Le 02/08/2012 03:55, waggy a écrit :
> andrel wrote:
>> I don't know where you live, but in general emigrating to Germany or the
>> Netherlands should do the trick.
>> We both have similar long sentences, and in German you have the bonus of
>> constructs that consist of a verb and another word. This allows you to
>> use that word, which might not be the one the audience expects, and then
>> 5 minutes later finish off your sentence with the right verb.
>> When done expertly it can make boring speeches into a spectator sport.
>>

And it's the main reason the "congressmen" of Germany are disciplined
and do not interrupt the speaking "congressman" with noisy
interruptions, unlike any other countries: they cannot guess the meaning
before the verb. They would risk embarrassing themselves as interrupting
an idea they did support and therefore being counter-productive to their
goal.

> Now there's the best reason yet to quit smoking, but alas, I think I'm too old
> (mid forties) to emigrate from the Great (formerly) Independent Republic of
> Texastan.
> 

You should have learned from the image of your country in movies: "when
you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk!" (The good, the bad and the ugly;
Siergio Leone ). Ergo, small sentences are mandatory in your land, or
you get a bullet.

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On 02/08/2012 08:12 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:

> Hint for starting students: get access to the accepted theses of the ten
> or so previous years. (theses are published... they go public)

I thought that when a paper is "published" that just means that it goes 
into some journal which can only be purchased for thousands of pounds 
per issue?

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>> yeah, it's a strange habit that I carried over even to my portuguese writing.
>> And the funny fact is that you do know it makes sentences stand out better!
>
> But not so strange, since I think proportional typeset text traditionally has a
> wider space after a period between sentences than it uses after an abbrev.
> within a sentence. Do any word processors automagically put in a wider spacing
> character between sentences?

TeX.

Whenever it sees a dot followed by whitespace, it adds a wider space, 
unless the character before the dot was a capital letter. (This 
exception means that something like "R.A.M." does not introduce 
extraneous space.) In case this is incorrect, you can write "\ " to 
introduce a regular-size space. (And there's probably some macro 
somewhere to introduce a wide space where one would not normally be.)

This from the typesetting engine which considers a hyphen, a minus sign, 
an en-dash and an em-dash to be three unrelated glyphs...

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On 02/08/2012 12:53 AM, nemesis wrote:

> so all you need to make up new (ilogical) words is getting a bunch of dumbasses
> demanding it so?

Yep. Just like all of antiquity.

Take "apron", for example. This word is actually a mistake. The original 
words was "napron". But when some dumbarse heard the phrase "a napron", 
this misinterpreted it as "an apron". This stupid mistake has now stuck, 
and I defy you to find a dictionary today which even lists "napron" as a 
word.

Seriously, how do you *think* new languages are invented? They happen 
because of people being stupid.

Related: You can probably find "teh" in the dictionary. Along with 
"pron" and so forth.

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> And it's the main reason the "congressmen" of Germany are disciplined
> and do not interrupt the speaking "congressman" with noisy
> interruptions, unlike any other countries: they cannot guess the meaning
> before the verb. They would risk embarrassing themselves as interrupting
> an idea they did support and therefore being counter-productive to their
> goal.

Filibuster vigilantly...

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On 02/08/2012 12:36 AM, nemesis wrote:
> I like this guy. :)
>
> tough competition, Andrew!

That's funny... I thought you hated me. :-P

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On 2-8-2012 10:01, Invisible wrote:
> On 02/08/2012 08:12 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
>
>> Hint for starting students: get access to the accepted theses of the ten
>> or so previous years. (theses are published... they go public)
>
> I thought that when a paper is "published" that just means that it goes
> into some journal which can only be purchased for thousands of pounds
> per issue?

No and no.

A thesis is published as a separate entity and in general contains much 
more than one paper. In the Netherlands they are even published as a 
book. I have about 3 meter of them from various friends and colleagues. 
In many places the University publishes them on-line also.

Papers are published in journals. Journals might cost thousands of 
pounds per year but there is a growing trend of free articles and free 
journals.



-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

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>> I thought that when a paper is "published" that just means that it goes
>> into some journal which can only be purchased for thousands of pounds
>> per issue?
>
> No and no.
>
> A thesis is published as a separate entity and in general contains much
> more than one paper. In the Netherlands they are even published as a
> book. I have about 3 meter of them from various friends and colleagues.
> In many places the University publishes them on-line also.
>
> Papers are published in journals. Journals might cost thousands of
> pounds per year but there is a growing trend of free articles and free
> journals.

Thanks for clarifying that.

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On 2-8-2012 10:13, Invisible wrote:
> On 02/08/2012 12:36 AM, nemesis wrote:
>> I like this guy. :)
>>
>> tough competition, Andrew!
>
> That's funny... I thought you hated me. :-P

Don't take his name personally.

-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

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Le 02/08/2012 10:11, Invisible a écrit :
> On 02/08/2012 12:53 AM, nemesis wrote:
> 
>> so all you need to make up new (ilogical) words is getting a bunch of
>> dumbasses
>> demanding it so?
> 
> Yep. Just like all of antiquity.
> 
> Take "apron", for example. This word is actually a mistake. The original
> words was "napron". But when some dumbarse heard the phrase "a napron",
> this misinterpreted it as "an apron". This stupid mistake has now stuck,
> and I defy you to find a dictionary today which even lists "napron" as a
> word.

Well, it comes from the same word that gave French "napperon" (with a
silent "e" between p & r, guess what happened ? vocal transcription with
fast speakers...)

napperon is today a small tablecloth of lacework, but the lace is very
similar to the lace that was used as part of an apron by the servant.
(the lace white part of an apron could as well be a kind of "napperon",
the real protecting cloth (in black in traditional imagery of female
servant) getting incorporated in the term)

> 
> Seriously, how do you *think* new languages are invented? They happen
> because of people being stupid.
> 
> Related: You can probably find "teh" in the dictionary. Along with
> "pron" and so forth.


And hypothenuse get 314 000 results, vs 2 millions for hypotenuse on
some search engine with a name related to glasses.
(adding "english" change the results to 88k vs 405k )

It's a Greek rooted word, there is absolutely no way go get a second h
in it, yet 1/7 of the indexed Internet get it wrong.

Finish him: "hypothénuse" get 654k vs "hypoténuse" only 112k.
On a majority vote of Internet, the French dictionary is ruled out.

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