Its area is 20,446 sq. km. The population in 1997 was about 2.7 million. The capital is Magdeburg.
Can also be expanded senza tempo (Italian equivalent).
Paramount Pictures has an official Star Trek site. The largest online Star Trek site, with lots of downloadable stuff, is Star Trek in Sound and Vision. Trek Sites is a hub site with a search tool and links to over 700 web resources. Two search engines for Star Trek web resources are Trekseek, with over 1200 links, and Trek Search, with over 600.
Usually when there is an adjective ending in a in female form (like alta, `high,'), the corresponding male form ends in o (alto, `high'). The adjective santo/santa (`sainted') is no exception to this rule. Moreover, nouns for people often take natural gender, and santo/santa (`saint') is not an exception to this pattern either. But the male form of the title is San, so there's no ``Sto'' title abbreviation. (The situation resembles that of words like un, `one, an,' which have a common female form una, but have male forms un and uno before and after a noun, respectively.
I wonder what language uses Santa as title for a male saint. [FWIW, Esperanto noun modifiers (singular form) end in a. This is very irritating to a Spanish speaker, since singular nouns end in o. Oh dang: Esperanto uses the root Sankt-.]
In my capacity as critic I never stab anybody, for I know how life-denying it is to be stabbed. Writing a book is damned difficult work, and you ought to praise a book if you can.
TLS published Burgess's reply, probably to demonstrate the sagacity of its reviewer. (I should warn you: I have the Burgess quote only at second hand. It was ``recent'' in 1986, but I didn't find it in 1970-86. The online TLS archive is a major piece of work, but searches are waaaay slow and the Chadwyck-Healey search form is weak, so I'll wait a couple of years before I try again.)
My impression is that most people who use the rarer variant do so wittingly (at least they know what they mean and how the word is constructed, even if they might be unaware that there is a different more common spelling). As is often the case with small-number statistics, however, the signal edges into the noise. A Lexis-Nexis search in June 2008 found only one instance of this spelling among major media; it occurred in an 8000-word transcript of a CNN show on May 7, 2008, where the spelling was tagged as ``(ph),'' so I guess the transcriber didn't recognize the word or its construction.
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Electric and Magnetic Fields (as measured by appropriately localized Hermitian operators) are conjugate operators in the same sense that position and momentum are conjugate, and they also obey a Heisenberg uncertainty principle which states that they cannot, in principle, be simultaneously known with arbitrary precision. Moreover, the field at a point is the Fourier transform of fields in all wavevectors (or frequencies, for a point in time). As a result of zero-point motion in each wave-vector component, it turns out that measuring even a single component of electromagnetic field, averaged in a region of volume V, can be done only up to an accuracy bounded by a quantity that scales as (if I recall aright) 1/V.
Of course, all these cavils are mostly ``in principle.'' As a practical matter, the electromagnetic fields we are usually concerned with satisfy Maxwell's equations, which are a large-occupation-number limit of the quantum field theory.
Among realtors, a house is said to be staged if furnishings are brought in to improve its saleability. This is more common with new houses and with more expensive homes whose current owners are absent or, mmm, thrifty. There are companies that specialize in staging properties for sale, and they'll often decorate rooms with a theme -- hockey posters and equipment in a children's room, say. The furniture used in staging a house is called ``staged furniture.''
Police investigators describe a crime scene as ``staged'' if it has been rearranged to mislead them.
Bruce the spectroscopist joined us for lunch one day after he got back from a sabbatical spent in Austria. When he learned the name of our group, he did not object that rather than the synecdoche, we should use the Runde compound. He did object, however, that the ambience was not very authentic. (That day we were outside by the Burger King.) I agreed: ``Of course -- no ten-year-old boy walking past carrying a Bierstein the size of his head.''
Japanese has a frequently-used complimentary adverb sasuga ni, which may be translated as `[done] as befits the doer's station in life.' A similar idea is contained in the adverb dake ni, which may be translated `as may be expected,' the basis of the expectation again being social condition or status of some sort (such as having graduated from high school, say). Contrastively, there are adverbs like kuse ni and datera ni that imply reproach for conduct unbecoming.
You know, marketing is rocket science, and naming product is a fine art. I think that the people who do this sort of work should be rewarded appropriately, commensurate with their contribution. In fact, I would be pleased if the geniuses at Oldsmobile who came up with Achieva received a tidy sum. They could name it severance pay.
Hmm. Message to future readers of this glossary: ``Oldsmobile'' was a GM marque that ran out of tag loyalty and was discontinued at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The way tag loyalty died out was that those who got Oldses got old. They died or otherwise lost their licenses, and were not replaced by younger customers. The division even had an ad campaign or two featuring Youngmobile, a word evidently created to highlight management marketing fears and remind everyone to associate ``Olds'' with old. See the REO entry for other Oldses that have passed on.
GM announced in December 2000 that it would end production of the Oldsmobile line with the 2004 model year. The Alero was the only remaining vehicle in the lineup, manufactured at the Lansing Car Assembly plant. The last Alero to be manufactured rolled off the assembly line at around 10:20 AM EDT on April 29, 2004.
The word appeared once in a clinical research article in 1987. Part of the research involved identifying different streptococcus strains, and the efficacy of ``Strep Trio-Tubes S4, S5, and S3'' was compared with brand X (okay, okay, ``with conventional methods based on the Facklam scheme for differentiation of group D streptococci''). The Trio-Tubes are evidently so-called because they consist of three medium-containing tubes (``with two microtubes held in place by medium in the butt of the carrier tube''). Starbose is mentioned as one of three components of the growth medium in Trio-Tube S4: ``arginine-starbose (combination of starch and sorbose)''; it seems clear that starbose is just a (physical) mix of sugar and starch.
Presumably, the term was coined by the manufacturer of the Trio-Tubes. That was Carr-Scarborough Microbiologicals, Inc., based near Atlanta, but it's not clear from the web that they're still in business, at least under that name. (And D.L. Carr's most recent publication seems to date from 1990.) I also can't find very much information specifically about the product [by now (2009) I would expect that it had been superseded, anyway], and no other instance of the word starbose.
(The article, ``Identification of Streptococcus faecalis and Streptococcus faecium and Susceptibility Studies with Newly Developed Antimicrobial Agents,'' was published by M. Jane Kim, Martin Weiser, Sandra Gottschall, and Eileen Randall -- all of Evanston Hospital in Evanston, Illinois -- in the May 1987 Journal of Clinical Microbiology, pp. 787-790.)
In the 2004-2009 series, Katee Sackhoff played a Lt. Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace.
I've also encountered the claim that studies have shown that when a Starbucks is opened, it actually improves the business of coffee shops that were already in the area. I guess the mechanism at work here is that a local Starbucks franchise puts the idea of drinking coffee into people's heads, and many of those people go and get their coffee elsewhere. It's possible they go elsewhere because Starbucks coffee tastes bad.
The resemblances varied, and the performances probably do too, so it might be unfair to compare. They have a pretty convincing Sean Connery and their Jean Claude van Damme isn't bad. Interestingly, though they have a fair Donald Trump (I mean, you don't have to ask ``who were you supposed to be, again?''), the hair just isn't bad enough. They have a good imitation of what Pamela Anderson will look like when her surgical tucks start to come loose. The best thing is that after staring at ersatz stars for a while, when you look again at the real thing, some of the skepticism stays with you.
What ever happened to Koo Stark? Now that Andy and Fergie are permanent splitsville, maybe she won't seem the mistake she seemed earlier. [She's probably available: Koo's ex-husband is dating Elle MacPherson (picture in August '95 Cosmo).] The House of Windsor has done worse. Frequently. Mom married a Greek Orthodox, so the fact that Koo is a Hollywood Buddhist should present no problem.
Omigod! Imagination pales. According to news reported in the pages of the University of Oviedo, Spain, as of August 25, 1996: Andrew has met Koo secretly for the (then) past six months, and she recently announced that she's pregnant. There's 'smore juicy stuff here, and this source at least got Queen Elizabeth's name right, but ``cheek-to-cheek'' isn't enough bait to justify learning Indonesian. There was apparently something about it in the Daily Mirror at the time. Oh wait! Finally something in English:
``I feel strongly that this is a private matter and the child should know before the rest of the world. I will never publicly reveal the identity of the father unless it is both his wish and that of the child.''This'll be her first child. Koo turned 40 on August 9. The cheek-to-cheek connection is that she became pregnant shortly after dancing that way with Andrew. [Shades of Margaret Meade.] That's about it.
Y'know, Koo Stark had a cameo in ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show.'' She was a bridesmaid. ``Always the bridesmaid, never the ....'' Never mind.
In summer 2002 she got magazine cover space as a breast-cancer survivor. Let's face it: Prince Andrew is a star-maker.
- Edwin Starr was born Charles Edwin Hatcher, January 21, 1942. The name must have been in the air. After army service in Germany from 1960 to 1962, Hatcher joined the road show of Bill Doggett, who introduced him by that name one night. He died of an apparent heart attack, at midafternoon on April 2, 2003 -- during the height of the war in Iraq -- but at his home near Nottingham. He was most famous for the 1970 hit (number one on the Billboard chart) ``War.'' (It had been released by the Temptations as part of an album, but Motown reportedly didn't want to risk the reputation of one of their top groups by releasing it as a single, so they gave it to Starr to record for release as a single.)
- Ringo Starr was born Richard Starkey, July 7, 1940. Only the good die young.
A statement made under oath, of course, is regarded as a somewhat reliable form of evidence in court. Hence, a number of the common competent collocations of the verb state suggest legal or quasi-legal contexts. For example, Ani DiFranco's song ``32 Flavors'' includes the lyrics ``And I would like to state for the record / I did everything that I could do.''
Thou shalt not answer questionnairesThis song could benefit from Frank Sinatra's phrasing. In case it helps, Auden's full name was Wystan Hugh Auden. By the time he wrote these lines, he was a confirmed expatriate in the US, and had broken with his old socialist activism.
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.
There's more at Ehrenfest's Theorem.
As they ran for the bushes again with all the glory of their nudity fully ablaze, the female statue turned to the male and said, ``Let's do it again, only this time, you hold the pigeon and I'll shit on it!''
Versions of this have appeared widely. I first saw it on the anthro-l mailing list, but it must be older than email.
``During the Persian Gulf War, U.S. strategists figured that many of the Iraqi troops-faced with, among other things, poor food and continual aerial bombardment-were ready and willing to surrender. According to a November 1995 article in the STC journal Intercom, technical communicators used a variety of skills to complete a surrender leaflet that was to be dropped by airplane into enemy lines.
After dropping limited quantities of early versions of the leaflet, technical writers revised their work, based on information gathered from captured prisoners. They removed the color red after learning it was a signal for danger in Iraq. They learned that among Iraqis a bearded man is more likely to inspire trust and brotherhood than a someone clean-shaven, so they inserted the picture of a bearded soldier in place of the original picture of a clean-shaven Allied soldier. The writers also learned that bananas, a delicacy in Iraq, would be a nice addition to the bowl of fruit pictured.
The net result was that the Allies spent about $16 million (out of almost $60 billion total for Desert Shield/Desert Storm) to drop 29 million leaflets on 98 percent of the 300,000 Iraqi troops. Almost 87,000 enemy soldiers defected without firing a shot.''
The SUNY Institute of Technology Technical Communication department has some relevant stuff on its homepage.
Well, I'm not gonna put in a whole extra entry for syphilis -- I mean, it's not as if I want to put a lot of effort into this glossary -- so I'll just list the link to syphilis information from the NY State Dept. o' Health gopher here. Also, gonorrhea (or ``clap''), and the rarer, tropical STD's granuloma inguinale (or donovanosis, but not named after the singer) and chancroid.
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There are probably many motives for making a stealth backronym of what was originally a plain honest word. The three examples I can examine that ignorance may sometimes play a role.
One day at an impromptu tenth birthday party for Merald Knight, his eight-year-old sister Gladys and some other family members sang together as a quintet, and their cousin James `Pip' Woods suggested they form a group. They made him their manager and took the name ``Gladys Knight and the Pips.'' [Gladys had begun singing with the Mount Mariah Baptist Church choir and had toured the church circuit (to as far off as the neighboring states of Florida and Alabama) with the Morris Brown Choir -- by the time she was five. At seven she had won the $2000 top prize on ``The Ted Mack Amateur Hour'' by singing the apposite song ``Too Young,'' and she subsequently appeared on a number of other TV shows. So she was the obvious headliner.] Some time later it was given out that PIP stood for ``perfection in performance.''
News does not stand for ``North, East, West, and South,'' as has not infrequently been claimed. Similarly, it is claimed that ``for unlawful carnal knowledge'' is the expansion and explanation of a common English verb. No. Hey! This is a family glossary!
The meaning of the word spool has a natural extension in the context of data streams, but it has been assigned an acronym expansion (see SPOOL). Information technology is a fertile source of stealth backronyms. Of course, they wouldn't be stealthy if their histories were very clear, so there's generally some doubt as to their status. See Pine, for example. And when cooking up the expansion for a stealth backronym is too difficult, a stealth blend may be the answer.
When this entry was added on August 19, 2007, a google search suggested that this term did not exist, but the term is needed, so here it is.
See Albert V. Crewe, ``A High Resolution Scanning Electron Microscope,'' in the April 1971 (vol. 224, #4) issue of Scientific American.
Not to be confused with STM, which uses a pointy contact instead of a beam.
First off, a number of what appear to be stem changes are merely regular
orthographic changes. For example, the verb buscar (`to look for') has
a second-person singular present subjunctive form ending in -es, just like any
-ar verb. (Typical corresponding forms in an ordinary regular -ar verb:
fumar, que fumes, meaning `to smoke, that you smoke.') But -ces
would be pronounced with a soft cee. To preserve the hard-cee sound in the
conjugated form, one uses a qu, so the -es conjugated form is busques.
The reverse problem occurs if a soft cee in the infinitive would be pronounced
hard (i.e., if the conjugated form followed it with anything other than
a vowel e or i). The solution here is to replace the
cee with a zee. Again taking the inf. and 2nd pers. sing. pres. subj. forms,
convencer and esparcir (`convince' and `spread, scatter') have
conjugations convenza and esparza.
Similar things happen with g, and you should be careful not to mindlessly convert c to z: conocer has 2s. pres. subj. conozca. But look, this isn't what I wanted to write about at all. I wanted to write about real stem changes, not this orthographic stuff. Except that there are dozens of them. Okay, some have to do with initial letter y or i, or an h hiding an initial vowel, or conjugations that result in unpleasant vowel clusters (i.e., stems ending in vowels -- creer, reír, etc.), and a lot of g's popping up out of nowhere just before the ending, and a very few hopelessly irregular verbs, which are of course the most common ones. I didn't want to get into any of that.
I just wanted to deal with these two rather common changes in stem vowel:
e --> ie and
o --> ue. This is handy information for
all you Italians out there, whose native language is not blessed with this
particular peculiarity (because diphthongs don't come through well in opera).
It's sort of a regular irregularity, in the sense that when it happens, you can
sleep-walk your way through a lot of the conjugation. The thing to notice
about all of them is that the infinitive's vowel is replaced by a diphthong
only if it is stressed in the conjugated form.
The stem change occurs with all three verb classes (-ar, -er, -ir). Examples:
cerrar, cierro (`to close, I close');
tostar, tuesto (`to toast, I toast');
poder, puedo (`be able to');
sentir, siento (`feel, sense');
morir, muero (`die').
Okay, one little thing: there's a kind of regular irregular codicil to this
regular irregular conjugation. For some verbs, the stem vowel changes only
when it is stressed. For others, it also changes in another class of
situations: when the vowel is unstressed and the following syllable contains
a stressed a, ie, or ió. In this case,
e --> i or
o --> u.
I have this horrible feeling that this entry will never be of any use to anyone.
The STEREO spacecraft were launched in October 2006. They were maneuvered into solar orbits slightly within and without Earth's orbit. Around April 23, when the first 3D images of the Sun were unveiled, the two satellites had an angular separation of 4 degrees (in terms of the Sun as vertex).
The two satellites are separating at about 45 degrees per year. In other words, their orbital periods are about a sixteenth shorter and longer than the earth's. Hence, by Kepler's 2/3 law (which can be stated as (R/a0)3 = (T/y)2 for an orbit of period T and radius R, where y is one year and a0 is the astronomical unit), their orbital radii are roughly one twenty-fourth smaller and larger than Earth's. The satellites' radial separation is thus equivalent to one twelfth of a radian, or about 2.4 degrees.
Steuben is also the name of a company incorporated in Corning in 1903, and acquired by Corning Glass Works in 1918. Steuben gradually became renowned for its fine glass. They make essentially two kinds of pieces: decorative ware and tableware. The decorative ware has no practical use and the tableware is (also) so expensive that you're practically scared to use it. Each piece is individually (i.e. hand-) blown and engraved.
An announcement November 24, 2003, for the April 2004 event offers no website, just a snail address, three email addresses (``submit in triplicate'' -- I guess they haven't figured out how to create aliases) and phone numbers. This is so wonderfully retro that it would be a shame to spoil it by giving away any useful contact information at this web entry.
If nothing is seriously wrong with your hand or the gear shift, you can shift gears without using any more force than one finger can apply. I recommend two or more fingers. Most people use the whole hand, since it comes along with the finger, and place the palm against a knob at the end of the lever. On a five-speed, that knob may be decorated with the following sort of diagram --
1 3 5
| | |
|_____|_____|
| | |
| | |
2 4 R
-- indicating the positions for the various gears. Anywhere along the middle
is neutral. To switch gears, you move along the lines: forward or backward
between some gear and neutral, then sideways if necessary, then forward or back
again to the next gear. What you're doing with all this, though you can't see
it, is pushing different gears in and out of alignment to engage in different
transmission ratios.
All auto mechanics that I have ever known, other than transmission repairmen, leave the transmission in gear when they park the car. This has the effect of using the transmission as a parking brake. It's bad for the transmission.
Here's the diagram for a three-speed pick-up truck, from the old days when people used them on muddy dirt roads:
1 3
| |
|_____|
| |
| |
R 2
First gear and reverse are lined up so that you can quickly switch back and
forth between backward and forward gear. On a farm, that's more important than
switching quickly to higher forward gears. In particular, if you're stuck in a
ditch and you want to rock the truck forward and back to get out, this makes
it easier to get some traction in both directions.
The tractor of a semi-trailer typically has about eighteen gears; things there are a bit more involved. Race cars use a paddle system: tapping a paddle on the steering column shifts gear one step up or down. It's mechanically like a manual transmission. In particular, it uses a mechanical clutch (rather than a hydraulic one as in automatic transmissions), but the clutching is handled automatically. This kind of manual is coming into use in ordinary passenger vehicles, starting with high-end European cars.
The next day she spent with California and Iowa in the garage, as she called the two soldiers who were detailed to fix up her car. She was pleased with them when every time there was a terrific noise anywhere, they said solemnly to each other, that french chauffeur is just changing gears. Gertrude Stein, Iowa and California enjoyed themselves so thoroughly that I am sorry to say that the car did not last out very well after we left Nevers, but at any rate we did get to Paris.
-- The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, p. 221.
An earlier term for an earlier practice with the same end was MIS.
STL used to be a TWA hub when there used to be a TWA. When American (AA) bought what was left of TWA, it inherited TWA's slots at STL. I made a connection through there in August 2003, towards the end of a transition during which AA was phasing it out as a hub. The place needs some work in the areas of personnel supervision, signage, gate seating, rest rooms, and restaurants. Other than that, I didn't see any major problems.
``The Living Encyclopedia of Physics'' has an entry. So does Virginia Tech.
The Church of Bird used to sponsor a Star Trek site but for reasons explained here does so no longer. It appears to be a Helen Hunt veneration page these days.
In Smuts: A Reappraisal, published in 1976, author Bernard Friedman thinks it worthwhile to gloss the word (``[a] terraced verandah in front of the house'') in one of only 9 footnotes for the first section (pp. 11-78).
In the US, however, the word is normally spelled stoop and appears to be one of the few survivals from Dutch colonization. The AHD4 tags it as ``[c]hiefly Northeastern U.S.'' but judges that the usage is spreading. In US usage the term describes a feature generally narrower than a veranda; rather, it is a small porch or steps and a landing before the front entrance of a building (of a separated house, in all my experience).
It seems just possible that stoep might be etymologically related to the Greek word stoá. This described a roofed colonade generally, or the great hall at Athens. The great hall was decorated with frescoes of the battle of Marathon, and called by Milton ``the painted Stoa'' (translating the Greek hê stoá hê poikílê. The last word gave rise to the name Pœcile as English name for the great hall. Zeno lectured in the Pœcile, and hence his followers are called Stoics.
From the following, you will appreciate how everyone's gotten bigger in the last century (and mind that when this entry went up in 1998, England was experiencing a Santa shortage).
George and Harris and Montmorency are not poetic ideals, but things of flesh and blood -- especially George, who weighs about twelve stone.
-- from preface, August 1889, of Jerome K. Jerome's
Three Men In A Boat
(To say nothing of the dog)
And you: stop defending yourself!
Cet animal est très méchant,(This animal is very bad / when attacked it defends itself.)
Quand on l'attaque il se défend.
This little couplet (it rhymes, as you can see from the spelling) is from La Ménagerie, published in 1868, by one otherwise unknown ``Théodore P.K.'' At the time it was published, it was considered ironic even in France.
(In the Stranski-Krastanow mode of growth, initial wetting is followed by island formation. In Volmer-Weber mode, growth takes place in incoherent islanding, and in Frank-van der Merwe, growth is layer-by-layer.)
Voluntarily defaulting begins to make sense when the value of a home is less than the amount owed on the mortgage, loosely speaking. (This is called ``being upside-down''.) To be more precise, one must consider expected appreciation in the value of the home, the rates of interest on the loan, the rate of inflation, and the costs of damaging one's credit by defaulting. Most of these things can only be estimated or guessed (all of them, if the mortgage is an ARM). On the other hand, mortgage interest rates, home-value appreciation rates, and inflation are loosely correlated. That's where I stopped writing when I first created this entry and failed to publish it. You know, perfection used to mean completion (rather than, say, completeness). Perfection now is the enemy of perfection then.
I don't really know much about the calculation directly, but I do know that strategic default was not considered hypothetical in 2009. I know of a professor at an expensive private university who defaulted voluntarily. Okay, I don't know the details of his private finances; I think he did.
We mention ``A Streetcar Named Desire,'' in passing, in a brief discussion of roach bombs, and eventually we will also do so in the teamster entry.
There is scattered streetcar content at these entries: HSR, MU, Muni, PCC, RT, TTC.
It is possible to have stress without strain. For example, some materials exhibit a measurable mechanical magnetostriction, in which an applied magnetic field can cause a deformation. Thus, in an appropriate geometry and magnetic field pattern, one can simultaneously apply surface forces to cancel the effects of a body stress generated by a magnetic field, and have no net strain.
Future additions (if there are any) to this entry should discuss creep and amorphous materials.
``Strib'' sounds dismissive to me. At least it doesn't have very good rhyming company, on balance (with the more or less negative bib, drib, fib, glib, squib, as against the merely neutral crib, nib, rib, sib, stib[ium], and, in some dialects, /usr/lib/). In the teeth of this irrefutable logic, it turns out that ``Strib'' is used affectionately as well as unaffectionately.
In French: proprement dite (`properly said').
Here are two other senses of ``strong reading'' -- the ones that actually prompted me to slog through a few ghits and write this entry:
- In literary analysis, or in the analysis of explicit arguments
generally, a strong reading is a tendentious or biased reading. One might
call it a strong-arm reading, but a conscious intention to mislead is not
always implied. Here are two examples:
- ``Trilling's `historical-dialectical' view of [Matthew] Arnold is a case of a later critic's reinventing himself in the image of his precursor, but also of a `strong reading,' that is to say, a misreading whereby the later critic interprets his precursor to accord with his own present needs.'' [Mark Krupnick: Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern U.P., 1986), p. 53.]
- ``Rosenberg provides a `strong' reading of Holmes's theory of torts, a reading of the kind that Holmes himself engaged in many times, particularly in The Common Law. Lawyers and law professors offer strong readings of tests all of the time; that may be all that they do. When offering a strong reading, if something does not fit in an argument [I bet you think this is going to turn into a dangling participle], they squeeze, raise the rhetorical level, or assert an interpretation for troublesome facts that makes the trouble go away. And when faced with an opposed strong reading, they work diligently to undermine that reading.'' [John Henry Schlegel, in a review of David Rosenberg's The Hidden Holmes: His Theory of Torts in History (1995) that was published in American Historical Review, vol. 102, #2 (April 1997), pp. 544-45. The reviewer goes on to say, ``Now there is nothing wrong with offering strong readings of classic texts. David Harlan has made the case for just such work in the pages of this journal [viz., AHR].'' I'll have to track that down.
- In linguistics, philosophy, and logic, a strong reading is an
interpretation of an ambiguous statement that understands it to make a
stronger rather than a weaker claim. (For ``statement'' read text, claim,
proposition, utterance, speech act, or whatever is appropriate to the
disciplinary context.) Here is one example:
- Language,
Proof and Logic A logic courseware package (including a book)
by Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy, apparently
uses ``weak reading'' and ``strong reading'' to distinguish
interpretations of an ambiguous utterance. A strong reading is one
that logically implies another (the weak reading). Obviously, no such
relation may obtain. A (standard) example given is ``Every minute a
man is mugged in New York City.'' The strong reading supposes it's the
same man. Strong/weak dichotomies of the sort contemplated by Barwise
and Etchemendy concern ambiguities most closely associated with
determiners and quantifiers. B&E distinguish strong and weak
determiners, noun phrases, and readings, at least. I'm sure it's very
helpful... sometimes.
There are some problems with this notion of ``strong.'' One problem is that ambiguous statements may admit of more than two interpretations. For example, in the case above there is the possibility that muggings might occur in clusters. If the time between successive muggings alternates between 30 seconds and 90 seconds, for example, the proposition might only be true if the minute-counting is properly registered to include one and only one mugging, or if some averaging process is implied. As one adds ambiguities and multiplies readings, one finds that which of two readings is stronger depends on which element of ambiguity one considers.
But in any case -- poor guy.
- Language,
Proof and Logic A logic courseware package (including a book)
by Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy, apparently
uses ``weak reading'' and ``strong reading'' to distinguish
interpretations of an ambiguous utterance. A strong reading is one
that logically implies another (the weak reading). Obviously, no such
relation may obtain. A (standard) example given is ``Every minute a
man is mugged in New York City.'' The strong reading supposes it's the
same man. Strong/weak dichotomies of the sort contemplated by Barwise
and Etchemendy concern ambiguities most closely associated with
determiners and quantifiers. B&E distinguish strong and weak
determiners, noun phrases, and readings, at least. I'm sure it's very
helpful... sometimes.
It is a hackneyed observation but true, that most enterprises consist of the many doing what they cannot manage, and the few managing what they cannot do. STS intends to provide advice to some of the latter.
Sorry -- my mistake: STS has been intended by some, in the past, to contribute to public debate about technology issues. Some STS people do. However, within the discipline, a long-running historiographic criticism of ``presentism'' has led many within the discipline to feel that any involvement with current affairs in STS (next definition) compromises their ability to study the fields in the appropriate context, untainted by current points of view or even knowledge. (The preferred approach, ``contextualism,'' might be called scientific objectivity or disinterestedness, but such scientific ideals are also viewed with suspicion. Pity the poor STSist. More precisely, these observations apply to the HOSer, q.v.)
You shouldn't suppose that I doubt the utility of that social dimensions stuff. And I don't mind that the hype ignores that this is merely another rediscovery of an educational approach dating back to the iatrochemists of the sixteenth century. But I'd believe the schools were serious if these things were taught as the scientific and technological aspects -- centrally important aspects -- of history and other humanistic courses.
(Most of the rest of the links in this entry are to information at The Internet Movie Database.)
Let's go back in time, shall we, and consider what other programs were on the air at the same time as ST:TOS. Mr. Ed, about the talking horse who was always getting his owner Wilbur in trouble, was coming to a triumphant conclusion after five seasons and 143 sparkling episodes (1961-66). Also ending, My Favorite Martian (1963-66) (in 1999 the premise was exhumed for a movie of the same name) and My Mother the Car (1965-66). It was the era of I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970), The Flying Nun (1967-1970), and Bewitched (1964-1972). What becomes apparent is that Star Trek was a great leap in the direction of realistic drama, and away from bizarre science fiction or fantasy, but that it was a bit ahead of its time.
For example, here's something condensed from pages 158-59 of Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories (1994), by Nichelle Nichols (``Lieutenant Uhura''). After wrapping the last show of the first season, she went to Gene Roddenberry's office to resign. ``I've put up with the cuts and the racism, but I just can't do it anymore.'' Gene was sympathetic, explained that he was fighting a hard battle against the studio, asked her to reconsider.
The following evening she was attending an NAACP fund-raiser, and someone approached and said ``Nichelle, there is someone who would like to meet you. He's a big fan of Star Trek and Uhura.'' As she turned around she saw Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and decided that that fan would have to wait. She and the Reverend were introduced, and Dr. King's first words to her were ``Yes, I am that fan.'' When he learned that she was quitting the show, he argued that in her part she served as a unique role model, and eventually convinced her to reconsider.
Another show of that era was The Munsters (1964-66). Grandpa Munster was played by Al Lewis. His character would sleep upside down hanging from a rafter like other, less bulky bats, and was known for his cheerful, even enthusiastic attitude to morbidity. In 1998 he was the Green Party's candidate for Governor of New York State.
New York has many small parties that don't have a realistic chance of electing their own candidate to statewide office. Nevertheless, they make an effort in the gubernatorial campaigns (held in ``off years'' -- ... 1994, 1998, 2002...) because of an important consolation prize: any party that gains above a threshold of 50,000 votes qualifies to have all its candidates automatically appear on the appropriate ballots for the next four years. If they don't make it, they have to gather signatures on individual petitions for every candidate. One approach to this challenge (for smaller parties) is to endorse a major-party candidate. (Votes for the same candidate appearing on different tickets are tallied separately, though the winner is determined by total votes regardless of which party line they were cast on. Endorsing a major-party candidate gives voters a chance to support the party without ``throwing away'' their votes on a candidate unlikely to win a statewide race. A minor-party endorsement may help a major-party candidate as any endorsement may.)
If there is no palatable major-party candidate that will accept its endorsement, the party must seek someone with name recognition. Al Lewis, a labor socialist on his mother's side (she was a garment worker), campaigned on a platform of reform of Rockefeller-era drug laws, clean-up of the Hudson River, and cheap housing for the poor. The election came at a bad time, since Al Lewis earns a large part of his living now making paid Halloween appearances at shopping malls. The party also alienated animal rights activists by serving chicken at its gatherings.
The State Board of Elections opposed his request to appear on the ballot as ``Grandpa Al Lewis'' on the basis of its ``opinion that people don't go around calling him `Grandpa Al Lewis' all the time.'' A judge saw it the board's way, even though when he is seen in public people call out ``Grandpa!'' In the election, the Green Party gubernatorial candidate won a hair over the necessary 50,000 votes.
In the 1976 US presidential election, Carter waged a successful court effort to appear as ``Jimmy'' rather than ``James.'' His full given name is ``James Earl Carter Jr.'' The man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was ``James Earl Ray.'' Murderers and patronesses of poetry are usually identified by three names. In the former case, it is presumably to minimize any case of mistaken identity. The full name of the author of Invisible Man (1952) was Ralph Waldo Ellison.
Diez offers a offers a partial taxonomy of bloopers. (These are expressed inconsistently in terms of either the bloopers or the blooperers. I have renamed rather than translated the nomenclature.) For some of the taxa he exampled a specimen (usually from biology); I have wrestled some of the examples into English (freely when necessary):
- Pure error:
- The density is a small box that serves to collect rainwater.
- Ungulates are the animals that move along the ground, like the viper.
- Compounded error:
- One nocturnal bird is the bat, which is, moreover, the only mamiferous bird.
- Birds have feathers or hair, the latter more rarely.
- Phonetic confusion:
- Flowers with stamens and pistils are called manfrodite. [The Sp. word manflorita, `effeminate man,' is supposed to be derived from hermafrodita, `hermaphrodite.' I presume the formation was influenced by flor, `flower,' and the diminutive female suffix -ita. The man- must be either influenced by English or a coincidence.]
- Young amphibians breathe through gills, and adulterous ones through lungs.
- Confusion of similar forms at different scales:
- Immunity protects against insects. [Wrong size and kind of bicho (`bug').]
- An example of a worm is the serpent.
- Remotely understandable error:
- A purgative oil called resin is extracted from the pine. [In Sp., the castor-oil plant (Ricinus communis) is called ricino.]
- Bones of the face: two penguins. [The orbital bone's Latin -- its Latin name in both Spanish and English, in fact -- is unguis.]
- Amusing description:
- One zygodactyl bird is the parrot, which speaks but doesn't know what it's saying.
- An example of gallinacea that is not a hen is the chicken.
- Exam disorientation:
- Example of an amphibian: John studies.
- Ingenuousness:
- Sulfur: I don't remember about that one; what I do remember is about the skeleton.
- I am not familiar with any harmful caterpillars, or perhaps I have seen one but to my manner of thinking it wasn't harmful.
- Confusion of part and whole:
- The scorpion's bite can kill humanity.
- One bat is the New York vampire. [American.]
- Failure of expression:
- Glaciers can have thicknesses of three or four million.
- The stomach has a form of two kilograms.
- Embroidery:
- The volatile organs, generally known by the name of wings...
- After the dentary machinery has savaged the nutrients...
- Spelling atrocity:
- Marine worms are on the beeches and make wholes in the sand.
- The feemails of invertegrates lay egz.
Taxa listed without a specimen include the word-fog used to obscure ignorance (`those who think that it's enough to pass if they don't shut up'), the crossed-out correct answer, the really creative inspired error, and the error due to youthful innocence.
Most bloopers are not all that funny. My impression is that their popularity often reveals certain insecurities of those who share them. I'll expand on that some day.
Heller writes in the preface that his ``studies are the work of no scientist or historian of science, but of an amateur of the Latin language, a professional classicist who has specialized, if at all, in the history of words and the transmission of ideas from the ancient to the modern world.'' This ``amateur'' does animadvert that he has been editor of the Transactions of the American Philological Association (TAPA) and president of that association.
The book consists mostly of photoreproductions, with occasional penned-in corrections, of articles published previously. The seven reprinted studies were published from 1946 to 1976. There are two new formal studies, as well as some indices of trivial names.
The book is volume 7 in a series of `Marburg Notes for the History of Medicine' [Marburger Schriften zur Medizingeschichte; Bd. 7]. In fact, the volume lists both an ISSN (0721-3859) and an ISBN (3-8204-7344-0).
Heller was born in 1906, joined the classics faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1949 and was head of the department until 1966. (This was the same department in which the learned but widely reviled Revilo Pendleton Oliver was a professor.) In 1975, Heller became an emeritus professor, and in 1988 he died. The year 1999 saw the publication of The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs: De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes, 1542, with Frederick G. Meyer, Emily W. Emmart Trueblood, and John Lewis Heller as authors. (It lists at $300. Do you really need the publication details? Okay, big spender: Volume I, Commentary. Frederick G. Meyer, Emily E. Trueblood, and John L. Heller. 895 pp. Volume II, Facsimile. (Leonhart Fuchs). 897 pp. 1999. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Hardcover, $299.50, ISBN 0804716315.)
One of the new (in 1983) items in Studies in Linnaean Method and Nomenclature was ``Caput Oculus, Linnaeus's Chinese Materia Medica.'' Heller commented in the preface that it was ``drawn from materials gathered for my still unfinished index, which I hope to publish soon as a complete Bibliotheca Zoologica Linnaeana. That compilation had been in progress since 1959 and was incomplete when he died. Two different individuals continued the work. John Penhallurick, an associate professor in communication at the University of Canberra, has an interest in ornithology, and he edited photocopies of Heller's typescript sent to him from Illinois. The other individual was Alwyne Wheeler, head of the Fish Section in the Natural History Museum, London, and a Past President and Council Member of the Ray Society in London. Wheeler had received from Heller a later version of the compilation. I'm not sure what else he did with it, but in 1994 he got the Council of the Ray Society to agree to publish the work. Penhallurick took on the task of completing and publishing the work in 1999, and was unaware of Wheeler's involvement and later version. Penhallurick only learned of this when he went to the Ray Society while searching for a publisher. He ended up combining the two versions, and the Ray Society published it as Index of the Books and Authors cited in the Zoological Works of Linnaeus, compiled by John L. Heller and edited by John M. Penhallurick, in October 2007.
The study was based on questionaires mailed back by many students who had participated in study abroad programs. The book has many diagrams and tables; it's not just a bunch of words. Chapter 9, ``Conclusions,'' summarizes some of the most important and fascinating findings. Here is the first fruit of this research (bold text in the original, p. 204):
This is important and surprising, and I hope I can remember it. Now, I don't want to sound immodest, but I too have done some research in this area -- informally, yet I think rigorously enough. I was able to pinpoint a feature of experiencing first-hand living in and becoming acquainted with a foreign country (I don't think foreign languages come into this very much) that was important to US students studying in the UK. That feature, roughly speaking, was beverages. More specifically: alcoholic beverages. US students in the UK are able to experience British drinking folkways, which include a legal drinking age of 18. Students like to compare their experences in the UK, where they can drink legally at 18, with their experiences in the US, where they can drink illegally at 18. One of the differences is that the South Bend Police regularly raid the bars near the Notre Dame campus, having somehow got it into their heads that bars near campus might contain college students imbibing illegally.
Just my contribution to research. The survey instruments used by Opper et al. apparently were not optimized to detect this effect, though I can't imagine any reason why self-reporting students might focus on more widely socially accepted reasons for spending thousands of extra bucks and a year abroad.
Never underestimate the frivolous.
- n. What things are made of, subject to availability.
- n. Uncountable thing[s].
- v. Force or compress (into).
For deep thoughts on stuff, see the HYLE and klutz entries and stuff.
This year (2007) when I tried to stimulate class discussion with the question ``What is the world made of?'' the first answer was ``Dreams.'' (Insert your own damn commas.) This is not a very useful answer in an engineering course, so I replied ``And as Delmore Schwartz explained, `In dreams begin responsibilities'.'' It was one of those rare instances when I experienced staircase wit so prematurely that I was actually able to feign wittiness or witticism or whitever.