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My tweets
- Mon, 20:16: RT @_cingraham: Bad charts of the world, meet your God (h/t @FrankieBi) http://t.co/SnDKijnHxJ
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WoUtNW
The WoUtNW is amanuensis. For those of us who went to MIT instead of Harvard, the Wikipedia article: amanuensis.
I was just cc'ed on an e-mail in which someone used amanuensis quite naturally, in the sense referred to by
I was just cc'ed on an e-mail in which someone used amanuensis quite naturally, in the sense referred to by
It is also used in a specific sense in some academic contexts, for instance when an injured or disabled person is helped by an amanuensis at a written examination.
Quote of the Day
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.
Thomas Paine
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WoUtNW
The WoUtNW is lunch.
Lunch is derived from lump, indicating that your lunch is a formless mass of some sort of (hopefully edible) substance. Or possibly it is derived from the Spanish word lonja meaning "slice" (but literally meaning "loin"). It seems that that form lunching predates lunch, and that this in turn may have been a corruption of luncheon (which obviously also survived). Luncheon may have been influenced by nuncheon, from Middle English nonechenche.
Nonechenche seems to be a combination of none, "noon", and schench, "drink", from Old English scenc derived from the verb scencan, "pour out", cognate with Old Frisian skenka, "to give to drink", and with the modern German/Dutch schenken, "to give."
Lunch is derived from lump, indicating that your lunch is a formless mass of some sort of (hopefully edible) substance. Or possibly it is derived from the Spanish word lonja meaning "slice" (but literally meaning "loin"). It seems that that form lunching predates lunch, and that this in turn may have been a corruption of luncheon (which obviously also survived). Luncheon may have been influenced by nuncheon, from Middle English nonechenche.
Nonechenche seems to be a combination of none, "noon", and schench, "drink", from Old English scenc derived from the verb scencan, "pour out", cognate with Old Frisian skenka, "to give to drink", and with the modern German/Dutch schenken, "to give."
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My tweets
- Wed, 18:12: polyphonic overtone singing - Anna-Maria Hefele https://t.co/6fdPJCvXl2 via @YouTube
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A Different Set of Conversations
"We want Iran not to have nuclear weapons precisely because we can't bank on the nature of the regime changing. That's exactly why we don't want to have nuclear weapons. If suddenly Iran transformed itself to Germany or Sweden or France then there would be a different set of conversations about their nuclear infrastructure."
I'm pretty sure that if Iran suddenly turned into Sweden, the different set of conversations that would ensue would no longer be about nuclear infrastructure at all, and would be much more ontological or at least would include some profound social constructivist questions.
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What's the opposite of politicolinguistics?
Cruz was joined by 18 Republican senators in his effort to prevent stripping out a clause that would have defunded the Affordable Care by voting against the motion, leaving the effort 21 votes short of the required number to deny cloture.
Not a sextuple negative, but sufficiently contorted that I had to read it three times to parse it correctly.
Not a sextuple negative, but sufficiently contorted that I had to read it three times to parse it correctly.
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I guess it was due
My parents got a new roof in 2013, and they got it with ice barriers, so I thought ice dams weren't a problem. But then I hear that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dcltdw and nuclearpolymer also have a new roof, also with ice barriers, and they've got water infiltrating their living quarters. I start to doubt.
Well, I doubt no longer. Water is infiltrating my parents' house in several locations, and new stains are appearing on the ceilings daily. I am afraid to go up into the attic to see what it looks like up there. The folks who installed the roof are going to come over and clean snow off, at $300/hour.
But hey, it could be worse. I'm reasonably healthy, vastly wealthier than the majority of humanity, and I know how to solve differential equations.
dcltdw and nuclearpolymer also have a new roof, also with ice barriers, and they've got water infiltrating their living quarters. I start to doubt.Well, I doubt no longer. Water is infiltrating my parents' house in several locations, and new stains are appearing on the ceilings daily. I am afraid to go up into the attic to see what it looks like up there. The folks who installed the roof are going to come over and clean snow off, at $300/hour.
But hey, it could be worse. I'm reasonably healthy, vastly wealthier than the majority of humanity, and I know how to solve differential equations.
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It's a Smallish World After Some
Remember that shoe bomber? Well, I'm taking a class and one of my fellow students was a prominent member of Richard Reid's legal team. (I don't know if he was the lead or what, but he did seem to be the one the newspapers quoted.) We had a short interesting chat about how that experience gave him a lot of understanding of Reid's motivations, but that understanding Reid's motivations was no help in understanding the motivations of people who might superficially appear similar (e.g., the three girls who seem to be attempting to join the Islamic State).
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tanstaafl
What do you pay for that you could get for free? (Including premium versions of something you can have a basic version of for free, like Dropbox or Spotify or or LiveJournal or sex.) Why do you pay for it?
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WoUtNW
The WoUtNW is quintessential.
OK, so a quintessential foo means something like "ultimate or perfect example or embodiment of a foo". But what's that quint- doing there? Is that a five? Five whats?
( Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends )
OK, so a quintessential foo means something like "ultimate or perfect example or embodiment of a foo". But what's that quint- doing there? Is that a five? Five whats?
( Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends )