The Reading Room

b_jonas

10:29

Hi, guys! I'm just back from the library, and I borrowed that Strugatsky book you recommended, Nehéz istennek lenni.

Also several other books I want to re-read.

Rand al'Thor

14:49

@Shokhet @Mithrandir I fixed up both the wiki and the excerpt.

in Stack Overflow на русском, yesterday, by Gallifreyan

Если устанете от программирования и прочих важных вещей, то на Literature SE Апрель 2017 выбран месяцем "Трудно быть богом" Стругацких. Заходите, спрашивайте, отвечайте :)

^ if anyone has stars to spare?

Gallifreyan

15:54

@DVK-on-Ahch-To That was your idea, @Randal'Thor. Should we?

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan As DVK says, you may want to ask a mod in chat first. There's a possibility it might be seen as spamming.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor SO wouldn't probably welcome it (yes, it's a Russian book, but the whole point of Russian SO is that they don't want to speak English)

And the Russian Language chat is dead

Both of them

So we're in a sticky situation here

@b_jonas Yay!

Mithrandir

17:28

So what's happening for April 1st?

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir You're getting demodded.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor I wondered how long it would take...

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir I posted a question on SFF which I've been saving for almost a year.

Mithrandir

This?

Rand al'Thor

Since it's the only question I've posted on SFF in the last couple of days ... yes :-)

Gallifreyan

17:46

I've checked out my library English copy of Hard to Be a God and started taking notes.

It looks like this now:

Mithrandir

*claps*

I still haven't managed to get a copy...

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir How about Amazon? Kindle?

Mithrandir

@Gallifreyan Planning on it. Have to check with my mother.

Bookworm

19:12

1

Q: Hard to be a god - how do they decide who to save/bring to earth?

The main character (Anton/Rumanta) falls in love with Kira and decides to take her with him back to earth. Since their task is to be as undercover as possible it’s obvious that they are not allowed to save everyone/whoever they like. Kira also has not any bigger roles to build up Arkanar after t...

Gallifreyan

19:25

@Bookworm Yasss!

Rand al'Thor

19:58

How is that even possible?

Ca-ching!

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor It's an April Fools joke.

Rand al'Thor

@Riker Hey, new avatar!

@Gallifreyan If you remove the Russian from the title of your question, it's more likely to make it to HNQs.

(For language sites, SE has algorithms to determine whether a question is written in English or in the language of the site, and only the former get to reach HNQs.)

Gallifreyan

20:18

@Randal'Thor I don't think I can convey the premise of the question without that Russian bit. Also, we've had quite a lot of Ukrainian Language SE question in HNQ, all written in Ukrainian.

@Mithrandir awww :(

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Re Ukrainian, that's a bug.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor Crap.

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan It makes sense. In a year's time, we won't want people to be mainly voting on the top bunch of answers corresponding to topics that have already been chosen as challenges.

That's how we do it on Puzzling too.

Gallifreyan

Ah, well. I've been thinking about proposing Eugene Onegin. What do you think?

Rand al'Thor

Isn't that russian-literature again?

Gallifreyan

20:21

Yep.

Rand al'Thor

In the interests of diversity, I'd say wait a while before proposing another Russian topic challenge.

Gallifreyan

But that one is completely different. It's a novel in verse, a classic, and probably the best known work of Alexander Pushkin, who is, according to many, the father of modern Russian as used in literature.

Of course, all that gets lost in the translation. There is at a least a dozen of English translations, most notably by Nabokov, neither of which, obviously, can convey all the virtues of the book.

E.g. Nabokov's translation (supplied with his commentary) conveys the meaning but sacrifices the verse; Arndt's translation keeps the verse, but not so much the meaning.

Rand al'Thor

Verse is hard to translate.

Gallifreyan

It really is a masterpiece, and it hurts me that it is not as well-known outside Russian-speaking world.

Rand al'Thor

Trying to keep the meter and the meaning is almost impossible in many cases.

Mithrandir

20:26

@Gallifreyan no classics as challenges! :P

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir Classic is relative.

5

Q: How does a book become "an American classic"?

It seems that, in passing, some books are referred to as "an American classic," or "one of the great American classics." This seems like it's a whole subsection of what counts as "classic literature." Oddly, while infrequently, certain books are debated, or people discuss which new book is going...

american-literature classic-literature

Damn you, Tolstoy, for writing prose!

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan You sound just like Axelrod :-)

Gallifreyan

How so?

Gallifreyan

20:41

I plotted the iterations needed to compute the Collatz sequence for every number from 1 to 100 million. Took ~6 minutes with parallel computing, 20 minutes otherwise

For no reason at all (cc @Randal'Thor - I think you'll appreciate this)

Displaying that graph nearly crashed my laptop :)

Doesn't look much like the graph from Wikipedia though

Or maybe it does. I wonder if it is possible to make it less dense. I don't want to delete entries, since that would probably disturb the shape of the graph.

I'll try to display only odd-numbered indices, see how that one looks

Riker

@Randal'Thor yes

The ex squirrel already noticed :p

But visiting gparents on east coast us this week, belated ping responsrs

Gallifreyan

21:03

@Riker SQUIRREL?! Is she back?

Graphs for odd and even numbers look different. The former has those spikes as in the graph above.

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Yes, but her username is user22792 for a while.

(Hence "ex squirrel".)

@Gallifreyan That makes sense.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor Why would odd numbers require more iterations? The graph looks more or less uniform otherwise

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan For an odd number, you have to start off by ~tripling it, whereas an even number immediately gets reduced by a factor of at least 2.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor Well yes, but that's just one iteration

Rand al'Thor

It's not going to create a definite rule that even numbers always reduce quicker, but surely at least a trend.

Gallifreyan

21:18

Sounds like a Math.SE question: "Why the spikes?"

BESW

@Randal'Thor Pretty good answer on the Pookworthy thing, but maybe try to NOT explode the assumptions underlying half of Western lit analysis in a concluding parenthetical?

[wry]

Rand al'Thor

21:38

@BESW I'm nothing if not controversial :-P

BESW

There's controversy, and then there's challenging the justification for most of lit.se's content.

Rand al'Thor

Actually I didn't realise that would be so assumption-explodey for lit analysis. All I was trying to do was move away from the SFF mentality of overanalysing every little unimportant detail.

BESW

Lit analysis loves every little unimportant detail--it just tends to be more interested in how they fit together than each one separately.

Rand al'Thor

I thought lit analysis was supposed to be more about examining things that actually are relevant to the meaning/appreciation of the work, rather than random factoids?

BESW

Who decides?

Rand al'Thor

21:40

(Sorry if this sounds like putting down your question - it's not meant that way.)

BESW

I can't know if the initials are relephant if I don't know what they are, right?

Rand al'Thor

But if the initials were relevant, wouldn't they have been mentioned somewhere in the book itself?

BESW

The forward is part of the book.

Rand al'Thor

I mean what they stand for, not just the letters themselves.

BESW

It's written in character, setting up the reader's expectations and giving them context. There are things in the book which I know would make no sense without the forward.

Maybe I missed it, and somebody can point that out!

Rand al'Thor

21:45

When we're reduced to hunting through supplementary material and reviewers' guesses to find an answer, it's probably not going to be something that's necessary to appreciate the book properly.

BESW

(Also CCF is satire, which assumes some familiarity with the works being satirised that I don't always have.)

It might not be strictly necessary to know why Landen Parke-Laine is named that, but it certainly improves my appreciation of The Eyre Affair to know that the rich, perfect fiancé is named for the British version of the most expensive property in Monopoly.

When I first read CCF, I assumed the initials were real-life abbreviations applied incorrectly for comedic effect.

Esq. IS a real initialism, and ABS does mean "able (bodied) sailor," so I figured since I recognised two out of three the third is also a real thing.

Now it seems only Esq was intended to be recognised as an existing initialism and the others are wordplay.

Maybe it's a reference to one of the works she's satirising.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW *Second most expensive :-)

BESW

I stand corrected and blame 8am on a Sunday.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW Bear in mind that I have no primary source for the "Associate Back Scratcher, Licensed Log Roller" thing.

It could just be that she had no particular words in mind to fit those acronyms, and just added them for the effect of having "fancy acronyms" without any more meaning than that.

BESW

People have gotten PhDs arguing over who or what Gibbons is roasting in that novel.

Rand al'Thor

21:55

Also, obligatory:

Monty Python - Cosmetic Surgery

►

BESW

I do give many bonus points for pointing out that an introduction to a new edition doesn't have any more authoritative weight than any other essay about the work.

Gallifreyan

Can we all just stop and admire that we've actually got a question about about our book challenge? :)

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