How is Hopkins’ “No Worst, There Is None” a Christian poem?

I get that it’s a poem by a Christian, that it mentions feeling abandoned by God and the Virgin Mary, that it alludes to God-in-the-Whirlwind from Job in the context of enduring fury and desperation, and that religion is shown as a temporary respite in the end.

But that doesn’t sound like a poem encapsulating Christianity (Michael Masiello’s answer to How can I stop hating religions and God?); it sounds like a poem written by a Christian, having a crisis of faith in Christianity.

Magister?

Does the word “painted”, in Greek vamenos, mean that the person has fanaticism or rancor or both?

Fanaticism. A “dyed” Olympiakos supporter (βαμμένος Ολυμπιακός) is a die-hard Olympiakos fan, not an embittered Olympiakos fan. From the Triantafyllidis dictionary:

Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής

3. (μππ.) φανατισμένος οπαδός (πολιτικής παράταξης, ποδοσφαιρικής ομάδας κ.ά.): Είναι βαμμένος αριστερός / φασίστας / Ολυμπιακός.

Fanatical supporter (of a political party, a football team, etc): he’s a ‘dyed’ left-winger/fascist/Olympiakos [fan].

A ‘dyed’ fascist might also be rancorous because their ideology is not getting through; but you can certainly be a ‘dyed’ support when your party is in government, or your team is winning the championship.

EDIT: the expression is also in English: a dyed-in-the-wool Liverpool fan.

Why do Greeks love Russia so much?

Greeks (OK, Byzantines) gave the Russians Orthodoxy, and feel a bond with them out of that. During Ottoman rule, the Russians saw themselves as the Third Rome—the successor state to Byzantium, which the Greeks felt was their lost empire. The Greeks in turn longed to be rescued by the Russians:

Ακόμη τούτην άνοιξη (ραγιάδες, ραγιάδες)
τούτο το καλοκαίρι (Μωρηά και Ρούμελη),
Οσο νάρθει ο Μόσκοβος (ραγιάδες ραγιάδες)
να φέρει το σεφέρι (Μωρηά και Ρούμελη)!

Just one more spring (ye slaves, ye slaves),
just one more summertime (Morea and Rumeli),
Till Moscow comes
bringing the army down.

The Greeks certainly remember the Orlov Revolt of 1770 a lot more clearly than the Russians do.

How could I submit an audio in Quora if I want to ask a question about that audio?

See Can you upload audio files as part of your Quora question?.

Vocaroo | Online voice recorder has become popular here lately in answers on “what does your accent sound like”.

I reluctantly agree with Konstantinos that the question should not be a “what sound is this”: not exactly googleable, and I have seen questions like this torpedoed. If the sound *illustrates* what you’re asking about, that’s different.

What is the etymology of name Mavronis (Μαυρώνης)?

It’s an old surname: a scribe Niketas Mavronis is recorded in 1285: Σημειώματα-Κώδικες – View Simeioma

The stem is pretty clearly μαύρος “black, swarthy”; the -vr- is something of a giveaway, and the name doesn’t particularly look Slavonic or Aromanian. (1285 is too early for Arvanite or Turkish.) The -ώνης could mean the surname is derived from μαυρώνω “to blacken”, but that looks forced.

Most plausibly, -ώνης is some sort of diminutive or name suffix. This site ΤΑ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΕΠΩΝΥΜΑ‏ μια μελέτη και η Ιστορία τους. explains the suffix of Κοτσώνης Kotsonis as a diminutive of Kotsos < Kostas, adducing the colloquial diminutive (neuter) κλεφτρόνι “little thief”, and the surnames Γεωργιώνης, Γιαννακαρώνης, Διακώνης, Δροσώνης (from George, Big Little John, Deacon, Fresh [proper name]).

What do you think of the Census fail In Australia?

Hilarity abounds about #censusfail, the crash of the online census on August 9 2016: Census in Australia. And I will admit that, like millions of Australians that were under the impression we had to complete the census on that night (so the whole country hit the same server at 8 PM), I had a lot of merriment following the #censusfail hashtag on Twitter in between hitting Refresh (and the occasional ping).

But as a kinda public servant, I’m saddened. I’m saddened that the public’s trust in the Australian Bureau of Statistics has been trashed. I’m saddened that the data quality of the 2016 census will take a severe beating. I’m saddened that the census has ended up politicised.

Many people (particularly my fellow public servants) have been blaming the government for this, for stripping the ABS of funding. And yes, the rush to doing the census online was motivated by cost-cutting rather than efficiency. But the hubris and miscommunications out of the ABS, about the ability of their systems to deal with the load, aren’t the government’s fault. And no, I don’t buy it that hackerz brought the site down, rather than having five million citizens log in at once. Few Australians do.

[MEME DELETED]

“1 Million Forms Per Hour”: the amount of traffic the ABS stress-tested for. Double their expected volume. A fifth of the volume expected by anybody else.

I hate to agree with anything Newscorp publishes, but this nails it: http://www.news.com.au/technolog…

AUSTRALIA just lost something rare. The Census was one of the national institutions we truly trusted. Now that trust is gone.

What can be done to make Quora better (2016)?

Quora Inc stepping out of the echo chamber of wherever it’s getting its feedback from (not www.facebook. com/groups/quoratopwriters “Quora Top Writers”, and I doubt it’s even www.facebook. com/groups/quorawriters/ “Quora Writers Feedback”),

and instead, looking at answers on Quora, to questions like this.

Or this: What are the things on Quora that annoy you?

Or this: How could Quora be improved? If you were running the product/technology team at Quora, what would you do to improve the service?

Or this: What features would make Quora better?

Or this: What currently annoys you about Quora (2016)?

Or this: Rage against Quora

Since everyone under the age of 50 has to take an English test to become a US citizen, should there be a press “2” for Spanish option?

The question presupposes that only citizens are entitled to use any service provider in the US with a customer phone line.

To the best of my recollection, I was able to get PacBell while living in the States, without taking out citizenship.

Is “κάπου και που” in Greek about time or about place?

I’ll start by saying that the expression (lit. “somewhere and where”) is unfamiliar to me. Which makes me curious when it became common.

The related question, αραιά και που “sparsely and [some]where” refers to time: “occasionally, now and again”, rather than “in scattered locations, here and there”. The metaphorical use of spatial for temporal expressions is a linguistic commonplace.

The examples Google gives me of κάπου και που, on the other hand, are locative, temporal, or ambiguous:

  • Τέσσερα χρόνια μετά, διαπιστώνουμε κάπου και που ότι φυτρώνουν “Κιμωλίες” σε όλη την Ελλάδα. Four years on, were see that “Chalk” sites are springing up here and there/(now and again) throughout Greece.
  • Σε όλα τα ραντεβού πληρώνουμε, και κάπου και που μας κάνουνε κανένα τραπέζι ή κανένα μικρό δώρο. We pay at all our meetings, and (here and there)/now and again they take us out to dinner or give us a small gift.
  • Συνέχισε με την επίσης κωμική τηλεοπτική επιτυχία “Dharma και Greg” και κάπου και που εμφανίζεται σε μικρούς ρόλους. She went on to the other successful comedy Dharma and Greg, and she appears here and there/now and again in minor roles.
  • Μιλήσαμε για τις Λάκκες που κάπου και που έβλεπες σπίτια και πιο πολύ καλύβες We spoke about Lakkes, where here and there you would see houses, but mostly you’d see huts.
  • ενώ παλεύει ακόμα με τις προσωπικές της εξαρτήσεις και κάπου και που κάνει και καμία τηλεοπτική εμφάνιση [Heather Locklear] is still struggling with personal addictions, and now and again makes the odd appearance on TV

So the impression I get is that it’s about both time and place. But because the expression is unfamiliar to me, I hereby request answers from people living in Greece.


EDIT: from comments

The που in που και που, αραιά και που, and presumably κάπου και που is the stressed interrogative locative, πού “where?” So something like “I see him—sparsely; and where?”, “I see him—where?, and where?”, “I see him—somewhere; and where?” All, I presume, as a rhetorical question, something like “I see him; God knows where.”

Compare the use of the stressed interrogative πώς “how?” in κάνει πώς και πώς να τον δει “he acts “how? and how?” to see him” = “he is very eager to see him” It’s something like, he’s asking out loud, giddy with excitement “how [will it happen]? how [will I act]?”

If everybody on Quora decides not to upvote any answer, would you still answer the questions?

Depends. Do we get to keep comments?

If we do, I’m fine. And expect to see a lot more comments consisting of “this” and “+1”. Comments are more substantive feedback anyway.

If not, then, as I’ve said here before: if I wanted to speak in an anechoic chamber, I’d still be writing academic papers.