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Bookworm
Bookworm
03:52
0
Q: How does the study of 'schoolmen' help in improving our distinguishing skills?

growkneeI have been reading the short essay 'Of Studies' by Sir Francis Bacon. I couldn't understand the meaning of the sentence: 'if his wit be no apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen, for they are "Cymini sectores;"' On an online analysis of the essay, the simplified vers...

meaning essays francis-bacon
 
2 hours later…
verbose
verbose
05:59
@CowperKettle That's a very clever song title.
 
2 hours later…
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
07:51
Russia Labels Author Lyudmila Ulitskaya Foreign Agent. One of our next reading challenges: Russian authors labelled as foreign agents?
13 January: Boris Akunin: Russia designates author ‘foreign agent’. There must be more. Is anybody keeping track of them?
7 October 2022: Russia declares popular rapper and writer ‘foreign agents’. "Oxxxymiron added to an updated list alongside four journalists and Dmitry Glukhovsky, a prominent writer"
Wikipedia's List of foreign agents in Russia does not look up to date.
 
2 hours later…
b_jonas
b_jonas
09:29
@verbose Over on Sci-Fi we have multiple "first" questions like that that have answers ranging from Gilgamesh to 19th or even 20th century: scifi.stackexchange.com/q/123002/4918 scifi.stackexchange.com/q/46747/4918 scifi.stackexchange.com/q/94622/4918
b_jonas
b_jonas
09:41
there are also multiple questions that ask what is the first "modern sci-fi" story that has such and such element
 
1 hour later…
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
10:53
@verbose At least those are questions I can learn something from. I have never learnt anything from those numerous identification requests.
 
1 hour later…
b_jonas
b_jonas
12:07
I had a book and a book series identified from id questions (both were before Lit SE was started), and I re-read both. It could have been three but I managed to identify that one myself eventually.
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
@b_jonas We currently have 920 identification-request questions. If the two questions you have in mind had been posted on this site, would that mean two out of 920 identification requests (0.2%) had been useful to you?
b_jonas
b_jonas
@Tsundoku At least, yes.
For reference, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/… was the other such id question
 
3 hours later…
bobble
bobble
14:50
I also have two ID-requests where I happily found the book
The frequency of "thanks" comments (or answers...) on answered ID-requests sound indicates that askers find them very useful
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
15:43
ham meme
►
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
16:10
@bobble Nobody was questioning the utility of the answers to askers. It's about the information value of those questions to the community as a whole and to visitors from outside the community.
bobble
bobble
Your initial argument here seemed to be that you personally had never learned anything from ID-requests. Thus, I presented evidence that other people had learned something.
 
1 hour later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
17:16
0
Q: Do we know "The Midwife"'s real name?

Clara Diaz SanchezIn The Midwife by Katja Kettu, many of the characters have different aliases. By the end of the book we have enough information to identify most of the characters, such as "Scarface", "Redhead", "The Jerker", "The Merchant" and so on. The one exception is the central character, the midwife hersel...

the-midwife katja-kettu
 
1 hour later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
18:25
1
Q: What are "Himalaya Wines", in the "Last Chronicle of Barset"?

mikadoIn Chapter 37, of Anthony Trollope's, The Last Chronicle of Barset https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3045/3045-h/3045-h.htm#c37 a sign in Hook Court advertises "Burton and Bangles, Himalaya Wines". The establishment is undoubtedly a wine merchant, with a sideline in money-lending, but why "Himalaya"...

historical-context anthony-trollope chronicles-of-barsetshire
 
5 hours later…
verbose
verbose
23:32
@Tsundoku Since most of the questions of that sort remain unanswered here, I guess I don't understand what one can learn from them. Particularly given that to me, the questions themselves seem to rely on mistaken assumptions.
I'm sad but not really surprised that the muhammad-iqbal topic challenge got zero questions. It's good that both current challenges have seen some questions.
@Tsundoku Are Flemish and Dutch mutually intelligible?
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
23:57
@verbose Correcting an asker's mistaken assumptions can have value.
@verbose The official language of Flanders and the Netherlands is Dutch. The variety of Dutch spoken in Flanders is sometimes referred to as Flemish, either informally or for political reasons.
Well, I should have been in bed by now.

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