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hace 10 añosdiscuss

What is "uniquely American" about the word apple? Both the word and fruit come from elsewhere and still abound in those places: the word came into use in English over a thousand years ago, and the first apple tree to grow in the Americas would have been planted by a European settler some centuries later. There are cultural associations with apples in America, but do these attend to the word or the culture? And are they necessary for an understanding of the word 'apple' - whether by someone learning English as a second language, or as their first but in another part of the world?

Perhaps you mean that 'apple' has a different meaning in the United States than, say, in Wales, because its web of implications looks different in one place than another. Following that thought, though, the same would be true of two American speakers, who surely have their own idiosyncratic webs. It's an interesting idea. But are words not 'synonyms' that have the same referent, only because two speakers have different relationships to that referent? Is a word partly its evocation? Or can we look at its evocation separately from a stricter 'meaning' it shares between speakers? (Surely it shares something, or language would lose its point.)

Incidentally, synonym is not the word to be nullifying here. A synonym is a like word, something that may equal the original but usually differs in degree, amount, tone, allusion, or other effect. Anyone using a thesaurus without a dictionary is sure to embarrass themselves sooner or later: differences in meaning between like words are common, and it is no revelation to say that one speaker will have different associations with a word than another, particularly if they come from different cultures.

hace 10 añosdiscuss

This doesn't quite hit the mark. The example given in Klisp will work with an arbitrary number of arguments. What looks to be the second of two named arguments, e, is actually the dynamic environment from which $and? is called.

hace 10 añosdiscuss

There are plenty of English compounds that don't fit that description: forthright, downright, forthcoming; wisecrack (but "wise woman"); blackboard, greenback, greengrocer, yellowbelly; drive-by, drive-in; tapout, all out, balls-out, blackout, checkout. A couple common vulgarities do exactly what Sitzpinkler and Sockenfalter do, though admittedly the English -er is no longer "male-specific." (It once was.)

I think an article on German compounds would have been worthwhile on its own. To develop interest in it, however, the author has found it necessary--as many others have--to write of one language's richness as a factor of another's lack. English is actually quite pithy on some of the concepts he claims "require a mouthful when translated" from the German: "that which is in the process of becoming" (das Werdende) is (with varying nuance) nascent, incipient, inchoate, germinal, budding, springing, arising, dawning, crepuscular, in embryo, in the bud, in the gristle, forming, fashioning, styling, or becoming. To give rise to a noun to describe that thing which is nascent, incipient, etc., does not require the ham-fisted (there's a good, playful compound!) stroke which Duncan has used: he's playing it up! If you want a single word for it, bud, germ, etc., have their figurative uses as well. And if he wanted a dictionary definition for das Werdende, he could have dropped the relative pronoun and two prepositions and written, "a nascent thing." (In actual writing, thing would usually be replaced by a more precise identifier, and the phrase would be the richer for it.) There are some rare words, like inchoant, which also do the trick, and whose inception (or kick-off, throw-off, lift-off) looks rather like that of das Werdende.

hace 10 añosdiscuss

Apathy and disagreement are different things. So are extrapolation and confirmation.

No one is in a position to "confirm" this statement or prove it irrecusably wrong. More or less tenable arguments may be made, more or less well. I think Hawking does well here, behind the poorer commentary, but I'm unwilling to engage in or let lie propaganda for any end, particularly on a forum on which we are to default to respect for others' ability to engage in thoughtful dialogue. The source for this article is not easily to be dismissed, but the article's title is misleading - a straight fib - and a misleading headline that suggests one reading over another while pretending to fact is propagandistic.

hace 10 añosdiscuss

Phonetic alphabets have strong precedents - and have had strong backers - in English as well. See the Shavian alphabet[1] for a relatively recent example. Others were drawn up by such as Benjamin Franklin and Sir Isaac Pitman, famed for his shorthand.

One of the greatest impediments to these systems was that, while pronunciation may be picked up from spelling in a so-called phonemic system (assuming a bog-standard means of determining stress, which English doesn't have), spelling does not always follow from pronunciation - not unless you happen to speak precisely the English that the standards body prefers. English phonology, particularly when it comes to vowels, varies so wildly from place to place that any new, purportedly simpler system will be met with resistance from the majority of speakers to whom the system seems to be wrong, messy, and arbitrary. As a simple and common example, that of 'Mary, merry, and marry': do you collapse these three vowels, as many English speakers do, thus frustrating those who would like to make the distinction in print; or do you retain the three and in doing so create three new arbitrary-seeming spellings for words that to many speakers are homophones? Do you, as in Shavian, retain an R at the ends of "star" and "mother," or do you bow to common British pronunciations and excise these in spelling as in speech - something another phonetician, Henry Sweet[2], would have recommended?

(We see something similar in the promotion of and resistance to new programming languages: fixing some problems is not always enough to attract adopters away from a language which is at least doing the job. Imperfections stand out in novel tools, even if other improvements have been made and the imperfections are nothing new.)

Shorthand authors were well aware of the difficulties in teaching a "phonography," or phoneme-based system, to a duplicitous student body. This is one of the reasons that many English shorthand systems do away with almost all vowels, except perhaps to indicate where the vowel occurs and what broad family of like sounds it belongs to. Of course, eliminating vowels is one of the best ways to promote speed in writing; but there was also the problem that, where writing a vowel was desired (e.g. to differentiate 'tarp' from 'trap'), not all students will agree on which symbol ought to be used for each vowel sound - the sound varying from person to person, even within the same county or town. These shorthand systems were left ambiguous on purpose, so that teaching speed might be improved alongside writing speed. No need for a student to learn whether the first vowel in 'father' is indeed the same as the one in 'bought' - and from whose mouth, anyway?

It is possible that in an IPA-based system, English spelling may differ from person to person as widely as pronunciation does. Surely, however, that would make things more difficult for second-language learners than having to contend with one standard that happens to be riddled with inconsistencies? (Or perhaps not?)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Sweet

hace 11 añosdiscuss

Which is why I wrote 'apparently.'

This is an interview with NPR, not an academic paper. You may as well question whether the correlation exists at all as hone in on this one point.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

This is addressed at length - and quite early on - in the article. The correlation stands, apparently.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

What use do you want us to make of that comment? Be upfront if you actually have something to say. Do you mean that Austria has only just changed its official position, relative to whatever scale matters to you personally, and should not be let off just yet from this long chain of acrid remarks?

Going by your time scale, WWII was still on three days ago. Then again, there are people who might come onto this forum and in all honesty say that 1943 was only yesterday to them, and that you mistakenly said that this morning was yesterday afternoon. Do we revise our comments yet again, in light of this fact?

By many measures, 24 years are scarcely any. Which measure do you want to make use of, and what consequences does it have? You haven't said anything.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

I'm not sure how this would pose a problem. I'm not the parent commenter, but I don't typically go to Google to search for sites I frequent. It would be such an odd thing to do—granted that I know the URL—that I would be forced to consider what I was doing even more vividly than if I had to type the URL out.

Unless you mean the search bar?

  browser.search.suggest.enabled = false

Or, if you mean that you'd like to have autocomplete on for searches, just leave the default:

  browser.search.suggest.enabled = true

This does not affect the URL bar.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

"E.E. Cummings" is fine. It's what he used.[0]

On the top of Cummings, I have occasionally felt like I was faced with an incomplete set of instructions when reading certain of his poems. Of course, there's no particular reason to liken them to computer instructions; I've never seen anything in the poems to suggest a connection. Anything to link one art with another is a stretch—if we even accept that coding is an art.

(I think code can be, though it isn't as a rule. In the same way, writing can be artful but is typically workaday and unremarkable. This post, for an example.)

0: http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/caps.htm

hace 11 añosdiscuss

J is in fact a much more recent invention than many of us would suppose[0]. It is worth adding, however, that it would not have saved G, except in English; our pronunciation of J, while close to the French and a couple others (with an added /d/ at the front), is quite unique among languages that were written in the Roman alphabet at the time.

In any case, English suffers quite a few more more overloaded consonants that C and G. Most occurrences of /z/ (a frequent sound in English) are marked with an S (codes), and a great many /t/ sounds are written D (typed).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J#History

hace 11 añosdiscuss

It is a true if disingenuously narrow-sighted description of the origins of vi as a visual interface to ex, a regex-based line-editor and descendant of ed. Even the ascetic ed, however, cannot be reduced to a "regular expression system." All the more is it untrue to claim that vi added nothing but a "user interface" to ex. (As if `dib` and `ct;` and `gqap` and `zf` and `gj` were so effortless in a line-editor!) That is to say nothing of the (admittedly clumsy) scriptability of vim.

Even if you agree with vim's approach to modal editing and object motions, there is plenty bad to be said about it in light of some of the tools we have available to us today. But humble origins do not always lead on to humble ends. There is no use in calling a book bad and giving as your reason that it was once pulp. It would be just as unhelpful to call the Lisps of today slow, and to use as your crutch the old adage that "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing."[1] As GP said, "There's been some progress since the 1970s."

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Perlis#Epigrams_on_Progra...

hace 11 añosdiscuss

Hard wrapping may be an elegant solution on the runtime configuration side, but it is frequently to blame for inelegance when editing. Hard-wrapped text must be manually reformatted for display when (1) changing terminal or window size, (2) vertically splitting panes, (3) opening a file on a different monitor. Hard-wrapped text must also be manually reformatted after many editing tasks: new lines, far shorter in length than the textwidth of the paragraph as a whole, sit in the middle of old ones that wrapped naturally, while some old lines teeter out into your wrap margin (and off of your display) after text was inserted into their middles.

This solution, meanwhile, is far from inelegant:

  nnoremap g gj
  nnoremap k gk

That's it, once and done. Aside from setting your wrap preferences—which you would have had to do anyway with hard wraps—there's no more to be taken care of. The text will always display fluently and in full, and you will have no need to manually reformat your paragraphs using gqap whenever you make a change to them. All that need concern you is the text, not its line-by-line arrangement.

(I do agree that vim-pencil is unnecessary, at least if you're only going to use one scheme for wrapping.)

hace 11 añosdiscuss

Zaner-Bloser, to my knowledge, is not so far off from Palmer except in its prescribed teaching style, as carried out over multiple years in a child's schooling. The final product, that is, looks quite similar, and the techniques are not so far off from one another.

D'Nealian was one of the final blows to nibbed pens in the U.S., even wiping them out of most Catholic schools: it was ballpoint from then on, almost without question. With longhand in the workplace largely supplanted by typewriters (and soon by personal computers), the public at large moved toward writing implements that were "easier to pick up." After all, few people have need for an instrument whose finickiness is made up for only by ease of use in long sittings. Ballpoints are among the easiest writing tools to care for; you basically keep them out of the wash. No ink refilling, no cleaning out converters between colors and brands of ink, no ink drying out after two weeks in the drawer, no worry of the dreaded "baby bottom nib" of new fountain pens. Buy a Bic, get on with life. There's much to recommend them. If your writing is purely utilitarian and miscellaneous—lists, thank-you notes, reminders, memos, etc.—you probably don't want to bother with anything more complicated.

As it was taught to me, D'Nealian seemed to be designed for easy entry, plain and simple. Many other methods tend to concentrate on technique early, quite apart from letter formation. In D'Nealian, students are taught the proper manner in which to hold a pen, but little else. And ballpoint pens don't really allow for the old "proper" grips that are still often taught, as other commenters have touched on. You have to exert force downward onto the page to get a ballpoint to write, while the old, loose tripod grip that is still recommended was designed for nibs that only needed to glance the page. So D'Nealian is associated in the minds of many students with cramping exertion, and forcing the pen into practice.

Anyway, as soon as you can hold a pen, you start tracing and copying letters. You basically "draw" them; the letter is taught, not the movement. That's about all I can remember.

I'm not in education, so my recommendation of one over another shouldn't be sought. But I would easily believe that there were great things to say about a system that gets children writing as soon as possible. This is particularly true if the manner in which we make our letters by hand will have no bearing on our future prospects. Which, of course, it almost certainly won't.

Personally, I think D'Nealian looks childish. And if you aren't writing with a flowing technique, I see little point for joining all letters in a word. Not that cursive has always been written with streamlined, flowing, efficient, "full-arm" movement, as in the Palmer method and some of its relations. But from my point of view, why waste the extra ink or graphite needed to join letters just to encourage cramp?

I don't think D'Nealian killed cursive; Palmer or similar methodologies, which are hellish to learn if you go by the book, would likely have done even worse. More or less everything that we deal with today is in manuscript, unless your apartment complex happens to have cursive lettering on its awning or something, in the hopes of looking nice. Or maybe if you're digging through old relatives' things. So it's natural for children not to care about it, and even resent the drills needed to learn it.

I think the argument that ballpoints killed cursive is naturally overstated. If ballpoints hadn't become popular around the same time that typewriters did, there may well still be need of different writing implements and quick cursive in the workplace. But certainly ballpoints do make cursive much more difficult.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

Please don't assume my ignorance on other hands, or that I would argue in favor of teaching students the Palmer method. Teaching children outmoded systems ill suited to the instruments they are likely to have at hand is grossly unnecessary. (One of the reasons, incidentally, that I don't think students ought to be required to use italic nibs.) In its time, Palmer was taught under the assumption that a sizeable portion of each class would need a good—not decorative—hand for professional purposes at some point in their lives. That is no longer true.

Palmer descends from, but is assuredly not, Spencerian. Nor is it in any sense of the word fancy, except perhaps in comparison to blockletter print. It is a business hand designed for practical, quick, and legible business communications. It is not a coincidence that Palmer books begin with posture and movement exercises before students are even to lift a pen. It really is meant for everyday, injury-free use.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

It is most telling, to me, to hear people (none of them made from straw) admit that writer's cramp is part and parcel of a single session of taking notes or writing an hour-long exam. Professional copyists and secretaries in the early 20th century weren't biting down on their lower lips to push through the pain every time they put pen to paper during ten- and twelve-hour workdays. They just used better tools for that job (leak as the tools might do) and were taught how to write with focus on posture and movement, not on letterforms alone.

I don't strictly use the letterforms or all the best practices of the Palmer method—see the article for a link—but using a Palmer book as a guide, I managed to teach myself to write with a relaxed grip and no movement in the fingers or wrist, and I can go for hours now and walk away with no more discomfort than the stiffness of sitting without relief.

It is hard to write like this using most ballpoints because you do need to exert more force to get a consistent line out of the things. You don't need a fountain or dip pen, however—just a soft-leaded pencil (try an art supply shop), a good rollerball pen, or some gel pens. None of these write as effortlessly as a fountain pen, but neither do they require the kind of cramp-inducing force that a Bic pen does.

I've read mid-century materials on this topic before. My sense is that this isn't a new argument so much as a forgotten one.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

This is the 1999 I remember as well, with the addition of visual clutter (see present-day excite.com for a reminder), JavaScript everywhere (DHTML, not AJAX), and pop-up and pop-under ads making the Flash ads of today look tame and gentle--those that don't autoplay video, at least. I've heard OP's tale before, but it was certainly no more than a tale by the late 90s.

And "blazing fast" is definitely a relative term. I remember the feeling of liberation when we got rid of dial-up, but there were still plenty of seconds-long load times just to see the main content--only to find it scrunched between two fixed-width sidebars (arranged in a table). And it was quite possible that the page would do its utmost to slow your browser down with custom scrollbars and cursors.

Image maps for site navigation, font size=1, and precious little free hosting of user content without ads pasted at the top and bottom of the page, more prominent than ever.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

I agree with you. My experience with remote work has been touch-and-go, but it always helps when team members are mutually willing to communicate over the phone. Effective back-and-forth over email seems to be a rare skill. No matter how much time you put into refining a message, it is only ever one piece of a conversation. If there is more to say than just "Do this," or "I have done that"—if you need a back-and-forth—all email does is stretch the dialogue out. Answers come more slowly, and often as incompletely. And, as you say, tone is very hard to get right over email. I'm sure I've read at least a couple articles on HN about the tendency to read aggressiveness into concise emails.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

If I ever listened to horror stories like these, there wouldn't be an airline left I would fly with. This is textbook; replace United with Delta, Southwest, Air Canada, etc., at will. The only company I've used that I haven't heard exactly this type of complaint about is Widerøe, a tiny regional line in Norway with a fleet of prop planes. This is unfortunate, as I live in Pennsylvania and get motion sickness on those little aircraft. And I imagine that if I spoke Norwegian—it seemed to me that while many Norwegians speak English, they don't do much complaining in it when the native language would do—I wouldn't even have Widerøe left.

hace 11 añosdiscuss

It does feature satirical articles and columns, including the Borowitz Report, of which that Scalia article is one installment. (One of its most famous regulars was James Thurber, creator of Walter Mitty and a rare kind of humorist, still widely read decades after his death.) But it is not a satirical magazine cover-to-cover. It's particularly well-known for its short fiction and criticism.