The world's scientists have come through once again with vital information to help enrich the lives of the citizens of the world. BBC News reported today that linguists from Australia think, but are not sure, that what Neil Armstrong actually said when he first stepped onto the moon was "one small step for a man"
Thank God someone said it. Good thing that people are spending their time arguing about the wording choices here, especially since it makes such a huge difference whether he said "man" or "a man".
Here's some of the nonsense unedited:
Explanations offered for the discrepancy are that perhaps transmission static wiped out the "a" or that Commander Armstrong's Ohio accent meant that his "a's" were spoken softly... To settle the argument, Dr Chris Riley, author of the new Haynes book Apollo 11, An Owner's Manual, and forensic linguist John Olsson carried out the most detailed analysis yet of Neil Armstrong's speech patterns... clearer recordings indicate that there was not room for an "a". A voice print spectrograph clearly shows the "r" in "for" and "m" in "man" running into each other...
And so on and so forth.The best piece of knowledge that has come out of the study was that it seems he was speaking spontaneosly, rather than following a script as previously assumed.
The thing is, that as a world filled with politicians and marketing pros, linguists should have their hands full with analysing what these crooks are saying and how they ought to be interpreted, rather than filling the world with more useless "information".
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