English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

13:00

@crl Apparently it was a fad among the cool college kids in 1920s America.

Goldfish swallowing was an American school fad starting in the 1920s, where a live goldfish is swallowed. It is not clear how it became a fad: various people have made claims. A 1963 letter to the New York Times claimed that the fad began in late 1938 when Lothrop Withington Jr., a Harvard freshman with "[class] presidential aspirations," was encouraged by his "campaign managers" to do so as a publicity stunt: "Reporters and photographers were inadvertently present in the Harvard Freshman Union when Withington swallowed his live goldfish (with a mashed potato chaser) and started a nationwide fad...

crl

hehe, oh! raw swallowing, the fish must continue living in your intestine

tchrist

@crl Shouldn’t make it past the pyloric valve, aliens notwithstanding.

crl

:))

tchrist

13:16

Alimentary Education: mouth → pharynx → esophagus → lower esophageal sphincter → stomach → pyloric valve → duodenum → jejunum → ileum → ileocaecal valve → {transverse,descending,ascending} colon → caecum → sigmoid colon → rectum → anal sphincter → anus, with an optional one-way field trip to the appendix for small groups of travellers led by Messrs Bacteroides, Klebsiella, and Escherichia-Coli.

The semi-colon only beat out the sigmoid colon because of the dearth of Greek amongst long-haul truck drivers’ epistolary missives.

Cerberus

13:35

@tchrist The period beats the colon, let alone the semi-colon.

It ignores them, so to speak.

Robusto

@Cerberus I'm not sure women would agree.

Cerberus

Well, it does not need them.

So it wins. Right?

tchrist

One should not attempt to promote a colonel of truth to a general principle: it overreaches.

Robusto

> PLEONASM, n. An army of words escorting a corporal of thought. —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Cerberus

@tchrist That is a very nice typo. Too bad I won't believe that was accidental.

tchrist

13:50

@Cerberus Which is why you are smarter than any cybernetic autocorregidor shall ever be.

Andrew Leach

Puns are rarely accidental.

Cerberus

@tchrist Naturally.

klysium

14:25

Has anybody read through the Strunk and White’s Elements of Style book cover to cover?

Cerberus

Hello.

I wonder why people keep mentioning that book, even though everybody agrees it is poorly written.

klysium

hello @Cerberus

Cerberus

I have never read it; why is it significant?

klysium

@Cerberus is it poorly written? It was recommended by the writer center mentors at my college.

I found it very boring and didnt help me at all...

Cerberus

Haha then throw it away.

klysium

14:29

trying to now improve my english since I neglected it when I was younger. Got any recommendations?? haha

Cerberus

They say many things about grammar that are actually wrong, I am told.

klysium

apparently its more about the 'style' of writing great, or something. I was having a hard time following through

Cerberus

I like Fowler's for stylistic advice. But it is more of a book to look things up in, not a book to read cover to cover.

klysium

@Cerberus cool, i will check that out

Cerberus

Good luck on your quest!

In general I recommend proper capitalisation and punctuation.

terdon

14:41

@Cerberus Old, and popular. Also simple and concise. Despite its shortcomings, it is often a useful little reference. Just don't take its suggestions as law.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@terdon Also, first thoroughly learn your grammar, because they explain it incorrectly in some cases and will only serve to confuse you.

tchrist

@Cerberus Because it is a required text for many American high-school composition classes.

And "poorly written" is unkind.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@klysium Don't bother reading it.

tchrist

It is useful for students at that level.

Cerberus

@tchrist That might explain it.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I would not consider a style book that doesn't get grammar.

A good style book uses grammar as an important base to build on.

Structure and consistency are important stylistic virtues.

klysium

14:50

My biggest issue is bad grammar. I did not have a good experience learning grammar or composition growing up. I remember asked too many questions about why and how grammar works the way they do... I would like to hear some suggestions.

terdon

@klysium About the how and why? I doubt you'll find anything better than because.

klysium

Hopefully, and maybe, the Element of Style and the Fowler book suggested by @Cerberus will help a bit and ease my fear of writing

Andrew Leach

When I was at university, I wanted to know why we did things a certain way. The answer was "We don't know why this works, but it does, so we use it."

That was Civil Engineering calculations, but the principle is similar.

terdon

@AndrewLeach Ugh, that's scary. Language just grew so it makes sense, but I expected something a bit more rigorous from engineers.

klysium

@terdon @AndrewLeach asking how and why or examples of why it works, is how my brain tries to make sense of things

Cerberus

14:52

@AndrewLeach This applies to idiom and basic premises. But mostly a good style book explains how its recommendations follow from its premises.

klysium

I agree with @AndrewLeach, as a computer engineer, the mathematics behind things are pretty clear and well defined, so it 'make sense'

@Cerberus thanks =]

@terdon =[

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

43

Q: What’s purportedly wrong with Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”?

I was reading the comments on this answer where several users claimed that Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style was “misinformed, hypocritical, and wrong” and “flat-out wrong or totally misleading”, so I’d love to get a delineated list of where it is wrong. Note: I have no position on this o...

klysium

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 oh...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

This Q on our site discusses the book and there are several competing viewpoints presented as answers.

11

A: What’s purportedly wrong with Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”?

In the spirit of answering the original question the way he wanted it to be answered, I will summarize the grammar points of Pullum’s essay: Passive voice Elements strongly advises against the passive voice. Pullum has two objections to this: (1) in many cases the passive voice really is superi...

Notably, nohat summarizes several places where S&W get the English wrong.

Cerberus

The problem with linguists is that they just don't get style books.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

14:57

So, sure, read S&W if you want basic advice like "omit needless words". But beware that the book contains factual errors about language, and if you're the kind of person who needs a book like this then you're probably the kind of person who isn't ready to distinguish between what's correct and what's not.

Cerberus

They hate them, which is fine and good, but they fight them with the wrong arguments, from the wrong category.

The fact that some famous author used x doesn't mean that a style book cannot disapprove of it or recommend y instead.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The problem with style books is that many people treat them like rule books; and when style books have incorrect rules or bad grammar they do more harm than good.

Cerberus

Yes, people shouldn't treat them as Qurans.

And the categorically disapproving language found on some pages should be taken with a grain of salt.

Mitch

@klysium S&W is not a grammar, but rather biased advice on how to write well. Also it is short and readable, and a lot of the style advice is liked by teachers in the humanities who have to read undergrads who try to hard too write fancy. Lots of its advice can be avoided, but its not a bad thing for a beginning writer to follow.

Cerberus

But the basic problem with linguists is that they think style books describe how the majority of people write, which is a rather silly thought invented by themselves. On the contrary, they aim at leading the majority towards something they perceive as better.

Mitch

15:01

right..they're (questionable) suggestions, not descriptions

klysium

@Mitch Thanks for the tip. I was looking at the links posted by @Mr.ShinyandNew安宇, and I feel I should probably be more confident/comfortable with grammar then look into styles

Cerberus

Yeah.

Actual usage among certain writers is one course one factor style books will or should take into account, but it is only one out of many.

Mitch

@klysium yes, you probably want grammar rules first before style.

klysium

@Mitch or anyone for that matter, got any recommendations for grammar books? I found a few ESL, or spanish to english learning guides online which are not written for native speakers like me.

Mitch

if you're about to write non-trivial amounts of text (like descriptive paragraphs or essays or short stories), then a style guide might help. Probably good to just mimic styles you like (if you can tell at this point)

@klysium so you're a native speaker of English? are you in school? what level? and what is your concern with writing English?

klysium

15:04

@Mitch nope, i can not tell styles from each other. To me, everything is 'well written'

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, linguists don't think the style books describe how the majority of people write. They think that the majority of people think style books describe how they must write.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But that is what their arguments sound like.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The reason people think that is because the style books are held up as gospels by the teachers.

Cerberus

No, listen to the linguists.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I have read the linguists' arguments

Pullum in particular often mentions how generations of Americans are being taught from S&W as if it were a grammar book.

Cerberus

15:06

> Elements says a sentence should not begin with however in its connective adverb sense (“when the meaning is ‘nevertheless’”), but this restriction is simply invented, and Pullum says “good authors alternate between placing the adverb first and placing it after the subject” and “The evidence cannot possibly support a claim that however at the beginning of a sentence should be eschewed. Strunk and White are just wrong about the facts of English syntax.”

This is the wrong kind of argument, even if Pullum were right.

"Evidence" and "facts of English syntax"?

It is possible that S&W make such claims, in which case perhaps the argument is against the factual claims.

But as an argument against stylistic advice, it is in the wrong category.

The same applies to some of Nohat's other paraphrases of Pullum.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That is indeed wrong, and problematic.

klysium

@Mitch English is my primary language, but I remember having a hard time learning proper grammar and what not as a kid. I graduated college already in Engineer where writing well was not a 'concern'. Improving my english is a long time goal of mine, I no longer want to fear people's poor reflection of me because I can not communicate properly. This greatly affected my public speaking performance at school because I will write my manuscripts

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Here is a link to the original version where, among other things, they describe their advice as "rules"

Cerberus

Rules doesn't mean you have to follow them always.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

> However. In the meaning nevertheless, not to come first in its sentence or clause.

When however comes first, it means in whatever way or to whatever extent.

That's under a section called "Misused Expressions"

So they are presenting it as a fact of language, and they are wrong.

Cerberus

I don't think "misuse" is factual at all. It is a judgement of value.

A style book is not a technical manual.

Interpreting it that way is wrong.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

15:19

Tell that to every teacher in America.

Cerberus

Then we're back at your original point.

I would love to tell them.

But I have never been to America.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

How is a high-school student supposed to know that the "however" sentences I quoted are meant to be taken as "We, S&W, feel that it's nicer to always use however this way and not to use it that way"? The sentences are clear and unambiguously stating laws. "When used this way, it's wrong."

The OTHER rules in that section are more loosely worded. "This is bad style", "This is trite or cliche", "This is hard to read", "this sounds better".

But for however, they just say "Don't do this. It means something else".

Cerberus

They mean the same thing.

But I see no reason to give a style book to high-school students, at least not without a proper reading guide.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Compare their advice for very in the same section:

> Very. Use this word sparingly. Where emphasis is necessary, use words strong in themselves.

See the difference in tone? "use it sparingly". THAT is "advice" and not "rules".

tchrist

@klysium Native speakers are fundamentally disadvantaged against learning that language’s formal grammar.

Cerberus

15:24

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Sure, but, in style-book language, it is the same thing: they always mean "advice".

Catholics get this better than Calvinists.

terdon

That however rule is ridiculous.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus When someone hands you a book and tells you "This book will teach you how to write well", and parts of the book have advice like "it's better to X" or "Y is overused, do Z instead" or "avoid this or that", and other parts have "X is wrong. Always do Y" and "A can never do X, use B; A means something else", how is a reader who needs that guide supposed to distinguish between the advice and the advice-masquerading-as-rules and the real rules?

Cerberus

@terdon I sympathise with it to some extent. I am undecided.

terdon

However, it did not turn out as expected.

klysium

@tchrist hopefully, I am not hopeless. lol

terdon

15:27

Nothing wrong with that. It is extremely common in scientific manuscripts.

@klysium By the way, the pedants among us might point out that hopefully doesn't mean I hope but full of hope. If you want to hang out with close minded prescriptivists, don't use it that way.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If you give it to people who are too...young to understand that a style book is not the Bible, then you should explain that to them.

@terdon Category mistake!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The advice to avoid using however in certain cases may be valid, in order to promote clarity or to reduce complaints from prescriptivist readers or whatever. But to frame it the way they have is simply misleading.

Cerberus

(Besides, scientific manuscripts are the worst example ever: they are often poorly written.)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus You are not listening to my point.

Cerberus

@terdon *prescriptivists

terdon

15:29

@Cerberus Well, yes, thats quite true.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I think you're just disagreeing with their point.

terdon

@Cerberus I have no idea what you're talking about.

whistles innocently

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

There are three kinds of statements in the book: 1. "It's better to do X". 2. "Doing X is wrong." 3. "Doing X is wrong"* <- this third one is not a real rule, just advice masquerading as a rule

Cerberus

@terdon Oh, never mind, never mind.

terdon

:)

klysium

15:30

@terdon haha. Well... I hope to still improve despite being a native speaker

terdon

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Name three "real" rules.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Any "fit" reader should be able to tell that.

> Nu krijgen gebruikers bij video’s nog regelmatig reclamevideo’s te zien, die niet zijn weg te klikken. Op vaste computers zijn de advertenties redelijk eenvoudig te omzeilen met adblockers, maar op mobiele apparaten is dat niet mogelijk.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@terdon Oh, there's a language log post about that.

terdon

@klysium Being native is no help. Much of the worst English I've ever heard was spoken by natives.

Cerberus

Newspaper claims you can't block advertisements in Youtube on mobile.

tchrist

15:31

@terdon 1. A verb agree with its subject.

terdon

OK, I lie, it's a help, but not sufficient.

@tchrist 2 to go.

Cerberus

@tchrist The language police are not always in agreement about this.

klysium

@terdon I agree! I wish to avoid that

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus You mean, any reader who doesn't need a style book like S&W.

tchrist

@terdon 2. Pronouns in subject position must be nominative or genitive case, never in object case.

Cerberus

15:32

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No. I need it. You need it.

terdon

@klysium Read. A lot.

Cerberus

"Need" is not the right phrase.

terdon

@tchrist Examples?

tchrist

*Me talk pretty someday.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I shared the link with you, did you read it? it's really, really short. did you learn anything from it?

terdon

15:33

@tchrist Me thinks you doth protest too much.

Cerberus

@tchrist And yet, "us" is what people sometimes use as a subject, especially with quotation marks.

tchrist

She is good. Hers is better. But her suck.

terdon

OK, 3?

klysium

@terdon I got a kindle! Heard that C.S Lewis has great books with well written english

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I have not.

terdon

15:33

:)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Actually... in some dialects of English using objective pronouns as subjects is standard. But let's agree that we're only allowing rules of "Standard English" ;)

klysium

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 What is Standard English?!

tchrist

@terdon 3. Many goes with plural count nouns; much goes with (amongst other things) mass nouns, which are never plural.

There are also various article rules.

terdon

@tchrist Manyfold?

tchrist

That is not many.

terdon

15:36

@tchrist Isn't it? :P

tchrist

This paper has many folds in it, not *much folds.

terdon

> Old English monigfald (Anglian), manigfeald (West Saxon), "various, varied in appearance, complicated; numerous, abundant," from manig (see many) + -feald (see -fold). A common Germanic compound (Old Frisian manichfald, Middle Dutch menichvout, German mannigfalt, Swedish mångfalt, Gothic managfalþs), perhaps a loan-translation of Latin multiplex (see multiply). Retains the original pronunciation of many. Old English also had a verbal form, manigfealdian "to multiply, abound, increase, extend."

So manifold does kinda come from many. But I am being difficult.

tchrist

4. All present tense verbs have morphological inflection in the third person singular.

So yes, there are rules.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@klysium Language Log on hopefully as a sentence adverb

3

terdon

@tchrist Can you also name at least one exception of each of them?

klysium

15:41

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 haha nice

tchrist

@terdon If I could, they would only be rules not laws.

When you break a law, the result is not perceived as grammatical by native speakers.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

In short, using hopefully that way has been around a long time, and nobody cared until in the 1960s people started doing it more and more.

Cerberus

@terdon Aren't we all. It's what we do.

@tchrist You choose to call the modal verbs past...

tchrist

An example of a rule not a law is that English plurals are formed by adding -s.

terdon

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ooh, thanks, I've been arguing with my father about that one for years. He's a curmudgeonly old prescriptivist and objects to impact as a verb, hopefully and momentarily meaning soon.

tchrist

15:43

@Cerberus Defective.

klysium

anybody know what this is? www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/modestproposal.pdf

terdon

He has infected me enough that I can't use them either but I'll no longer correct most of them when editing. Always nice to have new ammunition.

Cerberus

@tchrist Defective? They are past, originally.

Which is why they have no -s.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@terdon curmudgeonly old prescriptivists are usually not swayed by evidence. That's what makes them prescriptivists.

tchrist

No, I mean that they are defective in not having 3s nor non-finite inflections.

Cerberus

15:44

We are all prescriptivists...

@tchrist That is not the definition of a defective verb.

Mitch

@klysium OK, nice. Then S&W, though boring, to you has a lot of good basic writing advice (not rules, just advice) that can be not followed at any time when it is suitable. Grammar is knowing to say 'between you and me' (and not 'I') or getting the tenses right in 'I will have been long departed by the time the police determine the culprit'. What you probably want is advice on how to write engineering-style documentation (the choice of words, how to split (or not) long technical sentences.

Cerberus

"Been" departed?

tchrist

A defective verb is one that cannot be used in the same grammatical situations that non-defective verbs can.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@klysium "A modest proposal" is a signal that what the author is proposing is not meant to be taken seriously. That's because of Swift's original "Modest Proposal"

Cerberus

Engineering-style documentation is usually badly written.

@tchrist Yes.

But lacking a certain ending is different.

tchrist

15:46

You are musting to explain me that.

Cerberus

For example, the verb die is defective in the sense that it lacks passive forms.

tchrist

It is not transitive.

Mitch

@Cerberus It's a little overrated. It takes too long to travel between cities and the cars are sadly not all being driven like on 'The Fast and the Furious'.

Cerberus

The verb can merely has a different ending for the third person singular, but it does have a 3rd-singular form, so it is not defective there.

tchrist

I am not canning to see that.

However, I am canning pickles.

klysium

15:48

@Mitch Engineering style would be nice, but wish to not limit myself? I guess its a good start. I would like to have a more 'story telling' and visual style. Which will also help with engineering because Im such a visual person

Cerberus

@tchrist Most intransitive verbs can still be transitivised and have a passive, but die cannot. At any rate, you could say intransitivity is in a sense defective.

tchrist

I never went you anything like that.

Cerberus

@tchrist He was lived by his unquenchable desire for revenge. He [*was died]...

tchrist

*was lived

Cerberus

He walks. He can. (Not defective).

@tchrist Let's say it is poetic.

At any rate, it doesn't matter.

tchrist

15:50

Let’s say it is forbidden.

Can he walk now? No, but he will can.

Mitch

@Cerberus ha ha. maybe. me talk pretty.

Cerberus

@Mitch OK OK.

terdon

@Mitch That's still something, we can't all be handsome.

Cerberus

@tchrist Can is not defective in the third person singular, that's all.

tchrist

It is irregular.

Cerberus

15:54

Because it is a past form.

Mitch

@klysium Copy the style that you like in others, but be aware of your audience i.e. don't try to write like Jane Austen or Kurt Vonnegut if your audience is an answer on StackExchange (or vice versa)

Leuchte

Hello

Cerberus

Like the other modals.

In all the Germanic languages, I believe.

tchrist

Will is not a past tense form.

Cerberus

I thought it was.

tchrist

15:54

Dare is not a past tense form; durst is.

OED calls these something I forget.

Leuchte

I'm wondering what is meant by the phrase "for close" in the context "the end of the world I had known for close for thirty years"?

Cerberus

Interestingly, some similar words are also present perfects in other languages.

terdon

> There’s nothing like a note – from a teacher, for God’s sake – commanding that “Every child should bring their lunch” to make me want to switch exclusively to Latin.

Leuchte

Does it mean he was expecting the world to end?

Mitch

@tchrist in time-travel sci-fi, it will have been yesterday a perfectly good tense.

terdon

15:55

@Cerberus does Latin have a gender neutral pronoun then?

Cerberus

@terdon I couldn't agree more.

terdon

@Leuchte No, he meant close to

tchrist

@Mitch Or in English.

terdon

@Cerberus Pfft, don't start that one again, nothing wrong with singular they.

Cerberus

@terdon No: like all other European languages, including English, the masculine form has a 100% neutral meaning when necessary.

tchrist

15:56

@Cerberus No.

Mitch

@terdon looks around dammit, I forgot my lunch.

Leuchte

@terdon Sorry for the interruption in your conversation and thank you for your help

terdon

@Leuchte I've known him for close to 30 years means almost.

Mitch

@terdon 'id'?

Cerberus

> dare One of the interesting group of Teutonic preterite-present verbs, of which the extant present is an original preterite tense: see can, dow, etc.

terdon

15:58

@Mitch Perhaps, I have no Latin whatsoever.

tchrist

@terdon You have lots of Latin. It’s just recent. :)

terdon

Heh, true, derivative Latin. Inferred Latin.

Mitch

@Cerberus not really any more. people mostly (60%?) assume it's gendered. It's grating to hear 'A doctor will perform the head transplant shortly he reads the instructions'

Cerberus

Will was probably formed based on the analogy with the present-praeterite verbs, like shall.

@Mitch Bad style.

terdon

@Mitch Well, yes, but for all sorts of reasons.

Mitch

16:00

still 'they read' is less grating

Cerberus

Most people are not good writers, we all know that.

It is grating.

tchrist

Will he or nill he, you should not tell him he has no gender.

Cerberus

@Mitch Besides, that sentence is silly.

Mitch

@Cerberus In what way?

Cerberus

Who needs to read instructions before a head transplant?

Just do it.

tchrist

16:01

Category:English defective verbs

» English language » Lemmas » Verbs » Defective verbs English verbs that lack one or more forms in their conjugations.[edit] Category:English impersonal verbs: English verbs that do not indicate actions, occurrences or states of any specific grammatical subject....

terdon

@Mitch shortly they read?

@Cerberus The different models have the cranium release switch in different places.

Mitch

@terdon argh! 'shortly after'

Cerberus

@tchrist They may be defective in other forms.

@terdon Ugh. Then you should have sent them back to the nanobots before signing.

Mitch

@terdon you need to tell the nurse where to squeeze all the bloody spurty things while you're busy gluing.

Cerberus

@Mitch I chose to ignore that as an archaism, à la "they left directly the nurse arrived".

tchrist

16:03

@Cerberus Nothing that a seven-year calligraphy apprenticeship won’t improve.

Cerberus

> The celebrated work of De Lolme on the English constitution was suppressed...directly it appeared.

terdon

@Cerberus Shortly doesn't work though. Dunno why.

Cerberus

@tchrist Then let's make that compulsory.

Mitch

haha. momentarily. presently. I don't know what any of those mean. I really want to pronounce that as 'torectly'

Cerberus

@terdon I don't remember seeing it used as a conjunction...

Mitch

16:04

@Cerberus isn't it compulsory in monk school?

Cerberus

I'm sure it is.

tchrist

@Cerberus It would be illuminating.

Cerberus

Ah, that is not necessarily calligraphy, is it?

tchrist

Rubication is different.

Cerberus

Is that with just black and red?

Some people think miniature has something to do with minuscule, small.

terdon

16:07

@Cerberus It doesn't?

Cerberus

4

A: Where is the root in these words: miniature, minimal, minimize?

It turns out there are two unrelated roots: There is the (modern) Portuguese/Galician river Minho/Miño, called Minius in Latin, probably from an unknown root in Iberian, which is assumed to be a language isolate, i.e. not at all related to surrounding languages. From this comes miniature and the...

@terdon Nope.

Thanks for the votes, anonymi!

terdon

@Cerberus That was me. That was very interesting, thanks. Oh, and I also fixed your format.

Cerberus

@terdon Thanks, but the second one is now broken.

I had a kind of sigma shape there.

Or, rather, a two-pronged fork.

terdon

@Cerberus Is it fixed now?

Cerberus

Ah, better!

Thank you.

terdon

16:17

You're welcome.

Cerberus

Now the dots and arrows are a bit redundant...

I should prefer only →.

terdon

@Cerberus Ah, well, I didn't know what you were doing with that. I just wanted to show you nested lists.

Cerberus

Yes, that was a great improvement!

Mitch

I want to see nested nests

Cerberus

I probably had to add them earlier because the system worked differently in 2011.

Whoops and something has gone wrong here.

The new system again, automatically applied to existing posts only upon editing them.

tchrist

16:21

@Cerberus Right.

terdon

@Mitch Make a list and indent the next list item with four spaces.

Mitch

@terdon Nice. OK, how about time travel?

I'm not asking for much...like maybe 20 minutes a half hour in the future? Then come back of course.

terdon

@Mitch Ask me again yesterday.

Mitch

I will have done that already ... um ... later this ... uh ... lastweek

checks mailbox Thanks!

terdon

Damn, I will have been good!

Leuchte

16:36

@terdon I see (in response to your earlier statement)

Robusto

@terdon Nah, you were only "will have been going to be good" . . .

Leuchte

I'm stuck on attempting to put this in formal, civilised English: "the torture of watching horrible things happen to other individuals and not helping them for the sake of sanity"

It's quite interesting to see this implemented:

How does the reader feel like?

I can't quite describe it unfortunately :/

I would be extremely grateful for any help

Thanks in advance

Cerberus

@tchrist Who told me again about the backslash to escape? It has made my life so much easier!

Robusto

@Cerberus Are you talking about grep or about life in general?

Cerberus

@Robusto About SE.

After they changed things with the asterisks and bolding things.

@Leuchte Despondent?

Sad?

Robusto

16:42

@Cerberus So you escape an asterisk to make a real asterisk? Or what?

@Leuchte Helpless.

Leuchte

Is there no specific phrase to describe this condition?

Robusto

Does there have to be a specific pat phrase? Make one up? That's why you're a writer, no?

Cerberus

@Robusto Yes!

You can probably escape anything.

Robusto

\governmentsurveillance

Cerberus

Otherwise, the asterisks in my answer above wouldn't be possible any more in the new system.

Robusto

16:44

Nah, didn't work.

Cerberus

Heh.

Perhaps if you put on a tinfoil hat, it might work.

Robusto

I keep wearing those out. They don't last.

Leuchte

@Robusto I think that the fact that here he has made the decision not to help makes it work, so I don't think that the term 'helpless' can be used?

Cerberus

Add a colander?

Robusto

@Leuchte Doesn't matter. The only difference there is that the helplessness is voluntary. Doesn't make it feel any better, necessarily.

Mitch

16:46

@Cerberus except for the crushing insignificance of existence.

Robusto

@Mitch Did you mean "the crushing irrationality of existence"?

Mitch

Also, the bad effect of drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth. Yuck!

@Robusto no, I meant ...

crushed

Cerberus

@Mitch Right. But there are other remedies.

With a handle and a head.

Robusto

@Mitch Santayana said it first

Mitch

?? Hunh ?? is the handle on the head? or is this a trick question, like 'faucet'?

@Robusto pfft Santayana. I'm writing my book, and I'll make up my own cliches.

Leuchte

16:55

Pardon the delay

Mitch

It's the title of the book. All the pages are empty. But it's not one of those daily diary books because it's bound on both sides... it can't be opened from either end!

Leuchte

Thanks for all your help

Have any of you read the book?

The Day of the Triffids, 1951

Cerberus

@Mitch The head is on the handle.

Leuchte

@Mitch I didn't quite get what point you were trying to make by the "crushing irrationality of existence" Would you mind clarifying please?

Cerberus

Hammerhead shark

The hammerhead sharks are a group of sharks in the family Sphyrnidae, so named for the unusual and distinctive structure of their heads, which are flattened and laterally extended into a "hammer" shape called a "cephalofoil". Most hammerhead species are placed in the genus Sphyrna while the winghead shark is placed in its own genus, Eusphyra. Many not necessarily mutually exclusive functions have been proposed for the cephalofoil, including sensory reception, maneuvering, and prey manipulation. Hammerheads are found worldwide in warmer waters along coastlines and continental shelves. Unlike most...

Andrew Leach

17:04

@Leuchte I have. And it's been on TV several times. But commute.

Cerberus

I have read it and listened to the spoken book.

Leuchte

@AndrewLeach The 2009 one was pretty good at suspense but it was mainly criticised for its clichéd mush

Wait... is the accent the right way round?

Cerberus

The accent is right.

Mitch

@Leuchte 1) be aware that we are just screwing around here and making statements of dubious sense and/or humor 2) Don't let that bastard @Robusto put words into my mouth. I said 'insignificance' not 'irrationality'. It's a world of difference like between an empty string and a null pointer to a string.

Leuchte

@Mitch I see

I love the scientific anologies made above...

wait it's analogies :)

Mitch

17:13

@Leuchte So I was not trying to make a point but rather to intentionally misinterpret Cerb's and Robusto's conversation about regular expressions and 'escaping'. Cerb said you can escape anything. And I randomly (or viz Robusto not so randomly) came up with an exception, the great meaninglessness and inconsequentiality of life, which haha is implied to be universal. ha ha. sobs into hands

Leuchte

Sheesh I did not intend to bring discords!

Cerberus

@Leuchte Nice.

Robusto

@Mitch Except insignificance isn't the crushing part.

Leuchte

Cerberus

@Leuchte But its native habitat is extraterrestrial, is it not?

Mitch

17:15

@Robusto Some say it is freeing

Actually, no one has ever said that. Not even randomly

Robusto

@Mitch It is merely freezing. Again.

Leuchte

@Cerberus It was rather due to biological mishap during genetic modification of plants, if I read the book closely

Mitch

@Robusto puts coat on. inside

@Leuchte Is that why everyone is so scared of GMOs? Because of some 1950's B-movie?

Robusto

S'posed to get up near 39° today. ~~Hot~~ Cold damn.

Leuchte

@Mitch I guess that there's more of a religious aspect to it

Mitch

17:18

@Robusto Woo hoo!! runs around screaming outside. rips off t-shirt. holy crap, puts t-shirt back on again and goes back inside

Robusto

I wouldn't put it past them.

Mitch

@Leuchte wait... GMO means genetically modified food right? not something gross like in the bible?

Cerberus

> The origin of the triffid species is never fully revealed in Wyndham's novel. The novel's central character, Bill Masen, dismisses the idea that they are a naturally occurring species, or that they are extraterrestrial in origin:

My own belief, for what that is worth, is that they were the outcome of a series of ingenious biological meddlings—and very likely accidental, at that. Had they been evolved anywhere but in the region they were, we should doubtless have had a well‑documented ancestry for them.

Leuchte

I find that this one's well...less realistic

@Cerberus That's quite true

Mitch

@Robusto By the way Santayana, it looks like you got a lot of time on your hands. Get a job, you hippie!

Leuchte

17:26

They were actually puppets

Robusto

17:38

@Mitch Philosophers tend to be chronically unemployed.

Leuchte

amazon.com/How-Make-Triffid-Tor-Com-Original-ebook/dp/…

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