TransientRandom said about 1 year ago or at 12:33PM on Wednesday, September 8 2010 in stupidity
My workmate was reading a paper on 'subaerial' something or other, hoping a specific meaning would become clear through the context. Not trusting his intuition, he consulted a reference text to determine the exact meaning. Yep, 'subaerial' = ground. Brilliance.
Meanwhile, I am dealing with an activation system with components known as sigmaB, anti-sigmaB, anti-anti-sigmaB, and the anti-anti-sigmaB antagonist, presumably because someone put their foot down at the third 'anti-'
spam spam anti-anti-spam spam eggs spam spam sigma spam.
ERGH.
Share your clangers!
I remember once there was some hoo-ha over Donald Rumsfeld and his unknown unknowns.
''There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.''
I've seen that one represented as a Venn Diagram!
I think this thread may be bollocks.
I feel like I've birthed a crippled child.
No TR! I come across them all the time in the health sociology field I'm currently studying in, I'll post them when I next find them.
My colleague left the office for her holiday yesterday saying ''I don't know anything that nobody else doesn't know''.
I'm still trying to figure that one out.
Jouissance
Used in a geography paper to make the pretty bland statement that people 'like' something.
I think the word 'nebulous' is self-descriptive in that thread title.
My boss uses nebulous all the time and then makes fun of me for saying things like serendipity and moribund.
I try
As much as I've always hated Donald Rumsfield, I've never had any difficulty understanding the unknown unknowns. It makes perfect sense to me.
Maybe ''Impenetrable'' would have been better suited
I've always enjoyed the term ''automagical.'' Mostly used by programmers and tech people. It's not particularly hilarious or nebulous, but I like it.
I'm often being described as 'truculent' at work by my boss, but I've never given a fuck what he thinks.
as a discipline which likes to rape and pillage mathematics for its own benefit, economics is pretty good for this thing. only bettered by international development policy.
i had a conversation with a prof the other day that suggested that someone's second order condition is positive. (their mood is declining, but at a slower rate).
too many people use second order effects incorrectly. (it's to do with infitisemals, not that it's the effect with second greatest magnitude)
i have been known to say two people are orthogonal when they walk in opposed directions, or the dot product of their matrices is zero.
opposed is the wrong word. that would imply some sort of definition that they hate each other or negatively define themselves upon each other. this is that they have nothing in common except having nothing in common.
leaves
My father is a theologian, and he is often giving me drafts to read, but he is using the word 'meme' frequently when describing biblical/cultural ideas, and now I can't read his articles without thinking of lolcatz and trollfaces..
The entire IT industry.
My personal most bitched about favourite is 'half-duplex'. Which would be simplex. Which is up there with 'subariel'.
an extract from the Victorian Primary Producers Act 1958: The provision of section 43 and 48 shall with such modifications as are necessary extend and apply to and in relation to this Division and, without affecting the generality of the foregoing, in particular with the modification that - [a] a reference to eggs or eggs products shall be construed as a reference to citrus fruit.
I know. I don't understand why people use that quote to make him look stupid. At first I thought it was that he was pointing out the obvious. But it is not hard to understand and it is not incorrect. So.
Half duplex can go in two directions, whereas simplex can only go in one direction.
I definitely recall simplex buses going two ways when I did an 'introduction to hardware design' back in the day.
It also begs the question as to what full duplex would be.
Full duplex is both directions at the same time.
Yep, this definitely belongs in this thread, then.