Cupcake WarsFollow

He's from LA. Hence my focus was on that aspect of it. But you're correct that there are varieties that are well seasoned, but as you say:



The mix of seasonings he used and the proportions he used seemed specifically to be attempting to reproduce the flavor profile of a taco seasoning packet you'd buy in a store. Which, I'm hoping you will agree, is not actually like any "authentic" Mexican taco tastes like. It's what folks who live in the US at least 500 miles north of the Mexico border *think* tacos taste like. Which was my point.

I'm hoping you agree with my point about round bottomed shells at least?



I was honestly trying for a bit of rare brevity and actually cut out a whole paragraph I initially wrote about different types of tacos (even mentioned carne asada street tacos), and made a point that even tacos with minimal fillings (meat only in some cases) don't have the kind of seasoning that Alton made. So just pretend that I did talk about all of this and still concluded that AB's tacos just didn't match anything I'd remotely call authentic.



Don't feel like getting into an argument about antecedent rules in English, so I'll just accept that what I wrote could have been written more clearly so as to avoid the misunderstanding. I will, however, mention that when someone writes something that makes no sense as you just read it, it might make sense to see if there's another interpretation of it that does make sense and does match the facts at hand, rather than leaping to the conclusion that the other person just wrote something completely nonsensical for no apparent reason. The word "reproduce" had a purpose in the sentence I wrote. If you'd spent a half second thinking about what that purpose might be, it should have dawned on you that the part about store bought components referred to the type of meal he was reproducing, not his actual process of making the reproduction. Also, the fact that I specifically stated that he spent "a lot of time and effort" making that reproduction would seem to run counter to me saying he just used store bought shells and seasoning.

Crap. I wasn't going to argue about that. Well, too late I guess.

Um.. No. It's unclear. I've acknowledged that. But the correct interpretation is not the one you two went to under strict grammatical rules. The relevant verb is "to reproduce". You then ask the question "what was reproduced". The answer is: "the "kind of taco that I'd expect someone from say Indiana to make for taco night, complete with store bought shells and taco seasoning". That is the correct way to interpret the sentence. As anyone who was properly taught grammar in say 5th or 6th grade should know. The phrase "complete with store bought shells and taco seasoning" is clearly an adjective phrase which modifies/describes the noun "taco". That noun is itself the object of the verb "to reproduce", as I mentioned above. That phrase makes no sense as an object to the verb "to reproduce". For it to be so (as part of a list of things that apply to the verb), it must stand by itself and make sense in the absence of the words between them. So, if the sentence "For someone who actually grew up in LA, he spent a lot of time and effort to reproduce complete with store bought shells and taco seasoning" makes sense to you, then you can reasonably argue that it references the verb and not the object. Clearly, that is not the case.


It's unclear because it's remotely possible that someone could mistakenly think (as you did) that the phrase after the comma refers to the verb (to reproduce) and thus is describing the process of reproducing the taco rather than describing the kind of taco we're reproducing. And to be fair, it's a reasonable mistake to make since you have to actually stop and think about the sentence and the rules of grammar to realize that it does not. Also, people tend to commonly make grammar mistakes in which they intentionally write such descriptive phrases incorrectly (so they'd write what I wrote and actually mean that he used store bought shells and taco seasoning to make his reproduction) . But that does not change the fact that your interpretation was a mistake. It also does not change the fact that once you interpreted the sentence in that way, and realized it made no sense, you should have looked to see if there was an interpretation that did make sense instead. Had you done that, the correct interpretation was right there in front of you.




Yes. That would have been much more clear. But absolutely not more correct. "complete" and "the sort" serve identical purposes in that sentence and should result in the same interpretation. It's only more clear because "complete" is more likely to result in an incorrect interpretation. We can speculate as to why, but clearly that is the case.



You mean without an identically superior understanding of the language, right? I get it. I sometimes express myself in ways that require a better grasp of the English language than most people possess to fully understand. It's a flaw I have. I try to write down and use simple words and grade school level sentence structure when possible, but sometimes I forget to. I apologize for this and will endeavor to make my words easier for you to understand in the future.

Do you need some warm milk and a blankie too? Perhaps a box of crayons?

Edited, Oct 2nd 2014 6:55pm by gbaji

You mean without an identically superior understanding of the language, right? I get it. I sometimes express myself in ways that require a better grasp of the English language than most people possess to fully understand. It's a flaw I have. I try to write down and use simple words and grade school level sentence structure when possible, but sometimes I forget to. I apologize for this and will endeavor to make my words easier for you to understand in the future.


ADORABLE.

I think, of all of the people who are aware we both exist in any form, there is exactly one who would be inclined to believe you had a better understanding of language than I do. Again it's not really your fault, you're just uneducated. Sorry, was that confusing? Your education was a failure, like that of the average third world child, complete with a lack of understanding of simple grammar. Did that make more sense to you?

Just kidding, we all know how this ends out.

Edited, Oct 2nd 2014 10:07pm by Smasharoo

Ah. When in doubt, attack! I'll note that you made zero effort to defend your interpretation, nor to apply any sort of grammatical rules to support your case. You just attacked me personally. And you included a logical fallacy along the way! It's like a twofer.


I'll just take your post as an admission that I'm right and move on. Better luck next time Smash.

I'll take an additional moment to point out how strange it is to me that you have no problem realizing that "the sort with X" refers to the "kind of taco" being reproduced, but you stumble over "complete with X". Both should follow the exact same grammar rule.

"Complete with" is a subordinate conjunction, thus making what follows an adverb clause. That's about as far as I can go without it being way over your head. I learned it in 3rd grade. Sorry I can't make it clearer, no time to upload a puppet show to youtube.

Um... No. It's not. There's just no simpler way to say this. You're wrong. If you were correct, then you could remove the intervening words and the sentence would make sense. As I clearly showed above, this does not work. Ergo, it cannot be any form of adverb, whether a phrase, or a clause, or whether joined with a conjunction or a comma or a semicolon. It's not a freaking adverb. It's an adjective.

It's axiomatic Smash. It either modifies or describes the verb, or it does not. The "remove words in between" method allows us to determine that it is not. Therefore, no matter what we choose to call it, it does not modify or describe the verb and thus your interpretation must be wrong because it assumes that the phrase "complete with X" refers to the action of the sentence "to reproduce" rather than the object of the sentence "the kind of taco ...".



Yeah. Keep telling yourself that. This is beyond hysterical really. You should just stop now while you're just obviously and easily demonstrably wrong.

Whatever flaws you have, "writes too well" isn't one of them. You're a terrible writer. I don't say that as a "haha, pick on Gbaji" thing but, in all sincerity, your writing is usually for crap.

The best writing advice of all time:

"Omit Needless Words."

Or that? There's a ton of ways you *could* decide to manipulate the sentence (especially if we're allowed to add new words in there as you just did). The point you seem to fail to grasp is that it's kinda stupid to go out of your way to deliberately find one that makes no sense and assume that's what the writer intended.


Oh. And just to follow up on your whole "it's a conjunction!" bit. If we simplify that (and eliminate the conjunction itself, cause it just connects two things), we end up with this:

"For someone who actually grew up in LA, he spent a lot of time and effort to reproduce store bought shells and taco seasoning"


Um... which also does not suggest at all that he actually just bought taco shells and seasoning and made tacos with them, and in fact matches up precisely with what he actually did so on his show. So even your own argument fails to arrive at your initial conclusion.


Of course, even this is not what I intended, and I'll still point out the whole antecedent rule. In English, when in doubt about what a part of a sentence refers to, you should always start by assuming it refers to the part that immediately precedes it. Which, in this case, is precisely what I intended and if you read it that way results in a sentence that makes complete sense and matches with events on the episode in question. You should have stopped right there and been done. I understand how someone might misunderstand the sentence I wrote, but I didn't actually write it incorrectly, and the person reading should have looked for a better interpretation rather than leaping to the conclusion that I must have intended to write something so absurd.


Did anyone actually think that I meant to say that Alton Brown just made tacos using store bought shells and seasoning on his show? To me this is like doing a math problem and getting an answer that is obviously wrong. The next step should be to re-examine the problem to find an answer that looks correct, not assume that the wrong answer is actually right, or that the test question was written wrong, or some other bizarre conclusion. To me, that's just what you do.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2014 2:36pm by gbaji

To be fair, he doesn't need ambiguity to back-peddle. I can easily think of some scenarios where he blatantly did a 180.

Well, no. But let's let that go for now.

OK.

Hey! If I do this every time I think you're doing that I'll be at 10K by Christmas!

Reminds me of the back and forth in the latest episode of Haven.



Edited, Oct 3rd 2014 7:25pm by TirithRR