The perpetual calendar
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From: PaulJK on 2 Mar 2010 22:51 Peter T. Daniels wrote: > On Mar 2, 2:06 am, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote: >> Peter T. Daniels wrote: >>> On Feb 28, 9:50 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote: >>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote: >>>>> On Feb 28, 1:42 am, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote: >>>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote: >>>>>>> On Feb 26, 1:40 am, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote: >>>>>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote: >> >>>>>>>>> Do the Pacific states get the same coverage we do? >> >>>>>>>> Ignoring the various pay, satellite, and cable channels, there >>>>>>>> are about twelve free-to-air locally broadcast channels. >>>>>>>> One of the free-to-air channels (Prime) broadcasts Winter >>>>>>>> Olympics every day nonstop from 5:30am to 6:30pm. Looking >>>>>>>> at today's Friday schedule, apart from the half-hour WO news >>>>>>>> at 5:30am and Cross Country skiing at 10:30-11:30am all the >>>>>>>> events are live. >> >>>>>>>> If by "same coverage" you mean "identical programming" then >>>>>>>> the answer is no. All commentators are either New Zealanders >>>>>>>> or people who are aware of commenting for the downunder >>>>>>>> or specifically kiwi audience. Now and then they interrupt >>>>>>>> the program to switch to another competition to show >>>>>>>> a kiwi athlete, who would we normally not see, perform >>>>>>>> their shtick and then switch back. >> >>>>>>> Eh? You take "Pacific states" -- in the context of time zones -- to >>>>>>> include New Zealand?? >> >>>>>> Whoops, sorry, I didn't realise that by "Pacific states" you meant >>>>>> "US Pacific states". >> >>>>> We very, very, very rarely use "state" to mean 'independent nation'. >> >>>> And we very, very, very rarely use the expression "Pacific states" >>>> which would exclude the majority of Pacific states (i.e. non-US >>>> states in the Pacific). >> >>> "Pacific states" is a wel-established term -- sometimes it includes AK >>> and HI, sometimes not. >> >>>> This just shows that no matter how hard I try I still sometimes >>>> fail to correctly translate Merkin E. semantics to English E. >> >>> "State" is not a useful term for 'nation-state' because it is serving >>> a different, much more salient function not only in the US, but also >>> in (at least) Mexico and Brazil, and I think Germany. >> >> I don't particularly care about lectures on what "nation-state" >> "nation" or "independent nation" mean in AmE. God knows why >> you've dragged these in at this late stage when the original mis- >> understanding was simply between what I thought you meant by >> "Pacific states" in your "Do the Pacific states get the same >> coverage we do?", and what you meant by it. >> >> Being a resident of one of many Pacific states I responded. >> >> Then you said (my emphasis): >> *We* very, very, very rarely use "state" to mean 'independent nation'. >> And I responded (my emphasis): >> And *we* very, very, very rarely use the expression "Pacific states" >> to exclude the majority of Pacific states (i.e. non-US states in the >> Pacific). >> >> There is nothing more to keep arguing about. >> >> Unless you want to keep discussing, yet again, who, USians >> or the rest, use the words "state" and "nation" with correct >> meaning. > > What do you mean by "correct meaning"? Words mean what their users > mean them to mean, and when different communities of users use them > with different meanings, we get misunderstandings. Precisely, now we agree on that, that's something. :-) My "correct meaning" was ironic. Pity we don't a have special typeface like "sans serif ironic". :-) pjk
From: PaulJK on 2 Mar 2010 22:58 James Silverton wrote: > PaulJK wrote on Tue, 2 Mar 2010 21:01:20 +1300: > >> Algol 60, i.e. thirty years before Fortan90, allowed general >> expressions in array declarations, e.g. > >> real array A(i*2 : fcall(p,3)); > >> It wasn't particularly difficult to compile, since all code to >> compile general arithmetical expressions was already there. >> The expression (i*2) and the function call (fcall(p,3)) had to >> be evaluated at run time but that wasn't difficult either. >> The whole array declaration was evaluated at run time >> as if it were a function call which resulted in an area of >> memory being reserved on the top of the stack by pointing >> the top of the stack pointer beyond it. > > Actually, the first compiled language that I used was Algol in 1960. Not that it matters much but do you remember was it Algol60 or Algol58? The year 1960 sounds to me a bit too early for an actual commercial implemetation of Algol60. > The > resulting programs on the Burrouughs 220 were so pathetically > unoptimized and slow that I ended up using machine language and a > primitive assembler. > > I never brought myself to use Algol again. pjk
From: Brian M. Scott on 3 Mar 2010 00:16 On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 21:50:45 -0000, Mike Lyle <mike_lyle_uk(a)REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote in <news:hmk17n$at7$1(a)news.eternal-september.org> in sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.lang,alt.usage.english: > J. Clarke wrote: >> On 3/2/2010 2:23 PM, Nick wrote: >>> "J. Clarke"<jclarke.usenet(a)cox.net> writes: >>>> On 3/2/2010 4:38 AM, Lewis wrote: >>> [nothing I wasn't going to snip] >>> Look everybody - it's Lewis and Clark(e)! >>> (sorry guys) >> <groan> > You must admit he did react expeditiously, though. In the very Nick of time, in fact. Brian
From: Nick on 3 Mar 2010 02:47 Glenn Knickerbocker <NotR(a)bestweb.net> writes: > Nick wrote: >> >> You're the persistent Google groups user IIRC. Â Look it up, or don't >> ^ >> Look! There's another one. Whenever you quote me there's a little >> underscore-like character appears where the second of my double spaces >> was. > > Google is translating your second space into a nonbreaking space (0xA0) > so that it will be displayed in a Web page. Which is a perfectly sensible thing to do when displaying it - turn strings of spaces into alternating string and . I do it myself. But why on earth is it then sending it out. Among other things, for the structure of my post it's /wrong/. It's the /first/ space of a doublet that should be non-breaking (so it remains at the end of the previous line). Otherwise Google is telling people to break my sentences with a space at the start. Like this. I'm very grateful they run a Usenet archive (even if it seems to be impossible to search it sensibly at the moment, perhaps they can fix it). I'm getting FTB with them -hide quoted text- -show quoted text- spewing gunge all over Usenet. I>t's properly displayed as > just a space, but Emacs must be showing it to you as something else to > alert you that it's not a "normal" space. Google does change the data, > but it's your tool, not Peter's, that's changing its graphical image. > > Then, when you post it, Gnus encodes it in UTF-8. My ancient Netscape > (which I may finally replace with Thunderbird now that a few more of the > missing basic functions have been added in version 3) then displays it > without decoding it, so I wind up quoting it as an A-circumflex followed > by a space (0x4120). > > I still think it would be nice if mail and news tools left 8-bit data > unencoded when it didn't use any of the code points that differ between > the ISO 8859 and Windows code pages, unless some other code page was > specified. When I wrote it, of course, it didn't. So Google is making a post that I write that you can easily read and transforming it, when quoted, into something that's messy and that you can't easily quote. See above. -- Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk
From: Nick on 3 Mar 2010 02:52
"Skitt" <skitt99(a)comcast.net> writes: > Evan Kirshenbaum wrote: >> Nick writes: >>> "Peter T. Daniels" writes: > >>>> Right, writing "somewhere in England" you wouldn't know what >>>> "English major" means. I don't know the British nominalization for >>>> someone who "reads English" "in university." >>> >>> If I'd done that and completed the course, I'd be an English >>> Graduate. Otherwise I don't think we have a noun term for what you >>> are when an undergraduate on a particular course of study >>> ("reading", btw, is in fairly limited use these days, most of us >>> (and it's 25 years since I was an undergraduate) would have said >>> that we were "studying English" (or whatever)). >>> >>> I always assumed that "major" meant that you were studying two >>> courses, but one was the most important. Is that the case? >> >> No. Your "major" is the subject that you're intending to get a degree >> in. It's short, I believe, for "major concentration", referring to >> the fact that a certain number of courses[1] (and certain specified >> courses or choices of courses) need to be taken from a set that have >> been pre-selected by the department to count toward the degree and >> which will suffice to warrant granting it. (Not all of these courses >> need be taught by that department.) Other courses might be taken to >> satisfy general university requirements or as "electives". >> >> When I was at Stanford, to get a bachelor's degree required 180 >> "units", where each quarter-long course (three quarters per year) was >> worth, typically, 3-5 units[2]. Roughly four or five classes a >> quarter for four years, so about 50 courses in all. My linguistics >> major had a requirement of at least 45 units courses designated as >> contributing to the the major, but I think that that was on the low >> end. Looking at an old _Courses and Degrees_, it looks as though a >> math major was about 80 units, English about 55 units, physics about >> 95, various engineering disciplines about 105. (Of course, when the >> number was small, most people took courses in their departments over >> and above the minimum. Those in more structured departments just had >> less free choice; it was more "at least one from each of these groups >> of two or three".) >> >> If you actually have a second concentrationm, that will be a "double >> major" if you actually satisfy the requirements for both majors (which >> often involves counting some courses, e.g., beginning calculus or >> physics, toward both). Otherwise if one department certifies that >> you've done a fair amount in their field but not enough for a degree, >> you're considered to have a "minor" in that subject. I don't know of >> any universities that will give you a degree based on just minors. >> You have to actually fulfil the requirements of some major. >> >> [1] Where "course", in the American sense, might be "class" >> elsewhere. It's (typically) a quarter's or semester's worth of >> class sessions meeting a certain number of times per week on a >> specific topic, taught by (usually) a faculty member. So the Math >> department might offer courses in linear algebra or differential >> equations. >> >> [2] Typically less a measure of how much work it was than how many >> courses that department thought you should be taking at one time. > > At the time when I was in college, the courses required for an > engineering degree almost met the requirements for a mathematics > minor. All I would have had to take were two additional math courses, > one of which was History of Mathematics. I don't remember the name of > the other one, but it was similar in subject matter. > > I also don't remember what a "minor in math" was good for. When I did Genetics at Liverpool you spent the first two years collecting units, but the final year was full time and fully taught by the "school" you were going to get your degree from. Although you had registered for a degree in a specific subject, if you had the right set of modules and the school would take you, you could end up getting a degree in something else. I was qualified to do microbiology and - very nearly - biochemistry as well. All the biological sciences worked together in that way: you couldn't mix this up with say English or history. I don't know if it's like that now. I'm pretty sure you could also take three years of the modular courses (it was 4 per "semester" (one-and-a-bit terms) making 8 a year) and end up with an "ordinary" rather than an "honours" degree. -- Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk |