I'm Questioning My Literacy

  • Thread starter lisab
  • Start date
In summary, the Army used a literacy test in 1918 to select recruits. This test was based on false beliefs about pernicious pedestrians. Deaf and blind men with seeing eye dogs routinely failed the test, showing that even if these men had the ability to see, their blindness was due to something other than subjunctivitis.
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  • #2
lisab said:
I'm not sure if pernicious pedestrians are translucent :frown:.
I think the answer is dependent on whether or not you're familiar with any ironic blast furnaces.
 
  • #3
I am definitely illiterate.
 
  • #5
Borek said:
I am definitely illiterate.
I am illiterate in more languages than you are. (nyah, nyah). I am barely literate in English, but have yet to establish that level of proficiency in another tongue.
 
  • #6
zoobyshoe said:
I think the answer is dependent on whether or not you're familiar with any ironic blast furnaces.

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/20000/3000/900/23960/23960.strip.gif [Broken]
 
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  • #7
lisab said:
...based on this literacy test used by the Army in 1918:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/09/24/army_literacy_test_used_on_recruits_in_wwi.html

I'm not sure if pernicious pedestrians are translucent :frown:.

No, they are not.

Reasoning:
An infinitesimal titanic bulk is not possible.
Vagrants usually don't posess immaculate cravats.
Laconic messages are never verbose.

Therefore, pernicious pedestrians cannot be transluscent.


There's four versions of the test (starting on page 282) and all four use the same answer key. That way, all four tests can be distributed randomly without making the graders' task more difficult.

There was a serious problem with this test, though, when given in Florida. Deaf and blind men possessing crippled seeing eye dogs invariably failed. But what else is new? Having a hard life was nothing new to those guys.
 
  • #8
I think there is a contradiction in terms here.
If a pedestrian is translucent, he cannot be pernicious.
 
  • #9
BobG said:
Deaf and blind men possessing crippled seeing eye dogs invariably failed.

Especially if their blindness was caused by subjunctivitis.
 
  • #10
Be it was subjunctive, this sentence became pernicious. Like my cousin Anemia. Every allusion is an illusive illusion.

Write if you find work.
 
  • #11
jim mcnamara said:
Be it was subjunctive,

And don't forget the extra tenses needed to deal with time traveling:

You can arrive (mayan arrivan on-when) for any sitting you like without prior (late fore-when) reservation because you can book retrospectively, as it were, when you return to your own time (you can have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome).
(Douglas Adams, H2G2).

Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations is a grammar book by Dr. Dan Streetmentioner. It is about what tense formations to use when discussing time travel, and is supposedly "the main work to consult on this matter."
However, the book is an exceptionally dull read,and most readers only get as far as the section on the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Subjunctive Intentional before giving up. Because of this, in later editions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
 
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