albatross@367
I assume he was thinking of the famous chart of Napoleon's armies.
Which goes one better by being quantitative, not just schematic. For people who don't know Minard's famous graph of troop losses in Napoleon's attack on Russia, see here, and there's a website of variations.
xeger@379:
Shredded cabbage and carrot with black mustard seeds, ground cumin and coriander, lime juice.
Fry the mustard seeds in some oil until they start to pop. Add the cumin and coriander and stir briefly. Add everything else and stir frantically to get it mixed. Cover and cook for a few minutes.
dcb@74:
Glad to hear things are improving. I have found old-fashioned sedating antihistamines to be helpful for an irritated cough (partly by helping me sleep through it).
John Houghton@69:
The failure of codeine to work as an analgesic for some people wouldn't necessarily be relevant to it working for cough. The issue for analgesia is that a lot of the effect of codeine comes from some of it being metabolised to morphine, which has much more effect on the mu-opioid receptor. Some people don't do this metabolic step, so codeine doesn't work for them. The effects on cough are not through the opioid receptors -- dextromethorphan, which works just as well, doesn't have any opioid effects -- and codeine should work without being converted.
I suppose the opioid effects of codeine may help with not worrying about the cough and being able to sleep through it, rather than actually with suppressing the cough.
Janet Croft@59:
Even in strange cities, when I'm in fairly obvious tourist drag, I still get directional questions.
Yes, this. I seem to generate "Frequent Asked Questions" even in foreign parts. Unfortunately, although my French is just about up to "over there and turn right", it isn't up to "your map is out of date and that street doesn't connect anymore; you need to go around the block and get in from the other end".
I've seen the invisibility field working on my mother, once or twice. When I arrived and started talking to her, the field suddenly shut down. Most strange.
Washington State also has a ballot initiative up, and like Maine, it's an attempt to stop something the legislature already decided, a bill that provides that for all purposes under state law, state registered domestic partners shall be treated the same as married spouses and that provisions of the act shall be liberally construed to achieve equal treatment, to the extent not in conflict with federal law.
It's not marriage, but it would help to remove a lot of the discrimination-by-default against same-sex couples.
HP,dcb:
My monkey brain's irrational preference for personal news makes me note that colleagues who work at the big hospital in town are seeing just the same as the WHO reports. There are somewhat more very sick people than in a usual flu season, and a higher proportion of them are young and previously healthy. They aren't currently in any danger of running out of beds or nurses or doctors, though.
Well, if you will set off a full immune response for a few little rhinoviruses, you got to expect some collateral damage. No mercy will be shown to any cells that have been reading subversive unauthorised RNA. There's no Guild of Radical Militant Librarians to protect you here, and the T-cell doesn't need a search warrant to read your MHA.
C. Wingate @102:
the point of Christian fasting (and maybe Yom Kippur and/or Ramadan) isn't altering your brain chemistry or what not; it's to remind you of your religion
Yes, precisely. Lent is about altering perceptions, but social rather than physical perceptions, and the fasts of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are not enough to put any real stress on the body [if they are, it's a valid reason not to do them]. The point of fasting, prayer, and alms-giving is to rearrange your life for a period around different priorities. Lent isn't intended as a mind-body hack, but as a mind-soul hack.
As a specific distinguishing point, I think most people would agree that the purpose of Lent relies on its religious assumptions: as the Apostle Paul said If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.
Some of the Native American traditions (and in other parts of the world) seem to have a different purpose -- they are intended to mess with your physical perceptions. This was motivated by the desire to allow specific spiritual perceptions, but transformative experiences (Abi) or mind-body hacks (TNH) can still make sense in a woo-free way. This does require a level of physical or emotional stress that is risky; thus the need for the process to be designed carefully around those risks.
It looks like the rainy season started yesterday in Seattle. But it's a dry rain.
Sarah S. @123
Google Books pointed me to several books that used the essay. One is The Simon & Schuster short prose reader, and it does have a copyright attribution for the essay (though you can't see what it is in the Google snippet).
Bruce Cohen@91:
often prefer "which" to "that" in my writing, and have often used it out of spite because I hate the rule so much.
If someone argues that 'which' and 'that' can't be interchanged and should be separated, you could ask for reasons. After all, 'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.'
Pendantka@57:
Yes, the Journal of the American Medical Association also has a "wicked which" rule.
I should point out that I don't have any objection to people saying that they personally prefer "that" in restrictive clauses, or even to organizations saying that their house style is to use "that". Those are stylistic preferences, to which people and organizations are entitled. The problem is people who say that restrictive "which" is a grammatical error and that proper writers knew to use "that" in the Good Old Days. It isn't, and they didn't.
KeithS@52:
restrictive "which": some people believe that 'which' can only be used non-restrictively, ie, following a comma, and that other uses should be replaced by "that".
This "rule" appears to have been introduced by Fowler, in the interests of symmetry. The use of "that" following a comma is extremely rare, so things would be tidier if "which" could only be used in situations where "that" can't be used. I was introduced to this under "strange things Americans believe about English", and it is more common in the US, but it does have disciples in the UK.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (the only major evidence-based usage book) says "You can use either which or that to introduce a restrictive clause--the grounds for your choice should be stylistic".
TexAnne:
Um. Yes. I had that specifically in mind when searching Homer, Dante, the Bible, etc, but my subconscious must think of Andersen as English. And I've seen the statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, so I really have no excuse.
Pedantka@41:
It's not an academic text, but there is a discussion of "different from" vs "different to" in issue 41 of Scribner's Magazine (1907), in an article on misconceptions about the differences between American and English. The author clearly implies that people thought of "different from" as an Americanism, even though he shares Bruce's attitude to it. Incidentally, this agrees with the C19th origin from my earlier searches.
"Different from " can hardly be called an Americanism, because it can be found in English writers of the highest mark at all periods. Byron, for example, uses "different from" in his letters (Prothero Ed., vol. iv, p. 422). But during the last century a fashion grew up in England of saying and writing "different to." I have met with it in many recent authors of repute, and some Americans—the few who like to ape English habits, good or bad—undertook to use it in this country with very slight success. There never was either warrant or reason for "different to" and it is clearly ungrammatical, as was strongly shown by a writer in the "Spectator" not long since in an article condemning this practice among some of his countrymen. "Different from " is not only correct, but if anyone desires authority he can find a great one in Dr. Johnson, who uses it in his letters (Hill Ed., i, p. 189). The universal American usage, I am glad to think, is again prevailing in England, where it was set aside only in obedience to some strange freak for which no cause can be alleged.
[via Google Books]
Bruce Cohen@33:
"different to" does seem less ubiquitous than many phrases that are supposed to Ruining The Language. Unlike singular "they" and restrictive "which" it isn't in the King James Bible, Shakespeare, or Jane Austen. It takes some care to search for, since there "it looked very different to her now" is not the same usage.
In the form you are objecting to, it was used at least once[#] by by Wilkie Collins, G. K. Chesterton, Hans Christian Andersen, and Arthur Conan Doyle. So the answer to "When did this Frankensteinien construct become acceptable?" appears to be the middle of the 19th century[*].
There certainly have been changes over time -- in the 19th century "different to" was much less frequent than "indifferent to", and according to Google it is now rather more frequent.
[#]http://www.online-literature.com/advancedsearch.php
[*] Mary Shelley herself appears to be innocent.
Teresa@35:
As I'm sure you know, but not everyone may, Fred Clark at Slacktivist also wrote some very good articles on offense as an addictive drug, back in July.
Epacris@20, Lorax@17, dcb@15:
There are US street directories, but the Thomas Guide does not compare to the wonder that is Melway (they look even better on paper, where the colours are less saturated and the resolution is higher). Also, Melway was (perhaps still is) sufficiently ubiquitous in Melbourne that a page and grid cell was a common way of giving directions, like a pre-internet hyperlink.
I do wonder if the relatively easy availability of basic street data from the Census Bureau in the US discourages publishers from investing in really good maps.
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