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Librarian

15:20

Q: Announcing the May 2019 topic challenge: "My Uncle Napoleon"

In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges, and since the list of suggestions has a single highest-voted entry as April draws to a close, it's time to announce the next topic challenge! Throughout May 2019, our topic challenge, proposed by BESW, will be My Uncle Napoleon, ...

Educ

15:51

could someone help me

2 hours later…

Mithrandir

17:44

@Educ With what?

Educ

17:55

please could you analysis the following quote

or comment it

"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action."

Mithrandir

Sounds like the point is that the purpose of education is not education for the sake of education, it's education for the sake of putting that education into application. Like, okay, so you know how a tree grows - go use that knowledge to plant a tree. Don't just learn for the sake of learning, learn for the sake of doing.

(Which (*pokes @Alex*) is an issue I have with kolel learning and what a lot of charedi folks do here, but that's neither here nor there.)

Alex

@Mithrandir Neither here nor there because it's everywhere?

Mithrandir

More meant that it's not exactly relevant to the conversation at hand, but.... yeah.

Alex

I have nothing against tangents.

Mithrandir

What about tangerines?

Alex

18:04

They're okay.

Tangents are better.

Mithrandir

It does make figuring out where a good pause point is in the g'mara very difficult.

Alex

On the contrary! Now you can pause anywhere.

Rand al'Thor

See, this is why people are put off by Mi Yodeya - all the foreign/jargon words thrown around ;-)

Mithrandir

"oh, this is related, should continue... oh wait, this is too... can't stop, this is a continuation of this theme here"

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir TV Tropes?

Mithrandir

18:06

Worse. In Aramaic.

Alex

@Randal'Thor If there's any jargon you want to understand, feel free to ask.

@Mithrandir "oh, this is unrelated, should stop... oh wait, this is too... I can stop there, this is not a continuation of this theme here"

Rand al'Thor

@Alex I have no particular interest in learning about it. It's just always strange to me that Mi Yodeya people seem surprised by the claims that most of the site is incomprehensible to the average passerby.

@GarethRees I would've simply changed it to "must just". Not a common phrase, true, but aesthetically elegant enough to be excusable IMO.

@CowperKettle Nice poems, btw!

Alex

@Randal'Thor I'm not surprised (well, I don't know about most of the site, but certainly a decent portion of it). Officially we try to use as little jargon/foreign words as possible. Some users follow that more than others.

Mithrandir

I don't expect to be understood any more than I understand @Rand talking about Brit stuff... like politics.

Educ

18:35

@Mithrandir Thank you could you also comment about the following quote

"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's value."

1 hour later…

Alex

19:53

@Mithrandir I certainly didn't understand this comment of yours:

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 12 mins ago, by Mithrandir

I see enough DnD memes on Imgur to understand that this is a common headache for DMs. Players killing the wrong NPCs and absolutely convinced that other wrong ones are important.

Mithrandir

"DnD" = Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop role-playing game. "Imgur" = an image sharing site and community platform. "DM" = Dungeon Master, the person who runs the DnD game ("campaign"), and is in charge of worldbuilding, story arc, etc. "NPCs" = non-player characters, characters in a role-playing game not being played by one of the people playing.

1 hour later…

Mithrandir

21:20

@Educ "doing good things makes you happy"

or, rather, doing your purpose, so... in essence, good things

@Alex The problem is, then you have to backtrack a bit next time to understand the context. Also, it's simply easier to just stop when you're for sure done with a section.

Alex

22:17

@Mithrandir Indeed, sometimes if the study sessions are not that long you end up spending the whole time on the “backtracking for context” and never actually go further.

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