English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Stud finder

A stud finder (also stud detector or stud sensor) is a handheld device used to determine the location of wood and metal framing studs used in light-frame construction after the walling surface has been installed. There are two main types of these devices: Magnetic stud detectors * Stationary magnetic stud detectors use a small (stationary) magnet to detect the nails or screws placed into studs during the manufacturing of the wall. It is the "pull" of the metal fastener on the magnet that alerts the user to the (possible) presence of a stud. Since the amount of "pull" is greatest when ...

3:15 PM

@tchrist Studs not on top.

@RegDwighт I still think it is a bug I can only select one close reason. :)

@tchrist that question is actually an example of the bug I reported last night.

Ah.

@Anna: just happened again, this time on SO: stackoverflow.com/review-beta/first-posts/766806. Someone upvoted this... thing (which is not just poorly worded and mistyped, but arguably a too localized NARQ to boot), and that counted as a review. While my fixing the title, the body, commenting, and voting to close no longer did. — ЯegDwight 2 hours ago

@RegDwighт woo! sorting bar ;)

3:17 PM

Wow, you’re going to top out on q’s instead of on a’s on MSO. That takes some chutzpah.

Q: Editing in first post review not worthwhile, someone else takes the review point

Yeah, it's fun. That question pushed me over 3k, enabling me to close-vote. And guess what my first close vote was cast on...

...drum roll...

2

Possible Duplicate: The current review system encourages faux reviews: some people upvote everything rather than actually fixing it I just spent some time (a minute or so) to edit a new users first question. I found the question through the First Posts review queue. After editing the q...

feature-request review

Delicious irony.

Quite.

Good thing I did report it last night.

Today would've been too late.

@Cerberus If you’re searching for a man, a page just isn’t going to do you, as several of our whilom congressmen have learnt to their shame.

Newspaper pages, hmm?

3:21 PM

@RegDwighт My ELU sensibilities are offended by the wordification of incentivize in that answer.

@Cerberus Congressional pages are teenagers.

Q: What is the grammar of this sentence?

0

Time is one of the two elements that Americans save carefully, the other being labor. How do I understand this part: the other being labor? EDIT Sorry for leak of further description. I mean why we can combine expressions like this which is not complete with the main sentence.

grammar

This is a duplicate.

See my comment.

> Grammatically, I can't tell you anything certain, as my copy of CGEL is in my other pants. So I will speculate.

This is sooo stupid.

It's a dupe of "What is this grammar?"!

@tchrist Ohh those pages.

I think the previous one had What is this grammer?

@RegDwighт It is a dupe of every question on the site!

@tchrist So why does your congress have pages?

3:23 PM

page > squire > knight, or vice versa

It sounds...archaic.

They’re interns.

Why are they called pages?

Last time we had pages was in the Middle Ages.

What else would you call an errand-boy?

...

How about servant?

3:24 PM

Too classist.

That is stupid.

Servility doesn’t become the masses.

It does.

I call him Jim

Servile though they may be.

That reminds me of the user Jaime Soto, whose name is something like Jimmy Jack (jack from cards).

3:25 PM

Oh.

There were 1,3 million people in service in England around 1900.

Congressional page

A Congressional page in the United States can belong to either of the Houses of the Federal Legislature: * United States House of Representatives Page * United States Senate Page

I saw this in a documentary yesterday.

Mark Foley congressional page incident

The Mark Foley scandal, which broke in late September 2006, centers on soliciting e-mails and sexually suggestive instant messages sent by Mark Foley, a Republican Congressman from Florida, to teenaged boys who had formerly served as congressional pages. Investigation was closed by the FDLE on September 19, 2008 citing insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges as both "Congress and Mr. Foley denied us access to critical data", said FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey. The scandal grew to encompass the response of Republican congressional leaders to previous complaints about Foley's cont...

Why are they teenagers?

3:26 PM

I never played cards in Spanish. Not even on the Spanish train that runs between Guadalquivir and old Seville.

It sounds like a church.

and now we're all in service. service to the cash machine

United States House of Representatives Page

United States House of Representatives Page Program was a program run by the United States House of Representatives, under the office of the Clerk of the House, in which appointed high school juniors acted as non-partisan federal employees in the House of Representatives, providing supplemental administrative support to House operations in a variety of capacities in Washington, D.C. at the United States Capitol. Pages reported to "Chief Pages", commonly referred to as work bosses (or "House Page Work Supervisors") on the Democratic and Republican sides of the House of Representatives Floor...

Ridiculous.

@RegDwighт OMG, so funny you should say that.

@MattЭллен Yay!

:D

3:27 PM

@Cerberus there's a word in Spanish I don't understand. TIL it's soto.

Damn it.

I can’t paste worth shit. The snarf-n-barf refuses to reload.

@Cerberus ?

@RegDwighт I was just being silly.

►

@tchrist I presume soto means silly, right?

United States House of Representatives Page

United States House of Representatives Page Program was a program run by the United States House of Representatives, under the office of the Clerk of the House, in which appointed high school juniors acted as non-partisan federal employees in the House of Representatives, providing supplemental administrative support to House operations in a variety of capacities in Washington, D.C. at the United States Capitol. Pages reported to "Chief Pages", commonly referred to as work bosses (or "House Page Work Supervisors") on the Democratic and Republican sides of the House of Representatives Floor...

3:29 PM

Snarf and Barf.

Or crazy.

Finally.

@Cerberus thicket, grove or copse

Bah y'all too fast. I'll go water tomatoes.

@RegDwighт Fast? This dude keeps posting the same Wiki article 9000 times.

@MattЭллен Thicket?

3:30 PM

@Cerberus aye

@Cerberus yes, but 9000 times per unit of time. That is fast.

@MattЭллен Really? Then why does it mean "jack"?

I've no idea

@RegDwighт I suppose.

Baraja española

La llamada baraja española consiste en un mazo de 48 naipes o cartas, clasificados en cuatro palos y cada uno numerado del 1 al 12. Lo más frecuente es que los mazos no tengan los números 8 y 9, por lo que solamente tienen 40 naipes. Las figuras de la baraja española corresponden a los números 10, 11 y 12, y se llaman "sota", "caballo" y "rey" respectivamente y, a diferencia de la baraja francesa, se representan de cuerpo entero. El 1 se llama as en muchos juegos, nombre que proviene del latín as, que quiere decir uno. Ciertos mazos incluyen además 2 comodines. Los cuatro palos son: oros...

My tomatoes died last night.

3:31 PM

@MattЭллен Hmm odd.

We had a hard freeze.

@tchrist Shouldn't be sleeping outside in this weather, I told you.

> En los modelos mexicanos, originalmente diseñados por Don Clemente, la sota es una figura femenina, en las barajas españolas antiguas, como en el modelo catalán, la sota se representa por un varón.

@tchrist oh my. That's why I bring them in to our kitchen overnight.

I put mine into the earth, not pots.

3:33 PM

I put mine into earth, too. Then put the earth into pots.

Seriously though, we have too much stuff growing, no room for tomatoes, so pots are the only solution.

My dill etc. are in pots, too.

> Los naipes del siglo XV que se conservan en Venecia y otras ciudades son más grandes que las de hoy y de un cartón grueso parecido al papel de algodón de los antiguos manuscritos. Las figuras resaltan sobre campo de oro y son: tres reyes, dos mujeres y dos sotas, una de ellas a caballo. Cada figura lleva un bastón, una espada o una moneda.

> En algunos naipes antiguos se pintaban mujeres en lugar de hombres sobre los palafrenes. En algunas zonas de Andalucía, los ases estaban representados en forma de muchachos desnudos.

Whoa!

Naked boys, eh.

Apparently.

Instead of ases.

O en inglés, aces.

Not asses.

Ago, aces, ace, acemos, aceis, acen.

I have no earthly idea what the aces would be nekkidboyz.

heh.

3:36 PM

Google Image Search!

Oh yes!

But I'll go visit the showermobile first.

Show show!

BBL

k

I’ll look for the barajas andaluzas.

Apparently gentlemen were not to play cards.

> Al parecer, el Consell de Cent, prohibió los juegos de cartas en 1310, en Barcelona,1 siendo esta la mención más antigua del juego de naipes, que prueba que ya llevaba años existiendo, para que se llegara a la prohibición. En otras partes de España, los naipes eran conocidos pues los estatutos de la orden de caballería de la Banda fundada por don Alfonso XI en 1331, prohibían a los caballeros jugar a los naipes. Igual prohibición dictó don Juan I de Castilla en 1387.

Here’s one for @Cerberus:

> quod nulla persona audeat nec praesumat ludere ad taxillos nec ad paginas

Speaking of pages. :)

> En Francia, en 1337, en los estatutos de la Abadía de San Víctor, en Marsella, se menciona (prohibiéndolo a los frailes) un juego que llaman páginas que podría referirse a los naipes: quod nulla persona audeat nec praesumat ludere ad taxillos nec ad paginas

3:43 PM

@tchrist Ah, so a pagina is a card?

Not normally, no.

But here, yes.

It sounds like Mediaeval Latin.

It is.

Normally, naipe or carta is a card.

"Nulla persona" and "ludere ad" sound very Mediaeval.

Because of the ad?

3:44 PM

@tchrist In Spanish, you mean?

Yes, in Spanish.

ludere ad is interesting because you still play at something, as one does today in Spanish.

Yes, it could be an Ibiricism.

To play cards is jugar a las cartas.

In French, it can be either à or de.

I think.

But mainly à, in any case.

With the jugar a unique u>ue stem-changing verb: juego, juegas, juega, jogamos, jogáis, juegan.

3:47 PM

Jouer au ballon.

Musical instruments you use tocar for.

It isn’t a game.

Ah, jouer à = play a sport, jouer de = play an instrument.

Roughly.

I knew it was something silly like that.

And I remember from French class there were exceptions to this rule.

But jouer de foot is clearly wrong.

> La guitarra es uno de los instrumentos más fáciles de aprender a tocar. Voy a darme un baño y luego tocaré el piano. A la muerte de Susana, se tocaron las campanas de todas las iglesias.

How about "play an instrument"?

So even bells are played/rung using tocar.

That would be tocar, not jugar.

3:50 PM

Right.

The second sentence is I'm going to take and bath and then I shall play the piano.

Yes.

> Guitar is one of the easiest instruments to learn to play.

Spanish is fairly readable for me, if I know all the main content words.

Which was easy, in this case.

Baño is easy, and so is piano.

And you had just explained tocar to me.

When Susanna died, the bells were rung in all the churches.

3:52 PM

Yes, yes.

That’s actually a reflexive of course, but translates into a passive.

D'oh.

@tchrist that is one huge lie. Guitar >> piano.

Today is such an exciting day.

I really, really want Capriles to win.

No more Chávez!

@RegDwighт Well, it doesn’t say anything about piano in that first sentence.

3:54 PM

You know what sucks? Dutch newspapers rarely give us an indication about polls.

I always found it funny that French used the same verb for games and musical instruments.

Even if they use a different preposition.

Technically, I have no idea as to whether Chávez or Capriles was leading.

Stupid.

Neither do I.

Except that I read somewhere that Chávez was somewhat ahead a week or so ago, but Capriles was going up.

@tchrist but I do, as a point of reference.

3:56 PM

Do we trust the wheels of democracy there?

@RegDwighт I never managed guitar.

So-so.

Something that's harder to learn than piano cannot be labeled "uno de más fáciles".

Perhaps they distinguish learn from master?

@Cerberus luckily polls are unreliable. what you want to look at are the forecasts

@MattЭллен Forecasts as in...?

3:58 PM

@tchrist I play guitar way better than most people, including pop stars, and yet I can't reasonably claim that I can play guitar at all.

@Cerberus predictwise.com

How can you have a forecast that isn't based on a poll?

O sea, que Segovia no eres.

Well, that’s ok then.

@MattЭллен What are you saying?

@tchrist yes they do, but what does that mean? Learn to what, exactly? Learn to play Em and Am using a pick?

3:59 PM

Yes, I think that may be it.

Then every instrument is easy to learn.

I mean, I could manage that. But you’re right, it hardly counts.

@MattЭллен That it is better to poll people about who they think is going to win than about who they will vote for?

sceptical look

@Cerberus I don't exactly know, because I'm not going to read this article again. but it does use polls a little, but you get a more reliable picture from things such as people who trade futures in the candidates

modelling is where it's at

Some instruments are harder on other people when you are learning to play them.

4:00 PM

Is that really true?

More to the point, then the piano is still easier to learn.

@Cerberus yes

Isn't it more like stock prices?

Proof?

well "really true" as in I read it in New Scientists Opinion section

I don’t know. I’ve seen people pick up guitar as adults more readily than piano.

4:01 PM

Em and Am are exactly the same on the piano. And C, and G and everything else, for that matter. Not so on the guitar.

Then again, the person I am thinking of could play the Bach solo violin partitas before he touched the guitar, so perhaps ought not count.

@MattЭллен Hmm.

I too think Obama will win.

That would be my friend Larry Wall, actually. He also was a proficient percussionist as a youth, and can still beat out 3-against-7 and worse on his two hands.

But then polls indicate that he will win too.

Hear, hear.

4:02 PM

He took up guitar as an adult as a social instrument, like in church.

So...is that site really better than polls?

@Cerberus Gosh I hope so.

@Cerberus Allan Lictman uses a model that has been right for the last 7 elections. Polls are only useful for the moment they are taken.

@Cerberus after the debate it looked like it was level pegging

@RegDwighт The chords, not the scales.

@MattЭллен How long before elections did this Lictman make his predictions?

4:04 PM

@tchrist but we are talking chords.

How many people do you know who can play a single scale on the guitar?

@Cerberus I don't know. he was predicting Obama whenever this article was written

Larry Wall and Nathan Torkington.

That’s two.

@MattЭллен Right, polls can absolutely be misleading and wrong.

See. Out of OVER 9000.

I can’t.

4:05 PM

I can with moderate effort. I have the theoretical knowledge, and some practice to go with it. And it would still require conscious effort.

Paco de Lucia I never will be.

Béla Fleck can do some fancy stuff on mandolin. Have you heard him?

He isn’t Paco tampoco, but still.

I know the name. But I don't know where from.

Well, he has done Bluegrass, amongst other things.

He has done classical with Edgar Meyer.

I should check out the mandolin some time. No idea how it's even played, actually. Do you hit both strings at once? Only one? Which? How?

I really like their album Uncommon Ritual.

Nathan plays mandolin and banjo. We tease him, of course.

4:08 PM

Then he can probably play bass as well.

Same difference.

Though with coolness factor.

Nathan too me and my sister to see Meyer and Fleck on their Uncommon Ritual tour, when they were in Boulder. I had had no exposure. So I am sitting there looking at the stage set before they came on, being superunderwhelmed by the double bass sitting there, thinking it would be lame.

Then Edgar came out and played “Zigeunerweisen” on the bass. Totally mind-blowing.

I mean bass viol, not bass guitar.

Here, let me find your email address again, and I will send you something.

@RegDwighт Mail en route.

4:35 PM

Beautiful. Thank you.

Isn’t that crazy?

You’re welcome.