Yes, I have to be careful for another 8 or so hours.Originally Posted by Trebuchet
Established Member
Yes, I have to be careful for another 8 or so hours.
Order of Kilopi
I went to sleep after supper and woke up half way thru Doctor Who, saw part of it tonight but re-broadcasts early in the morning.
From the wilderness into the cosmos.
You can not be afraid of the wind, Enterprise: Broken Bow.
https://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/
Order of Kilopi
I had an awesomely awful pun I was going to post in the "When you have to make a joke" thread. But I've forgotten it.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Order of Kilopi
I remembered it. It's even worse than I was thinking.
SpaceX's Starship production is really intense.
"In Tents", see?
I'll show myself out.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Moderator
Pretty good, but you didn't stick the landing.
Order of Kilopi
Ah, I think you're two tents about that joke, but I don't have a stake in it. I'll canvas the other posters to see who likes it.
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
Administrator Borealis
No need to make a flap about it.
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Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. — Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
Order of Kilopi
Sorry, sometimes these habits of mine just pop-up. At least I'm not hoarding teepee like everybody else!
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
Order of Kilopi
I guess it’s poor research. There was a US soldier who escaped the Japanese troops when they invaded Kiska in 1942, so it might be referring to that, but “jungles” is a bit of a stretch!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
As above, so below
Established Member
Trivia that bugs me? Childproof medicine bottles that are also old people proof. After finally getting it open, everything spills out all over the floor.
Order of Kilopi
And the thing is, they're not actually childproof. Kids figure them out faster than adults.
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
Established Member
Two other things that bug me. Amazon and Walgreens. Amazon has provided me with the worst delivery service on the planet by far. All of 60 + parcels since 2018 have been misdelivered. Providing delivery instructions doesn't work. They ignore them. GPS will not help anyone find my home. None of the astronomers in my club has ever found my home using GPS.
Walgreens is a distant second, but they are trying harder. I ordered med supplies from them last Wednesday. The place I ordered them from is just 2.3 miles down the road. In two hours I could walk from here to there and back. Tracking predicts a Thursday delivery this week.
But then there is a third. Paypal Credit. Don't get it. I signed up for autopay but it takes two months to activate that feature. Meanwhile, they send a notice that I am overdue. If I don't pay then charges are added to something I was promised would be interest free. When I talked to the person handling my complaint, she mentioned that I should wait until the 24th. I was told that the last time on another item of $1200 last fall, a solar spectroscope. Charges were added so I just paid the whole thing off. I am going to have to do that again. "But sir, if it does just call us back." No thanks ma'am. Calling back is just a waste of time and a loss of money.
Established Member
"Near Miss". A favourite with safety types that clearly have an issue communicating the concept of a near hit.
Order of Kilopi
A miss, that was near its target. The meaning seems pretty clear to me.
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
Established Member
Practically all planes miss each other in the course of a day. But some miss each other nearer than most.
Order of Kilopi
Here in the UK Amazon seems to work, i can order at 5pm and it arrives next day, but when I was in the USA it was much slower. Geography obviously makes a difference but the hub to hub structure seems clunky in US. The comparison with the UK parcel service and Same in US, leaves Amazon better in my experience, ordering stuff most days. I also find Fedex rather amazing, they can get my UK stuff to USA next day in most locations. Hasten to say I have no other connection to these companies other than as a customer.
sicut vis videre esto
When we realize that patterns don't exist in the universe, they are a template that we hold to the universe to make sense of it, it all makes a lot more sense.
Originally Posted by Ken G
Bad Post-Doc
Simon definitely needs no help getting his antibiotics bottle open.
_____________________________________________
Gillian
"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"
"You can't erase icing."
"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"
Order of Kilopi
But what’s funny about it is, with a “near hit” it seems that they nearly hit. But with a “near miss”, you would think they nearly missed, which means they hit... But it’s the opposite. Just one of those funny things about English, which can confuse learners. Another one they have trouble with is why “quite a few” is much more than “few”.
As above, so below
Order of Kilopi
We use near to mean either "close", or as the adjectival equivalent of nearly. Sometimes the noun gives us a strong hint as to the intended sense--a near hit is likely to be something that was nearly a hit, because hit already implies closeness; whereas the Near East is likely to be a nearby part of the East, since describing something as "nearly to the East" would be an odd way of speaking.
The trouble with miss is that it can entertain either adjectival meaning equally easily, so we can't deduce the intended meaning of near from context. So it's an idiom--we just need to learn what near miss means. As Theodore Bernstein pointed out a very long time ago, there's absolutely no point in trying to make idiom answerable to logical argument.
Grant Hutchison
Order of Kilopi
English is the most consistently inconsistent language. It has more exceptions than rules!
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
Order of Kilopi
I'm just curious how you measured that, or where that comes from. Do you mean that as a percentage of terms, English terms tend to be more inconsistent than other languages?
As above, so below
Order of Kilopi
??!?
I neither measured nor cut.
I'm not sure how you would even go about measuring such a thing. Is there a standard for it? Units of consistency? I give it a 4.5 on the Lingo scale.
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
Order of Kilopi
Well from limited knowledge, Spanish, for example is pronounced as it is spelled, helpful for beginners, French, nearly so, some exceptions, but English, codified in writing , is very different. Then in English we can use nouns as verbs, verbs as adjectives and so on.
It is very contextual. I believe early writing as Cunieform was even worse! But that is purely received from idle browsing of online lectures.
sicut vis videre esto
When we realize that patterns don't exist in the universe, they are a template that we hold to the universe to make sense of it, it all makes a lot more sense.
Originally Posted by Ken G
Order of Kilopi
Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear enough. You said, "English is the most consistently inconsistent language." I'm not questioning it (I also suspect it may be true), but wanted to know how you determined that. There are a lot of languages out there (like 500 or something in Nigeria alone), so it seems hard to make that comparison.
Last edited by Jens; 2021-Jan-06 at 07:25 AM.
As above, so below
Order of Kilopi
English is what happens when you combine several Celtic languages, Roman, French, a couple forms German (Saxon, Angles and Norse), and let them ferment on a small island where people have several spellings and many meanings for the same word. Then it is let loose on the Earth to mix with every language.
From the wilderness into the cosmos.
You can not be afraid of the wind, Enterprise: Broken Bow.
https://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/
Order of Kilopi
I thought Chaucer invented it and King James 6 of Scotland made it official. That was after the Krakatoa volcano of course.
But I heard in the southern states, they spoke it for ever. (BBC correspondent joke)
sicut vis videre esto
When we realize that patterns don't exist in the universe, they are a template that we hold to the universe to make sense of it, it all makes a lot more sense.
Originally Posted by Ken G
Order of Kilopi
It's just my opinion, I didn't determine it.
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
Bad Post-Doc
Consensus among linguists seems to be that English is at very least one of the hardest languages to learn to spell, because we have several categories of word.
1. Words which are phonetic by "standard" English phonics.
2. Words which are phonetic by their language of origin.
3. Words which were phonetic centuries ago but the pronunciation has shifted and are no longer phonetic.
4. Words which were spelled phonetically but have been forced out of it by an attempt, usually misguided, to spell them the way they're spelled in their language of origin even if we don't pronounce them that way and indeed even if their language of origin has shifted and they don't pronounce it that way, either.
_____________________________________________
Gillian
"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"
"You can't erase icing."
"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"
Order of Kilopi
And then there are homophones, which are pronounced the same but spelled differently and have different meanings. Eye type them awl the dam thyme. (Yes, you've seen that joke before.)
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.
Mostly HarmlessI have a reader of my blog objecting to how I disseminate data. He objects to logging into websites to purchase my books, he objects to having a Google account to access Google drive files. If it was a one time thing or an issue that affected many users, I'd change. I made the mistake of giving him a complementary copy of my book and on reading the cover price, he asked me why I charge money* for it. Then he complained about the cost of having to print it out.
Hmmm.
If it was a physical book, the solution would be easy. I'd snatch the book from his hands and hit him with it. And keep it afterwards.
*Edit - What makes this particularly galling is all of my books are pay what you want, even $0.00. So, he couldn't or wouldn't read the letters on the page.
Solfe
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