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1:47 AM
@KitFox saw this and thought of you
 
 
2 hours later…
3:37 AM
guys, anyone know the opposite of "planner"
 
3:53 AM
Whimsical
 
 
2 hours later…
6:22 AM
@tchrist Are you in India?
 
An "Indian summer" is a North American name for a summer that lasts longer than usual.
 
ohh ok
 
There is an ELU question explaining it somewhere :-)
 
 
5 hours later…
11:57 AM
4
Q: Is "to boil down" formal enough to be used in scientific writing?

painfulenglishThe phrase to boil down to something can be found in most dictionaries. However, to me, it sounds colloquial to write Finding an exact solution to Eq. 1 boils down to ... A real-life example can be found here, and many more here. Interestingly, many of the examples are by non-native ...

What are your thoughts on this question and its answers?
 
12:26 PM
Well, I have gotten 2 downvotes on my answer there, but I stand by it.
 
it boils down to what you mean by "scientific" writing
 
I actually think most of Kris's answers are rubbish.
 
12:44 PM
Oh, Kris has gotten five downvotes today.
 
1:08 PM
Oh, Kris has gotten six downvotes today.
I wish my 3 downvoters would comment though as to why they downvoted.
@IceBoy I do not think that is the issue here.
 
1:38 PM
@JasperLoy what do you think the issue here is?
 
@IceBoy The issue is that in the title. It is not about what you mean by scientific writing.
 
@JSBձոգչ d'awwww
 
Hello @matt, please take a look at the above question and its answers and cast your votes.
 
Gary S Hart provides a useful answer. The question does not interest me.
I am a dismissive snob
 
No problem, have a nice day. But note that he does not answer the question, lol.
 
1:46 PM
"Do not use colloquial speech"
"boils down to" is colloquial
 
@MattЭллен Ah, but I don't think it is informal. You think it is?
@MattЭллен He did not say that explicitly in his post.
 
it's not very formal, but I wouldn't think it gauche to find it in a scientific paper
@JasperLoy true
but it is not a precise phase
or, I should say, not a "science paper" type phrase
unless you're talking about boiling
in which case, it's no longer an idiom
I can imagine it in an arts subject paper
so the other side of academia
 
user116848
@MattЭллен Is this grammatical? : "I don't know which dialect of American English I speak. Is that okay? Or it looks backwards?"
 
how are you, anyway, @JasperLoy?
 
@MattЭллен I am OK.
 
1:52 PM
@Arrowfar "Or does it look backward(s)?"
otherwise it's fine
right. time for lunch. bbl
 
user116848
@MattЭллен So, looks is not correct here? I mean if I don't want to use "Does"
 
user116848
okay. See you :-)
 
2:43 PM
[ SmokeDetector ] Phone number detected, All-caps title: +91-9950211818 GET MY H U S B A N D B A C K on english.stackexchange.com
 
2:56 PM
@JasperLoy Really? That seems rather high to me; I wonder if it’s real. I’ll downvote him when he deserves it, but I also upvote him when he deserves. I haven’t looked into these new cases at all though.
 
3:13 PM
As I am not your downvoter, I can comment freely. This is terse advice with little explanation and no alternative provided. But I wonder: which of “cliché, catch-phrase, metaphor, or slang word” do you consider this use of the phrasal verb boil down? The OED doesn’t say it is any of those things. Rather, it gives the primary sense of boil down as “to lessen the bulk of (anything) by boiling”, along with a figurative sense of “to condense, epitomize”. I presume you object to the common figurative sense used here as inappropriate to the register of a formal research paper. Please expand. — tchrist 1 min ago
 
Yes, good thinking there.
 
I cannot speak for the downvoters for I do not know them. I can only imagine what their possible reasons might have been and how he could improve his answer by addressing those imagined reasons. I doubt whether this will have any effect, neither on him revising his answer nor if he does on his downvoters’ retractions. Kris seems not to mind incurring not just downvotes but even lightning-rod postings for the same. Last I looked he had quite a few net-negative answers, and seems not to care.
 
I suspect that Kris is Thursagen.
 
No.
Impossible.
K is much older; you can tell by his attitude. He does not revise his answers to make others’ happy as T so often did.
T was rather more earnest.
“Finding an exact solution to Eq. 1 boils down to” sounds more like a mathematical context than it does one of chemistry.
 
4:10 PM
@Arrowfar If you don't want to use does then you're going to have trouble properly forming a question.
 
Please approve my edits, lol.
@MattЭллен How was lunch?
 
fine, ta. I had pizza
and watched Dr. Who?
 
I am glad my answer got 5 upvotes, even though it got 3 downvotes.
 
44 reps in total, right?
 
Yes, that's very good, lol.
 
4:26 PM
yeah
 
I have so far told 4 people about my moral dilemma. 2 SE folks and 2 friends here.
Even if I am not jailed or fined, I could be blacklisted and monitored. It is a difficult decision.
 
indeed
 
I can't imagine them monitoring my internet activity for the rest of my life, lol.
Who knows, they might even stop me from leaving the country, lol.
They might try to find fault with something I said in this chat, and then charge me under some other obscure law.
Why was I born here? But I am glad I ain't in North Korea or the Middle East or Africa.
@MattЭллен english.stackexchange.com/questions/204652/… Have you also approved this?
Hello @caleb, you are very quiet, but I will try chatting with you again, lol.
 
Jasper, I blame this on you:
0
A: Why is the word "how" considered an adverb, even if the answer is an adjective?

tchristTLDR: It does not matter what part of speech which you or anybody else calls how; it only matters what it does. The way to determine the part of speech played by any word in a phrase or sentence is not by looking it up in a dictionary, but rather by examining the job which that word is doing i...

 
4:41 PM
I have now
 
posted on October 26, 2014 by sgdi

"Because I’ve got no money now," Said who was the man selling his cow “I’ll sell you her cheap “For one of your sheep And you do me a deal on your sow”

 
I now need 215 points to reah 2000 and retire, lol.
 
4:56 PM
@Cerberus I don’t know who taught you that well must invariably be an adverb, but they were not a well person.
 
maybe they were stuck down a well
 
> How are you? I’m stuck down a well: how the hell do you think I am!
That stuck smells rather adjectival to me.
But not myself being a person stuck down a well, I cannot be certain.
There’s a rather nice ambiguity there with stuck, by the bye.
Stuck in traffic, stuck in the arm.
 
being stuck with a knife vs being stuck without a knife
 
aye
How come I don’t know how many L’s are in fulfil?
 
yeah, I get that wrong all the time, too
 
5:10 PM
@tchrist I even gave an example where it functions like an adjective...
 
@Cerberus I thought you were saying it was acting like an adverb.
Copulae don’t seem to admit anything but a noun modifier of some sort.
Or another substantive.
Distressingly many people claim that one must say "I am well" never "I am good" on the basis that be is a verb in need of an adverb, and they think well is doing the adverb job there and so that good is wrong. They are delusional.
 
5:34 PM
@MattЭллен I mean, if the knife's a witty conversationalist, maybe being stuck with it isnt so bad.
 
@Mitch yeah. I suppose most knives are quite sharp
 
@tchrist Cerb shouldn't be talking to cistern people either, it's not hygienic.
@MattЭллен !!rimshot
I always hear that it's more dangerous to cut with a dull knife.
 
Kris got 9 downvotes today lol
 
All on the same answers?
 
5:58 PM
3 times 3.
I now need less than 200 to reach 2000, lol.
I still cannot stand Kris.
Oh I made some more edits, please approve them all, lol.
 
looks good
 
Just trying to keep it at multiple of 5, lol
 
Oops, got another downvote, LOL.
+7 and -4, very controversial, lol.
 
scandalous
 
7:15 PM
I stand by what I answer, till the end of time.
 
what if time does not have an end?
 
Until he sits down?
 
Interestingly, none of my 4 downvoters commented as to why they downvoted.
I will not guess, because there are too many possibilities.
I have learnt never to guess what others think, because I have a strange mind that works differently from most others.
Now George will come in and say I am 2 Chainz, lol.
However, I suspect that Kris is one of the downvoters, lol.
 
@JasperLoy I think it is because they disagree.
@JasperLoy I didn't get that. What does that mean?
 
@JasperLoy possibly.
 
7:23 PM
agree to disagree is an important skill in life
 
@Mitch 2 Chainz has a song that keeps repeating "I'm different".
 
Oh. We're all different.
oops.
 
I'm not
 
viva le difference, celebrate the differences
 
Thank you.
 
7:28 PM
np
 
@Mitch We are all different, but I feel I am more different from most people than most people are different from one another.
 
@JasperLoy Now that's subtle.
 
@Mitch If so, it deserves a star.
 
it's sorta like the second derivative
 
or analysis of variance (the distribution of between group differences over within group differences)
 
7:32 PM
the difference of the difference
 
acceleration.
What's the third derivative called? It has a name...
 
jerk
 
also known as jolt, surge, or lurch,
 
@IceBoy Same to you buddy.
snap
 
7:37 PM
@Mitch nice troll
:-)
fell right in that one
3
Q: Names of higher-order derivatives

David RuttenSpecific derivatives have specific names. First order is often called tangency/velocity, second order is curvature/acceleration. I've also come across words like Jerk, Yank, Jounce, Jolt, Surge and Lurch for 3rd and 4th order derivatives. Is there a widely agreed list of names for these? How many...

 
@IceBoy Today is Joke Set Up Sunday !!
 
Orly?
@AndrewLeach nice link, thanks :-)
 
I sincerely couldn't remember what the word was. But it worked out good.
 
yep, it doesn't have much physical meaning...
 
So tonight is game 5 of the World Series. Do you know who is on first?
 
7:44 PM
no, who?
 
That's right, who is on first.
 
this will come down to game 7
 
bottom of the 9th
 
I'll wait.
 
7:47 PM
2 outs
full count 3-2
 
@Mitch no that's what I'm asking you. who is on first?
 
8:36 PM
@MattЭллен Why do you wanna know?
 
9:20 PM
I don't know
 
9:36 PM
Huh. OK. Well, that's about it then.
 

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