English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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I don't know who I am.

11:26

Hello, everyone.
Doctor is hard job.
Is it correct sentence?
Its correct form is.
Doctor is a hard job,right?

@terdon

@tchrist

Matt E. Эллен

11:54

happy birthday @tchrist :D

@RegDwigнt Thanks ~~gorgeous~~ hideous owl!

tchrist

12:16

Thanks. I slept in today.

It's pea-soup outside right now. Eerie.

1 hour later…

tchrist

13:31

Thought for the Day: Why don't we call hackathons “coding bees”?

crl

14:16

tchrist

searches for goats

crl

I sailed around that rock some decades ago, do goats swim?

oh sometimes animals conquer new islands on small rafts, it's not far away from mainland anyway

tchrist

They do swim, but probably not so far.

Most mammals swim.

crl

yea, can't think of a mammal that can't

tchrist

Camel.

crl

14:19

would they sink :)? or drown of exhaustion

tchrist

Elephants don't swim, I think.

straightdope.com/mailbag/mcamelswim.html

crl

they can youtube.com/watch?v=HpD40ewOyC4

tchrist

So it says.

crl

they have an integrated scuba

tchrist

Great apes, including homies, have a bit of a rough time at it.

sci-news.com/biology/…

But it can happen.

Be warned that that link contains naked swimmers.

> Humans, who are closely related to the apes, also do not swim instinctively.

Hmmm.

tchrist

14:38

Save this: What Really Happened to English? Examining the Celtic Hypothesis

I'm forever trying to dredge up the sorts of things it gathers together there.

1 hour later…

Cerberus

15:41

@tchrist Is to-day your birth-day?

Happy it!

tchrist

@Cerberus Thank you. I had crème brûlée avec fruits des bois for breakfast by way of celebratory indulgence.

Which sounds so much more refined than custard with berries.

But I did not make it myself, and so it bore no saffron.

Cerberus

Good.

I like crème brûlée, even if it be custard.

tchrist

The crunchy top is nice.

Cerberus

A very fatty custard with a layer of hard caramel.

Quite.

Do you have a burner?

tchrist

Custard is a comfort-food.

I do not.

Cerberus

15:47

If you do, crème brûlée is easy to make.

Oh.

tchrist

They're always sold out because drug addicts use them for something I forget.

Cerberus

Oh, really?

Hmm.

tchrist

Burning meth in pipes?

Cerberus

You can probably buy them online for a tenner.

tchrist

I don't know.

Cerberus

15:48

I'm not a drug person, alas.

tchrist

Sure, but then I'd never leave the house.

Plus it is a rather rich dessert.

Like booze, probably not something to get into the habit of consuming alone too often.

Cerberus

Mmm...

tchrist

gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com/engl/Croc_sat.html

Nice page.

Cerberus

Lots of synonyms.

This is dimetrodon.

tchrist

’Tis.

Cerberus

15:54

It lived during the early Permian.

tchrist

I know.

Cerberus

Do you think it is closer to you, or to a dinosaur?

tchrist

Not sure what you're measuring there.

Cerberus

DNA and genealogy.

Whose lesser cousin is it, yours or a dinosaur's?

Aka. phylogenetically closer.

tchrist

It is in the mammaloids not the avioids.

Cerberus

15:55

Bravo.

tchrist

Remember whom you're asking these simple questions of. :)

Cerberus

It is a indeed a synapsoid, a being "closer to mammals than to dinosaurs".

tchrist

I knew its name when I was eight years old.

Cerberus

Well, I don't know anything about your biological knowledge. Besides, you might not have thought about it for a while.

So did I: I built it when I was eight years old.

tchrist

They had a lot of mistaken ideas back then.

They taught us that it was a reptile.

Cerberus

15:58

I became a dinosaurophiliac a few years before the dinosaur rage began with Jurassic Park and such.

tchrist

Lo these five and forty years ago.

Children often do.

And not purple ones.

Cerberus

In fact, a case can be made for calling it (and us) reptiles.

At any rate, we're all reptilomorpha.

tchrist

You have to carve off clades.

Cerberus

Off from what?

Reptiles isn't a clade, is it, if you exclude dinosaurs and us?

tchrist

The problem is that you have to remove mammals and dinobirds.

Cerberus

16:01

Exactly.

Or...perhaps you don't have to.

At any rate, I don't use the term in phylogenetics: too confusing.

tchrist

Hm, axe-lizards.

πέλυξ σαῦρος

Cerberus

tchrist

Why are birds and mammals connected?

And while I know where the dinosaurs sit there, I wonder if others do.

Hm, the first evidence for fur in mammalish things is from the mid-Jurassic, some 164 million years ago.

theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/03/…

Apparently we only find feathers on dinosaurs 150 million years ago.

So perhaps they were just trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Cerberus

@tchrist Perhaps because they are the main surviving endotherms?

@tchrist Just before the aves.

tchrist

16:18

> The two naked men are a magnet for . . .

Cerberus

@tchrist I'm not sure whether that is evolutionarily possible...

Hmm naked men?

tchrist

Yes, like attracts like. :)

> . . . visitors to London’s Natural History Museum.

cosmosmagazine.com/life-sciences/neanderthals-live-us

Somewhat odd.

Cerberus

@tchrist Does it? Wouldn't it make more sense to suspect a common cause behind both fur and feathers, rather than one being caused by the other?

tchrist

@Cerberus This was a joke.

Cerberus

OK just checking.

tchrist

16:22

The designers of those figures are Dutch.

Cerberus

Do they have any evidence that tattoos were popular in that age?

tchrist

I wondered that.

I don't know.

Cerberus

I'm playing Schubert.

Because he will be played at the Concertgebouw tonight.

This evening.

tchrist

Which?

Cerberus

concertgebouw.nl/concerten/…

tchrist

16:31

> Anisodactyly, syndactyly, zygodactyly, heterodactyly, pamprodactyly, schizodactyly.

Cerberus

Alfred Brendel - Schubert - Four Impromptus, D 935

►

tchrist

I like those.

Cerberus

Ah, the second movement is probably very well known.

That is, I know it.

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