The Reading Room

4:09 AM

Ooh a collection of essays out by @etangata https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/04/13/19051/e-tangata - nz cultural succour ✌🏽❤

Tweeted by thingswhatilove on April 14, 2017 at 7:41 PM

3 hours later…

A J

7:18 AM

@Randal'Thor Congratulations for being top user on another SE site.

Q: W.E.B. Du Bois's thoughts about Harvard University

I was listening to a talk about W.E.B. Du Bois and the speaker said W.E.B. Du Bois had once noted that it was "Harvard's honor" for him to be their student. However, I was not able to find evidence of Bois every saying this. Has anyone came across this quote? I would be interested to know if th...

quote-identification

4 hours later…

11:13 AM

@AJ Thanks! :-D I've hardly really noticed it here, tbh - been more focused on just providing good Q&A, and also the meta side of things.

@Emrakul probably thinks I'm following them around - being the top user on every site where they have a diamond :-P

Q: Why is this adjective given in Ode on Melancholy

11:32 AM

In Keats's Ode on Melancholy, he writes neither twist Wolf's bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Why is Wolf's bane described as "tight-rooted"?

poetry meaning john-keats

Q: Do the poisons in "Ode on Melancholy" have deeper meaning?

11:45 AM

In "Ode on Melancholy", Keats uses the images of three poisons in the first stanza: Wolf's bane, nightshade, and yew-berries. Are these poisons simply meant to connote death/suicide, or might they have a deeper purpose?

poetry meaning john-keats

A J

@Randal'Thor lol

9 hours later…

8:25 PM

By the way, today is Boris Strugatsky's birthday!

Gotta ask a Hard to be a God question.

*tries to figure out how to word a pin-worthy message*

Today is the birthday of Boris Strugastky, one of the authors of Hard to Be a God, our current topic challenge! Why not ask a question?

@Mithrandir That sentence doesn't look well syntax-wise, if you ask me.

@Gallifreyan that's why I didn't pin it yet

8:41 PM

@Mithrandir Looks great now!

Thanks :)

Interesting fact: English Wikipedia claims his birthday was yesterday. Russian Wikipedia claims it's today.

O_o

deletes all the old messages

user15026

@Gallifreyan Weird.

@Gallifreyan and no, I don't need a haircut that badly :P

8:46 PM

There are two sources for 15th of April: National Library of France and Library of Congress. English Wikipedia lists no sources for birth date.

Although... In ten minutes it'll be the 16th.

@Mithrandir Her haircut is intentional, but I think its backstory may be out of scope for this room.

@Gallifreyan you missed the joke... But whatever.

@Mithrandir :( Sorry, meaning of things seems to elude me this week.

9:05 PM

Argh, 4 minutes late with my question!

And I'm going to sleep. Good night everyone!

Riker

nn sleep tight

> time in turkey: 12:08 am

go to sleep silly time lord

@Gallifreyan night!

@Riker here too.

Riker

oh, cool

@Mithrandir go to sleep silly padawan

9:11 PM

@Riker nah, too much fun stalking you. I'm watching you on Veg, in TL, and TNB, not to mention here and Mos...: P

Riker

well no dur of course you're in TL and mos :p

and you forgot the reading room also

Q: What does Father Gur mean by "And then you'll be given back!"?

During the dinner at the king's palace, Rumata has a conversation with Father Gur, the poet. Rumata offers him a copy of the poets work, in exchange for a promise to write something new: “Very well put, Father Gur. By the way, is it still possible to find your book?” “I don’t know… And...

russian-literature meaning strugatsky-brothers hard-to-be-a-god

Long John Silver

Q: What is the significance of the anisotropic highway and the skeleton of a fascist chained to a machine gun?

In the beginning of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's novel Hard to Be a God, the protagonist, Anton, goes down a country road, disobeying a "wrong way" sign, and finds a skeleton of a fascist chained to his machine gun - a remnant of The Great Patriotic War. “Toshka, what was there, beyond the ...

symbolism russian-literature strugatsky-brothers hard-to-be-a-god

Browsing this holiday home's extensive old library, I'm enjoying how many of the books have hand-lettered dust-jack… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/853173030461231104

Tweeted by dylanhorrocks on April 15, 2017 at 9:07 AM

@LongJohnSilver you're also alive! O_O

9:42 PM

Hello, guys. Are you here?

I read Hard to be a god and didn't like it. But it was worth my time, because now I've given it an honest time and can say in an informed way that this sort of soviet sci-fi just isn't for me.

You can no longer give the excuse that I had only read the bad books because there was nobody to tell me which ones are good.

If you're interested, I can tell you which parts I liked and which ones I didn't.

Everyone has different tastes.

Now I'm back re-reading Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

And I'll have to grieve for the character that dies in that book again when I reach that place.

I'm bouncing between reading Hidden Figures and The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy, and re-reading Metro 2033. I might get back to Radiance soon.

I have borrowed Johnny and the dead to re-read too.

I hope I'll be able to get the other two of the trilogy at some time.

...I need to find a less mouldy copy of Shark Dialogues.

user15026

10:18 PM

@BESW Hidden Figures was a pretty good book.

I'm trying to read it aloud to my dad.

1 hour later…

11:27 PM

I've been monitoring our Area 51 stats. Our questions and visits per day are both increasing (and approaching "Okay" rather than "Needs Work"), but our percentage answered is decreasing slightly.

I'm not sure how to effectively combat this, i.e. increase the percentage answered without encouraging bad answers. Perhaps more bounties on unanswered questions (anyone feel free to ping me if you see one that could do with a bounty, since I apparently have rep to spare), or just encouraging our active users to browse through the unanswered questions looking for ones we can answer.

The users stat is the only one of the five I'm not worried about at all, since that can only increase with time. (Unless people start deleting their accounts in droves, I suppose.)

And I'm not sure about the answers per question stat; can't really remember what it was a few weeks ago.

@b_jonas Not even enough to ask any questions about it here? :-)

@Randal'Thor I'll think about it. I'll have to digest this book a bit, and perhaps even re-read parts of it while deliberately ignoring the parts I don't like. I know that helps. It also helps to hear other people's explanations.

11:48 PM

@Randal'Thor The easiest way to do it, obviously, is to encourage people to ask easier questions.

But not so easy that they get downvoted into the basement for lack of research.

I think this site is ridiculously aggressive about that standard.

One problem is that most of the literature I want to ask questions about is sci-fi.

Asking sci-fi questions here would be a reasonable way to get users active on that site to become active on this one as well.

I don't want to fragment the sci-fi questions. Sci-fi SE is still my home site and I won't cheat on him. Asking about Strugatsky here would be fine because you convinced me to read his book, but most sci-fi isn't.

11:58 PM

It can also depend on what kind of question you want to ask about a sci-fi book. E.g. I posted a Wheel of Time question here because it was the sort of subjective-analysis question that would likely be closed on SFF.