English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

forest

02:00

Too much or too many? :p

Cerberus

@tchrist I'm sure it stands in some noble literary tradition.

But I don't like all of literature.

tchrist

> The moral issues in The Children of Húrin have been compared to Tolkien's analysis of The Battle of Maldon that shows Tolkien's interest in the "theory of courage",[6] and distinguish between arrogance and true courage. Túrin's decision to build a bridge at Nargothrond which enables the invasion by Morgoth's forces resembles the character Byrthtnoth from The Battle of Maldon.

@Cerberus Nor should you.

@forest Too much reading of.

Cerberus

But really, I think Tolkien did a good job with the story between Eowyn and Aragorn, but it could have been made bigger.

forest

oh lol

tchrist

@Mitch Imagine Adam and Eve's grandchildren.

Cerberus

02:02

What is your favourite story from Tolkien's world?

Mitch

@tchrist And Lot's children/grandchildren

Cerberus

There is so much.

tchrist

@Cerberus I don't know.

Cerberus

@Mitch Is Numenor still there, when the series begins?

Mitch

@Cerberus No

Cerberus

02:03

So sad.

tchrist

@Cerberus The Amazon TV series you mean?

What series?

Cerberus

Yes.

Mitch

Yes

tchrist

Sure, it's there.

Cerberus

Oh, really.

Mitch

02:03

What?

tchrist

You get to see it in the 3rd episode.

Mitch

I thought ...

Cerberus

So it begins fairly early in the second era?

tchrist

Are you on the wrong kind of drugs again, Mitch?

Mitch

oh

Cerberus

02:04

Or is it with lots of flashbacks and -forwards?

Mitch

@tchrist Maybe not enough

tchrist

@Cerberus That.

Cerberus

OK.

I thought I had seen Numenor but wasn't sure.

Mitch

@tchrist I just don't know enough about the timeline and how one thing happened before another.

Cerberus

By the way, does anyone mind if I remove the stars from the unpleasant situation of earlier tonight?

I don't think anyone needs a reminder.

tchrist

02:05

It takes place in the days of Tar-Palantir having been supplanted by Ar-Pharazôn, who's been working on TP's daughter Miriel. Elendil lives. It is near the end of the Second Age. They've had to compress time or the mortals would all perish from one episode to the next, or at least from one season to the next.

forest

I don't mind. We could even move it to trash if you want.

Cerberus

The Silmarils are better.

tchrist

@Cerberus PLEASE DO

Cerberus

@tchrist Ahh, good times.

tchrist

I haven't even looked at any of that. I can't possibly think through anything in my current physical condition.

Mitch

02:06

@Cerberus please

Cerberus

@forest Ah, no need.

forest

k

Cerberus

It need not be censored, nor should it take up most of the star wall, right?

forest

Fair.

Cerberus

@tchrist No need.

@tchrist The end of the second era?

I thought that ended with the defeat of Sauron by Gild-Galad and Isuldur and friends?

The erae always confuse me.

I would have chosen a different division, by the way.
First era: from creation until the fall of Morgoth (or perhaps this one could be split into more?).

Second era: from the fall of Morgoth to the fall of Numenor.

Third era: from the fall of Numenor to the first fall of Sauron.

Fourth era: from the first fall of Sauron to the second.

Fifth: the end.

Mitch

02:11

Fifth: Beowulf kills Grendel

Sixth: Beowulf kills Grendel's mom

Cerberus

Aww.

Mitch

Seventh: Beowulf discovers that Grendel was his brother

Cerberus

How many will there be?

Mitch

It's like Game of Thrones you don't really know

tchrist

@Cerberus That's correct. Gil-Galad is High King of the Noldor, reining from Lindon, and Elrond is his herald. Celebrimbor is just about to start forging the naughty bits. Sauron we haven't located yet.

And Elendil and his sons are still in Númenór.

Pharazôn has not quite seized power yet, but he's working on it, slyly.

@Cerberus Five seasons.

Have been greenlit.

@Cerberus Not quite. Sauron repented when Morgoth fell, but not for long. He took it on the chin when Númenór fell and could no longer appear in a fair form, only a scary one. That was the form that Elendil and Isildur, and Gil-Galad and Elrond, slew at the end of the Second Age. Somehow the foundering of Númenór was NOT the end of the Second.

> Tall ships and tall kings
Three times three,
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing sea?
Seven stars and seven stones
And one white tree.

Cerberus

02:33

@tchrist That's a crazy number.

What if it is bad?

@tchrist Yeah, I remember all of those things!

Good story.

@tchrist Yes, so the order I gave above was my fantasy. What I meant to say was that the real second era does not end with the fall of Numenor.

tchrist

@Cerberus I doubt that it shall be bad. But perhaps tepid. I don't know. It opens spectacularly. They're burning through a million bucks every 30 seconds. The production values are higher than we have ever before seen on TV. It makes the new Game of Thrones show look like it was put together by an eight-year-old playing Minecraft.

Cerberus

@tchrist Hmm what are the seven stars?

Just the blazon?

tchrist

A very good question.

Cerberus

I should think: just the blazon, but which is a remembrance of the seven silmarilli?

Err three.

Never mind, silly Cerberus.

So that can't be it.

tchrist

> The Seven Stars were also a symbol of Elendil: The Faithful escaped the Akallabêth on Elendil's nine ships. Of those nine, each of the seven which carried one of the Palantíri had a single five-rayed star on its sail. When Narsil was reforged, in Andúril's blade were traced seven stars, set between a crescent Moon and a rayed Sun.[3]

In the Rhyme of Lore remembered by Gandalf, they are mentioned along with the seven Palantíri.[4] The Crown of Gondor bore seven jewels of adamant set in the circlet.[5]

> Seven Stars is a common symbol throughout Arda.

It refers to the constellation that turns through the northern skies every night of the year. To the Elves this was the Valacirca that signalled the downfall of Morgoth,[1] but the Men of the Northern lands called it simply 'The Wain'.[2] The Seven Stars are today known as the Plough, or the Big Dipper.

The Doors of Durin also displayed seven stars with a crown, probably representing Durin's Crown.

Cerberus

02:39

Could Durin's stars represent the seven rings? Probably not?

Is there any relation between the nine ships and the nine rings that Sauron wrought for man's kings?

I don't remember who those nine kings were, nor whether they were even kings.

I also wonder: why did two of the nine ships not bear stars?

CowperKettle

Because the captains of the ships so decided, and Elendil replied: "you do you".

For this was Elendil's motto.

He was a fan of early 21st century English slang.

Cerberus

Sounds appropriate.

tchrist

@Cerberus Because the palantiri numbered but seven.

Cerberus

Why must each palantir be marked by a star?

CowperKettle

Database legacy issues. The tables for palantirs and stars were linked, and could not be unlinked.

Otherwise, the third normal form would be lost.

tchrist

02:53

@Cerberus I don't know that they were. The seven stones and the seven stars were not the same thing.

> ‘And how it draws one to itself! Have I not felt it? Even now my heart desires to test my will upon it, to see if I could not wrench it from him and turn it where I would – to look across the wide seas of water and of time to Tirion the Fair, and perceive the unimaginable hand and mind of Fëanor at their work, while both the White Tree and the Golden were in flower!’ He sighed and fell silent.

Cerberus

But it cannot be accidental that only the seven ships with palantiri bore stars?

tchrist

We don't know what the rhyme means.

Cerberus

OK.

tchrist

We don't know whether it is the seven stones that became the crown of Gondor.

The "stars".

Cerberus

So were the Palantiri wrought by man, in Numenor?

tchrist

02:55

Are you crazy? :)

Men had no such craft. Think upon who did.

Cerberus

Sauron?

tchrist

No.

CowperKettle

Taiwanese?

Cerberus

I can't imagine elves nor Valar giving such unique objects to Numenor?

But, yeah, Sauron would have been extremely unlikely for several reasons.

I never imagined Beleriand being so small compared with Eriador and the rest.

tchrist

They were given to Númenór by the Eldar. The palantíri were probably made by Fëanor himself in the Uttermost West.

@Cerberus Me neither.

Cerberus

02:57

It would make sense for Feanor to have made them.

@tchrist Were they perhaps given to man so that he might glimpse the West, being forbidden from seeing it with his own eyes?

tchrist

> Many palantíri were made, but the number is not known. A Master-stone was in the Tower of Avallónë. The Eldar brought some of them to Amandil to comfort the Faithful, as the Shadow fell upon Númenor and they couldn't visit them any more.

Amandil was Elendil's father.

Cerberus

Ah, that late.

Good enough for a reason.

tchrist

> The Tower of Avallónë was raised to overlook the haven of Avallónë on the island of Tol Eressëa. There the Master Palantír was kept. It is said that when a mariner sailed to Aman he saw the tower first of all on the horizon.[1]

The Elostirion-stone, one of the palantíri erected in the tallest of the towers of Emyn Beraid, could show the tower when used by King Elendil. This would comfort him when he longed for the West.

Tol Eressëa is the lonely/wandering isle of the Elves. It is in Aman.

Cerberus

Almost, but not quite, I thought?

tchrist

I don't know that the Númenóreans were allowed to set foot upon it. I'm pretty sure it was forbidden. But Eärendil did, and there was diamond dust everywhere in Tirion upon Túna, but no one was home when he arrived. They had all gone to the mainland for some party.

But the Elves from the Isle DID sail to Númenór and back again.

> "[To Elostirion] Elendil would repair, and thence he would gaze out over the sundering seas, when the yearning of exile was upon him; and it is believed that thus he would at whiles see far away even the Tower of Avallónë upon Eressëa, where the Masterstone abode, and yet abides."

Cerberus

03:04

@tchrist I should think they were not allowed.

But I thought it was not quit part of Aman, being the main land?

tchrist

> This the Númenóreans knew
full well; and at times, when all the air was clear and the sun was in
the east, they would look out and descry far off in the west a city
white-shining on a distant shore, and a great harbour and a tower. For in
those days the Númenóreans were far-sighted; yet even so it was only the
keenest eyes among them that could see this vision, from the Meneltarma,
maybe, or from some tall ship that lay off their western coast as far as
it was lawful for them to go. For they did not dare to break the Ban of

CowperKettle

> When Semm introduced laparoscopic surgery at the University of Kiel, he had to undergo a brain scan at the request of coworkers as “only a person with brain damage would perform such laparoscopic surgery”. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Semm

Cerberus

03:23

@tchrist Right, so Eressea is not exactly Valinor/Aman.

@CowperKettle Hah, probably as a joke, right?

CowperKettle

@Cerberus Yes, it seems dubious

Wikipedia is not a very precise source

> Following his lecture on laparoscopic appendectomy, the president of the German Surgical Society wrote to the Board of Directors of the German Gynecological Society suggesting suspension of Semm from medical practice. Subsequently, Semm submitted a paper on laparoscopic appendectomy to the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, at first rejected as unacceptable for publication on the grounds that the technique reported on was "unethical," but finally published in the journal Endoscopy.

From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laparoscopy#History

Cerberus

Why was it deemed so unethical?

forest

Wikipedia is only useful as a tertiary source.

CowperKettle

Maybe because of poor visibility and presumed resulting errors? You cannot see the area of surgery as good as with direct access.

Cerberus

Sure.

But I think unethical is the wrong term for that.

CowperKettle

03:30

Lindbergh operation

The Lindbergh operation was a complete tele-surgical operation carried out by a team of French surgeons located in New York on a patient in Strasbourg, France (over a distance of several thousand miles) using telecommunications solutions based on high-speed services and sophisticated Zeus surgical robot. The operation was performed successfully on September 7, 2001, by Professor Jacques Marescaux and his team from the IRCAD (Institute for Research into Cancer of the Digestive System). This was the first time in medical history that a technical solution proved capable of reducing the time delay...

Cerberus

Impractical, impossible, crazy: those I could understand.

But it is only unethical if you do it without knowing it will work.

Just writing about it is not unethical?

@Robusto I think it is a fine article, and I think its point may stand despite my reluctance to call Trumpism fascism (I feel it lacks some essential characteristics).

user 726941

03:49

Are you back to in-person teaching? @Cerberus

Cerberus

04:03

@user726941 Hey, yes, we have been doing teaching at school again since ehh I don't remember.

There were two periods when we did remote, of a few months each.

How about you?

user 726941

I continue to learn on-line, sir.

Cerberus

Ah, how do you feel about that?

M.A.R.

04:30

Someone keyed our car and my paranoid switch is on

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. Someone scratched your car's paint layer?

M.A.R.

Well, technically, dad's car

And I now wanna hypothesize about nihilism or why the human race is screwed

CowperKettle

Probably some random act of vandalism

M.A.R.

Probably. It's a part of town that we visit once every two months

It looked pretty superficial though. If it was my car I wouldn't have bothered

The only material possession I'm attached to is my reading tablet. Not even my glasses.

A very early riser of a vandal, nonetheless. And schools aren't open yet

@user726941 unenviable.

I wonder how much online teaching varies per country, in how it compares to 'normal' teaching. Here, for twenty years, they've rambled against the internet, like it's some STD. They would have understandably screwed up any huge digital undertaking no matter what.

CowperKettle

04:50

Depiction of Gasparo Aselli discovering the lymphatic vessels on 23 July 1622 during the dissection of a dog

@M.A.R. Here, sometimes drunks are met in the street very early, at about 4 am, going home from parties

I used to come across them on early runs

Spanish word of the day: cubrebocas (medical mask: cubrir - cover, boca - mouth)

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