English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2014-08-09 (page 1 of 2)

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1:06 AM

> Yes, I HAVE Been Reading Patrick O’Brian, Why Do You Ask?

There’s a major argument in the offing. I’ve been at loggerheads with a guy who claims that the navies of the 18th and 19th centuries are the source for many terms in common use today, and I really need to take the wind out of his sails. We were just hanging out, skylarking, when he suggested it. At first I was taken aback: he should have known when he brought it up that there would be the devil to pay, since, by and large, I know about this stuff. You can tell by the cut of his jib that this is a guy who just likes showing aw…

source

Gene Wolfe does sailor-lingo better.

But this is just a rant, not art, so Steve gets a pass.

Does "nailing one's colors to the mast" mean hoisting a new flag?

@Cerberus Mais si!

> compote /ˈkɒmpəʊt/.
Also 9 compot. Also compôte.

Etymology: a. Fr. compote :– OFr. composte :– L. composta, composita, from compositus pa. pple.: see composite, compost. Analogous to sbs. in -ata, -ade, -ee.

1. a. Fruit preserved in syrup.

1693 Evelyn De La Quint. Compl. Gard. I. 91 marg., ― Compote, fruit stew’d in Sugar, after a manner peculiar to the French.
1725 Bradley Fam. Dict. I. 3 L ij/1 ― Cherries··put into Compotes, half Sugar and Conserves.
1883 Miss Braddon Gold. Calf xi. 139 ― He eats too many compots.

Tom I saw three gulo gulo at a distance of ~20 m today.

Wow..

I assume you weren't encircled?

Or wouldn't be here to tell the tale or 3.

nope, they ran off

I have never seen but a weasel/stoat in the wild as far as mustelids go.

Don't think gulo can be dangerous, they are so small

1:13 AM

@tchrist Soo why do I not see the circumflex everywhere?

Maybe ours are ghouler than yours?

@JohanLarsson What are they like?

dunno

@Cerberus It's mandatory in French names for French foods.

@Cerberus jumpy :)

1:14 AM

But both Wikipaedia and the Oxford English Dictionary do not write the circumflex?

They are extremely rare in Sweden

Googling...

Here too.

Nov 7 '12 at 23:25, by tchrist

Higgledy piggledy               Wolvering wolverenes
Lord Wyman Manderly             Incontrovertibly
Sups with his foes, leaving     Tell all who hearken that
Nary a crumb.                   Winter is come.

@Cerberus *Guloing

This was well above timberline, just rocks more or less.

Now, that is odd.

Few predators bother above timberline.

1:16 AM

Gf had the camera and was lagging behind so did not get nice film/pictures

Little to eat there for them, but marmots and pika and maybe certain ovids or caprids by summer.

They kill reindeers in winter

Here only Oreamnos stays above timberline by winter.

> Country Population Area Year State of population
Sweden 265+[6] Norrbotten[6] 1995–97[6] Stable[6]

Well, and ptarmigan.

@JohanLarsson Reindeer and caribou are invariant by number, like moose and deer and elk.

I cannot sat why.

By winter should be in winter, I think.

Caribou used to be cariboux in French long ago though, because they tried used French morphology on American Indian words.

1:21 AM

Gonna sleep now, been driving & hiking all day.

The TLF has no circumflex: circe.atilf.fr/definition/compote

Good night!

It's old.

Apparently.

Still, it's odd.

They have kept it where most s's disappeared.

1:40 AM

Well, they keep the hat en lieu of the s.

No?

There is a swarm of lightning bugs outside dancing on my grandparents' giant feline's head. It is very odd.

Its a >20-pound Maine coon.

@tchrist Yes, so why not in compote? I think we write compôte in Dutch.

@tchrist Are they like fireflies?

@Cerberus Those are the same thing.

Lightning bug == firefly

Are they only in the New World?

I can't tell. I think it says you might have some, but that they are bad at it.

Lampyridae is a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They are winged beetles, and commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous crepuscular use of bioluminescence to attract mates or prey. Fireflies produce a "cold light", with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies. This chemically produced light from the lower abdomen may be yellow, green, or pale red, with wavelengths from 510 to 670 nanometers. About 2,000 species of firefly are found in temperate and tropical environments. Many are in marshes or in wet, wooded areas where their larvae have abundant sources...

Ours are chartreuse.

fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cariboux

Ils disent qu’ils sont un nom invariable, les cariboux.

Ok, even in French it is only compote now.

Weird.

I too was sure it was compôte.

La Compôte is a commune in the Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France. == Geography == The village lies in the northern part of the commune, on the right bank of the Chéran, which flows northwestward through the northern part of the commune. == See also == Communes of the Savoie department == References == INSEE == External links == Official site...

Rhubarb Compôte

Summer Fruit Compôte scented with Lemon Grass

Compôte Let op: Spelling van 1858 Fr., ooftmoes, ingelegde of ingemaakte vruchten; ook het glaswerk, waarin die vruchten op de tafel gebragt worden

2:14 AM

Haha, let op: spelling van 1858!

@tchrist I think they are at least far more common yonder!

I have never seen them.

I have seen glow worms, a few times.

But never flies.

> In Europa voorkomende soorten eten als larve voornamelijk ongewervelden zoals (naakt-)slakken en kunnen daarom erg nuttig zijn, bij de meeste soorten eten de volwassen kevers niet meer en leven slechts enkele weken als imago.

So they only live for a few weeks as beetles here.

Perhaps that's why.

They are rare enough as larvae.

Ubiitous

Ubiquitous?

You forgot a labiovelar.

The voiceless one without aspiration, no less.

can't tyepe

eating

Ah.

I am eating crackers with cheese.

While my guy is sleeping.

I wish I had a normal sleep cycle!

Fruit flies like a banana. Fireflies like a torch.

2:34 AM

Hmm cryptic.

And reversed.

Not bad.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus You could just try going to sleep and waking up when everyone else does.

2:59 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I could try, but I would fail.

I tried to sleep, but couldn't.

Had I been able to fall asleep, I would have woken up after only a few hours, unable to get back to sleep (for about 4 hours).

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

it's like jet lag. You have to stick to a regimen

Why did the Shoguns visit the Baby Jeeziz?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

lie in bed from, say, 11pm until 6 or 7am. Get up at 7am, no exceptions. Don't nap.

@tchrist dunno, why?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, that works. It just means a week or ten days of very unhealthy exhaustion, where I get about 4 hours of sleep a day. Then I will have a normal cycle for a week or two, and then I slip again.

So we could have a Christmas song about their 3 kings.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:03 AM

@Cerberus Just maintain some discipline!

Still, seems like a long walk for song that would be millennia in coming.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

You have a reason, now, to do so

@tchrist I wonder if, perhaps, you don't have the cause and effect backwards

Time travel?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I have tried and failed so many times.

Lack of dedication.

It's like quitting smoking

No one ever succeeded who didn't try,

3:04 AM

Yes, I do not want to keep a 24-hour cycle. I only ever try because society demands it.

Society is immaterial.

It is in a way like smoking or getting fat.

@tchrist If so, then I have no reason at all to do it.

Your sun, the only god you will ever know, demands it.

I recognise no such body.

Or he would have made you small and furry, and you would taste good in milk.

3:06 AM

I live low.

Sunlight does not really penetrate here.

Vermiferous.

Vermiformous.

Vermifugal.

Vermiceous knids.

Infernal.

A verm by other name shall still turn as creep.

Vermiphagous.

Vermigenic.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus What is the problem? do you have a longer-than-24 hour circadian rhthym?

That'll really throw off the rhythm method.

3:10 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes.

I tend to go to bed later than the day before, usually.

Vermin vermilion.

That's just laziness.

I am active at night. I want to do things, not sleep.

Rigor is required.

I have to force myself to go to bed every day.

@tchrist Only because of society.

Sloth.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:11 AM

@Cerberus That's not the same as having a longer-than-24 hours rhythm

It's just lack of self-discipline.

Perhaps not. But that's what happens every day, every year.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I want to do things at night too.

Immediate gratification.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Like right now, it's 11pm and I'm not going to bed yet. But I should.

3:12 AM

6 mins ago, by Cerberus

It is in a way like smoking or getting fat.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That sucks, doesn't it?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus somewhat.

If I lived alone I would probably be nocturnal.

Boulder has a Hmong conclave and a Russian/Siberian one.

Is that just one Asian conclave in two pieces, or is that an Oriental one and something else?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But all it takes is getting out of bed each weekday at 7am to force me to go to bed by midnight-ish every weeknight

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Right, there you go.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist I'd say it's two things.

3:14 AM

I don't think the Russians like being called Oriental, even though they are from Siberia.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, it is somewhat better if you have to get up at the same time every day. But my various jobs have various times. And now it's summer vacation.

The consider themselves ethnically European, but they are clearly Asians.

And yet, not like the Hmong at all.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Well, Asia is a big place.

Tell that to Israel.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

continentally-asian is not a very useful label.

3:15 AM

Meh.

Jupiter is bigger.

@Cerberus Right, and Judah.

And so is Eurasia.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It's like if you called anyone from north or south america "american".

@tchrist Umm...no.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They are, in a way.

I still think Arabia is more African than Oriental.

Although others disagree.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:16 AM

@Cerberus they are. And that's how South Americans say it.

But it's not a useful label IMHO.

Right.

It depends.

By the way, which free phone would you pick: a Moto E or an Xperia E1?

You know how you can tell that Arabia is Oriental? All the flying carpets they import from Persia.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Whereas "Asian = Oriental = China Japan Korea Thailand etc" is a more useful label.

@Cerberus I dunno. I'd have to research it.

Is Ukraine in Europe?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

isn't it?

If Russia is....

3:18 AM

I thought it was.

Well, most of Russia is Asian.

Although I think Leningrad is European.

But Kaliningrad is Prussian, not Russian.

You know, it would be easier if we named places for their continental plates.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus according to gsmarena the E1 has only 512MB ram

so fuggedaboudid

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Huh!

It says everywhere that it has 1GB here.

Including the shop that sells it.

Besides, the Xperia E1 has 512MB.

@tchrist Yes, absolutely.

The Ural is the boundary between Asia and Europe, usually.

Does Ural means Caucasus?

Uhh no.

But one of them is the Continental Divide, right?

Or both?

3:25 AM

The Ural Mountains (Russian: Ура́льские го́ры, tr. Uralskiye gory; IPA: [ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈgorɨ]; Bashkir: Урал тауҙары), or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a further continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic. The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with...

Both.

The large majority of Russians live in Europe.

The continent.

But of course the name is used in different ways...

So wouldn't it make more sense to call the part of America west of the Continental Divide a different continent?

Where by America I of course include Canada and Alaska and such.

It's just convention.

> The Caucasus Mountains are generally considered as in both Europe and Asia. In fact, the main Greater Caucasus range is the most common definition for the continental divide.

So confusing.

Shouldn't geology be what counts, not mapmakers?

I know that America and Europe are different continents because of the North Atlantic. That's geology talking for you.

But just drawing little lines on maps to separate contiguous land masses is silly.

Pretty soon East India and environs will be a continent of its own.

If the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Eurasia occur on different continents, I think that the same should be true for America. I mean, it just makes sound sense.

I bet you could make money off of this.

3:33 AM

Go ahead and try it.

But I would rather you pushed the South onto a different continent.

How silly of him. The Romans had congress/trade with the Chinese.

Not then.

Although others no doubt did.

I guess the Greeks may not have.

But surely Alexander figured it out.

I mean, he gets to India and they tell him about the rest of the world.

I'm sure there were trade routes. But whether many Chinese goods ever reached Syria? I do not know.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yes. That's what I said, isn't it?

3:35 AM

Sino-Roman relations

Sino-Roman relations were essentially indirect throughout the existence of both empires. The Roman Empire and Han China progressively inched closer in the course of the Roman expansion into the Ancient Near East and simultaneous Chinese military incursions into Central Asia. However, powerful intermediate empires such as the Parthians and Kushans kept the two Eurasian flanking powers permanently apart and mutual awareness remained low and knowledge fuzzy. Only a few attempts at direct contact are known from records: In CE 97, the Chinese general Ban Chao unsuccessfully tried to send an envoy to...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ohh Jesus.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus ... are you okay?

When I wrote that, I had forgotten what the type name of the Xperia was, and from the corner of an eye I didn't notice the 1, so I thought you had written just E.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

ah

So yeah.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:37 AM

yeah

The only thing is that the E1 seems to be more current on Marktplaats.nl.

So it might be easier to sell.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Personally I would avoid getting a phone with less than 2gb ram

Even thought the Moto E is worth slightly more in theory.

So would I, but it's free.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

despite goog's claims that 4.4 will run in 512

> The first group of people claiming to be an ambassadorial mission of Romans to China was recorded in CE 166 by the Hou Hanshu. The embassy came to Emperor Huan of Han China "from Andun (Chinese: 安敦; Emperor Antoninus Pius), king of Daqin (Rome)". As Antoninus Pius died in 161, leaving the empire to his adoptive son Marcus Aurelius (Antoninus), and the envoy arrived in 166, confusion remains about who sent the mission given that both Emperors were named 'Antoninus'. The Roman mission came from the south (therefore probably by sea), entering China by the frontier of Rinan or Tonkin (present…

3:39 AM

Yeah, that was a nice age.

That's indeed a bit late for Herodotus.

I don't know how they get Daqin from Roma.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

where did you get that text?

Looks like Wikipaedia.

From the Wikipedia page oneboxed above.

It is surprisingly long.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

> In Chinese records, the Roman Empire came to be known as "Da Qin", Great Qin, apparently thought to be a sort of counter-China at the other end of the world.

3:41 AM

@tchrist Why surprisingly?

I am easily astonished.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And that it was.

> A new hypothesis (Greek Hoplites in an Ancient Chinese Siege, Journal of Asian History) from 2011 by Dr Christopher Anthony Matthew from the Australian Catholic University[41] suggests that these strange warriors were no Roman legionaries with their testudo formation, but maybe Greek-Macedonian descendants of Alexander the Great’s army, that still fought as hoplites in phalanx formation.[42]

Umm...

That sounds dubious...

It's bed time.

no kidding

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:49 AM

I think it's funny that we have ancient texts that refer to foreign people but we're not really sure who they're talking about.

The Egyptians wrote of the Sea Peoples. We don't know who they were. Vikings?

Too far back.

Bronze Age times.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

probably the mormon jews, on their way to America

The Sea Peoples, or Peoples of the Sea, is a term used to describe a confederacy of seafaring raiders who could have possibly originated from either western Anatolia or southern Europe, specifically a region of the Aegean Sea, who sailed around the eastern Mediterranean and invaded Anatolia, Syria, Canaan, Cyprus, and Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age. The term is used by modern scholars to refer to nine groups of people, although in the historical inscriptions the designation "of the sea" (Egyptian: n3 ḫ3s.wt n<.t> p3 ym) appears only in relation to three (the Sherden, Shekelesh, and Eqwesh...

Jews were Americans, not Orientals, you must understand. Scott Card said so.

The Seaple page is so long!

> Recent examinations of the eruption of the Santorini volcano suggest that it occurred very close (estimated between 1660–1613 BC) to the first appearances of the Sea People in Egypt.[55] The eruption and its aftermath (fires, tsunami, weather changes and famines) would have had wide-ranging effects across the Mediterranean, the Levant and particularly Greece, and could have provided the impetus for invasions of other regions of the Mediterranean.

So many theories!

And you are right: we don't know who they were.

Bout the only one not mentioned was ships from Atlantis.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, I was refering to the Seres, which are thought to be the Chinese, but maybe Indians, or basically anyone from Asia could be.

It's strange to think that only a few centuries ago even the concept of a nation was very strange to some people.

4:04 AM

The Seres were from far away in Asia. Somewhere. But the Sea Peoples were of the Mediterranean World. And we don't know who they were.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah.

We just have poor records from before Athenian Greece.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, the world is a big place, when you don't have proper roads with signs and maps and telephones.

Clearly there were civilizations there before then.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I wonder what people will think of us 1000 years from now.

Probably we'll be reviled for having destroyed the climate

4:06 AM

At least they will be able to read us better than we can read Linear A.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah, hopefully, if our electronic records don't all disappear

We could engrave books on gold so it would last, but people would just melt them down.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Yeah, maybe

Or the Angel Moroni would come back and collect them again.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

He's notorious for that

4:08 AM

Dumb name for an angel if you ask me.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Moronic

So linear A. we can't read it, right? but we deciphered linear b, and they both use the same alphabet, right?

IIRC

What good is a messenger who takes back his message with him? What an Indian giver!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I wonder if some has tried using linear b as a phonetic guide for linear a

Some people say they can read Linear A.

I don't believe it is the consensus opinion of the scholarly community though.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

> Using the values associated with Linear B in Linear A mainly produces unintelligible words. If it uses the same or similar syllabic values as Linear B, then its underlying language appears unrelated to any known language. This has been dubbed the Minoan language.

4:10 AM

Linear A is one of two currently undeciphered writing systems used in ancient Greece. Cretan hieroglyphic is the other. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization. It was discovered by archaeologist Arthur Evans. It is the origin of the Linear B script, which was later used by the Mycenaean civilization. In the 1950s, Linear B was largely deciphered and found to encode an early form of Greek. Although the two systems share many symbols, this did not lead to a subsequent decipherment of Linear A. Using the values associated with Linear B in Linear...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I guess that answers that

yeah

I meant that moronic angel is responsible for the cretans too. Makes sense

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

fascinating that we have a language with a writing system, and lots of knowledge about related languages nearby, and we know inventing writing is pretty hard and usually happens when someone learns writing from a foreign language and then adapts it to their own language... all these connected data points, and still no clue what is linear a.

I guess we don't really have all that much text from linear a

I have to pass out.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

ok have fun

cya

5 hours later…

8:47 AM

@AndrewLeach there's the verb fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/gyrate

(for "girouette")

weather-vane sucks, gyrater or gyrouette (from French) would be great

3 hours later…

11:58 AM

@Robusto hi pal.

12:14 PM

@nosmoking Spinner would be more in a normal register than would gyrater be.

What's the difference between saying that the army has billeted at Birnam Wood and saying that they’ve bivouacked there?

@tchrist right

Bivouacked is usually without shelter.

@Reg Putin could do a lot better at getting people to stop likening him to Hitler than having his secret police go around saying “Ihre Papiere, bitte!” to anybody who wants to use Wifi.

> First they came for the Wifiers, but I said nothing, for I did not use Wifi.

It sounds so very Chinese of him.

12:35 PM

What's the difference between 1 and 0.999...?

"Vos papiers, s'il vous plait!"

"Papeles, por favor"

@skullpatrol 0

Correct :)

0.999... = \sum_1^\infty 9*10^{-n}=1

12:52 PM

What is wrong with this "proof" that 1 - 0.999... = 0.000...1?

1 hour later…

2:09 PM

hmm

I'd say 1 - 0.999... = 0

0.9999 ≠ 0.9999...

one is finite, the other has infinite decimals

eh, so 1 is also an irrationnal

no I'm stupid

2 hours later…

3:46 PM

Today's Listening | Dance / Electro (Mixsets Day 9)

3:59 PM

At the risk of sounding like I’m a prickly and surly guy, I can but observe that you don’t have to be a homely sort to recognize that this ugly answer is too niggardly for its own good and too wobbly for good sense. In fact, it’s more than a bit silly, verging on unseemly even. A more mannerly answer from one of our kindlier members, not to mention a more likely and doubtless more manly one, would encompass all these illustrations as well as many others, while a princely answer from a wily member would demonstrate that the same root cause is at place in all these wordy yet worldly examples. — tchrist 1 min ago

1 hour later…

5:13 PM

lool ^

I've pursued my exposure therapy, almost 10 smokers seen today and sometimes smelt, I've just cleaned my nose after, no worse actions

user image

and also those little tubes i.imgur.com/VPf2pPv.png bought today, that can be useful

</schizo>

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Aug '149

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…

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