The Glade 4.0

I don't think Holloway was killed, although she may be dead by now. I think she was taken and sold as a sex slave.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's as probable as any other alternative we can produce through speculation.

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Does anyone here lend any credibility to the hidden video coverage of him riding with a man who posed as his friend to coax the detail out of him?

As far as I can tell, Joran believed him a friend and told him all the details of what actually happened with Natalee.

Only after Joran found out his "friend" taped the candid confession and outted it to the media, did he decide that he was merely posturing for his friend and making up a story that he wanted to hear.

To me, Joran was bragging to a friend about the actual details. It was all true as far as I am concerned. Natalee seized (likely alcohol related) and Joran decided to dispose of the evidence at sea instead of seeking medical help.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

No credibility whatsoever. Joran seems to be a habitual liar, and I more believe the posturing story than the unproven 'details' he described to his 'friend'.

The problem Foamy, is that the idiot has told so many different stories to so many different people that it is hard to believe any one of them over any of the others. Odds are he hasn't told anyone the truth. None of the stories have come bundled with any evidence/proof to back any one of them up.

As I said, personally, I believe he killed Natalee and got away with it, so far. I don't know that to be a fact.

All evidence and behavior, including his now recanted confession, points to him as the most likely person to have committed the killing in Peru. For this one I believe he will finally do real time.

He really needs to win a Darwin Award sometime along here. He seems to have more than his share of luck dice.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I'm not speculating.. well, not in the sense of taking a wild-ass guess. I'm making an educated guess.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Even educated guesses are speculation.

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Of a sort. Specualtion carries connotations of wild-ass-guess, though, with no understanding of the relative probabilities.

I think, given Holloway's matching of a highly desireable physical appearance in sex trafficking circles and the prevalence of such things in.. well, really the entire world when you get down to it, that is the single most likely possibility. That is not to say it is more likely than all others put together, however.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Adds a new twist to the investigative reports about his being involved in recruiting asian women for brothels in the Netherlands (I believe I am recalling it correctly)

No it doesn't.

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Yes it does.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Main Entry: spec·u·late
Pronunciation: \ˈspe-kyə-ˌlāt\
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): spec·u·lat·ed; spec·u·lat·ing
Etymology: Latin speculatus, past participle of speculari to spy out, examine, from specula lookout post, from specere to look, look at — more at spy
Date: 1599

intransitive verb 1 a : to meditate on or ponder a subject : reflect b : to review something idly or casually and often inconclusively
2 : to assume a business risk in hope of gain; especially : to buy or sell in expectation of profiting from market fluctuations

transitive verb 1 : to take to be true on the basis of insufficient evidence : theorize
2 : to be curious or doubtful about : wonder <speculates whether it will rain all vacation>
synonyms see think
— spec·u·la·tor \-ˌlā-tər\ noun

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I'm aware of the definition - a connotation is not a strict definition.


connotation



Have you any other nitpicks?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That is complete nonsense. If they don't have anything to report, then they clearly need to speculate.

The initial reporting for the Ft. Hood incident was disgusting.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Yes. You're still wrong. Speculation carries with it neither connotations nor denotations of unfounded supposition by itself. I am sure that you think it does, I am not trying to tell you what you think. I am merely informing you that what you think is incorrect. Now, perhaps you don't care. That's fine, but keep it to yourself.

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No, I'm not wrong. It does indeed carry such connotations. The only thing you're informing me of is that you think your personal opinion is fact, you have no idea what you're talking about, and you like to start pointless arguments over nothing.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's not nothing, it's semantics. It does not surprise me that you hold this in contempt, however. You've seen fit to engage in source derogation of a dictionary entry, which is simply phenomenal. As to the rest, may I remind you that I am the party pointing to canonical usage, and you are the party relying solely on personal usage. As a side note, are you aware that lexical definitions strive for comprehensive coverage?

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Yes, it's phenomenal that when someone suggests that the presentation of the denotative meaning of a word would preclude the truth of a connotative meaning. Is it also simply phenomenal that I believe the word "speculation" can carry connotations that imply a less than thoughtful analysis? I find it simply phenomenal that you're telling him that a word doesn't carry a connotation that it obviously carries for him. Think about that for a second.

You don't get to define what connotations a word carries for someone else.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

You know, you're just amazing.

1. Yes, arguments about semantics are pretty much arguments about nothing unless they directly affect some other more important point. In this case, however,

2. Your level of dishonesty is what's phenomenal. I said that the word "speculate" has a certain connotation. You claimed it didn't, based on it's dictionary definition. I pointed out that "connotations" are not about a word's strict definition. You come back and claim (twice) that it doesn't have those connotations based on the dictionary definition, thereby totally ignoring the dictionary definition of the word "connotation yourself!

3. Yes, any idiot can see that you're talking about "canonical" (dictionary) useage. No one ever claimed you were incorrect about the dictionary definition.

So yes, it's a pointless argument about nothing, and it apparently serves no purpose except maybe you flamebaiting or trolling.

As Vindicarre pointed out, you don't get to decide what connotations a word carries for anyone else. More to the point, it really makes you look foolish to complain someone is engaging in "source derogation" while totally ignoring the definition of the word "connotation" yourself.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So let me see if I have this correct. Your arguments boil down to that because you have assigned a meaning to a word only in a locally significant fashion, that meaning is valid in a global sense? In that case, let me say this: Construction bifurcation remedial polemy bunnyhop ice cream. You know what I'm talking about.

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So, let me see if I have this correct. Becuase you've decided that a word does not have a particular connotation (a perfectly valid and understood concept) it therefore necessarily doesn't have it to anyone else?

Of course, you didn't even know what a connotation was until I pointed it out and still don't seem to grasp the concept.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

1) It is more broad than Diamondeye assigning meaning to a word that you don't agree with. A quick search of "mere speculation" will disabuse you of any idea that it's just DE who believes the word speculation carries a negative connotation.
2) Your "illustration" misses the mark in that DE addressed the connotation he believes the word carries, your infantile attempt at creating a parallel only illustrates your lack of good graces.
3) DE didn't try to assert anything about a "global sense" he explained what he believed the connotation to be. It was simple and concise.
4) For some reason you decided that you needed to wave your e-peen around and try to prove your intellectual capacity. You failed.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

You are asserting it to be a common and standard connotation. I am unsure how you came to seize upon the notion that a lexical definition is exclusive of connotation, which is why I have been ignoring that portion of your argument. You have previously shown at least a rudimentary ability to use a dictionary. Perhaps you should employ that to a further extent and see if you can't find evidence that dictionary entries are highly inclusive of common usage.

Since you seem to have jumped in without sufficient grounding in the preliminaries, here is what DE claimed.

Here is my claim.

Now to respond to your points:
1. If you will note you were required to modify "speculation" to achieve the meaning you were looking for. It is true that "mere speculation" is commonly used as a dismissal or negation. I suspect that's because saying such things as "you can't prove that" or "you don't have any evidence" actually reinforces suspicions, whereas saying "that's mere speculation" is seen as placing the onus back upon the speculator. However, "mere speculation" != "speculation".
2. You are welcome to your opinion.
3. I refer you back to the refresher quotes, wherein DE does not say anything in the nature of "To me", "In my estimation", "I believe", nor any other words or phrases restricting the scope of his assertion.
4. I wouldn't decry that too loudly, it's all anyone does in heck/hellfire. I notice you to be a regular participant.

Now, looking back over things, it does jump out at me that DE said "specualtion". I am willing to concede that specualtion carries connotations of wild postulating. I was unaware that DE is actually Little Richard, just making up words when he doesn't have one that fits, but anything is possible on the Internet.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

First of all, I said nothing about it being "common" or "standard"; those are purely your assumptions. Second, no one said that dictionary definitions are exclusive of connotations; they sometimes include them depending on the particular word or dictionary but as a general rule they do not because a deictionary definition is a denotational one. If they included all connotational meanings, there would be no need for the concept of connotation in the first place.

Third, if you want to find evidence of something, YOU need to find it. I don't need to go find evidence of anything for you. Obviously dictionary definitions include "common usage", but common useage is not the same thing as connotation. You don't use a word in a sentence based solely on its connotation; the connotation is what the word implies in addition to its strict useage in whatever sentence you are creating.

Connotation is an essentially subjective, unscientific concept. The fact that you think I should have stated it was "in my estimation" or something like that indicates you still fail to grasp the concept. There is no test by which we can determine what connotation any word does or does not carry; it's based simply on our individual observations of how others react to the word. That would explain your strawman about "common" or "standard; it appears to be outside your reasoning capabilities to understand that ephemeral concepts might exist. Indeed, this concept is so foriegn to you that you've decided to nitpick "mere speculation" versus "speculation". How, precisely, you know that these concepts are different is somthing I would be most entertained to hear.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The linguist in me strongly disagrees, perhaps vehemently denies, these statements. Indeed, were connotations not shared at some broader level than individual, we would have no slang.

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