@Robusto Washington has always been infamous for random vowel movements, an inevitability once all posts are staffed with filibusted folks promoted to their level of incontinence.
@CowperKettle you may be well aware of this but after 'Evidence Based Medicine's was introduced many years ago (BMT = encouraging only using techniques in medicine that had been justified with an RCT or similar experimentation) some docs ridiculed it for it's logical conclusion of recommending avoiding treatments that were obviously beneficial
And there was a classic joke paper (~20 ago?) In BMJ also titled something like 'Are parachutes useful? An RCT'
@Mitch IIRC there was a study showing that, in most of the cases where the "parachute analogy" was used to justify a treatment, subsequent RCTs found the treatment ineffective.
@alphabet There was also a Soviet pilot whose chute failed to operate, but he fell on a long snow slope, with a deep cover of snow, and miraculously survived.
Some conservative types have started arguing that endocrine disruptors are making the youth LBGT. Incidentally this was the source of Alex Jones' "turn the flipping frogs gay" rant.
And pilot Alexey Maresyev survived a treck over enemy territory with his feet broken, in winter. Parts of his legs were amputated, but he somehow managed to return to pilot duty
Aleksey Petrovich Maresyev (Russian: Алексей Петрович Маресьев; 5 May 1916 – 19 May 2001) was a Russian military pilot who became a Soviet fighter ace during World War II despite becoming a double amputee.
== Biography ==
Before joining the army in 1937 Maresyev worked as a turner and then participated in the construction of Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
In 1941, he graduated from the Bataysk Military School of Aviation. He began his flights as a fighter pilot in August 1941. He had shot down four German aircraft by March 1942.
On 5 April 1942 his Yakovlev Yak-1 was shot down near Staraya Russa, after which...
@alphabet I was also thinking about this, but additional studies are needed. Any number of factors could be at play. What if over-population plays a role?
What if there's an ancient genetic switch for controlling the population size?
We have only just started investigating the genes.
My friends's grandma once was part of a group photo with Maresyev. The grandma died 2 weeks ago, so the friend showed me the photo.
@CowperKettle It's an extended argument for the idea that environmental pollutants have caused the obesity epidemic. I'm about 80% sure it's wrong but the series is really interesting.
@CowperKettle Indeed. The series notes that those tropical islands were also strip-mined for bat guano, probably creating a fair amount of toxic waste.
There's a compelling audio book about the Columbian Exchange (changes in the world due to the discovery of the Americas), and there's a chapter about the guano mining.
The whole book is amazing. This exchange is still ongoing and changing the world.
Rock science of the day: dike - a sheet of rock that is formed in a fracture of a pre-existing rock body
A dike or dyke, in geological usage, is a sheet of rock that is formed in a fracture of a pre-existing rock body. Dikes can be either magmatic or sedimentary in origin. Magmatic dikes form when magma flows into a crack then solidifies as a sheet intrusion, either cutting across layers of rock or through a contiguous mass of rock. Clastic dikes are formed when sediment fills a pre-existing crack.
== Magmatic dikes ==
A magmatic dike is a sheet of igneous rock that cuts across older rock beds. It is formed when magma fills a fracture in the older beds and then cools and solidifies. The dike rock...
@alphabet I came across "dike" in a geologist's twitter feed. Some man really mad about geology, it was interesting to read.
A levee (), dike (American English), dyke (Commonwealth English), embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure that is usually earthen and that often runs parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines.The purpose of a levee is to keep the course of rivers from changing and to protect against flooding of the area adjoining the river or coast. Levees can be naturally occurring ridge structures that form next to the bank of a river, or be an artificially constructed fill or wall that regulates water levels. However levees can be bad for the environment.Ancient...
Oh. The other word for levee is dike/dyke. I forgot that.
> Oh my, my this here Anakin guy Maybe Vader someday later, now he's just a small fry He left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye Sayin', "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi
@CowperKettle Wiktionary alleges that "chigger" is now a racial slur for a Chinese person who acts black. (Etymology should be obvious, but nobody actually says this, right?)
Word of the minute: skeuomorph -- a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original
Incidentally: where I am (Northeast US) the word "gimp" refers to a crafting activity (elsewhere called "scoubidou" or "craftlace") commonly done at summer camp. At college I learned that this is, in fact, not the most common meaning elsewhere.
Noun: gimp (countable and uncountable, plural gimps)
A narrow ornamental fabric or braid of silk, wool, or cotton, often stiffened with metallic wire or coarse cord running through it, used as trimming for dresses, curtains, furniture, etc. Also guimpe.
Any coarse or reinforced thread, such as a glazed thread employed in lacemaking to outline designs, or silk thread used as a fishing leader, protected from the bite of fish by a wrapping of fine wire.
1936, Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, Faber & Faber 2007, p. 87:
I'm a fisher of men and my gimp is doing a saltarello over every body of water to fetch up what it may.
The plastic cord used in the plaiting and knotting craft Scoubidou (lanyard making); or, the process itself.
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> Attested since about 1660, perhaps from Dutch gimp or French guimpe, and likely from Old French guimpre, a variant of guipure, a kind of trimming.
@CowperKettle Is this use of "gimp" a regional term for a common activity, or is it an activity uncommon elsewhere, or is the other meaning of "gimp" just better known in other regions?
@CowperKettle The simpler meaning of quilting is creating a quilt. Often these activities were done by groups of women in what were called "quilting bees," which were social gatherings, similar to shucking corn and the like.
> It is named after the 1958 song of the same name by the French singer Sacha Distel.The Distel lyrics that correspond to the English title are "des pommes, des poires, et des Scoubidous", or "apples, pears, and scoubidous".
Consider this example:
Commercialese is an instrument of art,
designed to enrich and invigorate our
language—surely you will all agree
with this—, and we should encourage newcomers to learn it. However, a side-effect is the
spread of commercialese to other
domains. This we must obje...
@CowperKettle Scoubidou etymology is uncertain. Some say it comes from the Provençal "escoube" (broom, it:scopasp:escoba) while other say it comes from scat singing: shoo-bee-doo-be-doo.
@alphabet even if it's true, lifestyle changes have made people fatter, but we don't go strapping them to chairs and shocking them until they lose weight
Onomatopoeia is the use or creation of a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as oink, meow (or miaow), roar, and chirp. Onomatopoeia can differ between languages: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system; hence the sound of a clock may be expressed as tick tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and Italian (shown in the picture), dī dā in Mandarin, kachi kachi in Japanese, or tik-tik in Hindi.
The English term comes from the Ancient...
As Lawler explains elsewhere, the purpose of a comma is to represent a characteristic change in intonation found in spoken English. The "rules" for comma placement are really just heuristics for determining where native speakers tend to use that change in tone. Commas would, in most cases, be jus...
I was really tempted to end this answer with "Take the comma usage red pill"
As I understand, different scientists are trying to understand how the biological brain learns without having the mechanisms for backpropagation similar to those that are present in artificial neural networks.
I wish I was smart enough to actually understand all this, but my backpropagation is too slow.
@CowperKettle It's an SAT question, so I think this is a native speaker who is trying to reconcile the fact that they've been taught a Big Official List of Comma Rules with the fact that those rules don't reflect the underlying principle.
(In particular, they probably think that the SAT writers are very good at following the Big Official List, and therefore that any apparent deviation within the SAT must be the result of their own incomplete understanding of said Big Official List.)
Ukrainians, building trenches on the border with Belarus.
I don't think a trench so shallow would protect from any serious shell, if landed straight, of course.
It's some basic protection from shell fragments and a line for moving here and there.
These mini-chainsaws are godsend during a non-military hike too, especially in the winter, when you need to build a fire.
With simple hand axes, we were spending any minute of free time chopping wood for the fire, when we went hiking in winter. With a mini-chainsaw, it's a charm.
You can make all the firewood you need, and then sit and chat and drink tea.
Etymology of the hour: daffodil -- Variant of Middle English affodill (“ramson”), from Medieval Latin affodillus, from Latin asphodelus, from Ancient Greek ἀσφόδελος (asphódelos), of Pre-Greek origin. The initial d- is perhaps from merging of the article in Dutch de affodil, the Netherlands being a source for bulbs. (Compare adder, apron, newt, nickname, orange and umpire)
Affodil (Asphodelus) is een geslacht van kruidachtige planten, die verspreid zijn over het Middellandse Zeegebied en het zuidwesten van Azië en behoren tot de affodilfamilie (Asphodelaceae)
== Kenmerken ==
Affodils zijn vaste planten die zich vermeerderen via een verdikte wortelstok of één of tweejarige planten met vezelige wortels. De loofbladeren zijn lang en smal en zijn in op de grond staande rozetten gerangschikt.
De bloemen groeien in rechtopstaande trossen of pluimen. Bij Asphodelus albus en Asphodelus fistulosus zijn de stengels ongeveer 150 cm lang; Asphodelus ramosus kan tot bijna 2...
> Inclusion of NSP as part of the diagnostic toolkit in DM would allow doctors to diagnose DE and take steps towards its correction in a timely manner, minimizing the severity of brain dysfunction and improving patients’ quality of life.
I wonder if this phrase, translated by me from Russian, is good stylistically. Diagnostic toolkit. The original Russian was "diagnostic arsenal", which sounds too militaristic to my taste, but is a well-worn phrase in Russian.
Maslenitsa (Belarusian: Масленіца, Russian: Мaсленица, Rusyn: Пущаня, Ukrainian: Масляна; also known as Butter Lady, Butter Week, Crepe week, or Cheesefare Week) is an Eastern Slavic religious and folk holiday which has retained a number of elements of Slavic mythology in its ritual. It is celebrated during the last week before Great Lent; that is, the eighth week before Eastern Orthodox Pascha.
The date of Maslenitsa changes every year, depending on the date of the celebration of Easter. It corresponds to the Western Christian Carnival, except that Orthodox Lent begins on a Monday instead of...
@M.A.R. "Abrogate" is one of those annoying things where the Latin root "abrogare," though ultimately just a compound of "ab" + "rogare," came to have a specific meaning not purely derived from those two parts
@Robusto In Latin, many/most of these preposition+verb compounds have meanings that are fairly obvious if you know the meanings of the original words. But some acquire new meanings that can be surprising
@Robusto Yes, but in Latin it's the exception, not the norm. E.g. "circumspectare" (look around) is just "circum" (around) + "spectate" (look). Likewise "abire" (go away) is just "ab" (away) + "ire" (go)
Sir Cumference is a series of children's educational books about math by Cindy Neuschwander and Wayne Geehan.
The books have been studied for their use in mathematics education.
== Characters ==
Most of the characters of the book are named after math terms, such as Sir Cumference (circumference).
=== Sir Cumference ===
Sir Cumference is a knight in the kingdom of Camelot. He has a wife called Lady Di of Ameter and a son named Radius.
=== Di of Ameter ===
Di of Ameter is the wife of Sir Cumference. In the first book, she came up with all the different shapes of the table (parallelogram...
@Robusto Yeah, Latin tends to form compound verbs whose meanings are obvious from their components, making "abrogare" unusual. Latin word order is quite flexible so it's easy for prepositions to get shifted around and merged into verbs. (Often such verbs take complements in the case used with the preposition, rather than a normal accusative direct object, even though the preposition does not occur before the complement.)
@EllenSpertus sex is particularly concerned with gender, so the use of "guys" when talking about sex would imply that their gender matters. In other content, "guys" can refer to ladies, like "Come here you guys!" But then when referring to specific groups of people, like "Those guys." then gender matters again. Hmm, English is just messed up actually. — Nelson2 days ago
The plural "guys" definitely is, at least here in San Francisco — I'm often hearing all-girl companies here being greeted with 'Hi guys, how are you doing?'.
How about the singular guy? Is it universally assumed that 'the guy who will be doing this' can be either guy or gal?
In Russian, pytat' is to torture. In Ukrainian, pytaty is to ask.
@Robusto Haha
@Robusto Some Western media yesterday published an investigation based on talks with top Russian businessmen. They asked them how they felt at 4 am on 24 Feb 22.
Turns out even Foreign Minister Lavrov learned of the invasion plan 2 hours before it was launched.
Nobody knew nothing.
Top tycoons knew nothing until after the event started.
According to that media, the tycoons came to Lavrov to learn about the situation, thinking that he is Putin's close advisor. Lavrov said "Putin now has only three advisors: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great".
Mazeppa is a narrative poem written by the English Romantic poet Lord Byron in 1819. It is based on a popular legend about the early life of Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709), who later became Hetman (military leader) of Ukraine. Byron's poem was immediately translated into French, where it inspired a series of works in various art forms. The cultural legacy of Mazeppa was revitalised with the independence of Ukraine in 1991.
According to the poem, the young Mazeppa has a love affair with a Polish Countess, Theresa, while serving as a page at the Court of King John II Casimir Vasa. Countess Theresa was married...
BTW, please be sure and remind me if the Sultan of Brunei job comes open. I want to put in an application. $50 billion and a harem. Don't even tell me about the medical.
> On discovering the affair, the Count punishes Mazeppa by tying him naked to a wild horse and setting the horse loose. The bulk of the poem describes the traumatic journey of the hero strapped to the horse.
@CowperKettle we have two semesters with history until the end of high school graduation. The first one is at junior high, has around 8 out of 21 chapters about everything until two centuries ago. The second one has nothing before the Qajar dynasty.
The Qajar dynasty (listen ; Persian: دودمان قاجار Dudmân-e Qâjâr, Azerbaijani: Qacarlar قاجارلار) was an Iranian royal dynasty of Turkic origin, specifically from the Qajar tribe, ruling over Iran from 1789 to 1925. The Qajar family took full control of Iran in 1794, deposing Lotf 'Ali Khan, the last Shah of the Zand dynasty, and re-asserted Iranian sovereignty over large parts of the Caucasus. In 1796, Mohammad Khan Qajar seized Mashhad with ease, putting an end to the Afsharid dynasty, and Mohammad Khan was formally crowned as Shah after his punitive campaign against Iran's Georgian subjects...
I wish Russia was ruled by a woman for a while. Women stay sane longer in their elderly years, and if they grow insane, they don't become as aggressive as men (I hope).
Hamilton is a sung-and-rapped-through musical with music, lyrics, and a book by Lin-Manuel Miranda, based on the 2004 book Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. The musical tells the story of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Composed over a seven-year period from 2008 to 2015, Miranda says Hamilton was originally a hip hop concept album in his head. The show draws heavily from hip hop, as well as R&B, pop, soul, and traditional-style show tunes. It casts non-white actors as the Founding Fathers of the United States and other historical figures. Miranda described Hamilton as about "America...
@Robusto Putin invoking LGBT rights as part of a casus belli is perhaps his most absurd excuse, though it may win him a few fans on the American right.
@CowperKettle Nothing protects from a direct hit, but artillery shells kill in a 360° arc. If you consider the shell explodes at the origin of a circle, all the vectors around that origin are potentially lethal out to the limit of the trajectory and potentially to anything in between. That's why trenches are effective.
Where anybody would use something in Spanish like pasar or maybe ocurrir, the Portuguese use acontecer, which also exists in Spanish but is of a different register there, a fancier word with a more restricted shade of meaning. But in Portuguese it's dirt common.
An inkhorn term is a loanword, or a word coined from existing roots, which is deemed to be unnecessary or over-pretentious.
== Etymology ==
An inkhorn is an inkwell made of horn. It was an important item for many scholars, which soon became symbolic of writers in general. Later, it became a byword for fussy or pedantic writers. The phrase "inkhorn term" is found as early as 1553.
And ere that we will suffer such a prince,So kind a father of the commonweal,To be disgracèd by an inkhorn mate
== Adoption ==
Controversy over inkhorn terms was rife from the mid-16th to the mid-17th century, during...
Anyone who has played scrabble-like games in English and other languages cannot help but notice that English has an extremely high number of two and three-letter words.
Is there a known historic-linguistic reason that English has so many short words?
@Robusto IIRC they also have automatic trench-digging machines, so it's a fairly easy way to get some level of protection. The alternative is to build fortifications aboveground, which is a bit more labor-intensive.