English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Matt Эллен

8:00 PM

hi!

Mahnax

How are you?

Matt Эллен

good! I had a chuckle at Bing's attempts to translate Finnish. how are you?

Mahnax

Once, a Finnish relative posted a status and a little button saying "translate with bing" was there. I clicked it, and it correctly translated nothing.

I'm alright.

Matt Эллен

:D

yeah, that's what I'm doing. a friend of mine is posting things in Finnish (because he is Finnish)

Glad to hear it

Mahnax

Cool, you know a Finn?

Matt Эллен

8:04 PM

Hmmm...jalkahoidon ottajalle käsihoito kaupanpäälle... Kaksmielisillä on taas hauskempaa
Hmmm ...foot care to the lessee by the hand in the management of the trade ... Kaksmielisillä is more fun (Translated by Bing)

@Mahnax the best thing about the internet is how many people I've met. a few from Scandinavia.

Mahnax

I love the internet. I've met all of you there!

Matt Эллен

exactly :)

Mahnax

And I've picked up some useful knowledge on ELU.

Matt Эллен

It is arguably the best site on the SE network

Vitaly

8:29 PM

The best site on the SE network was Atheism.SE. But they could stand its awesomeness, so they had to shut it down.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Vitaly Nah, it was kinda dull

Mahnax

What's to ask though?

Matt Эллен

do you believe in god?

don't you believe in god?

Mahnax

Okay, and then?

Matt Эллен

on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you believe in god?

on a scale of 1 to 10, how much don't you believe in god?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

8:31 PM

It had only two questions. "Is there a god?" and the accepted answer was "no", and "How do I argue that there is no god" and it was closed as "list question"

Mahnax

Hahaha.

Matt Эллен

@Vitaly what actual questions did it have? do you remember?

Vitaly

@MattЭллен I mostly remember two types of questions: refutations for theistic fallacies (“How do you refute a theistic Occam's razor argument?”) and dealing with theistically-minded people (“When someone says they will be praying for you, what do you say?”)

Matt Эллен

Maybe it would have been a slow burner. What I read on the blog was that the people participating ran out of steam

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен It didn't get many new questions.

Matt Эллен

8:39 PM

yeah

Vitaly

Feb 15 at 11:05, by Vitaly

Oh, and one more thing about Atheism.SE … You know PZ Myers, right?

Feb 15 at 11:07, by Vitaly

Anyway, PZ Myers plugged Atheism.SE (which wasn't even in beta then) on Pharyngula, and the Area51 proposal got hundreds of followers basically overnight

Feb 15 at 11:07, by Vitaly

It's not difficult to imagine the quality of such an audience

Most of us weren't ready for the StackExchange format. I only remember a few people who weren't first-time users of the StackExchange platform.

Not to mention that we didn't have a pro-tem mod.

Matt Эллен

so most users wanted to treat it like a typical forum?

that would make it difficult to keep here

Vitaly

Most users joined the proposal and never came back

Matt Эллен

oh

Vitaly

And most users who came back did that, yes

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

8:44 PM

I started using the Atheism site fairly early in beta. My problem was that I didn't really have anything to say about it that wasn't already being said. There just isn't much to discuss about atheism among atheists.

KitFox

Preaching to the choir, so to speak.

Matt Эллен

:D

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I mean, I should say rather than "there is nothing to say", there aren't many questions to ask.

KitFox

With Christianity, everyone can argue about who is right.

With atheists, everyone can just agree.

It's not like there are lots of different ways of not believing in god.

JSBᾶngs

@KitFox well, you could still argue, but not about that

KitFox

8:47 PM

My kind of atheism is better than your kind of atheism. I'm a better atheist than you.

JSBᾶngs

@KitFox a friend of mine joked about creating the Society of Particular Atheists, which consisted of people who were devoted to disbelieving in one particular god

KitFox

I suppose.

@JSBᾶngs That was actually going to be my next joke.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@JSBᾶngs Isn't that just about everyone, ever? :)

JSBᾶngs

Joke

A is something spoken, written, or done with humorous intention. Jokes may have many different forms, e.g., a single word or a gesture (considered in a particular context), a question-answer, or a whole short story. The word "joke" has . To achieve their end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices. Jokes may have a punch line, i.e. an ending to make it humorous. A practical joke or prank differs from a spoken one in that the major component of the humour is physical rather than verbal (for example placing salt in the sugar bowl). Purpose Jokes are typically ...

Vitaly

> A close friend of mine wanted to have what she called a respectful dialog on the differences in our beliefs, but when I wrote my story and emailed it to her, I didn't hear from her again. I guess she was offended that my deconversion story basically came down to education and knowledge.

Matt Эллен

8:49 PM

Teacher loses job over Facebook photo, files lawsuit

KitFox

If I'm Pastafarian, can I still call myself atheist?

Vitaly

(just skimming through the posts.xml file of Atheism.SE's dump)

Matt Эллен

@KitFox so long as you don't believe his noodley appendage is God/a god

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@JSBᾶngs yeah yeah, I got it.

Anyway: I'm outta here. later folks.

JSBᾶngs

@MattЭллен but isn't that the entire point of the Noodly One?

Matt Эллен

8:52 PM

cya @MrShinyandNew

@JSBᾶngs heh :) indeed!

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

0

Q: A unique event, an unusual event

We use 'a' before unique and 'an' before unusual. The latter example seems to me too unusual, so I was wondering why it occur.

indefinite-article

JSBᾶngs

close it!

Matt Эллен

but I can't find the dupe

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Oh come on! I thought we had our a/an question of the day already!

KitFox

Damn it. JSB's was better.

Anyway, must find dinner.

Later!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

3

Q: Is it "a uniform" or "an uniform"?

On a Physics specification, it says: 6.7 Know how to use two permanent magnets to produce a uniform magnetic field pattern. Isn't it "produce an uniform magnetic field", or is the existing "produce a uniform magnetic field pattern" correct?

grammaticality articles indefinite-article

There's also a question about an year, and at least two about an user.

Matt Эллен

9:04 PM

I see. I felt sure we'd had one about unique before.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I felt sure we hae one specificatlly about Yu vs Un, but couldn't find it.

Mostly because we have so many frigging questions about a vs an.

Matt Эллен

it's true

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…