[ExI] Captchas

[john clark]

On Aug 14, 2011, at 1:35 PM, Will Steinberg wrote:
"It is very easy John.   Affect is the verb"Very easy? My dictionary says that both affect and effect can be a verb or a noun, as a verb affect means "have an effect on or make a difference to". I could be wrong but I believe an effect can have an effect as well; it could make a difference to something too, in fact if it doesn't then its not an effect.
 "and effect is the noun"My dictionary also says as a noun effect means a change that is the result of an action. It does not say how a difference is different from a change, but that is not surprising, I have seen little evidence that lexicographers have a deep insight into the nature of causality or of philosophy or of science or of much of anything except defining words with, you guessed it, other words. I think that people who like to read dictionaries are fooling themselves, they get the feeling of increasing their wisdom without actually gaining anything . 

On the other hand maybe I'm wrong and when I'm wrong I'll admit it, so I'll concede the debate and admit the words mean VERY different things if you just do one little thing for me, tell me what measurement I need to make to determine if electron X effected electron Y or if electron X affected electron Y.  And then tell me what sort of test equipment I'll need to perform the experiment to discriminate between these two VERY different physical properties.
 John K Clark



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