English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

George Pompidou

12:30 AM

@Mitch whoa, do I get another prize if I get that?

jiggles about excitedly

SmokeDetector

8:57 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in body: Energy vs. Power by Steven on english.stackexchange.com

RegDwigнt

10:01 AM

-1

Q: english problem

I'm not a native speaker , I've a problem most of the time I write or speak English . I have tried to read books , newspapers but there is no impact ..I would like to know what is it that am not doing and why am I not doing it

conversation

RegDwigнt

10:28 AM

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: One day the great silver birds will come again bringing their bounty [ensign-by-cargo-kilt]

tchrist

12:14 PM

What, no doggie?

@snailboat Had some questions for you about Japanese SE stuff.

@Cerberus That was not the imagery of your personal life that I needed greeting me with the dawn.

Robusto

70s here all next week, with incursions into the 80s.

Hmm, incursions or excursions there? I guess it depends on your point of view.

Cerberus

@tchrist Imagery is in the eye of the beholder.

Robusto

12:40 PM

@Cerberus Or the ear, if you're speaking about music.

tchrist

@Cerberus Could you please roll back the vandalism here? Thanks.

terdon

@tchrist Apparently, a user has been doing that to various posts and the only active mod, J.R., is not around. It was mentioned in the TL.

tchrist

@terdon If it were ELL I could fix it but not on Ling.

terdon

Wow, talk about rage quitting: ell.stackexchange.com/users/12194/…

Robusto

He should have renamed himself before he left: Study.English.Good

@terdon Well, it was never a particularly robust site.

RegDwigнt

12:55 PM

@Robusto excurse and swear, lord Kildare, Rob will say what Rob will dare.

@tchrist ugh, turns out I can't even suggest edits on Ling, much less just edit, much less roll back.

These are some of the things that are wrong with the world.

Robusto

So if you are iterating over an array to find a match of some property, statistically speaking would the average length of your iteration (i.e., number of elements searched on average) be length / 2 or (length-1) / 2? Or something else?

0

Q: the third conditional and the meaning of the particular sentence

The history of the enabling act gives the lie to the National Socialist claim that they came into power by constitutional means. It is true that the act was passed by a vote of 441 to 94 and thereby received the necessary two-thirds majority of the members present (Article 76 of the Weimar Consti...

meaning

Sounds like he had to translate English into something else so he could understand it.

Mitch

@Robusto length/2 exactly. The average doesn't have to be an item of the set.

Robusto

@Mitch Thank you.

Mitch

1:13 PM

The point of an average (and lots of stats) is not to find a particular individual, but rather to compare distributions and so having a statistic that is derived from but not a member of the original domain is not a problem.

But it does make me queasy when they say that polling has shown a candidate has 4% of the vote with a 6% margin of error (confidence interval).

Was that the concern?

Robusto

Something like that.

Mitch

@terdon wow. that's a lot of random typing on the site just to 'undo' al his previous work. save yourself effort...just walk away, man.

Robusto

Yeah, this ain't WikiLeaks.

terdon

@Mitch Yeah, that's what I call dedication, devotion, turning all the nightime into day.

RegDwigнt

LikeyWeeks.

Mitch

1:18 PM

@Robusto Wait... you can do that on wikileaks?

goes to wikileaks to remove some ... things

Some of my laundry lists actually have dirty laundry in them. So embarrassing.

Robusto

@terdon You sound in dire straits today.

RegDwigнt

@terdon spare me their song about the sweet loving woman.

Robusto

Jinx, I guess.

Mitch

@Robusto the mode and median are defined to be part of the original domain. but the average, which goes into different calcs, does not

RegDwigнt

Better dire straits than cheerful gays.

Robusto

1:21 PM

I'm still waiting for my Coke.

RegDwigнt

Take that one up with Don Heladio.

Robusto

He's dead.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt Can you give it back tomorrow? There's an office party where it's needed.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto That explains it, no?

Robusto

Lotta plunking from the peanut gallery today.

RegDwigнt

1:22 PM

The pea is a lie.

Robusto

No, but the peanut is. Neither pea nor nut, that.

Mitch

You can't have your pea and eat it too.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto its role model was the Federal Reserve.

Robusto

I sense we're going down a dangerous path here.

RegDwigнt

Good thing our company includes a sentinel.

Now we'll only need a McGyver.

Robusto

1:24 PM

Wow, we haven't had a new question for, like 40 minutes. I wonder what's happening.

RegDwigнt

Night time in India.

Robusto

That never stopped them before.

RegDwigнt

Then perhaps every question formulatable using English words has now officially been asked, and mankind will spend the rest of their lives googling existing answers rather than asking anew.

Robusto

Fat chance.

RegDwigнt

I did say perhaps.

I will need to run several analyses first.

Robusto

1:27 PM

I did say chance.

RegDwigнt

You never did. Lies.

Robusto

You could look it up.

RegDwigнt

I'm looking it down and it's not there.

Robusto

That was your mistake right there. Look it up.

RegDwigнt

Shania Twain - Up! (Red Version)

►

Oooooh, red version! I like. Thank you, Rob.

Robusto

1:29 PM

I answered a question on SO this morning for the first time in ages. And the OP kept revising his question non-stop until my answer no longer made sense. Why do I even bother there? Note to self: do not bother with SO.

RegDwigнt

Haha ur so dum.

Y U even go their.

Robusto

Part of me wants to crack 20K, but that doesn't look too likely.

RegDwigнt

I will crack 20k from passive rep alone.

Robusto

I will too, eventually, but who wants to wait?

RegDwigнt

I've no idea what I'm at right now. I have other ideas of higher importance.

Robusto

1:30 PM

You're at around 66% of where I'm at, I think. That's what it was last time I looked.

RegDwigнt

There, you made me look it up. Almost 13k.

Another five seconds of my life wasted.

Robusto

You weren't going to do anything special with those five seconds anyway.

RegDwigнt

OMG im an imaginary numbarrrrr! look at me!!!!

Robusto

What was the German idiom for taking a piss that involved shooting little tigers and bears? Or something like that?

RegDwigнt

@Robusto I was going to do several unspecial things, though. And now I never will. Curse you.

Robusto

1:33 PM

Gah, I can't remember a thing.

RegDwigнt

No Aerosmith in this chat.

@Robusto first time I hear someone imagine such a thing exists.

Robusto

Might have been a regionalism.

RegDwigнt

amazon.de/Russland-Reich-Tiger-B%C3%A4ren-Vulkane/dp/B004UJHW5I

This is what I get for googling it.

Now seriously dude, what the actual fuck. Statistically speaking, there is not a single bear, tiger, or volcano in all of Russia.

They'd be better off titling it "Rußland: Im Reich des Whiskey und der Japaner"

Robusto

@RegDwigнt I think it was something like für kleine Bengaltiger gehen.

I thought it odd enough at the time that I (sort of) remembered it.

An odd euphemism.

Cerberus

@tchrist Alas, a moderator deleted the question.

I have flagged it for restoration.

terdon

1:43 PM

@RegDwigнt How 'bout the one about the night?

Mitch

@Robusto I have to go see a man about a dog.

Robusto

@Cerberus You, sir, are a restorateur.

Mitch

Well, not exactly a euphemism for just peeing, but a euphemism for "Leave me alone. I gotta go because I'm bored"

Robusto

My euphemism would be something like "I'm going away now because I'm not nailed down."

@RegDwigнt You're forgetting the Siberian Traps.

Siberian Traps

The Siberian Traps (Russian: Сибирские траппы, Sibirskije trappy) form a large region of volcanic rock, known as a large igneous province, in Siberia, Russia. The massive eruptive event which formed the traps, one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history, continued for a million years and spanned the Permian–Triassic boundary, about 251 to 250 million years ago. The term "traps" is derived from the Swedish word for stairs (trappa, or sometimes trapp), referring to the step-like hills forming the landscape of the region, which is typical of...

RegDwigнt

@Robusto or that. Rings a bell, yes.

Cerberus

1:51 PM

@Robusto Je vous en prie.

@Robusto Ooh I like the Siberian Traps, with the mass-extinction and all.

Robusto

@Cerberus You have strange tastes.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto I am not forgetting anything. I'm saying this is like making a documentary about the US, investing "3.5 years, 1200 days of shooting, 10 camera teams, 50 hours of aerial filming, 100000 kilometres of travel", and then the best you've got is a 94-minute DVD called "America: the kingdom of cats, vegetarians, and geysers".

Robusto

@RegDwigнt You left out gun nuts.

RegDwigнt

Is what I'm saying the whole time.

It's not like there aren't any cats, vegetarians, or geysers. There are probably tens of millions, in fact. But certainly a better title would be, um, anything at all but "cats and geysers".

Cerberus

@Robusto It simply means more "customers" for me.

Robusto

1:56 PM

To be fair, someone probably has already done a book about "Russia: The Land of Graft, Corruption, and Colossal Government Overreach."

Gotta find a new angle, yeah?

RegDwigнt

@Robusto that's a good point, actually. That someone is dead and buried together with his cojones. Perhaps the makers of this one specifically wanted to try a different fate.

Robusto

A prudent move.

RegDwigнt

Robusto

Hmm, just got a work email entitled, and I shit you not, "Boston Brain Tumor Ride on May 17" . . . Mommy, I don't want to go on that ride.

RegDwigнt

Anyway. Just go ask a hundred Russians where they'd look for a tiger, then tally "Africa" vs. "Russia".

Mitch

1:59 PM

@Robusto like cornuts, kinda salty

RegDwigнt

@Robusto Brain Tumor Awareness Day.

Mitch

@Robusto "This extinction event, also called the Great Dying, affected all life on Earth" ... pats down pockets

Uh oh... all the frogs I put in my pockets this morning aren't moving.

Damn you, Permian-Triassic Extinction event

Wait... no cause for alarm. everything's OK. They were dead already when I put them there.

RegDwigнt

Huhuh, you said triassic.

Cerberus

I am monassic.

Not quite monastic, though.

RegDwigнt

Mona Lisass Smile.

Cerberus

2:17 PM

Yuck.

RegDwigнt

Yeah, Julia Roberts.

Cerberus

Skittles.

Braiding.

Object-class distinction.

RegDwigнt

2:57 PM

Mr Treehorn treats objects like classes.

Cerberus

Mr Treebeard treats hobbits like little ents.

George Pompidou

Mr Crime murders people

George Pompidou

3:26 PM

and does other assorted crime too

like larceny and securities fraud.

if you're not careful he might steal your roof shingles and also take more of your return on investment than previously agreed

Actually, statistically speaking, there's not really any accuracy to it at all. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report - an extremely detailed record of pretty much anything law enforcement or crime-related in the U.S. - white and black people are killed by police in the U.S. at rates that very closely mirror the rates at which people from those groups are arrested. The ratio of white/black deaths by police lies in between the ratio of white/black arrests and the rate of white/black arrests for violent crimes, which seems like a reasonable outcome to expect in the case of no bias. — reirab 13 hours ago

does anyone agree that maybe this isn't such a good thing to bring up in this forum?

as statistic/factual as it is, it does warrant an opinion to think of it in that manner, and as a result this could cause argument on what I see as a political matter in the US

which just doesn't belong there. it's irrelevant to ELU whether or not there is racial injustice in the police system of a country

plus, this guy seems like kind of a dingus to me… it's clear that there are in fact some racial issues going on.

what? I didn't say that. I do not have opinions on race because I am white and privileged.

Mitch

@Cerberus It ain't all skittles and beer

@RegDwigнt Mr. Morton is the subject of this sentence, and what the predicate says he does.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in body: Energy vs. Power by Steven on english.stackexchange.com

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:45 PM

@GeorgePompidou So his assertion is that black people are killed by police in the same proportion as whites, per arrest? And that makes it okay? That's just moving the goal posts. It's common knowledge that black people are arrested way more often than whites, even when the crime rates are the same or lower than whites.

George Pompidou

I agree; did you not read my subsequent messages?

I just don't think his comment belongs there

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Yes. You didn't mention the higher arrest rates.

George Pompidou

regardless. even if I agreed with him, it still wouldn't belong there, bei mir.

but of course you're right

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'd say it's borderline to include it or not. In cases where the interpretation of the language is dependent on outside facts, getting the facts right matters. But in this case the actual facts are less important than the perceived facts.

George Pompidou

in this case I think he's just getting on the case of the people making the jokes, because he disagrees with them

it has nothing to do with language.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:48 PM

yeah

George Pompidou

what a buzzkillington

or a buzztötungsberg if he's a Jew

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:08 PM

I'm so annoyed by the public's reaction in my province regarding the new sex ed curriculum.

There have been actual protests

one douchebag was insisting that 6 was too young to know the words "penis" and "vagina"

The reporter asked him "What's wrong with knowing the names of the body parts?" and he said "I'm not talking about body parts, I'm talking about genitalia!"

Meanwhile all the homophobes are out, claiming that the Premier (she's lesbian) has some hidden pedophile agenda. Because homosexuality = pedophilia, doncha know

Anonymous

@SmokeDetector I wonder what keyword that was

Anonymous

@tchrist Hello!

George Pompidou

4:27 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 haha

I believe that all this anti-anything-about-sex stuff spawning from religion and puritanism comes directly from the insecurity of people who don't have as much sex as they'd like to

it's so obvious. I met this nutcase Jesus kid here in Germany who is from rural America and he gets completely shocked whenever he sees anything sex related. like he got all pale and awkward when we passed a condoms machine on the street somewhere and then starts uncomfortably yelling at how sex-related things shouldn't be in public

the kid clearly has never gotten any in his life

so naturally he feels weird about it and wants for nobody else to talk about it around him because it makes him feel shitty.

and that I think is the foundation of the Catholic church.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@GeorgePompidou I dunno. I think historically, most clergy - at least the ones as powerful as bishops or higher, have had as much sex as they wanted to.

George Pompidou

sure, I'm explaining how they get a following.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

A priest once made a point of explaining to my aunt that their vows don't say "don't have sex" they say "don't get married"

George Pompidou

lots of religion is based on appealing to what people feel bad or insecure or unsafe about

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I think people are mainly insecure about sex because of religion.

George Pompidou

4:36 PM

bah

I doubt it.

just from talking to people and gauging their emotions when they discuss sex.

and from self-observation. when I was younger and going through puberty I got really weird and insecure about sex things.

surely I'm not religious. it's just normal.

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They take a vow of celibacy, not of chastity. But illicit sex is still a mortal sin by their reckoning.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

well, it's hard to judge on that level. those people are raised in a culture that is wholly insecure about sex.

@Robusto a mortal sin?

Robusto

That's what the Roman Catholic church calls it.

George Pompidou

yes. and given that that insecurity comes naturally with growing up, I believe some of them just haven't grown up/started having as much sex as they would like to.

Robusto

Mortal sin

Mortal sins ((Latin) peccata mortalia) in Catholic theology are wrongful acts that condemn a person to Hell after death if unforgiven. These sins are considered "mortal" because they constitute a rupture in a person's link to God's saving grace: the person's soul becomes "dead", not merely weakened. A mortal sin does not usually mean a sin that cannot be repented; even after a mortal sin there is a chance for repentance. To Roman Catholics, repentance and a firm resolution to sin no more or to avoid occasions where one would be likely to give into sin (with at least imperfect contrition) restores...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:38 PM

@Robusto yeah but so what. They also have the sacrament of confession.

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hey, don't argue with me about that. I'm just reporting the facts.

George Pompidou

hahaha

Robusto

I knew a seminarian when I was in high school, and he was putting off his ordination for one reason or another. A seminarian friend of his told him, "You're just afraid of locking your balls away."

George Pompidou

I can only assume that means people who enjoy semen?

Robusto

I took it to mean that he was indulging in sexual relations, but that he would have to stop once he became a priest.

Like St. Augustine, who reportedly said, "Lord, grant me chastity—but not yet."

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:42 PM

@Robusto Sure, one of the consequences of celibacy is supposed to be chastity. But the point was that this priest was directly saying that having extramarital sex was not as serious a problem as getting married would be, for a priest.

Robusto

For a pre-priest, not for a priest.

George Pompidou

5:31 PM

so what happens if I get 100 score on something?

Mitch

24 hours ago, by Mitch

@GeorgePompidou you got a bronze for getting 10 upvotes, silver for 25, and you're rising so fast you might get a gold for passing 100. Chapeau!

George Pompidou

but what does that mean?

Mitch

Or to be explicit, if you get 100 upvotes on an answer you get a gold star.

George Pompidou

oh, that's it?

but it doesn't do something?

Mitch

You thought there was more to what I was saying?

crl

5:35 PM

i.imgur.com/3rTQjRi.gifv

Mitch

@GeorgePompidou 'Do'? this ain't real life.

Do you want to get cake or something?

@crl the one in the middle is trying to bite its own tail

George Pompidou

I dunno. I suddenly got the ability to edit posts without approval. so that was nice. I thought maybe if I got a "gold star" that would give me another cool thing like being able to draw penises on people's profiles or something.

crl

@Mitch Ouroboros!

Mitch

@GeorgePompidou Oh. You should read the docs more. Passing rep thresholds allows you to do more things. But higher scores on qs and as will get you badges and stars.

George Pompidou

also, can someone help me understand whether this professor's heading in an email to me being Hi Mister, is somehow intended sarcastically or to imply something, or just weird because English isn't his native language?

who starts an email like that?!

Mitch

5:38 PM

@GeorgePompidou "never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity"

George Pompidou

but it's a Professor

he's smart

crl

oh computer vision, I wish I did that

George Pompidou

it's actually really boring

crl

nah

George Pompidou

I just need an extra 4 credits in Kognitionswissenschaft and the other classes are unavailable or more boring

but can we address this Hi Mister,

cause it's freaking me out

crl

5:40 PM

What did you expect? Dear Mister?

Mitch

@GeorgePompidou He's not a native speaker and is just using a formula he learned a long time ago and was never corrected.

Hi John

I'm guessing.

I hope you're right…

Oh right /me realise I'm not native too now

George Pompidou

5:41 PM

otherwise that's rather seltsam

crl

"Hi Nigga"

Mitch

@GeorgePompidou there's another quote...

George Pompidou

@crl hahaha

Sup G,

Mitch

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

don't take it personally. In fact, he doen't care enough about you to be mean to you personally.

He doesn't care about all his students equally.

George Pompidou

I hope not. if I got that from a native English speaker I'd probably ask if I offended him somehow.

crl

5:43 PM

I hope you'll do some Matlab

George Pompidou

gah

I really am more of a linguistics guy, man.

crl

Ah I see

George Pompidou

this image processing is just so much math crunching I fall asleep.

it's a snoozefest in that class.

I am taking two very interesting classes and one seminar in linguistics though.

crl

literary vs scientific

George Pompidou

the seminar is so far over my head that I'm probably just going to drop it before the final so they don't fail me, but I like being at the "lectures"

I think linguistics is very much scientific.

crl

5:46 PM

If done right, it should be

George Pompidou

my NLP class is totally scientific. and computational linguistics too.

and even the seminar on cognitive modeling of language, which is a mindfuck

Mitch

@GeorgePompidou I've always been surprised at how boring artificial intelligence is in the classroom. It's all about using hackish tricks to make things appear intelligent. Like seeing the explanation of how a magician made an elephant disappear. "What, that's all it was? You just had two curtains?'

George Pompidou

@Mitch intro to AI was shockingly boring, but other things in the field are okay.

Mitch

@GeorgePompidou that's what it takes.

George Pompidou

my intro to AI class was like… if Mary is John's mother, then who… is Mary's son?

:O I DUNNO LETS PLUG IT IN TO PROLOG

Mitch

5:50 PM

@GeorgePompidou exactly. brute force tree searching, constraint programming.

crl

simplex

Mitch

@GeorgePompidou the difficulty is that they are teaching techniques which is what you need to know, but they aren't (necessarily) teaching the problems that need those techniques.

@crl in AI? I've never seen that for an AI problem.

crl

right, it's more an optimization method

George Pompidou

hides under desk thinking my professor hates me

Mitch

Your prof doesn't hate you. he doesn't want to waste any energy at all. But that guy who's hiding under the desk, now that's disrespectful!! Probably some american, with their undisciplined ways.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…