Per the Treehugger:
After looking at data from both Google and NASA satellite data, a student from Purdue University found evidence of North Korea logging in the Mount Paektu Biosphere Reserve, a 360,000 acre forest protected as a United Nations forest preserve.
and you thought North Korea could not shoot itself in the back.
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A forest protected by the United Nations?
I suppose the Koreans were all trembly when they began chopping away.
Don’t look at the “it’s” or the “ridance” of the previous post. Hey, I feel like Brendon now.
#4: I love the image of the UN-protected forest. I can just see Ranger Hans Brix threatening those loggers with a stern letter.
A stern letter! I’m chortling.
Not bad, Wedge. Not bad at all.
If they can blow up a naval ship and kill too many sailors with little more than a perhaps-slap-on the wrist, what’s a forest that can be exploited for some more cognac and another set of armoured railroad cars?
We all make typographical mistakes; I know I do, too. That said, three mistakes in only eleven words is pretty bad. There’s even a punctuation error at the beginning of the final sentence. That makes four mistakes in only twenty-three words of original text! Tsk, tsk, tsk.
R. Elgin,
I thought I was being good by not pointing out the obvious ones (I could have been first with them) but I see the mistake mavens are out in force. Although my special peeve is its/it’s, let me just say that I appreciate the news about North Korean lumber operations.
R. Elgin,
I could care less about the mistakes – I am just glad you posted the link.
#10 Robert: You know he made those mistakes just to make you feel better.
I appreciate his kindness….
Funny how people now say that they ‘could care less’ – logically, it means that they do care, when, in fact, they intend to mean that they don’t. Still, it seems to be increasing in common use over ‘couldn’t care less’.
The same could be said — and has been said, to me by my mother the pedant — about the use of “don’t got no” (and its hillbilly cousin “ain’t got no”). Luckily, language
ain’tisn’t algebra.A couple of questions before anyone gets his panties in too much of a twist:
1. When did the UN – UNESCO, at that – get the authority to usurp a sovereign government’s control of its own land, or did the NORKS pass some kind on enabling legislation (as the ROK has done in some similar situations) to legitimize such designation?
2. Doesn’t biosphere designation, unlike world heritage designation, permit sustainable development? (not that I’d be inclined to assume that’s what’s going on).
gbnhj: You will be happy to know that in Australia (and, presumably, the UK as well) we still say “couldn’t care less.”
#15: two Sperwers in that comment. Oh, it’s you!
Well, I don’t know how much luck plays a part in all this, or how happy I might be. I simply note that a change in expression seems to be taking place. North Americans used to say that they ‘couldn’t care less’ about something, but now say that they ‘could’ with greater regularity.
Still, that’s different from ‘ain’t got no’ and ‘don’t got no’. Aside from the double negatives contained in each, using got to express having (as opposed to receiving) possession of something is a grammar error all its own. But there’s no grammar error, per se, contained in ‘could care less’, merely one of logic, for the expression is at odds with the speaker’s true feeling.
Whose blog is this?
Oh, and shame on you N. Korea for chopping down trees.
A similar 180° shift in meaning has occurred with “lucked out”, which used to mean “had bad luck”, i.e. one’s luck ran out. Now the expression is used to mean one has been lucky.
“A similar 180° shift in meaning has occurred with “lucked out”, which used to mean “had bad luck”, i.e. one’s luck ran out. Now the expression is used to mean one has been lucky.”
–rmeurant
That’s a shame that one of the meanings seems to be losing favor. I find Janus words and terms appealing. Recently, someone sent me a mail with the statement:
“I’m caught up in grading.”
At first, I couldn’t tell whether he was busy with grading or had already finished.
Interestingly, Wikitionary seems to be suggesting that the out-of-luck meaning may be in use in Britain.
Elgin
One more time: Its not it’s
And while I commend you on your correction of “illegal,” “rustling” means “to steal,” which is by definition against the law. Thus, in this instance, “illegal” is redundant and should be erased forthwith.
Once again, you’re welcome.
Hmm, the final error is a capitalization error, not a punctuation error as I had remarked previously. I’m still casting a stone, though!
For the record: This is a blog, not a democratic country. If you post off-topic, inflammatory nonsense that detracts from the subject at hand, it goes.
If you don’t like it, go elsewhere.
Great, just keep axing the comments. Just show everyone how incredibly unable you are to handle criticism, while your “peers” take that with their chins up (Robert, Wangkon, etc.).
So let me get this straight… the UN basically said “We would rather you not do stuff in your own country”?
Shame on North Korea to have the audacity to ignore illegitimate commands by a wannabe world government.
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