English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

16:16

Looks like Obama has recruited Sulu and Jeeves to agitate against Prezident Putang.

And frankly, it couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer guy.

Cerberus

16:27

@MετάEd That is what their research showed, apparently.

It will have to be desktop browsing, I think.

I haven't read the study.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Perhaps...but I would not say that; I would instead say, "I am not religious".

@DavidWallace Happy what-we-call-sugarfeast!

tchrist

@Cerberus “Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.”

Cerberus

I suppose.

Παρθ Κοχλι

Hey, I'm writing an article. Does anyone know of a book that philosophically analyzes something very simple, such as... tacos? Or anything else in recreation.

tchrist

Depends on which kind of taco you mean.

Παρθ Κοχλι

@tchrist Not tacos specfically. lol

Some Guy

16:40

@KitFox I'm not on MSDN, but I ain't disregarding nothing!

tchrist

16:52

@SomeGuy Why not? You have something against Maso-Sadistic Dying Nonsense? :)

Cerberus

It's Masoch.

But he likes the abuse of his name, so go ahead.

MετάEd

@tchrist Atheism was, at one time, an epithet applied by the religious. It was used of people who denied the gods or were estranged from the gods in some way. Atheists have co-opted the term (see: Yankee) and now it means various things to various people. Some would strongly dispute the truth of your quotation.

tchrist

@MετάEd I didn’t put it in scare-quotes for nothing, sir.

@Cerberus I was wondering about that, actually.

MετάEd

@tchrist Hard to tell quotes from scare-quotes in this context.

Religion is scary.

tchrist

That’s why it’s all one big Mystery play.

And yes, I was quoting someone else. It was a citation.

If you want to see something really scary, chase down the Language Log postings about what British newspapers do with scare-quotes in headlines.

Some Guy

17:03

@tchrist Interesting quote!

tchrist

They use them for something super different.

If not collecting stamps is not a hobby, then not having a religion cannot be a religion.

“Mendacity Quotes” in UK newspaper headlines.

> As a headline writer on national newspapers in the UK, I can confirm that these are 'claim' quotes – they're a distancing device, like scare quotes, but unlike scare quotes they're not meant to carry any value judgment, quite the opposite.

> They are most often used when putting headlines on reports of court cases when one side, eg the prosecution, has presented claims that could be challenged by the other side, and they are meant to indicate that the paper is reporting a claim, not a fact, . . .

> . . . either in case the defendant is found not guilty and then tries to sue the newspaper for having presented something in a headline as a bald fact when a court has ruled that it is a falsehood, or, more commonly, to avoid being charged with contempt of court because the headline is seen as prejudicial.

It’s very odd.

It’s like the opposite of what you would think it would mean.

Cerberus

Dutch newspapers use double quotation marks for headlines of uncertain status too.

We don't have their sue-culture, but it is about when a headline is about something a person has said who is not an authority on the subject.

"Prison cell can hold two prisoners"

When this is a statement from a minister about a new law, for example.

tchrist

In a North America newspaper, it would be interpreted as meaning a verbatim citation.

Have you ever seen ~paraphrase quotes~ like those, with tildes?

It is not used in news headlines, but you sometimes encounter it online.

Cerberus

Maybe in (older?) foreign publications. Not in Dutch.

> Hormone ‘makes women unfaithful’

tchrist

How do you make a hormone?

Cerberus

17:15

This is possible in Dutch newspapers, but the quotation marks would be around the entire headline.

Sometimes this practice annoys me, at other times it seems...useful.

tchrist

It’s very confuting.

On these hither shores, at least.

Cerberus

The idea is that you can tell by the language that it cannot be a direct quotation.

But that study seems rotten either way.

tchrist

@Cerberus I know I’m a cyberhuman literalist in these matters, but does that actually work for you?

Cerberus

Well, most headlines don't look like real language.

11 mins ago, by Cerberus

"Prison cell can hold two prisoners"

I suppose some do, though.

Robusto

Jul 19 at 19:57, by Robusto

> You see these efforts as trying to steal away people’s ‘one thing’ or their ‘hope’…it’s nothing at all like that. A fan once asked a co-host, “When you rid the world of religion, what do you replace it with?” Without missing a beat, my co-host replied “When you cure cancer, what do you replace it with?”

Cerberus

17:27

Hah.

It is not always that bad...

Some Guy

Yeah, that's quite harsh.

But I do agree with it to a certain extent.

Cerberus

17:47

Yeah.

Some people seem to think human morality originates in religion.

Which is obviously historically untrue.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Device manager also recognoses my Nexus. But I haven't enabled it as a device administrator on my phone, so it probably can't do anything (I saw it in the list).

Further, it says Google will collect location info from all my phones if I use their "Service".

Lastly, I already use Android Lost, which has a lot more functions and is also hidden.

Παρθ Κοχλι

Quick question: "I have wasted a lot of time in algebra" or "I have wasted a lot of time on algebra"? The latter, I believe?

Robusto

Either works, but the latter is probably what you mean.

Παρθ Κοχλι

So "humans may have wasted a lot of time on philosophy" is correct?

2

Robusto

Yes.

Παρθ Κοχλι

Thanks again dude.

Robusto

18:02

What again? This is the first time you've thanked me.

Παρθ Κοχλι

@Robusto That Robert Frost thingy.

Robusto

Ah, OK.

Cerberus

> T-Mobile warns that a limited number of customers may experience problems when calling from abroad. They advise customers to try again.

MετάEd

@Cerberus I think it's actually the opposite. Much human immorality originates in religion.

More generally, much human immorality originates in stupid crap that people believe.

Cerberus

I don't know, most kinds of behaviour are rather independent of religion.

Religion mostly codifies pre-existing norms.

It is true that it can slow down change a little bit.

So some archaic elements can remain.

And it makes up some rules that are apparently unrelated to anything else.

But what is religion, anyway? There are many definitions that vary wildly.

Mitch

18:16

@ΠαρθΚοχλι This is a weird request. What is the point you're trying to get across?

Παρθ Κοχλι

@Mitch I'm pointing out how humans have invested their time looking into things that don't seem to matter, but they do.

And are minute.

Mitch

THere's a couple of books by that guy, Frankfurter? one called 'Bullshit' the other, the sequel, called 'Truth' both very short books (actually popular magazine articles made into very thing bound books)

Those are really good books and they matter, so not what you want.

MετάEd

@Cerberus A little bit? Galileo's conviction for belief in heliocentricity was repudiated over 300 years later. And heliocentricity is a minor error, all things considered. Major errors will probably never change unless the religion itself crumbles.

Mitch

There's a book titled 'Pencil' which is more of a technology book, about the historical development of the pencil. Sounds idiotic, but turns out very fascinating and informtive. It's not short.

Παρθ Κοχλι

@Mitch Ah.

That's exactly what I needed.

Cerberus

18:19

@MετάEd How do you mean? By the Church?

Mitch

@ΠαρθΚοχλι Mpost of the Platonic dialogs are about minute seemingly unimportant things.

MετάEd

@Cerberus I mean religions are very slow to change: they are dogmatic and cling to error very tenaciously.

Mitch

@ΠαρθΚοχλι It's not philosophy either.

MετάEd

I mean to disagree with your characterization of religion as something that slows down change "a little bit".

Mitch

@MετάEd s/religion/people/g

MετάEd

18:20

Religion has the emergency brake on all the time. The only difference is that the burning smell is people.

2

Cerberus

@MετάEd If you equate the published opinions of a church to religion, then, yes, they are backward; but, if you equate a religion to a web of cultural norms, then what the Pope says matters a lot less.

Had there been no Catholic Church, many people might still not have believed in heliocentricity.

Mitch

@MετάEd s/religion/people... oh never mind.

Cerberus

@MετάEd Note also that heliocentricity was hardly new: it was already proposed in Antiquity and believed by more than a few people.

And yet it did not become an accepted truth then.

And there was no real religious opposition at the time.

Mitch

@Cerberus by a few people meaning only rich educated people who have been historically rare. What does my understanding a heliocentric view do for me? I don't need to know anything about relativity to be able to use my smart phone despite the science being necessary for -someone- to understand.

Cerberus

@Mitch Yes, that is true.

Παρθ Κοχλι

18:27

@Mitch No problem. I've included that book in my article.

Cerberus

"Religion is what creates (im)morality, not humanity or society" is a bit like saying "the wave made me wet, not the sea".

Mitch

@ΠαρθΚοχλι What publication can we expect your article in?

Παρθ Κοχλι

@Mitch It's not a major article. Just for my school magazine. So I can afford to make it retarded.

Cerberus

It is true that waves are particularly concerned with active wet-making, but, in the end, they are to a considerable agree an exponent of the underlying sea. And part of it.

Mitch

@Cerberus No that's patently false. Waves are an independent force trying to break free from the sea, aided by the different actions of the wind and the moon and the shoreline. They are of the sea but conceptually not a par of the sea. They have independent existence. The waves are what King Cnut cannot stop, not the sea.

Cerberus

18:31

I see. Thank you for this wise lesson.

Mitch

I hope you take it to heart.

Cerberus

> The non-geocentric model of the Universe was proposed by the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus (d. 390 BCE). According to Philolaus, there was at the center of the Universe a "central fire" around which the Earth, Sun, Moon and Planets revolved in uniform circular motion.

> ... The Pythagorean concept of uniform circular motion remained unchallenged for approximately the next 2000 years, and it was to the Pythagoreans that Copernicus referred to show that the notion of a moving Earth was neither new nor revolutionary.[8] Kepler gave an alternative explanation of the Pythagoreans' "central fire" as the sun, "as most sects purposely hid[e] their teachings".[9]

> During the Late Middle Ages, Bishop Nicole Oresme discussed the possibility that the Earth rotated on its axis, while Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in his Learned Ignorance asked whether there was any reason to assert that the Sun (or any other point) was the center of the universe.

Stack Exchange

Limerick Machine: Flattery will get you everywhere

posted on August 08, 2013 by sgdi

I once sat a very fat rat In a waistcoat and bowler hat It saw me stare And gave me a glare So I said he looked dashing like that.

MετάEd

19:00

@Mitch People can change very quickly when dogmatic authorities that they trust (i.e., religion) don't stand in their way.

Cerberus

Look, internet activists can be fairly well dressed.

Only the guy on the left could use a new shirt.

David Wallace

@StackExchange Do you mean "saw" instead of "sat" @Matt?

Cerberus

just become contributor - which was before looking at the picture, btw.

David Wallace

@Cerberus How does one activate the internet?

Cerberus

By providing people with information?

We are the Internet.

David Wallace

19:08

Ooh, deep.

Cerberus

Well, we are.

And there are dark forces that are trying to bind us.

David Wallace

@Cerberus Ooh, that sounds like fun.

aedia λ

19:33

Happy birthday @cornbreadninja麵包忍者!

7

Who I hope is doing something more exciting than this w*rk.

The cats I'm pet-sitting keep making some noise, but every time I look downstairs to see what it is, they stop doing it.

Oh. It's the crinkle of that paper packing material in a pile of amazon boxes I didn't take to the recycle yet. Carry on, cats.

tchrist

20:03

> Unable to bear any longer the tedious work of seeking out all the instances of these two comment types so I can delete them, I have decided that from now on I will hunt down the relevant commenters and kill them. Yes, death is a severe sanction. But I think people should look at things from my point of view. It is really irritating.

Robusto

@tchrist I posted one of each kind of comment and left your name and address. I'm sure you'll understand.

tchrist

Trust me, I have prepared all my life for my epic battle with Geoffrey Pullum. Songs shall be written of our conflict.

Robusto

Mere songs? Not sagas? Not epic poems?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@aediaλ thank you!

@Robusto I rather liked this one:

musiciansfriend.com/keyboards-midi/…

tchrist

I already said epic.

It distributes.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

20:12

epic(songs, poems)

Robusto

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Looks good. Did you play it?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I did.

Robusto

And are you in love?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I played all of them. Then I found the synth room.

I'm pretty amorous for the price.

I want to say it was $100 cheaper at Guitar Center, which is where I went.

MF is pretty far away.

Robusto

If it feels good and sounds good, then I don't see a problem.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Yeah. That's why I thought of it first. I bought all my synths and paraphernalia from them.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

20:14

It's $499 there until 8/31.

Robusto

Sweet.

Cerberus

@tchrist Qui s'excuse, s'accuse:

> Anyway, I am not going to open up a forum on my policy here. It is over and done with [yes, I know, that's a stranded preposition, but don't even think about a joke comment!]; I have decided, and that is that.

Robusto

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Wait. You said epic battles.

Cerberus

Guilty as charged.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Happy birthday!!

Robusto

@Cerberus Who charged you, and with what?

Cerberus

20:15

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 presents chew-toy

tchrist

The Light Brigade.

Cerberus

11 mins ago, by tchrist

> Unable to bear any longer the tedious work of seeking out all the instances of these two comment types so I can delete them, I have decided that from now on I will hunt down the relevant commenters and kill them. Yes, death is a severe sanction. But I think people should look at things from my point of view. It is really irritating.

tchrist

On the American Express.

Cerberus

Pullum.

Says he will kill all those making stranded-preposition jokes.

Robusto

Hehe, no, I'm not going to "Pullum," tyvm.

tchrist

20:16

Just filter out videos and you’ll be fine.

Cerberus

Pullum off, perhaps? At least it ends in a "preposition".

Now I must leave.

poof

Robusto

Windows just told me my computer is slow. Hahahaha. And it thinks changing the color scheme is going to help that.

Really, who thinks up this shit? Is this some kind of Easter Egg?

tchrist

What do you call it when you abbreviate a word not by omitting its end but rather by omitting its start? neighborhood > hood, omnibus > bus, violoncello > cello

Robusto

What's wrong with abbreviate? That just means to make something shorter.

tchrist

Yes, but so does apocopate.

Not that that word means what I’m looking for.

Robusto

20:27

How about shorten?

Yeah, I know it doesn't sound erudite enough. But it gets the job done.

tchrist

But it doesn’t distinguish.

I am looking for distinction.

AB > A vs AB > B

Robusto

Well, try out for the Victoria Cross if you need distinction.

tchrist

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto Actually it can improve performance. By turning off Aero Glass.

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But my computer is already blindingly fast.

The CPU is running at 12% and I'm using about 35% of memory even while running X-COM Enemy Unknown and two IDEs.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

20:31

@Robusto This feature is activated if Windows spends too much time rendering its UI. Slow computers will be enhanced by turning off visualizations.

It happens on faster computers sometimes. You can ignore it.

Robusto

I intend to.

I dunno why it thinks it's rendering its UI so much. I don't even a lot of windows open.

I bet if I reboot all will be forgiven.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Probably there was some thread hogging the cpu too much and the gui thread got slowed down past the threshold.

I get that message sometimes when a game goes a little wonky

Robusto

The Desktop Window Manager is eating 273 MB at the moment.

I haven't rebooted in a month. I'll try that now and see what happens.

Damn, I hate rebooting. :(

There.

MετάEd

@Robusto The four R's of Microsoft.

Robusto

That took kind of a long time. I think there were a lot of updates queued. That happens sometimes.

MετάEd

20:37

How to repair any PC, the Microsoft way: Restart, Reboot, Reinstall, Replace.

Robusto

Yup.

How do you repair Microsoft's market share, though?

MετάEd

@Robusto Same way.

Robusto

@MετάEd I think it has more to do with getting rid of Windows 8.

MετάEd

@Robusto Haven't tried it.

Robusto

Nobody wants Windows 8.

JonW

20:39

Hello peeps! We have a question on UX that keeps getting flagged for migration over here, but I'm not sure it's suitable. Is it the sort of thing you'd want here?

0

Q: Better header labels than Current, Previous and Previous of Previous in a Spreadsheet?

Robusto

@JonW No.

JonW

That's what I thought.

Robusto

I think we did have it over here.

MετάEd

We did. I remember it.

Robusto

A closer reading of the leash laws would keep questions like that off the streets.

JonW

20:40

Oh yeah, his history show it. Didn't have that this morning first time it was flagged, should've rechecked/

Robusto

Just grab it with tongs, drop in toilet, and flush twice. It's the only way to be sure.

Mitch

@tchrist Mamma Mia or the Immigrant song? Both?

MετάEd

@Robusto Not sure whether that gets you into more trouble with OSHA or with EPA.

Mitch

"So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
For peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing."

Robusto

@Mitch Hammer of the dogs.

Mitch

20:45

"I've been angry and sad about things that you do
I can't count all the times that I've told you we're through"

OMG. Those are way too alike.

@Robusto Huenderdaemmerung.

tchrist

21:32

What the <CENSORED> is this answer trying to say, eh?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

shrug

tchrist

I don’t even know what language it’s in.

aedia λ

21:54

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 I was going to try to make a joke but then I got derailed by the fact that I apparently didn't know until this moment what a shrug (clothing item) was.

Cerberus

I don't know either.

shrugs

aedia λ

Until now I seriously thought it was some kind of sweater in between cowl neck and boat neck, but apparently it's more like a knitted bolero jacket and not a full sweater at all.

Cerberus

Ummm...

Those nuances are way over my head.

aedia λ

I think I own one or two and have just been walking around calling them all cardigans.

Cerberus

Oh, no!

aedia λ

21:57

A bolero jacket is like what we had to wear over choir dresses. Well, you probably didn't.

Cerberus

I don't recall doing so, no.

We wore choir skirts instead, it was all the rage.

Or quilts, as we preferred to call them.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@aediaλ shrugs are strange.

Cerberus

Two 19-y-old friends of the Boston bombers have been arrested for hiding evidence.

They could face 20+ years in prison. A bit long?

You could say hiding evidence increases their chances of getting away and doing it again...but that applies to any way in which you would help them, like feeding them. So I think they should be punished, certainly, but not 25 years in prison.

How about 6 months in prison and community service helping people who were wounded by the bombs, or something?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Cerberus Thank you!!

MετάEd

Attention. 15 gallons of isopropyl alcohol blended with 15 gallons of water yields 29 gallons of mixture. That is all.

Cerberus

22:06

Yay! With that clown, it's really your birthday.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

^_^

Cerberus

@MετάEd How?

A chemical reaction?

MετάEd

@Cerberus How what?

Cerberus

How does the volume decrease?

MετάEd

It's how the molecules nest together. There's room between the water molecules for the alcohol molecules.

Cerberus

22:08

More room that for other water molecules?

aedia λ

thinks about snuggling with some alcohol

Cerberus

So are you telling me there really is more wine in my bottle? Yay!

Matt Эллен

@DavidWallace dang, yes. thanks!

MετάEd

@Cerberus I think the effect will be similar with ethanol, but I don't know the exact yield.

Cerberus

@MετάEd I prefer alcohol, thank you.

But it is quite remarkable.

MετάEd

22:18

@Cerberus Alcohol isn't very specific.

Ethanol is the active ingredient of wine, beer, and spirits.

It's the alcohol.

But isopropyl alcohol is an alcohol too, as is methyl alcohol, as is benzyl alcohol ... and I don't advise drinking those.

aedia λ

Yeah. Probably want to be sure you're not drinking @MετάEd's bathtub full of diluted disinfectant.

MετάEd

@aediaλ Have you ever tried to drink a bathtub?

aedia λ

Not that I can remember.

Matt Эллен

I think the rule is: if you can blend it, you can drink it

aedia λ

That'd be a safer rule if blenders came with breathalyzers.

Cerberus

22:27

@MετάEd Oh, really?

Hmm.

MετάEd

Yes. Ethyl alcohol, a.k.a. ethanol.

Cerberus

Ethyl means with an extra branch of two C atoms, right?

MετάEd

Ethanol

| Section2 = | Section3 = | Section4 = | LD50 = 5628 mg kg−1 (oral, rat) }} }} Ethanol , also called ethyl alcohol , pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with the structural formula CH3CH2OH, often abbreviated as C2H6O. A psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs known, ethanol produces a state known as alcohol intoxication when consumed as a beverage. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a solvent, and as a fuel. In common usage, it is often ref...

aedia λ

All this talk of different alcohols reminds me of a little site I made back in Geocities days, for organic chem naming practice in high school (because I was bored and was such a teacher's pet). I discovered the other day that I still had a local copy of it on a backup I was flipping through. It was horrifically purple and full of animated gifs, but still worked. Such a weird pride/embarrassment/nostalgia feeling.

Cerberus

I see the ethyl branch, CH3CH2.

Two large black carbon atoms, with 4 slots each, mostly filled in by white hydrogen.

Phew, I remember something from the single year of chemistry I took.

I liked polymers. But our teacher was a bit of a jerk, and I had to drop some subjects.

Matt Эллен

22:35

you know what gives a good spectrum? ethylchrotonate

very distinctive

good night

tchrist

Don’t let the piggies bite.

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Noight!

tchrist

The sackers will be sacked, and free bangers for all.

aedia λ

22:54

Food calls! Bai!

Cerberus

Wow, I have accidentally watched a video of Bill O'Reilly.

Even his cronies quote statistics that contradict what he's saying.

Then he says, "well they probably do stats differently there", and eventually, "well, I don't care about that place", after having used it as an example of what threatens his own area.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…