No, plants don't do math(s).
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@DrPepper said:
I have a glass of tepid water and two ice cubes. Together, they adjust the temperature to a cooler value. OBVIOUSLY the water and ice cubes are performing some sort of maths to calculate the final temperature of the water.
Yes. And we can imagine building a computer which performed calculations in that way - perhaps dropping ice cubes into water and measuring the resultant temperature. If we set the starting temperature of the water as, say, your bank account balance, and drop in an appropriately scaled ice-cube for each withdrawal, the temperature of the water (at equilibrium) would give your new balance. (If your account is frozen, attempted withdrawals will bounce.)
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@Ben L. said:
If I take a shit, the water in the toilet rises proportionally to the size of the shit! Shit can do mathss!s
No it doesn't. The shit volume of water will spill over the S-bend so the level of the water remains the same.
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@Zemm said:
@Ben L. said:
I think you're making a huge assumption there....If I take a shit, the water in the toilet rises proportionally to the size of the shit! Shit can do mathss!s
No it doesn't. The shit volume of water will spill over the S-bend so the level of the water remains the same.
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@PJH said:
I think you're making a huge assumption there....
sob
This is why I am never setting foot outside the United States. Even parts of Europe are circumspect; there are those German toilets with the little poo shelf, and I've seen photographic evidence of piss troughs.
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@morbiuswilters said:
there are those German toilets with the little poo shelf
That's so people can check their stools for worms. And the shelf isn't usually that little...
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@PJH said:
@morbiuswilters said:
there are those German toilets with the little poo shelf
That's so people can check their stools for worms. And the shelf isn't usually that little...Oh, I'm well aware of its purpose and dimensions. I was just trying to be charitable to the Krauts.
My friend recently stole a fitness magazine from some German tourists. (Well, not stole, they just left it on a plane, but "stole" makes the US sound more dangerous and cool.)
Anyway, it was full of surprisingly-unattractive German people--in the US we like to cram our fitness magazines with gorgeous models to make the fat slobs buying them feel like exercise is even more cruel and Sisyphean--and they were running around on sunny beaches, doing fun-looking stuff. Not a single outdoor photo seemed to be in anything I'd classify as "Germany". Then we fumbled through some of the headlines, deciphering them by cobbling together what little German we knew, and determined that Germans basically only work out so they can go to beaches in the US, or Carribean or Mediterranean, and run around playing beach volleyball.
Also, there were copious ads for alcohol-frei beer, which I thought was odd. For one, I assumed Germans took their beer far too seriously to accept anything without alcohol. (Despite the fact that nearly every German beer I've ever had tasted like generic, watered-down pilsner trash. "Try Czech beers!" Europeans tell me. You do realize American Budweiser is a Czech-style beer made by Czech immigrants, right? And while Budweiser has slightly more toxic runoff than, say, Pilsner Urkel*, they are virtually-fucking-indistinguishable when it comes to taste. It would be like a European coming to visit me and saying "You know, I'm tired of eating at European Burger King, let's have some authentic American cuisine!" so I take him to a Carl's Jr. and apologize for the burger not containing as much horse anus as he's used to.)
For two, in the US alcohol-frei beer is only drunk by recovering alcoholics who need to sate their taste for beer without having any of the undesirable pissing-on-the-subway-third-rail moments that come with real booze. That, and I guess, I dunno, Mormons?
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@FrostCat said:
@blakeyrat said:
@Some BBC said:
Plants have a built-in capacity to do maths
Wow a grammar error in the very first sentence. I guess the BBC's reputation has completely disappeared now.
Are you talking about using "maths" instead of "math?" Because that's one of the weird things Brits do, like putting extra letters in words like color.
Or you could argue, since the language in question is "English" ... which we can all presume originated in England, that Americans have bastardised the spelling and removed these letters from the original spelling (such as the aforementioned "color" which should really be "colour")
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@PJH said:
@morbiuswilters said:
there are those German toilets with the little poo shelf
That's so people can check their stools for worms. And the shelf isn't usually that little...And the itching and feelings of something crawling up your anal passage isn't enough of a marker for worm infestation? It's either that or some sort of fetish, so I suppose they aren't mutually exclusive...they may be onto something
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@Charleh said:
Or you could argue, since the language in question is "English" ... which we can all presume originated in England, that Americans have bastardised the spelling and removed these letters from the original spelling (such as the aforementioned "color" which should really be "colour")
FFS, not this bollocks. Again.
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@Charleh said:
Or you could argue, since the language in question is "English" ... which we can all presume originated in England, that Americans have bastardised the spelling and removed these letters from the original spelling (such as the aforementioned "color" which should really be "colour")
The problem is you originated the language, but centuries of meticulous inbreeding and breathing in coal smoke left you unable to use it properly. And when you guys finally did decide to standardize it, you went with the French forms, instead of the proper Latin forms. Which is ironic, given your complaint about where the language originated from..
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Charleh said:
Or you could argue, since the language in question is "English" ... which we can all presume originated in England, that Americans have bastardised the spelling and removed these letters from the original spelling (such as the aforementioned "color" which should really be "colour")
The problem is you originated the language, but centuries of meticulous inbreeding and breathing in coal smoke left you unable to use it properly. And when you guys finally did decide to standardize it, you went with the French forms, instead of the proper Latin forms. Which is ironic, given your complaint about where the language originated from..
@James Nicoll said:
The problem with defending the purity of the English language
is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't
just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages
down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for
new vocabulary.
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@PJH said:
[quote user="James Nicoll"]The problem with defending the purity of the English language
[/quote]
is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't
just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages
down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for
new vocabulary.lol. I don't get people who appeal to some sense of purity with English. One of the defining characteristics is that it's cobbled-together language where most of the rules and definitions are merely descriptive. There's no "right" way to spell color, any more than it's wrong for words to take on new meanings or for entirely new words to be invented.
I always feel sad for the French, with their weird prescriptivist tendencies which try to keep foreign words from polluting their "pure" language. (French is about as pure as the thoughts of a crowd of Catholic priests at Vatican-sponsored Altar Boy Oil Wrestling Night. Their term for potato is literally "apple of the Earth". It's like a language invented by paste-eating Kindergartners..)
English, on the other hand, excitedly runs around, grabbing swarthy foreigners by the shoulder and pointing; "What is that called??" it asks. "Oh, that's a cool word!!" it enthuses, "I think I'm going to take that word now. Oh, and it will refer to a type of vehicular transportation and a hairstyle by next week!!" before running off to the next thing.
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@morbiuswilters said:
One of the defining characteristics is that it's cobbled-together language where most of the rules and definitions are merely descriptive. There's no "right" way to spell color, any more than it's wrong for words to take on new meanings or for entirely new words to be invented.
There is actually one hard and fast rule in English, and it governs everything from orthography to pronunciation, via grammar and semantics: clearly and unambiguously convey your meaning.
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@TDWTF123 said:
Division's a rare one, that I can think of - quite possibly unique to our knowledge, although likely far from unique.
Having implemented division in Brainfuck, I can appreciate how complicated it is compared to addition and multiplication.
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@morbiuswilters said:
"What is that called??" it asks. "Oh, that's a cool word!!" it enthuses, "I think I'm going to take that word now. Oh, and it will refer to a type of vehicular transportation and a hairstyle by next week!!" before running off to the next thing.
Example: pineapple
Which came from Dutch: denneappel, which is that rough wooden "fruit" that forms on pines: the pinecone.
We call pineapples ananas, though.
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@TDWTF123 said:
@morbiuswilters said:
One of the defining characteristics is that it's cobbled-together language where most of the rules and definitions are merely descriptive. There's no "right" way to spell color, any more than it's wrong for words to take on new meanings or for entirely new words to be invented.
There is actually one hard and fast rule in English, and it governs everything from orthography to pronunciation, via grammar and semantics: clearly and unambiguously convey your meaning.I could care less. It's a moot point.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@PJH said:
I think you're making a huge assumption there....
sob
This is why I am never setting foot outside the United States. Even parts of Europe are circumspect; there are those German toilets with the little poo shelf, and I've seen photographic evidence of piss troughs.
But Ben L was talking about shitting into water, which suggests a "normal" western style toilet.
I spent a fortnight in Japan in 2009 and never used a Japanese style toilet. I saw a few of them, but western style was everywhere, including in the ryokan we stayed at. My wife, however, did use them a few times, including on a train!
When you say "piss trough" do you mean something like this or this? Do you not have them in the USA? I piss in something similar pretty much every day!
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@Liquid Egg Product said:
I could care less. It's a moot point.
Aweful!
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@Zemm said:
When you say "piss trough" do you mean something like this or this? I piss in something similar pretty much every day!
Those are awful. Awful! Terrible!
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Just googled the shit shelf. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH GERMAN PEOPLE!?
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@dhromed said:
We call pineapples ananas, though.
And thanks to that word, my schoolboy childhood was filled with [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rBSflK1FTSY#t=225s"]this nightmare demon hellspawn mind-fucker[/url].
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@morbiuswilters said:
There's no "right" way to spell color, any more than it's wrong for words to take on new meanings or for entirely new words to be invented.
I don't care too much about color vs colour but some US words look weird. I prefer "litre" to "liter" because the latter spelling should be pronounced the same as "lighter". You don't measure land area in "acers" do you?
That said I'd prefer "program" to "programme".
Also pronunciation: I hate that in US English Erin and Aaron sound the same. "Buoy" like "booee" makes me cringe. (Though it does disambiguate from "boy") How do you say "buoyancy"? Booeeansee?
Here there are a lot of places named after aboriginal words or aboriginal mispronunciation of English words. I grew up in a city called Toowoomba: the two sets of "oo"s have different pronunciations! The leading theory it started life as "The Swamp" and morphed into that name. I've read that Australian English has a very large number of words. Even US comedians with file compression names have commented on it.
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@Lorne Kates said:
And thanks to that word, my schoolboy childhood was filled with this nightmare demon hellspawn mind-fucker.
Seriously! Look at this fucker. Sitting in the husk of a burnt out car, psychologically torturing small children-- all while wielding a scepter. A fucking scepter! Does he fancy himself lord ruler of the world? Is it a weapon? A torture device?
[img]http://i.imgflip.com/26mes.gif[/img]
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@Zemm said:
@morbiuswilters said:
My favourite one is Kansas is pronounced like it looks. But add an "Ar" to the start, making Arkansas? That last "s" is now a "w" motherfucker!There's no "right" way to spell color, any more than it's wrong for words to take on new meanings or for entirely new words to be invented.
I don't care too much about color vs colour but some US words look weird. I prefer "litre" to "liter" because the latter spelling should be pronounced the same as "lighter". You don't measure land area in "acers" do you?
That said I'd prefer "program" to "programme".
Also pronunciation: I hate that in US English Erin and Aaron sound the same. "Buoy" like "booee" makes me cringe. (Though it does disambiguate from "boy") How do you say "buoyancy"? Booeeansee?
Here there are a lot of places named after aboriginal words or aboriginal mispronunciation of English words. I grew up in a city called Toowoomba: the two sets of "oo"s have different pronunciations! The leading theory it started life as "The Swamp" and morphed into that name. I've read that Australian English has a very large number of words. Even US comedians with file compression names have commented on it.
Still, I like weird language stuff. It'd be very boring to have a perfectly sane, sensible, logical language...
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@KillaCoda said:
It'd be very boring to have a perfectly sane, sensible, logical language...
My 3 year old is learning how to read. It's becoming very obvious how unboring our language is!
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@morbiuswilters said:
I always feel sad for the French, with their weird prescriptivist tendencies which try to keep foreign words from polluting their "pure" language.
I thought only Canadian French was guilty of this...
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dhromed... do you zero index your acers?
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@Zemm said:
That said I'd prefer "program" to "programme".
You do realise that in British English, both are valid and are not interchangeable?
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@Zemm said:
"Buoy" like "booee" makes me cringe. (Though it does disambiguate from "boy") How do you say "buoyancy"? Booeeansee?
"boy-ansee" (hyphen only to make the parts clearer, it's hard to type up pronouciation).
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@Lorne Kates said:
dhromed... do you zero index your acers?
I mizconted them.
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@Zemm said:
When you say "piss trough" do you mean something like this or this? Do you not have them in the USA?
Yes, that's the one. You only find those in ancient baseball stadiums and other buildings built in pre-civilized times.
@Zemm said:
I piss in something similar pretty much every day!
At that point, they may as well have a wall out back we can use. Just have the janitor hose it down every day.
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@Zemm said:
I prefer "litre" to "liter" because the latter spelling should be pronounced the same as "lighter".
The former looks like "leet-reee" to me. Let's all agree it should be spelled leetur.
@Zemm said:
How do you say "buoyancy"? Booeeansee?
Boy-in-see.
The real funny one is "Bowie knife", which apparently most Americans are too dumb to know how to pronounce.
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@morbiuswilters said:
The real funny one is "Bowie knife", which apparently most Americans are too dumb to know how to pronounce.
It's pronounced 'this is a knife'. Has a kind of Aussie twang to it...
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@TDWTF123 said:
It's pronounced 'this is a knife'. Has a kind of Aussie twang to it...
See the red parts? Those are the parts that need to be nuked into oblivion. (And how the hell does the DC area pass, but not Kentucky or New Orleans? Jim Bowie was born in 'tucky and spent most of his live in Nawlins. Stupid gits.)
Here's the start of the maps. I was also horrified to find out that outside of the South, people pronounce "lawyer" as "loy-er". What the fucking fuck??? Seriously, I know the rest of the country is retarded, but can't you assholes at least learn how shit's pronounced?
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@TDWTF123 said:
It's pronounced 'this is a knife'. Has a kind of Aussie twang to it...
That's not a knife.
@morbiuswilters said:
See the red parts? Those are the parts that need to be nuked into oblivion. (And how the hell does the DC area pass, but not Kentucky or New Orleans? Jim Bowie was born in 'tucky and spent most of his live in Nawlins. Stupid gits.)
But then the opposite could be said about David Bowie. There's a song that samples some religious nut who lists artists he reckons is the spawn of Satan and he would be in the blue area. He also mispronounces Cyndi Lauper.
@morbiuswilters said:
I was also horrified to find out that outside of the South, people pronounce "lawyer" as "loy-er".
Foliage?
BTW those maps are fascinating. My own pronunciation of those words are all over the place, and some terms aren't on there. Like "yabbie" for "freshwater tiny lobster"; "motorway" instead of "freeway", but otherwise the "west coast" meaning. The devil is beating his wife WTF? "The City" should really be the closest big city (for me it's Brisbane). (Pronounced "brizbin") Drive through liquor store is a "drive-thru".
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@PJH said:
You do realise that in British English, both are valid and are not interchangeable?
But then I speak Australian English, which follows British English mostly with some exceptions. This is one.
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@morbiuswilters said:
And how the hell does the DC area pass, but not Kentucky or New Orleans? Jim Bowie was born in 'tucky and spent most of his live in Nawlins. Stupid gits.
I can't speak for Kentucky or New Orleans, but I'm sure that the city in Maryland accounts for the local pronunciation.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Here's the start of the maps.
Wow, my way of talking is all over the place. Some of them I land in Texas, others Cali, or Chicago or NYC. How the F did I end up with such a weird grabbag of different ones?
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@boomzilla said:
@morbiuswilters said:And how the hell does the DC area pass, but not Kentucky or New Orleans? Jim Bowie was born in 'tucky and spent most of his live in Nawlins. Stupid gits.
I can't speak for Kentucky or New Orleans, but I'm sure that the city in Maryland accounts for the local pronunciation.Kentucky gets it wrong cause they are a bunch of cousin humping monkeys like the rest of the south (I know they are on the edge, but still count).
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@Zemm said:
But then the opposite could be said about David Bowie.
Sure, but nobody asked people who they pronounce his name. Presumably people would get it right (at least the twits in the non-Texian parts of the country would..)
@Zemm said:
Foliage?
Foal-ee-ehj.
@Zemm said:
BTW those maps are fascinating. My own pronunciation of those words are all over the place, and some terms aren't on there.
Yeah, me too. I'm basically standard Midwestern, although I know what a Bowie knife is and the guy who argues in front of the judge is a law-yer (or law-talking-guy, if you prefer..)
@Zemm said:
Like "yabbie" for "freshwater tiny lobster";
"Crawdad".
@Zemm said:
"motorway" instead of "freeway"
That question honestly makes no sense. I guess "highway" is the best general term, but highways and freeways are very different. Anyway, only Clownifornians call limited-access highways freeways; they're Interstates everywhere else (even in Hawaii, where there are no other states to connect to..)
@Zemm said:
"The City" should really be the closest big city (for me it's Brisbane).
I agree, and that's actually what that map seems to show. Only people in the NY region consider NYC "The City" (and some scattered remnants along the East Coast, but fuck them.
@Zemm said:
Drive through liquor store is a "drive-thru".
I've never heard a special term. Just a drive-thru liquor store.
Other ones: "caramel" to refer to the candies, "carmel" to refer to the sauce or anything that uses it ("carmel corn", "carmel apples", "carmel filling"..)
You draw with a "cray-ahn". I use "slaw" and "coleslaw" interchangeably. I say "you guys" or maybe "you all" to address a group of people. I never say "y'all".
The pie is "pee-KAHN". Soda is "soda", not ever "pop". Sometimes "coke" is acceptable, although usually just old people say it that way. As in "Go grab me a grape coke from the fridge" when they want a grape soda. I'm surprised nobody mentioned "sodey", which is one I heard a lot growing up, too.
You drink out of a "water fountain", although I wouldn't think twice if somebody said "drinking fountain". "Bubbler" is just stupid. "Sneakers" and "tennis shoes" are interchangeable.
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@boomzilla said:
@morbiuswilters said:
And how the hell does the DC area pass, but not Kentucky or New Orleans? Jim Bowie was born in 'tucky and spent most of his live in Nawlins. Stupid gits.
I can't speak for Kentucky or New Orleans, but I'm sure that the city in Maryland accounts for the local pronunciation.
Ahh.
(Also, your sig is effing annoying. It's breaking the page layout.)
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@locallunatic said:
Kentucky gets it wrong cause they are a bunch of cousin humping monkeys like the rest of the south (I know they are on the edge, but still count).
The South is the only place where anybody seems to know how to pronounce it at all, though. I'm honestly shocked so few people elsewhere knew it. Maybe his sampling is just retarded. The first time I ever saw David Bowie's name in print, I assumed it was pronounced like the knife and the Jim, because that's the only experience I had with that name.
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@morbiuswilters said:
(Also, your sig is effing annoying. It's breaking the page layout.)
Big tags not the sig itself are doing that (doesn't split it without spaces).
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@morbiuswilters said:
@locallunatic said:
Kentucky gets it wrong cause they are a bunch of cousin humping monkeys like the rest of the south (I know they are on the edge, but still count).
The South is the only place where anybody seems to know how to pronounce it at all, though.Only people I ever hear get it right are those who hunt, but it's most of them no matter where they are from. So it may just be the percentage of hunters (and those who regularly interact with them) that sets what the result was for an area.
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@locallunatic said:
@morbiuswilters said:
(Also, your sig is effing annoying. It's breaking the page layout.)
Big tags not the sig itself are doing that (doesn't split it without spaces).
Yeah, sorry, I meant tags. Very tired today..
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@morbiuswilters said:
The pie is "pee-KAHN".
Emphases should be on the first syllable! Slaw is coleslaw without the mayonnaise. Dropping the second syllable in caramel sounds retarded (like dropping it in "orange"). Though I can't talk about dropping vowels. My nation's capital is pronounced "can-bra"!
@morbiuswilters said:
Sometimes "coke" is acceptable
Here Coke is not a genericised trademark at all. So if you ask for Coke you get the product from the Coca Cola Bottling Company. But it has something like 90% penetration: if you end up at KFC and ask for a "coke" you'll be corrected to "Pepsi?". The only place that I can think of that sells post-mix soft drinks that aren't Coke or Pepsi is Ikea. (Of course "Coke" includes some "Kirks" brands and "Pepsi" includes some "Schweppes" brands, those are secondary in both cases)
@morbiuswilters said:
"Bubbler" is just stupid.
That's what we call them :-P at least in primary school.
@morbiuswilters said:
"Sneakers" and "tennis shoes" are interchangeable.
Tennis shoes should have white soles so you don't scuff the tennis court. Or something.
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@Zemm said:
Emphases should be on the first syllable!
PEEK-ahn? Do people really say it that way?
@Zemm said:
Slaw is coleslaw without the mayonnaise.
I have never encountered that distinction. In the US, it's just a regional difference of the same dish. Slaw/coleslaw can either be vinegar-based or mayo-based. Both are tasty.
@Zemm said:
Dropping the second syllable in caramel sounds retarded (like dropping it in "orange").
Do you say "car-a-mel-ized onions"? (And "orange" is "or-inj". I don't know that I've ever heard it pronounced otherwise.)
@Zemm said:
Here Coke is not a genericised trademark at all. So if you ask for Coke you get the product from the Coca Cola Bottling Company.
Outside of the South, that's what you'll get, too. Referring to any soft drink as "a coke" seems to be something only old people from the South do.
@Zemm said:
That's what we call them :-P at least in primary school.
Really? Whoa, I had no idea. I thought it was just a Wisconsin/Rhode Island thing..
@Zemm said:
Tennis shoes should have white soles so you don't scuff the tennis court. Or something.
I was raised to call them "tennis shoes", but at a young age found this incongruous with the fact that most sneakers were not used for playing tennis, and in fact looked nothing like the shoes people used to play tennis. So I started working "sneakers" into my vocabulary. Ultimately, I end up 50/50.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Do you say "car-a-mel-ized onions"?
Yes, but less distinction. Not dropping the "a" sound completely.
@morbiuswilters said:
(And "orange" is "or-inj". I don't know that I've ever heard it pronounced otherwise.)
Most US TV shows I've heard it pronounced "awhnj".
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@morbiuswilters said:
I always feel sad for the French, with their weird prescriptivist tendencies which try to keep foreign words from polluting their "pure" language. (French is about as pure as the thoughts of a crowd of Catholic priests at Vatican-sponsored Altar Boy Oil Wrestling Night. Their term for potato is literally "apple of the Earth". It's like a language invented by paste-eating Kindergartners..)
...with head trauma.Why on earth is the standard name for "ninety-eight" pronounced as "four twenty ten eight"? I shudder to think what they would have done with my late mother's phone number 890-9089, which in plain simple English is "eight ninety ninety eighty nine".
