I found this following a link from RationalWiki’s article on Hovind. We’d like to create an article on the Hovind Scale – well, I mean I’d like to copy & paste your article in to RW. Obviously the article would mention the history of the scale and the work done by you and the other contributors and link back. Would that be OK?

Cheers.

PS. Yes I am lazy but I would never use someone else’s work uncredited.

How is an “Abstinence Only” program anti-science?

Every single in-depth and scientific study shows it to be 100% accurate. There has only been one single exception in all history.

Well, it took me about 15 months, but I finally got the joke. Sorry to be so thick, Timotheus!

The problem with your reasoning is that Korean, like Japanese, has different politeness levels.

Did you read my post? A central part of my argument is not only that Japanese does have politeness levels, but that English does as well. I claim that, as politeness levels in Japanese are more explicitly defined than in English, Japanese speakers do not require as elaborate profanity as English speakers to form bonds of familiarity.

You are also incorrect – Japanese has many swear words but they aren’t generally published or substituted in English-based movies.

Further evidence that you did not actually read my argument. I mentioned quite clearly that Japanese does have swear words, but that these are milder than those in English.

For example, shouting　このやろう！ (“kono yarou”) to a Japanese person may be as offensive as “You dirty mother trucker” (use your imagination) to an English speaker, despite the fact that the former means little more than “You jerk!”

Example with three verbs: I *like* to *sit* at the bar and *eat* sushi is “Baa de suwatte, o-sushi wo taberu koto ga suki desu.” Suwatte is the “te form” which is acting like a gerund here, and in another context is used as an informal command; taberu is the casual or dictionary form of the verb to eat; and desu is the polite copula that sets the tone of the sentence as mildly formal.

They always say it’s safe to stick with polite forms first, but the best way to develop natural Japanese is to carefully observe the specific social contexts in which polite (with out-group or to a “superior”) and casual (with in-group or to an “inferior”) speech are each used.