« first day (239 days earlier)      last day (4676 days later) » 

1:56 AM
Больше всего эта страна похожа на болото с нефтяной вышкой в центре и помойкой по периметру
Sorry I can't translate it. This sentence abt what Russians think abt Russia haha
 
2:08 AM
Anyway guys , try to get reach smn knowning Russian.... to translate the above to you
very funnilly :)
 
 
6 hours later…
7:59 AM
Best question title ever:
1
Q: Usage: grammar or style

MaryDoes one say, give your best OR give of your best when it comes to effort?

(And someone actually upvoted it as is. Sigh.)
 
8:35 AM
Reminds me of this:
120
Q: Question title that doesn't describe the problem

Adam Davis Pre Edit 4: Pointing out that thread's popularity is a direct result of programming community interest in said subject, and that someone likely stands to become rich and/or famous by solving the problem none of the answers, save my own, came even close to resolving. Long salutation desc...

 
Jez
8:47 AM
 
8:57 AM
@trg787 First and foremost, this country resembles a swampland with a pumpjack in the middle and a garbage dump along the perimeter.
0
Q: Metaword required

TerryI need a new word or, even better, an old word that I don't know. This gets terribly meta (in a Hofstadter sense) and recursive, so I hope that this makes sense. The word I need is one that describes a word that embodies a concept. So, for example, a mouse is a small furry rat, but in a lab some...

Mar 9 at 3:45, by Kosmonaut
I read through this question a few times and now I feel like I don't understand English anymore.
 
F'x
9:39 AM
OK, I've done my word coinage of the day, I'm out
0
A: Metaword required

F'xI'm not exactly sure what you're after, so the best I can propose are generic terms describing words of a specific trade or branch of knowledge: terminology, lexicon, nomenclature... If you're looking for word coinage, I would suggest isology. It has some ground in reality, as it is (sometimes) ...

 
@RegDwight hello o_0)
 
Hi there.
 
how are you?
\-0-/ little bit busy doing some R&D on German language.
 
9:55 AM
R&D on German? Whaddayamean?
Especially the D part.
 
oOOhh..I have to remove the D part either the language would be change.lol
Whaddayamean?
 
@Cerberus
 
10:50 AM
@RegDwight yesterday I given you 1 trillion dollar. what you did? and when you will teach me German language. 25 is running now.
 
Huh what? Which account did you transfer it to?
Or which maleta should I look in?
 
In SO account I transfer. how can you forget?
 
Hm. Perhaps it's stuck somewhere in the middle.
I don't see it.
But well, I'm nice, so I'll give you the first pointer.
 
oOH.that's great after completion you will get more.
 
Jez
"Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless"... French?
 
10:57 AM
What's your feedback about Indian languages?
 
Jez
Der Mann, dessen Katze war gerade von seinem Sohn anderes Haustier gefressen worden, wurde mit schmerzhafter Trauer, schien es nie kommen würde, hatte geschlagen.
 
Jez
11:13 AM
English, for all its foibles and other issues it is regularly criticized for which have become part of the language over the many hundreds of years it has been develoing yet because of the fact that it doesn't tend to have long tracts of verbiage separating the noun and verb with no punctuation nor hyphens nor parentheses to aid the reader in its comprehension, rules.
 
@Jez Sorry, but that combination of letters makes just as much sense in German as it does in English.
 
Jez
makes perfect sense
 
Okay, if that was too subtle how about this: That is not German.
 
Jez
am i missing something? It wasn't supposed to be.
 
Was it supposed to be French?
 
Jez
11:18 AM
o.O
what language did it look like to you?
 
None I am remotely familiar with.
 
Jez
oh. don't know what you're doing here then. :-)
 
That's what I'm wondering, too.
Over and out.
 
Kit
11:47 AM
Hup.
Let's get it started, let's get it started in here.
Hey, what happened to the boy's room (War Metal Tyrant)?
 
@RegDwight This is an EXACT translation!
 
 
1 hour later…
Kit
12:58 PM
0
Q: Sentence critique

MattAre these sentences technically run on? How can I shorten them? should I? Sentence 1: Tolstoy’s metaphor from War and Peace uses the mathematical concept of integration in order to better explain the method by which we can understand a sociological concept that he calls the “laws o...

Let's send this over to Writers so I can answer it there.
 
I get "Page not found", so presumably it's gone.
I'm not feeling terribly inspired today. Possibly because I'm stuck at home with builders.
 
@Kit Haha, and now Writers have rejected it, too.
-1
Q: Sentence critique

MattAre these sentences technically run on? How can I shorten them? should I? Sentence 1: Tolstoy’s metaphor from War and Peace uses the mathematical concept of integration in order to better explain the method by which we can understand a sociological concept that he calls the “laws of history”. ...

@Kit The boy's [sic] room is still alive and thriving.
I had to make it private, though, so it doesn't appear on the ELU front page.
 
Kit
@RegDwight Well, how am I supposed to hang out there if I can't find it?
@RegDwight What's wrong with boy's room? Should it be boys' room?
 
Jez
1:15 PM
there's something wrong with "boy's soom [sic]" ;-)
 
@Jez LOL.
@Kit You mean it's just one boy's room?
 
Jez
wow, Twain was pretty scathing about German. probably the most low-brow thing I've seen from him
assuming he really wrote it
 
He wasn't serious about it.
 
Jez
he seemed semi-serious
 
He spoke and wrote decent German, or so I am told.
Yeah well, there's always some truth to every joke.
 
Jez
1:17 PM
during the middle of his diatribe, he referred to the fictional reader as 'he', indicating a failing of English
he could at least have used thon
whilst we're on fixing a language
 
Is thon even that old?
 
Jez
> According to Dennis Baron, the neologism that received the greatest partial mainstream acceptance was Charles Crozat Converse's 1884 proposal of thon, a contraction of "that one" (other sources date its coinage to 1858[10] or 1859[11])
so it should've been one of his contemporaries
 
Kit
@RegDwight Yes. Yours.
 
@Jez Interesting. I thought it was much younger.
@Kit Well in that case forget all I said cause if it's my room I'm not tellin ya whassup with it.
 
Kit
@RegDwight Well, shee-it.
 
1:21 PM
I no, rite?
 
Kit
@RegDwight I can't believe Writers rejected this question. What do they accept there, besides our offal?
 
0
Q: What Exactly is the Meaning of "Fatal"?

Tom AuMy understanding is that in its normal usage, it means "deadly." But the root word of "fatal" appears to be "fate," rather than anything that has to do with "death." In this regard, "fatal" resembles "fateful." Could "fatal" be a variant of "fateful," perhaps with the "deadly" connotations allu...

@Kit: curses, you gave the same answer as me only better!
 
Kit
@Rhodri What? Surely not?
 
Then it's not the same. :P
 
@RegDwight I was going to mark that as a duplicate
I know I have answered a question in which I explained the rule of thumb for run-on sentences.
 
1:22 PM
Next up is Rhodri posting, "What exactly is the meaning of 'same'?".
 
Jez
@Kosmonaut Duplicate of dictionary.com? ;-)
 
I couldn't find the post before this question was killed.
 
@Kosmonaut Yes. Comma overuse.
5
Q: Tending to misuse comma

Quintin ParI tend to misuse commas in large way. Whenever I draft a professional mail, I get engrossed in the points, and somewhere along the way I get the feeling that this sentence is too long. I then start putting in commas to separate out thoughts. This often leads me to situations where I start usi...

 
There we go.
 
@RegDwight What is the difference between "same"?
 
1:23 PM
@Rhodri Same difference, d'oh!!!
 
I thought it was different sameness.
 
Rhodri always asks the most easiest questions. So tell me, @Rhodri, how does this total embarrassment work for you?
Now, @Robusto on the other hand...
Mar 9 at 16:42, by Robusto
What's the difference between 3.14159 and mitochondrial cells?
Still unanswered.
 
That is not a difference. That is a link to a site.
Kosmonaut fails me so badly today.
 
@RegDwight Total embarrassment is my friend. Like Total Recall, only with less Schwarzenegger.
 
1:26 PM
And Cerberus is about to leave us for a whole week.
@Rhodri Fewer Schwarzenegger, damnit. Fewer.
 
I'd settle for less. Say, a leg.
Or better, a head.
 
Leg is almost an anagram of Reg.
Feb 23 at 15:56, by Kosmonaut
The antonym for bee is pee, btw
 
Jez
Darn AJAX. I mean I'm in the middle of writing an answer and someone else beating me to it is already in the back of my mind. Last thing I need is a popup at the top of the page along the lines of "someone's posted a new answer, you might as well stop wasting your time now."
 
Kit
@RegDwight My mother did not give me 3.14159.
@RegDwight kiss
 
@Kosmonaut The question's back
 
1:29 PM
@Jez The message doesn't say that that someone hasn't posted complete crap, though.
@Kit See, that wasn't that hard! Telling us the difference, that is. Not the lack of pie.
 
@Rhodri Do you all agree that it qualifies as a dupe of this?
 
Dear @Kosmonaut, would you please stop trying to close a deleted question as a dupe?
Or do you actually want to reopen it?
In which case, knock yourself out.
 
I didn't re-open it, it is open.
 
Jez
hmm:
chat sux.
 
@Kosmonaut Well, I be damned. My bad. I was looking at the other two copies of this question.
 
Jez
1:32 PM
how the heck do you quote on this thing
 
@Jez Who wrote that and why?
 
1
A: Do two people have "breaths"?

Rory AlsopThe singular form is correct in this context: Bob and Alice held their breath is correct, as is The crowd held its breath But Bob tried to quiet his breaths would also be correct

 
@RegDwight Wait, did this person keep rewriting the question?
 
I have long lost track of who keeps rewriting reclosing reopening what.
Mar 22 at 16:42, by Martha
@RegDwight It's the line break in that post: putting in a line break turns a post into preformatted text, essentially.
If you want to quote multiple lines, you can't keep the line breaks.
Or you have to post them separately.
 
@Kosmonaut Writers.SE told him to, apparently.
 
1:34 PM
@Rhodri Oh, okay, I thought it was talking about the singular form of the verb.
 
Jez
> The singular form is correct in this context:
> Bob and Alice held their breath
^ interesting, i wouldn't have said that
'held their breaths' sounds more correct to me
 
Wait, are we discussing that question now?
Cause it's a dupe, too.
 
Kit
Fennec is confused.
 
3
Q: "on their back" or "on their backs"?

mel p. After the therapy, eight children (43%) became able to crawl/move on their back. Or should I use "on their backs"? Singular because each child only has one back, or plural because we're dealing with eight backs?

10
Q: "Only those who qualify will be awarded a certificate" or "Only those who qualify will be awarded certificates" ?

xportIn my life, I always confused with choosing plural or singular form to represent one-one correspondence notion. Only those who qualify will be awarded a certificate. or Only those who qualify will be awarded certificates. ? Another example, let us consider the following: "Each stud...

5
Q: "His head" or "their head"?

Mike ChristianI was disappointed to see a favorite storybook from my childhood has been edited. (Harry, the Dirty Dog; ISBN-13: 978-0064430098) I distinctly remember the text written as follows: ...but everyone shook his head and said, "Oh, no, it couldn't be Harry." I was taught that the male gender f...

The last two are for dessert.
 
Jez
"they used their head" vs "they used their heads"
 
1:38 PM
@psmears: Lol, thank you!
(I am trying to create a stereo effect for him.)
 
Jez
 
I've seen that somewhere just a few hours ago.
Oh, I know where.
It was in the related videos list to my ST: TNG video
 
Jez
hmm do ppl in the USA really have 3 or 4 jobs sometimes?
i mean how can you fit that in?
 
Kit
@Jez I work four tens for my day job.
eight hours on Tuesdays
then maybe two hours at night after the kids are in bed
 
Jez
four tens?
 
Kit
1:45 PM
four ten hour days.
 
Jez
is that one job or four?
 
Kit
Sometimes on the weekend too.
@Jez Which? What?
 
Jez
well you used the singular 'job'
 
Kit
Yes. Four ten-hour days = 40 hours or 1 full-time job.
Per week, I should have said.
 
Jez
well that's not 3 or 4 jobs then :-)
 
Kit
1:50 PM
@Jez Yes, but the Tuesdays that I work 8 hours is another job.
And the two hours a night after the kids are in bed and sometimes weekends is another job.
So that's three.
 
Jez
mmm
i think you guys could do with some legislation similar to the European Working Time Directive
i don't envy your work-obsessed culture
9.00-5.30 Mon-Fri is too long for me :-)
 
Kit
I wouldn't call it work-obsessed. We do it this way so that one of us can stay home with the kids.
Why do you think I spend so much time goofing off at work?
Girl's gotta play too.
 
Jez
over here more than 1 job is basically considered weird overkill
over there it looks like 2 or 3 is common
even with kids that applies
 
Kit
Besides, I'm hoping for a raise next year. Then I can drop all this consulting crap and be a regular 9:30ish to 4 or so-er.
 
Jez
9.30 - 4.00 is regular?
see now that's shorter hours than here...
 
Kit
1:54 PM
Um. 9 to 5 is the expression.
I was making a joke.
 
Jez
ah. didn't carry well.
 
Kit
I'm much funnier in person.
3
A: Is there a scientific term for the way creationists use "macroevolution"?

KitI think the short answer is "no." From the resources you provided, there is no equivalent concept of macroevolution in creationism, so there is no equivalent term. That is, it seems there is no "evolution of one 'kind' into another" in creationism. Think of it this way. Macroevolution is spec...

Can we move the comments here to a chat room?
 
2:11 PM
Hello there. Can you 'adjudicate' genres to songs/books/etc? is it a right word?
 
Kit
@vemv No, this sounds weird. "Adjudicate" is used in legal matters pretty exclusively.
What are you trying to express with it?
 
Jez
consider something of a genre, probably.
 
Thank you. I'm trying to find a synonym to 'assign'.
 
Kit
Allocate?
Categorize into?
 
Jez
why do you want a synonym?
'assign a genre' is a very common phrase
 
2:14 PM
Oh I didn't know that
I'll stick to 'assign' then!
 
Kit
Oh, yes. "Assign" would have been what I would have suggested.
 
Perfect. English is not my first language so I'm always crazy about this sort of things.
 
Jez
c'est aussi difficile que le français dans le choix du mot correct
 
Supongo que ocurre en todos los lenguajes ;)
 
Somewhere I have a Dutch translation of "My hovercraft is full of eels." Don't make me hunt it out!
 
Jez
2:20 PM
heh
J'aime ma langue, si poétique et mélodieuse
we're gonna have some right characters when FL&U gets into beta
 
Kit
@Rhodri My friend once taught me "Pardon me, but your pig just exploded" in Norwegian, but I've forgotten it now.
Terribly useful phrase. Shame I've forgotten it.
@Jez Wait, you're a francophone?
 
Jez
i'm not a very good francophone
 
Francophones are for talking to deceased Spanish generals.
5
 
Kit
@Rhodri Thwack!
 
Jez
one 'ha'.
 
Kit
2:26 PM
So hungry...must get snack...AFK
 
hello guys
what's up
 
Hi @Brandon. Not a lot right now; Kit has the munchies.
 
Kit
2:41 PM
I'm back!
With taco salad.
 
Jez
@Kit can you magically push things on 2 hours so i'm home from work?
 
Kit
Which is really more lunch than snack, but taco salad is as hard for me to resist as a drunken co-ed at a frat party...
@Jez I am not a magical fennec.
Hi, @Brandon!
 
Jez
i'm a meatarian
 
Kit
@Jez face punch
 
Duh. I feel so stupid.
I've been trying to find some plainchant to stick in the background of a song about war and fighting.
Specifically the Terminator movies.
It's taken me waaaaay to long to think of Dies Irae. Judgement Day indeed. Bah.
 
Kit
2:54 PM
@Rhodri Come now. Everyone uses that one. Do you need some coffee?
Oh, crud, you're a Brit. Tea, then?
@Jez That was very funny. Sorry about the reflexive face punch.
 
Jez
lol that is The Apprentice to a tee
i'm guessing the principle is the same with the US one
 
Kit
"What's the smallest large amount of money?" <—my next question on EL&U
 
Jez
i do think The Apprentice has become obviously scripted
before, it passed as just dunderheads described as 'the best'
 
Kit
3:12 PM
I don't watch it. I prefer to watch things that I like, that are clever and have some sort of redeeming value.
 
Jez
so that rules out US TV then
 
Kit
Pretty much.
Well, that's not true. I like "Castle" a lot.
And Law & Order.
 
Jez
never understood why people like Law & Order myself
 
Kit
Although I find Law & Order: UK puzzling. I started watching it because, well, it's L&O, but also because it's got that chick from Doctor Who in it.
I like the mini-mysteries.
Same reason I like Castle. And Nathan Fillon reminds me of my husband, and that chick who plays Kate Beckett is hot.
I see a pattern forming here.
 
@Kit What chick is that?
Ah Freema Agyeman
 
Kit
3:24 PM
@z7sg Yup, aka Martha Jones-Smith.
 
ustream.tv/channel-popup/nasa-hd-tv shuttle launch streaming HD live starts in about 2 mins
2
 
Kit
@Vitaly Eek. I can't watch. Someone mentioned Challenger early today and it's gotten me all freaked out.
 
50 seconds
 
Kit
Frig. Now I have to watch.
Agh! I can't stand it!
Which component failed?
 
Pause at 31s
 
Jez
3:27 PM
they're all dead.
 
Kit
@Jez Seriously, dude, check that attitude. You probably don't remember the Challenger explosion, but it was pretty shocking and traumatic.
 
20s
 
@Kit Oh yes, I remember. I was in college.
 
Kit
Boy that camera shot is cool.
 
that was beautiful
 
Kit
3:30 PM
@Rhodri Yeah, Jez was still in short pants.
 
the moment of launch
 
Kit
Covering my eyes.
 
Oooh, nice shot of the booster rockets falling away.
 
Kit
Are they in blackout?
Or did something bad happen?
 
Just very s-l-o-w feed I think
 
3:33 PM
for me they are still streaming from the shuttle itself
 
We seem to have lost sound, but the video is fine
 
the rim of the Earth is already visible
 
Ah, sound is back. My broadband is just not up to the bandwidth, that's all.
 
Kit
@Rhodri I think there's a blackout period on launch and landing, isn't there?
 
Jez
i get a feed
 
Kit
3:35 PM
Something to do with supersonics?
 
Kit
Not so much to do with bandwidth?
 
wow look
the shadows
how it's rotating
it has just rotated along its axis now
or something like that
at least it looked like that
 
Jez
it's a tragedy that the clowns in the US senate are cutting nasa funding
 
trying to recognize the continents
 
Jez
3:37 PM
and increasing war funding
 
no luck, too cloudy
 
Kit
@Vitaly Yes, they roll so that the cockpit faces away from the planet.
 
or too much sun
 
Jez
USA is going to fall as the leading intellectual power
 
Kit
Freaking cool.
 
3:38 PM
ok the shuttle got separated from the carrier
well it seems to be over now
 
Right. Back to "work".
 
Jez
heh the shuttle's rotating upside-down
 

« first day (239 days earlier)      last day (4676 days later) »