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12:27 AM
I wonder how many Yoichi questions we’ll get out of Dowd’s new Madam President column. Her first and last sentences are the best ones there.
Perhaps he’ll ask about a “segue artist”.
Ms Dowd dislikes Barack and Hillary
Both of whom she’s ready to pillory,
    Working with great thrift
    Gives the pair short shrift,
And brings out her heavy artillery.
Kinda naughty of her to call him Barry though. He’s tried to disown that former name of his.
Hey, now there’s a Segway Artist for ya!
But I give up: why does the unicorn have a pocket?
 
12:51 AM
It's not a pocket, it's a cutie mark.
Of a lyre. How subtle.
 
I don’t get the lyre bit.
 
Well, it sounds like liar and is also Apollo's symbol.
 
Oh.
What about Apollo though?
 
What about what about Apollo?
 
Fair warning: I turned around and asked a question I marked as a duplicate only and specifically because the OP begged me to. I don’t normally do that.
1
A: Can "Apple" be an adjective?

tchristFrom the new tag wiki I just made: A noun adjunct, also called an attributive noun, is when one noun is used to give an attribute to another noun, like dog catcher, dog food, house sitter, heart surgery, running shoes, employee compensation, and Peter Principle. It is an alternative to a pre...

 
12:55 AM
God of music and poetry and stuff.
 
Yes, he is. But I don’t get the subtext.
 
Or maybe it is because you don't know that cutie marks are supposed to reflect the pony's special talents?
 
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Sorry.
 
That's a pony.
The thing you thought was a pocket is a cutie mark.
It is a picture of a lyre.
 
At first I thought your beauty mark was a gossamer wing.
 
12:57 AM
It's not a beauty mark. It's a cutie mark.
 
Eh?
Huh?
 
That's a My Little Pony pony.
 
If you say so.
I still think its color is off.
 
My goodness.
 
12:59 AM
Apparently, the lyre is an actual cutie mark. I didn't know that.
I didn't recognize her.
 
How good are you at identifying cutie marks?
 
Fair to middling.
 
So this is just a scheme for selling crap to kids?
That’s sad.
 
Ponies are on the wane and Pingu and Secret Agent Oso are on the rise.
 
@KitFox Namely these:
Jul 27 at 3:12, by MετάEd
Mar 28 at 22:50, by MετάEd
Nov 6 '12 at 23:09, by MετάEd
9 hours ago, by MετάEd
user image
 
1:05 AM
@tchrist Uh, no.
@MετάEd Well, there's just the one there.
 
Then what’s all that crap about merchandise?
 
@KitFox Oh, I thought there were two there on the blue's haunch.
 
No, that's just one cutie mark.
Looks like two lollipops with bows.
 
Now, this is interesting.
 
I think it is made up. It's not one I recognize.
 
1:07 AM
There seems to be a rule against using primary colors in those thingies’ depictions.
 
Of course.
 
Why do you imagine that might be?
 
Because you're incorrect.
 
@tchrist
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is an animated television series produced by Hasbro Studios in the United States (for scripts) and at DHX Media's studio located in Vancouver (for animation; formerly known as Studio B Productions), which is based on Hasbro, Inc's My Little Pony line of toys and animated works. The series is intended for girls age 2 to 11 and is considered to be the fourth generation (G4) of the My Little Pony franchise, following earlier lines and television show tie-ins in the 1980s and 1990s. The series premiered on October 10, 2010, on The Hub, an American pay te...
 
It's just that the colors are desaturated.
 
1:08 AM
Oh hai.
 
Pastels are not primary colors.
And magenta and cyan hardly count as primary no matter their saturation.
In fact, they’re the complements of primary colors.
 
Blah blah, whatever.
 
Don’t make me teach you color theory again.
 
Don't make me not care again.
And it was Cerb, not me.
 
Well, it seems not to have rubbed off then.
 
1:11 AM
Anyway, I don't see that cutie mark on any of the official pages, @MετάEd.
 
@KitFox Oh well.
 
I think we need to turn tchrist into a brony.
4
 
Oh! Oh! Found a pic. Hang on.
Right mark, wrong color. (But that's not yellow, because desaturated colors aren't colors.)
 
I don’t do girly stuff.
 
It's not just for girls.
 
1:14 AM
You don't do heraldry either, I guess.
 
Whose heraldry? Hera’s? Hers?
 
As evidenced by the huge brony following
 
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Doesn’t mean it’s not girly.
 
Sometimes I forget how old you really are, @tchrist.
 
Why?
 
1:16 AM
How old are you really? 506?
 
Because anyone under 40 knows MLP
 
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You mean who is a dedicated follower of television and consumerism. Which I am not.
I swore off TV in 1976, and haven’t looked back.
 
Except Ponies are girly.
I mean, you are guessing.
 
I saw your pictures.
 
1:19 AM
Unless you watch the show.
 
I have never seen it nor anything like it in my life, I quite promise you.
 
Well, I wouldn't call myself a dedicated follower of television or consumerism. But I did watch TV as a child
 
Hence 1976.
If it wasn’t on before then, I haven’t seen it.
 
So you've rather rushed to judgment.
 
1:20 AM
I read your descriptions. There is no rushing involved.
There is analysis.
 
Sure. OK. Hi @Mahnax!
 
Hiya!
 
I have friends visiting your neighborhood in a few weeks.
 
How close?
 
Is that a threat? :)
 
1:21 AM
Do I need to mobilize to the shelter?
 
Hey Guido, pay Maxxie a call, will ya?
 
Um, somewhere flyfishing near Calgary. If you named a river region, I'd probably recognize it.
 
Hm. I don't know of many rivers here, to be quite honest.
There is of course the North Saskatchewan River.
 
Which reminds me that I was going to review the Latin names for some of the local tree species. I got totally schooled today.
 
Which flows through the bustling metropolis that is Edmonton.
 
1:22 AM
I used to live in Calgary. On Dover Glen Crescent.
 
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I think we battled with them.
 
I wonder how the people who can’t say ask right make out with Saskatchewan.
 
My friend had 40+ of those beasts.
 
@Mahnax Hmm. Maybe. Do people go flyfishing there?
 
@KitFox A little.
Pembina River?
 
1:23 AM
sas katch eh wan
 
Could be the Bow River.
 
Saxawatchin
 
@tchrist winces
 
Now you know how I feel!
What does fly mean as an adjective?
Like something was really fly.
 
Hip and happening, but only seventeen years ago.
 
1:25 AM
What, somebody put it in your mother’s baby shower book?
:)
 
@Mahnax Could be that. That sounds more likely. I think I would have remembered Saskatchewan.
 
@KitFox There's a N. Saskatchewan river and also a S. Saskatchewan river.
 
Bow is too short. I bet it was Pembina. Not really that important I suppose.
 
Saxachewin
 
@Mahnax Funny. I guessed that.
@tchrist Saskatoon.
 
1:27 AM
Coladoro
 
Saxaphoney!
 
Nu Yolk
Virgintinia
 
I had one of those once.
 
Illinoisey.
 
I painted the kitchen today.
 
1:28 AM
Arkansassy.
 
@KitFox What colour?
 
fly3    (fl) KEY

ADJECTIVE:
1. Chiefly British Mentally alert; sharp.
2. Slang Fashionable; stylish.
 
@Mahnax Yellow and yellow.
 
Strange: those are dissimilar.
Well, except maybe for sharp.
 
@KitFox Ah. Our kitchen is also yellow.
 
1:29 AM
Et tu?
 
It is a good color for kitchens.
 
As is most of the main level and upstairs of our house.
Thankfully, the basement escaped.
Not-so-thankfully, it got painted Oilers colours.
 
I varied the color scheme in our house, but the hallway and stairwell are also a yellow, but lighter than the ones in the kitchen.
@Mahnax Hee hee hee
 
@KitFox frowns
My room has plain white walls. Nice and simple.
 
@Mahnax I found out something cool about Edmonton yesterday.
 
1:31 AM
@DavidWallace Oh?
 
Apparently, you have an absolutely enormous shopping centre, with a fantastic roller coaster and an ice rink inside.
 
This is true.
There are many roller coasters. I would call four of them fantastic.
 
Many roller coasters in the same shopping centre?
 
There is also a pirate ship, a Ferrari, and some seals.
@DavidWallace There's an entire amusement park.
 
I dislike white walls.
 
1:32 AM
As well as a hotel.
 
Except white-walled tires.
 
And a waterpark.
 
A waterpark? In the shopping centre? (er "mall" for those North Americans among us)
 
Sounds like a fun mall.
 
Yes, a waterpark. It's very big.
 
1:33 AM
A shopping center is different than a mall.
 
books ticket to Edmonton
 
@KitFox I think you would call this a mall then.
 
Oh yes. I know whereof you speak.
@Mahnax Oooh, aaah.
 
@KitFox Indeed. I've been there a few times. Fun enough, if you like being in water.
 
1:34 AM
Also, terrified of losing my children/having them drown.
 
The amusement park, (Galaxyland), is very fun.
I once went on the Mindbender (the largest rollercoaster) 21 times in a day.
 
Awesome. I love rollercoasters.
 
The Mindbender. Yes, that's the one I saw on the TV.
 
I went to Wonderland once. It was great.
 
Here is the Mindbender.
Fast and fun.
And a few of the seats face backwards.
 
1:36 AM
envy
 
Some day I will take you on a tour of the city, @Kit.
By which I mean we will visit the two attractions: WEM, and the Devonian Botanical Gardens.
I think you'd like them.
 
Hmm. That gives me an idea. How far is it from there to Anchorage?
 
Just over 3100km.
 
Oh, God. Looks more like the gut bender.
 
How far is it from here to there?
 
1:38 AM
Something would surely get bent.
 
@KitFox Great circle, or roadway?
 
@KitFox 4500km.
From you to me.
Roughly.
 
So I could meet my brother-in-law and his family there.
@tchrist Doesn't matter really.
 
0
Q: Using an versus a

Angus BlackwyldeI was reading something yesterday and part of the sentence was, "... and he was an amateur." This caused me to wonder, is it correct then to say "He is an professional."?

Wah.
And some nimrod upvoted it.
Shame on you!
 
Who upvoted that junk?
Come on, folks.
 
1:42 AM
Off-topic? Really?
We have thousands of this question.
shakes finger
 
I didn't feel like finding any…
I should just stay retired.
 
You don't have to find. Click "frequent". It's the first one.
 
@KitFox Well, 52.
 
@KitFox Frequent?
I don't know how the new closey things work.
 
The frequent tab.
 
1:43 AM
He doesn’t know. Be gentle.
If you go to Questions.
 
One moment.
 
There is a way to sort by Frequency.
 
You know, at the top of the list, where it has "newest"and "active", etc.
It used to be called "faq".
 
Ohh.
Right.
 
I'm only shaming you because it is the most asked question ever.
 
1:44 AM
I thought Help used to be called FAQ.
 
Shame tchrist, then.
He did it first.
 
I was shaming you both.
 
Sorry.
 
@tchrist They both were. It caused much confusion.
 
I'll try harder next time.
 
1:45 AM
Oh.
 
haha. Don't think I don't know you're just humoring me.
 
looks real innocent-like
 
Woohoo, I got to reject spam!
 
People with beards never look innocent.
 
@Mahnax sighs OK, you can have a popsicle.
 
1:46 AM
That's reasonably fun.
 
@Cerberus Et tu?
 
@KitFox Yay, thank you!
 
Et ego.
 
Yesterday, my son informed me that I don't know what "spam" means.
 
We had one of those yestermorn meseems.
 
1:47 AM
tries to savour popsicle; fails
 
Don't drip on the rug!
 
You need the orange kind with creamy bits on the insides.
 
Orange dreamsicle.
 
@KitFox I'll sit at the table.
 
I don't know why I say it's OK when I spend the whole time freaking out about it.
 
1:48 AM
We have a table here?
I thought it was done with CSS.
 
Yes. And a refrigerator.
considers, leaves it
 
It’s good to have an ice box in the summertime.
 
I hate the one in the house we're moving to. It's crazy huge.
 
We have… two fridges with small freezers and one upright freezer at home.
 
This is a cause for hate?
 
1:50 AM
We'll have three fridges and a chest freezer.
 
Wowza.
 
@tchrist It's like having a giant standing in your kitchen, just staring at you.
 
My folks have two fridges, both with freezers, and one of those huge freezers you open from the top.
 
@Mahnax Also, two kitchens.
 
@KitFox Is there a basement suite?
 
1:51 AM
I have two fridges, actually.
No extra freezer though.
 
@Mahnax No, but there is a west wing.
 
West wing? Wow!
 
Hence the second kitchen.
 
An icebox is a compact non-mechanical refrigerator which was a common kitchen appliance before the development of safe powered refrigeration devices. Design Iceboxes had hollow walls that were lined with tin or zinc and packed with various insulating materials such as cork, sawdust, straw or seaweed. A large block of ice was held in a tray or compartment near the top of the box. Cold air circulated down and around storage compartments in the lower section. Some finer models had spigots for draining ice water from a catch pan or holding tank. In cheaper models a drip pan was placed u...
 
@KitFox Wow. You rich folks and your wings.
 
1:52 AM
Haha. No, not rich.
 
Tell that to your wings.
:)
 
But it will be twice the floor space with an ungodly amount of storage and something around four acres of land.
 
> The horse-drawn ice wagon and the daily occupation of the iceman, who made regular door-to-door deliveries of block ice, was as much a social institution as the milk man.
Who has a milk man?
@KitFox Nice.
 
thinks of Jasper
 
@KitFox I hope you mean four acres of land, not four acres of house!
 
1:53 AM
@tchrist Not me, that's for sure.
 
Me neither.
It's got a barn, even.
And we're going to plant a new orchard, since we've gotten so fond of our old one.
And a CSA across the street.
 
I’ve heard that he’s back in some places in England, too.
 
@KitFox A what?
 
What’s a CSA?
 
Do you mean one of those shared fruit-and-vegetable places?
 
1:55 AM
> The earliest survey from the Department of Agriculture on home milk delivery was in 1963, when nearly 29.7 percent of consumers had milk delivered. By 1975, the number had dropped to 6.9 percent of total sales, and by 2005, the most recent year for which figures were available, to just 0.4 percent.
 
Community Supported Agriculture. A farm.
That sells food shares, and then whatever is leftover at a stand.
So fresh vegetables and fresh eggs.
 
> Every day, the UK's 5,000 milkmen and women deliver to around 2.5 million homes.
That’s quite a few, eh?
 
We let him use the barn last year to cure garlic, in exchange for some garlic.
 
What, hang it to dry you mean?
 
The street I lived on as a child was long and straight. The milkman rigged his truck so that it would move very slowly forward, without a driver. He could then run backwards and forwards between his truck and people's letterboxes, distributing milk, and have his truck move with him.
 
1:58 AM
Or something else?
 
Curing garlic is very pungent, and it took months to convince my littlest to go into the loft again after that.
Plus, he never wants to be near garlic ever again.
Awkward.
 
My garlic never gets sick.
 
Every driven past Gilroy, CA?
 
@DavidWallace Must be cured then.
 
> After garlic is harvested it needs to be cured. In curing the energy from the leaves goes into the bulbs as they dry. Remove any chunks of dirt from the roots, being careful not to bruise the garlic. Leave the roots on as they have a moderating effect on the drying rate.
Interesting.
 
1:59 AM
He hung it from the rafters. It filled the entire loft.
And the smell was strong enough to make your eyes burn.
He had two industrial fans blowing on them.
 
> We hang the plants - about 25 to 40 to a string in bunches of 4 to 6. The appropriate number of plants in a string depends on their size and moisture level at harvest. You want the circulating air to be able to reach all sides of all bulbs.
> Hang the strings out of direct light where it is warm with good air circulation - a temperature of 80°F is ideal and two weeks drying time is ideal. This way the bulbs dry evenly and without spoilage. You want the wrappers to dry and the garlic to retain its moisture and oils.
That’s pretty warm.
 
Yep. The loft was perfect for it.
Fresh garlic is really delicious, but it molds quickly.
 
I never knew that.
 
The cured stuff is what most people buy. It's still really good, but not quite as acidy.
 
> Supermarket garlic has usually been kept cold in controlled storage. If garlic has been kept cold it soon begins to sprout when brought to room temperature.
But that part I had noticed, without knowing why.
 
2:01 AM
Yeah, it's a bulb.
That's how you force bulbs.
 
Right.
 
Like tulips.
 
Or narcissuses.
 
Yes.
 
> bulbil, also spelled bulbel, also called bulblet, in botany, tiny secondary bulb that forms in the angle between a leaf and stem or in place of flowers on certain plants. Bulbils, called offsets when full-sized, fall or are removed and planted to produce new plants. They are especially common among such plants as onions and lilies.
 
2:03 AM
What? Lilies are rhizomes, I thought.
 
Addis Ababa banana narcissuses.
 
> Some lilies form small bulbs, called bulbils in their leaf axils. Several members of the onion family, Alliaceae, including Allium sativum (garlic), form bulbils in ...
 
Hmm. I must be confusing them with something else.
 
> Other types of storage organs (such as corms, rhizomes, and tubers) are sometimes erroneously referred to as bulbs. The technical term for plants that form underground storage organs, including bulbs as well as tubers and corms, is geophyte. Some epiphytic orchids (family Orchidaceae) form above-ground storage organs called pseudobulbs, that superficially resemble bulbs.
 
Oh, iris. That's it.
 
2:05 AM
> Species in the genera Allium, Hippeastrum, Narcissus, and Tulipa all have tunicate bulbs. Non-tunicate bulbs, such as Lilium and Fritillaria species, lack the protective tunic and have looser scales.
Yes, iris.
And crocus/saffron has corms.
Funny, epiphyte I’ve long known, but geophyte I hadn’t heard.
 
Well. Rather makes sense.
 
All the bulb-makers but one are monocots. The only dicot that makes bulbs is wood sorrel.
Of course, things like iris and crocus are also monocots.
And orchids.
 
Sorrels are interesting plants.
 
Because?
Oxalic acid?
 
Just because.
 
2:11 AM
Oh. Wood sorrel != sorrel.
Like evening primrose != primrose.
Sorrel soup is a soup made from water or broth, sorrel leaves, and salt. Other possible ingredients are egg yolks or whole eggs (hard boiled or scrambled), potatoes, carrots, parsley root, and rice. It can be served hot or cold, and is usually garnished with sour cream. It is known in Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Eastern European Jewish cuisines. Its other English names, spelled variously schavel, shchav, shav, or shtshav, are from the Proto-Slavic ščаvь for sorrel. Due to its commonness as a soup in Eastern European cuisines, it is often called "green borscht", ...
 
Right, I should have said my brain was wandering off.
 
OK, time for me to go. I should clean up my messy room and do the dishes.
Nice chatting, all. Have a good night/day/afternoon/whatever.
 
You are the dishwasher?
They make devices for that now. :)
 
@Mahnax Later.
 
Bye.
 
2:14 AM
The dishwasher isn't large enough to do everything at once, Tom!
 
I should go as well.
 
But yes, bye.
 
Good night.
 
I hate it when there’s too many dishes to fit in the dishwasher.
Besides big pans and such.
It can happen when entertaining.
 
2:45 AM
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Did you read about how Google will serve ads from within Maps, very soon?
I think it may be related to why they cut out much functionality from the old Maps (which I am of course still using).
in The Frying Pan, 1 min ago, by Cerberus
> User ElSnugglesWise: I'm personally looking forward to Google Glasses pushing ads directly into wearers field of vision.
 
Disgusting.
 
Thankfully old versions are all over the Internet, such as on androiddrawer.com.
@tchrist You do realise that was a joke, don't you?
 
Yes.
But it’s going to happen.
 
OK.
Wouldn't surprise me...although perhaps not in the centre of your vision.
 
Charlie Stross has quite an um vision of this sort of near-future.
 
2:51 AM
Who?
 
He’s a Scottish writer.
And one-time programmer of bleeding-edge stuff.
I agree with his “reality check”.
 
I agree as well, of course.
Although Assumptio Tertia "people don't want to interact, they only want to consume" seems very outdated by now.
 
All or most of both his near- and far-future dystopias show what happens when the first set of assumptions are allowed to run amok.
 
> Google may have non-monetary reasons for not wanting to offer a premium service - most notably, they may not want people to equate the absence of ads with "premium service." Or they may just want people to get used to seeing ads everywhere. But it's not like they couldn't make more money on a per user basis by charging people who want to opt out of ads.
 
That is not their point, though.
Just background color, as it were.
 
2:56 AM
Whose point?
 
Stross’s.
His fiction.
The point of his fiction is to entertain, not to preach.
Almost.
There is some preaching of course, because you can see things the author touts as good or bad, or annoying but inevitable.
I am not sure that that counts as preaching. It is not heavy-handed in these cases.
 
Right.
 
If a work if fictions approaches a sermon too closely, it becomes boring.
 
> The new Congress took 11 working days to pass the Securing and Enumerating America’s Communications and Hypertext Act, which authorized the DHS and NSA to outsource up to 80 percent of intelligence and analysis work to private contractors. Theoretically, the contracts were open to competitive bidding, but within the secure confines of Google’s Building 49, there was no question of who would win.
> If Google had spent $15 billion on a program to catch bad guys at the border, you can bet they would have caught them–governments just aren’t equipped to Do Search Right.
 
2:59 AM
But a good work of fiction will often have a morale, or several.
 

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