OT Why is a gyroscope called a gyroscope?

OT Why is a gyroscope called a gyroscope? When it doesn't have a scope.

Reply to
mm
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According to the OED... "An instrument designed to illustrate the dynamics of rotating bodies..."

illustrate = show --> "scope"

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

Why is pulchritudinous such an ugly word ?

Reply to
N_Cook

I did not screw up. Shall we whip out our vocabularies and see whose is larger? I have two printed copies of the OED (plus the digital 2nd), thesauri galore, etc. I am a word-lover -- a logophile -- of more than

50-years' standing. What are /your/ qualifications?

I should have learned by now that any attempt at even fairly obvious humor on UseNet almost always fails.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

And how many definitions for moron does your dictionary have? One word managed to change what could have been a joke into a wonderful display of stupidity.

Reply to
PeterD

SDNWOTN and often HDNWOTN. Sarcasm does not work on the net.

>
Reply to
mm

On 3/23/2010 10:56 PM mm spake thus:

I disagree; it can work, and often does, but it requires a certain intelligence on the part of both writer and reader.

Myself, I don't use smiley faces. If anyone needs that kind of crutch to discern humor, they're beyond hope.

--
You were wrong, and I'm man enough to admit it.

- a Usenet "apology"
Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Thank you for clarifying that. I don't like to assign blame where none is due.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

yawn...

--
Lead free solder is Belgium's version of 'Hold my beer and watch this!'
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

"Emoticons are the wheel chair ramps for the humor impaired."

Jeff

--
?Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.?
Frank Leahy, Head coach, Notre Dame 1941-1954
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Jeffrey D Angus

Agreed, I'm going to STFU now...

Reply to
PeterD

Good. Let's all do it.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

Don't forget the mentally decapitated!

--
Lead free solder is Belgium's version of 'Hold my beer and watch this!'
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I actually think that you are quite wrong on this one. American humour is totally different from British humour, and mistakes as to the intent of a comment, are often made on both sides. This is likely to be all the more so for non-native English speakers. Also, it is very difficult to convey 'barbed' humour by the written word alone, and something of this type that may be actually spoken with humourous intent, and recognised as such by vocal intonation and facial expression, will not be so recognised when just written, and may appear, incorrectly, to be an offensive comment. We have seen this on here many times over the years, sometimes leading to protracted and vicious flame wars. The simple addition of a smiley face to the piece of text, totally eliminates this type of misconception.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

On 3/24/2010 6:40 PM Arfa Daily spake thus:

Nah; it's just a crutch.

And I said that humor in this medium *can* work, not that it always does. The chance that Brits and Yanks might not catch each other's humor doesn't disprove anything.

Perhaps good to keep in mind that all those wits and savants from the Algonquin Round Table managed to quite successfully convey humor in the written word, a long time before anyone ever thought of using parentheses and colons as sideways symbols.

--
You were wrong, and I'm man enough to admit it.

- a Usenet "apology"
Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Maybe we should read some of their material and find out how. I don't think I have, but still, I think they spent more words at it than posters to use net do.

Reply to
mm

Whether you believe so or not David, humourous writing *is* difficult, and beyond the skill sets of many professional writers, let alone amateur ones, and if the simple addition of a smiley helps anyone to get a humourous point across without causing offence to anyone with any native language, then I fail to see what the difficulty is with that. As to whether humour in this medium works, I never disputed that it "can" work. Some humour is universal, and no one anywhere would have any trouble recognising it for being humour, written or spoken, but much is subtle, or 'group-specific' - like in something being an 'in joke' - and if people are going to try to use that sort of humour on a medium like this, ir *is* going to get misunderstood by many people, and quite possibly cause offence.

All I am saying is, that if anyone wants to try to convey that sort of humour on here, and is not a 'wit' of the (apparent) stature and writing skill of the Table members, then avoiding offence should be carefully considered in the wording, and if the person cannot find a way of expressing that wit in such a way that it clearly is such, then a smiley will do the job of that lack of word skill.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

Arfa, I appreciate your attempt to intelligently and considerately smooth over this fracas. But I neither started it, nor made it worse. The latter was the fault of people who open their mouths before thinking -- something I am occasionally guilty of, myself. You can spot these people by the hissing noise as air enters their empty heads.

The difficulty, Arfa, is that I don't like having to explain my humor. Call that unreasonable, even call that arrogant or even irresponsible, but humor that needs explanation is not humor. I enjoy subtlety, and the pleasure of sudden recognition. I would prefer to eat cream pies than throw them.

People conveniently forget that "you moron" was in (humorous?) respsonse to an obscenity in the preceding post, and directed at that poster. Apparently, it's okay for other people to say such things seriously, but I'm raked over the coals when I do it in jestingly in response.

As for the members of the Algonquin Round Table (who apparently called themselves The Vicious Circle)... these people were (largely) literary humorists (Benchley, Parker, Kaufman, et al.) who wrote material that was presumed to be intentionally funny. UseNet posts lack that context, and I refuse to provide it with emoticons. It should also be noted that some of these people were pretty vicious (Dorothy Parker, in particular) and delighted in putting down others, even if only by trying to be more clever. (Parker even said "The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them.... There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn't have to be any truth.")

None of you will believe this, but I have a self-deprecating sense of humor. I used to belong to a social club in Seattle, and sat on its board of directors. Whenever I poked fun at myself, the then-president would use it as an excuse to dump on me. (I never asked why.) Around the third time this happened, the other board members went for his throat, and he stopped.

Am I a chrome-plated jerk? I used to be, and I /think/ I've mostly outgrown it. But I'm not embarrassed calling most people wit-less, because it's true of Americans. We're seeing this right now, in the fracas over health-care legislation. The problem isn't that there are legitimate differences over how or even whether the health-care system should be modified, but the fact that most Americans are unwilling to sit down and carefully consider all sides of an issue. You cannot have a democracy in which the citizens refuse to think! It's this knee-jerk, politically partisan reaction to everything (from both left and right) that will eventually destroy American government and society. We are well-along the path that Ronald Reagan set us on 30 years ago. But then, it's what Americans want, and so-richly deserve.

In closing (thank God!)... We all have to decide what sort of persons we want to be, then make an effort to be them. I've reached the point where it's time to stop being clever (at least among people I don't know) and stick with being nice. I'm to here to learn, and to make constructive suggestions. And nothing else.

I'm sure some people will have something nasty and mean-spirited to say about this.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

Well actually you did start this with your entomology comment, then the furious back-pedaling to claim it was a joke.

Jeff

--
?Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.?
Frank Leahy, Head coach, Notre Dame 1941-1954
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Jeffrey D Angus

You seem to be determined to provoke me to say even more unkind things. So be it.

If I could give you the sensation of having your mouth smashed in with a baseball bat -- without actually doing you any physical harm -- I would do so, because you badly need it.

Do you think I don't know the difference between entomology and etymology? Would you like to see the dictionaries and thesauruses I keep next to my computer, so I can look up a word? I'm working on an historical novel, and I check the OED (Know what that is? No, of course not.) to see whether a word was in use during the time of the story. Very handy.

So please cut the crap, huh? There aren't many people who have/had a better vocabulary than I. (Jacques Barzun and William F. Buckley come to mind. You probably don't even know who Barzun is.)

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

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