@flowerbug It's always good to back up answers with something, whether that be quotes or links or just some solid reasoning. Sometimes it feels weird to be explaining something "obvious", but I always try to remember that it can't have been obvious to the OP, otherwise they wouldn't have asked the question!
A one-line answer which is correct and hits the nail on the head is often indistinguishable, for someone who doesn't already know the answer, from a one-line answer which is just a random internet user's opinion.
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By encouraging explained and evidence-based answers, we allow this site to be useful even for people who don't know our users and their expertise: you don't have to care who wrote an answer, or whether they know what they're talking about, if all the reasoning which leads to that answer is laid out right there.
In the story "Fellow-Feeling" from R. K. Narayan's short story collection Malgudi Days (which I've been reading online), a proverb is mentioned in passing:
Rajam Iyer leaned back in his seat, reminding himself of a proverb which said that if you threw a stone into a gutter it would only spurt...
@NapoleonWilson The most excitement you can get now is following this page as it updates. Can't see who's ahead, but at least you can see who's voting. It's the closest thing to new activity or scores to observe, if that's what you're after ;-)
The more I read of Bentley's 1732 edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, the more I realize that I recognize Bentley's approach to the text — it's exactly the kind of determinedly literal reading that we are all familiar with from scifi.se.
Take the question of the physical relation of Hell to the Abyss.
Bentley says, "Twas hard, if not impossible, in our Poet's Condition [referring to Milton's blindness], not sometimes to forget, and make his Fictions inconsistent, against the natural and establish'd Rule. We have here, The nethermost Abyss but He makes not that the nethermost, but all Hell below it, as Chaos tells Satan v. 1003 ... And Belzebub owns, that the Abyss was higher than Hell, v. 408 ... And Satan, when he first left Hell and took his flight into the Abyss, he aims upwards"
This is the high-culture version of wondering when Klingons gained their brow ridges.
@Gallifreyan As currently worded, I regard it as a history question, not as a literature question. Asking whether Nabokov drew any inspiration from juvenile sexual behaviour in New England during the 1940s would obviously be on topic.
@GarethRees Are you reading a version from Archive.org. The one I found also displays the hand of someone who's holding the book while the pages are being scanned or photographed.
@Tsundoku Yes, that's the one. Quite a few books on archive.org are photographed with hands visible -- I guess because they won't stay open when placed in the book scanner.
There's another copy on Google Books. Both have handwritten annotations
@flowerbug You're asking about your answer here where you write, "Frame is structure like the rib cage, bones, physical size", is that right? If so, I think that if someone has asked (as the OP does in this case), "What does he [Whitman] mean by frame?" then you need to assume that it's not obvious.
There could be various reasons for that -- perhaps the OP is not a native English speaker, or that sense of the word has fallen out of use in the OP's dialect, or they just forgot. Whatever the reason, it's worth showing how you know the answer, even if this is something that you think is straightforward like looking the word up in a dictionary -- it might not be straightforward for the OP.
Whenever there's a question about vocabulary, and especially in poetry, it's worth looking to see if there is more to say about the word than just its literal meaning. If someone has difficulty with a word, it's often a "tell" that there's some complexity there. In this case we might ask why Whitman chose "frame" here rather than a plainer synonym like "body". For example, is there some nuance or shading arising from the other senses of "frame"?
I've just come across the short story "Do You Love Me?" by Peter Carey via a story-ID over at SFF. The basic premise of the story is that when something isn't loved, it disappears.
Upon reading through the story, I came across a repeated phrase that I'm unfamiliar with:
A Contradiction
...
That reminds me of that German joke: "Komisch, wie ein einziger Tippfehler eine Nachricht urinieren kann". Literally: "Funny how one typo can urinate a mesage". When you switch the first two letters of ruinieren (to ruin) it becomes urinieren (to urinate).
I suppose that's enough scatological humour for one day.
Well, Skooba already mentioned "head-in-semprini syndrome" and added that 'his children are not allowed to say "semprini" they must use "bottom" or "bum" as per wife's rules"
People in Flanders are unfamiliar with this meaning, so there is a comic strip series called De Kiekeboes where one of the characters is an attractive young girl called Fanny. The series has never been translated into English.
Yes, I always wondered why people commonly wore a fanny pack on the front if the fanny was supposed to be the rear.... I found out when my wife told me fanny was indeed not a rear appendage outside the US
@Randal'Thor For questions which get no action for a few years it seems strange to say that what has been provided is not enough. it is a start. work from there if you want. don't mod it away. :(
it makes it less likely that i would work harder to have negative marks.
@NapoleonWilson i'm not sure i can agree as i consider iterative answers as a natural progression from nothing. please edit and expand if you wish, don't be so quickly negative. thanks
Editing someone else's answer to improve it is certainly an advantage of the Stack Exchange system, but only within limits.
Editing an answer to improve formatting, add links to where a cited book can be read, add quotes from already-cited links - all that is great.
But editing a one-line answer to include links, quotes, reasoning, and interpretation? At that point it's better to write your own answer if you can, or of course encourage the original answerer to do that editing.
The Warden of the Tomb is an expressionist play fragment by Kafka. Although incomplete, possibly extremely so, it's still decently long - about fourteen pages. Sadly (to me at least), as far as I can tell it has received little attention: basically the only writing I can find on it are a paper of...
In the novel 1984, Winston Smith writes:
Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.
How exactly does Smith, or anyone else, think that Big Brother will discover their thoughtcrimes? Do they think Big Brother can read their minds?
:54164102 Yeah, that becomes visible to everyone only after the election is finished. You're the only person in the world not employed by SE who can see it now ;-)
It's expected to get a big surge at the beginning, again because everyone gets a notification reminding them to vote when the election starts. It'll probably just be a very slow trickle of new voters from now on.
I wonder what happens if someone reaches 150 rep during the election? I think we've had a couple of new askers do that in the last few days. Do they get a notification to vote as soon as they pass the 150 mark?
If they're banned but the account still exists, I guess the vote still counts (unless it gets manually removed by CMs, e.g. if they were using socks to vote twice or something).
If they delete their account, I wonder if the votes get attributed to Community (user -1)? That happens with other kinds of votes.
Time to check if Community has Constituent badges on any sites ...
I happened to notice that different books published by Springer sometimes have slightly different names listed next to the copyright © symbol. For instance:
Mirrors and Reflections by Borovik and Borovik says © Springer Science+ Business Media, LLC 2010
Combinatorics of Coxeter Groups by Bjorne...
In the story "Fellow-Feeling" from R. K. Narayan's short story collection Malgudi Days (which I've been reading online), a proverb is mentioned in passing:
Rajam Iyer leaned back in his seat, reminding himself of a proverb which said that if you threw a stone into a gutter it would only spurt...
I've just come across the short story "Do You Love Me?" by Peter Carey via a story-ID over at SFF. The basic premise of the story is that when something isn't loved, it disappears.
Upon reading through the story, I came across a repeated phrase that I'm unfamiliar with:
A Contradiction
...
In the novel 1984, Winston Smith writes:
Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.
How exactly does Smith, or anyone else, think that Big Brother will discover their thoughtcrimes? Do they think Big Brother can read their minds?
