<p>“The decline and fall of TLC, the History Channel, and Discovery Channel is a good place to start.”</p>
<p>The decline of television programming. . .right. The most intelligent people I know do not even own a TV! I would have thought the decline of intelligence in this country would be based on the fact that people are trying to learn from the television. Gather information from it if you want, but learning best comes from reading and discussion along with experiences in life, at least in my opinion. TLC is what it is, you can still learn from the crap they put out, but you can also learn something from reading the back of a lot of cereal boxes or certain popsicle sticks.</p>
<p>Fancy words are nice, but plain words are useful, too. Some of the most useful words are a mere two or three letters. Consider the verb “to be”, which is used in so many different sentences to help express so many different things.</p>
<p>I guess what I’m trying to say is that words should have a functional purpose when you use them in any context - a conversation, an essay, a note to your friend, an email, a phone call, etc. I don’t care if you use big or small words because the function and fit of the word in the context matter much more than the length. Remember that the words you use are not about you. You use words to communicated with others, so use the words/syntax that most appropriately reach the audience you are trying to reach.</p>
<p>For somebody with such a love of syntax, the OP certainly doesn’t have a very firm grasp of it. Perhaps that’s why instructors are having a hard time understanding his writing?</p>
<p>Life advice: If you are not smart enough to use more complex grammatical structures correctly, TRYING to use them just gives you away. ; )</p>
<p>What’s so wrong with learning from television? There ate crappy tv shows the same way there are crappy books. People learn in different ways and pretending to be an intellectual because you don’t have a tv doesn’t mean squat.
50 Shades of Grey is no better than The Bad Girls Club (very entertaining show, BTW).</p>
<p>Few things are more obnoxious than a Birkenstock-wearing, canvas-toting hipster who proudly declares he does not own a TV in an attempt to seem above the masses.</p>
<p>As for bad TV, I’ve watched plenty of it. That doesn’t mean I prefer it. I’d rather be able to tune in to those channels and actually learn something useful instead of watching a bunch of rednecks overfeeding their offspring and throwing them into beauty pageants.</p>
<p>I agree that few things are more obnoxious, but I can certainly think of one. I don’t know anything about “Birkenstock-wearing, canvas-toting hipster who proudly declares he does not own a TV” but then again I think generalizations and assumptions are pretty ignorant. The people I know that do not watch TV don’t “proudly declare” it, they are in their 50’s and 60’s, they have busy lives and prefer to learn from sources other than sitting on their asses watching a screen. Me personally, I watch a lot of TV, but I don’t have expectations of being taught by a television company concerned with selling commercial space.
I was simply pointing out that many people(including myself) would find it ridiculous that someone considers bad TV some sort of decline of national intelligence. Most people watching TV nightly are boring people, living boring 9-5 lives, sitting around waiting to die. They don’t want to learn, they want to be entertained by people that make their miserable lives seem better.
You can learn a lot about the rainforest through the TV, but you will never know the smell of the rainforest or the feeling of the thick, humid air in your lungs. You will never experience the surprise of having a pumilio run across your foot, or comprehend the beauty of a buttress roots towering above you. But, to each their own!</p>