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04:00
Who knows!
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
       The night above the dingle starry,
               Time let me hail and climb
       Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
               Trail with daisies and barley
       Down the rivers of the windfall light.
Start of "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas.
@DavidM Me, I love it. Good poetry anyway.
@Cerberus She was American!
@Robusto I don't look down on others for it. I'm not one of those.
But was she fluent according to David's criterion?
It just doesn't speak to me.
04:01
(LOL a few times, silently)
@Cerberus Yeah, but not according to yours. I had to tone down my vocabulary to communicate with her. Which kinda made me less eager to do so of course.
Too bad. I feel sorry for people who don't get music or poetry.
But the thing is, you don't even have to speak a language super well in order to enjoy some poetry.
@Robusto As long as they don't try to play it, I don't mind.
@Robusto I get music. And, even lyrical poetry. There's something about it not being set to music that makes me lose interest.
04:02
@terdon Ugh, that is such a turn-off!
Yup.
@Robusto Actually, song lyrics I'm quite up on.
I'm used to it of course, since I tend to speak with non-natives, but I like to let my hair down with natives and it bugs me there.
Song lyrics are something else. They borrow their significance from the music. Poetry has to do the whole thing by itself.
@DavidM That is poetry. Well, some songs anyway.
@Robusto One word: Dylan.
04:03
At least the non-natives can get back at you in their own language.
@terdon I was just about to say that.
@Robusto Song is poetry.
Jinx.
I'm the slowest of us all.
@Cerberus True, and anyway, fair enough, it's not their language.
Yeah.
@Robusto It's not a matter that I don't understand/feel it's art. I merely cannot bring myself to enjoy it.
04:04
But perhaps this girl knew a lot of slang words that you didn't?
Dec 23 '11 at 3:37, by Robusto
-----------
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
@DamkerngT. Shh just pretend you weren't going to say that.
Gah, you have to click the link to see the full text.
@DavidM Sometimes, a special trigger is needed.
An emotion.
@Cerberus Yes. That I can understand.
04:05
Such as a poem your beloved likes a lot.
Well . . . I can say I did enjoy certain epic poems.
@Robusto What was that? It's excellent.
Or when you happen to be moved by a scene in a film where the poem is mentioned or cited.
@Cerberus Quick and fast are two different things, yes? :-) I'm not a fast typist.
@terdon Wallace Stevens: "The Snow Man"
04:05
@DavidM Ah, good. Which ones?
Dante's Inferno
@DamkerngT. It depends!
@Cerberus I'm sure she did. What really put me off was the fact that she was impressed more than anything else. Had she simply asked what it meant we'd be fine.
@DavidM See, there you go!
@terdon Yes, yes, exactly.
Stevens is my favorite American poet.
04:06
Being impressed by common things is horrible.
Never even heard of him, I think I will rectify that.
Almost as bad as being impressed by bad things.
Like...murder.
I'm not one to condemn an entire art. I just have a much higher threshold for enjoyment (if that makes sense?)
Many kinds of poetry also do not come easily for me, especially in languages that I know well, oddly.
@Cerberus I would say it depends . . . being in awe of common things is some people's definition of enlightenment.
04:07
Dammit, I can't find my favorite Tennessee Williams quote
How do you mean?
@terdon I would recommend him highly. You have to let the language flow over you at first, don't force it to mean something right away; when you're ready, the poems will reveal themselves.
As in, philosophical curiosity?
@Cerberus The ability to recognize that all things simple are a wonder merely for their simplicity.
Oh, sure.
04:08
@Robusto Thanks, I'll try. I blush to admit that I haven't read poetry in years.
@DavidM But that is different from being impressed.
@Cerberus Perhaps.
As in, impressed by an effort or by someone's status.
Well, it's never too late. It and music are sometimes the only things I can go to for solace.
@Cerberus Think of it as being impressed by the work of the universe.
04:09
Sure, in such an abstract sense...
I'm not going to suggest that I'm capable of this.
Heh.
But it is past 5 already.
I'm nowhere near Nirvana (unless you count owning all of their albums).
Bed time for me!
I am actually in part. Not in the sense of enlightenment obviously, and not in all aspects of my life, but a constant ability to be amazed by everyday beauty is the main reason I do science.
04:10
I remember Nirvana, good times.
OF MERE BEING

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.


~Wallace Stevens, 1954
Good night, gents.
Sleep well!
This is all about recognizing simplicity, and the power of it.
@Cerberus Night Cerb
04:10
CU @Cerb.
Thanks!!
@Robusto I like that.
poof
It speaks to me.
Good night
That's what Stevens wanted.
04:11
@Robusto I should think so.
Yes, that is beautiful. 50's? I would have guessed well before that.
It takes my breath away. In simple words, he describes the thing that cannot be described, and puts one in awe of it.
@terdon My favorite piece of poetry: "It's alright Ma, I'm only bleeding"
Dylan.
@Robusto Yes.
04:13
Can anyone help me remember a Tennessee Williams quote? Went something like "A vicious flower bloomed in his mind and put the stop under the question mark that was his life". One of the most beautiful turns of phrase I've ever read, it describes a brain tumor.
There was a time when I could write it out verbatim
Those days are gone.
@DavidM Yes, Dylan is wonderful. If only he didn't try to play.
@terdon IDK, I think he's more of a musician than people give him credit for,
@terdon He's fluent in several different musical styles.
@terdon "The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks."
@DavidM Not really. He plays badly, and in his later years, extremely off key and off beat. He is a great songwriter and a great interpreter but not a great musician IMO. Pretty bad one really.
04:15
@DavidM Every album of his is a different style, after perhaps The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
@Robusto Is that the source? It was a short story I read many years ago. I still remember, I was on a ship and I had to put the book down and just stare into the distance for a while.
@terdon I've seen him a few times. In the last few years he got a lot better. He had a interesting awakening.
@DavidM Saw him last year, it was the worst concert I've ever seen.
He said he was sitting there on stage with a bunch of backup singers realizing that he had moved way past his roots.
@terdon Perhaps not. I'd like to hear of it if you figure it out, though. All I've read are his plays, which can be exquisite. A Streetcar Named Desire has some of the best dialogue ever written by an American.
04:16
@terdon I haven't seen him in about 10 years.
> “Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.”
@DavidM Don't. Keep your memories.
That was from Streetcar.
@terdon Ha! He is over 70
@Robusto I had a great collection of hist short stories. Apparently he would write the short and then develop the play from it.
04:17
I saw Chuck Berry and Bo Diddly once. Speaking of getting on stage one time too many.
@DavidM Seriously, I've never been so disappointed. His band were great but he was just awful. He tried (and failed) to play an (out of tune) piano for fuck's sake!
@terdon That's too bad.
@DavidM Woah! Well, depends, when was that?
@terdon Nearly 20 year ago.
I was in college.
@DavidM OK, not 40 then, how were they?
04:18
@terdon Bo Diddly was awesome. Chuck, not so much.
@terdon 38
@DavidM I meant not 40 years ago.
@terdon Ah
I read a great little sentence on Dylan a couple of years ago: "He's been collaborating with an artist young enough to be his girlfriend!"
@terdon Ha!
It reminds me of the great Groucho Marx quote: You're only as young as the woman you feel.
In the Economist of all places, cynical bastards.
@DavidM Ha indeed :)
04:21
What do you do for a living? You mentioned science.
Biology, computational biology to be precise.
> “I’m a poet. And then I put the poetry in the drama. I put it in short stories, and I put it in the plays. Poetry’s poetry. It doesn’t have to be called a poem, you know.” — Tennessee Williams
You're an anesthesiologist right?
@terdon Ah! Using DNA to create analytical computing or something?
@terdon Yes.
@Robusto Ooh, well said! That's how I think of John Fowles, he writes poetry in prose.
@DavidM Nah, mostly evolution and genome annotation/gene prediction and protein networks the past few years.
@DavidM Your comments are read :P.
04:23
@terdon I see.
@terdon I usually only trot it out when it's relevant.
At least I try.
@terdon Yes! I still remember the first time I read The Magus!
And then the second time too.
Apr 17 '11 at 0:50, by Robusto
When I first read it I was 17 and I stayed up all night reading it. On a school night. Then Fowles brought out a revised edition later on, because the first one had been edited too much (and he didn't have enough clout to prevent it), so when he was famous he released the "Author's Cut" and I thought I would look at it, and wound up staying up all night again reading the damn thing.
@Robusto Yeah, the first blew my mind, the second was slightly disappointing, I was older.
The French lieutenant's woman's last page is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.
@Robusto Heh, almost the same experience, though I was 18-19 :)
@DavidM Oh, I only read one when you made a pretty good joke with it, that's why I remember, I was not implying you trot it out all the time or anything.
@terdon That's not how I took it. ;-)
Actually the funniest joke of all about anesthesiology is our pick up line: Sleep with me and you won't feel a thing!
Real lol :) Does that ever work?
@terdon IDK, I've been married since it would matter.
I take that back, I was in serious relationships, and then married since I became one.
04:28
Here's a virologist's joke: "There are two things a man can give a woman: diamonds and Herpes and of the two, only Herpes is for ever."
@terdon Ha!
We're kind of the voodoo priests of the medical world. No one really understands what we do, but they all think it's necessary, yet scary.
And, if anything goes wrong, they blame us first!
And for epic poems:
Mar 28 '12 at 15:02, by Robusto
@JSBᾶngs Yeah. The Odyssey teaches children how a clever man can stay away from home for an extended period of time, then mollify his wife with a bunch of fantastic stories. "No, really, honey. Then we were blown off course again and landed on a magical isle full of beautiful women who forced us to have sex with them. It was horrible. I'm so glad I'm home."
@Robusto Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Nobody is attacking me!
Nemo!
I must admit, that I'm a huge Jules Verne fan!
I paid a fortune to eat in the restaurant in the Eiffel tower just because it was called the Jules Verne!
04:34
He took that name from the Odyssey. Which seems fitting and just, somehow.
@Robusto Right! I always forget that!
I remember absolutely loving The Mysterious Island, in which Nemo makes his second appearance.
@Robusto Hah, that's nothing compared to the Bible. I'd elaborate but don't want to offend anyone's belief system.
Nemo is Latin for "no one", and also (as νέμω) Greek for "I give what is due" (see Nemesis).
From Wikipedia
Ah! OK, the cyclops story!
04:36
@Robusto Yes! I loved that one!
Someone made a pair of video games called the Return to the Mysterious Island. Worth playing if you liked the book.
Nemo is, moreover, the Latin rendering of Ancient Greek Outis ("Nobody"), the pseudonym that Odysseus, in Greek mythology, employed to outwit the cyclops Polyphemus.
More from Uncle Wiki
But let the poet on his balcony speak
And the sleepers in their sleep shall move,
Waken, and watch the moonlight on their floors.
@Robusto How'd you format that?
More Stevens.
Multiple lines brings up the "fixed font" button.
> A long moment. The pressure of lips upon auburn hair. In the distant house the untalented lady, no doubt seized by remorse (or perhaps by poor Chopin's tortured ghost), stops playing. And Lalage, as if brought by the merciful silence to reflect on the aesthetics of music and having reflected, to bang her rag doll against his bent cheek, reminds her father --high time indeed-- that a thousand violins cloy very rapidly without percussion.
Fowles. Tell me that's not poetry.
No. He has a very capable style. He involves you in his words the way a poet does.
04:39
The paragraph just above is the best description of love I have ever read but unfortunately it's not in google books and I don't have my copy here.
@Robusto Yes, the book's there, that's where I got the above from. It is the paragraph before it that is missing, you don't get the entire book in google books.
You can't scroll up?
GBooks only posts most of the book. With no permission from the publisher I might add.
At least in some cases.
@Robusto how come you speak Japanese? Did you ever live there or was it just for fun?
Jul 4 '12 at 13:21, by Robusto
"Circe's Aisle" by me

It's hard to tell why feminine hygiene
hides on the other side of a pegged divide,
turned away from all the mouthwash, floss,
balms and oil of clove; or why so many
faces on so many boxes and cans so full
of so much promise of beauty and sex so much
avoid your eye as if they understand one day
you'll walk in here and buy a tube of toothpaste
that will last you the rest of your life.
@terdon My wife is Japanese-American. I got interested, since her family speaks Japanese at home.
04:49
@Robusto Ah, makes sense. And is that yours above?
Yep.
Is there more? I like that!
Thank you.
It is also very true.
@Robusto Applause
I especially like the ending.
04:50
Yep, that's the true bit.
"A Woman Combing" by me

You see her in tangerine light
making shadows on the stone,
facing away from the fire,
head down as if in thought.
The unsupported strap of her bown
genuflects across one clavicle
while the tortoise-shell comb moves
like a loom, pulling jacquard
weavings back and forth through
stories or fables that form
beneath her moving touch.

There are men in the distance
hunting boar in sparse woods
but here is a scene of women.
They have greeted each other
with a kiss, and now a swallow
Since you asked.
________________________

Sumiiro-na Kami-no-Ke

Your ink-hued hair and wheaten skin, in shade
your eye, like darkest life, obsidian—
in light reflecting glints of sakura,

a perilous vitality, which seems
most precious when it quivers on the twig
in paper white, when just about to drift,

when just about to fall, josei, so light,
the bright of death floats all around—but still
your charcoal hair, your iris flashing jet.
...
Well, I guess it's time for me to hit it. Them dreams ain't gonna dream themselves.
Lators.
05:07
@Robusto Thanks for those! I see you move between styles too. I particularly liked "as the story unfolded from her hair". Good night, and I hope to read more.
 
5 hours later…
10:08
"As requested by @libbymiller, here is my Python script that plays the best radio station in the world: Radio 4 without the Archers.

"It works out the time until the next Archers episode, then plays the Radio 4 stream, slowed down just enough to allow you to skip the next episode."
10:41
@Hugo Ha! I like the joke about "just two minutes" in the comments.
11:34
I am so tired of .
but I neeeeed a word.
I need a word that is 5 letters long and contains only one vowel and is the appropriate AmE correlate of brocade.
we could start saying "the first one is free". we'd be like word barons. This adjective is 90% pure!
Which then will spark an entire civil war about brocade versus jacquard.
Which has absolutely no relevance to anything.
"I'm sure I read it somewhere a few years ago. please help me to remember"
11:38
And after I delete it all, I will be accused of betraying my gender (for some reason).
Hello @matt @kit!
Hi @Jasper
Hello, @Jasper. How are you this day?
I am feeling better recently, thank you.
11:41
Glad to hear it.
Oh, I wanted to share with you that the guy who was making my life difficult yesterday also requested a 1-on-1 meeting with me at 4pm today.
I declined it and suggested Friday at 9 instead.
Aha! Are you afraid to meet him?
has he acquiesced?
No, it was just yet another dick move.
@MattЭллен He didn't accept it, if that's what you mean.
@KitFox that's what I mean
Well, the earlier you meet him, the faster you can resolve your issues, no?
11:43
Half the state is under a winter storm warning. I am not going to work today.
And I am certainly not going to stay an hour and a half past my usual leaving time just so he can get his rocks off by condescending to me.
He was in rare form yesterday.
I got one downvote on an old answer on each of the last three days on math, I am getting a mod to look into it.
Maybe a good nap helped him out.
Is this Jay's boss, or the other, slightly unsettling guy?
Jay's boss, Jack. Yes. They all have J names. It's a requirement at this place of work.
Just to make it extra confusing.
11:49
So I crawled all the linked pages last night and got a lot of information, and the first thing I noticed in the meta data is that there are "description", "Description", and "DESCRIPTION" meta tags.
So these should all be one tag only.
These should be consistently named, yes.
I recommend that you prevent standardisation by proposing that description be spelled using randomised casing for each letter.
That might actually work to standardize it.
Oh. Nice. There's also "generator", "Generator" and "GENERATOR". I don't know what those are.
Same for keywords.
Could be three different people doing the job, so there are three formats, lol.
11:52
those are things that generated the page, I think (like Word, or Dreamweaver)
Yes, I'm thinking so.
Do you think a downvote on three consecutive days is fishy? I think so.
Seems it.
Hard to say though.
what makes you think there's more to it than coincidence?
I also just noticed that we don't have spaces around the dash in the front page title.
11:56
@MattЭллен I have not offended anyone since I started my new account, lol. And three is a little too much of a coincidence.
three downvotes? sounds like a coincidence to me.
especially if you think noöne is upset with you
:
Do you usually offend someone?
@MattЭллен Anyway, it doesn't really matter, I am just curious, lol.
@Mitch Not really...
hmm, that didn't produce the weird character
Make metadata labels case insensitive. Done.
11:58
@MattЭллен Which?
Oh, the o.
@KitFox ☻
Oh, the enderman.
I typed noöne and it just appeared in the middle
There is someone in this building who smells like a used nail file
There's a smell like that?
The emery board type
@Mitch yeah, if you take a breath in just after filing your nails with an emery board, it's quite a distinct smell
12:05
What's a "noydir" directive?
Oh. I was thinking of the metal kind which smell well like metal.
@KitFox something to do with Yahoo!
Oh.
I see. Thanks.
And I know what you mean about the emery board thing. That's a weird thing to smell like.
If I use Yahoo or Bing image search here, there is censoring. I can only use Google image search now. Another reason for me to leave this country.
Remind me later not to do that.
12:07
@KitFox yeah. he came in this office just now and I could smell him before I could see him. it's weird.
So what's this "alternative description" that is suppressed?
I don't know
I thought I was going to have fun today.
Playing with data.
there's no fun at SE!
oh
There is plenty of fun in Rebecca Black's Friday, lol.
12:13
people make fun of Rebecca Black's "Friday"
We've got page titles that are over 255 characters long.
Why do people do stuff like this?
Hmm, try to trim it then, if necessary.
@KitFox they were raised in Geocities
went to school at MySpace
It's pie day, pie day / gotta eat lots on pie day / Everyone's looking forward to the dessert
@JasperLoy I can't do anything to it. This is an observational probe.
@MattЭллен Mmmm, pie day.
This particular one I'm looking at didn't import correctly and now I'm trying to decide what to do about it.
12:24
... why do we have a link for 2013 calendars?
retro b4 it's retro
Desktop wallpaper calendars no less.
"Oh man, do you remember 2013?"
"Yeah. Good times."
Aww, and no one had liked or tweeted the page since it was put up.
How sad. Of course, probably no one except for the person who posted it knew of its existence.
UNTIL NOW!
no wonder you've got so many calendars left
12:28
So I was looking at this because I've got an unidentified column here.
Apparently they used "Property" instead of "name" and that property was og:image.
in a meta tag?
Yes.
> This month we feature A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens."
Aww. I feel so bad for this page. I think I am the only one to see it.
And it is trying so hard to be liked.
laughs so hard she is not sure if she can type
OK, OK, wait. I might just not understand how this works.
@JasperLoy Are you using Tunnelbear? It's free, and you can surf from several different countries.
A VPN.
12:39
Seriously, it's like people who publish content here are on crack. "Download a PDF of this issue" as a link to the pdf version. I think they must hate icons and people.
> This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.
...is the meta description of our main blog page.
noooooooooooooooooooooo
that makes me sad
12:56
Aww, come work here. You could make it all better.
And then we could be real friends instead of imaginary ones.
but... you're expecting more winter
come and work here! we're not getting flooded again for... I'm guessing at least a month
Just today, and mostly downeast. And we get to work from home on those days. And on other days too.
Did you read the question, or did you just decide you would write out the only things you know about the words? — Matt Эллен 11 mins ago
too harsh?
too passive agressive?
too late
@MattЭллен lol
13:13
in English Language Learners, 20 mins ago, by Jolenealaska
What's a commonly known strongly flavored dark rum? I need to call around to get an airline sized bottle for a recipe. All my grocery store had was Bacardi Gold, and that's not quite cutting it.
@skullpatrol too localized.
"the darker the better"
Also, airline-sized bottle? That's either awesome or really disappointing, depending on how you interpret that.
rofl
13:29
it's fine here, thanks
Hi.
Do you want to talk privately, or is here OK?
um, I'm deleting answers that have no value in my opinion
mostly early answers, where there are better answers than mine
@medica I like to delete my answers at 0 votes, lol.
@medica I know, I think I said so in the message.
and I'm keeping (Hi, Jasper)... right
I'm keeping the ones, even the 0 voted ones, that do have value.
the ones with no value, I'd like to be free to delete
13:33
You aren't blocked from deleting, are you?
@medica We can delete at most 5 old answers a day.
@JasperLoy right.
Jasper is our deletion expert.
@medica If you want to delete more than 5, just spread it out over a few days, that is what I did.
@KitFox - no, I wasn't blocked, but I received (as you know) a letter discouraging me from doing so.
13:35
It is better to make your answer better than it is to delete it.
Jasper delete Loy :-)
So if it has no value, it is better to give it some.
And if you delete more than a certain percentage of your content, it is possible to trigger an autoban.
@KitFox - if there is an answer with value, why change mine?
(Or it might not be auto, it might be that the CMs take notice.)
@medica Why not just keep it? Unless it's related to OCD.
13:37
@medica Because we encourage people to make their answers better rather than delete their content.
@KitFox 10k users can see the list of recent deletions too.
@KitFox - making the answer better is a lot of work; when there is an answer that is better than mine, I feel I'm not robbing anyone of anything.
And that is precisely it.
Don't answer unless you are willing to put the effort in.
I'm not saying you do it, but that is why the trigger is there.
As well as for other reasons that I won't enumerate.
It was a courtesy notice because you had tripped some early warning alarms.
@KitFox - my recent answers are more informed; I have learned to leave better (or no) answers. So I was cleaning up worthless ones only.
It's still within my domain, so as long as you take heed, I wouldn't worry too much.
13:41
OK. thanks. I do have another matter, might we meet for a moment in another room?
Privately?
@medica There was once I went through all of my answers and reformatted them. Again you can edit at most 5 old answers a day, lol.
yes, please
@KitFox ♫ Fun fun fun on the autoban
13:57
Wow, there is a matheducators.stackexchange.com now, lol.

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