English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2013-01-11 (page 3 of 5)

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1:00 PM

3

Q: Reading out decimal numbers in English

Possible Duplicate: How to write decimal values in words How do you read numbers like these? 0.12 "oh point twelve", "zero point one two", "zero and twelve hundreds" And these ones? 0.345, 12.45

pronunciation numbers reading

Perissologiast.

@Noah That is so not not a joke :-D

0

Q: Etymology of phrase "Let's Go <favorite sports team>!"

Here in Pittsburgh, we have lots of "Let's go Steelers!" (and some diehards who also say "Let's go Bucs!", but they're dying out). What does that phrase even imply? I assume it's similar to "Go Steelers", which I'm also not sure of the implications. "Go Steelers... to victory!" is a very strange ...

It has an etymology?

Not everyone uses “etymology” the same way, clearly.

Bugs me, sometimes.

Funny commas, those.

Hmm, I find entomology bugs me!

1:08 PM

Why do people have to know about the etymology of something.

?

Because it is a big hairy word with too many legs.

Do we have to find out why a dog is called dog?

2

Q: How important is a word origin?

I wonder what will happen after knowing the origin of a word. I see 7-8 questions about it everyday. Is it really useful?

discussion questions

@DavidWallace There are bugs in my entomology software.

@Noah Are we serious language enthusiasts here? Or are we the bathwater?

1:12 PM

Two great tastes that taste great together.

Would a rose smell as sweet?

Probably the latter ones.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

my kids got candy with real crickets inside for christmas.

Strangely, they don't want to eat them, and insist that I should eat them.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You kidding me.

I hate bugs.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Noah The ingredients are sugar, cricket, citric acid, yellow #5, etc.

1:14 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Okay. I thought it was a living cricket.

Well, I can understand them not wanting to eat them, if they contain yellow #5.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Noah No, but it is a real dead cricket.

@DavidWallace yeah I have no idea what Santa was thinking.

@tchrist Okay. And if it comes from an Arab's, American's, Jamaican's, etc's mouths?

I am feeling pretty pleased with myself that I was able to put together the LEGO starfighter again this morning, this time without instructions.

What, you don’t know the old joke??? You have got to be kidding me!!!

1:16 PM

Is that the thing that beats up celebrities?

@KitFox Now this doesnt seem to be related to ELU. Why dont we start a sister site for LEGO enthusiasts.

Are crickets related to ELU?

@tchrist No, I don't.

I wonder what Vitaly would have said.

@Noah And apparently you never will, given the censorship insanity.

1:18 PM

@Noah uh, we did.

443

LEGO – bricks.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for Lego and building block enthusiasts.

Currently in public beta.

How did I not know about this?

Weren't LEGO's sales going down the toilet?

You didn't?????

@Jez yes, in 1993.

@RegDwighт No. You and Mr.Shiny never talked about it.

How else would I know?

> Heaven in Europe is where the English are the policemen, the French are the cooks, the German are the mechanics, the Italians are the lovers, and the Swiss organize everything. Hell in Europe is where the German are the policemen, the English are the cooks, the French are the mechanics, the Swiss are the lovers, and the Italians organize everything.

1:20 PM

@KitFox how do you know about Cooking? We never talked about that one, either.

@RegDwighт But you are not the fount of cooking knowledge.

@tchrist old. And wrong.

> The Swiss are the only people on earth able to simultaneously make the French seem inelegant, the Germans untidy, and the Texans unrich.

font. fount. font. fuck.

Everybody knows the Germans are more organized than the Swiss.

> Danes are really Germans who think they’re Englishmen.

1:21 PM

Feb 7 '11 at 15:29, by Robusto

In heaven, the cooks are French, the engineers are German, and the police are English. In hell, the cooks are English, the engineers are French, and the police are German.

Yeah, the Italian thing seems strained.

@tchrist they never met a single Swissman.

Interesting that Rob’s comment has not been deleted by the thought-police.

@RegDwighт That’s because marriage is obligatory?

Are you saying that “Zurich” is not mean to be a compound word? :)

The only people the Swiss make seem inelegant are Bavarians, and that's not saying much. Not to mention that the French are about as elegant as the turds they decorate the streets of their capital with.

I am proudly posting that from the French border. Come and get me.

Genève ≠ Zurich

The Swiss border with France at Geneva is not quite so startling as the French border with Italy along the coast — but it’s getting there.

1:25 PM

Gah. I hate the outfit I wore today.

Ok, so change the joke to make the Swiss untimely. Or someone.

The oldest bank in Switzerland just closed down because one American whined about money laundring. So much for Swiss organizational skills.

If thy outfit offends thee, disrobe.

I have nothing else.

Did I say anything about changing? :)

1:26 PM

I took my sweats home for laundering.

I don’t understand why the Swiss keep caving about their banking.

If only I had something besides these tiny shorts.

hushes

They only have banking, chocolate, and jewelry. Kind of like America only exports movies and wars.

You left out dumb tourists.

1:27 PM

Is that what we do? I heard we were funny too.

No, these always pretend to be Canadians. Always.

Well duh.

Those are the smart ones.

The smart ones pretend to be dumb Canadian tourists.

You mean "well duh, eh".

Jinx.

1:28 PM

However, you cannot pull it off if you’re Texan.

Tommy Lee Jones can.

Non credo.

Skip to agnus dei.

Kit or I can prolly pull it off, what with Canada immediately to our natal norths, but a lot of Americans have the wrong mouths for it.

Bulk Insert skip row, anyone happen to remember the syntax?

1:30 PM

@tchrist Well you were around for the Tommy Lee Jones discussion.

With video.

Firstrow. That's it.

Skid row is better.

Yeah, baby.

Consult the Hobo-kin.

Does building LEGOs help in anything? Does it improve memory?

1:31 PM

It improves many things.

It also produces beauty.

@tchrist so a hobo from Harlem is a Harle-kin?

It improves fine motor skills, spatial conceptualization, mental planning, working memory, and baseline life satisfaction, to name a few.

It doesn't have to improve shit. It's fun.

I covered that.

And you are a very lucky viscacha to be required to build a LEGO kit for work.

I want to pet your fur, you cute little soft rodent.

@RegDwighт Hobo-kin sounds a lot nicer than a skid-row bum with all their toilet-hygiene problems. Joisy just can’t get no respect.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

1:35 PM

@KitFox he's building a lego you?

Whoa.

haha

I didn't even think of that.

Ohai @Mr.Shiny.

Kit's gravatar would work quite well as a LEGO mosaic.

where did you get that gravatar anyway?

1:36 PM

It's a scaled-down photo of a LEGO mosaic.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

My avatar is a scaled-down photo of a Lego model of my workplace desk.

Although... we closed the office and all telecommute now, so I should probably redo it.

Wow, you've never changed your avatar in the time I've known you.

That would be like @Rob changing his avatar.

Or @tchrist having one.

Um, Rob changed his several times.

@RegDwighт Not since I've known him.

Just saying.

Mr Shiny is in a different league.

1:41 PM

You mean he’s in a a different 4.828032e+13 Ångstroms. Leagues are forbidden by law in Kannadu.

Damn it, stupid files.

and flies

@tchrist not for the French population.

I hadn’t realized he was so easily pithed.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist yeah, we have the National Hockey 4.828032e+13 Ångstroms.

1:46 PM

Stupid bulk insert. Just put the stupid data in the table! punches computer

That’s your problem right there. Your keypunch is broken.

Yom Kippunch?

No, Andean ones.

Quipus (or khipus), sometimes called talking knots, were recording devices historically used in the region of Andean South America. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords. The cords contained numeric and other values encoded by knots in a base ten positional system. Quipus might have just a few or up to 2,000 cords. Archaeological evidence has shown that systems similar to the quipu were in use in the Andean region from c. 3000 BC. They subsequently played a key part in the administratio...

What would morning be without voiding one’s bowels? A sham poo.

You trying to one-up the fireworks-eating thing?

plodes

1:55 PM

Speaking of one-upping.

user image

God I hate <BLINK>.

blinking is like the browser saying "HEY hey HEY hey HEY hey HEY hey"

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez Or in this case "SEHEN SIE IHREN TRICK sehen sie ihren trick SEHEN SIE IHREN TRICK sehen sie ihren trick SEHEN SIE IHREN TRICK sehen sie ihren trick"

2:11 PM

Ha! Way to give away your non-German heritage. It's "SEHEN SIE IHREN TRICK sehen Sie ihren Trick SEHEN SIE IHREN TRICK sehen Sie ihren Trick SEHEN SIE IHREN TRICK sehen Sie ihren Trick".

quite a few people in the US with German heritage wouldn't know that either :-)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwighт haha, you caught me.

The past tense of trick should be truck.

> The last task we’ll set ourselves is to script out static data.

Yes? Yes. Yes...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It's the last task? Woohoo! after that you can retire!

2:22 PM

I don't know what an Urn is. I feel like I should know this one.

@RegDwighт Yesterday I got all tetchy about a big class where a bunch of ferrin Programmers added a whole bunch of new methods with utterly incongruous names of Germanically mixed Case when there was a clear naming convention already in use in the other 50 methods. I mean, what the hell? I hate maintaining Krap like that. Road signs should all be in the same language(s), not randomly mixed.

@RegDwighт When was this? Perhaps in the first few days I was working on getting the transparency just right, but it was always the same avatar.

I've been dragged into a Youtube comments debate for the first time

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez No! That's even more fruitless than an ELU chat debate!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No it's not!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:29 PM

@KitFox Yes it i-- wait a minute.

Damn.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

almost.

why is it spelt dammit and not damnit?

Dunno.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez why is it spelled damn and not damm or dam

2:30 PM

Oh baby. I think I got the export working.

gets hot

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 comes from the Latin damnare

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez sure, but we cut off the -are, why not fix up the spelling too?

because we usually don't

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox new foreplay idea: erotic code golf

@Jez You were dragged into a Youtube comment thread by ... what appendage exactly?

2:33 PM

Yeah, powershell script. You like what I'm giving you, don't you? Take it. Take it!

@Robusto the kanji used to be on a white round button.

Yeah, but not for long.

I never said anything about long.

@MετάEd fingers

@Jez I want the app that physically drags other people to a thread and makes them comment on it.

2:36 PM

Oh, damn. I was so close.

I can't get the loop to work.

Iterate, damn you!

@RegDwighт I'm still kind of impressed (or weirded out) that you remember such a thing.

Well I was there. It happened. The rest logically follows.

I also created a derivative work of yours, Kosmo's, and someone else's, I think ShreevatsaR's, gravatar.

I remain impressed (or weirded out) nonetheless.

When did I switch to the elegant, dreamy transparency I use today?

So actually I have now spent some time looking for your original gravatar on my hard drive.

I suppose imgur has long deleted it, so no point in checking the transcript.

Now you're scaring me.

2:43 PM

@Robusto shortly after the said derivative work was created.

Rendering it obsolete.

TemporaryNickName

I wonder if I can ever going to able to write reports, essays and sentences like a pro :/ When ever I read my own writing, it always sound like some 6 years old's writing or some FOB's.

It was obsolete from the start. I don't know why I even created it as a button.

@TemporaryNickName How old are you?

TemporaryNickName

21 years old

Feb 9 '11 at 13:53, by RegDwight

user image

See, as I said. Gone.

But that answers your question about the date.

2:44 PM

@TemporaryNickName Then give it another five years of practice before you are too hard on yourself.

TemporaryNickName

yeah =/

Writing is not easy.

Kosmo re-painted his gravatar shortly thereafter.

We also had Microsoft Clippy with Kosmo's gravatars for eyes.

Gone as well.

TemporaryNickName

I am not trying to become a really good writers like you guys but good enough to avoid ESL classes at University.

user image

There it is.

2:50 PM

Aww. That's sweet.

Don't seem to have the original gravatars, though. Only the end result.

So yeah, that's Rob, Kosmo, Kiamlaluno, and ShreevatsaR.

user image

Have this in the same folder.

My God, I'm cute.

I don't recognize the badger though.

user image

And this, of course.

@KitFox How many badgers do you know?

More than you'd think.

2:56 PM

More to the point, how many badgers have you had sex with?

I'm not sure.

badgerbadgerbadger.com

@RegDwighт Beermadillo? That's better than an Armadillo.

I can't lie anymore. It's true.

TemporaryNickName

omg badgerbadger

user image

0

Q: Difference between Explicit and Exclusive

What is the difference between explicitly and exclusively?

Uh, everything. Everything is different.

3:01 PM

Look them up in a dictionary? — spiceyokooko 20 secs ago

Hahaha.

TemporaryNickName

oh, I remember that some people committed suicide after listening to Badgers music. Has this happened anywhere else as well?

Everything except the beginning and ending letters. — Robusto 42 secs ago

The ending letters are different...

Looks like spending more than six days on ELU convinced even spiceyokooko to convert to the dark side.

TemporaryNickName

lol

3:02 PM

@Robusto In the title.

TemporaryNickName

that's funny

@KitFox Read the question text. It is definitive.

It is interesting to me that I have one Jedi child and one Sith child.

@AndrewLazarus My comments weren't really directed specifically at Elton Johns alter ego, they were general comments aimed at the community as a whole. Is the site for English Language and Usage as applied to everyday problems or is it English Language and Usage for Academics to pontificate over and write answers that interest and excite them and their academic friends but don't actually answer the question an OP may have asked in a friendly and pleasant manner? There is a reason for why the community has been called snobby. — spiceyokooko Dec 17 '12 at 19:25

Look them up in a dictionary? — spiceyokooko 3 mins ago

See.

It works.

Did you link him to that comment?

3:04 PM

Why would I.

I sure hope his memory serves him well.

So he's finally drunk the Kool-Aid?

Because it is always nice to rub their noses in it.

I'm not like that.

I know. You are very nice.

I am not.

Also, hungry.

3:05 PM

Here's an even better one:

Who is asking you to review them? Why do you take it upon yourself to review questions you've admitted you had no real strong view on? You reviewed it simply because it was in the queue? How rediculous, and encapsulates everything that is wrong with this Stack. — spiceyokooko Dec 18 '12 at 12:24

That was originally @Rob.

So I guess Rob can now comment back, "who is asking you to comment on this question?"

0

A: From French "manœuvre" to English "manoeuvre", does œ exist in English?

First, be aware that manoeuvre is now normally spelled maneuver in America, and indeed, has fallen behind maneuvre in England. Even the Economist (but not the Œconomist :) uses maneuvre now. Rendering Typographic Ligatures Correctly The general answer is that œ is considered a mere typographic ...

user image

@spice: Whoa, jump back. What are you, my mom? For the record, my idea of policing is making judgments based on the information I have at the time. I make no apologies for the decisions I've made. If a borderline question gets flushed and people vote to reopen it, so be it. — Robusto Dec 18 '12 at 13:14

3:07 PM

haha what a bird

@Jez no idea why, but it reminds me of Shadow of the Collossus.

Birds aren't supposed to have teeth. That's just unnatural.

Meet archaeopteryx.

user image

Eeep!

@mplungian. Well, that settles it then. Wikipedia is never wrong. Sorry. — Robusto 10 secs ago

3:09 PM

The script is working!

@RegDwighт I think of Z as being a reptilian character. Also S.

A is an avian character.

What character would you attribute to the SS?

Toothed beak and sharp claws.

> Archaeopteryx (pron.: /ˌɑrkiːˈɒptərɨks/ AR-kee-OP-tər-iks), sometimes referred to by its German name Urvogel ("original bird" or "first bird"),

This is the first time ever in any language that I see or hear the word "Urvogel".

There was an original bird?

I guess you could have an Ur- anything, though.

3:12 PM

I think I should edit Wikipedia's article on Wikipedia to read "Wikipedia, sometimes referred to by its Russian name Wiskipedski..."

Go for it.

@Robusto right, I meant Ur-Wiskipedski.

But first I must edit the archaeopteryx article to include at least three mentions of it being a portmanteau.

@Robusto there was, but first came the original egg, of course.

Die Urei?

Das.

One must not speak of it.

3:22 PM

@RegDwighт œuf-ogle, oaf-foggle, oaves-foggler

Wah, I have an hour-long meeting coming up. Life is unfair.

Die Ursitzung.

It's only unfair if you don't have enough Ur-Pils and Ur-Dirnen.

Most people do not know that as elf > elves, so too oaf > oaves. Still fewer are aware of the common provenance and occasional common meaning of those words.

I will wear the Urdirndl. That will shock them.

The Uridindi sound like a lost branch of the Avari.

3:26 PM

Yay! My very first DB installation script.

Deutsche Bahn installation script?

Laters.

Urlaters.

cornbread ninja

Mornin'.

Howdy.

3:35 PM

Urlaters are Web-Luddites.

Matt Эллен

3:52 PM

@tchrist bid and beuhd, so that's not just a longer vowel. shed -> shared is just a longer vowel. Tusk and task are different vowel sounds I think

And only one of them is a Prime Minister.

Matt Эллен

there other is the bodyguard dressed to look like the prime minister

fingers crossed Gramma D is not doing well.

For about the tenth time, she's at death's door.

Walk toward the light, Gramma D! We're pulling for you.

Matt Эллен

4:10 PM

I hope your Gramma D gets better, Kit

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

user image

@MattЭллен Oh, please don't. She really doesn't want to.

Matt Эллен

oh, ok then :D

She's been waiting for years to go.

Speaking of going, I am off to lunch. bbl.

Matt Эллен

CU

4:17 PM

@tchrist Linklaters are slackers.

@KitFox forwarded to Gramma D's facebook page

@Robusto your mom is so fat...

cornbread ninja

4:35 PM

@Mitch Richard?

cornbread ninja

4:59 PM

I am so fucking sick of television.

3

@RegDwighт Very tasteful.

@cornbreadninja Get rid of it. We have talked about this.

Double dog lunch. Makes me feel vaguely pornographic.

Matt Эллен

@cornbreadninja if you hate TV, there's a site, I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called YouTube. Never go there.

There's also the rest of the Internets.

And books.

cornbread ninja

5:14 PM

@Cerberus it's not mine to get rid of. I'm a houseguest.

@MattЭллен ha!

BBL.

@cornbreadninja You could at least smash it?

Matt Эллен

@KitFox books make you feel pornographic? Then there's this type of building you might like. They're called libraries. Most towns have one.

user image

Snow in Lebanon, Baalbek.

@MattЭллен No, I mean as a TV substitute.

The temple of Bacchus on the left.

user image

Israelian soldiers guarding colonists.

user image

Jerusalem.

5:18 PM

Oh this is awkward. I seem to have forgotten how to create a website in IIS.

user image

Syrian refugees.

0

Q: What is the word for converting the code to version for publishing?

What is the word describing the process of converting the code to the format appropriate for publishing on WWW site (usually HTML format with syntax highlighting, but also wiki format etc.)? I have problem finding correct and understandable word. formatting is used to describe the process of i...

single-word-requests

Yawn.

Seriously, who cares?

@Noah That's really weird. Why arrest kids? Warn them, rather.

Whoosh.

5:40 PM

Anybody know TeX?

Matt Эллен

You!

I forgot \textbackslash.

Some TeXer.

TeXnician, I should say.

Did I mention that I scripted the website setup? I did, I did.

Matt Эллен

congrats! so now the installation is really easy?

Um. It would be easier if I knew how to modify the web.config using powershell.

I haven't parameterized the install, either.

I figured I would do that later.

I need to decrypt, alter, then encrypt, the connection strings.

But I'm pretty sure there is a way to do that.

Matt Эллен

powershell uses .net libraries, if I'm not mistaken?

open the web.config as an xml file

5:47 PM

Yeah, it can be read that way, so that's how I'll probably update it, but I don't think I can decrypt it that way.

Matt Эллен

oh

There is an executable I can call, I'm just trying to figure out the parameters.

Well, I mean how to call it from powershell.

I'm trying to read through someone's very neat and well packaged code to find the one piece that I care about.

Matt Эллен

ah yes, I've spent many an hour doing similar

This presentrix calls herself a "horny woman" and lets the candidate giver her a wet willy.

Pretty incredible.

Is that Katie Couric?

Matt Эллен

5:57 PM

3

A: Powershell equivalent of bash ampersand (&) for forking/running background processes

Seems that the script block passed to Start-Job is not executed with the same current directory as the Start-Job command, so make sure to specify fully qualified path if needed. For example: Start-Job { C:\absolute\path\to\command.exe --afileparameter C:\absolute\path\to\file.txt }

@MattЭллен Are you helping me instead of doing your own work?

@KitFox I don't know her name, could be...

Matt Эллен

@KitFox me? I'm at home :D it's 6pm

Oh right. You bastard!

@MattЭллен That's a powerup mushroom, not one of those annoying turtle shells.

Matt Эллен

5:59 PM

@Cerberus extra life!

Yay!

I remember learning the word "1-up" years and years before I finally understood what it meant.

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Jan '1311

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