English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:05

The bumblebees are of the genus Bombus. I wonder what they have to do with firefighters?

tchrist

00:17

Ok, I give up: what the heck is a bumfuzzle? Well, or how does one bumfuzzle something, if a verb?

I do so need to get DARE.

> Thanks to DARE, we will always know that a “gospel bird” once meant a chicken, “long sugar” was molasses, a “toad-strangler” (a.k.a. “duck-drownder,” “belly-washer” or “cob-floater”) was a heavy rainstorm and “Old Huldy” was the sun.

> At a “waistline party,” mentioned in African-American circles, the price of admission corresponded to a reveler’s girth; at a “toe social,” a mid-20th- century term, women draped in sheets were picked as partners on the basis of their feet. (Presumably they then danced together uninhibitedly, or “fooped.”) In the 1950s, a man from the Ozarks might say his pregnant wife was “teemin’” or “with squirrel”—but not if she was around to hear him.

Sorry Jasper, but as the missus is with squirrel, she won’t be joinin’ usuns.

> Those fluffy bits beneath the bed, for instance, are dust kitties (Northeast), dust bunnies (Midwest), house moss (South) or woolies (Pennsylvania). A potluck is a tureen dinner in upstate New York or, in the Midwest, a pitch-in or scramble dinner. Almost a whole page of DARE is dedicated to “wampus,” a Southern term for a variety of real creatures (such as a wild horse) and imagined ones, such as swamp wampuses and whistling wampuses.

That, ’twould appear, is a wumpus.

Also known as a wampus.

Ooh ooh ooh! They have a quiz!

MετάEd

@tchrist Unseasonably warm, yes.

Today 17 °F above the mean.

@tchrist This was my Wumpus: atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=247

tchrist

00:37

I’ve just learned that somehow who plays unscientific whist is known as a bumblepupper or bumblepuppist. Now, what the devil is unscientific whist? Somebody who can’t count tricks?

@MετάEd I get a Not Found.

KitFox

@tchrist Well, I'm sure that I typed an apostrophe. So. shrugs

@tchrist I said no such thing, you silly person.

tchrist

@KitFox Regarding that, it appears that the software has a broken algorithm for converting ASCII into curly quotes.

@KitFox And regarding that, it sure looked that way to me. BTW, I can’t find any actual examples for “Seamus’ writings”, nor, alas, for any possessive use of Seamus that way. I should think it would always have been Seamus’s, since otherwise it sounds like you have someone named Shama, or if non-rhotic, Shamer. I think that might have been a problem.

tchrist

01:28

@MετάEd Your wumpus has mysteriously resolved. My DNS seems to have been whacked out.

Robusto

@tchrist Should've whacked out your DNA instead. Then you could be in the X-Men.

tchrist

@Robusto Well, I did spend my junior year in college abroad.

Robusto

I spent my junior year in a broad.

cornbread ninja

01:55

@MετάEd we're at $2.97 today.

@Robusto rimshot

Robusto

@cornbreadninja Nah, it wasn't kinky like that.

cornbread ninja

@Robusto oh, more like Fantastic Voyage?

Robusto

@cornbreadninja No. Just no rimshots.

I suggest you look up the alternate meanings on Urban Dictionary.

cornbread ninja

@Robusto OIC.

@Robusto that's rim job. :P

Robusto

Also rimshot.

@cornbreadninja That's the correct emoticon, BTW.

cornbread ninja

02:01

@Robusto followed by :d

Robusto

That's "licking the alphabet" for sure.

Cerberus

08:18

Hello.

tweakers.net/nieuws/85646/…

Video of the world's oldest working computer restored, from 1949.

It looks cool. And it's decimal, not binary based!

It can hold several numbers in memory at once!

And it has cool lights.

And it makes fantastic clicking sounds.

Cerberus

08:45

Distribution of Android versions over time.

RegDwighт

10:21

What's with the typos questions today?

Cerberus

Are you saying I'm a typos question?

RegDwighт

I am saying it can be see that you are as could as ice.

@Cerberus they started with five versions simultaneously? The first one never getting any traction at all?

Cerberus

@RegDwighт plugs ears

@RegDwighт Well...what do you think?

RegDwighт

Also, nobody likes honeycombs. Ice cream sandwiches, on the other hand!

Cerberus

Presumably the history of Android goes back further than the graph shows.

RegDwighт

10:26

@Cerberus I think that the graph is rubbish, that's what I think.

Cerberus

@RegDwighт Yes, ICS is cool.

@RegDwighт Wai?

RegDwighт

Because:

33 secs ago, by Cerberus

Presumably the history of Android goes back further than the graph shows.

Cerberus

They probably measured user agents on some website.

Which is known to be unreliable.

RegDwighт

Yeah.

I still get hits with IE 4.0.

Cerberus

But it will give us some impression.

Hits?

Oh, on your website.

RegDwighт

10:27

Yes. Wrong impression is also an impression.

Cerberus

Well, those may be real.

@RegDwighт Well, other sources seem to indicate somewhat similar distributions.

RegDwighт

@Cerberus on my site they may indeed. It will work in Netscape 4.4.

Cerberus

Yay.

RegDwighт

But that's beside the point.

The point is not that if someone visits my site with NS4 it will work; the point is what the heck is he doing visiting my site with NS4?

He probably can't even Google in it. AltaVista might work, but I'm not so sure.

@Cerberus also, why the hell do Cupcake, Donut, and Froyo have brackets? What for, pray tell.

Not to mention the X axis, which is labeled in a most dumb way; you can smell the graph was made by a geek with no knowledge of graphs.

Cerberus

@RegDwighт Long live Altavista! I used that all the time.

In 1999.

RegDwighт

10:32

Yeah. All the time, for small values of all.

Cerberus

@RegDwighт Looks neater that way.

Now you know that, say, Froyo and ICS are equals, not one a header and the other an instance, or whatever.

RegDwighт

What?

I'm not following.

He even uses hyphens for dashes.

And the justification of ICS is horrible.

Verdict: he cannot pass.

Cerberus

Then go and break your silly staff, if that rocks your ~~boat~~ bridge.

RegDwighт

I'm not in a hurry. It's not like he can fly away or something.

Cerberus

11:11

Well, do you know what he looks like?

He may have—let's call them umbratic protuberances.

Matt Эллен

I don't understand the graph. It says 100% of people use version 1.1. that can't be true, because some people are using something that isn't 1.1

Hello!

Cerberus

You know very well that is a cumulative graph...

Matt Эллен

11:29

so?

what does that mean?

it's still at 100%

how can it be at 100% when no one has it anymore? cumulative doesn't make sense

what is it 100% of?

the chart doesn't make sense.

cumulative means "how much so far" it's not at 100% so far

Cerberus

The percentages do not point to single versions: how could they? There are no lines.

Matt Эллен

so what is the y axis for?

Cerberus

So 100 % means the aggregate of all the OS versions under it.

Matt Эллен

oh

Cerberus

Surely you have seen graphs like this before?

Matt Эллен

11:41

maybe

I don't recall

without labels it doesn't make sense

@Cerberus there are lots of lines. they go all over the place.

Cerberus

No meaningful lines.

Only bands.

So you can't say "1.1 is 100 %" just because the upper boundary is at 100 %.

In any case, I know what you mean, but context is implied, and these kinds of graphs are fairly common...

Matt Эллен

fairly uncommon everywhere else but where you are, apparently

Cerberus

Matt Эллен

yep. I can't read that one either, without the y axis label

Cerberus

The fact that there are coloured bands indicates that the percentages are cumulative.

Otherwise, you would use lines, not bands.

Matt Эллен

11:48

ok, if you say so

Cerberus

The label is the same as the title.

Matt Эллен

I don't read "Cumulative percentage of GDP" in the title

anyway. band graphs are news to me. they seem stupid.

Cerberus

These kinds of graphs are not really meant for reading individual values (like the percentage for discretionary spending in 1991), because you can't read those.

@MattЭллен How else to present a cumulative graph?

Matt Эллен

don't

it doesn't tell me anything I want to know, like how much the net interest was

Cerberus

But they can give you a quick overview.

Matt Эллен

11:51

not if they don't make any sense

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Indeed not.

But is that what you want to know?

Matt Эллен

it tells me that the net interest was close to 25

which it wasn't

Cerberus

The purpose of such graphs is to easily estimate which kind of spending makes up the largest part at any given time.

And nothing else.

Matt Эллен

I suppose

Cerberus

In a graph where the total is always 100 %, the above is all that you can use it for.

In a graph like the spending graph, you can also read the total spending in all three categories combined.

So you should only use such graphs if a quick historical overview of proportions is what you want to provide.

If you want people to be able to read actual values of the components, then you need to use another type of graph, with (intersecting) lines—but then you lose the advantage of the quick proportional overview.

So it depends on what you want.

flatronka

11:55

Is it correct ?: "It is my fault, I change the words meaning. I can't imagine how hard to manage thousand of students."

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus Yes. sorry, I was very frustrated by the chart. I'm better now.

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Haha it's OK.

It wasn't my chart.

@flatronka Hmm sorry, but no.

What do you mean by "I change the words meaning"?

flatronka

yeah I wan to apologise because I change 2 words meaning application and nomination

my story: I write a letter where I use application instead of nomination and application instead of application. Now I want to apologise

RegDwighт

"I used the wrong word", "I swapped two words", "I got two words confused".

And the second sentence is wrong.

"I can't imagine how hard it is to manage" and "a thousand" or "thousands".

Cerberus

I agree with Reg (obviously).

flatronka

12:05

thank you

Robusto

12:49

Hola.

KitFox

Morning.

Robusto

I must have a door in the back of my head.

KitFox

Why do you say that?

Robusto

►

Matt Эллен

Maybe he's having a Malcovich moment

KitFox

12:54

@MattЭллен That's what I was thinking.

Robusto

Malkovich.

Matt Эллен

Milky witch

KitFox

Speaking of milky witches, how's the story coming?

Robusto

> I'm thinkin' blah-de-blah-blah-blah to your trip.

Matt Эллен

@KitFox Pretty good. I'm trying to write about what happened in the missing 8 hours. How's yours coming?

Robusto

12:57

Someone's writing a story about milky witches?

Matt Эллен

well, ghosts

Robusto

Do they make those with the same process used to make milk chocolate?

KitFox

@MattЭллен Surprisingly good, except I realized that her sister's going to get whacked in the next scene.

It's very upsetting.

Matt Эллен

@KitFox :( nothing can save her?

KitFox

They don't even see it coming.

Matt Эллен

12:58

@Robusto similar, only with more cats

KitFox

Because I sure didn't.

Matt Эллен

:D

Well, what's got to be's got to be.

KitFox

Just goes to show my gut reaction toward sibling closeness.

Matt Эллен

That you're upset?

KitFox

That I'm extremely anxious about bad things happening to them.

Well, to one of them anyway.

It is freezing in my house this morning. WTF?

I guess the stove must have gone out last night because it is about 60 degrees in here.

Matt Эллен

13:03

lets hope it wasn't stove in

KitFox

It's not stove up, don't be silly.

How would that happen?

Someone break into our house and hit it with a sledgehammer a few times?

Matt Эллен

with some sort of brute force

KitFox

Want eggs?

Coffee?

Matt Эллен

or someone's coffee was laced with hallucinogens that caused you to have some sort of out of body experience or something.

KitFox

Sorry I have no bacon.

Robusto

13:08

I have bacon.

Matt Эллен

Eggs sound good!

KitFox

Fried? Scrambled? Um...poached?

Robusto

@MattЭллен Eggs don't make any sound. They have to turn into chickens first.

Matt Эллен

fried!

KitFox

I've got one here. How do you like them, easy or hard?

Wow. That sounded completely wrong.

Matt Эллен

13:10

easy, with toast

its_me

In a lesson about Knowledge and Wisdom the author says, "We are told on Sundays that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. On the other 6 days of the week, we are exhorted to hate him. You may say that it is nonsense since it's not our neighbour whom we are exhorted to hate. But you will remember that the precept was exemplified by saying that the Samaritan was our neighbour." -- Does the bible say something like this?

Matt Эллен

@KitFox it's OK, you weren't talking about sausages

KitFox

I like mine scrambled hard with ketchup.

@its_me You might check the Christianity room.

its_me

@KitFox I actually want the meaning of the sentence if anyone knows

Matt Эллен

which sentence?

its_me

13:12

Is the author saying that by urging ourselves to love our neighbour on sunday, we are thereby pressing ourselves to hate him on the other days?

KitFox

@its_me It means "don't be a hypocrite."

Matt Эллен

@its_me that's not a sentence, it's a passage, or extract.

its_me

@MattЭллен :P

KitFox

Don't go to church and glorify Jesus by saying how much you love your neighbor and then spend the rest of the week persecuting others because they are not of your faith or don't do things the way you would.

That's what it means, as far as I can tell.

Or as near as I can tell.

its_me

okay

Matt Эллен

13:13

@its_me the more accurate your question, the more accurate the answers

its_me

@MattЭллен (below)

> Is the author saying that by urging ourselves to love our neighbour on sunday, we are thereby pressing ourselves to hate him on the other days?

Matt Эллен

> Does the bible say something like this?

> I actually want the meaning of the sentence if anyone knows

@its_me if you'd said that first, it would have taken less effort on all our parts

its_me

@MattЭллен Since it says "Sundays" I thought it's related to Christians

KitFox

Yeah. "Love thy neighbor" is a Christian tenet.

its_me

@MattЭллен Will do that next time, sorry for the trouble

Matt Эллен

13:16

@its_me no worries :D

its_me

@KitFox Ah, okay

Matt Эллен

The problem, of course, comes when one can't tell between love and stalking

its_me

hehe!

KitFox

There's a difference?

Matt Эллен

Well, I didn't want to say anything...

People tend to let the restraining orders speak for themselves

KitFox

13:21

Oh, is that what those are about?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Stalking is when two people go on a nice, long, romantic walk together, but only one of them knows about it.

KitFox

Hahaha

Laundry, dishes, drywall, pies, lasagna.

Matt Эллен

, writing

KitFox

, getting the kids somewhere to run around.

Damn it.

Maybe my friend wants to bring her kids over.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox or maybe your friend wants to watch your kids

KitFox

13:31

She'll take the eldest on occasion, but that wouldn't help today. I'd have to drop him off, so I'd lose 40 minutes and then I'd be stuck entertaining the youngest.

Matt Эллен

or maybe you should set up an elaborate experiment where some of the kids are gaolers and some are inmates, and have your friend monitor the behaviour to see what develops...

KitFox

Maybe i'll give them cake.

Matt Эллен

sounds easier, I'll grant you that

but it won't give me time to catch you up

KitFox

Actually it probably would.

tchrist

@KitFox Actually, “Love thy neighbor” is Judaic, and appears in many other cultures. “Love thy enemy” is a Christian tenet. It is . . . different.

KitFox

13:35

shrugs Whatever. It's all Greek to me. I suggested he ask in the Xianity room anyway.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

haha, so my wife changed cell phones a week ago, and her old one finally ran down its battery and then did it's "vibrate and beep" song and dance to alert the inside of the desk drawer that it was shutting down.

It was a bit startling.

KitFox

@tchrist And since I wasn't the one asking and I don't care, you might direct your comment to @its_me.

its_me

@tchrist are you sure? kingjbible.com/mark/12.htm

Matt Эллен

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 why do they do that? Using a bajillion battery points to tell me the battery is almost dead is not a good plan.

KitFox

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That's funny. You know how batteries spontaneously discharge when they are dying? About a week after my dad died, one of his battery-powered fire engine toys started going off in the middle of the night. It freaked us all out.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13:39

@MattЭллен yeah I dunno.

Matt Эллен

also, yeah, it makes me jump a mile

KitFox

@its_me You are better off asking in the Christianity room.

its_me

@KitFox I was only providing some clarification. Anyway...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox THAT's odd. Actually I don't see how the battery's state should matter. The battery should be discharging whenever the rest of the circuit wants current. So something else in the toy is responsible for the noise. Maybe a poltergeist.

Matt Эллен

maybe something was acting like a capacitor

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13:41

@MattЭллен Esp since I didn't know this phone was on, or still charged, or even where it was. Good ol' dumbphones: battery lasts forever.

@MattЭллен Yeah that was my other theory, after "poltergeist".

KitFox

I'll ask my husband. He'll know.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

He's an expert in the paranormal?!?

Matt Эллен

Maybe they had a group hallucination!

KitFox

He's an electrician.

shakes head You guys are weird.

I barely knew him then anyway.

Matt Эллен

weird, or ... interesting?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13:46

haha, Kit calls US weird. At least we're not married to the Ghostbuster.

Matt Эллен

Probably Venkman. He has a way with the ladies.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

There's something strange / in your neighbourhood / who you gonna call? / Kit's husband!

Matt Эллен

LOL

tchrist

What’s the deal with people voting to delete questions closed as dupes? I thought we weren’t supposed to do that, so that there would be more ways to find answers. Ok, not encouraged, if you would. But still.

Matt Эллен

I think I've done it accidentally before. In haste, before realising it was a dupe. but only once or twice

RegDwighт

13:48

US electricians are experts in the paranormal? How is that different from US not-electricians?

KitFox

@MattЭллен He was always my favorite.

tchrist

@MattЭллен Yes, exactly. I have, too, and felt bad about it. I just wonder whether our new deleters are aware of the general SE viewpoint regarding the matter.

Matt Эллен

@RegDwighт You'll be shocked by the explanation.I'm not sure you have the capacity to understand it. You'll certainly resist it. Etc.

RegDwighт

@tchrist yeah, that. No idea. You see a deleted dupe, bring it up here. I don't think you can flag it.

KitFox

Hi fluffy owl friend.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13:50

tchrist

@RegDwighт Oh, I think I could flag it if, if only I could find it. There is little you cannot flag.

RegDwighт

Note that many dupes are deleted automatically. That should probably be reversed, too.

tchrist

They are?

I had thought they must be excepted.

RegDwighт

No answers, less than 100 votes, and a score of minus 1 or lower = you're killed with fire after a month.

tchrist

That gets in the way of the many-paths thing.

RegDwighт

13:52

@tchrist I haven't been monitoring it closely by any means, so I dunno. But I thought I saw one or two occasionally.

I'm not camping in the "recently deleted" tab.

tchrist

I don’t think the autodeletes show up in the recently deleted queue that I can see, do they?

Maybe they do. The Community ones do.

KitFox

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh my god, I completely forgot about the cartoon.

RegDwighт

english.stackexchange.com/questions/79065/…

This was deleted automatically.

Matt Эллен

@KitFox That's a new cartoon

RegDwighт

There was a meta question about it, in fact.

It's a dupe.

So QED.

tchrist

13:53

And dead.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен No, it's from the 80s

RegDwighт

Now let's see if the deleted queue goes that far back.

Matt Эллен

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 but the 80s one had venkman, spangler, ray and winston. No gorilla, purple chick, ray and blond guy

RegDwighт

The tab says 30 days. And actually it only goes back 2 days. So we'll have to check some other time.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен No, this was Filmation's Ghostbusters. The Ghostbusters movie licensed the name from them, and after the movie was released, Filmation made a new cartoon. The Venkman/Spengler/etc one was called "The Real Ghostbusters"

RegDwighт

13:57

@MattЭллен Permission denied. But I notice the URL says TV Tropes. I would thus like to thank God for denying permission to access TV Tropes.

tchrist

The tab is the last 50, up to 30 days old. If there are 50 over the last hour, those are all it shows. Right?

RegDwighт

Guess so.

Matt Эллен

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 oh! well that never made it to the UK :D

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен btw I get "referral denied" for that image

Matt Эллен

well, I can't edit it...

tchrist

13:58

I’m not sure why those queues have no “next 50” button.

Matt Эллен

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Ghostbusters (1986 TV series)

Ghostbusters (later called Filmation's Ghostbusters) is an animated television series created by Filmation and distributed by Tribune Broadcasting and launched following the success of Ivan Reitman and Columbia Pictures' 1984 film Ghostbusters. It ran from September 8 to December 5, 1986 in daytime syndication and produced 65 episodes. The cartoon was based on a live-action television show from 1975 titled The Ghost Busters. It is not to be confused with the animated show The Real Ghostbusters, which was based on the 1984 film Ghostbusters. Columbia Pictures had to obtain the rights to ...

RegDwighт

I undeleted it, but I guess it will be autodeleted again in thirty days.

Or sooner.

Sooner in point of fact. The script runs every week.

tchrist

Well . . . I bet locking it stops that. Or at least, I should hope it would.

But it doesn’t really merit a lock.

But we use what tools are available, I guess.

RegDwighт

It doesn't merit an upvote, either. But that's what the system invites us to do. Upvote crap dupes.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…