English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

In some places, the power is utterly gone throughout the whole neighborhood and has been for days. In others, it has been out for under an hour and come back. In still others, it hasn’t gone out at all.

KitFox

Morning.

cyberskull

hi

KitFox

Still got ur internetz, I see, @tchrist.

Pays to be on the mountaintop?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

3:22 PM

Bro is ok.

tchrist

@KitFox Internet, singular. I useta have two, and am now down to one.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Good!

KitFox

Your food and water supply OK?

tchrist

And no landlines.

cyberskull

no phone?

tchrist

Yes, and they have confirmed that the city water is still safe. I don’t have my own well, or else it would not be safe.

No landline, yes.

Been out since yesterday.

I keep meaning to call it in.

cyberskull

3:24 PM

call it in now please

KitFox

Are you able to prepare food or heat water?

tchrist

Both.

KitFox

Good.

tchrist

And I have 3 7-gallon jugs of safe water.

KitFox

The rest is just luxury.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

3:28 PM

@tchrist Did you towel off your kitty?

cyberskull

Your govenor must have declared a "state of emergency" if the national guard is there.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

:O

cyberskull

:D

Johan Larsson

@tchrist how much water is it in your basement now?

Cerberus

@tchrist I don't even know what that is, so terrible does it look!

I hadn't noticed that Nederland had lost power, though.

4

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

3:37 PM

imagines an adventure park full of safe cars called Naderland

Cerberus

Why safe? Or do you just mean "in heavy traffic congestions everywhere"?

@tchrist So how about this? A terp is an artificial hill. Then houses will remain dry, just like your house.

If you think the current is too strong, you could build a short concrete wall on one side, covered with earth.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

> Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair.

Cerberus

Comme ça.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Hmm are American cars really less safe? Still?

I've never heard of that...

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Cerberus Cars don't kill people.

Guns do.

Cerberus

I thought it was kinetic energy that kills people.

cyberskull

3:43 PM

people kill people

Cerberus

What if people crash into trees?

Then a safer car might save them.

cyberskull

or safer driving

Cerberus

Or that.

Or not driving.

Johan Larsson

or make software not love

Cerberus

Or that.

Or, in Dutch, voer eendjes, geen oorlog.

Eendjes voeren = to feed ducks.

Oorlog voeren = to wage war.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

3:47 PM

@cerb Nader's problem with the Corvair was the location of the gas tank, IIRC.

Cerberus

Oh...

tchrist

@cyberskull Yes. So did Obama.

@Cerberus Er, that works on a plain. People aren’t living on the plains. They have mountains on at least one side, if not all, and the mountains will always be higher than any berm.

Johan Larsson

trying to parse/read a pdf file from C# is not much fun

tchrist

The land to the west goes up almost two miles.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I wouldn't think anything related to C# would be fun.

tchrist

3:55 PM

@JohanLarsson And where do you place the blame, eh?

Cerberus

@tchrist Why is that a problem? As long as you're higher than the land immediately around you.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

In the middle of the octothorpe.

tchrist

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Exactly.

Johan Larsson

@tchrist is it a bliss with Perl?

tchrist

@Cerberus But you can’t be.

Johan Larsson

3:56 PM

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 what language do you prefer?

Cerberus

Then how does your house stay dry?

tchrist

I am, because I live on a hilltop.

Cerberus

Same thing.

tchrist

Not everyone can or does.

KitFox

@JohanLarsson I think there is a good third-party library for that.

Johan Larsson

3:57 PM

I tried pdfsharp, should probably try itextsharp now

Cerberus

@tchrist And I suggested just that, build houses on terps.

KitFox

@JohanLarsson itextsharp is the one I was playing with earlier this year.

Cerberus

Not saying it is cost effective...

Johan Larsson

@KitFox can you recommend it?

tchrist

@Cerberus Are you use terp in a way that I don’t know, as a berm.

KitFox

3:58 PM

@JohanLarsson Maybe. I don't know what you're trying to do with it.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@JohanLarsson I'm most familiar with Java.

Cerberus

@tchrist I don't know, berm means something else in Dutch, the verge of a road.

Terp is Frisian/Saxon.

tchrist

The hillside behind me, like 500-700 feet higher, is filled with huge mudslides right now.

Johan Larsson

@KitFox I'm writing a script to rename files, when the file does not have metadata I want to read title from contents

KitFox

I see. I haven't used it that way, so I don't know how difficult it would be.

tchrist

4:01 PM

@Cerberus Wow, so it is!

An artificial mound or hillock, the site of a prehistoric village, and still in many cases occupied by a village or church, in parts of Friesland below sea-level or liable to inundation. Also applied to similar mounds outside Friesland itself. Also attrib.
These terpen, like the Italian terremare or terramares, have in modern times been excavated for the sake of the fertilizing soil which they yield, and more recently for the prehistoric remains found in them; the name has thus passed into archæological use.

Cerberus

They are a poor man's dike: if you can't protect your land, you can at least protect your house.

tchrist

@Cerberus You are right: berm is more limited to the side of a road.

Cerberus

A terp does not require pumping, probably unlike a "house dike".

tchrist

Ok, there are two issues here.

Cerberus

Wiki has various uses for berm in English...

tchrist

4:03 PM

One is that most of Boulder's downtown is built on the flat floodplain.

Cerberus

Of a river?

tchrist

Which they are evacuating more of right now, because the gaslines are compromised.

Cerberus

Only because of the gaslines? Not because it has been inundated?

aedia λ

@Cerberus Colorado is like the size of six Netherlands and only two of them are as flat. The other four are more like if you took the topographic map of the Netherlands and stretched it up x10. With a few extra hills 'cause that's probably not even enough.

tchrist

@Cerberus Well, for the nonce. Normally Boulder Creek is just a creek but right now it has just as much water as the mighty Colorado River itself. See the problem?

@Cerberus 4,000 were evacuated due to flooding or great peril of the same. This is new.

Cerberus

4:05 PM

@aediaλ I know! But a terp is just about being slightly higher than the land immediately surrounding you.

@tchrist So most of the town/city was not flooded?

How many people live there?

tchrist

@Cerberus Did you see the floodplain plan I posted?

Cerberus

No?

tchrist

Where plan here means map.

Let me find it.

It will show you the flooding.

aedia λ

@Cerberus The weirdest thing to me about pictures like that is seeing the flatness in all directions. The mountains aren't in the background somewhere like they should be. Even here on the East Coast you can always see something, unless you're down among a ton of buildings. Adirondacks, Catskills, Appalachians... they're always lurking above you.

tchrist

Cerberus

4:07 PM

@aediaλ Haha, true! Anything non-flat scares us...

tchrist

The dark blue is the 100-year flood plain, and it is almost all completely flooded right now.

The lighter blue is the 500-year flood plain, and most of that is not flooded, although some is.

Cerberus

Ah OK, so most of the town is still dryish?

tchrist

Yes.

Cerberus

Good.

tchrist

But the heart of downtown is the blue stuff.

And campus, too.

Cerberus

4:08 PM

Too bad.

I have an idea.

Why don't y'all go live on top of the boulder?

tchrist

About 25% of the campus buildings have flooded basements.

The problem is the water table is too high.

Cerberus

Higher than the top of the big rock?

tchrist

Even without creek flooding, there is no place for the water to go.

That is why my basement flooded.

Now, two blocks away, and 200 feet down, there is a huge gash in the earth with a roaring new river where a street used to be, and where two people drowned yesterday. But no river is able to get to me.

Cerberus

And the city doesn't have any permanent, high-capacity pumps (called gemalen) anywhere, presumably, because this is so rare?

tchrist

@Cerberus I think you are probably right.

Cerberus

4:11 PM

Tchrist, the man on the terp!

tchrist

That’s why it is called a 100-year and a 500-year flood.

Cerberus

Yes.

It's all about costs v. damage.

tchrist

Terp looks like twerp to my brain.

I really want to know what is going on downtown.

Johan Larsson

@tchrist are there any webcams?

tchrist

@JohanLarsson Oh, right.

Yeah, lemme find ’em.

Johan Larsson

4:12 PM

they might be out of power though

Cerberus

tchrist

Aw crap

Cerberus

You need to have these to pump out very large amounts of water, each having the capacity of maybe fifty wind mills.

tchrist

Although that looks like this morning, not now.

Must not be live.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

instagram.com/p/eNN1_nok_i

tchrist

4:13 PM

@Cerberus We would need a lot of those right now.

Cerberus

Yeah.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

That's my brudda and his homebuilt jalopy passing some sort of pre hill climb inspection.

tchrist

Here are all the Boulder webcams, live.

Looks like Pearl Street isn’t underwater any longer.

Cerberus

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Oh!

tchrist

Oh, I’m wrong. That’s just a frozen image. Darn.

Can’t find any from downtown that are still live.

Guess shouldn’t be surprised; they were street-level.

So, @Cerb, the 1st of the two problems was the floodplain issue, and that applies to where you live as well. The 2nd of the two problems is all the water from the high country funnelling down the canyons at high velocity, and that one is alien to you.

I’m getting tired of being wrong, though, so let’s try to limit that for today.

Cerberus

4:19 PM

Haha.

tchrist

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 I should expect Java and C# to be in much the same pain-class.

Cerberus

The only thing that makes water coming down from mountains extra dangerous is local erosion.

It can breach dikes.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Cerberus

Breach, not stream over the top or leak.

But you can do something about that with stone/concrete walls.

tchrist

@Cerberus Hundred-foot trees and tumbling cars and trucks and house-sized boulders also has something to do with it.

Cerberus

4:21 PM

How do you mean?

tchrist

Apparently the concrete dam at Barker Res is holding.

And not breaching.

12 lesser dams are breaching in the county.

And one failed.

Cerberus

If you throw enough money at it, it's possible. Like the Japanese tsunami walls.

tchrist

It was not concrete.

Cerberus

Right.

tchrist

F=ma

@JohanLarsson Does the following look any easier than what you are doing?

Cerberus

4:22 PM

tchrist

 use PDF::Parse;

  $pdf->TargetFile($filename);
  $pdf->LoadPageInfo;

  $version = $pdf->Version;
  $bool = $pdf->IsaPDF;
  $bool = $pdf->IscryptPDF;

  $info = $pdf->GetInfo ($key);
  $pagenum = $pdf->Pages;

  @size = $pdf->PageSize ($page);
  # or
  @size = $pdf->PageSize;

  $rotation = $pdf->PageRotation ($page);
  # or
  $rotation = $pdf->PageRotation;

Cerberus

Nothing can destroy this ^.

tchrist

@Cerberus Is that here or in Switz?

Cerberus

They do have to be high enough.

@tchrist Japan, I presume.

tchrist

Oh.

Cerberus

4:24 PM

I think a tsunami has more kinetic energy than even a mountain flood?

tchrist

Here’s the one I am talking about:

It is not a current picture, obviously.

Cerberus

That looks sturdy.

tchrist

But it is a Serious Dam.

Cerberus

How high is the water level there?

I mean, nothing can stop km-high water, probably.

tchrist

Good question. I heard it is not full, because they have been releasing it carefully.

Cerberus

4:25 PM

Right.

But 10 m is doable over long distances.

tchrist

30' is what we got hit with last night.

That is an aerial of when it was super dry.

All the shore there is full up now.

Cerberus

That looks very deep, as in...50m?

tchrist

Haven’t found any current pix. A lot of people want to know.

I don’t know.

Cerberus

@tchrist But what matters is local depth, where the dam/dike is.

tchrist

> Built in 1909, the dam is 175 feet high with a crest of 720 feet.

Cerberus

4:29 PM

tchrist

It’s what guards Boulder.

As you can see, other factors are still devastating.

Cerberus

Crest?

tchrist

I wondered that myself.

Having internet trouble. Hm.

Cerberus

Oh, I know.

tchrist

> The dam, 364 feet (111 metres) high, with a crest length of 12,562 feet (3,830 metres) and a volume of 57,940,000 cubic yards (44,300,000 cubic metres),

Hm.

That’s a different one. Just looking for crest instances associated with dams.

Cerberus

4:31 PM

There are several things it could mean.

tchrist

Seems to be length.

Cerberus

Yeah.

tchrist

> The Portugues Dam will be 220ft high, with a crest length of 1230ft.

I know, I know!

It means that the top of the dam, its crest, has that length.

Cerberus

Length measured at the top.

Jinx.

tchrist

Right.

So our damn is about 60 yards high by 240 yards long.

Cerberus

4:33 PM

That's close to my 50 m, isn't it?

tchrist

< 10%.

Rather, yes, to within 10%.

Cerberus

Right.

tchrist

Small dam failure yesterday.

Cerberus

Ugh.

tchrist

Don’t know anyone in Nederland to ask for a current picture of the dam, and all canyon roads were closed yesterday. Dunno today. Only first-responders and escaping residents should risk it.

Cerberus

4:38 PM

Is above-ground power more resistant, or less resistant, to flooding?

I wouldn't know, because we have neither.

But maybe the cables are safer up there?

tchrist

Below ground power only happens in very rich places. We have that in downtown Boulder and along a couple of the very most major in-town thoroughfares only.

You can put power lines climbing up a mountain side on stilts much easier than you can blast granite.

It never happens cross-country between communities. Ever.

@Cerberus You have no flooding?

Barker Meadow Reservoir

Barker Meadow Reservoir is a water supply reservoir in the Colorado Front Range located near the town of Nederland, Colorado in southwestern Boulder County. Barker Meadow Dam provides water to a downstream hydroelectric power generating facility, and its reservoir provides water to the city of Boulder, Colorado. In 1908, the Central Colorado Power Company began construction of Barker Meadow Dam to provide electricity to nearby mining communities and the city of Denver. Completed in 1910, the dam and Barker Meadow Reservoir were named for the owner of the land, Mrs. Hannah Connell Barker...

Because Boulder is situated at the base of the mountains, there is an ever-present threat of flood, particularly when spring rains or cloud bursts combine with melting snow from the mountains. The question is not if there will be a major flood in Boulder, but when.

They were, of course, correct.

Cerberus

@tchrist No...we built 1,000 or 10,000-year dikes around everywhere after the flooding of 1953, so now we only have some minor flooding near certain parts of a river occasionally. Of course one cannot predict the future, who knows...

So are power lines on poles relatively safe from flood damage?

tchrist

Yes.

Wooden poles can of course fall over, but not often.

You do realize that Colorado is about 8 times the size of the Netherlands, even without counting the diagonal parts accurately?

I never can find Holland in Wikipedia, because I keep typing Nederland. :)

And you have about 9 times our population density.

That gives a very different sort of tax base for every given square mile.

Huge whole lot of “can’t get there from here”.

See all those blue arterials, though? Bazillions of them, and those are just the big ones.

Eek, there are exposed power lines along US 36! People die that way.

That’s quite near me.

Sky just let up enough for them to send out rescue choppers. FINALLY.

Creek down to only 3,200 cfs, from last night’s 5,000. Still should be in the 80–200 range though.

Johan Larsson

5:05 PM

in WPF on Stack Overflow Chat, 5 mins ago, by Billdr

Spamming chats with my website, http://tipbitco.in, feels unethcial @JohanLarsson.

Nice guy^

In Sweden we have a thing that is called 'vaska' Champagne, you order a bottle at a nightclub and then you tell the bartender to pour it out. (Pure intentional waste)

Does it exist outside of Sweden?

A guy made this site where you can just send an sms and waste some money.

Cerberus

@JohanLarsson Poor it out into glasses? Or what?

I dread your answer...

Johan Larsson

pour it down the drain

Cerberus

Haha.

That is like the worst of the worst Russian maffia.

Johan Larsson

it is a nouveau riche thing

Cerberus

Quite.

And you can bet the restaurant uses € 1 "champagne" for that.

So they spend € 100 to waste € 1. Not a good deal.

Johan Larsson

5:13 PM

there is a slightly more civilized version, traska (walk). Then you order a bottle and walk away when it is opened.

Cerberus

I'm sure this is widely known only because it's extremely rare and everyone things it is ridiculous?

Johan Larsson

@Cerberus it is pretty big in Sweden, don't know if many do it but many know about it.

Cerberus

Pretty big? Haha.

I'm sure some people do that here as well.

But I think burning bank notes with a lighter is classier, and you get more bang for your buck.

Johan Larsson

@tchrist looks similar for metadata, reading content was where the fun ended for me

KitFox

5:32 PM

@Cerberus You're supposed to light your cigar with it.

Johan Larsson

It is illegal to burn money I think

cyberskull

Yes, it's called defacing the queen...

...the same is true for coins.

Matt Эллен

burning coins is more of a challenge

Johan Larsson

is it decapitating for coins?

cyberskull

Putting them on the railroad tracks is fun!

10

Q: Has anyone been charged with defacing money?

In many countries it is illegal to deface or destroy money, but has this law ever been enforced? (note: I'm not asking about counterfeiting) Have there been any notable cases of people being charged or jailed in the past 50 years? One thing that comes to mind was the KLF's Burn a Million Quid: ...

Mitch

5:51 PM

@JohanLarsson Wait...I have an idea..can they let -me- pour it out? I will 'waste' it proper for them.

@JohanLarsson there's also the thing (I don't know where but I've seen it at nightclubs) of taking a stack of bills and quickly swiping off the top bills into the air so that they fly around almost like confetti shooting out.

Johan Larsson

@Mitch I'm not the right person to ask, don't know the inner workings. But I have a feeling you would do great.

Mitch

@JohanLarsson excellent. I'll take that as authoritative approval.

Johan Larsson

@Mitch similar to making it rain?

Mitch

Yeah, sure, something like that. Usually over a dancing girl, but essentially it goes all over the floor. They're not just throwing a wad of cash in the air, it's bill by bill, but really fast.

Johan Larsson

I read somewhere, don't know if it is true, that some football player made it rain in a stripclub causing a state of riot.

out of line

cyberskull

5:58 PM

It's raining money, HALLELUJAH!!!

@JohanLarsson Did he set off the sprinkler?

Johan Larsson

@cyberskull If i remember correctly he brought a bag of bills. I rarely remember correctly.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@cyberskull you misspelled men.

►

cyberskull

:D

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

:D

Wow, parts of that aren't quite SFW.

KitFox

rushes to watch

Noooooooo... can't blot out images

cyberskull

6:15 PM

Wow, I always thought it was older than '82

"It's Raining Men" was a song written by Paul Jabara and Paul Shaffer (of "Late Night With David Letterman" fame) in 1979, and originally recorded by The Weather Girls in 1982...

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@KitFox which ones?

KitFox

Most of them.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Of it raining Paul Shaffers?

KitFox

I do have a soft spot for shirtless men in bracers.

Posing as firefighters.

With puppies and babies is even better.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I was in and out on that video.

KitFox

6:18 PM

There were some weird ones and also a lot of the Weather Girls and disco.

And a some uh. interesting, uh, male poses.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Many male poses suffer from the utility of the male body.

KitFox

I felt bad for the one guy in a banana sling in what was likely cold water.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Not quite as artful as the female form.

looks around, bookmarks video

KitFox

There must be better scantily clad men videos.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I demand body hair.

And coffee.

KitFox

6:22 PM

►

This looks. Well. Not very.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I can't look at that til like, tomorrow sometime.

Johan Larsson

There are worse songs than It's raining men, it makes me happy.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Lunch is my great demotivator.

curls up for nap

KitFox

nudges @corn over, squishes into next to her

cyberskull

Right Said Fred Said "I`m Too Sexy for this.."

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

6:27 PM

@KitFox assumes spoon position

KitFox

spoons

drools a little in corn's hair

Johan Larsson

Maybe related, great song and video any way.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Ooh, I'm the little spoon.

wiggles butt

KitFox

I think I am great bigger than you. I might be mistaken.

Aphex Twin. Hee hee.

That's a whole lotta panties.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

1. Collect underpants.

2. ???

3. Profit.

cyberskull

6:37 PM

@JohanLarsson This comment says it all "My parents walked in and I switched to porn because that was easier to explain"

Johan Larsson

haha

youtube comments are usually a worthwhile read

cyberskull

Yep

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@tchrist would you agree?

2

Q: What is a word for a situation in which one thing becomes the be all end all for everything in that group?

Ex: Burning man makes every other festival you go to boring after it.

single-word-requests

user87637

I missed the panties talk, lol.

Mitch

@JasperLoy If only they could.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

6:44 PM

LOL not, blue square!

user87637

@Mitch Very funny.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

gestures wildly at star wall

user87637

In other news, I joined okcupid.com, HAHAHAHAHA.

Mitch

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 "I hadn't noticed that Nederland..."?

user87637

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 I see you are very corny.

Mitch

6:45 PM

You should change your name to Jasper Lol. And then you wouldn't have to say 'lol'. It would save typing.

user87637

@Mitch I am surprised at the number of hot people near me, lol.

Mitch

@JasperLoy I know! You guys need air conditioning.

user87637

Looks like I am gonna get laid soon, lol.

Mitch

Drink lots of fluids.

To keep cool. I don't know about the laying.

user87637

@Mitch You are full of puns tonight.

Mitch

6:47 PM

@JasperLoy I am full of it tonight.

user87637

Tonight, I feel like I am on the path to recovery...

cyberskull

because it's FRIDAY

user87637

I will just continue to take my meds, though I am not sure if they really work.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@cyberskull to-do: get down

user87637

►

cyberskull

6:50 PM

1 min ago, by cyberskull

because it's FRIDAY

27 secs ago, by cyberskull

1 min ago, by cyberskull

because it's FRIDAY

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@JasperLoy ahh, thank you.

MετάEd

That's not the Friday video, right? Nobody would post that.

user87637

@MετάEd Except a nutcase, lol.

cyberskull

(-;

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…