English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@JacobBlack so I saw

away eating lunch

user19161

@MattЭллен Now you know why I am sick and tired of this world.

@JacobBlack This is the Universe getting even with you via karmic rebalancing.

@JacobBlack Too much time on the computer instead of with real people always causes that.

user19161

2:06 PM

@tchrist Well, real people made me sick, actually.

If you cut off everything and everyone but those of the perfect, pristine, and platonic MathWorld, you will quickly find they are just as sullied as everyone else. You will find no refuge there.

@JacobBlack Stop hanging out at hospitals?

Jasper, I am more than beginning to seriously worry about you. Honest.

I do not mean to drag you down. I'm sorry.

user19161

Nah, you don't need to. You don't really know about me.

That is part of the issue. I cannot tell.

But it looks like you’re getting closer to suicidal than is healthy.

Please don’t.

user19161

My problems are mine alone to solve. No, I will stay alive.

I hope so.

2:10 PM

Just completed Stage 1 of The Great Driveway Clearing Experiment of 2013. The snow is about 6" higher, on average, than the gatherer (?) of my plus-size John Deere snowblower.

Not sure what you call the part at the front that gathers the snow.

Not the chute.

user19161

@Robusto There are 9 more stages.

No, just two more.

I think he’s out of Denial already.

What does a Singapore Sling know about throwing snow, anyway?

Jasper, have you ever seen snow?

Touched it, felt it?

user19161

2:11 PM

I think Ninja Warrior finally went to the US.

user19161

@tchrist No.

As I thought.

Interesting.

I just figured out something less than stellar about the close-vote queues.

First stage was knocking down the overage and roughly clearing the driveway, leaving a residue of about 6-8" variously. Now I wait for the snow to stop and do a proper job with the rest of it.

What’s overage?

Then I have to break out the shovel and hand-clear the walk, because my snowblower doesn't climb stairs.

Overage is what I'm calling the snow that is higher than my snowblower. I'm knocking it down and blowing it out, but that leaves a residue.

2:14 PM

I have a very short driveway. The house I didn’t buy had a very long one, so long in fact it came with a snowplow.

We have someone in our neighborhood with one of those little riding snowclearing devices who comes by and scoops out the sidewalks for us. Our driveways are our own duties, though.

The city only gets on your case for sidewalks, and even those only if somebody complains.

But a sidewalk can still be dangerous, since a scraper can leave enough residue to become a problem.

My driveway faces south. That means I virtually never have to shovel it.

But this has been a dry winter, and it is to easy to forget the multi-foot snows of yesteryear.

@Rob The housing prices in the L-towns are about 50% those of Boulder, which are the highest in the area except for Capitol Hill, where you probably wouldn’t care to live anyway.

user19161

Oh, the chat sleigh finally disappeared.

They are even lower in the hinterlands, of course, but that might not be too your liking. A bit isolating and all.

@JacobBlack Prematurely.

user19161

@tchrist Well, the sleigh is for Christmas, not for snow. QED.

Once when we had a 5’ snowfall, I saw a guy take a dogteam and sled downtown.

Thar she blows.

2:19 PM

’Bout two feetish?

More.

Baseline, or drifts?

user19161

@Robusto Now we know you like green.

Eh?

The hopper on the front is 24" high.

2:20 PM

Ah.

Looks like baseline.

@tchrist I put it by the lowest area.

@JacobBlack It is green for its symbolic value: it chases away the snow like summer warring with winter.

That area now has another 3-4" of fresh snow on it now. I had to get out there before I wanted to just so it wouldn't be impossible.

Is this sucking in moisture from the sea?

Instead of being fed from the west?

That's why they call it a nor'easter.

2:23 PM

It reminds me of lake-effect snow.

Higher near Lake Michigan.

It's like lake-effect snow on steroids.

And I say that as someone who has dealt with lake-effect snow on many occasions.

That’s why I mentioned it.

Clever of them to build the interstate right along the lake, eh?

Look at the plowed snow directly behind and to the left of the snowblower. That part was fresh-cut 15 minutes previous to the picture being taken; now it's all blurred with fresh snow.

By the way, the corresponding storm-type here is called an “upslope” storm.

Which you would never realize is the same thing.

Gulf moisture sliding up the Rockies?

2:25 PM

Basically.

It’s pulling in moisture from down east instead of the dry from up west.

It can be completely localized to this side of the Divide, too, even like only 5–10 miles.

Yeah, and as the moisture-laden warm air rises up the slopes it collides with the colder, dryer air and produces snow.

Gigili

@Kit: Please send me an email as soon as possible. Thank you.

On the western slope of the Cascades, that process would be called orographic rain.

This upslope thing never pushes over the spine of the continent. We can get six or eight feet of snow, yet the ski areas west of the Divide get starved.

I thought it was dry that ways?

Western slope.

2:28 PM

Sorry, left-right fuck-up.

Occidents will happen.

Do you have any cats or dogs to play in the snow?

I could toss our cat out into the snow, but she wouldn't feel very playful in it.

Yes, quite.

The stuff at the end of my driveway, the tailings from the town plowings, was over waist-high on me.

2:30 PM

I remember my cat walking in the canyons I’d shovelled out and thinking it very strange.

Actually about up to my rib cage.

My grandparents’ Maine coon actually seems not to mind the snow so much as the others do.

And as we speak, the plow just spread another 30" at the end of my driveway.

@Robusto Winter is just hell on hobbits, now ain’t it?

@Robusto I do so hate that.

Yeah.

That's why hobbits don't live where there are blizzards, I guess.

Oh, cool. I got my first accepted answer on Music.SE.

2

A: High D on Tenor Recorder

The high D is actually pretty easy on my tenor (Rottenburgh). You have to pinch the thumb hole (covering somewhere around half of it) and then four of the first six top holes, leaving both middle fingers off (also both pinkies, though you never use the left pinky anyway—I just wanted to be clear)...

2:36 PM

@Robusto D″?

Or one more?

At tenor, it should be the D”, right?

Yes.

K.

The tenor recorder is the same range as the concert flute.

Well, not exactly.

I don’t think of a flute as having a tenor range. Does it?

Concert flute has a low B and plays an octave above the tenor recorder.

2:38 PM

I thought it was higher.

You can get three octaves and a fifth out of a concert flute.

Low C on a flute is Middle C on the piano.

More than most humans.

But the top fifth is only heard in composers like Richard Strauss.

Flutes use treble clef, right?

Yes.

But so do alto flutes, which always gave me cognitive dissonance.

2:39 PM

The high tones are too close together to be easily distinguished, perhaps. Or is it an airflow issue? Or is it that there isn’t enough room for audible overtones to enrich the harmony?

No, they're just very shrill.

Also hard to play in tune with a tempered scale.

The third tends to be flat, for example.

Think of playing something that is normally contained within the two octaves centered about Middle C now transposed way up to the top of the 88-key keyboard. Sounds blah.

Because it is part of the natural harmonic sequence.

You mean with an equal-tempered scale, I presume.

Feb 15 '11 at 15:13, by Robusto

Now, as you know, the flute is not a transposing instrument. And harmonics are not something can be fingered, they have to be achieved by adjustment of the embouchere.

Read starting there.

@tchrist You know I do.

Shorthand.

2:41 PM

I did presume.

whoa, phone

So apparently this is Winter Storm Nemo.

►

3:15 PM

Hello! Is anyone there?

Is anyone where?

:D I see there is you

I wanted to ask a question.

Shoot.

Well, is 'you' capitalized in formal speech?

ask this question, but still no replies

No. It is only capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.

3:24 PM

do you have an example where you think it would be?

Pronouns are not capitalized except for I.

It used to be capitalized in Russian

English is not Russian.

and I have been told by my Russian friend

maybe it should be capitalized in English too

@Robusto the start of that sounds like the shower scene music from Psycho

3:26 PM

Who you gonna believe, your Russian friend or a bunch of native speakers of English?

If I belived my Russian friend I wouldn't come here and ask this question

:D

Notice I didn't write "Who You gonna believe ..."

So it was never capitalized before?

Never in English, right?