The Reading Room

Librarian

02:21

0

Q: Do we want a migration path from ELU?

A lot of questions are posted and closed on English Language & Usage SE, including some which are asking about the meaning in context of some passage in a novel/poem/story and which would be perfectly on-topic for Literature. A few of us sporadically check the ELU site for such questions and flag...

Bookworm

03:55

0

Q: Buddhist interpretation of The Tale of Genji

The search for literary sources has been inspired largely by the difficulty scholars have experienced in imagining that a work of the magnitude of The Tale of Genji could have been created without models. The early commentators found sources in the Tendai Buddhist scriptures, the Records of the ...

japanese-literature murasaki-shikibu the-tale-of-genji motoori-norinaga mono-no-aware

Knight

04:06

@EddieKal I think not all sectors have Saturday off, as far as I know the HR department and Logistic department of corporate (non-IT) sectors companies don’t have Saturdays as off.

Eddie Kal

04:21

@Knight Interesting. Where/what country is this?

Mithical

05:53

On the other hand, stalking when a user is off work or not is kinda creepy and stalker-ish.

Knight

06:47

If that particular user have some problem, he will say to me and we will agree on something. But it is quite rude and unsolicited when someone else comes and say "creepy", "stalking" and "stalker-ish"

Given that you have used the word "Stalker" without specifying its meaning, I can take you to mean the marked one below:

To make everything short, don't call someone a stalker and creepy.

Knight

07:27

@EddieKal See the table in this wikipedia link

In Mexico they work from Monday to Saturday, in North Korea they work Monday to Saturday, in Uganda they work from Monday to Saturday and in Hong Kong and India too.

Rand al'Thor

10:18

@EddieKal Just FYI, there's a list of posts for each topic challenge, in a Community Wiki answer on meta, so feel free to edit in your own questions as you post them :-)

Tsundoku

11:31

@EddieKal Well, they had previously described 4chan as merely "politically incorrect".

Mithical

11:46

@Knight Yes, that's the correct definition. I find it concerning that someone would try to figure out exactly when another user is at work or not, and why they're not hanging around in chat at that exact moment. Why are you trying to figure out what Napoleon's work schedule is? What business is it of yours? I consider that to be prying into details that are of no concern to you, and thus, yes, creepy and a bit stalker-like.

You don't need to try to figure out other users' personal information or schedules.

It's up to @NapoleonWilson of course if it bothers him personally. I chose to say something because it disturbed me and struck me as too stalker-ish for my taste.

Knight

12:29

And try not to be bothered when two people are talking, you got problem that's your problem.

Tsundoku

@Knight Trying to find out what people's work schedules are behind their backs is inappropriate. That is not just "two people talking". If you want to contact someone, you can ping them; that should be sufficient.

Mithical

13:13

...I do believe that that is one of the most patronizing messages directed at me I've ever read...

Knight

@Tsundoku I never tried to find his work schedule with malicious intentions. Please don’t present me like that.

Tsundoku

@Knight I didn't assume malicious intentions. "Inappropriate" does not imply "malicious intentions".

Knight

How was it inappropriate to someone else other than Napoleon himself?

I even said that he will frown at me, you and others know it was a joke.

Tsundoku

@Knight "He will frown at me for caring about him too much" @Knight I think you were already aware that this is rather unusual behaviour.

Knight

13:56

@Tsundoku I would very much like to know how it is unusual?

Now, you will present the argument “SE is not about having fun”, right?

Rand al'Thor

15:26

@Knight I actually think there are cultural differences here, and for your country/culture maybe that behaviour is normal. But for most people here it seems weird to obsess over internet strangers to the extent that you do. To be clear, I don't think you have any malicious intentions - it just comes off as strange, and liable to make people uncomfortable (although like others I can't speak for Napoleon, of course).

Knight

@Randal'Thor Hello Rand. Okay, I agree with that.

But can you at least agree with me that, "stalker" and "creepy" was quite too much to say to someone on a public forum?

Napoleon Wilson

I think this is a bit growing out of proportions on both sides.

First of all, it can be a bit annoying when people get unappropriately interested in someone's personal life or expect them to adhere to certain patterns. Specifically, it doesn't actually quite matter for my presence in this room if I'm at work or not. Sometimes I have better things to do at home than chat, and sometimes I have worse things to do at work than chat. It also depends largely on the topic and if I can contribute something. I don't tend to just "hang around" in this chatroom.

I also don't really need your infatuation with me to grow too much out of hand, wherever it comes from.

However, I would also not go as far as insinuating ulterior motives to your interest in my personal life or you trying to do something "behind my back", rather than just curiosity and an, admittedly odd, fascination with me.

I would try to not be too offended by a comment that wasn't without reason, even if it can come across as patronizing.

> That's all I have to say about that.

Knight

15:46

Can you see who the stalker here is?

Tsundoku

?

Knight

:)

Tsundoku

:(

Knight

who is non-regular visitor there?

Tsundoku

What is that supposed to mean? This room is public. In fact, you don't even need a Stack Exchange account to read what goes on here.

Knight

15:52

Napoleon knows the background, so he knows what I mean.

Napoleon Wilson

I do, and I have to say, oh come on, you're not going to drag this useless weird feud with totally unrelated users into this room where it has abolsutely no place now. You people need to get over this. I say this now as a chat moderator on all of SE. My effin' private life was more constructive than that.

Knight

LOL

Mithical

So how's steeler? :)

Knight

Before we move on to something else, i have to say a little more

Napoleon Wilson

I would prefer you don't.

Knight

15:57

People here have used the words "obsession" and "infatuation" for my questions.

And these two words are very infamous in teenage school/college life.

Napoleon Wilson

Maybe the choice of words didn't employ a finesse required by the situation. If anything, I think Rand al'Thor summarized the conflict quite eloquently and conciliatory in his last message.

Bookworm

16:11

0

Q: What is the nature of the differences between the Kawachi-bon and the Aobyoshi-bon lines of the Tale of Genji manuscripts?

The original manuscripts of The Tale of Genji no longer exist. Royall Tyler writes in the introduction to his translation (Penguin 2003, page xviiii) that by the 13th century, the manuscripts of the work were becoming corrupt, so two scholars independently attempted to restore the text. Minamoto ...

japanese-literature

Eddie Kal

16:24

@Tsundoku Yeah and the problem is a lot of people say "political incorrectness" with approval and admiration. Someone says "I am not going to be restrained by the PC crap" and the others cheer, with bells on. PC is a thin veil. And anti-PC is a tell.

@Randal'Thor K I will remember to do that. Thanks for adding my questions for me!

Btw I really hope to get answers to my Genji questions.

I will probably post some more "interpretation" "analysis" questions because at the moment they are most intriguing to me. And it is not easy to know the answers without a lot of research. I hope someone very familiar with Genji will show up and answer my questions.

@Mithical steeler?

I assume you are not asking about the Steelers?

Rand al'Thor

16:51

@EddieKal Someone who used to be a popular regular in SFF and M&TV chat. Big fan of the Steelers football team.

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor It reminds me of a guy I used to know who would shout "Go Steelers!" when watching a Cowboys game with friends.

Rand al'Thor

Another SFF chat regular (who's not even American and knew nothing about American football) used to say "Go Bengals" just to annoy our Steelerfan :-)

Mithical

17:15

steelersquirrel

715 7 15

ernest-hemingway for-whom-the-bell-tolls historical-context laura-ingalls-wilder little-house-series realism song-lyrics

Tsundoku

18:47

We need to pick our next reading challenge tomorrow and we have a tie between Rabindranath Tagore and Ko Un. (And neither proposal comes from Rand or myself!)

Eddie Kal

19:59

I don't quite understand the code formatting. Never used it before. I see this question of mine has been neatly reformated (thanks to @Brahadeesh and @Tsundoku)

3

Q: Why did Waley choose to transcribe the titles of some chapters as opposed to translating them in The Tale of Genji?

Arthur Waley seems to be a champion, practitioner, and repeat offender of domesticating translation. This Q&A tells us his translation of Journey to the West significantly abridges the original work and alters the moral of the story. My own answer to this question here also demonstrates how consp...

translation japanese-literature the-tale-of-genji murasaki-shikibu

I am composing another post and hoping to insert a table. The tab key doesn't seem to work, so I'd like to know how were the tab spaces entered

Because in the revised question the table seems to contain some tab spaces

Tsundoku

20:24

@EddieKal I you can think of a different way to present the information than a table, that would be preferable. Using spaces or tabs to present information in rows and columns (visually) strictly speaking results in fake tables that are inaccessible to screen reader users.

Background: this WCAG technique. (Digital accessibility is the area are work in; I teach this stuff.)

user185131

20:49

I don't think there's any good way to present tables on SE :(

Eddie Kal

Okay got it. Let me try

user185131

@EddieKal Maybe you can try opening Notepad or something equivalent and make a tab space there, and then copy that over when you need to insert a tab space in a table? I realize that's a caveman-like technique, but it's kind of what I did when formatting the table in your post, actually — I found a tab space already present in your version and just copied that for use everywhere else.

Eddie Kal

@Brahadeesh Ahh I see

Thanks

Rand al'Thor

@Brahadeesh There is on sites with MathJax enabled. Unfortunately, Literature isn't one of them.

user185131

Ah, right, I completely forgot about that... Still, the sites with MathJax enabled are the ones to be considered exceptional.

Rand al'Thor

20:58

Regarding the topic challenges, I've upvoted Rabindranath Tagore but haven't voted on Ko Un yet. It's a good suggestion and I'd like to see it chosen soon, no doubt about that; it just feels a little odd to make the newest proposal the next one chosen, when others have been waiting in the list so long. (Not that I'll object at all if it is; just didn't cast the deciding vote myself.)

@Brahadeesh I guess so, although I'm used to it since one of my main sites has MathJax (plus I use TeX formatting all the time IRL).

user185131

@Randal'Thor Puzzling SE?

Rand al'Thor

Yep.

user185131

Somehow I've gone by without creating a single table so far, though I use plenty of LaTeX almost daily :)

Rand al'Thor

Some people there even made their own fancy formatting templates that get copy-pasted to many puzzles of a particular type, e.g. the Word(TM) puzzles.

@Brahadeesh Me too, I've never written a paper with a table in it :-)

user185131

Is Why didn't Harry and Hermione Granger get married? a dupe of JKR says that Hermione shouldn't have married Ron. Is this correct?? I noticed that the later question is asked by one of the answerers on the earlier question, so maybe they were unsatisfied with some aspect of the original formulation; but they look like the same question to me.

user185131

21:07

@Randal'Thor Wow, I had a look at that template, that's some dedication :D

Eddie Kal

21:37

@Randal'Thor I was wondering if Japanese SE has something that Lit doesn't because I can't type furigana here.

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