person like he's still up and doing things in the present tense? Of course Homer was worriedabout his repressed libido*. He isn't still worried about it! He's dead! Of course he doesn't "say" things, he "said" them a long time ago! Argh.

*my research paper deals with psychoanalytic theory and Homer's "potentially repressed libido" cameos in it. :D

Valley girls are, like, you know, this! That guy was, like, soo annoying!

Think stereotypical blonde California girls. (No offense to anyone from California.)

The "valley girl" is basically a caricature of the 80s San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, who like, totally, you know, talks like this, like every other word is like, like. And like, it's totally, like, awesome, to have blonde hair. ;)

This Wiki article sums it up pretty well.

Ah, I see I cross-posted with Firefoot.

Okay, now I feel not merely puzzled but actually insulted.

I'm not even a blonde. You know. Ugh, he's so annoying. :o

I know the feeling, having been teased about potentially turning into a valley girl when I lived there a few years ago. No offense intended to anyone from LA, of course. It's just the annoying sterotype that I'm talking about. In fact, let's send it to Mordor with all the other sterotypes. :D

I assign my grumpy attitude that comes with being tired at the end of the day. The person I was ranting about Monday was so nice to me yesterday that I feel guilty about assigning his past behavior to Mordor, even though it was completely exasperating at the time. Honestly, I almost started to think that he saw the post and knew I was talking about him, even though I know that's not particularly likely.

I suppose I should send my conscience to Mordor to join Fea's.

Perhaps I've just been spoiled by the fact that my first name is so unusual I've never met anyone else with it and only one other person in the world (my brother) has the same last name as me. (It's hyphenated, so even our parents don't have it.)


Back on topic, I conassign excessively hard math tests. I didn't even answer two of the questions and there were several ones I did answer that I know couldn't possibly have been right. I thought that was really bad, until I talked to someone else after class, and he said he didn't get to seven questions! That test was just was too hard and long to do in 48 minutes, especially with the very distracting smell of ham cooking throughout most of the period.

Significant figures in solving Chem problems (especially stoichiometry).

Seriously! Why can't they just be contented with two decimal places?

How about calculating the standard deviation for chemistry? I mean COME ON, IT'S A TITRATION NOT A STATS PROBLEM.

Also, to Mordor with the profs who will give you four answers in the multiple choice varying only on the sig. figs.... I mean, COME ON... my answer is 0.856 and the options are
0.85
8.5X10^-1
0.855
0.856

Is it not all the same????

Only the first two, so you know it's not them. And seeing as you got 8.56, that would have to be the answer.

Hmm, I have nothing I'm angry about... How about sending teachers' timekeeping to Mordor?

Ahhh The Guy Who Be Short!!! you need to review those sig figs!
-0.85 - two sig figs
-8.5x10-1 = .850 -- three sig figs
-0.855 perhaps I made a rounding error?
-0.856

Actually the second one is only two sig figs. 8.5*10^-1=0.85


I conassign getting yourself all worked up and angry at somebody, only to find when you go to yell at them that they haven't behaved nearly as badly as you thought they did. You have no way to release all that pent up energy and you feel more than slightly foolish for getting all worked up when the person didn't even really do anything wrong.


I also conassign the City of Madison, for never, ever plowing my street when it snows. We got somewhere between 2 and 3 inches last night, and as of right now (5 pm) the street has yet to be plowed. If they ever do get around to doing it (which isn't very likely), it won't make a difference, becaus the snow's already been driven over and packed down so much that the plow won't move it, so it all just turns into a two-inch layer of ice on the street for the whole winter. For the first 5 years or so that we lived in our house our street was always one of the first to be plowed because a member of the City Council lived in our house before we did and it took the city a long time to figure out that he'd moved. Once they finally realized that, they stopped plowing our street! (Suck ups!)

I conassign Hookbill the Goomba. I might need him in AT-- Er, I mean... because I don't like the way that "hook" and "goom" have the same "oo" sound, but it's pronounced entirely differently. There... *wipes brow* found an excuse.

I also assign my latest tragedy: I went to have a bowl of cereal and when I pulled my soymilk out of the fridge, guess what... yeah... it was frozen solid. So now I'm having a dry bowl of Apple Jacks. And that just ruins my night. :cool:

I'm almost possitive that 8.5*10^-1 indicates that you are certain up to the 5 and therefore you have a third decimal place of which you are not completely certain (namely the 0)

And two inches of snow? last winter, right before New Year we got two feet!!

Gotta love Canada =D

I'd like to see Wedgies and other assorted Creeping Underpants in Mordor.

Also, those dumb vinyl gloves we have to wear in my food service job, that have a cornstarch powder inside them that stays on your hands and everything you touch.

Also, the thought of both of those combined.

I live my life in constant paranoia, friends.

I (con)assign to Mordor any usage of numbers outside of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I swear, all these (cough) problems showing up on this thread must be some kind of evil code! :eek:

Did you say titration? Yes, I send that to Mordor as well. That's the third lab experiment we'll be doing and we've just finished the second, so maybe we won't have to do it anymore. :D

And if Farael, tgwbs, and Oromin don't stop that nonsense they're doing, they'll soon be following it to Mordor. :p

Dry coughs belong to Sauron and his minions.

You know what else I conassign to Mordor? The fact that this thread is longer than that other one over there, outside. *points somewhere to the N&N*

Now, now, it will always be easier to find things to complain about.

I assign disputes with long time friends that could possiblyend the friendship if either party gets overly emotional while trying to talk it out.

I also assign people who get overly emotional over the littlest things.

And, completely unrelated, I assign people who keep promising to call at a certain time, and then forget.

Why do I keep on being sent to Mordor? =S

On a personal note, I send dust to Mordor... yes, dust.... it is most definetly an invention of Sauron or maybe Morgoth himself.

I assign to Mordor people who assign people to Mordor simply because they want the people assigned to Mordor in the Assigned to Mordor thread. :D

No, the 5 is the digit that's uncertain. And the two inches of snow is only because winter's just beginning. Snow can be funny here. Some years we hardly get any, some years it does nothing but snow. It is really cold here, though. Just as cold as many parts of Canada, I'd warrant. After all, you're not that far north of us! :p

I conassign people who try to do things you really should be involved in behind your back in order to cheat you out of things that should be yours. Especially when they're members of your own family.

Well, its certainly cold in Alberta! I would like to send that all to Mordor because it is just way to cold. You just have to be outside for a minute and your thighs are frozen. Plus I look like the Michelin Man in my big wintercoat. That can all go to Mordor with the fast express.