English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mitch

19:04

@Cerberus what were the reputational problems you heard about zoom?

skullpatrol

you can only go back so far with the ones who weren't doing too well in the first place, after that they have to take responsibility for their own learning, no?

tchrist

> It's a zero-width pattern similar to (*SKIP), except that when backtracked into on failure it causes the match to fail outright. No further attempts to find a valid match by advancing the start pointer will occur again.

Cerberus

@Mitch Insecure and bad for your privacy.

tchrist

@Cerberus look for that text. There's an illustrative example there.

Cerberus

OK.

skullpatrol

19:06

They steal data.

tchrist

@skullpatrol That sounds like a pretty useless backtracking control verb to me. :)

skullpatrol

:-)

Cerberus

@tchrist It is all a bit confusing, but at a glance it seems each verb has a different 'scope'?

Where I would define the end of a scope (hierarchically) as follows:
- The engine stops trying to match the Regex altogether.
- The engine stops backtracking and advances the cursor.
- The engine stops bracktracking within the subpattern and advances the cursor within the subpattern.

Or something. Maybe that is still not right.

Oh, well, it doesn't matter too much at the moment.

I'll experiment with it whenever I actually need something like this.

skullpatrol

19:22

The current Nobel prize for physics was won by a person who was held back a year in grade 3 because he was too slow. His grade 4 teacher asked him why he was struggling and he told him that he didn't have enough time to complete the tests given. So this teacher gave everyone as much time as they needed and then started getting 98% on the tests.

This lockdown could be viewed as a situation in which all students are getting as much time as they need.

Cerberus

Time is nice.

skullpatrol

Given proper guidance, of course.

Cerberus

But guidance is the problem.

skullpatrol

Yup, that's why I said

48 mins ago, by skullpatrol

Learning to teach online is going to be a valuable skill set, pal.

Cerberus

It is not a matter of "learning to teach".

It is a matter of physical presence: without it, many children lack the required discipline.

That is in addition to the practical problems I mentioned above.

skullpatrol

19:39

Children are always going to lack discipline

Let them take responsibility for it.

Cerberus

@skullpatrol Yes, but much less discipline is required when they are physically at school.

@skullpatrol They will not do so. They are children.

Faheem Mitha

@Cerberus How old are your children?

Cerberus

@FaheemMitha 12–17.

skullpatrol

Resiliency, I beleve, can be learned.

Faheem Mitha

@Cerberus That's certainly youngish. And covers the ages of puberty, when kids are more than averagely unstable.

Hormonal stuff.

Cerberus

19:46

Yes.

Though younger children are no easier to manage in this regard.

Faheem Mitha

In my case, it took 20+ years of practice before I could properly focus on my own. And even now, I'm not that good at it. But I'm a slow learner.

But I think educational systems typically fail children. At least in India. No idea what the Netherlands is like. I think Chomsky spoke approvingly of the school he went to before he entered high school. Some kind of experimental school.

But such things didn't exist where I was.

I think children are very receptive when their ages are in single digits, and for some time afterwards.

That's the time they can learn a lot of stuff if properly motivated. But my school barely rose to the level of a joke.

I remember I got very interested in maths when I was around 14, but nobody could have cared less. And I got no help. And none of the teachers in the school knew the first thing about maths. It was ghastly.

And maths isn't something you can bootstrap oneself, unless one is a genius. And even then one can have a hard time. As Ramanujan did.

skullpatrol

The man who knew infinity

Faheem Mitha

@skullpatrol Yes, him.

He had a hard time. And died young.

skullpatrol

@Cerberus I didn't mean "learning to teach", I should of said "adapting your skill set to the online environment" sorry pal

Sloppy wording

:-)

Faheem Mitha

A century later, people get math prizes for proving small bits of Ramanujan's speculations.

Not a bad legacy, though I expect he would have preferred to live out a normal life span.

skullpatrol

20:06

In the movie he attempted suicide when he found out he was dying.

Faheem Mitha

@skullpatrol That's not historical, as far as I know.

But I'm not an expert. I've not seen the movie. Is that the movie called "The Man who Knew Infinity"?

skullpatrol

Yes.

Faheem Mitha

He got sick. Then went home to India and died there.

No drama involved, as far as I know. But he was very young.

skullpatrol

Yup, they showed that

Faheem Mitha

Generally credited with supernatural powers of intuition. I keep half an eye on current math research, and his name keeps showing up. Particularly in number theory.

Mock theta functions, for example. Connected to modular forms in some way.

skullpatrol

20:12

Good movie to watch several times.

Faheem Mitha

Still on the cutting edge of research. There was significant progress on that in the last 20 years or so.

@skullpatrol You liked it?

skullpatrol

Yup.

The movie is more about his relationship with G H Hardy.

Faheem Mitha

Well, I didn't expect it to be about the mathematics.

Unfortunately, Hardy wasn't interested in his health. He was mostly interested in the mathematics. Typical Cambridge academic.

skillpatrol

21:03

tchrist

@Cerberus Backtracking control verbs control what happens while backtracking, and backtracking happens only when an initial attempt at a match needs to recompute a possibility because what it had just tried didn't work. I almost never ever use them though, so would have to relearn anything to speak with any confidence.

skillpatrol

Interestingly, relearn is a word, but overlearn is not.

tchrist

Bull.

Both prefixes are equally productive.

skillpatrol

Define: overlearn please

tchrist

@skillpatrol Figure it out.

You can always use any productive affix to create de novo words at will.

That's what productive means.

Produce at will,

Not all affixes are still productive, or equally productive. But over-VERB is probably just as productive as re-VERB and un-VERB are.

skillpatrol

21:11

It's not in the standard college dictionary, pal :-)

tchrist

Fuck college.

Dictionaries mean nothing.

Never say something is not a word, Just say "I couldn't find this word in the dictionary I looked in."

"To be a word" takes no dictionary.

Thus to be unfound in any dictionary whatsoever is no proof of nonexistence.

skillpatrol

Define: word

tchrist

My honor.

My say so.

My statement.

That's my word.

skillpatrol

The Word of god?

tchrist

@skillpatrol lexico.com/explore/…

skillpatrol

21:16

Thanks, I've read that :-)

Psychologists define overlearn also.

But not standard dictionaries

tchrist

OFFS

To overlearn means to learn something too much.

Just like all overVERB verbs mean to verb too much,.

It's productive.

That's what you produce.

Stop obsessing on dicktionaries.

> over-, prefix
View as: Outline |Full entryKeywords: On |OffQuotations: Show all |Hide all
Pronunciation: Primary stress is generally retained by the usual stressed syllable of the subsequent element, with a secondary stress on the first syllable of the prefix. However, some nouns carry primary stress on the prefix, such as those at sense 1h(c).
Forms: see over adv., over adj.
Origin: Formed within English, by conversion. Etymon: over adv.
Etymology: < the same Germanic base as over adv. (see cognates at that entry; Old Icelandic also has a number of superficially similar compounds in of…

There, is that productive enough for you?

Come back once you've finished reading every word of that.

skillpatrol

21:32

Then, why don't they put "overlearn" in there?

tchrist

You're overtrying.

skillpatrol

Thanks for the citation :-)

I'm not disputing its legitimacy.

Just asking why it is not listed, yet?

tchrist

How often it's used.

books.google.com/ngrams/…

skillpatrol

ok, thanks... That's good enough for me.

tchrist

google.com/search?q=%22overlearn%22&tbm=bks&lr=lang_en

Robusto

21:40

@tchrist: Looks like your air is currently under assault by the aptly named "East Troublesome" fire.

tchrist

> Be selective and make vocabulary cards only for the words you want to overlearn. It is important to overlearn new words, not just memorize them, because you will gradually forget their meanings if you do not use them. All the words you ...

> The inserted questions marked with an asterisk are useful enough to overlearn . Overlearn means to practice beyond the point of being able to answer . Overlearning occurs frequently in sports as when a field goal kicker practices day after day ...

@Robusto whut whut

Robusto

Check it out.

tchrist

I'm in Lake Geneva. Got here last night. Was 15 hour drive.

Not looking forward to smoke.

Robusto

@tchrist That's a long drive. It only takes me 13 hours to get to LA, and I consider that a long ride.

But it looks like you got out just in time.

skillpatrol

Sorry for overobessing @tchrist

tchrist

21:45

@Robusto Looks awful.

Robusto

tchrist

@skillpatrol You should be able to know without looking that a trivial application of a productive affix via derivational morphology produces a valid result.

skillpatrol

yes sir

Cerberus

22:12

@tchrist Hmm but are all of those verbs backtracking verbs? That site I linked to implied they weren't, not really. But I don't trust it entirely any more.

I'll let you know if I ever have any illuminating thoughts hehe.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Phone number detected in title, potentially bad keyword in title (66): How to contact Aol mail helpline teleservice number 8449326261 by deaton on english.SE

SmokeDetector

23:06

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, phone number detected in title (160): Aol desktop gold icon 8449326261 not working windows 10 by deaton on english.SE

Stupid question inc

23:19

@M.A.R. Do you know few books such that I can master English grammar? Not necessarily all in one but a book that is intutive and well written such that I can write a english thesis properly. I have forgotten most of the grammar rules and also I have to write an article for request which I hope doesn't contain grammar error. I don't even know how to use this symbols such as :;,."' in English language.

M.A.R.

23:38

@Stupidquestioninc Well, a cursory Google gives me this ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/grammar_for_academic_writing_ism.pdf

You don't need a comprehensive book for grammar, you need as much as would be required in academic writing. The one I found up there would be one example of such a book

How long do you have?

JTP - Apologise to Monica

"To Root Out Racism in Schools, Start With Who You Hire." - "Whom", right? I'm not in the habit of calling out common grammar errors, but this was posted on a site called "Education Week." I'd hold them to a higher standard.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…