@ymb1 I'm so envy of you climbing the rep so rapidly while it seems to take me ages to get there. I see you have a couple of very high vote answers though, that helps tremendously I guess.
Following this answer, when looking for how many times the publicist badge was awarded, it's quite surprising to see nobody received it.
Many questions (2,400+) have been visited more than 1,000 times, and this cannot happen unless the link is shared. Example:
Question Why do most single prope...
@kevin not really, daily rep cap of 200 limits those votes, like the +100 vote answer, it was in like two days, so it's like <40 since there were other posts as well. I guess I just go addicted, we have similar number of posts :D
@kevin whenever I try to back off, a question pops up that I feel I want to answer, two recent examples: this and this.
Looking at some photos, I realised some aircraft have holes in their air-brakes, why is this when the whole purpose of them is to slow down the aircraft, and holes will not help slow them down.
The afd tag refers to the FAA's Airport/Facility Directory, which was renamed to the Chart Supplement in March 2016.
Right now we only have 4 questions tagged afd but what should we do with them? Should we create a new tag and keep afd as a synonym? If so, what should the new tag be?
@anonymous if the speedbrake answer here on the chat and on airliners.net still didn't satisfy your question, sure why not. You might perhaps want to research when are/not holes used, and what is the method of determining such parameters, if you couldn't find answers, or found answers that are not clear, then you can ask a question that highlights the research you've down and what you wish to understand.
@anonymous I'm with @ymb1, the main thing people on the site want to see (from the context of your question) is that you've already made an effort to answer the question on your own. A good way to do this is to say things like "I read this article here <insert link to article> and it explained <x,y> but I don't understand <z> still."
That way people know you're doing your part to find the answer.
One of the things SE really hates (for whatever reason) is people who just show up and ask questions without trying to figure it out on their own first. I personally think it has to do with the fact the Stack Exchange started as "Stack Overflow", and on Stack Overflow it's considered very bad manners to just show up and ask someone else to write code for you.... People would want to see that you've tried first.
I don't know if that same logic should apply to every stack, but it's part of the culture here anyway ;).
The point being, just make sure when you ask questions that you show that you've tried your best to understand it on your own first. People tend to really appreciate that around here.
@JayCarr It's considered very bad manners to show up and ask anyone to do your basic research for you without at least offering to pay them or something :)
(I consider my "pay" for digging up answers to obscure questions to be the new knowledge I gain, but if the question is answered by the first Google result it makes me sad)
IE., I'd be more accepting of a 14 year old asking me a basic question than a 25 year old who's already finished college (and ostensibly knows how to research things.)
@voretaq7 Right, I'm mostly making allowances for age here. I have a niece who's only 9, for example, if I asked her to "Go Google that" she'd just be confused.
yeah, that's part of why I'm OK with basic FAR questions (because really there's no such thing: Even when you think the regulation is clear you wind up going down the rabbit hole of enforcement actions and counsel opinions to find out it doesn't actually mean that)
@voretaq7 lol, yes to that about a million times over. I remember the one time I tried to answer a question about the FARs.... Never again, at least not until I've had a few years to familiarize myself.
Meriden Fly-In postponed (again) on account of "It's fall in the Northeast, we can't have nice weekends."
On the one hand this is good, because I double-booked myself tomorrow. On the other hand this also means my flight lesson for tomorrow is probably getting scrubbed because we're not allowed to have nice weekends.
@voretaq7 Well it looks like you lucked out on the hurricane, though. Two weeks ago they thought it might head that way. Of course my brother just moved to Hilton Head. He's lived there two months and already has to evacuate
@JayCarr Latin does not have marked infinitives, so no need for s rule there. Actually, the rule only showed up in English in the mid-19th century. It's not an old rules and nobody can figure out who made it up in the first place. So we've kicked it to the curb, and rightly so
@TomMcW Oh? Maybe I'm thinking of some other rule of English...that was migrated from latin.
In the mean time, I've figured out that I didn't actually split an infinitive up there (my grammar is not so good) and now I'm trying to figure out one that works...and is still topical...and still lets me swear @voretaq7.
@TomMcW God I had prescriptive people. It's like they have no understanding of how languages evolve and why it's a good thing.
Being prescriptive is just giving into one's need to force conformity on a group, IMNTHO.
Since language (and accent and usage) is a big part of group identity, you get idiots who start getting really finicky that everyone do things the same way.
In my head, so long as I understand someone (for the most part), I'm fine with how people say things.
@TomMcW The rule exists for consistency of modifier placement - that's not a strict requirement of English grammar though
(e.g. "It is helpful to have a sentence structure that places modifiers consistently relative to the subject, object, or verb" vs. "It is helpful to have a sentence structure that consistently places modifiers relative to teh subject, object, or verb")
The Oxford Comma, however, is non-optional. Omitting it causes structural ambiguity, and I will physically fight people over that one.
@voretaq7 Yet another point we'd disagree on, but I'm decidedly in the minority on this one. I get yelled at by all my editor friends every time I don't use one. I just might cave at some point. But at the moment I don't give a fuck, a damn or a rats ass.
lol, just showed my fiancée this and she asked me what book I would prefer to read: one about Clinton, my Grandmother and a heroin addict. Or perhaps: Clinton, my Grandmother, and a heroine addict.
@JayCarr I use them often. I use a lot of parentheses to. I usually use a dash when the phrase being set aside is at the end of the sentence, but not always
@TomMcW I'm all about parenthetical (so much so that sometimes I use braces [god, could you imagine] in the middle of my parenthetical.) But I often catch myself using commas for asides, which isn't really what they are for... I dunno punctuation is weird man.
@voretaq7 I usually don't use the Oxford comma, but that's just what I'm used to. It's very useful in certain situations to keep the conjunction from being ambiguous.
for your amusement: A complaint I just sent to the NTSB:
Using the page: "Aviation Accident Database & Synopses" at http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/index.aspx,
The dropdown selection for "State" is mostly alphabetized, but has numerous errors in the ordering, making it hard to find locations.
Specific examples: Alberta Alaska (should be before Alberta!) Alabama (should be before Alaska!) Atlantic Ocean Arkansas (should be before Atlantic Ocean!)
Nunavut Nevada (should be before Nunavut!)
Please look into if these options should be properly alphabetized.
The problem here is English is a grammar-slut of a language: We've taken constructs from every other language we've ever encountered so some elements of our grammar are logically Latin, others are logically Germanic, and the third group is simply illogical :)
@abelenky "Call us when our website makes a jet crash."
@abelenky You could probably argue that website design isn't fundamental to the mission of the NTSB.... But, that being said, I think if website design isn't in any particular companies domain it would behove them to hire in a company who can do it right.
@abelenky One thing I hate is when you have a drop-down list of countries. Half the time you can't find the United States. It's never alphabetized correctly
We need an aviation.SE style guide. Oxford commas required, strict alphabetization rules, and can we all agree that, regardless of what Wikipedia says, the proper abbreviation for knot is kt or kts?
"Novel English" (how you would write a book or short story) calls for punctuation inside the quotes. "Legal English" (self-explanatory) calls for what appears inside the quotation to be exactly what is quoted (including punctuation). "Technical English" follows the rules of Legal English because if you cut and paste something with extra punctuation you can bring down a whole production environment.
I've seen it turn up in technical writing where people weren't sure if they needed punctuation to end the enclosing sentence if it ends on a quote. (No, you do not, because it looks stupid.)
the link above shows even BrE and AmE don't agree on the legal (non-fiction) positioning of the punctuation. "Today", said the Prime Minister, "I feel free from care and anxiety." vs. "Today," said the Prime Minister, "I feel free from care and anxiety."
@ymb1 I had no idea the brits did it differently. I've always hated the hard-and-fast everything inside the quotes rule. Never thought it made sense. I guess I intuitively use the British style MOST of the time, but because I was taught the American system I use it sometimes for the purpose of "correctness". But I shan't from here on!
this of course relies on the use of the comma as an element of cadence, as opposed to the US practice, sprinkling them liberally, like salt and pepper on a bad steak.
For some reason in the US we don't teach proper use of the semicolon, and then at some point people discover there's this key between L and ' and just start hitting it for some reason
though I'd be happy if we would just teach using it to separate list elements that themselves contain commas.
Stealing this from Wikipedia: My wife would like tea; I would prefer coffee. Would it be correct to replace the semicolon with comma followed by and? I.e., My wife would like tea, and I would prefer coffee.
I can spot at least two errors in the message I sent as a whole hehe
@ymb1 Basically, if what's on each side of a comma forms a complete sentence then it should be a semicolon. If what's on each side of a semicolon does not gotten a complete sentence then it should be a comma.
@ymb1 it's proper to use a semicolon there (because you're joining two independent clauses without a conjunction)
a comma and a conjunction (and, but, or however) would also be appropriate depending on the context, it's more a stylistic choice for flow.
(not included in this discussion is the death-glare or kicking-under-the-table you may or may not receive from the aforementioned wife for presuming to order for her…)
@voretaq7 copy; lol @TomMcW the comma splice article on Wikipedia confused me even more; speaking on GPWS, loading-wheel still not fixed, probably DNS issue
@TomMcW In High School I used to delight in constructing the most convoluted grammatically-correct sentences I could. I received many papers back with lots of red marks, crossed out with more red marks, and "Nevermind, it's fine" scribbled in the margin.
@ymb1 The key here is independent clause. It's not the subjunctive adverb that calls for the semicolon it's the independent clauses. If you break it off and it doesn't make a complete sentence then it's not an independent clause
alright here, slightly baffled at the lack of interest re: my "what design features are there to relieve empennage overpressure safely in case of an Aft Pressure Bulkhead failure?" question
(but then again, I've been batting rather poorly on questions across the network lately -- out of the last oh 4 or 5 I've asked, only one of them's gotten an answer, and that was a softball :P)
because it seems that the "fail safe" philosophy should be extended to the empennage as a whole, not just the aft pressure bulkhead
(i.e. if something breaks back there, it shouldn't take other parts of the plane out with it if at all possible -- had JAL123 not lost its vertical fin, it'd have been a simple non-normal depressurization, not a catastrophe)
@Shalvenay I've never read an official report on that one. What specifically was it that damaged the vert stab? Was it damaged from internal pressure or did part of the bulkhead hit it?
Seems like I remember the main problem was that the hydraulics were severed
@Shalvenay That makes sense. I've always had the idea that, especially with 4 hydro systems in the 747, you could pick one system to not go to each section. For example: yellow goes to both wings, but not the tail; green goes to left wing and tail; red goes to right wing and tail. That way damage to one extremity cannot destroy all hydraulic systems. You'd still have control over the undamaged section.
@voretaq7 Give me an example
@Shalvenay But it does seem that a simple blow-out vent would protect the empennage from damage from internal pressure. Is JAL123 the only known bulkhead failure?
but yes, a simple blow-out vent would do the trick -- it'd add 0 weight to the aircraft, and make the aft pressure bulkhead a much less critical component if you will (it's in a place where it's actually rather vulnerable to getting well, banged up)
actually...whoa
apparently Boeing had put pressure relief doors in the original 747 empennage design, but they were too small?
@TomMcW yes, though the "therefore" in that bothers me and I would reword it ("He is sometimes late to appointments because of this." - now with even more pronouns relying on the preceding sentence! :-)
@TomMcW yeah -- you can't make the aft pressure bulkhead redundant in the traditional sense, but my suspicion is you could make it so that subsequent failures happen in a controlled way
@voretaq7 There's no rule that pronouns have to be defined within the sentence. It's still a complete sentence. I'd say that particular example is correct with the semicolon. I, of course, would have used a comma. Then Mrs. Rhone would have marked it as a comma splice. But I wouldn't care. It looks funny with the semicolon
another thought -- if you ever get a low ceiling over the DC area with a stiff wind from the west, that actually kinda bones people who aren't in craft capable of handling really stiff crosswinds....
@Shalvenay about JAL, what I understand is, the gash just aft of the bulkhead, released the pressure, the onslaught of that pressure is what broke off the tail
(if you want background -- it's actually worldbuilding for a short-story that's been rattling around my head for a while now. part of it involves an Emirates A380 intentionally getting its rear pressure bulkhead blown out by a bomb planted by white supremacist terrorists, and the vertical tail coming off as a result of that -- however, the terrorists' intent to kill all aboard is foiled by a combo of the A380's hybrid hydraulic-electrical flight control architecture and good flying)
IMO, criminal investigators should only start investigating a mishap if the aviation investigators call them in because signs of foul play have turned up
I think that's usually where leaks happen. It gets subpoenaed for a lawsuit. The lawyers and their staff all get their hands on it and YouTube is just too tempting
Following this answer, when looking for how many times the publicist badge was awarded, it's quite surprising to see nobody received it.
Many questions (2,400+) have been visited more than 1,000 times, and this cannot happen unless the link is shared. Example:
Question Why do most single prope...
The afd tag refers to the FAA's Airport/Facility Directory, which was renamed to the Chart Supplement in March 2016.
Right now we only have 4 questions tagged afd but what should we do with them? Should we create a new tag and keep afd as a synonym? If so, what should the new tag be?
The Hangar
The Hangar