English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Ask on stackoverflow.com -- Voting to close as too localized. — Kris 1 min ago

too localised?

well, I suppose in a way it is

NARQ.

Anywhere and everywhere.

true, true

Though — not to bash SO again, but that's just how it is — by SO's standards this is a hell of a decent question.

I had to review a hundred worse posts this morning alone.

it does at least specify the technologies and problem.

A: How can I convert a binary number into a string character using Perl script?

10:12 AM

0

I am a newbie in programming and recently got a problem to be solved in perl. The problem is that, I need to sort the strings in the alphabetical order. My idea is that, I'll convert the first letter of the word to binary and compare against the rest of the first letters of the word. But, I am...

@tchrist

> I am a newbie in programming and recently got a problem to be solved in perl. The problem is that, I need to sort the strings in the alphabetical order. My idea is that, I'll convert the first letter of the word to binary and compare against the rest of the first letters of the word. But, I am not getting any operators in perl to convert the letter to binary, can somebody through some light on my path... Thanks in advance, May God Bless you... Joby Joseph

Never mind its hilarious complicatedness — it's an answer to a question.

That's the best way to answer questions - with another question

Oh really?

What do you think?

I think?

do you?

10:16 AM

No, you?

Is there someone who can tell me?

Okay cut it, this is getting boring?

lol?

Haha typoed, you lose?

did I lose by playing?

10:17 AM

How about a game of chess?

What are the other options?

checkers?

And who are you?

nobody

That's not a question?

10:18 AM

Am I going to have to change the name next to the article you've said you'd write from john junior to skullpatrol?

Who said I was going to write an article?

you did?

Who is article?

What is this grammar?

@MattЭллен What topic did I say I was going to write on?

A: How can I determine if a script was called from the command line or as a cgi script?

10:21 AM

0

I usually do a little trick at the begging of my module: exit run(@ARGV) unless caller(); # run directly if called from command line sub run { process_options(@_); ... } sub process_options { @ARGV = @_; my %opts; GetOptions(\%opts, ... } and the module does not ha...

> I usually do a little trick at the begging of my module

That's not the original wording, mind you.

That's been edited in by a helpful 1k user.

@skullpatrol The use/misuse of English in the chat room

I used to often find myself misspelling beginning as begging

I think I've figured it out now

Its reigning cat's & dog's hear.

do they?

@MattЭллен I think that topic is a bit too ambitious for me.

shall I can it?

hmmm

10:25 AM

please

do

A: Which is correct: "I bought it online/offline"

0

This is interesting because my bf caught me saying 'I bought this t-shirt offline the otherday' And since I am studying Semantics at the moment it made really think what the word I was saying meant. I see it as two separate words 'I bought this t-shirt off line the other day' so like the sentence...

Sigh.

A wall of text from someone studying Semantics.

@skullpatrol done

@MattЭллен Thanks.

> I see it as two separate words 'I bought this t-shirt off line the other day' so like the sentence 'I bought this off Ebay the other day' means 'from' ie 'I bought this from ebay other day

Where is the semantics in that? I honestly can't parse that.

I dislike it when people buy things off others

from is a much nicer word

but at least off makes sense there

unlike in based off (of)

but offline and off line are not the same, semantically

although they may have been

10:28 AM

Gave up half way through.

This is unedi(ta)ble.

@MattЭллен How about online and on line?

@skullpatrol to me they are different things. online is online, on line means very little, if anything. I realise the etymology, but it's not important in the usage (don't tell Cerb I said that!)

OK

It is a meandering answer that doesn't say much that can't be summed by "Off can mean from, so off line could mean from the internet, but it could also mean not from the internet because offline means not online.", wrong though it maybe

@RegDwighт Sheesh.

10:38 AM

@tchrist I wonder if he ever heard of capital letters. Among many, many things he should hear of.

I think I need to move to the Azores. I seem to be living in their time zone.

Bem vindo!

It’s 4:40am. This is inhuman.

I was wondering about that.

It takes a day or two to shake out the Portuñol from my system in Portuguese-speaking countries.

One would think it was easy.

May 2 '11 at 15:25, by RegDwight

Through a series of highly scientific experiments, I was able to determine that in Portuguese, every letter of every word is pronounced as either /ʒ/ or /ʃ/, except for the letter a in some rare cases.

Ah, you’ve been listening.

10:43 AM

I'm listening and reading and multitasking and asking you to imagine that!

I blew um, I forget his name, Chairsomething, the Columbian, ’s mind the other day by having him listen to real portuguese.

> Diabetics who are physically active have a 38% smaller risk of dying.

Actual sentence from an article I am reading now.

Um, premature death.

dying prematurely

Even if it meant that, which is questionable from context, it would still need to be defined.

What is "prematurely"?

How do you know who dies prematurely?

Arguably there is no such thing as prematurely anyway.

Well, you can talk about 5-year mortality rates, for example.

Although usually with them it’s more like a 20-year mortality rate where it gets really bad.

10:46 AM

I'm just saying, that's not some stupid journalist blathering. That's an actual quote from some professor who run a study on 5859 patients.

Oh, damn.

If that's how clearly he can express himself...

Native speaker?

Of Dutch. The article is in German. The English translation is mine.

In --$job, I went through a king’s ransom worth of inscrutable biomedical papers.

10:48 AM

I don't think "prematurely" would get lost in translation from Dutch to German, though.

So sloppy thinking in any language.

It's not a word you'd overlook.

He must mean during the course of study?

I don't know. I'm not sure a single patient died.

Then how can they improve mortality rates if there aren’t any?

10:50 AM

It says he also compared 12 older studies. Some of these seem to have examined deaths.

Still, that is irrelevant to my original point. Everybody's risk to die is exactly 100%. No discounts.

I don’t ever understand how their statistics work when they collect up data from old studies.

Yes, I know.

@tchrist one would hope they try to normalize them, somehow.

Xblast time!

Go have some sleep.

Maybe breakfast.

Tough call.

I have a $job meeting at 7:30 anyway.

Might as well get my brain working.

10:53 AM

You'll be hungry again by then. But tired you already are.

Found veggie sausage in my freezer, so could have that for breakfast.

Anyway, I am supposed to be bombing in that other window. BBL

I am never tired in the morning. It is afternoon when I need a nap.

See ya.

What was "non-constructive" about english.stackexchange.com/questions/84330/… ? How could it have been made more "constructive"?

It isn’t really an English question, Andrew. It’s a mythology question.

Or cultural, I should say.

10:59 AM

I voted "do not close", so I can't tell you.

@tchrist Please go on.

It’s not asking about grammar, or accents, or syntax, or any of the things we normally have here.

Alenanno

@tchrist In that case then it should have been closed as Off topic, not Not constructive.

It’s like asking whether kids have the Tooth Fairy where you’re from. That isn’t English, is it?

@tchrist That wouldn't be English.

11:01 AM

I don’t know how the votes fell out, it could have been mixed.

it's asking about the distribution of an English phrase — I guess to determine if it's an international idiom

Alenanno

If it turned out NC, then the majority voted that. I might agree with the closure, but not with the reason.

It seems prone to provoke discussion, not a right answer.

Look at the six answers.

@tchrist One of them explained that "washing up" isn't an idiom in American English.

And that's about English, right?

> As to fairies in the U.S, I am personally a firm devotee of the Parking Fairy, and, influenced by Fairiology as presented in Pratchett's Hogfather, I have recently come to discern the importance of the Traffic Fairy in our lives; many U.S. children believe in the Tooth Fairy; and Jim McCawley used to say, of some people, that "the Mind Fairy must have come and left a quarter under their pillow".

What does to wash up mean to you? It’s not what kids do before dinner when they’ve been out playing in the dirt?

11:06 AM

"to do the washing up" means to clean the dishes, pans, cups, etc.

“Kids, go get washed up before church.”

Oh, there is no “do the washing up”.

That doesn’t sound right.

“washing up” isn’t a verbal noun like that.

Here.

I wasn't aware of the difference between American English and British English before asking this question either.

Yeah, I think me 'n' Kit 'n' Aedia have had a similar conversation

That might have been a suitable question. Moreso than the fairy bits.

We just say “do the dishes”.

Which isn’t always quite all it is, since you have to clean the kitchen, too.

There are two kinds of house guests: those who leave a trail of destruction in their wake, and those who leave the place cleaner than when they arrived.

Hippietrail's answer about set phrases, idioms and lexical items was useful as well.

11:11 AM

Interestingly Oxford Dictionaries Online says washing-up. I don't think I've used a hyphen there before.

It’s the Oxford hyphen.

Like the Oxford comma?

Aye.

> washing basket, washing bat, washing-bill, washing-block, washing-book, washing-bottle, washing-crystals, washing-day, washing-engine, washing-green, washing-house, washing-leather, washing-line, washing-machine, washing-place, washing powder, washing-rod, washing-stand, washing-stool, washing-stuff, Washington, Washingtonia, Washingtonian, washing-up cloth, washing-up liquid, washing-water, washing-week

Those are the OED washingthingies.

Washing-up cloth and washing-up liquid are alien to America.

But my point is you can see how much that Oxford likes hyphens.

indeed :D

Hello

11:14 AM

Hello

Do they mention the Washminster system, which has a extra-strong spin cycle?

vide supra

lunches

breaks his fast

Sorry, didint intend to delete that

Where can I find these?

any url or map based directions?

Hi, @MattЭллен

Okay, let me repost it

Does anyone know of a good American Radio drama?

11:19 AM

Current? No.

@tchrist doesnt have to be current

If not, there are many many many that have been broadcast historically.

@tchrist could you name a few?

probably the best ones

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

moment

> As of 2011, radio drama has a minimal presence on terrestrial radio in the United States. Much of American radio drama is restricted to rebroadcasts or podcasts of programs from previous decades. However, other nations still have thriving traditions of radio drama. In the United Kingdom, for example, the BBC produces and broadcasts hundreds of new radio plays each year on Radio 3, Radio 4, and Radio 4 Extra.

Radio drama

Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theater) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story. “It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension.” “Seneca has been claimed as a forerunner of radio drama because his plays were performed by readers as sound plays, not by actors as stage plays; but in this res...

I used to listen to E.G. Marshall’s Radio Mystery Theater when I was a kid.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater (aka Radio Mystery Theater and Mystery Theater, sometimes abbreviated as CBSRMT) was a radio drama series created by Himan Brown that was broadcast on CBS Radio Network affiliates from 1974 to 1982. The format was similar to that of classic old time radio shows such as The Mysterious Traveler and The Whistler, in that the episodes were introduced by a host (E. G. Marshall) who provided pithy wisdom and commentary throughout. Unlike the hosts of those earlier programs, Marshall is fully mortal, merely someone whose heightened insight and erudition plunge the lis...

74–82. Yah, that fits.

I graduated high school in 81.

These days you probably need to tune into BBC radio for dramas.

Unless you like Garrison Keillor’s skits.

Which I do.

The BBC’s radio version of The Lord of the Rings was very well done, and remains a classic to this day.

It’s 13 hours long.

Cool

@tchrist Where can I find this?

11:32 AM

Well, they would like you to buy it, I assure you.

@tchrist from where? Could you point me to the right website

Far be it from me to be a public disseminator of purloined products.

Sorry.

Don’t know of any such website.

@tchrist No, i mean a place wehre I can buy this

Is it available on their website?

Oh!!

Amazon, I am sure.

Let me look.

If you go to Amazon and look for "Lord of the Rings radio" it gives you a bunch of options, the cheapest of which is slightly under $20. You want the BBC radio version with Ian Holm.

It’s actually worth that price, too.

Ian Holm portrays Frodo in the radio version, and Bilbo in Jackson’s films.

okay, thanks.

appriecaite it

11:39 AM

Hope you like it.

It is good for long drives and such.

Thanks

Q: Balanced and unbalanced tag questions

Sure.

This here is the cheap one.

This is a proper radio drama, not a book-reading.

Robusto

0

Along with "balanced"as called here tag questions, which look like "positive-negative" or "negative-positive", for example It is a cat, isn't it? there are also "unbalanced" tag questions, which look like either "positive-positive" or "negative-negative", for example This cat is cute, i...

questions question-tags

His link answers his questions. I'd say Gen Ref, though perhaps in this case it's Specific Ref.

@tchrist great.

nearly ordered the wrong version

and the good thing is that i am an Audible member, so probably can get it for a better price

Robusto

What do you get if you're a Visible or a Palpable member?

11:50 AM

Nothing. It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, not the visible wheel or palpable wheel.

TIL a new insult.

@kitfox

lol

Never heard dickmilk before, but I’ve heard vegans calling cheese coagulated cow cum.

They should eat some meat, their brains are rotting.

There’s definitely some gender confusion there, I agree.

12:02 PM

@RegDwighт No, meat is not good for your brain. Eat vegetables and fish

I may get snowed on tomorrow.

watches the choir-preaching

Nutmeats are good for your brain.

How about potatoemeat

Potatoes have no meat.

Neither do mincemeat pies, interestingly enough.

Nutmeat and mincemeat are the old sense of meat.

@tchrist You could make a mixture of meat and potatoes

@Noah chat.stackexchange.com/…

Pay attention.

12:06 PM

They should eat some vegetarians.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That would be vegetrian meat

Also, even though Western menus often divide their offerings between meat, poultry, and fish, it’s not as though poultry and fish are not meat.

@tchrist And Buffalo Wings

Plus they include crustaceans and molluscs under fish, which is ridiculous.

had veggie meat for breakfast

@tchrist Italian monks used to have duck during lent, arguing they are obviously fish.

12:08 PM

Irish ones, puffins.

@tchrist I know some vegetarians who eat fish and chicken.

No you don’t.

No, I do

And Americans?

They are not American

12:08 PM

wtfysd

So you know liars, fine.

@tchrist ?

I try not to hang out with liars. Gets under my skin.

No, they just use the word "vegetarian" differently than you.

whatever the fuck you say, dude.

They’re lying.

I'm not a vegetarian. Meat tastes too good.

12:10 PM

In a rather insulting and self-serving way.

How many vegetarians do we have in this room?

I’m sure meat tastes good. I’m sure heroin feels good, too.

@tchrist Nah, they just have a different definition of "vegetarian"

That doesn’t mean I have to be an idiot.

doesn't stop you though...

;)

12:11 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 A lying one, to be sure.

The thing is that I know several unconnected people who share this same definition.

They are harmful.

harmful?

JSBձոգչ

sheesh, i should have listened to the weatherman

Deception is harmful.

12:12 PM

how is the weather where you are?

We should end this.

if the weatherman says it's raining, are you certain, sunshine?

It’s about 50 degrees colder than yesterday.

JSBձոգչ

yesterday it was about 75. right now it's snowing.

Yes, exactly. WTF is that all about, anyway?

12:13 PM

@tchrist They're not being deceptive. They are just not as strictly vegetarian as you might expect. They are primarily, ideally, vegetarian. But on occasion they eat fish or chicken.

The proper answer to a guy who asks you why you don’t eat meat is asking him why he doesn’t suck dick. It’s about equally offensive, and productive.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They are more like Steve Jobs

But they’re still harmful, deceitful liars.

@tchrist Whoa! Maybe he likes sucking dick. Have you ever tried it? Maybe you'd like it too.

@tchrist I agree.

12:14 PM

I craft the response to counter the querent’s sexual orientation.

Queer Ents for the straight wizard

@tchrist mm-hm. And I'm sure you always know everyone's sexual orientation. But that's okay! go ahead and turn a harmless question into an insult, and possibly a homophobic one at that!

So @tchrist, why don't you eat meat?

It’s not a harmless question, it’s an offensive one.

how in the world is it offensive

SFOAD

12:17 PM

I once asked a guy why he didn't eat meat and I learned something. I wonder if I would learn things if I asked if someone sucks dick...

Just FO, ok?

@MattЭллен You’d learn whether he’s looking for a date.

Are you effing kidding me? because now I am actually curious about what is it that you are so uptight about.

There are like a million reasons why people don't eat meat.

See, FHs everywhere.

Better to ask why they don’t genuflect five times a day.

I've got a million reasons to... oh, no I don't :(

Geez tchrist, lighten up

12:18 PM

And less controversial.

Nope.

And you really need to find somebody else to accuse of manophobia.

You're the one that brought up "sucking dick" as an insult.

It is, to most straight men. Doesn’t mean it is sensible.

How about I tell you why I don't suck dick and you can tell me why you don't eat meat

Lesbians aren’t too fond of it, either.

Are you a lesbian?

not telling until we agree.

12:20 PM

Nope.

I don’t want to hear your stupid reasons, and you don’t want to hear mine,

superb!

Well done.

@tchrist No, actually, I do, because I cannot comprehend what pushes you to these extreme positions

But I do not understand the triangles.

12:21 PM

I wish I could do stuff like that.

Zelda

what's that thing called?

Triforce.

@MattЭллен the legend?

yeah! thanks :)

But he means the building techniques involved.

There's a lot of crazy stuff going on there.

12:22 PM

Harassing people about their personal choices, preferences, beliefs, and orientation is considered abusive. Go question your own beliefs, but keep the hell away from my own.

asking about someone is considered Getting to know you

@tchrist "harassing"? Nobody's harassing anyone.

Bye.

Am I walking in on a therapy session?

I just wanted to post a picture.

Whatever. I have maybe a dozen friends who are vegetarian for various reasons. I don't know if any of them are vegetarian for the same reason. So I don't see how asking about that is harassment or offensive.

12:25 PM

@Everyone: obviously, all your personal choices, preferences, and beliefs are plain wrong, otherwise they'd be not your personal but everyone else's. HTH.

6

@RegDwighт Why do you have to star your own message?

who says he starred it?

same reason other people have stars

I don't have to.

oh I misread

12:27 PM

I starred the "@everyone" one and I am guessing Matt starred the lego shield

I sure did!

Okay, sorry.

I thought it was @RegDwighт

So @RegDwighт have you bought all the LotR lego yet?

None, and I'm a bit surprised you ask, as I thought I mentioned how crappy I thought them to be.

Not just overpriced; really all around disappointing to boot.

A friend of mine has the spider, and it looks quite fine, I guess I can make an exception there.

But the rest are rather laughable. Helm's Deep, Moria, you name it.

I have two: the weathertop one and the orc forge. They are maybe not the best renditions of the scenes in the movie, but they come with lots of great parts.

12:38 PM

Actually I found the ratio of great parts to run-of-the-mill ones not to be too exciting, either.

And I now have two tiny Uruk-Hai on my desk, they are so cute in their white-hand helms and shields.

The new Monster sets are way more promising in that regard.

Really? I find that all the small monster kits are really boring.

I hate all the hero figs

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yes, the said friend kept begging the LEGO store staff for an Uruk-Hai.

And I already have the mad scientist and frankenstein figs from the collector series

12:40 PM

I'm not into figs much. I have too many and I never play with them.

And I certainly don't need more lego ghosts or zombies.

there don't appear to be any Lego balrogs

I actually don't have a single ghost yet.

@RegDwighт Me too. But I love having them.

@MattЭллен Not yet.

@RegDwighт I have two or three from way, way back.

I guess the new ghosts might be different, but frankly I couldn't care less. They are just too silly.

I do like the haunted house set though. I am torn between getting that or the sopwith camel for christmas.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 my point is, I have some 150k parts, and not just random parts but specifically collected with the goal of having every part in every color, and yet the Monster series sets still have parts I don't have, not even once. They are second only to Friends in that regard.

12:42 PM

@RegDwighт Ah. That is a strange goal :)

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yes, that was in my dark ages. When I saw the light, the ghosts completely disappeared.

I buy kits with the intention of one day, sometime, building something. But life gets in the way.

@RegDwighт Your dark ages? Aren't you younger than me?

a bit younger

your dark ages were probably at the same time as mine.

But..... hm, now that I think of it, the ghosts were probably in sets that originally belonged to my younger brother.

Okay, your story checks out.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 not at all. It's incredibly satisfying to be building a new set and think, "oh gosh, wouldn't it be nice to have [weirdest part ever] in [impossible color] to fit in right in this spot" — and then just go and grab that part and use it. It's the most satisfying definition of luxury I have experienced so far.

@RegDwighт heheh, true. But on the other hand, when I'm building something, I usually think "Wouldn't it be nice if I had 50 of these in this colour?" and I reach over and I have 3. :( Then I think "I don't have enough parts" and I start fantasizing about bricklink orders and whatnot, and then eventually I just put the model away, unfinished, because I haven't had time to work on it in weeks.

I am seriously considering a renovation to my house that would add a room so that I could unpack all my lego and start building something large and actually complete it, without having to put the lego away whenever, say, a major holiday rolls around and the imminent arrival of guests forces me to vacuum for once.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I had exactly one set as a child, one that I built myself from loose parts in my step-aunt's house, which she then let me keep. My mom would never buy me LEGO. And when I grew up I kind of forgot all about it. I mean, no, worse: I would actually browse LEGO in stores from time to time, going oh and ah, but somehow it never occurred to me that now I could just take it off the shelf and buy it.

So it all started two years ago when my wife bought me a set as a birthday present. That's when I realized, hey, that LEGO stuff is actually available. I can have it.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yes, that's what I call the bottomless-pit problem. Even if you do have every piece in every color, you never have enough of any particular piece in any particular color.

But that's what BrickLink or eBay are there for.

Actually it's only yesterday that I placed four BL orders for things I need to turn my Tower Bridge into, well, the Tower Bridge.

12:52 PM

heads on spikes?

One of my concerns now is that when I finally let the kids go wild in the big buckets of parts, they will fail to learn one important Lego lesson: scarcity.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 that's why you buy them their own sets and only let them touch your stuff once they are AFOLs.

@MattЭллен no, those I actually have enough of.

0_0

JSBձոգչ

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 you always learn the lesson of scarcity sooner or later, though

no matter how big your bucket is, you're still three parts short of the set that you need

But as the designer himself explained in that video I posted a while back, they shortened the middle part of the bridge somewhat. Obviously I object to that decision and have to undo it.

Aug 22 at 15:37, by RegDwight АΑA

►

12:55 PM

@JSBձոգչ Yeah, true, but kids usually build smaller than adults, so they will learn the lesson much later, and only if they persevere in the hobby.

I only have one tower built so far, and I already modified it in innumerable ways, and it needs countless modifications still.