31–40 of 74 posts
Can someone explain why these exemptions exist in the first place?
Your employer is in a better position to lobby for a law that will let them underpay 1000 employees by $100 each, then then their employees are to protect themselves from such a law.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might have been implying this with your parenthetical but, just to say it, the irony is that the same guy created Comic Sans.
I wasn't implying that, just giving him credit for a great quote. > In an interview for the Huffington Post, Vincent Connare, designer of Comic Sans, said, “if you love Comic Sans, you don’t know anything about typography. But if you hate Comic Sans, then you don’t know anything about typography either…and you should get another hobby”.
To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God
To , and
To , , and
However, isn't it also ambiguous WITHOUT the Oxford comma?
It can be to three entities, same as with the comma:
To , and
To ,
It seems to me that the ambiguity in this comes not from the Oxford comma's presence or absence, but rather from whether or not the comma after "mother" is part of an appositive phrase.
Offhand, I don't think I've seen an example where an unambiguous sentence without an Oxford comma becomes ambiguous with the addition of the comma. All the ones I can recall have another ambiguity from an appositive phrase or similar without the Oxford comma and the Oxford comma at most just changes the ambiguity.
On the other hand there are sentences that are unambiguous with the Oxford comma that become ambiguous if it is removed.
This suggests that the Oxford comma should always be used when the list has more than two items, and it is appositive phrases that we need to be scrutinizing.
For appositive phrases, maybe we should use parenthesis instead of comma? In the above examples the appositive phrase cases become:
To my mother (Ayn Rand) and God
To my mother (Ayn Rand and God)
Uhmh, can anyone elaborate on exactly why someone driving perishable food should be exempt from overtime pay ? Isn't it a bit ass-backwards: exactly those who need to work overtime so the food doesn't spoil are the ones who cannot get overtime? Am I reading that correctly?
But here is a thing -
Right now I am eating a dairy snack item that someone drove in a massive lorry across the Alps with, risking life and limb, climate changing the ozone hole in the process.
Theoretically this truck loaded with useful quantities of yoghurt laced with sugar could have been slowed down by ice, floods and immigrants on the road - anything could have happened.
You would think that it might be possible to buy a locally made dairy item. Cows used to be personally owned, as common as cars and really useful for pulling ploughs primarily. Then horses stepped up to the plough pulling and cows became relegated to dairy herds, no longer man's best 'prime mover' and not personally owned. There has been a lot of consolidation since, hence the food miles.
The dairy in town closed down a long time ago, the farmers now do other things with their fields and even the big dairy they built on a factory scale is closed as that was not competitive in the marketplace. The subsidies have gone and now the food miles are not really anything anyone cares about. However we do have massive lorries towing useful things like yoghurt and even water over the Alps.
I know that lorry drivers in Europe have some tachometer that does not lie. They therefore cannot rack up the overtime extensively. There is a limit to how many hours they can be physically at the wheel or else they would be breaking the law.
In dairy you do have weather related yield changes, so if it is really dry and the cows have nothing to eat then there is not the same supply as when everything is lush and green. There are also supply changes, demand can go silly at Christmas. I appreciate that in 1956 or whenever it was necessary to get 'farm hands' to pull their weight when nature demanded it but we have moved in to a sillier world and I bet those Maine drivers aren't doing local runs but taking product many miles across many 'Alps' in a supply chain that has over-evolved for yester-laws.
I'm as big a fan of the Oxford comma as anyone, but the court ruling here was ridiculous. External evidence, including the state legislature's style guide, made it perfectly clear what the law meant.
California's red-light infractions are a pretty common example of this. The vehicle code lays out what the infractions are, and the people who drafted it have said very clearly that they intended to have a "rolling turn" -- making a right turn at a red light without coming to a full stop first -- be a lesser infraction than running a red (driving straight through without stopping). But a number of cities in California have argued the language is ambiguous enough to let them ticket a rolling turn as running the red light, and that's exactly what they do (most likely because the fines and fees are far higher). It's also pretty well known that anyone who hires a lawyer to fight one of those will get the ticket dismissed, because the cities don't want it to ever be argued all the way out and potentially turn into a ruling against their interpretation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are an IT worker you're probably exempt from overtime pay as well. Does nobody bat an eye at this? How is this even justified?
Because IT workers make a lot more money than the average voter so they are more likely to be the victim of animosity than the subject of pity.
Uhmh, can anyone elaborate on exactly why someone driving perishable food should be exempt from overtime pay ? Isn't it a bit ass-backwards: exactly those who need to work overtime so the food doesn't spoil are the ones who cannot get overtime? Am I reading that correctly?
If you are an IT worker you're probably exempt from overtime pay as well. Does nobody bat an eye at this? How is this even justified?
We live in an era where the rights of workers and individuals is held in contempt by those in business and government. If you aren’t wealthy, you’re defective.
Question: the Wikipedia article on this subject [1] gives this example as a case where including the comma would create ambiguity: To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God The ambiguity is that dedication could be read as a dedication to two entities: To , and or to three entities: To , , and I agree with that. However, isn't it also ambiguous WITHOUT the Oxford comma? It can be to three entities, same as with the comma: To ,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are an IT worker you're probably exempt from overtime pay as well. Does nobody bat an eye at this? How is this even justified?
Look at the comment in this thread declaring that you’re unreasonable to expect overtime compensation if you should “expect” overtime because of the nature of the work. That’s not a fringe opinion. We live in an era where the rights of workers and individuals is held in contempt by those in business and government. If you aren’t wealthy, you’re defective.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at the comment in this thread declaring that you’re unreasonable to expect overtime compensation if you should “expect” overtime because of the nature of the work. That’s not a fringe opinion. We live in an era where the rights of workers and individuals is held in contempt by those in business and government. If you aren’t wealthy, you’re defective.
We live in an era where the rights of workers is held in contempt by workers. Everybody wants to drag everyone else down.
As a tech lead, I have made it my sacred duty to build people up rather than exploit them as 'resources'.