
Royal Society of Chemistry: £1,000,000 for 100% chemical free material - pierrefar
http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2008/ChemicalFree.asp
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dazzawazza
Good on 'em I say. Saying organic fertilizers are 100% chemical free makes a
mockery of the English language and more importantly the science of Chemistry
that directly or indirectly has saved everyone's arse on this planet at least
once.

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scott_s
This bothers me with "all natural" foods. Crude oil is "all natural" but it's
not fit to drink.

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ovi256
TLDR : Use, don't abuse language, please.

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petercooper
Society has big problems if _254 words_ is considered "too long." Should it
fit into a single Twitter message to be worth reading?

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gaius
When we're done with this we need to reclaim "organic" too. Non-organic
vegetables indeed!

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sh1mmer
The "Organic" in Organic food refers to the method of farming rather than the
food itself, and thus is entirely valid.

I think the chemists have a point, but at the same time trying to be over-
protective of language is often an exercise in futility.

There have been plenty of articles about an older generation complaining about
the appropriate of the word "gay". For younger generations it's not something
we have a problem with.

I would suggest that for chemists they might consider that the common usage of
"chemical" is actually an abbreviation of "manufactured chemical" or some
similarly accurate term.

Many parts of science are constantly misrepresented by those not involved in
the specific subject area. That's just life.

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gruseom
_complaining about the appropriate [use] of the word "gay"_

This is a fascinating one because that word is shifting again: "gay"
increasingly means "lame" rather than "homosexual". What's fascinating is how
this is happening even as society becomes more tolerant of homosexuality.
Young people who use "gay" this way belong to probably the least homophobic
generation ever, so the politically correct misreading of this shift is even
more off-base than political correctness usually is.

The South Park guys captured this perfectly with their line, "This is gayer
than sex with men!"

All this by way of agreeing with you that the subtleties of language far
surpass people's rigid attempts to nail them down. Incorrect usages that gain
currency turn into correct usages. It's more interesting to observe and admire
these shifts than to try to stop them (a fool's errand).

Edit: _Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in
fact language remains the master of man._ \- Heidegger

