Author: admin

• Wrath: I enjoy it a little too much, though it really is more as a performance piece than a reality. The Magister Optimus Michael Masiello circulated the rage performance pieces of Eddie Pepitone recently (Michael Masiello’s answer to Who’s the best stand-up comedian whose act is awkward and funny?); they had me in stitches. Gratias tibi, bene enim me docuisti.
• Greed: Nah.
• Envy: Nah.
• Gluttony: 1.68 m tall, 95 kg. Some of that is muscle. Most of it isn’t.
• Sloth: Comes and goes, but more than I’m happy about.
• Lust: It’s annoying to be turning middle-aged, but, well, yeah, and let’s leave it at that.
• Pride: just look at my bios on language topics. And DO NOT call me “Mr Nicholas”. I did not spend six years in Evil Medical School, etc, etc…

I stand with Jake Williams. Pride: boom, there it is.

Can’t find the link, and I don’t want to awaken any demons in invoking it, but Tatiana Estevez did once say that obscene language is not encouraged on Quora, even if it wasn’t directed aggressively at anyone in particular. The rationale given was that Quora did not want third parties to get the impression that that kind of language and tone was welcome on Quora.

User, I think the context was your edit-blocking, but I could be wrong.

Quora is decidedly not a free-speech zone; moderation here is quite heavy (when your transgression is brought to their attention). But I, and many others, would object to the policing on Quora of obscene language that is expressive, rather than aggressive. Dan Holliday would be left speechless, for one. 🙂

Quora has a community norm of language. As in much of the world, that community norm allows obscene language, and it disallows aggressive language. Tatiana has voiced the opinion that both are discouraged, and people may have even been blocked on occasion for it (how can you tell?); but I haven’t seen it as an ex cathedra policy that it is disallowed, and any policing is clearly unenthusiastic.

The World has moved on in its taboos. The World certainly has taboos, but they are different now; in the US, for example, racism rather than sexuality.

In participating in Quora, you are engaging with the World. Its norms may well not be your norms; and more power to you for having your norms. But your norms are not its norms either. And I’d really rather Quora not get into trigger warnings.

Other than that, what McKayla Kennedy said. As ever.

Here’s some data, from Gyula Moravcsik’s Byzantinoturcica, a dictionary of all Turkic names and words that ended up in Byzantine Greek. The names are in roughly chronological order.

Osman is named as:

• Atman (George Pachymeres, Nicephorus Gregoras)
• Atouman Atoumanos Atoumanes (Notitiae Chronicae, Chronicon Turcorum)
• Otmanos Otmanes (Hierax, Chronica Minora)
• Otoumanos (Chalcocondyles)
• Othmanos Othman Otthmanos Otthmanes Otthamanes
• Osouman

From Turkish Atman, Ataman, Azman, Tuman? ~ Arabic Otmān.

So Moravcsik accepts that the name originated as Atman, with abundant bibliography, and the very earliest mentions are as Atman. The versions with an initial O- and with a -th- are 15th and 16th century.

Without looking it up?

Yes, yes, misspelling of birthist, but what would a birthist be?

Birthist. Latin counterpart: natalist.

It’s an –ist, so it’s either a profession or a profession of ideology, and with a Germanic stem preceding it, it’s likelier to be an ideology.

I’d guess someone who advocates being born as something special. The closest we have to that in the real world is nativist: being born in the country should give you priority over immigrants to the country.

There’s also birther, someone who advocates the conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the US; that could easily have ended up as birthist instead, but it hasn’t.

Other respondents have covered this well (which is a benefit of me putting off replying to A2A’s!)

I’ll just add some metacommentary. People of Quora who get me in their feed because they like me or something: do read the other responses.

• The egalitarian ideal of Australia is that we address each other as mate, because we are not Class-Obsessed Poms [British]. But that’s an ideal, and it has its limits. It’s not really appropriate for someone substantially older than you. Mateship was also was never really a female friendly thing, though that has eroded somewhat.
• There is also something of a class factor to mate. Australians are in denial about there being class in Australia (because, again, We Are Not Poms); but all the grumbling about bogans is nothing if not classist.
• Mate is fine for males younger than you, including teens and kids.
• Darl and love were addressed to women in the bad old days; hence Sarah Boon asking noone keep using them. I have been addressed with darl and love myself by older women, mostly in service industry contexts; but it is decidedly antiquated.
• Zero-address is safe, as others have said, precisely because we’re uncomfortable with more formal alternatives to mate (such as sir—which we wince at even in service industry contexts), and we have a lack of female alternatives. (Mate towards women is limited, probably odd to most people, and certainly only addressed to women you know, not strangers.)
• Ma’am has actually gotten me adverse reactions. I do use it, but as an ironic thing.

To narrow down Cheri Thomas’ answer: failing to scope down your thesis as you go. You are always more ambitious at the start of the thesis than you need to be, and you will need to say less than you thought you would.

Cheri says:

Another is that they set too high a standard for their dissertation topic. The dissertation is something to get over and done with. It’s your first piece as as academic, not your greatest piece.

Now, for all too many, it will be their only piece, unless they’re happy signing up to a lifetime of being a TA and penury. But it’s still true: as a fellow student once said to me, “It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be done.”

Not having a plan and methodology and a strategy (which, inter alia, will help you scope it down when you need to). If your supervisor is doing their job, they will help you have a plan. All too often, they don’t; you may need to draw on your peers for that. A PhD is a three year project. It is your baptism of fire in project management. That is something you will not have learned from undergrad.

Unless you’re one of those horrible ghastly geniuses that can pull off a dissertation in 10 pages, in one of those disciplines where you can get away with it, it’s a mistake to assume that doing a PhD is about being brilliant. It isn’t. Brilliance gets you started. Slog and persistence get you to finish it. The slog is not fun (though the peers are). The motivation is even harder, especially if you’re part time.

Oh, doing a PhD part time? Especially if you have family responsibilities or teaching responsibilities? Feasible, but much, much, much harder. Much more of a requirement that you have disciplined project management about it. Not being brilliant was not a predictor of failing to complete. Not having enough time in the week to focus on the project, I’m afraid, was.

Oh, and if you want an academic job at the end of it, which is a slightly different topic, there are some other fatal errors, which I can certainly attest to:

• Not doing something fashionable
• Not networking
• Not publishing early and often
• Doing too much TA work

Ordelafo Faliero de Doni, 34th Doge of Venice, ruled 1102–1117.

Like the Latin says: Orfaletrus D(e)i Gra(tia) Veneciȩ Dux. Ordelafo, By God’s Grace, Doge of Venice.

Ordelafo is a one-off name, and is presumed to be the Venetian name Faledro, spelled backwards.

Spelling names backwards as far back as the 12th century. And coming up with Ordelafo. That impresses me.

Question patterns by Jay Wacker on The Quora Blog

Question patterns exist. However according to Jay Wacker’s response to Edward Conway in comments there, all such bot-generated questions are posted by a specific bot, so this is not Quora’s doing.

Of course they can:

var’aq – Esolang. A programming language using Klingon vocabulary.

Of course, the pIqaD (see Klingon alphabets) does not have an official Unicode encoding: the ostensive reason is that Klingonists don’t actually use the pIqaD. The gossip is that the German arm of the ISO vetoed it, for fear of bringing Unicode into disrepute. (Then Unicode went and dumped every daft emoji they could find into the codeset; way to pick the wrong target, German arm of ISO.)

That means you would need to use an unofficial mapping into the Unicode Private Use area (ConScript Unicode Registry), if you want your var’aq program to show in pIqaD. But if you’re going to be programming in var’aq, I suggest the unofficialness of the ConScript Unicode Registry is the least of your problems…

People of Australia!

… Yairs?

People of Australia! Oyez, oyez, oyez!

[from: Christine Leigh Langtree’s answer to What city in your country do you feel would give a foreigner the best idea of said country’s culture?]

… Oy! oy! oy! Whaddaya want, Nicko? I’ve got some shrimps goin’ on the barbie!

There’s this guy on Quora, right. An’ ’e arsked a question ’bout two yeeears ago.

… Go on.

And the question was, wait for it…

… Why, one-and-a-half decades into the twenty-first century, do Australians (and many others) still have to physically go to polling booths and fill out voting papers in general and state elections?

… You wot?!

… Why, one-and-a-half decades into the twenty-first century, do Australians (and many others) still have to physically go to polling booths and fill out voting papers in general and state elections?

Ha…

… baha…

haHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Good one, mate! Now come on over an’ ’ave a prawn mate!

An’ bring yer own farking beer this time, ya cheaparse!

---

Why, people of Quora, why would my fellow antipodeans react in September 2016 with such merriment about this question, asked January 2015?

Domhnall O’Huigin, God rest him, had the right answer from Ireland’s experience. But Australia has a rather more salient counterexample for online voting. A rather recent counterexample. A rather annoying counterexample.

A counterexample that has spawned the following questions right here on Quora:

• What do you think of the Census fail In Australia?
• What was the reason for the Australian census breakdown on August 9, 2016?

The 2016 census went online. It was a disaster. A government orchestrated DDOS on its own servers.

And right after the disaster, every pundit known in the continent was chortling to whoever would listen, “well, so much for online voting.”