English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

skullpatrol

00:18

in The Reading Room, 1 hour ago, by Rand al'Thor

I just learned that Ursula K. Le Guin has died. Her words are always with us. Some of them are written on my soul. I miss her as a glorious funny prickly person, & I miss her as the deepest and smartest of the writers, too. Still honoured I got to do this: https://vimeo.com/112654091

Tweeted by neilhimself on January 23, 2018 at 10:27 PM

2

R.I.P.

Matt E. Эллен

00:44

@Mitch ?

Mitch

01:11

@MattE.Эллен I think it means 'pwned'

Robusto

@skullpatrol Damn. She was the best there was.

I've never read better sci-fi/fantasy than hers. And I include Tolkien in that.

Not to mention her short stories.

@Cerberus And because they usually generate a lot of bogus activity, diverting attention from the more interesting questions and cheapening the very notion of acquiring reputation on this site.

From a social point of view most SF has been incredibly regressive and unimaginative. All those Galactic Empires, taken straight from the British Empire of 1880. All those planets—with 80 trillion miles between them!—conceived of as warring nation-states, or as colonies to be exploited, or to be nudged by the benevolent Imperium of Earth towards self-development—the White Man’s Burden all over again. The Rotary Club on Alpha Centauri, that’s the size of it. —Ursula K. LeGuin

Male elitism has run rampant in SF. But is it only male elitism? Isn’t the “subjection of women” in SF merely a symptom of a whole which is authoritarian, power-worshipping, and intensely parochial? —Ursula K. LeGuin

Yep, "...authoritarian, power-worshiping, and intensely parochial" really sums it up.

Those quotes are from this: American SF and The Other.

skullpatrol

01:44

nytimes.com/2016/08/29/books/…

Robusto

Yes.

As great as she was, she was nevertheless catastrophically underrated.

Her fiction did not drop into any convenient slot as so many other "genre" writers does, like a bag of chips in a vending machine. It opened doors, worlds, minds.

> The Earthsea series was clearly influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. But instead of a holy war between Good and Evil, Ms. Le Guin’s stories are organized around a search for “balance” among competing forces — a concept she adapted from her lifelong study of Taoist texts.

skullpatrol

Indeed, "balance" is an important concept in life.

tchrist

02:07

skullpatrol

"Nicanor Parra, Chilean Voice in an ‘Anti-Poet’ Movement, Dies at 103" via @nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/obituaries/nicanor-parra-chile-poet-dead.html

Tweeted by StackLiterature on January 24, 2018 at 1:10 AM

103 years old!

tchrist

@skullpatrol They use octal in Chile. :)

skullpatrol

:-D

So rare to hear someone live past 100.

Tonepoet

02:45

@Robusto I don't remember that much of a resemblance between the Earthsea trilogy and the Lord of the Rings trilogy to be honest. The magical elements were kept to a minimum in Lord of the Rings, and kept rather mysterious for one thing, whereas the details of magic were very explicitly detailed in Earthsea, at least to a point. Lord of the Rings was mostly about a fellowship, with some emphasis on certain members: Earthsea was almost exclusively about Ged if I recall correctly.

Lord of the Rings was out to save the world from an invasive evil. Earthsea was a journey to rectify mistakes that were made.

With that having been said though, I don't remember the details of either so very well.

skullpatrol

...and, as they say, the devil is always in the details...

Mitch

03:10

@skullpatrol you devil!

skullpatrol

ikr

Cerberus

@Robusto True.

Robusto

03:24

@Tonepoet Where did I say there was a resemblance? The point is that they're vastly different.

Tonepoet

@Robusto I was commenting on the "clearly influenced" part of that quotation.

Robusto

The first book of Earthsea was about Ged's struggle, but while he features in other books he's not always at center stage.

CowperKettle

My first post on Health SE: health.stackexchange.com/questions/15086/…

(0:

Robusto

@Tonepoet That still doesn't say anything about a resemblance. You can be influenced by someone without being anything like them.

@CowperKettle I dunno. When medicos talk about a "productive cough" they mean a cough that produces phlegm and expectorants.

The opposite of a "dry cough" ...

CowperKettle

@Robusto I agree. "Productive vasculitis" might be understood as-is, but I wonder why it is only mentioned in Russian and not in "native-speaker" English.

Maybe because in the Western world the diagnostics are more developed, and this rough classification is considered outdated

Tonepoet

03:36

@Robusto That's true to an extent with people, although the most influential people are the role models you try to emulate, and besides that there is also the fact that this is a context of literary criticism, in which case it is harder to have that sort of influence. There are fewer ways of one story affecting another one than to serve as an example for its form.

Robusto

@Tonepoet Let's just say the resemblances, if there are any, are not overt. Gandalf was a wizard and so was Ged. That's a resemblance of a sort, I suppose, but not really worth talking about.

George Gershwin admired Ravel very much and wanted to study with him; Ravel told him he could do so and become a second-class Ravel or learn on his own and become a first-class Gershwin.

Tonepoet

@Robusto That vaguely reminds me of an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, where Thomas Riker was offered command of his own ship, although Riker chose to stay aboard the enterprise rather than go off on his own.

Færd

04:34

For so long I had misinterpreted the horns gesture to have the same origin as, and therefore subtly hint at, the shocker. Turns out it's not a dirty sign at all.

Dirtiness is in the eyes of the interpreter.

CowperKettle

Færd

@CowperKettle It'll taste better if you let the cardamom infuse with the tea. Cardamom sugar cubes are for lazy people who have nothing but unflavored tea bags.

Those ain't cubes BTW. :)

Færd

09:54

> - Ali was here.

> - So he was.

What do you think about this so? Too literal for common speech?

Guess not.

CowperKettle

10:42

Word of the day: superficialmost

Robusto

11:03

@Tonepoet Kind of the opposite of what I was talking about with the Gershwin story.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch I see. using how the letter look not how they're meant to sound. I was trying to read it and could make neither head nor tail. Google translate did not help even a little bit :D

Robusto

@Færd Literal? No. So is used in that way as a discourse marker to express agreement in a possibly confrontational way.

Tonepoet

@Robusto Yeah, I concur. It's the same sort of opportunity, which is what reminded me of the circumstance, but the mentor posed opposing advice and we opposing results. Picard's advice was more of the big fish in a small pond dilemma (and it is a dilemma because the alternative is being a nobody, except where it counts).

CowperKettle

> The medulla contains individual under-developed Hassall’s corpuscles. (Will this be understood as "the corpuscles were undergoing development when the animal was euthanized", or will it be misunderstood as "the corpuscles failed to develop properly"?)

Robusto

@CowperKettle The latter, if it is in fact a misunderstanding. Depends on the context, really.

I suppose it could be understood as evidence that the animal had not reached adulthood at the time of the euthanasia.

CowperKettle

11:22

So there is no way to state it clearly.. hm. In the Russian original document it is clear that the corpuscles were "in the development stage" when the animal was killed.

> The medulla contains individual being-developed Hassall’s corpuscles (this is how it's written in Russian)

That's how I'll translate it: The medulla contains individual Hassall’s corpuscles in the process of formation.

Robusto

That sounds more like "under development" than "under-developed" ...

@CowperKettle Or perhaps The medulla contains individual Hassall's corpuscles that are/were undergoing development.

In the process of formation sounds like you mean they were in very early development, which is fine if that is really what you mean.

Tonepoet

12:17

@Færd It has connotations of delinquency. It reminds me of constructions such as "Billy the Kid was here." or this derivative form:

So it has an allusive effect, at least to me. Is that your intention?

Granted, I'm assuming you are asking about the whole passage, or the first part, rather than the response.

Mitch

13:22

@MattE.Эллен I've entirely forgotten where I saw it. I have no idea now. Even the shape doesn't mean anything to me.

@Færd Did you mean 'literary'? (very different from 'literal')

Feeds

14:34

0

Q: What would be the best word to define myself?

I work for a Team of Local Guides. My job is to read the customer's email requests, schedule everything and inform the guides. Can I define myself as a "coordinator", "orchestrator" or "organizator". English is not my first language so I don't know the right word for this. Thanks in advance!

single-word-requests

Lawrence

@CowperKettle The usual form would be "contains individual developing Hassal's corpuscles", but that invites the questions about said individual.

CowperKettle

15:03

@Lawrence Thank you. "Individual" means "singe", "separate", "standalone"

Is it better to say sporadic or isolated instead?

Or single?

Or occasional?

CowperKettle

15:37

There's no verb "to autopse", so we don't have "autopsers" or "autopsists", like we don't say "He was autopsed yesterday". — Max Williams 6 mins ago

hm

> There are groups of empty cells that lack glycogen.

This sentence looks awkward.

But it's a direct translation. Maybe I should remodel it.

> Groups of empty cells lacking glycogen are visible/are present/are observed/were observed/ etc.

Feeds

0

Q: What do you call a night sky without any stars??any single word for it?

'A night without stars'; I need a single word for it if possible.....

single-word-requests

Mitch

YIL (Yesterday I Learned) that 'sublime' doesn't mean what I though it meant.

I thought it meant something like 'really great, but subtly so, it kinda grows on you, or you need to digest it well to appreciate it, unassuming but transcendant'

or something like that.

but instead it means "expressing lofty ideas in an elevated manner"

I feel like I only ever hear the word in pretentious reviews of classical music (or any other art)

CowperKettle

I thought it was an adjective and meant "sitting under a lime tree"

Tilia

Tilia is a genus of about 30 species of trees native or bushes throughout most of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. Commonly called lime trees or "'lime bushes'" in the British Isles, they are not closely related to the lime fruit. Other names include linden, and basswood for the North American species. The genus occurs in Europe and eastern North America, but the greatest species diversity is found in Asia. Under the Cronquist classification system, this genus was placed in the family Tiliaceae, but genetic research summarised by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group has resulted in the incorporation...

Mitch

Etymonline says : "1580s, "expressing lofty ideas in an elevated manner," from Middle French sublime (15c.), or directly from Latin sublimis "uplifted, high, borne aloft, lofty, exalted, eminent, distinguished," possibly originally "sloping up to the lintel," from sub "up to" (see sub-) + limen "lintel, threshold, sill" (see limit (n.)). The sublime (n.) "the sublime part of anything, that which is stately or imposing" is from 1670s."

@CowperKettle haha, but yeah that's sorta where I was going...

I thought the etymology, which is actually cognate, was 'sub-' + 'limn' for threshold, under the threshold, similar to subliminal not sublimate, that is, a subtle greatness

CowperKettle

16:12

I've been translating this necropsy document, quite long, and used hyperemia as a translation of Russian полнокровие. "The vessels are visibly hyperemic" etc. But I've realized that maybe it's better to translate as congestion, since the blood has already clotted (or whatever it does) in a dead animal.

I wonder now how to check it.

Matt E. Эллен

16:29

@Mitch I thought it meant "not quite lime enough"

leading to superlime, a crime fighting lime

@Mitch that's not what I read when I went to that link

Feeds

1

Q: What is a single word to describe someone who has very little or no authority?

What is a single word to describe someone who has very little or no authority? An older colleague used to say it but I cannot recall.

single-word-requests

Mitch

17:12

@MattE.Эллен Oh. Ah. The second definition. For adjectives.

@MattE.Эллен If Marvel hasn't yet created a movie for that, they will

Matt E. Эллен

by day, a lime that works at Subway, by night a crime fighter with the powers of a lime. The sound track is just songs by Sublime

terdon

And his trusty sidekick, Blimey?

Feeds

0

Q: Year : Anniversary :: Day : ___?___

Is there a term for a milestone number of days since an event, just as an anniversary is a milestone (in increments of years)? I want to say “100 day-versary” or something like that.

single-word-requests

Matt E. Эллен

@terdon a lime brought up in Britain.

She's this series' Nurse Claire

terdon

17:29

snort

@MattE.Эллен Well, duh! He's a Blimey!

Matt E. Эллен

exactly :D

terdon

Speaking of which, I'm officially a London resident now.

Loving the weather so far! ;)

Matt E. Эллен

:D

we had a surprise downpour this morning. no build up, just all the cats and dogs in one ten minute deluge

where abouts in the British metropolis are you?

terdon

@MattE.Эллен We found a very nice (I believe the estate agent term is charming) house in Kensal Green. NW10

Matt E. Эллен

oh! nice.

terdon

17:37

It's about half the size of my flat in Athens at twice the price :) But that's London for ya. And it really is charming, not just code for "small", so I'm quite pleased with it.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer: What sense of "hack" is involved in "five hacks for using coffee filters"? by Billijo Blewett on english.SE

terdon

Let me know if you're ever in town, I'd love to have a pint and actually meet you face to face!

Matt E. Эллен

I will.

Only twice the price :-o ;)

terdon

@MattE.Эллен It was a big flat in Athens ;)

Oh. Hang on, you're right. It's 3x the price.

Matt E. Эллен

lol

terdon

17:41

shudders

Mitch

17:53

@MetaEd sorry, was I derailing your chat? I thought it was all about the original topic anyway

@terdon not lol!

Feeds

0

Q: What's the adjective to describe something that's to do with conviction?

If someone has a strong sense of morality, you can say things like "they're on a high moral plane." Moral being used as an adjective. If someone has very strong conviction, what could you say: "they're on a high ______ plane." The sentence I was actually just trying to write was like "don't try...

single-word-requests

Mitch

I saw a chart of price of a latte in terms of minimum wage for each country.

Surprisingly Switzerland had a very affordable latte

MetaEd

@Mitch It's all good.

Faheem Mitha

18:10

@Mitch Link?

Mitch

19:45

from businessinsider.com/…

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Thank you.

Mitch

which I interpret to mean that Zurich has a really high minimum wage

not that latte's are cheap there

or rather that if you work there then lattes are cheap

Faheem Mitha

The link is broken here.

Also, I don't understand this list, because lots of places don't have minimum wages. I think India might have one, but it's a bad joke. Because the Indian Govt is run by criminal morons.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2095122/…

@FaheemMitha haha .... wait that's sad

yeah, there's a lot of inference and nuance there

the article mentions the bigmac index, how the average is different from the lowest (related to gini index of the country) etc

Faheem Mitha

There's en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_Wages_Act_1948, but I can't be bothered to read it in detail. But the Indian legal system is so dysfunctional that it doesn't mean much anyway.

> The highest minimum wage rate as updated in 2012 is Rs. 322/day in Andaman and Nicobar[3] to Rs. 38/day[4] in Tripura.

Rs 322 is close to USD 5. Even in India, that's not a lot of money.

And people tend to underestimate how expensive places like India are, anyway.

Sure, some things are cheaper, but other things are as or more expensive than the West.

Feeds

20:33

0

Q: Is there a single word for 'internet dissociation'?

I responded today on a Stack Exchange site and later realised that my words had been of a slightly different character than if I had, say, left a post-it note on a colleague's desk whom I knew by face-to-face conversation. This is not because of anonymity as I choose not to be anonymous on the ...

single-word-requests

Mitch

20:48

@FaheemMitha in rupees or dollars?

@FaheemMitha also, minimum wage is just what is specified as a government law, but there's no guarantee people follow that exactly, lots of ways around it.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Not sure what you are asking.

I mean if you compare say buying computer equipment in India, it costs more than it would in the US - converting Rs. to dollars or vice versa.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha it all depends. is the person earning money in India or the West, and is the item being bought an Indian brand or a Western brand and is it being bought in India or is it bought in the west?

Feeds

0

Q: Can the word "vernacular" be used as a way to describe a visual scene set in everyday life?

Can the word "vernacular" be used as a way to describe a visual scene set in everyday life? For example: Thomas is a photographer best known for his fine art series of nostalgic Star Wars scenes set in the vernacular

single-word-requests nouns descriptive-grammar

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch the former doesn't matter. And Indian electronics doesn't really exist.

Mitch

so there's an exchange rate difference, and then what the price is set at in each place, and there is what one usually earns for the same job in the different places.

Faheem Mitha

20:53

It's pretty much the same stuff internationally.

Mitch

eg a flight of 500 miles by a entry level bank teller

Faheem Mitha

I'm not concerning myself with Indian vs US wages. All I'm saying is some stuff is more expensive in direct currency conversion terms in India than in the US.

Mitch

is the flight from NYC to Chicago, or Mumbai to Bangalore, and does the bank teller live in the US or in India?

'more expensive' depends on all those things.

Faheem Mitha

E.g. if I go on Amazon India and compare to prices on Amazon US, then prices on AI are like 2 to three times more than the AUS one.

That's really all I meant to say.

Mitch

OK

That makes sense.

I wonder if one could buy it from Amazon.US and ship it to India onesself

Faheem Mitha

20:56

Given that Indian wages are substantially lower than US ones, of course that means that electronic equipment is much more expensive as a proportion of wages in India than in the US. Like maybe a factor of 9 or 10 times.

@Mitch Sure, but shipping charges and import duty make that a very expensive option.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha that could easily account for the 2-3x markup

Faheem Mitha

India has a sliding scale for import duties. I think electronics are taxed heavily.

Mitch

some things might be made in India that are comparable

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Well, that accounts for most of it, yes. And I suppose the importer wants to make a profit too.

@Mitch Surprisingly, that doesn't appear to be the case.

I actually put it to my dentist recently. Yes, I don't have much of a social life.

Mitch

cost of living involve not just purchasable consumer goods but housing prices, food prices, taxes, travel expense (like gas/petrol) etc.

Faheem Mitha

21:01

He said that running a manufacturing business in India was a nightmare. So people tend to not do it. I would have thought lack of skilled labor was big factor too.

Mitch

a nightmare because of government regulations/bureaucracy?

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Of course. That was just an example. But for example electricity is more expensive than in the US, just in dollar terms (I think). So much more expensive as a wage proportion.

@Mitch Yes, and also corruption/inefficiency/plain insanity.

I've actually been struck by the wide variety of things that don't seem to be manufactured in India.

For example, almost all luggage racks sold on Amazon India are imported. Mostly from the US, as far as I can tell. Which is very weird.

And doing a direct search for luggage racks doesn't turn up much else.

Mitch

weird

Faheem Mitha

India does manufacture a wide variety of clothing, for example.

But there are entire areas where they are mostly missing. Electronics, for example. And really precision anything. Like high end machine tools, for example.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha OK yeah. so electricity more expensive in India but housing food not as expensive (if you just compare via exchange rate)

Faheem Mitha

21:07

@Mitch Yes, housing and food is cheaper. Food is much cheaper.

Having said that, imtma.in/pages/84/industry-data

Mitch

12th place is pretty good

Faheem Mitha

Though also industr.com/en/EM-Magazine/metal-cutting/…

> Nov 15, 2017 As per recent industry data, high-end machine tools are majorly imported in India.

That's in line with what I know.

Mitch

India should do like china did and create cement plants and pave everything

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch How would that help?

Mitch

would reduce dusty congested town centers

build an interstate highway system, to increase commerce

Faheem Mitha

21:10

@Mitch Oh?

I think India manufactures plenty of cement.

Mitch

1 downside... cement plants are creating most of the current green house gases (more than coal power plants)

@FaheemMitha they should make more

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch I don't know anything about cement.

ibef.org/industry/cement-india.aspx

says

> India is the second largest producer of cement in the world.

Mitch

Oh.

haha

2nd place is not winning!

Faheem Mitha

But I don't really see what is so wonderful about cement.

Mitch

2nd place is 1st loser

It's just a crazy scheme I had in my head

Faheem Mitha

21:14

@Mitch I don't think it's a competition.

Mitch

yeah it totally is

Faheem Mitha

21:37

Anyway, I don't know that much about Indian manucturing. Just that I've periodically tried to buy pre-fab stuff here, and have been amazed I couldn't.

MetaEd

@FaheemMitha It lasts. One big reason we have the Roman Pantheon and Colosseum is the Romans made them from concrete.

Faheem Mitha

@MetaEd From what I've seen of modern Bombay architecture, I'd much prefer those buildings didn't last.

Roman buildings were less ugly.

Cerberus

23:32

@FaheemMitha True.

But most modernist buildings don't last, luckily.

They're built to last a couple of decades.

And often times, demolition is cheaper than reinforcement.

Lawrence

@CowperKettle Yes, I understand what the original was trying to convey. I was pointing out the alternate reading of the 'natural' rewording of the smaller phrase. :)

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…