For reading between the lines with greater comprehension
Dinner at an all-you-can-eat restaurant last week reminded me how fundamentally ambiguous the word can is. Its meaning falls between “want to” and “can endure without dying,” just as, conversely, the word need falls somewhere between “want” and “will die without.” Imagine an all-you-can-eat restaurant with a reverse bouncer, a big galoot who won’t let [...]
“Life is a game.” People interpret the parallel between life and games in two ways. The most common implies that like a game, life is no big deal, so you should just relax. This notion can be a comfort when you’re feeling stressed–stressed, in fact by the other way to take the statement: that in [...]
“Don’t say I don’t care. I do care.” Like many words, care means different kinds of things. It has its descriptive meaning–its denotation: Caring is a certain kind of behavior. But it also has its prescriptive meaning–its connotation: Caring is good. You should care. Being uncaring is bad. Combining denotation and connotation you get a [...]
“I can’t believe how closed-minded he is.” We might conclude that the person who says this is pretty open-minded. After all the more open-minded one is, the less one is able to believe how closed-minded other people can be, right? Not necessarily. For three reasons, it’s easier to detect others’ closed-mindedness than one’s own. First, [...]
“You’re wrong; it’s not the same thing at all.” You press a friend on an inconsistency, some double standard that has him talking out of both sides of his mouth. He denies it and you’re left to wonder who’s right, him or you? Well of course it depends. Maybe he is being consistent and his [...]
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