English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

15:00

> Water Hemlock, found in swamps and roadside ditches, is highly poisonous, as is its very close, difficult to distinguish relative, Conium maculatum, the non-native species, "Poison Hemlock" of Socrates infamy. The danger in both is that they look superficially similar to other members of the Parsley Family that one might nibble for a bit of Parsley flavoring. Avoid all unless you are an expert in distinguishing the various species.

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Right, right, I forgot. I suck at plant and bird names in any language!

tchrist

Reference.

Cerberus

At Tchrist's misspelling is some consolation.

Matt Эллен

:D

tchrist

Hemlock humbles.

And stultifies.

It benumbs the mind.

But it is incredibly lovely.

Cerberus

15:01

@tchrist Ah, I know that plant, it is extremely common here.

Doesn't look like parsley at all.

tchrist

 The leaves were long, the grass was green,
 The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
 And in the glade a light was seen
 Of stars in shadow shimmering.
 Tinúviel was dancing there
 To music of a pipe unseen,
 And light of stars was in her hair,
 And in her raiment glimmering.

 There Beren came from mountains cold,
 And lost he wandered under leaves,
 And where the Elven-river rolled
 He walked alone and sorrowing.
 He peered between the hemlock-leaves
 And saw in wonder flowers of gold
 Upon her mantle and her sleeves,

Cerberus

I didn't know it was so poisonous, though.

tchrist

Larkspur kills cows.

Cerberus

Many things kills cows.

Like...ivy.

tchrist

Man.

Cerberus

15:02

Or man.

Matt Эллен

TB

Cerberus

Tuberculosis?

Matt Эллен

yes

Cerberus

Oh...

That's TBC in Dutch.

Matt Эллен

it's why there's a usless badger cull in parts of the UK

@Cerberus well, when it's confirmed let me know ;)

Cerberus

15:03

Poor badgers...why is it useless?

@MattЭллен Hmm what?

tchrist

We normally call larkspur the short annual species of the dry foothills, and delphinium the great towering perennials of the lush montane zone.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus because they probably don't spread it and even if they spread it a bit, that's nothing compared to how much cows spread it between each other.

Cerberus

Oh, I see.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus To Be Confirmed

Cerberus

Then why are they doing it?

Matt Эллен

15:05

@Cerberus farmers like killing badgers

Cerberus

Yeah?

Matt Эллен

The government like to look like it's doing something

Cerberus

I think they are rare and protected here.

How about England?

terdon

@MattЭллен Hang on, are the culls for TB? I always thought they were simply to keep the population down.

Ah scratch that, looked it up.

Idiots.

Matt Эллен

@terdon from what I understood it was to stop cattle from getting ill. The badger population isn't very high

@Cerberus I'm not sure

tchrist

15:06

All dolphins great and small and arid.

They have not wholly uncommon sports wherein they appear magenta or ivory instead of cobalt.

terdon

@Cerberus apparently not

tchrist

Any of the deep blue flowers this can happen to. You see it from time to time in lupines and columbine as well.

Matt Эллен

> around 220,000 badgers in England based on a 2005 assessment of available data by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC)

tchrist

Indeed, in any field of lupines, you can find some fine sports.

They stand out.

nominates @Cerberus for a summertime botanical fellowship at RMBL

Matt Эллен

Badgers are protected in Britain

tchrist

15:11

I don’t think we know how many badgers remain.

►

“When Badgers Attack!”

Cerberus

> De das staat niet meer op de Nederlandse Rode Lijst voor zoogdieren. De soort is dus niet meer bedreigd. In het verleden was dat wel het geval, maar de situatie is verbeterd. Wel geniet het dier in Nederland nog de grootst mogelijke bescherming in de Flora- en faunawet.
Das & Boom

De vereniging Das & Boom werd in 1981 opgericht. Op haar initiatief heeft de rijksoverheid een beschermingsplan opgesteld om de das voor uitsterven te behoeden. De werkzaamheden van de vereniging hebben er mede toe geleid, dat de dassenstand van 1200 dieren in 1980 is gegroeid tot zo’n 4500 in 2006.

tchrist

Just be happy they aren’t gulos.

Or whatever you call them in English.

> The wolverine /ˈwʊlvəriːn/, Gulo gulo (Gulo is Latin for "glutton"), also referred to as glutton, carcajou, skunk bear, or quickhatch, is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae (weasels).

Cerberus

@terdon Badgers were threatened with extinction here, apparenly, but the population grew from 1200 in 1980 to 4500 in 2006. They have been taken off the "red list", but they still enjoy "the greatest protection possible" from the Law on Flora and Fauna.

tchrist

Skunk bear. I like that.

terdon

@Cerberus Ah, I see. Are you saying that wikipedia is wrong? Oh the horror!

Cerberus

15:17

Never would I suggest such a thing!

It is the collective knowledge of the noble masses!

It can merely be...misinterpreted.

tchrist

Do we today have the honor of the company of any ladies amongst us?

For I would a question ask them.

waits

Cerberus

What wouldst thou request unto them?

tchrist

I should ask them to tell me what colors they see.

Matt Эллен

@meer2kat are you a lady?

maybe that was offensive... I only meant to draw her attention

tchrist

They should easily be able to name at least eight.

Whereas I bet our menfolk would be hard put to account half that sum.

Matt Эллен

15:20

um

Cerberus

@MattЭллен How could that be an offence?

@tchrist Indigo? Magenta?

Matt Эллен

yellow, blue, green, grey, white, purple

Cerberus

No, not magenta. That's more like red.

Matt Эллен

unless you discount white

tchrist

@Cerberus Magenta = no green.

Cerberus

15:21

@MattЭллен Those are colours I know.

@tchrist What?

Please speak in full sentences.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus He's saying magenta = (white - green)

tchrist

@MattЭллен Well yes, although surely you realize there is more than one variety of several of those you have so graciously done us the honor of enumerating.

Alraxite

It's dark blue!

Matt Эллен

@tchrist heh, yes.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh. And as usually he refuses to explain himself...

@Alraxite Yes! But it's also a bit purplish.

tchrist

15:23

yesterday, by tchrist

I always say exactly what I mean.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus asking if some is female/male could be seen as casting doubt upon it.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Yeah but sometimes it isn't clear to others what what you mean is.

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Oh haha. Well, this is the Internet. Despite pictures, one can never be sure.

tchrist

@Alraxite Aye, ’tis that, but have we no more refined name for such a hue?

macbook# colorgrep '(?:dark|deep)' '\bblu'

azure: A bright blue pigment or dye; The clear blue color of the
unclouded sky, or of the sea reflecting it. (Originally, the deep
intense blue of more southern latitudes.)

bice: Brownish grey, dark grey. dark or dull blue.

blae: Of a dark color between black and blue; blackish blue; of the
color of the blae-berry; livid; also, of a lighter shade, bluish grey,
lead-colored.

blue: The name of one of the colors of the spectrum; of the color of
the sky and the deep sea; cerulean.

It seems we do.

KitFox

Do I count as a lady?

Alraxite

15:29

@Cerberus It's purplish near the stamens.

Cerberus

@Alraxite Even the rest of the petal is more than just blue, I'd say. I see a hint of purple.

Matt Эллен

@KitFox Yes! if you want to

KitFox

22 mins ago, by tchrist

What is that, delphinium?

Cerberus

15:45

> Political correctness isn’t confined to China, though. “Making jokes about women being bad drivers is a no-no,” Wong says of America. “In China,” he shrugs—“It’s fine!”

I doubt whether this is true...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The irony about jokes claiming women drive worse than men is that insurance companies charge men higher rates because they get into more accidents.

KitFox

Flax, maybe? Or some kind of violet?

Whoa, weird internet glitch.

Matt Эллен

@KitFox flax

KitFox

Thanks,

meer2kat

@matt yeah i am lol

sorry was afk

that pic to the left is me

@tchrist blue. lol or from a typical lady perspective: the inner ring is a magenta and the outer is periwinkle blue

another example of periwinkle color:
http://ih0.redbubble.net/image.8706218.2578/flat,550x550,075,f.jpg

Alraxite

16:02

The inner ring doesn't look magenta...

!!magenta

KitSox

@Alraxite That didn't make much sense. Use the !!/help command to learn more.

Alraxite

!!wiki magenta

KitSox

Magenta

Magenta () is a purplish red color and one of the three primary colors of the subtractive CMYK color model. On color wheels of the RGB (additive) and CMYK (subtractive) color models, it is located midway between red and purple. It is the complementary color of green. Magenta was first introduced as the color of a new aniline dye called fuchsine, patented in 1859 by the French chemist Francois-Emmanuel Verguin. Its name was changed the same year to magenta, to celebrate a victory of the French and Sardinian army at the Battle of Magenta on June 4, 1859, near the Italian city of that nam...

KitFox

It doesn't look magenta to me, but I don't do color subtraction well.

It looks like dark purple.

There are greens and browns and yellows as well.

MickLH

16:17

You can't trust that two people see the same colors even on the same computer screen

Additive and Subtractive color are biological hacks, exploiting the fact that we only see a small range of color, a minor variation in your cone cells will cause our Red + Blue = Purple hack to shift

Alraxite

But they would certainly still call them the same colour.

MickLH

Not necessarily, if you were to print the "same color" on paper and show someone with these cones not perfectly lined up with "average", they would see different colors on the paper and the screen

lol sorry for rambling, it was quiet and I'm kindof a lighting nut

Alraxite

Well, what I meant was that a person who sees red instead of purple would still call it purple.

MickLH

I understand your point: that if someone is trained to call red "purple", then purple is just their name for red

Alraxite

Yeh.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

16:32

@Alraxite What does it mean to see red instead of purple and call it purple?

Alraxite

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It means when I see purple they see what I see when I see red. But they will call it purple because that's what the people around him call it.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Alraxite What will they see when they see red?

Alraxite

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Could be anything.

Certainly not the red that I see.

Because then they would call purple and red the same colour.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Alraxite Either they'll see red, in which case to that person, "red" is red + purple, in which case they'd answer "red" to your original question.

If they don't see "red", then it's just a bunch of labels

They see a wavelength of light, (or in the case of purple, overlapping wavelengths) and process it as a colour and assign a label: "purple".

or "mauve" or "magenta"

whatever.

Does it make sense to discuss a person who theoretically sees "green" when you see "red" and "red" when you see "green"?

MickLH

I kept quiet about it for peace but it's bugging me

I understood the point before I made my final point

It was actually a rebuttal to it

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 This gives a hint to the idea behind that argument

Real colors are wavelengths, single frequencies

Alraxite

16:40

If they see my red when I see my red, then they would think purple is synonymous to red, given that we're talking about the same person who sees my red when I see purple.

KitFox

I think the philosophical argument is silly. It's a chemical sense that reacts to a specific wavelength. There is no way that your labels are significantly different than mine.

Alraxite

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It certainly makes sense. But whether it's actually possible within humans is another thing.

MickLH

We trick our eyes into seeing a color by overlapping frequencies, not by synthesizing the exact wavelength we want

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Alraxite I don't think it makes sense.

MickLH

It's sortof like music, the difference between a note and a chord

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

16:41

Unless, perhaps, in cases of mental illness that occurs after the learning of colour.

Alraxite

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Maybe it contradicts some biological fact about how the human eye works which I wouldn't know. Other than that, what doesn't make senese?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Maybe one day you see colours like everyone else, then you're hit by a car, and from then on your reds and greens are swapped.

MickLH

God damnit, why did I try to say something logical from science on the internet lol

I always forget stack exchange is the internet too

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Alraxite The light is a stimulus to the brain. It elicits a response. You call that "blah" or "wibble" or "purple".

What matters is if you can distinguish between various stimuli, or wavelengths, or overlapping wavelengths.

meer2kat

I also have an over sensitivity to light and colors so I very much see magenta

MickLH

16:43

You don't see purple! Ever! Instead your red detector says "kinda" and your blue detector says "kinda" and your brain puts 2 and 2 together to say "purple!"

meer2kat

Side note, did you know that guys really don't see different shades of red the same way we do?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MickLH I think most of us are agreeing with you.

@meer2kat some guys.

KitFox

Yes but red and blue don't ever make green.

meer2kat

@KitFox actuallllllyyyyy

Alraxite

I'm not sure what the other side of the disagreement is.

meer2kat

16:45

Impossible colors

Impossible colors or forbidden colors are hues that cannot be perceived by ordinary viewing conditions from light that is a combination of various intensities of the various frequencies of visible light. Examples of impossible colors are bluish-yellow and reddish-green. These colors include "Stygian blue" (an impossible deeply saturated blue-black) and "hyperbolic orange" (an orange color that is oversaturated compared to a pure spectral orange). Opponent process The color opponent process is a color theory that states that the human visual system interprets information about color by pr...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Alraxite Well, you seem to be proposing a theoretical person whose brain gives the "red" response when they see "purple", but whose brain doesn't give the "red" response when they see "red". I'm not even sure what that means.

meer2kat

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Selective color-seeing?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@meer2kat I dunno. The only scenario that makes sense to me is some kind of brain damage where they see things in colours they know (from past experience) are wrong.

KitFox

@meer2kat That's about perception though, and not actual photosensation.

meer2kat

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Sounds a little like that age old point. That if someone grows up calling what we call "green", "orange", it will be "orange" to them even though we say it is "green".

Alraxite

16:49

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, if there were a theoretical person who sees red when others see purple and again sees red when others see red, then certainly other people would come to know of his variance. This I believe hasn't happened in reality, so if there truly is a person who sees another colour when we see purple, say colour A, then when we see A, he should see some other colour, perhaps purple.

meer2kat

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Used to be a common point of weird philosophy talks when I was young(er)

@KitFox that's true

What are we even arguing about? This is fun

KitFox

@meer2kat But see, they won't. They are not sensing different wavelengths.

meer2kat

Hey @Kitfox what was the writing topic yesterday?

KitFox

There wasn't one.

meer2kat

Aw :(

KitFox

16:51

Well, we could have one today instead.

meer2kat

that sounds fun :D

KitFox

Writer's chat.

The Overlook Hotel

General discussion for writing.stackexchange.com. Writing exer...

@Mr.Shiny

And whoever else usually joins.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah in my experience women seem to be slightly better drivers.

Some men get too excited behind the wheel.

But w'evs.

Alraxite

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm just saying that the following hasn't happened in reality: that there is a person who sees red instead of purple and also sees red when we see red.

MickLH

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It means their DNA instead of coding for cone cells tuned on about 430nm, 545nm, and 572nm. Some minor variance caused the numbers to be slightly different, which in turn changes the entire way color addition and subtraction works for them

Cerberus

17:04

What is that image, fifty shades of grey?

MickLH

It's so you can see how those numbers line up with natural colors

So you can see that your brain actually does a lot of math just to "see red"

Alraxite

@Cerberus That was funny.

Primarily because I get the joke.

MickLH

Supplementary information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Alraxite No, this is classic colour blindness. People can't distinguish between two colours... in this case, red and purple.

KitFox

Also, @Matt.

Cerberus

17:10

@Alraxite Hehe. You're apparently the only one...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, the rest of us got it, but didn't laugh. And there's no well-known abbreviation for "not funny. didn't laugh".

NF;DL

you're welcome.

it'll come in handy around here.

Cerberus

You're in such a good mood today!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I am, actually.

Cerberus

Apparently.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I typed all of that with a smile on my face.

but it's lunch time now. bbl.

Alraxite

17:13

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes. I should have said people who dont suffer from this problem. That, if there is such a person who doesn't have colour blindness and sees red instead of purple, then he can't see red instead of red. That there could be such people who can see red instead of purple but there is no way for us to tell. Unless you do some sugery on them, in which case I'm not aware if that's possible.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Who painted that smile on your face, and was it with lipstick?

Have fun.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I'm a minifig. We're always smiling.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Is it some combination of botox and cutting tiny face muscles?

Alraxite

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Maybe he was being sarcastic :/

Cerberus

@Alraxite Always.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

17:14

@Cerberus minifigs don't have face muscles.

okay going now for reals.

Cerberus

The idea of cutting muscles in your face just so you look "prettier" (in reality, you do not look prettier, on the contrary) is so appalling.

Mitch

@meer2kat Who cares? It's fun!

Cerberus

Bai.

meer2kat

@Mitch what?

MickLH

He's just saying I'm right

Mitch

17:19

@MickLH No, I'm right.

See? It's fun!

MickLH

While that's partially valid, it's also partially incorrect.

Mitch

Wrong again! Woo hoo!

Jez

17:30

finally got a job offer :-D

£40k

KitFox

Is that a lot or a little?

Alraxite

17:43

Is it possible to search for everything a particular user has said in chat? I mean, if I want to see all the messages user1 has said in some chat room, what should I type in the search fields?

KitFox

You should scrape the content and grep it.

Otherwise, you can't.

Alraxite

Oh, I was hoping it could be done by using some special character, like *

The Overlook Hotel

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…