English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

2:00 AM

The red dot is a breach.

The green line is water flowing over the dike but not breaching it.

The purple is the flood.

tchrist

Hm

They do this on the Mississippi.

Lower.

Cerberus

Presumably, an unbreachable dike is not that much more expensive.

tchrist

Not much on upper, thought they sometimes need it.

But they do virtually none of that here. It is not supposed to happen here. On average, it doesn't — within one human lifetime. But it is guaranteed to occur.

Cerberus

It all depends on how much money you are prepared to spend to protect how many people / property.

tchrist

There is about a 50% chance of a 1/100 per year event happening in 70 years.

Cerberus

2:04 AM

No higher?

Or lower?

tchrist

There is only a 7% chance of a 1/1000 event in 70 years.

Cerberus

I don't even know how to calculate that...

tchrist

Simple math. (1/100) ** 70.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

"with conventional dike"

Cerberus

?

tchrist

2:05 AM

(999/1000) ** 70 = .93236116492191258599

Cerberus

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Ah, yes. Very good!

tchrist

(99/100) ** 70 = .49483865960020725986

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Cerberus whee!

MετάEd

Photo #133. It's not a door jam. That's something else.

tchrist

(checking)

@MετάEd Don’t understand. You mean this Photo #133?

It’s too easy for us here in Boulder County to forget there are 13 other disastered counties. I hadn’t realized Evergreen had had it so bad. I have a friend/coworker there I’ve talked to about the situation, and he only has basement issues like me, and hadn’t mentioned the downtown problems.

Never just insurance people.

That’s from today in Boulder.

Cerberus

2:14 AM

Nice truck!

We have no old-fashioned fire trucks any more, only ugly ones.

tchrist

That’s an insurance vehicle, not a real fire truck anymore.

Only the old little towns ever still have those.

You see them in Fourth-of-July parades and stuff up in the prosaic little mountain hamlets.

The truck was at 190 Araphoe. 000 = Mountains.

The closer to the mountains you were, the worse the damage. The kids died over between 2nd and 4th street on Linden.

I live at about 5th.

Not positive where they died. But the 4th-street intersection was the worst, and leading back up towards the mountains.

People hugged up against the mountains are in a great bit of hurt right now.

MετάEd

@tchrist photos.denverpost.com/2013/09/12/…

It's number 140 now. I hate it when links change.

tchrist

Oh.

Looks like a ministep and doorjam to me. Which part do you mean?

MετάEd

I have reloaded the page and now what was #141 is #148, I think.

Don't they know people link to things?

It's a doorjamb.

Doorjam is what you get when you put your door in a blender and add sugar and pectin.

tchrist

True.

This is Linden two blocks from me, where the kids died.

MετάEd

2:27 AM

photos.denverpost.com/2013/09/12/…

I'd keep my daughter close too.

Dammit, the links changed again.

tchrist

Yeah, what’s going on?

Cerberus

Bad!

MετάEd

Probably the new photos are being posted at the top of the stack, numbered from 1.

Cerberus

I don't even understand what I'm looking at.

MετάEd

In other words, stupidity.

tchrist

2:31 AM

@Cerberus Well, the links have captions explaining them.

But if I post a link, it moves. The pix don’t.

Maybe they are updating?

Cerberus

@tchrist How did the water take that much land, if it's not even a breach?

tchrist

That’s the Linden picture.

@Cerberus Ahah! Yes, I see the conceptual problem here.

So that is what all our mountain roads look like now.

Your water is slow water, dawdling along.

MετάEd

@tchrist They need to update by adding new sequence numbers at the end.

tchrist

Ours has just run down a steep slope two miles lower at the bottom than at the top. Do you know what happens to a mass that falls two miles?

Cerberus

But the water is not flowing over the land on the left at all.

tchrist

2:33 AM

F=ma

MετάEd

@tchrist Einstein explained that one. A whole lot of energy gained.

tchrist

It is terrible.

MετάEd

Gravity works.

Never be on the wrong side of gravity.

tchrist

@Cerberus It doesn’t have to flow over it to destroy it, silly!

Cerberus

Nor does the water seem to approach the broken-off land from anywhere near a straight angle.

So it seems a rather random point to destroy.

So there must be something that we cannot see.

tchrist

2:35 AM

It merely smashes against it with repeated force, undermining it.

Cerberus

But why there and not 50 m away, somewhere else?

tchrist

@Cerberus I don’t think so. I don’t understand why you think this is odd.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Break me off a piece of that blacktop road. :(

tchrist

@Cerberus Who knows? Maybe a bend

MετάEd

@Cerberus Because the creek bed curves there.

And the water really, really wants to go straight.

tchrist

2:36 AM

Cerberus

@MετάEd Must be something like that.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@tchrist Jesus Q. Butterfat.

Cerberus

@tchrist Is that from LotR?

tchrist

@MετάEd And is used to getting its way.

@Cerberus Here, of course. Biblical destruction at times.

Cerberus

Nah, looks more like Hollywood special effects.

MετάEd

2:38 AM

@tchrist The Biblical flood was, of course, bigger.

tchrist

@MετάEd Unclear.

Cerberus

That couldn't possibly be real, it's too extreme.

tchrist

@Cerberus You live in a quiet subdued place, where the forced of nature are mere wisps. I don’t.

MετάEd

Pull your finger out of the dike.

Cerberus

It's a lie!

Geoguesser promised me it looked different, no cataclism.

tchrist

2:42 AM

MετάEd

Black Sea deluge hypothesis

The Black Sea deluge is a hypothesized catastrophic rise in the level of the Black Sea circa 5600 BC due to waters from the Mediterranean Sea breaching a sill in the Bosporus Strait. The hypothesis made headlines when The New York Times published it in December 1996, shortly before it was published in an academic journal. While it is agreed that the sequence of events described did occur, there is debate over the suddenness, dating and magnitude of the events. Two opposing hypotheses have arisen to explain the rise of the Black Sea: gradual, and oscillating. The oscillating hypothesis speci...

tchrist

Yup, know about that one.

MετάEd

@tchrist That is a great photo.

tchrist

Innit?

MετάEd

Just watch that first step.

Cerberus

2:43 AM

Is that the corner of a car?

tchrist

You know the oncoming cars will never see their doom.

It is.

With the ped-crossing sign.

Cerberus

So what was that, a landslide or something?

tchrist

No.

Just water.

Cerberus

Really? Weird.

tchrist

Not here.

That’s what water does.

Visit the Grand Canyon, carved by the mighty Colorado.

Cerberus

2:44 AM

That's different.

This is like a knife cut.

tchrist

Whose flow Boulder Creek matched yesterday morning.

Just an undercut.

Happens during these times of deluge.

Cerberus

Like that!

That's weird.

I had no idea something like that could happen under circumstances like those. Unless there was an especially soft patch of earth there?

tchrist

Nope.

Water does that when it falls two miles. You would, too.

MετάEd

@tchrist Don't underestimate the wisp.

tchrist

MετάEd

2:48 AM

@Cerberus More likely an especially hard patch. The water can be turned, but not stopped. Here it turned toward the road.

tchrist

MετάEd

@tchrist I saw that one. It struck me as really dumb to build a road as one bank of a riverbed.

tchrist

But what choice had they?

How do you think they get up the canyons, and where do you think the canyons came from?

MετάEd

They should have cut in about twenty feet higher.

tchrist

Maybe.

There’s another one for @Cerb.

Ex-road. Very ex.

It’s why the mountain people are utterly cut off except for the military choppers. ALL mountain roads are that way right now.

MετάEd

2:53 AM

tchrist

MετάEd

photos.denverpost.com/2013/09/12/…

tchrist

The people ones are heart-breaking.

I find that the rest of the country has no idea how bad this is.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

tchrist

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

2:57 AM

Her expression is worth a thousand words.

tchrist

It is.

That’s my highway, US-36 leading north from my place to Lyons.

It isn’t just the road that is gone.

Is is the entire roadbed and the land itself.

MετάEd

Okay now the story has 201 pictures. It was 211 earlier. They're deleting.

cpx

Guys, which tense am I using when I say "My work is done here". I doubt it's simple present but it doesn't matches with rules.

tchrist

“Is” is present tense.

Reminds me of Katrina.

cpx

I thought present tense was used to describe habitual or on going actions like "I go to school".

tchrist

3:01 AM

MετάEd

cpx

What are those images?

tchrist

Colorado.

The Front Range catastrophe.

Live 70 years, and you have a 7% chance of seeing it.

The homes and business no one will pay to fix: no insurance covers this.

cpx

@tchrist present progressive?

tchrist

@cpx No.

Cerberus

3:03 AM

@tchrist The government will, no doubt?

@cpx It is a present perfect.

tchrist

@Cerberus No.

Disaster relief usually just backs loans.

You are fucked.

Many many many thousands of people.

Cerberus

The passive form of the present perfect, but with a more or less active meaning, because the verbs go and do are special.

tchrist

It’s all gone.

Cerberus

@tchrist Really? Why? So the people flooded by Katrina also had to pay everything back?

cpx

@Cerberus Really? I never knew. I thought present perfect has to do with either have or has.

tchrist

3:05 AM

We’re through. We’re finished. Our whole repertoire’s diminished.

We are forced to state conclusively our program’s exhausted, washed up, and phased out.

Cerberus

@cpx For most verbs, the passive is has been x.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@cerb also, shit like this happens when they do help out.

nbcnews.com/id/11326973/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/t/…

Cerberus

But a few verbs have is x, where x is the past participle.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Yeah that can happen...

tchrist

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Cerberus The bad happens on both ends.

tchrist

3:07 AM

> SEPTEMBER 13: A rock slide covers Boulder Canyon through the narrows portion of Boulder Canyon along Hwy 119 near Nederland, CO on September 13, 2013. People living in mountain communities from Nederland all the way to Estes Park are basically cut off from the front range with all major roadways and canyons flooded out or completely blown out from the massive water in Boulder County on September 13, 2013.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Misappropriation across the board.

tchrist

Only the Chinooks and Blackhawks get in or out.

Cerberus

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Hmm?

tchrist

I cannot imagine how many people are affected.

cpx

@Cerberus I see. Thanks for it. :) I've got to do some reading I guess.

tchrist

3:08 AM

And that isn’t even counting the Katrina devastation out on the plains.

Cerberus

@cpx That's the problem with language, there are always lots of exceptions!

tchrist

This is on Linden by me:

And people wonder why kids died.

cpx

Actually I couldn't find a grammar book which explains tenses in depth.

tchrist

Past. Present. Done.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Cerberus The government gives debit cards to the wrong people, and the right people spend them on stupid crap instead of sundries and food.

Cerberus

3:11 AM

Ugh.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@tchrist what's going on in the background?

tchrist

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Dam overflowing.

Noah

4:32 AM

Hi

@tchrist I hope you are safe.

How's the flood going?

MετάEd

5:08 AM

@Noah Ironic.

Noah

7:37 AM

Hi

Is "in compare to" correct?

Theta30

no

it is "in comparison to"

Johan Larsson

@tchrist I find the ones with mud indoors the most heart-breaking. The outdoor pics are humbling.

Jason Marsh

9:02 AM

Steve Jobs: "Listen perfectly clear, Bill. So when I am finished, you can still see
through those thick pretentious glasses, you psychopathic unimaginable
criminal. You stole my software. I can prove it at court. And I will sue you
for every cent you have ever made and I will make it my life's mission to see
you ever make another dollar that I don't first take 90 cents!"

Bill is just a psychopathic unimaginable guy wearing a pair of thick pretentious glasses. ok?

Noah

9:31 AM

@JasonMarsh And then Bills receives a blue screen of death error and when he's restarted he blames Steve for trying to strangle him.

At that point, Steve realizes that his processor has stopped responding and goes into coma.

Jason Marsh

1:29 PM

Oh my god. All American food contains some form of corn in them, so technically all Americans have corn in their blood stream right now!! =( CORN

CORN CORN

omg this video is so funny...

►

cyberskull

1:41 PM

2

Q: Too many up-votes

Somebody out there in ELU land likes me. Which is really nice but this is getting a bit over-the-top. I'm getting a flood of up-votes in rapid succession, one after another. Take a look at my reputation chart and you'll see what I mean. This is day two. I could just keep quiet and bask in the gl...

support

I don't know how to vote on this?

Johan Larsson

2:12 PM

Looked like it was going to be cold and rainy today, great I thought and went for a chanterelle hike. The cold did not last long.

Robusto

@JasonMarsh Believe it or not, those are not typical Americans. (Unless you live in Houston, perhaps, but Texas tends not to consider itself part of the U.S. anyway.) I rarely see people that fat in everyday life. Not even close. When I do, it is startling.

Johan Larsson

2:31 PM

@JasonMarsh have you seen Food inc.?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

2:58 PM

@cyberskull ha.

@Mahnax I got some Ethiopian beans from these folks and they sure are tasty.

Johan Larsson

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Coffee?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@JohanLarsson yes.

Whole beans.