Starship Asterisk*

JohnD wrote:How "Can you find the local time of solar noon? (Hint: At solar noon the Sun is on the meridan.)" ?

It's when the Sun is highest, so shortest shadow, but the gnomons (which sounds just WRONG! "Gnomoi"?) are all differemt heights.
The image of the sun in the video disappears off the top of the frame, so no help there.
Is the square built on a North/South axis? So the bricks are so aligned? In which case "XII" is about twenty degrees off which cannot be!

How "Can you find the local time of solar noon?"
John

JohnD wrote:

rstevenson wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity#Research wrote:
... A three-country poll conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion in July 2010 found that Canadians swear more often than Americans and British when talking to friends.
...
... Functionally similar behavior can be observed in chimpanzees, ....>>

From which I conclude that Canadians are more similar to chimpanzees than are Americans or Brits.

My cousins may be foul mouthed, but no less British!

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/12/13/skin-deep-2/ wrote:

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<<During the filming of Planet of the Apes in 1967, Charlton Heston noted “an instinctive segregation on the set. Not only would the apes eat together, but the chimpanzees ate with the chimpanzees, the gorillas ate with the gorillas, the orangutans ate with the orangutans, and the humans would eat off by themselves. It was quite spooky.”

James Franciscus noticed the same thing filming Beneath the Planet of the Apes in 1969. “During lunch I looked up and realized, ‘My God, here is the universe,’ because at one table were all the orangutans eating, at another table were the apes, and at another table were the humans. The orangutan characters would not eat or mix with the ape characters, and the humans wouldn’t sit down and eat with any one of them. I remember saying, ‘Look around — do you realize what’s happening here? This is a little isolated microcosm of probably what’s bugging the whole world. Call it prejudice or whatever you want to call it. Whatever’s different is to be shunned or it’s frightening or so forth.’ Nobody was intermingling, even though they were all humans underneath the masks. The masks were enough to bring out our own little genetic natures of fear and prejudice. It was startling.”

(From Joe Russo and Larry Landsman, Planet of the Apes Revisited, 2001.)>>

neufer wrote:

• Fun F**ts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity#Research wrote:
... A three-country poll conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion in July 2010 found that Canadians swear more often than Americans and British when talking to friends.
...
... Functionally similar behavior can be observed in chimpanzees, ....>>

Chris Peterson wrote:
Swearing is a fascinating area of linguistic study.

• Fun F**ts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity#Research wrote:
In English, swear words and curse words tend to have Germanic, rather than Latin etymology. A three-country poll conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion in July 2010 found that Canadians swear more often than Americans and British when talking to friends.

Analyses of recorded conversations reveal that an average of roughly 80–90 words that a person speaks each day – 0.5% to 0.7% of all words – are swear words, with usage varying from 0% to 3.4%. In comparison, first-person plural pronouns (we, us, our) make up 1% of spoken words.

Swearing performs certain psychological functions, and uses particular linguistic and neurological mechanisms; all these are avenues of research. Functionally similar behavior can be observed in chimpanzees, and may contribute to our understanding, notes New York Times author Natalie Angier. Angier also notes that swearing is a widespread but perhaps underappreciated anger management technique; that "Men generally curse more than women, unless said women are in a sorority, and that university provosts swear more than librarians or the staff members of the university day care center".

Keele University researchers Stephens, Atkins, and Kingston found that swearing relieves the effects of physical pain. Stephens said "I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear". However, the overuse of swear words tends to diminish this effect. The Keele team won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for their research.

A team of neurologists and psychologists at the UCLA Easton Center for Alzheimer's Disease Research suggested that swearing may help differentiate Alzheimer's disease from frontotemporal dementia.

Neurologist Antonio Damasio noted that despite loss of language due to damage to the language areas of the brain, patients were still often able to swear.

A group of researchers from Wright State University studied why people swear in the online world by collecting tweets posted on Twitter. They found that cursing is associated with negative emotions such as sadness (21.83%) and anger (16.79%) thus showing people in the online world mainly use curse words to express their sadness and anger towards others.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Warsaw investigated bilingual swearing: why is it easier to swear in a foreign language? Their finding that bilinguals strengthen the offensiveness of profanities when they switch into their second language, but soften it when they switch into their first tongue, but do both statistically significantly only in the case of ethnophaulisms (ethnic slurs) led the scientist to the conclusion that switching into the second language exempts bilinguals from the social norms and constraints (whether own or socially imposed) such as political correctness, and makes them more prone to swearing and offending others.>>

E Fish wrote:The last time I got into what I thought was simply a friendly discussion, the person ended up swearing at me and telling me to do all sorts of unsavory things. It took me very much by surprise. So I'm a little gun shy. :)

But I love languages. I've studied five (although I'm not fluent). So when people bring up words I know the etymology of, I love to contribute. :)

Ann wrote:
I decided to check up synonyms of the English word "calm", and I was impressed at what I found: still, tranquil, quiet, serene, peaceful, pacific, undisturbed, restful, balmy, halcyon. I like halcyon! Then there was another set of synonyms of "calm" as in windless at sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcyone wrote:
<<In Greek mythology, Alcyone or Alkyone (Ancient Greek: Ἁλκυόνη, Halkyónē derived from alkyon αλκυων "kingfisher) was the daughter of Aeolus, either by Enarete or Aegiale. She married Ceyx, son of Eosphorus the Morning Star. Alcyone and Ceyx were very happy together in Trachis, and according to Pseudo-Apollodorus's account, often sacrilegiously called each other "Zeus" and "Hera". This angered Zeus, so while Ceyx was at sea, the god threw a thunderbolt at his ship. Soon after, Morpheus (god of dreams) disguised as Ceyx appeared to Alcyone as an apparition to tell her of his fate, and she threw herself into the sea in her grief. Out of compassion, the gods changed them both into halcyon birds, named after her.

[b][color=#0000FF]Ceyx seeing Alcyone's body washed up onshore before her attempted suicide. Herbert James Draper, Halcyone, 1915.[/color][/b]

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TS Eliot draws from this myth in The Dry Salvages:

• And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
  Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
  On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
  In navigable weather it is always a seamark
  To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
  Or the sudden fury, is what it always was."

Ovid and Hyginus both make the metamorphosis the origin of the etymology for "halcyon days", the seven days in winter when storms never occur. They state that these were originally the 14 days each year (seven days on either side of the shortest day of the year) during which Alcyone (as a kingfisher) laid her eggs and made her nest on the beach and during which her father Aeolus, god of the winds, restrained the winds and calmed the waves so she could do so in safety. The phrase has since come to refer to any peaceful time. Its proper meaning, however, is that of a lucky break, or a bright interval set in the midst of adversity; just as the days of calm and mild weather are set in the height of winter for the sake of the kingfishers' egglaying.>>

Chris Peterson wrote: English is a rich language, made especially so by the variety of ways it can be used, the many different ways that the same thing can be expressed by different users. Indeed, English is the richest language. There is a reason that some English translations of foreign works are commonly viewed as superior to the originals, especially with much more impoverished languages like French.

Chris Peterson wrote:

E Fish wrote:
Regardless, I wasn't intending to turn this into something to argue about. My apologies.

This is a forum that has entertained many interesting discussions about language over the years.

Discussions, not arguments. No apology necessary!

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=argument wrote:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

discussion (n.) mid-14c., "examination, investigation, judicial trial," from Old French discussion "discussion, examination, investigation, legal trial," from Late Latin discussionem (nominative discussio) "examination, discussion," in classical Latin, "a shaking," from discussus, past participle of discutere "strike asunder, break up," from dis- "apart" (see dis-) + quatere "to shake" (see quash). Meaning "a talking over, debating" in English first recorded mid-15c. Sense evolution in Latin appears to have been from "smash apart" to "scatter, disperse," then in post-classical times (via the mental process involved) to "investigate, examine," then to "debate."

argument (n.) early 14c., "statements and reasoning in support of a proposition or causing belief in a doubtful matter," from Old French arguement "reasoning, opinion; accusation, charge" (13c.), from Latin argumentum "a logical argument; evidence, ground, support, proof," from arguere "make clear, make known, prove." Sense passed through "subject of contention" (1590s) to "a quarrel" (by 1911), a sense formerly attached to argumentation.

JohnD wrote:It's fun to argue! If it's discussion, debate, not a quarrel.
As, I hope Chris will agree, having taken an opposing stance to mine, with effective points and argument, I am now considering my riposte.
Or not, as it is clearly, as he says, a matter of convention. Which I can use to win my argument by saying that is the glory of English! Unbound by strict grammar or rules of speech liberates us - and makes it the devil of a language to learn!

E Fish wrote:Regardless, I wasn't intending to turn this into something to argue about. My apologies.

JohnD wrote:This strikes at the root of the wonderful ability of English to adopt and accommodate non-English words. This has endowed English with the largest vocabulary, and the freest grammar of any language. Chris, when you are required to supervise a number of postgraduate students, you deal with their theses, not thesises, which no doubt contain appendices, not appendixes. The work deals with data, not datums, and they will do so according to a group of criteria, not criterion's.

It is a concession to mediocrity that pages like this are forums, not forae, and we should not be afraid of acknowledging the non-English origin of English words. To impose a strict pluralisation rule on them would begin to put a straightjacket on the freedom of English.

E Fish wrote:Gnomon is a Greek word. And the plural would be gnomones.

E Fish wrote:Gnomon is a Greek word. And the plural would be gnomones.

E Fish wrote:Gnomon is a Greek word. And the plural would be gnomones.

What I'm wondering is who randomly brought a skeleton to the town square. ...or does he just make a visit every day?

JohnD wrote:

How "Can you find the local time of solar noon?
(Hint: At solar noon the Sun is on the meridan.)" ?

Is the square built on a North/South axis?

So the bricks are so aligned?
In which case "XII" is about twenty degrees off which cannot be!

APOD Robot wrote:
one image was taken every 20 seconds from 8 am until 4 pm Central European Summer Time. Drawn on the ground are the dial hour marks calculated to show the local time for that specific date. Behind, the tower clock offers a time check. Can you find the local time of solar noon? (Hint: At solar noon the Sun is on the meridan.)

JohnD wrote: ...the gnomons (which sounds just WRONG! "Gnomoi"?)...
John

Uhyerp wrote:

neufer wrote:

heehaw wrote:
Well, they do say "gnomon is an island," don't they?

The Starship Asterisk* : to boldly go where gnomon has gone before.

Dog was definitely gnomon