Doesn't rain fall on the leaves as much as the soil?
Genuine question, does it help the plants in some way?
It’s pretty rare though. They usually only do it when it rains heavily right before harvest.
By example:
"There are likely to be cows over that hill" - correct, many cows
"There is likely to be a herd of cows over that hill" - correct, one herd
"There are likely to be other factors" - correct, many factors
"There is likely to be a number of other factors" - correct, one collection of many factors
"There are likely to be a number of other factors" - correct, emphasizes the factors over the collection
"There are likely to be other factors" - correct if you want to treat 'other factors' as a singular group. Up for debate.
Also, "there're" is very hard to say, so using "there's" as a contraction for "there are" is, in my book, okay, even if it's not technically correct.
1. If you accidentally say There is and want to use a plural after, (for example, a lot), you can just say a number in between. The sentence stays correct, you just have to say 2 additional words. I personally never had this problem
2. This is internet. You are free to edit your comment and reread it a million times before posting
Hope you understand what I'm trying to say, not being native sometimes restricts my ability to properly articulate semi-complex stuff
Language is ultimately descriptive, not prescriptive -- so common patterns are never "just wrong". But as someone who taught English for many years, I'm actually fascinated by what you've noticed. Because as an overeducated native English speaker, I observe that:
- "There's likely other factors" sounds totally fine to me.
- "There is likely other factors" sounds horribly wrong.
- "There's other factors" sounds wrong, but not horribly so.
- "There are likely other factors" sounds fine, but you wouldn't usually say "there are" as two distinct words, you'd say...
- "There're likely other factors" which would sound fine if perfectly enunciated, except the "'re" tends to get swallowed up and it will easily sound like "There likely other factors" to the listener which will sound wrong
So my theory here is that, in order to aural eliminate confusion between "there" and "there're", there's an unwritten rule in spoken English where we substitute "there's" instead when the plural object isn't immediately following, but has an adverb intervening.
I'm not 100% sure this is a full explanation of the phenomenon, but what I can tell you is that criticizing it is useless. It's just how native speakers talk -- it's conventional English (at least in the US). What is interesting is investigating it, though! So thanks for noticing a little quirk of English like that.
Why are we grammar policing on hackernews? This is a tech and startup forum not a language forum.
We don't have to invent ex post facto explanations for why something is the case in nature or why there is some un-intuitive reason as for why the natural way is better.
That's assuming that we are somehow outside of nature.
> We don't have to invent ex post facto explanations for why something is the case in nature or why there is some un-intuitive reason as for why the natural way is better.
We don't have to , no , but we do , because that's how we learn.
Nobody was claiming the "natural" way was better, just that it might serve a purpose.
No it isn’t. You know what they meant, you are just one-upping them on a technicality in a way that doesn’t advance the discussion at all.
Yes, it is.
> You know what they meant.
I have clearly stated what i think they meant.
They specifically said "disadvantages compared to us." that heavily implies ( if not outright declares ) an us vs them.
It seems you have a different interpretation, I'd be interested to hear what that is if you don't mind ?
> you are just one-upping them on a technicality in a way that doesn’t advance the discussion at all.
If you don't see how what i said was related to the discussion then we probably aren't going to agree on what constitutes a technicality.
Hey and you were wrong. You are pretty bad at understanding what other people are saying.
> how what i said was related to the discussion
It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement.
Or you are bad at conveying an explicit meaning.
> It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement.
I've outlined why i thought what i did, if that was a misunderstanding of your intention I'm willing to accept that, doesn't mean what you said was clear.
The other person understood me just fine, and also noticed how obvious my statement was, and how you avoided it.
> doesn't mean what you said was clear.
Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly.
Of a sample size of two that's a 50% failure rate.
You stated an us vs them, i pointed out that drawing an us vs them assumes that us and them are different.
That you apparently meant something different is odd to me, but you do you.
> Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly.
Again, 50% failure rate.
If you wish to conclude that a 50% failure rate makes something obvious in favour of one side, feel free.
Well, actually it's extremely obvious there you aren't actually attempting to understand my argument.
The other person noticed it as well.
Notice, how instead of going on about this, you could have instead gone back to my message and actually tried to figure out what my argument was.
But you didn't.
Because you aren't interested in understanding what my argument was.
> that a 50% failure rate
Oh you still aren't getting it.
It's not a 50% failure rate. It is a 0% failure rate. Instead it is that someone else noticed they you werent even trying.
Of course you aren't going to admit that.
But if someone else backs me up, thats really good evidence.
I am fully confident that the success rate is 100% and actually you could understand the argument if you stopped doing what we both know you are doing right now.
A single line explaining how "people vs nature" doesn't imply that people and nature are different things would have cleared this up easily but instead we get multiple instances of you saying "it's so obvious I'm not going to explain it"
However, you have full confidence that everything is cleared up, so i guess it must be.
I'll see myself out.
Frankly, I prefer the way that thinks of 'ex post facto' explanations for nature. At least that keeps us hypothesizing and not sitting there tooting our own horns.
Wow we have completely different world views. I think nature is perfect and it's us who have gone too far away from it to notice and hence we are far from perfection as well. Ideally we should not be comparing us to nature since we are part of it. But somewhere deep down we know we are not aligned with it so we end up comparing it to humans which seems pretty grandiose on our end.
Why do you think nature is perfect? I.e. what is your "gold standard" against which you measure?
Something that immediately comes to mind for me is all the death and suffering that is abundant through nature. If the only thing that matters is propagation of life, then nature does seem pretty good at it, but as a being that operates some layers above the selfish gene, it seems far from perfect.
What if this is the best it can do with all the things that can go wrong or are going wrong. Perfection does not mean things will never go wrong. They can and they will. I can give you example of process that is near perfection: photosynthesis. Nature can store energy and then utilize it without creating adverse effect on other life. This is just one example but there are many processes like this.
Much has gone into studying how to best grow these crops, both at universities and research centers and on the field at farms themselves.
in a garden where plants do not have neighbours competing for space and water isn't scarce, there's no reason to water the leaves when you could just water the roots directly.
We do plants a disservice by studying them when they’re grouped together by species and age cohort, and generalizing their behavior under those conditions.
You can recreate these circumstances in your garden by, for example, planting the three sisters (beans, squash, corn) together. You can also opt to grow perennial versions of your crops and stagger their planting / surround them with annuals the complement their chemical needs.