Language Overflow - 2016-03-08 (page 1 of 2)

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4:31 AM

My question is, is there any natural way to learn English? -- There are several, I think. But instead of mentioning any of those, I'd like to say that your problem, judging from your writing in this post, is not that you know too little about English; it's that you already know too much. IMHO, knowing too much is precisely what holds you back. There are two main ways to work around this: one is trying to see English afresh, as if you don't know it (which is easier said than done); another, which is a more common way, is using grammar books and sentence correction exercises. — Damkerng T. 6 mins ago

@snailboat I think this one is sort of a comment-answer!

(But I think it's probably off-topic, so it's better as a comment.)

2

Q: Can the word "there" be used as noun?

Dictionary say "here" is adverb and "there" is adverb and noun. How can the word "there" be used as noun? Can't the word "here" be used as noun? In addition, now I knew that "there" is used as pronoun like " There is a pen.". If so, how about "Here is"?

> Dictionary say "here" is adverb and "there" is adverb and noun.

I didn't believe it at first, but!

thefreedictionary.com/there really says that there is (can be) a noun.

> n. That place or point: stopped and went on from there.

I think traditionally, that there would be a pronoun.

(Isn't it strange that the dictionary defines there in Hello there as a pronoun, rather than noun? Talking about consistency. :-)

Morning, @CowperKettle!

Good morning, @DamkerngT.!

Anonymous

4:47 AM

Oh, what a good question! :-)

Good morning, @snailboat!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think a lot of users use comment-answers that way, leaving comments if they feel a question should be closed.

Anonymous

Good evening!

nods

Good evening!

Anonymous

In any case, I'm not going to criticize the process of answering in comments anymore, I think. People can do what they think is best.

Anonymous

4:51 AM

I'm going to try to avoid answering questions in comments myself, though.

@snailboat I wish we could discuss more about how we should handle things on our site. I mean, to try to find the norm.

Anonymous

There's a fair bit of discussion going on on meta. I think most meta posts these days get a fair bit of attention.

> 1777: Women lose the right to vote in New York.
1780: Women lose the right to vote in Massachusetts.
1784: Women lose the right to vote in New Hampshire.
1787: The U.S. Constitutional Convention places voting qualifications in the hands of the states. Women in all states except New Jersey lose the right to vote.
1790: The state of New Jersey grants the vote to "all free inhabitants," including women.
1807: Women lose the right to vote in New Jersey, the last state to revoke the right.

(Wonders what was up with New Jersey)

Anonymous

I'm going to stay out of the discussions on meta for now, I think. I'm not frustrated like I was a while back, though.

Anonymous

@CowperKettle heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/…

4:56 AM

@snailboat Aww... I just made a rather long ramble in the main room. :-)

I hope everyone will take it in a good way, as an attempt to find a sort of the middle ground of how we should handle things. :-)

@snailboat New Jersey seems to be the most liberal state.

Feel free to join (or not to join) the discussion.

Anonymous

I'm sorry, I helped J.R. reopen that question after his appeal in the comments. I wanted to help the site err on the side of letting people add answers in cases where there was no consensus about closing.

morning everyone!

Okay, got it! No problem. :-)

Morning!

Anonymous

4:58 AM

I didn't really engage in any sort of deep analysis of the question, it's just that people seemed to want to be able to post answers :-)

Morning!

can I ask something out of the box here? :D

Anonymous

Good morning, @CrazyNinja!

Sure! -- finding the box; where is it? Where is it?!

chat rules becomes bit tough :p

4:59 AM

> Contrary to popular opinion, the 19th Amendment did not give women the right to vote; it merely guaranteed women the right to vote.

So 'guarantee' <> 'give'

Anonymous

The rules in chat boil down mainly to Be Nice.

yeah. Be Nice more polite

@CowperKettle Being used that way, they're really different.

ok. let me ask you something. What do you use to comb your hair?

I guarantee I'll be nice in the chat.

5:00 AM

:D

(0:

I mean, any oils or gels or hair-creams?

@CrazyNinja Had I lived 100 years ago, I might've.

@CrazyNinja Hmm... I usually use my comb. :P

Anonymous

I use a brush. I do have a wide tooth comb and a shower comb for detangling, but I mostly brush. I don't use oils or gels, but I use a leave-in conditioner sometimes.

Anonymous

5:02 AM

I do have hairspray and spray gel but I don't use it as much.

@DamkerngT. comb is just a tool.

Anonymous

I do a lot of detangling by hand.

I use ~~moose~~, um, I mean mousse sometimes.

Once I used gels and hair-creams. But my hair is getting grey.

Anonymous

I tend to use that Frizz-Ease stuff. I don't know if they have it where you live.

5:03 AM

@snailboat is it a good one?

@CrazyNinja I'd like to introduce this amazing tool: tweezers!

Anonymous

If your hair is super curly :-)

Anonymous

What's your hair like?

@DamkerngT. I'm not a old lady :p

Well, you may want to use them some day. :-)

5:05 AM

@snailboat curly when I grow bit longer

Anonymous

How long is it right now?

@snailboat I cut it to short. Cos of the warm whether

I didn't use anything on my hair for very long time. It's been like 1 or 2 years now

Anonymous

It's funny, my hair is curlier the shorter it is. When I grow it longer, gravity pulls it straighter.

Anonymous

When it's short it's a frizzy mess!

user image

My favorite brand.

5:07 AM

@DamkerngT. @snailboat can you suggest me a good brand that use for men ? :p

Anonymous

Hmm, I'm not sure.

I use the pink one. :D

Anonymous

I think a lot of the stuff I use could be used by either gender :-)

@DamkerngT. are you a he or she? hahahah

Anonymous

They do market a lot of stuff specifically to men and women, though, don't they?

Anonymous

5:08 AM

My brother uses really girly hair care products.

I think it's supposed to be for women, but a hair stylist used it on my hair once and I kinda liked it, so I've kept using it since then.

But I need something really good, natural.

Anonymous

He used to keep it almost as long as mine, but his girlfriend made him cut it.

hahaha

do you recommend the different waxes use for hair?

I don't like to use oil on my hair. I really hate cos, they don't vapor and retains for very long time making me to avoid touching my hair

Anonymous

Maybe use less product?

5:13 AM

I know a friend who uses this regularly: topicstock.pantip.com/chalermthai/topicstock/2010/02/A8838145/…

Anonymous

Like, maybe you're just using more than you need to.

I keep coming across Snails' answers

10

A: "A few" vs. "few"

Few is what Huddleston & Pullum call an approximate negator, a negative which puts the quantity near zero rather than at zero. Because it's negative, it licenses negative polarity items (NPIs): Few people ever ran for office. 　 (= "Not very many people ever ran for office.") *Many people e...

I was answering this question

One suggests "not many, but not too few"; the other suggests "not enough number of something", I think.

Yes, I linked to an ELU discussion where everything is explained this way.

Anonymous

Yay :-)

5:18 AM

what does this sentence means?

information needed for adding spokes in the car wheel

Not sure. I'd want more context, but I guess it means someone is asking for the information they may need to know before adding their spokes.

Anonymous

It's not a complete sentence, but I suppose they mean they need information in order to add spokes to the wheel, or information about adding spokes to the wheel.

what are spokes?

Is this kind of thing DIY?

DIY ?

5:21 AM

@CrazyNinja Try image googling for "spokes car wheel".

Do It Yourself ?

@CrazyNinja Do-It-Yourself

Yep!

ok.

> Her silk scarf, draped around her neck, became entangled around the open-spoked wheels and rear axle, hurling her from the open car and breaking her neck.

Angela Isadora Duncan (May 26 or 27, 1877 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer. Born in California, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. She performed to acclaim throughout Europe. Duncan's fondness for flowing scarves contributed to her death in an automobile accident in Nice, France, when she was a passenger in an Amilcar. Her silk scarf, draped around her neck, became entangled around the open-spoked wheels and rear axle, breaking her neck. In 1987, she was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt...

Oh, no!

Is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button based on her accident?

> Benjamin Button: Sometimes we're on a collision course, and we just don't know it. Whether it's by accident or by design, there's not a thing we can do about it. A woman in Paris was on her way to go shopping, but she had forgotten her coat - went back to get it. When she had gotten her coat, the phone had rung, so she'd stopped to answer it; talked for a couple of minutes. While the woman was on the phone, Daisy was rehearsing for a performance at the Paris Opera House. And while she was rehearsing, the woman, off the phone now, had gone outside to get a taxi. Now a taxi driver had dropp…

5:26 AM

I remembered that because she was a lover of the poet Sergey Yesenin.

A famous poet!

Yes, at least here.

Hey, he sort of looked like Brad Pitt!

LOL

Oh, and her two children drowned in a car that rolled into a river.

Hah! Oh, that was sad.

5:31 AM

Yes. I never knew that.

Yesenin was quite uncomfortable for the Soviets, he was not into Communism much. He died a strange death.

> On 28 December 1925 Yesenin was found dead in his room in the Hotel Angleterre in St Petersburg. His last poem Goodbye my friend, goodbye (До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья) according to Wolf Ehrlich was given to him the day before. Yesenin complained that there was no ink in the room, and he was forced to write with his blood.

That's really puzzling.

Or maybe not.

Yes, probably it was a suicide.

Another suicide followed 5 years after.

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (/ˌmɑːjəˈkɔːfski, -ˈkɒf-/; Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский; July 19 [O.S. July 7] 1893 – 14 April 1930) was a Russian Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor. During his early, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Russian Futurist movement; being among the signers of the Futurist manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1913), and authoring poems such as A Cloud in Trousers (1915) and Backbone Flute (1916). Mayakovsky produced a large and diverse body of work during...

> Mayakovsky's funeral on 17 April 1930, was attended by around 150,000, the third largest event of public mourning in Soviet history, surpassed only by those of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

He did not look like Brad Pitt though.

@CowperKettle Hehe!

And this poet wrote a short verse about Stalin, and was sent to death camps.

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (Russian: О́сип Эми́льевич Мандельшта́м; IPA: [ˈosʲɪp ɪˈmʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ məndʲɪlʲˈʂtam]; 15 January [O.S. 3 January] 1891 – 27 December 1938) was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union and husband of Nadezhda Mandelstam. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets. He was arrested by Joseph Stalin's government during the repression of the 1930s and sent into internal exile with his wife Nadezhda. Given a reprieve of sorts, they moved to Voronezh in southwestern Russia. In 1938...

It must've been tough being an artist of any branch in Russia back then.

5:40 AM

Yes, even for such outwardly pro-Communist artists like Mayakovsky.

@DamkerngT. Not only for artists. The key Soviet rocken engineer, who launched the first man in space, got his jaw broken in a labor camp.

Hah!

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (Russian: Серге́й Па́влович Королёв; IPA: [sʲɪrˈgʲej ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ kərɐˈlʲɵf], Ukrainian: Сергі́й Па́влович Корольoв, Serhiy Pavlovych Korolyov), also transliterated as Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov; 12 January [O.S. 30 December 1906] 1907 – 14 January 1966) was the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer in the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 1960s. He is considered by many as the father of practical astronautics. Although Korolev was trained as an aircraft designer, his greatest strengths proved to be in design ...

Oh, an interesting word: astronautics

> Silver particles deposit in a thin film, creating a 'silver mirror'.

Or should it be "are deposited"?

How often do we use deposit in the middle voice?

5:50 AM

@DamkerngT. In Russian, it's cosmonautics.

Cosmonautics Day

Cosmonautics Day (Russian: День Космона́втики, Den Kosmonavtiki) is an anniversary celebrated in Russia and some other former USSR countries on April 12. In 2011, April 12 was declared as the International Day of Human Space Flight in dedication of the first manned space flight made on April 12, 1961 by the 27-year-old Russian Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin circled the Earth for 1 hour and 48 minutes aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. The commemorative day was established in the Soviet Union one year later, on April 9, 1962. In modern Russia, it is celebrated in accordance with Article 1.1...

Hey, nice stamp!

Yes. And we've Gagarin streets in each town and city. (0:

I used to live on Kosmonavtov Str.

Anonymous

Hate-watch and hate-read are interesting terms.

@CowperKettle You could've applied for a cosmonaut prep. school or something similar!

Yes. (0:

Anonymous

5:54 AM

jezebel.com/5876891/the-art-of-hate-reading

Anonymous

I've never found a lot of entertainment value in reading things I dislike, unfortunately :-(

> I can't even pass hate-reading off as a catty social activity, because, while it's certainly bitchy, I usually hate-read alone, late at night when I'm procrastinating, drunk, bored, or all three.

Anonymous

And yet, unless something is truly, truly awful, I feel compelled to finish it.

I had to look up "catty".

Anonymous

I hate to read only part of a book. Or even series.

5:58 AM

I read all the books in the Dark Tower series except the last one.

Anonymous

Oh god, I just read the butter-soaked bag part of the article. Yeegh.

Anonymous

Microwave popcorn is awful stuff.

Some folks seem to feed on their hatred or angst. They could come up with a new word (e.g., Hathahaters. Sorry, Anne!)

@snailboat It was an exciting experiment for me!

There should be some genetical/neuroscientific ground for this.

Anonymous

Have you ever read about popcorn lung?

6:01 AM

Um, no? -- googling for it!

Haahhh!

Bronchiolitis obliterans

Bronchiolitis obliterans (BO), also called obliterative bronchiolitis (OB) and constrictive bronchiolitis (CB), is a rare and life-threatening form of non-reversible obstructive lung disease in which the bronchioles (small airway branches) are compressed and narrowed by fibrosis (scar tissue) and/or inflammation. Bronchiolitis obliterans is also sometimes used to refer to a particularly severe form of pediatric bronchiolitis caused by adenovirus. Bronchiolitis means inflammation of the bronchioles and obliterans refers to the inflammation or fibrosis of the bronchioles partially or complete...

Anonymous

I used to love microwave popcorn, but somewhere along the line it became unpalatable to me.

Anonymous

Now it sounds gross.

Anonymous

Isn't it interesting how our palates change?

I haven't had any popcorn for ... years? already.

6:05 AM

I last ate it.. somewhen in 2001.

Anonymous

sometime

Adverb: somewhen ‎(not comparable)

at some time; indefinitely; some time or other, sometime

Anonymous

Non-standard

@snailboat My favorite taste becomes blander and blander.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I used to love sweets!

6:06 AM

@snailboat Somewhen it will be mainstream.

@snailboat Me too! Especially when I was still playing badminton every night!

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Some of those examples are fine, though.

Anonymous

Or maybe all.

Yay!

Anonymous

But somewhen in your message seemed odd.

6:07 AM

The word somewhen makes me think of The End of Eternity.

Wiktionary comes in handy somewhenes.

Anonymous

You can certainly use it on purpose, and I won't tell you it's an error :-)

(0:

Anonymous

But my ear expected sometime, so I said so.

nods

Anonymous

6:09 AM

I think to the extent that somewhen is acceptable, often as wordplay, it's not quite the same as sometime.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. My favorite foods are spicy now! :-)

Anonymous

The food I love more than any other is any kind of hot pepper.

For me, it's soup! :-)

Anonymous

I really like habaneros. I'm addicted!

I found this:

> In New York and elsewhere, only **a very few animals**—and very lucky ones too—were ever recovered by their owners or adopted by others.

Anonymous

6:11 AM

I also consume more onions than most people.

@snailboat I also like Kaeng tai pla when it's not too spicy. But I think you may like the standard recipe!

Anonymous

How many examples like that can you find in corpora?

> It is thought that a very few animals, such as whales and dolphins, are in fact three-plane beings with an intellectual body of very different nature from ours

> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaeng_tai_pla

I was prompted by Maulik:

You mean 'a very few animals' is ungrammatical? — Maulik V ♦ 3 mins ago

Anonymous

6:12 AM

It does sound okay, doesn't it?

Anonymous

But I don't think it's an especially common construction.

@snailboat I'm not sure.. how to explain it then?

Anonymous

Maybe you could see if it's rare or not.

"There are a very few animals there" as a sentence sounds odd, I think.

So, Maulik simply disregarded the context.

Anonymous

A definitely doesn't work in the OP's sentence.

Anonymous

6:15 AM

@CowperKettle Can you find any examples like this that are existential, like the OP's?

> “In the Christmas story, were there not a very few animals present, also?”

^The first example in Google Books.

> In New York and elsewhere, only a very few animals—and very lucky ones too—were ever recovered by their owners or adopted by others.

^The second.

> It was only in a very few animals that I found no hydrothorax, and articularly in those in whom convulsions had appeared before t eir death.

> “No Trespassing” signs will never work. Wecan domesticate and/or train a very few animals to obey our commandsin very limited ways, but “putting down” a dangerous animal is never punishment.

Anonymous

The second isn't existential, neither is the third.

nods

They're all just a string of "a very few animals".

Anonymous

I don't have a good explanation off the top of my head that distinguishes the two.

Anonymous

I'll try to look it up later.

6:17 AM

But how can a set idiom like "a few" admit an adverb?

I wonder if there is any other possible word between a and few.

Anonymous

Select?

A-ha! a relatively few!

Yes, a select few, too.

"A refreshing few cups of beer"?

LOL

Anonymous

6:19 AM

Really? That sounds weird. Can you show the whole quote for relatively?

Okay, I skipped the first example (it sounds too brutal). Let's try this:

> These macroevolutionary changes are sudden and lead to new species and forms in a relatively few number of generations;

Anonymous

That sounds ungrammatical to me, but that's just my personal judgment.

How about this one?

> It is not uncommon for the isolates of an F. oxysporum form species to belong to a relatively few VCGs.

Could the examples of "a very few" be typos?

Anonymous

Same. My ear just doesn't like relatively there.

6:22 AM

@snailboat Hah!

@CowperKettle All three examples above sound fine to me.

Anonymous

@CowperKettle Oh, um, I don't think so.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Hate-reading kind of reminds me of a friend of a friend. This person liked to find examples of people online to feel better than, and would often share these examples, laughing at how dumb everyone was.

Anonymous

Some people think most people are dumb.

Anonymous

I think most people are surprisingly intelligent.

Relatively, I think we all are pretty much the same.

I mean, for example, even the fastest runner in the world can't outrun an average person by much.

6:27 AM

> “In the Christmas story, were there not a very few animals present, also?”

Then again, much is relative.

Is this okay?

Anonymous

I value hard work more than intelligence, anyway – I think there tends to be a larger difference in how much effort we put in than what our potential is.

(It looks like an existential)

@CowperKettle Somehow being phrased in a negative question makes it sound quite okay to me.

Anonymous

6:28 AM

@CowperKettle I honestly don't like that example as much, but I'm evaluating it out of context.

> That couch affords a very clear view of a very few things, and one of those very few things has been your relationship with my kid brother.

Anonymous

I keep wanting to say it has to do with information status.

> To live within limits, to want one thing, or a very few things, very much and to love them dearly, cling to them, survey them from every angle, become one with them—that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.

Anonymous

I'm reaching satiation on processing this construction and my judgments are becoming less reliable.

Anonymous

I need to take a break from evaluating before commenting more.

Anonymous

6:32 AM

I wonder if there's any connection between that sort of mental fatigue and others, like listening fatigue.

Yes, of course!
I'd put up a bounty on that question if nobody clears the issue for some days.

> There are a very few plates on the table.

Anonymous

I don't like that sentence…

Weird.

Anonymous

Couldn't help commenting, even in my declared state of fatigue :-)

Unless the context (which would be a very contrived one) turns it around.

Anonymous

6:34 AM

You might gather some native speakers and do an acceptability survey, scale of 1 to 5 or such.

Robo-contriving mode: You said I have no plates, but you're wrong. It's true that I don't have even a few plates, but can't you see? There are a very few plates on the table.

Anonymous

Yay, robo-contriving!

Hehe!

Very nice, Damkerng!

bows

6:37 AM

> To live within limits, to want one thing, or a very few things, very much and to love them dearly, cling to them, survey them from every angle, become one with them — that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being. — Goethe

Anonymous

Besides that, you can gather corpus examples and see if they have anything grammatical or contextual in common.

@snailboat If only we could make a poll on ELL...

Anonymous

Maybe on Lang-8? :-)

1

Q: A very few studies or very few studies

Which is the correct form: A very few studies addressed these issues. or Very few studies addressed these issues. I was pretty sure that a few is the correct form but then I noticed that in some academic articles very few is used more often. Can someone explain the difference?

We can make a poll on Lang-8?

I haven't used it for over a year.

Anonymous

6:42 AM

Voted to reopen…

A pool? That would be costly.

Sorry, a typo!

(0:

I wanna swim on Lang-8!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Lang-8 is relatively rule-free. They also started a Q&A service called HiNative some of my friends recommend.

6:43 AM

Oh, HiNative is an interesting name!

(Will I get more likes being a native?)

Anonymous

The idea is Q&A with only native speakers answering, I think. I haven't tried it.

> In a very few minutes she reappeared, having scarcely
allowed the two others time enough to get through a few short
sentences in her praise, after Thorpe had procured Mrs. Allen's
admiration of his gig; and then receiving her friend's parting
good wishes, they both hurried downstairs.

"A very few?"

Anonymous

That sounds good!

I guess a very few works sort of like something between a few and few.

Anonymous

Hmm, is it grammatically distinct from a few? Not just the insertion of very?

6:48 AM

It's not as many as a few, but more than few.

> There are a very few who are brave enough.

Anonymous

It does seem to be well attested.

nods

> There are a very few rivers and brooks and waters in Weymouth. There are many apple-trees, and pear-trees, and vegetables, but a few plum-trees, and peach-trees and grape-vines in Weymounth.

Anonymous

Why does it sound strange sometimes?

6:51 AM

So the existential construction is not to blame.

In a sense, it's saying that we don't have many brave men (and women), but it's not very many.

It has gotten harder to explain.

A-ha! I think it's related to very many.

Basically, I bet that it can go wherever not very many can go.

Maybe "animals" is too vague?

> There are a very few black squirrels there.

Hmm... I think I judged it too quickly.

@CowperKettle It sounds like it's missing something.

Like, "Look! I hadn't seen it before!" <-- probably not a very good example, still

6:54 AM

> There are a very few black squirrels in the Sherwood Forest.

> However, there are a very few publications on the simulation of extractive distillation.

@CowperKettle I think it could be okay in the context of animal extinction.

> However, thanks to Maulik's comment, I looked and found examples of "a very few" in literature:

I'm always unsure whether to put the before "literature"

I wouldn't use the in this one.

0

Q: What is the cup of coffee meaning in "cutie pie"

I've stumbled upon an image of a narrow angle, coffee cup and the mathematical symbol of pi. I get its reference to acute and pie, meaning a cutie pie. But what on Earth is the coffee cup supposed to bring to the table?

word-usage word-choice word-play

> There are a very few animals there that have not received the vaccine shot.

It's a Qt pie! -- Robo-nerd mode

7:04 AM

Maybe this way it will look better.

@CowperKettle nods -- I think it generally works better in limited or negative sentences.

@DamkerngT. But is not the original sentence by the OP limited?

It's a sentence out of context, so it's hard to say, IMO.

I think instinctively, we generally assume a positive context before reading anything. That may explain why I think the sentence sounds very odd on its own.

Okay... maybe @StoneyB or @FumbleFingers will answer the question. It'll be interesting to read their answers.

nods

Anonymous

7:23 AM

Maybe it's about context.

Anonymous

The Stigler diet is an optimization problem named for George Stigler, a 1982 Nobel Laureate in economics, who posed the following problem: For a moderately active man weighing 154 pounds, how much of each of 77 foods should be eaten on a daily basis so that the man’s intake of nine nutrients will be at least equal to the recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) suggested by the National Research Council in 1943, with the cost of the diet being minimal? The nutrient RDAs required to be met in Stigler’s experiment were calories, protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and ascorbic...

2

Anonymous

Mmm, 111 lbs of cabbage

55 kg of cabbage? It's like that Russian joke.

That's quite a lot in a year?, I think.

Ah, thats an annual intake, then it's survivable.

Anonymous

7:27 AM

This year so far I've probably had two or three pounds of cabbage. I'm not sure. How much is a head of cabbage?

I'm sure Stigler would've survived Mars if he had happened to be alone on Mars!

Anonymous

@CowperKettle It's for 3000 kcal/day, too!

Anonymous

After eating that for a year, I'd be 80 lbs heavier :-)

LOL

You can cut down the cabbage in the recommendation. :P

(0:

Anonymous

7:30 AM

Noo, I'd rather cut down on everything else!

:D

Anonymous

And add soy sauce.

Hmm... soy sauce is delicious!

Anonymous

Mmm, sodium!

Anonymous

I needs me some NaCl.

Anonymous

7:32 AM

Even though I need added salt in my diet, I still get the low sodium ones.

Anonymous

It just has a lot of sodium!

Anonymous

I guess that's one of my last remaining processed foods.

Perhaps fish sauce has more sodium than soy sauce. (But I don't know!)

Anonymous

But it's too tasty for me to give up.

Anonymous

I don't either!

7:34 AM

user image

Anonymous

I still haven't really learned how to make Thai food.

Your friend would know quite a few things. ;-)

As a native speaker I can say that the related(?) construction There are a (very) great many animals there is fine. Thus, although I wouldn't write a very few animals in your sentence, I can't explain why not. In other situations it would be acceptable. — Wyatt 7 mins ago

Anonymous

I can't explain it either.

I think my guess about assuming a positive context was on the right track.

Anonymous

7:37 AM

@DamkerngT. Yes! That friend is always trying to get me to learn to cook new things :-)

Anonymous

The first step is getting me to eat salmon, apparently.

Yummy! :-)

Anonymous

I ate salmon once.

BBL!

@snailboat You could try a small bite of salmon once a day. After about 15-20 days, you will like salmon. :D

o/

Anonymous

7:39 AM

At my brother's wedding. It would have been rude not to.

Anonymous

See you, @CowperKettle!

Oh, was it recently?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. How do I do that without wasting any salmon?

Did you have to make a speech in the wedding, too?

Anonymous

No, thirteen years ago.

7:40 AM

@snailboat Sushi could be an answer!

Ahh

Anonymous

Thankfully, no speechifying :-)

Hehe!

Anonymous

I always eat veggie rolls at sushi places.

Anonymous

I should look up what kinds of sushi have salmon.

I think some shops sell salmon rolls, usually cooked.

Anonymous

7:42 AM

Oh, cooked is a plus :-)

I could be wrong about cooked.

Anonymous

I like this sushi idea. My plan was to make it palatable by covering it in hot pepper.

allrecipes.com/recipe/19511/smoked-salmon-sushi-roll

This one is smoked!

@snailboat You can afford wasabi, too!

Anonymous

Oh, that looks good! :-)

Anonymous

I'm going to save that link.

7:47 AM

Yay!

Anonymous

7:58 AM

There was one time I ate shrimp tempura, I think it was, but that was a long time ago.

Anonymous

I've eaten fish before, just not very many times.

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