@Toby “Ellipsis” (Wikipedia).

That's the explanation behind leaving it out. As for leaving it vs. leaving it out, that's just regional style differences.

@Toby War of 1812 changed everything. The English had an Embargo on 'to' (also the letter 'u' as evidenced in the American's impoverished spelling 'color', 'humor'.)

@MετάEd That's an explanation, like explaining to kid's that babies come from the hospital. when in fact tehy come from stork's that drop them off at the hospital.

and baby ducks come from the chocolates eggs that bunnies lay.

@MετάEd thats a lot of types of ellipsis I didnt know existed (thought it was just the name for "...")!

Sorry, I wasnt clear. That was the explanation, not what happens.

@Mitch LOLhave to disagree there as Americans managed to replace quite a lot of other letters with a single 'u' as evidenced in "thru"

;)

exatcly...efficiency under duress, removing the idiotic -ough.

also, we've replaced yes and no with a single word 'huh'. reduces confusion having too many possibilities.

The "write" and "an 'erb" (vs "a herb") are the two parts of AE that always grated on my ear. The later would seem to be down to grammatical rule interpretation and a lot of the other differences are obv based on the evolution since the divergence with the influence of french, but "write me" always just seemed like laziness... (although the ellipsis explains the how somewhat)

'in hospital': you've thrown away a perfectly good use of 'the'.

@Toby That’s not American. It’s illiterate.

Hi

@Toby An herb is the original; the weird a herb is a recent invention.

@Toby Exactly what @tchrist says: the old country rotten by its own decadent conservatism.

*its

what's the verb form of 'rotten' ... 'spoiled'?

ha! I'm always doing that.

Call me a cab. Sing me a song. Answer me a question. Tell me a tale. Write me a letter.

OK. You're a cab.

Wait do I have to do all of those?

riolet

Do you know why we’ve no Wester holiday in six months?

Today, while reading an article I came to a weird sentence:

We stopped celebrating Wester when they stripped September 31st from the calendar.

@tchrist When's the next one?

Water is a strange substance; it is formless and transparent and yet we long to be beside it.

What does it mean?

@Sudhir I totally disagree. It's a very normal substance.

sorry, not being serious. here's serious.

@Mitch: I read in newspaper.

But yet we long to be beside it.?

What does it mean?

'yet' = 'but' there. That is, they;re trying to draw a contrast between 'formless/transparent' and 'longing to be beside it'. But I don't see that contrast, it seems hardly relevant one way or the other the formlessness or transparency of an object and want to be beside it.

Presumably 'wanting to be beside it' is about people wanting to have homes or vacation nect to a body of water. Which in that context, the water is not at all formless or transparent. It's a big obstacle, but s nice to look across.

Please explain 'longing to be beside it'.

'longing' means 'desire' 'I long to be beside it' = 'I want to be beside it' but with more feeling.

'beside it' means just that 'I want to be next to it'.

Make sense now?

Yes. Thanks.

Off to make like Bush and clear brush...BBL TTYL TTFN AFK YMMV

GR

@Mitch:You're a native speaker of English?

Hey @tchrist. Haven't talked to you in a while

@simchona: Whether we use a before half year like a million and a half years ago?

or simply a million and half years.

@Sudhir That's not a full sentence, and I already told you to stop pestering people with pings

Sorry.

The sentence was Sometimes about a million and half years ago, some forgotten genius of the hormonid world did an unexpected thing.

Hi!

Hello.

Can I ask you something?

Yes, sure

I'm french and I was wondering if "Let's code" is right? Can I write "Let's code" (in french : codons)

That would probably be short.

@Guicara It's perfectly fine

Grammatically its correct. But if you're in a formal conversation that you should expand it further.

@Sudhir It's fine either way.

@Guicara:Why don't use Google translate?

It's not an idiomatic phrase, but it's perfectly understandable. Kind of like saying "let's go!"

Google Translate fails to translate "codons" (the french word for "let's code") :/

Okay.

@simchona that's what I thought (for "let's go"

Thank both of you! Have a nice day! Bye

Bye! Good night.

Here is a Norwegian forest cat, once more.

And that is all.

@tchrist so folks give the appearance of macho nachos?

I’m kinda here. What’s up?

The Easter Groundhog.

> 2013-02-19: When a comment thread contains a comment by a user whose name starts with a non-ASCII letter (e.g. Я) and you write new comment, just typing @ will bring the tab completer up with that name.

How's the fever?

Gone down.

It is a nice day in the low 70s here, perfectly still and cloudless. A deeply cerulean sky.

We have 63ish, with increasing clouds.

Twas a nice day to peruse Dumpsters.

Hello.

Hello!

We got 3˚C today, yippee!

Whee!

sighs Yes…

:(

And only four baptisms to sit through!

only four

Χριστός ἀνέστη!

Four!

Easter Sunday + the pastor's final sermon after being at the church for longer than I've been alive.

Needless to say, the pews were packed.

Ugh.

Is your 'bucks open?

Yep. But another store is borrowing me today.

:O

Happens a lot—partners will be loaned to a store once in a while if they need extra people.

I was loaned to another Baskin Robbins once.

How'd that go?

It was interesting. Just the one shift.

Hmm. Well, speaking of shifts, I need to change and skedaddle. Bye!

Don't forget to 23 skidoo.

So the expert really is not a human. A pity!

@RegDwighт What page do I go to so I can try and talk to it myself? I can view everyone's transcripts but just going to adviza.stackexchange.com results in a 404 for me.

@WendiKidd I have no idea. For me the box popped up when I was editing a question. I guess the post on MSO might have hints.

adviza.stackexchange.com/transcript/7nwcjfdglEan

Not bad.

@RegDwighт So you make as little sense when talking to an expert as when you're talking to us...

@Cerberus Why do you say that you make as little sense when talking to an expert as when you're talking to us?

Hello!

Yes.

42.*

*) I actually got this answer once.

Turns out LEGO produces not very many parts in orange.

@Cerberus I read that.

Then how will you celebrate the inauguration des Sohns Beatrix?

@RegDwighт Cool.

@Cerberus he will be inaugurated? Oh my. Well, I will celebrate that with a hue manatee.

So stupid and stereotypical. Mine was green.

@RegDwighт A huge what?

@tchrist yes I know but @kitfox keeps asking for a fox.

With no methodology given, it is meaningless.

I have no earthly idea in the world why guys hate purple as much as they hate pink. I’ve never heard of such a thing.

And that brown was picked by someone who's colourblind.

I do hate purple.

Would never wear it.

It’s from a German site, so I’m sure they are precise. :)

Would wear pink.

Purple is certainly one of my favorite colors.

Are you colourblind?

Aww!

This is what I have so far, and I don't have many options beside that.

> The statistical source for the following diagrams was a survey carried out and published by Eva Heller (Eva Heller, Wie Farben wirken). Among german experts, this book is regarded as the most comprehensive work about color symbolism or color associations:

Then again, I am certain this is better than 99% of the LEGO foxen out there.

No capital, no Cerberus reading that.

Make it!

I was about to do just that but you pang me.

X you mw rhw lfwa longwer?

Er.

How pang I you?

Can you make the legs longer?

I pang you not.

It looks a bit like the ER dogs.

You think I should?

I don't think so.

Well, foxes have longer legs than most canines, is all.

Corgis don’t.

This is an abstract fox, so go with your feelings.

Well yes. But it would look as if it had hooves.

OH.

I hate sites that don’t let you get directory listings. :(

I see.

Well, I dunno if I would call those hooves.

That would work for me.

And anyway, it has to be in scale with my other animals.

But maybe others would not see it that way.

Right.

Well, not too much out of scale anyway.

Any way to make the tail longer than the snout?

@tchrist not really, no.

Ah.

That’s ok then.

Not using the cones.

I tried using other bricks, but that looked awful.

I agree you need to keep it orange so people think of the standard fox, Vulpes vulpes.

Aye.

Even though even that one comes in other color morphs.

If you did a fennec, you’d need big ears. :)

LEGO has like four shades of orange, but those have even fewer parts.

@tchrist I was thinking about a fennec.

In fact it's still on my list.

Not at this scale, though, I guess.

I tried to make a bunny the other day, keeping it as tiny as possible, it turned out gigantic.

You know the grey fox is arborial, right?

And of course, the arctic fox would be all white, but that would only work in a polar bear setting.

I give. What is it?

This is like the size of my hippo.

Is that the bunny?

I see now.

It wasn't clear?

Well, epic fail then.

I mean come on I even added the carrot just in case.

I was looking at it as a very large calibre army munition, used for shelling.

Anyway, that was just a study.

The ears are the tube for firing.

I guess at this scale I will have to go with the pre-mold LEGO one.

I guess you’ve seen the Easter Groundhog joke.