English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

01:33

@JTP-ApologisetoMonica You are correct. But you will find that many people use who as object informally.

CowperKettle

01:45

stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/…

> Mansuy and her team demonstrated that childhood trauma does have a lifelong influence on blood composition and that these changes are also passed to the next generation. "These findings are extremely important for medicine, as this is the first time that a connection between early trauma and metabolic disorders in descendants is characterized," explains Mansuy. medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-early-trauma-metabolism.html

Epigenetics is cool

Cerberus

02:01

@CowperKettle Is this physical trauma?

Of any kind?

Psychological trauma?

CowperKettle

03:24

CowperKettle

03:45

> Problem: distribute 3 apples evenly among 7 people, provided that you can make 4 cuts.

Faheem Mitha

07:06

@tchrist That seems like a poor construction to me. Over implies too much. But that's not what the definition says.

Oh "to learn or study excessively" is one of the things listed. But the others don't really support that. And is it really possible to learn excessively?

Seems like an oxymoron to me.

SmokeDetector

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CowperKettle

10:09

> Fred brings home 100 kg of potatoes, which (being purely mathematical potatoes) consist of 99% water. He then leaves them outside overnight so that they consist of 98% water. What is their new weight? The surprising answer is 50 kg

skullpatrol

:O

skullpatrol

10:23

throw them potatoes in the pond with the lily

on the 41st day!

skullpatrol

10:38

According to the behaviorists, learning can be defined as the relatively permanent change in behavior brought about as a result of experience or practice.

overleanining is over permanent?

how is that^ a valid result

Matt E. Эллен

what is overlearning?

skullpatrol

14 hours ago, by tchrist

Matt E. Эллен

huh

@skullpatrol I would guess the definition from behaviourism is not related to the definition of "overlearn", which seems to mean well practiced

skullpatrol

It all started here

14 hours ago, by skillpatrol

Interestingly, relearn is a word, but overlearn is not.

Matt E. Эллен

behaviourism is about stimulus-response or other conditioning, rather than practice

skullpatrol

10:50

right

Matt E. Эллен

I need to overlearn me IEC 62304

skullpatrol

:D

Matt E. Эллен

gets reading

3

SmokeDetector

11:32

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JTP - Apologise to Monica

12:01

@Cerberus - Thanks. I suppose it was really a matter of ignoring the misuse in conversation, but still expecting it to be correct in a certain venue. For example, I work at a high school. I'd ignore this from most anyone, but expect someone from the English department to get it right. ISTM, the term 'informally' just means it now has a different type of acceptance? I shouldn't really expect this to be correct from any source, but an English text book?

skullpatrol

Who vs whom?

Even textbooks have typos.

After all, it is only a one letter difference; but, yes strickly speaking you are correct.

marcellothearcane

12:30

No XKCD in chat

M.A.R.

13:54

@marcellothearcane If you leave the XKCD link, it'd onebox

JTP - Apologise to Monica

14:17

@marcellothearcane - that reminds me of the Merry/Mary/Marry discussion. Some pronounce these 3 different ways, others, 2, and some say they all sound identical.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle so is this intended to be a joke or how does it work?

marcellothearcane

@M.A.R. thanks, I didn't know that

JTP - Apologise to Monica

1% of 100kg is 1kg "instant potato", 2% of 50kg is the same 1 kg "instant potato". It took a lot of evaporation to move it from 99% to 98%. I like that one.

@M.A.R. - It's less about math and more about respecting instant potatoes.

M.A.R.

What sorcery is this

Here we have potatoes and . . . we just have potatoes. They don't seem confined to a time frame

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. No, it's not a joke, it's a famous mathematical problem, although entry-level

M.A.R.

14:31

Right, when you do the math, it makes sense.

It never makes sense to me to separate "potato content" from its water. If you evaporate all of that water, you no longer have a potato. An intrinsic part of a potato is the water between its starch and fiber, so it didn't make sense to me at first

Just like an intrinsic part of hemoglobin is its water of hydration

JTP - Apologise to Monica

15:06

This 5oz bag takes 2.5 cups, about 20 oz of water by weight. So the numbers in the problem are a bit exaggerated. I imagine that campers who go on long trips are sensitive to the dehydrating ratios more than us commoners. (As a math guy I love this one, though, because food and money help make problems relatable)

Cerberus

15:17

@JTP-ApologisetoMonica I know the feeling. Pedants will disapprove of it, but some other people will say it is OK in a text book.

CowperKettle

15:45

> Postman gives a striking example: many of the first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have walked down the street without being recognized by the average citizen, yet all these men would have been quickly known by their written words. However, the reverse is true today.

> The names of presidents or even famous preachers, lawyers, and scientists call up visual images, typically television images, but few, if any, of their words come to mind. The few that do almost exclusively consist of carefully chosen soundbites.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. The book's origins lay in a talk Postman gave to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1984. He was participating in a panel on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and the contemporary world. In the introduction to his book, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state control. It has been translated into eight languages...

tchrist

16:36

@CowperKettle I'm a superfan of that dystopian yet prophetic work. I first read it right after it was published back in the 80s.

Aug 1 '13 at 16:45, by tchrist

> Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Aug 1 '13 at 16:41, by tchrist

> What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.

Aug 1 '13 at 16:41, by tchrist

> Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions".

Aug 1 '13 at 16:42, by tchrist

> In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

> Un nuevo estudio revela que no elegimos cosas porque nos gustan sino que nos terminan gustando porque las elegimos y que esto sucede desde que somos bebés.

bbc.com/mundo/noticias-54564302

I have no idea why the Google thinks I want to read the BBC in Spanish. :/

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle That's a good book. I have a copy somewhere on my bookshelves.

tchrist

Curious that I don't seem to see the original version in English on their site.

Faheem Mitha

Though I don't totally agree with his assessment of "Brave New World". Or rather, it's an assessment of only part of it. The consumer aspect, if you like.

tchrist

@FaheemMitha Right, because that's the focus of his study.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Fair enough.

There's a striking description of what is recognizably a pop concert in "Brave New World". Before pop concerts existed. I don't think they did in the 1930s, though I could be wrong.

How old are modern loudspeaker systems, for example?

I just took a look at the text, and I'd remembered it wrong. It's a "Cabaret". Some kind of night club.

And I think I posted this here earlier, but this is Adam Cadre's review of Brave New World - adamcadre.ac/calendar/14/14432.html.

I think he does a masterly job of missing the point. But that's just me.

I think Postman gets it right, more or less, at least the part of it he seems to care about.

People tend to lump "Nineteen Eighty Four" and "Brave New World" together, but they're really very different books, with very different intentions, written by very different people.

They just happen to have similar SF-type trappings, and were written in approximately the same historical period.

Actually, I think the version of "Brave New World" I had once has a foreword by Huxley says that he didn't think it was actually a very good effort. But he'd left it alone, because he didn't think he could rewrite it without destroying what was good in the book.

And here it is online - wealthandwant.com/auth/Huxley.html

Random trivia. Eric Blair and Aldous Huxley once "met", when Huxley was a teacher at Eton. I don't remember any details, though.

M.A.R.