English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Oh, dear.

Better tune out all those pesky people and stick with what's important, the videos.

Yes, 'multi-tasking' really task-switching.

@Cerberus Indeed.

@Cerberus Also indeed.

Russia's Alcohol Problem

►

@CowperKettle: ^

Is this video accurate?

1:35 AM

@Robusto you could be having more than one convo in chat

@Mitch I chose to take @Cerb's advice and stick with the videos. tyvm.

@Robusto That is about two glasses of beer per man per week.

I think the video might have misinterpreted the number.

@Cerberus The video says most of it is in spirits form, not beer or wine.

I think the number of litres per man per year is pure alcohol, not litres of alcoholic beverages.

So it is much more than they say.

@Robusto you're slacking. You can play more than one YouTube at a time

It's not a good experience

But you can do it

1:38 AM

Also, that's on average. Averages are tricky things. You can stand with one foot on a block of frozen CO2 and one on a frying pan and on average you're comfortable.

@Mitch I'm pacing myself.

Alcohol consumption in Russia

Alcohol consumption in Russia remains among the highest in the world. According to a 2011 report by the World Health Organization, annual per capita consumption of alcohol in Russia was about 15.76 litres, the fourth-highest volume in Europe. It has dropped to less than 10 litres as of 2019. Another dangerous trait of Russian alcohol consumption pattern was the high volume of spirits compared with other alcoholic drinks (such as beer or red wine).Russia currently implements a variety of anti-alcoholism measures (banning spirits and beer trade at night, raising taxes). According to medical officials...

I think the video is basically reading Wikipaedia to us.

Olympic swimming on one channel, gymnastics on another, a webinar, and then a TED, talk

It has the same anecdotes and stuff.

@Cerberus Yeah, but statistics are more fun in a video than in Wikipedia.

@Cerberus wikipedia is marginally more accurate than Wiktionary

@Robusto an 8 min vid could be replaced by a 3x4 table

1:41 AM

Yes, the number in the video is litres of pure alcohol.

Haha 2x3

Ah, interesting.

But they treat it as though it were litres of alcoholic beverages.

Hmm.

I'm interested, though, in the "boots on the ground" perspective that @CowperKettle can provide.

who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/…

Notice how the numbers are decreasing.

Russia seems to have been on the right track for decades, perhaps since Gorbachev?

1:44 AM

But who is providing the numbers? The Russian government?

I don't expect the WHO to trust solely in the Russian government for statistics?

Could be surveys?

Or some reliable organisation within Russia?

And that organization would be ...?

?

In conclusion, I think the video is mostly accurate.

It matches what one reads elsewhere.

2:12 AM

>“Detection of excessive alcohol consumption is problematic, illustrated by the fact that self-reports of alcohol consumption account for only approximately 50% of the reported sales of alcohol. ”

GPS from phones on staggering people?

Oh that’s good Mitch.

Then we can have a social score, like China’s.

Most governments tax alcohol, but people can make their own.

There used to be a big 'bathtub gin' culture in Iran in the early 1980's. Don't know if it's still going on.

@M.A.R. Do people make alcohol at home and pass it around nowadays?

@Xanne Not trying to defend China here, but there are surely 'social' scores in NA/Europe that we have no idea about that companies are passing around.

@Mitch Sounds hip.

That is, at least there's is known

2:20 AM

@Mitch I think that's mostly not allowed in Europe.

@Cerberus I think the cool kids in Teheran do it

But I'm sure some types of lists are circulated between companies.

@Cerberus 'not allowed' != 'does not exist'

No, indeed.

I read an article the other day about some new tech for army type soldiers... basically bite-sized surveillance drones (big as your hand) to fly through a house to see if any 'enemy combatants' are in it, so soldiers can more safely secure it. And the drones were mostly autonomous, no GPS, only sending bluetooth info out, so as not to be hacked.

which is next level drone tech like another Black Mirror episode.

The idea then is to hack the drone software -before- the software is installed on them.

Ask me about my next bank heist.

Wait...

I was about to tell you the plotline of a Superman sequel in the 80's.

nevermind

2:32 AM

Better send EMPs when you see drones?

I used to use cash to prevent detailed profiling by data miners. Covid changed that. Now they know that I either have a cat or live on cat food.

BTW those red and white checkered table cloths are usually oilcloth, not plastic.

2:49 AM

Yeah, that kind of sucks.

But at least the companies that have your data (bank and supermarket) should not be allowed to use personal information on you.

3:06 AM

@Robusto The video is probably correct. The situation has improved since 2000, as the video says

Could be an interaction of vaccine and disease, leading to runaway immune reaction.

If it is real, it's probably coincidence.

What's the source?

@CowperKettle Worldwide, more than two billion people have received at least one dose of covid vaccine. Consider how many had coincident unfavorable events occur to them.

I cannot believe a serious newspaper would ever produce such a terribly misleading headline.

@Cerberus The source is the media: dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9826739/…

I just googled for Jummai Nache in the "News" section of Google

Yes, the headline is an attention grabber

Sales of electric cars in Russia grew fivefold, with about 100-120 cars purchased each month in January-May 2021.

That's up to 3 cars/day.

Nice.

3:24 AM

@CowperKettle You do realize that that's a silly sensationalist tabloid, don't you?

@tchrist Yes, I know

Newspapers - Yes Prime Minister 😂

@Cerberus Daily Fail.

►

washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/29/cdc-mask-guidance

Okay, that's pretty shocking. Seriously.

NOTE BENE: "The Washington Post is providing this important information about the coronavirus for free."A

No paywall on that article.

> The delta variant of the coronavirus appears to cause more severe illness than earlier variants and spreads as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal federal health document that argues officials must “acknowledge the war has changed.”

The document is an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention slide presentation, shared within the CDC and obtained by The Washington Post. It captures the struggle of the nation’s top public health agency to persuade the public to embrace vaccination and prevention measures, including mask-wearing, as cases surge across the United States…

> Vaccinated people infected with delta have measurable viral loads similar to those who are unvaccinated and infected with the variant.

> One of the slides states that there is a higher risk among older age groups for hospitalization and death relative to younger people, regardless of vaccination status. Another estimates that there are 35,000 symptomatic infections per week among 162 million vaccinated Americans.

A neighbor living a floor below has caught covid. He is 66, a bit overweight. He had been fully vaccinated, and his disease is mild. Yet he has not been wearing a mask. Still refuses to wear, and walks about everywhere. His wife is berating him, but he does not listen.

@Robusto The game has changed. See immediately above.

@CowperKettle Hearing loss. :)

From the evolution standpoint, maybe it has been profitable for men to be stubborn.

3:35 AM

@CowperKettle A terrible source.

Columbus disregarded all evidence saying that the Earth is large, for instance.

Most British newspapers are just worse than than...anything else.

And I believe the Daily Mail is amongst the worst.

@CowperKettle His math was wrong. Everybody who knew anything knew that.

@tchrist Yes, that needed to be reposted.

@tchrist This contradicts recent numbers for the Indian variant that I have seen.

@Xanne or both. so...which is it? and which flavor do you prefer?

I like the ones with sauce. but not liver or kidney. ew.

@Cerberus Aren't EMPs only creatable by a nuclear explosion?

3:42 AM

@CowperKettle We've known the size of the earth since no later than 240 BC when Eratosthenes cleverly proved/derived it.

Columbus was a dunce.

Let's suppose you can create one that only affects a 10yard radius (and absolutely nothing else), then you've also fried all your electrical appliances (but I suppose if you want to stop a soldier from shooting your entire family in the face, that'd be ok.

@Cerberus So be it.

Russia is going to install a nationwide face recognition streetcam system at a cost of $3 billion. It would be a version of Moscow's system which has been in operation since 2018. e1.ru/text/gorod/2021/07/30/70049276

> Dat een deel van de gevaccineerden nog besmet kan raken is geen verrassing: geen van de vaccins beschermt immers voor 100 procent tegen het virus. De mRNA vaccins van Pfizer en Moderna beschermden tegen ziekte door de originele virusvariant rond de 94 procent, de vectorvaccins van Janssen en AstraZeneca rond de 70 procent.
Maar de Deltavariant knabbelt daar wel zo’n 6 tot 8 procentpunt van af, blijkt uit de laatste berekeningen van Public Health England die woensdag in the New England Journal of Medicine verschenen.

@CowperKettle To what end? Out-Chinesing the Chinese?

3:44 AM

@tchrist Probably to make it easier to catch criminals

But it will be abused of course to track the opposition.

> Maar de bescherming tegen de Deltavariant blijft in de studies beter overeind dan bijvoorbeeld die tegen de Bètavariant, die het eerst in Zuid-Afrika werd ontdekt, volgens vaccinoloog Cécile van Els van de Universiteit Utrecht en het RIVM. Tegen ernstige ziekte en ziekenhuisopname voor de Deltavariant beschermt een volledige vaccinatie met Pfizer of AstraZeneca zeker 92 procent.

I'm kind of divided on this count.

@Cerberus That does not in any way negate anything the CDC is saying.

Nor what the article is saying.

I would gladly endorse a camera on each tree in the local park, especially at evenings and nights.

@tchrist Yes, I posted those things while reading the article I thought mentioned the expect change of infection and passing it on, after 1 and 2 vaccinations, for the Indian variant.

3:48 AM

It's saying that this is spreading as fast as chickenpox, which is extremely fast indeed. And they are saying that vaccinated people who catch it are shedding about as much of this virus as unvaccinated people who do so. They at no point said that lots of vaccinated people were getting super sick and dying. They may not even know they have it.

I can't find the numbers I saw earlier.

@tchrist I know that.

The numbers I was trying to find were: chance of infection after 1 and 2 shots, and chance of spreading the virus after 1 and 2 shots.

Those numbers were higher than for the older variants of the virus.

But, even for the Indian variant, the numbers were much lower for fully vaccinated people than for unvaccinated people.

@Mitch The cat (Lolita) usually laps up the gravy, so I just have what’s left. I do love the gravy though.

I think it was something like, if you have received 1 shot, you're 36% as likely to spread the Indian as is someone who is unvaccinated.

And, after two shots, of course the number was better.

So "vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated" is what was contradicted.

Several articles even mentioned the Americans were scared and why the scare was unjustified (some sort of simplification ignoring certain factors, I don't remember the details).

There's a difference between the American public and scientists.

I don't see anything equatable to such figures provided in that article, so I don't see any contradictions.

Almost everyone being hospitalized and dying is unvaccinated here. Something like only 1 in 200 deaths are in vaccinated people.

But this is a much more contagious variant, and the viral load appears just as bad in the vaccinated who contract it. Which means that there is much more capacity to spread.

Apparently these are new data.

> The recommendation that vaccinated people in some parts of the country dust off their masks was based largely on one troublesome finding, according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New research showed that vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant carry tremendous amounts of the virus in the nose and throat, she said in an email responding to questions from The New York Times.

The finding contradicts what scientists had observed in vaccinated people infected with previous versions of the virus, who mostly seemed incapable of i…

> In her email, Dr. Walensky said breakthroughs are rare, and unvaccinated people account for the bulk of virus transmission. Still, she said, the new data suggest even fully immunized people can be unwilling vectors for the disease.

4:03 AM

@tchrist No, it's not in that article.

I thought it was in there, but it must have been somewhere else.

@tchrist Newspapers here mentioned the viral load was up to 1000x higher.

@Cerberus Yes. The R0 is still "only" 2-3x the original's.

> The Delta variant seems to flourish in the nose, the main port of entry for the virus. The vaccines are injected into muscle, and the antibodies produced in response mostly remain in the blood. Some antibodies may make their way to the nose but not enough to block it.

“The vaccines — they’re beautiful, they work, they’re amazing,” said Frances Lund, a viral immunologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “But they’re not going to give you that local immunity.”

When the virus tries to snake down into the lungs, immune cells in vaccinated people ramp up and rapidly clear the inf…

Yes, it the Indian variant is spread by vaccinated people more easily than other variants; but even the Indian variant is spread much less by fully vaccinated people than by unvaccinated people, in all likelihood, or so it said.

So it's reproducing in -- and spreading from -- an area that the antibodies don't get to. As soon as it moves into the lower respiratory system or elsewhere in the body, the vaccine-primed antibodies quash it quite well. But while it is busy giving you catarrh, you're spreading it to other people.

> vaccinated people should be infected and contagious for a much shorter period of time

Yes.

4:09 AM

That means less infectious.

And they usually won't get very sick at all.

No.

It does not.

While they are infected and contagious, they are just as good at spreading it as non-vaccinated people.

They may do it for 3 days not 13, is all.

It means it in a similar manner in which a higher viral load means more infectious.

@tchrist A shorter period means less infectious.

@Cerberus I'm going to disagree with you.

If two people have the same disease, but the vaccinated person can spread the disease for only 3 days instead of 13, that means he will infect fewer people.

Ceteris paribus.

You are just as likely to catch it from a vaccinated person who has it as you are from an unvaccinated person who has it.

Because they're shedding about the same amount of virus at that point.

4:12 AM

Even if that were true, vaccination still works fairly well to stop the disease from spreading.

Reducing the time can be as good as reducing the viral load.

@Cerberus Amongst the vaccinated, this is true.

They aren't the ones that everybody is panicking about here.

Amongst everybody.

Apparently it is going to be impossible ever to convince 30% of the population to vaccinate here.

That's too many for an R0=6 or whatever it is to not spread.

Just math.

I think I read 6–8.

Yeah, I was lowballing.

4:16 AM

However, the previously infected will also be less likely to spread the virus.

So, once every single unvaccinated person has been infected, you will not need so high a rate of vaccination.

Well then I'm glad there's no more problems with this virus, that the pandemic is over in my country, and nobody else is going to get sick and die. We can all carry on as before now. Hurray.

?

That's what you've said. Good.

All I wanted to say is that it would seem misleading to say that the vaccine does not help against the spread of the Indian variant.

Who said that?

Gods!

It is all extremely misleading.

NOBODY said that.

4:18 AM

> vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated

This suggested it.

Yep.

And that's what the data are showing.

"vaccinated individuals infected with delta"

So I wanted to set it straight: vaccinated people are most probably less likely to spread the virus.

16 mins ago, by tchrist

> In her email, Dr. Walensky said breakthroughs are rare, and unvaccinated people account for the bulk of virus transmission. Still, she said, the new data suggest even fully immunized people can be unwilling vectors for the disease.

@Cerberus We're talking about people who have the virus.

Of course they "can be".

That's all.

4:20 AM

Nobody ever expected vaccines to prevent people from spreading the virus 100% per cent.

And the Indian variant makes it more likely for the vaccinated to spread the disease than do other variants.

> The CDC’s revised mask guidance stops short of what the internal document calls for. “Given higher transmissibility and current vaccine coverage, universal masking is essential to reduce transmission of the Delta variant,” it states.

@Cerberus You realize why you aren't supposed to call it that, but continue to do so. Why?

But the bit I quoted just now suggests that it doesn't matter for the spread of the Indian variant whether you're vaccinated or not, which is just not true.

It does not matter if you're infected, that's right.

That's what it is saying.

If you are infected.

That I do not understand.

But anyway, I think the topic has been discussed enough.

It's bedtime.

You are not supposed to call it by regional names because it does really bad things when you do that.

It causes hate crimes against people from there.

4:23 AM

I do not care about PC stuff, you know that.

It is not PC.

It is about harm reduction.

It is not an "Indian" variant.

No more so than it is the Chinese virus.

Those are demonstrably harmful.

I disagree and I will not have this discussion.

2

Hate crimes against Asians went through the roof because of this.

Why don't you care about that? Why do you make it worse?

4:50 AM

What an odd term.

But I am already in bed.

5:01 AM

> * Risk of severe disease or death reduced 10-fold or greater in vaccinated.
* Risk of infection reduced 3-fold in vaccinated.

That's in the CDC slides.

That sounds better.

It's not as good as it had been.

5:44 AM

507 new covid cases in my region today, an all-time record. In the first wave, the figure hovered just below 300. In the second wave, just below 400/day. During the current wave the curve stayed quite a while at about 490/day, and now a new record.

Word of the day: cardiophrenic angle (Greek phren = diaphragm)

> Drunken antivaxxer in Abakan burned a vaccination tent installed in a square by the Ministry of Defense.

In Russian, the word душ (douche) means shower. For a long time I thought that the douchebag was a kind of cap you wear in shower to keep your hair dry.

7:28 AM

New Jerusalem monastery in Istra outside Moscow

7:39 AM

Increased Mortality Associated with Hypermagnesemia in Severe COVID-19 Illness

M.A.R.

7:49 AM

@CowperKettle In Persian as well

8:19 AM

Word of the hour: mentiferous ether

8:32 AM

Delivery man in Yekaterinburg

> - can I take a picture of you
- just don't make me a meme
- we are already in a meme

10:02 AM

Lukashenko has just announced that Russian troops could be stationed inside Belarus. To support his regime, of course. rbc.ru/politics/30/07/2021/6103c5909a79476cade2c49b

1:05 PM

This is a repeat of Czechoslovakia, 1968

Only this time, a less repressive regime did not even start to flourish. It was squashed right away.

1:29 PM

When I first came across this word, I thought it meant some servant in a train car.

1:42 PM

@Xanne If I were a cat, I think I'd like that gravy, too.

I am not a cat though

just to make it clear

I might like it, not being a cat, but I don't really need it so I don't really need to try it.

@CowperKettle Most unfortunate.

@CowperKettle I don't watch enough Soviet propaganda. I don't recognize that guy in the middle, who I can only figure must be Engels?

Is Engels the Garfunkel of Communism?

@tchrist There have been lawn signs everywhere here which say simply "Stop Asian Hate" (because of the recent uptick in crimes targeting Asians (in my town there were a spate of similar breakins to houses that also had the similarity of being Asian households)).

But two language things: it is not clear to me what 'Asian' is supposed to mean lately. Is it East Asian only (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, ...) does it include Indians (my intuition says no but, really, is racism that picky?), does it include Arab/Turk/Persian (which seem way off the intent but again). I guess it all depends on context...which I don't have!

The other thing is "Stop Asian Hate" as a telegraphed admonition kind of sounds like instead of the intended "Stop hate of Asians", but comes across as "Stop Hate by Asians". A very different message. I'm sure there's a relevant ELU question with a number of very unsatisfying ELU answers by people who don't really know just giving idle guesses.

2:00 PM

@CowperKettle Is it from Karabakh?

So in English do nominal adjectives have the same range of meaning as their prepositional version?

> < Arabic qarrābah big jug

Hmm probably not.

@Cerberus Really? I would guess yes.

@Mitch Yeah, the word Asian is often abused.

I think what people often mean is a kind of paraphyletic Asian.

@Cerberus looks up paraphylic

2:03 PM

No, I said it wrong.

What's correct word?

As in "Those Asians are so paraphylic"

When, in biology, one uses a term that means "a group containing every other species from a certain genus".

wow...now I wish hadn't googled

@Cerberus oh...like a single sub tree?

@Mitch Or even several sub-trees together.

I used to know this. And tchrist has posted copiously about it here.

2:05 PM

Which are not necessarily related except that the other sub-trees already have names and these didn't, so they are grouped together.

I thought it was paraphylic, from para- "next to" and phulê "tribe".

paratypic

Hmm, no, I don't think that was it.

paratypic is multiple unconnected subtrees

We have used the word extensively in this very room, but it was years ago.

I thought it contained the root phyl-.

Monophyly

In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic groups are typically characterised by shared derived characteristics (synapomorphies), which distinguish organisms in the clade from other organisms. An equivalent term is holophyly.The word "mono-phyly" means "one-tribe" in Greek. Monophyly is contrasted with paraphyly and polyphyly as shown in the second diagram. A paraphyletic group consists of all of the ...

haha just caught it at the same time

gah

paraphyletic

that's the word we're looking for

2:08 PM

Ahh.

phyletic

Stupid suffixes.

philic... is something else entirely

Quite.

2:10 PM

So what people often mean is, I think, "Asian but not the more specific categories of Near-Eastern or Middle-Eastern or Subcontinental".

The potato sense of spud only developed in the mid-19th century.

I.e. East-Asian.

So I would recommend against using paraphyletic Asian.

@Cerberus which I would call more naturally Far East Asian (which would include SouthEast Asian for me)

Paraphyletic terms are only good when they are useful and clear.

@Mitch Except that India is also in the Far East.

@Cerberus Me too but being specific doesn't fit well on a yard sign.

2:12 PM

The Far East begins in Pakistan, I think.

@Cerberus Is it? I didn't know that.

@Mitch It's just four more letters.

In BrE I'm pretty sure Asian means -exactly- India or Pakistan

@Cerberus You save money where you can

@Mitch Yes, he must be Engels. Marx had a bigger beard.

@Mitch I think various terms have been used quite chaotically.

But, as I researched them a while ago, I think I found that the Far East ~= the Indies, starting at the Indus.

But I think East Asia is pretty clear, isn't it?

2:20 PM

Alas, near all the birds
Will sing at dawn,–and yet we do not take
The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.

@Cerberus I would think it would exclude South Asia (India/Pakistan), but maybe include South-East Asia (Vietnam/Thailand/Philipines/etc)

@Mitch Exactly.

And Indonesia.

We also have South-East Asia.

But I'm not sure what to call China/Taiwan/Korea/Japan.

Central-East Asia?

Unclear.

@Cerberus Just East Asia or Far East Asia?

There's no North Asia

no one cares

or West Asia

The Russians have all that covered

literally?

I don't like how they aequate those regions with Near East and Far East.

@Cerberus OK so I was pretty close, except waffling on Southeast Asia

2:30 PM

And I have some doubts about East Asia: Indonesia and the Philippines are more eastern than China.

Also somebody needs to lobby for Papua New Guinea

So I am fine with the regions, but not sure I agree with all their names.

It's not exactly Australia -or- Oceania

@Cerberus WHoever is in charge of this should have consulted us first

Yeah, that one is also difficult.

@Mitch Why do they never do that?

We're here.

We listen.

Perhaps the yellow region could be called the Sinosphere?

As those places have always been under heavy Chinese influence.

@Cerberus They're probably really busy

2:34 PM

So are we.

That's no excuse, we're all "very busy".

@Cerberus also vietnam. but maybe not as much Cambodia/Thailand/Malaysia/Indonesia/Philipines?

@Cerberus furiously types diplomatic but strongly worded letter

@Mitch I think Vietnam probably less so than Japan?

China also tried to conquer other places in Indo-China, like Siam.

And its tribute system covered many Indo-Chinese places.

Probably also many South-Asian islands.

4:08 PM

Russia's State Prosecutor demanded today that a blogger who played a prank in a Moscow subway carriage in early 2020, pretending to fall unconscious due to covid, should get 4 years of incarceration novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/07/30/…

Four years for a prank.

At that time, Russia had zero officially registered cases of covid, so people in the carriage got scared and skedaddled.

4:28 PM

Men are the inventive sex

4:58 PM

What is the etymology of roadstead? Stead means place, but why road? Roads are for land vehicles, not for ships.

5:23 PM

> The results showed that the observers' pupil size was significantly enlarged either when they viewed a single agent that sent interactive intention towards them versus towards others, or when they viewed facing agents engaged in social interaction as compared with non-facing dyads. medicalxpress.com/news/…

Faheem Mitha

Crimes towards minorities (like Asians in places that aren't Asia) vary a lot, depending on the historical background. In the UK Asian hate crimes include Indians and Pakistanis (for obvious reasons) to a large extent. This isn't the case so much in other places.

Though Indians have been attacked in North America.

I don't know the statistics. As an Indian in North America I didn't feel targeted in any way. But maybe I was lucky. I felt more racism directed towards me when I was in the UK, I'd say.

In many places these days the Middle East is the bugbear (again for obvious reasons), including, but not restricted to North America.

It usually boils down to "blaming/attacking the victim".

@FaheemMitha Did anybody insult you?

I think that in every country there is some percentage of idiots who dislike foreigners.

In Russian, I have heard Central Asians being referred to as churki (blocks of wood), although not directly but in a conversation between Russians.

Faheem Mitha

6:53 PM

@CowperKettle Where/when?

@CowperKettle Those are used for lining up bolt holes in metal work.

Hampton Roads

Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water that serves as a wide channel for the James, Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's Point where the Chesapeake Bay flows into the Atlantic Ocean, and the surrounding metropolitan region located in the southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina portions of the Tidewater region. Comprising the Virginia Beach–Norfolk–Newport News, VA–NC, metropolitan area and an extended combined statistical area that includes the Elizabeth City, North Carolina, micropolitan statistical area and Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina...

That's for ships, etc.

In Anglo-Saxon, "whale road" (hronrād) was a kenning used to refer to the sea. So the place where ships go has been referred to as a "road" for over a thousand years now.

7:13 PM

How strong are webs spun by Monsanto corn cobs?