- (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} entangledbank) wrote,@ 2004-08-18 16:35:00 |
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SP2, the piding, and the Muckle Spate
1. When journalists don't use multiple logical operators correctly, it can be gruesomely plausible. A BBC story on a Microsmurf patch to their XP system (and to be fair XP is the first time I've known a Microsnot OS to be an improvement on previous ones) contains this awful warning:
2. So this new bird found on Calayan that scientists didn't know about but the local people did. Okay, catalogue it, call it Gallirallus calayanensis, but what's this "Calayan rail" bizzo? The locals have a name for it, it's the piding, so why not now make the English the piding without italics?
3. Hm, searching for {piding} finds many thousands of sites in German because it's a place in Germany. My naive attempts to winnow these are thwarted: searching for {piding -der -die -das -zu -hier -nicht -ist} still throws up thousands of sites in German, and I'm wondering as a general question how much of the top lexicon you need to include to nearly guarantee a hit. Or non-hit or whatever I'm after.
4. The Cornish village Boscastle, wrecked by a freak flood, lies on the Rivers Jordan, Paradise, and Valency. Either one of the first two is charming, and the other of the pair isn't so surprising, but the collocation with Valency is delightful. Pity about how their catchment areas are arranged. Anyway, the worst flood recorded in Britain was that of the River Findhorn in Moray in 1829, appealingly and logically called the Muckle Spate. The Findhorn rose 15 m, which I find inconceivable on an island this size. But the largest ever flow recorded here was of the Findhorn in 1970. I think I'm going to have nightmares about that.
1. When journalists don't use multiple logical operators correctly, it can be gruesomely plausible. A BBC story on a Microsmurf patch to their XP system (and to be fair XP is the first time I've known a Microsnot OS to be an improvement on previous ones) contains this awful warning:
It also lets users know the risks they are taking if they do not have the firewall turned on, do not update their anti-virus software or install future updates for XP.
2. So this new bird found on Calayan that scientists didn't know about but the local people did. Okay, catalogue it, call it Gallirallus calayanensis, but what's this "Calayan rail" bizzo? The locals have a name for it, it's the piding, so why not now make the English the piding without italics?
3. Hm, searching for {piding} finds many thousands of sites in German because it's a place in Germany. My naive attempts to winnow these are thwarted: searching for {piding -der -die -das -zu -hier -nicht -ist} still throws up thousands of sites in German, and I'm wondering as a general question how much of the top lexicon you need to include to nearly guarantee a hit. Or non-hit or whatever I'm after.
4. The Cornish village Boscastle, wrecked by a freak flood, lies on the Rivers Jordan, Paradise, and Valency. Either one of the first two is charming, and the other of the pair isn't so surprising, but the collocation with Valency is delightful. Pity about how their catchment areas are arranged. Anyway, the worst flood recorded in Britain was that of the River Findhorn in Moray in 1829, appealingly and logically called the Muckle Spate. The Findhorn rose 15 m, which I find inconceivable on an island this size. But the largest ever flow recorded here was of the Findhorn in 1970. I think I'm going to have nightmares about that.
