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00:00 - 01:0001:00 - 00:00

01:00
I asked @Cerberus if he had read it.
@Mitch I would say not! I would say Maghreb or just northern Africa, if that had been allowed.
@Cerberus There are, but they are in order of commonality and modernity or whatever. I mean, the third one is about horses.
Actually more like 10 minutes ago.
@FaheemMitha Ah, only small parts, long ago.
Why?
@Færd haha I can't read my own typos. I meant 'orient'
01:01
@Færd I wouldn't say so, not about the adjectival v. substantive senses.
I knew someone once who was doing her thesis on "Orientalism". Or maybe related topics. In Cambridge.
@FaheemMitha nice. I haven't read the entire transcript yet. working on it.
@Cerberus No particular reason. Just seems sort-of relevant.
@Mitch OK :)
Does anyone know the television series Temptation Island or Survivor?
01:02
@Mitch Is it worthwhile?
@Cerberus That was not allowed in the rules of this game!
I once had to tutor this student who had written an essay on orientalism in those series...
@Mitch Have you read it, then?
She was doing "media studies" or something, which is really bad.
@Cerberus Why bad?
01:03
@Mitch Then I am nonplussed!
@Cerberus You never mentioned you were an actor.
@Cerberus What kind of tutoring?
@FaheemMitha Because the entire subject (reality tv, the lowest of pop culture) is only suitable for academic research in a sociological way, not in the way one studies great works of art.
@Færd the entire transcript? There are nuggets of sanity somewhere in here.
@Cerberus It's all art.
@Cerberus I thought it was typically studied in a sociological way.
01:05
@Færd Maybe you need to take a course called "Adjunct Scope 001"?
@Mitch "Transcript" makes me think it was originally motion picture. ?
Anna Karenina? Just a long long soap opera.
Though I don't know if the studies are useful or accessible.
@FaheemMitha Not in Media Studies, alas!
I think studying mass media can potentially be a very useful way of understanding certain things.
01:06
Hamlet? Can't he make a decision already? a farce where everybody dies at the end
@Cerberus Adjuncts have indefinite scopes for all joking purposes.
@FaheemMitha Trying to get her academic writing up to an acceptable level.
Julius Caesar? a dramatized history for the unwashed
@Cerberus Ah, writing help.
@Færd Quite so.
@FaheemMitha But as a sociological phaenomenon: not as a great work of art.
01:07
Actually, there is way too much worship of works that form part of The Canon.
@FaheemMitha I did a while ago but have forgotten most every thing beyond vague impressions
Like people who get hysterical if you say that Shakespeare is overrated.
There certainly can't be too little worship of Temptation Island.
Like he is some kind of beacon of Ideal Art. Sheesh.
@Cerberus I certainly agree with that. Dreck is dreck.
It is all about the western view of 'things to the east' as exotic and 'othered'
01:09
@FaheemMitha Myeah, the Arts can be a bit like that.
@Tonepoet Hahahaha okay, thought I could pop into chat for a quick reply
@Mitch That's my impression too. But I assume Said goes into it in some detail. Not the most challenging area of study, to my mind. But perhaps useful.
@Cerberus It's a documentary?
Kind of like hitting a barn wall with an automatic weapon.
@HsMjstyMstdn Yeah, sure: We're more lenient in chat. I just thought you should know. XP
01:09
@Færd It is reality tv of the lowest sort.
1
Q: Is there a single word for "the desire to feel useful"?

Fiona M.An example that comes to mind is, let's say, the sensation you have if you go to a party and you feel the need to make use of yourself/be productive/help the host. Or maybe when you feel underutilized at a place of employment or a volunteer activity or some such — the desire to be productive and ...

@FaheemMitha and unreadable
@Cerberus And Survivla too?
Survivor, yes.
You oughtn't to know it.
also pretty pretentious with all that feeble attempt at rhyming
01:10
@Cerberus No, I don't.
@Mitch Oh, he's not that bad. I actually quite like Julius Caesar, for example.
You don't ought not to know it?
It's a pretty good play. Nice and short. Says what it wants to say, says it well, and then stops.
@Cerberus Sorry, I have to take Grammar 001.
All considerable virtues, to my mind.
01:11
@FaheemMitha I'm fairly certain at the time it was very new and changed a lot of people's minds about things. Challenged a lot of unconscious eurocentrism
@Færd Too bad.
Survivor is a reality competition television franchise produced in many countries throughout the world. The show features a group of contestants who are marooned in an isolated location, where they must provide food, water, fire, and shelter for themselves. The contestants compete in challenges for rewards and immunity from elimination. The contestants are progressively eliminated from the game as they are voted out by their fellow contestants until only one remains and is awarded the grand prize and is named the "Sole Survivor." The format for Survivor was created in 1992 by the British television...
@Mitch Oh, no doubt. Lots of things seem obvious in hindsight.
It's British, apparently.
@Cerberus But that wasn't ungrammatical, on second thought.
At least Faheem will hate it!
01:12
@FaheemMitha Friends Romans Countrymen blah dee blah dee blah
@Mitch Well, yes, it starts like that.
@Færd If not, then what infinitive can you supply after don't?
But really, it has quite a lot of good stuff. And its scepticism of the cult of Royalty etc is quite modern.
> I don't (know it).
Seeing as Shakespeare lived under a monarchy, one wonders what he really thought of the institution.
Which unfortunately still exists in the UK. Ugh. Though in a very watered down form.
01:14
@Færd I don't think that would constitute a proper reply?
@FaheemMitha The start of every bad oration. Change 'Romans' for 'Slovaks' or 'Malays'.
> You shouldn't enter the forest. — No, I don't (enter the forest).
@Mitch I don't know if Shakespeare can be blamed for that.
I don't think that works.
4 mins ago, by Cerberus
You oughtn't to know it.
> = You prolly don't know about it.
> - No, I don't.
01:15
Umm.
@FaheemMitha Oh the British As ineffectual as an elementary school play
@Færd I intended it as, you shouldn't know it.
And of course a play about JC is anyway of great interest, because he was such an enormously important person in history.
You're not supposed to know it. It's better that you don't know it.
@FaheemMitha I think we should blame somebody, and who better than the first?
01:16
@Mitch lol
@FaheemMitha Was he, really?
@Cerberus I'd say so, yes.
Or did you mean Jesus Christ...
He presided over the destruction of the Roman Republic. Itself a very significant event.
@FaheemMitha haha. this is good troll material. Why isn't anyone playing?
01:17
@Cerberus That's not how know is normally used, I think.
@Cerberus I mean Julius Caesar.
@FaheemMitha I suppose so. But that republic was running on its last legs anyway. Remember Sulla and Marius?
It's unclear whether Jesus Christ actually existed.
And Augustus really finished the job.
@Cerberus Yes, it was. Still, he gave it the final push.
01:18
I would say that was Augustus.
@Cerberus Those guys? A bunch of asses
At least Caesar was killed in time.
Berlusconi would have done better
And it's arguable how much of a republic the Roman Republic was, anyway.
There I said it
01:18
@Færd It wasn't normal language.
They were pretty terrible before they officially became Imperial.
What does terrible have to do with republic?
@Cerberus Well, Augustus finished things off, certainly.
@Cerberus One sort of assumes that more democratic means less violent.
Mm I don't know about that.
These names I remember from an HBO series ...
01:19
But the Punic Wars for example, were pretty nasty affairs.
Democratic Athens massacred entire islands, children included.
Ah, Rome.
And that was when Rome was still a republic.
@Cerberus Probably my inherent optimism asserting itself.
And Rome was never super democratic, just republican.
OK.
@Cerberus Yes, just a small group of people got to vote and stuff.
01:20
Maybe republics are on average better behaved that monarchies.
But not by a super large margin, and only on average.
Rome was pretty weak hearted. They didn't kill absolutely everybody. They'd keep a few around.
You could certainly use the modern US as a counter-example to my statement.
Having said that, the US is bad, but it could be worse.
@FaheemMitha Well, poor people did get to vote; but their votes were often 'bought', and they counted less than votes from the higher classes.
@Mitch I would've chosen to be killed outright.
@Cerberus Oh. I did not know that.
01:21
@FaheemMitha Indeed.
@Mitch Yes, they were lovely people. :-)
@FaheemMitha And of course slaves, children, women, and foreigners normally couldn't vote.
@Cerberus Right
The mongols did it right. They'd kill everybody but one and send him off to tell others.
@Mitch Caesar did kill entire towns...
Razed them, too.
01:22
Oh.
Still, the Mongolian way is more impressive.
They razed Carthage to the ground. To cite probably the most famous example.
If a town had risen against him, it would be punishes severely.
Yes, Carthage, too.
But also various towns in Gaul.
Though these days, only historians remember the fate of Carthage.
Or Corinth, among the nicest and oldest cities the world had ever known.
01:24
@Cerberus Corinth?
> Nearly a century later, in 146 BC, Corinth was captured and destroyed by Roman armies.
?
@FaheemMitha I remember it like it was yesterday. Sitting at a cafe, a short glass of mint tea, cracking pistachios between my teeth. The sun was unbearably hot that day, I do remember that quite distinctly, that's why I made sure to find a shady seat. And then the street was suddenly full of people running, a mother screaming for her child. Then the soldiers tramped in. I cannot go on.
Well anyway, back to Berlusconi.
Manspread:
@FaheemMitha Yes, exactly.
She-bagging:
Nice terms.
Haha.
Now, that's racist.
Men can bag you too.
01:29
But women can't spread?
Maybe they could, but they don't.
@Mitch I didn't know you were several thousand years old.
0
Q: Is Ragtags a valid word?

Knight FallI have seen the word ragtag in various places. Just want to be sure about Ragtags.

You must have seen a lot of stuff.
It's a pity we can't all live for a reasonable length of time. The human life span is so pitifully short.
@Mitch God, I hope we won't see him again in public office.
At least he isn't allowed to for the time being.
01:31
@FaheemMitha You still don't know that
@FaheemMitha Maybe this will be fixed in our lifetime.
@Cerberus I thought there was some recent news story about him trying to run again.
Anyway, I'll try to try to get some sleep. Later, guys.
@Cerberus Incredibly unlikely.
@FaheemMitha Sleep, like Shakespeare and Harvard, is overrated
01:32
@Mitch He's still running his party, an active politician. But I don't think he is allowed to be a minister again.
Maybe in a few hundred years. If the species lasts that long.
@FaheemMitha Sleep well!
@Mitch I disagree.
@Cerberus Thanks!
@FaheemMitha mice get by on only a year or so
they learn to communicate real fast
@Mitch Well, they don't want to learn math and music and write novels and travel and stuff.
Also, lots of reading to do.
01:33
@FaheemMitha I know. Harvard is pretty good for some things. Their math department is great.
@Mitch :-)
If I could live a 1000 years, I'd spent around 50 years trying to get a decent scientific and mathematical education. At least the basics.
I'm very slow, so it would take me awhile.
@FaheemMitha I don't know if that's true. The inner intellectual life of mice is unknown to us. Are they dullards? Or are they keeping it secret? Or are they screaming it as loud as they can but we just don't get it?
@FaheemMitha I think by year 200 you would be psychotic
not you in particular. anybody who lives that long
or if not psychotic, so equaninimous (if that is the right word) that you wouldn't care about anything, living, dying, suffering of others, you wouldn't care.
equanimitous
that's the right word, but possibly for something else
Aequanimous.
Thank you
Is there a question yet on the main site like "What is a single word for a single word?" If not, we need that.
word
aka datum
01:41
And all SWRs would be duplicates of that one.
Oh. you were answering.
I get it
@Mitch Monoword.
You could call it "a bit" of information, I guess.
uniword
nope, word is it
A single word for word is word.
How about a half a word for word is wo
What's the square root of a word?
Obviously, negative words exist. But what about no word?
"____" <---no word
@skullpatrol There are imaginary and complex words.
surreal words
01:51
Absolutely.
@skullpatrol there's no word for that!
There can be no word for no word!
"Silence" is the absence of words (and noise).
@Mitch Can't be Mitch or at least not as long as something can be called an open compound word. Prepare for take off. XP
@skullpatrol haha make that a real tag
 
1 hour later…
03:06
@Mitch It's unlikely. Sapience is quite obvious.
@Mitch Nobody knows what a human who has lived a very long time would be like. Because there is no data, obviously.
But 1000 years wouldn't seem that long if you kept busy. Assuming your surrounding civilization was to remain stable, of course. Hardly a given at any point in history.
03:23
Still can't sleep?
03:33
0
Q: Is there a word to for people who directly reports to me in office?

AADTechnicalThere are about 10-12 co-workers who directly report to me in office. It's a private company but of very large size. They are Junior to me in terms of experience and also are below me in Organisation hierarchy. Also I am their manager/boss who is responsible for their annual appraisals in comp...

03:48
@Cerberus I guess I'm up now. It's after 9 am.
 
2 hours later…
05:33
0
Q: Is there a word that captures the different moods and ways a word can be prnounced in?

John JoeI am looking for a way to categorize these different ways a given word can be said to convey completely different emotions in different contexts, and I feel like there is some proper term for it that I don't know about. For instance, you could say "Hi" in a very sarcastic way to convey a sense o...

 
6 hours later…
11:18
0
Q: Word for "gait" of handwriting

mungfleshIs there a specific word to describe the "consistent" nature of a person's ability to repeatedly write the same word in the same way, eg. as per a signature. Something like "style" but less generic. It's kind of like the gait describes a persons walk.

12:11
Is there anyone?
I have a question
askaway
There are no vegetables in the fridge, aren't there/ are there ?
What happens with that "no" and the affirmative verb?
silence
What do you mean?
Are there vegetables in the fridge or not?
I mean, what question tag do I have to put?
if your statement is negative, the tag should be positive
since no is negative, you need a positive tag
12:23
There are never vegetables, are there?
So this case is right
Isn't it?
yes
grammatically
factually, I would contest it :p
Why?
I have vegetables
(I was joking, don't worry about that)
:P
@Curio you really should go buy some vegetables, shouldn't you?
@Curio haha you got it right!
12:31
Yes I know XD
Fruit is good for you too, isn't it?
Junk food is no substitute, is it?
It depends on how you define junk food, doesn't it?
Which reminds me of a joke whose set up for the punch line is 'would I?'...innit?
@skullpatrol what I'm saying is EAT YOUR VEGETABLES DONTCHA KNOW!
Don't cha wish your veggies were fresh like mine?
Don't cha?
Don't cha?…
:-D
12:47
Don't cha? What does it mean?
cha = you
Thanks @tchrist ::goes to look up lexicon valley::
@skullpatrol spits out tea all over keyboard
2
@Cerberus I knew I had heard something about Berlusconi. It's not like he's breaking laws, but putting his name out there.
@skullpatrol Sesame Street should totally do a version with Elmo and the Pussycat Dolls
@Mitch Sure, he leads the party.
I'd watch that :P
 
1 hour later…
15:02
@Mitch Keyboard don(s) cha(i).
@Curio You don't have to add any question tags at all.
@FaheemMitha The problem with these things is knowing it (or at least a decent lower bound of it) in advance.
@Mitch Sleep is like food: your desire for more bears an inverse relationship with the quality and quantity you've just had.
15:33
@Lawrence My desire for more bears increases with their cuddliness
15:49
Mornin.
16:00
It is a good morning.
Because of the meta announcement that time between new answers is not restricted above a given rep...
I am making my announcement here that I will be asking all the questions I can think of.
I'll be setting up a process to spit them out regularly. First I will go through the dictionary for pronunciation and meaning.
Then I will go through all pairs of words asking 1) if they are the same or not (and how different), and 2) if they form a meaningful two word phrase.
I think I'll jump straight from there to sentences of unbounded length.
Hmm...I guess that means I'll be asking about novel-length sequences... I will limit myself to language questions and try to shy away from literary analysis.
@Mitch Probably it would be most efficient to use the Stack Exchange API.
@MetaEd Good suggestion. Probably python too.
@Mitch BASIC has better GOTO statements.
Wait...really? can you post questions using their API?
@Mitch According to the example given, you can post comments. I haven't looked at the API at all so I don't know what else it does.
16:08
@MetaEd Haven't we been through this before? The COMEFROM command in ICAL?
@Mitch http://api.stackexchange.com/docs/create-question
@MetaEd Reading the documentation is a bit 20th century, don't you think?
@Mitch What can I say. I'm a 20th century guy.
@Mitch INTERCAL.
Using SSL you can try it on this page: api.stackexchange.com/docs/create-question
So now I have definitely handed you enough rope.
@MetaEd My version is more terse
@MetaEd Oh expletive
@MetaEd I can see how one could create some sort of process to write functionally robust programs from mining all the answers on StackOverflow, but if you tried to do that using ELU You'd get a bowdlerized Urban Dictionary that talks about what to call a girlfriend that you think wants to tell white lies passive aggressively.
@Mitch What you're talking about is a sort of Eliza that (1) matches a new Q to existing Qs, and then (2) generates an A using existing A as a seed.
16:21
@MetaEd start coding
tippity tappity tippity
That's the sound of my keyboard
@Mitch You should probably put a matchbook under that corner.
tippity tappity tippity ding
It's one of those old-fashioned typewriters
ding
I like double spaced
I have one of those.
tippity tappity
and shorter lines
What's nice is you can compose your posts onto the paper tape and then post them later when the line noise is not so bad.
16:24
@MetaEd I remember the tape feed on the left. and instead of using it to save programs (its intended use), making little banners of words out of the dot patterns.
Sometimes when the sunspots are on the far side you can get data rates as high as 600 baud.
@Mitch Philistine.
I was young
I suppose you threw the chads at weddings, too.
A lot of birds died eating those, you know.
Pfft ... weddings. That was something that I had heard grownups do.
we just threw them in the halls
and sheepishly swept them up when we realized that the janitor would have to otherwise
16:27
But thinking back, it was amazing how quickly the tech changed (or what became available and was quickly discarded in that short time span).
0
Q: how do you describe two things/places/people who are similar?

LeeI understand juxtaposition to the placing of contrasting ideas next to each other, but what technique is used when similar ideas are placed next to each other? or is that juxtaposition also?

punch cards, that teletype, an IBM dotmatrix printer, TRS-80, Commodore 64, Apple IIe
 
1 hour later…
17:52
I am now imagining a confrontation between five enormous enthusiasms and two paralysing horrors.
I volunteer to play a paralyzing horror.
18:25
@MetaEd ???
1
Q: Countable vs Uncountable: "charge" and "payment"

Ko-KoI've noticed that the word 'charge' is marked in the Macmillan Dictionary as both countable and uncountable in the same meaning: charge [COUNTABLE/UNCOUNTABLE] an amount of money that you have to pay, especially when you visit a place or when someone does something for you I was wondering...

@Mitch
 
2 hours later…
20:13
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body, mostly dots in body: My tenants' lease will expire and I want to increase his rent by personal learner on english.SE
 
1 hour later…
21:20
What do you call it when a four-legged table (or stool or chair) keeps switching between two equilibrium positions, each with three of the four legs reaching the ground?
21:45
0
Q: What is the word for music that is both Accapella and Instrumental?

NH.Now, I know the terms "Accapella" and "Instrumental" are pretty incompatible, and to tell the truth, something like "Lyric-less" would fit better than "Instrumental" in this case. Basically, I'm looking for a word that applies to songs that use the human voice more for the purposes of making note...

Rocking?
@skullpatrol Oh, that's a good word, thanks.
 
1 hour later…
23:01
What does Hitchens say here at 34:15 ?
I can't seem to phonetically reverse-engineer the word enough for Google to make sense of it without auto-suggesting something I'm not looking for
23:16
I put on "closed captions" and got the word "insusionce" and some religious gangsterism stuff...
ah your word lead me to insouciance
thx
: a relaxed and happy way of behaving without feeling worried or guilty
np
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