Category: Uncategorized

The name of this blog was put up to a poll: New Blog for Deactivated Quora Users by Nick Nicholas on Assorted Polls

The people of Quora can name the blog whatever they want, so long as they choose one of the four obscure Hellenic names I’ve just made up for it.

The results were:

• Argologue: “List of the inactive”: 35%
• Apontologue: “List of the absent”: 31%
• Phygologue: “List of those who have run away”: 19%
• Ecdemologue: “List of those who are out of town”: 15%

The results did not astonish me. Ecdemologue is the oddest looking in English, with the <cd> cluster. Argologue looks the most familiar in English, because of Argo and Argon. (There’s two meanings of argos in Ancient Greek: “shining” and “idle, inert, slow”. Argo is the first one; Argon is the second one. And the icon of the blog is, of course, an Argon lamp illustrating the abbreviation of the element: Argon – Wikipedia.)

The other two choices were in between. Too many syllables in Apontologue, and I’m surprised it got as many votes as it did. Decidedly alien look to Phygologue, and kind of loaded meaning, so not surprised it got as few votes as it did.

Benjamin R. Drakenbourg is right: Australians have a lot invested in thinking they are egalitarian and not-British, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t class in Australia. The sneering at bogans that has happened over the last two decades is nothing if not class. So is the abundance of hipsters in the inner suburbs.

But Australians are in denial about class, and have an egalitarian ideal of the billionaire acting like a labourer, that is pretty entrenched. As someone once told me, the difference between Australians and the British is that lots of Australians are convinced that they are superior—but no Australians accept that they are inferior.

That aside, we exaggerate slight differences with the British, from our insider perspective, which are vanishingly small from an outside viewpoint (such as say Americans). Nick Nicholas’ answer to What are the myths about Australians?

Myth: That Australia is a classless society.

Fact: Only when compared to the British.

Myth: That Australians are an informal, relaxed people.

Fact: Only when compared to the British.

Myth: That Australians are an open, friendly society.

Fact: Only when compared to the British.

I’ve only been glancingly on French Quora, I admit. But so far, I have found Sihem Soibinet-Fekih to be prompt, and to be engaged. As I’m not really used to Quora staff being engaged on the site, I am seriously impressed by her.

I believe that everything that ever needed to be said about this has already been said by my friend Quora Quorason. Vote #1: Quora Quorason’s answer to How would you parody your own writing style on Quora?

This answer is meant to be supplemental to that. Only it isn’t, because I am enamoured of my own recherché grandiloquence.

• I hate Quora and everything about it, and anyone who ever says anything good about it, I shall have no intercourse with ever. For more information, see my blog Malleus Calamorum.
• The Greek for intercourse is συνουσία, “consubstantiality”, where οὐσία “substance” itself derives from the participle of the Ancient Greek copula. (Get it? Copula.) One may draw sundry sociocultural inferences from this. But alack, this is not the forum for such an answer.
• Having perused at least one Wikipedia article, I will now hold forth with great, if borrowed erudition on everything you didn’t need to know about Perso–Moldovan cultural contacts.

I can substantiate all of this by adequately lachrymose personal experience. As the great poet Farrokh Bulsara once put it,

I’m just a poor boy
from a poor family:
Scaramouche, Scaramouche
won’t you play the fandango.

I trust that we can all draw a lesson from this.

We already have. Where do you think motherfucking comes from?

Allusion to incest. For when fornication just won’t cut it any more.

This is an old finding. 150 years ago, damn could not appear in print unredacted.

The true and honest and equitable answer is the Magister’s: Michael Masiello’s answer to Is it veridical to state that esoteric verbosity culminates in communicative ennui? Vote #1 Michael Masiello. Vote early and vote often.

The petty and cavilling answer is mine. Others have gone part of the way there, but I’ll finish the task.

No, it is not veridical to state that esoteric verbosity culminates in communicative ennui. Because those are not synonyms of “is it true to say that using obscure words ends up in people getting bored with how you talk”. Big words have nuance. Big words have subtlety. Big words are there for a reason. That’s why you’re supposed to use them sparingly.

• Veridical does not mean “true”. It means “truth-telling”. It refers to a commitment to reflecting the world accurately, it’s not something you can accidentally blurt out or stumble upon. And there’s a good reason the word is mostly used in psychology and philosophy, domains that are concerned with people’s commitment to truth.
• Esoteric does not just mean “obscure”, it means understood only by very few select people, who are initiated into knowledge. The Greek means “insider”. It’s not the kind of thing that any fool can pick up a dictionary and learn; it’s supposed to be secret, and there’s a reason its connotation is one of cults and guilds.
• Culminates refers to something that builds up gradually to a climax or achievement of some kind. You don’t culminate into a passive state, such as ennui. That’s your classic parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. (Or anticlimax, if you prefer.)
• Ennui is not just boredom. It might be just boredom in French, but that’s not how the word is used in English. In English, it refers to the kind of existential, weary, discontented boredom that makes you give up on life itself. A misplaced hyperbolic reaction to being bored by someone’s big words.
• And communicative ennui does not sound like ennui about the communications you hear. It sounds like ennui about the communications you make. Like you’re questioning whether it’s worth continuing to live, as you’re stuck making inane smalltalk.
• Or belittling people’s vocabulary.

The only source of demographics on Quora there has been is the departed Laura Hale’s blog quora numbers, gathered manually and laboriously. For this question, via Facebook. See:

National breakdowns of by age participation on Quora by Laura Hale on quora numbers

75% of US users. 42% of Indian users.

An adolescent question like this deserves an adolescent poem as its answer. Here’s one I prepared earlier. As an adolescent, in fact.

Taktas jarojn tiuj, kiuj dankas
Dion – trance, kun vagstulta fido.
Trafas kraŝon tiuj, kiuj tranĉas
por si hastan vojon – kun venkrido.

Tanĝas homojn tiuj, kiuj talpas
mensizole, ĉar en si kontentas.
Transas homojn tiuj, kiuj drakas
homestrante, ĉar laŭ si potencas.

Taksas vivon tiuj, kiuj taskas,
 je pasumo de jaraĉoj dorme.
Miliardoj vojas kaj fiaskas,
sin-malŝpare, por malvivi morne.

Foja korpo pli ol ni meritas,
 ke pluvivu: tiun ni ŝtonumas,
kaj pluvivas mem ĝis preteritas.
Super niaj tomboj, tagoj lumas

sen ni. Tial traktas la drastantoj vivon,
kiel aviadonto aŭtobus-tarifon.

Love that jingle–jangle assonance. Happy to make an exit that way.

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Oh, you want a translation? It’d kind of spoil it, because it is adolescent (and I wouldn’t be as unforgiving now), but OK:

Those who thank God measure out
their years in a trance, with vaguely dumb faith.
Those who cut themselves a hasty way
hit a crash, with a victorious laugh.

Those who mole away in mental isolation
are tangential to people, for they are content in themselves.
Those who are dragons commanding men
are beyond people, for they are powerful according to themselves.

Those who have a job to do value life
as a passing of miserable years in sleep.
Billions make their way and fail,
wasting themselves, to be extinguished mourningly.

The occasional body deserves to keep living
more than us. So we stone them,
and keep living ourselves until we are in the past tense.
Above our graves, days shine

without us. That’s why the drastic treat
life, like someone about to board a flight treats the bus ticket.

Should Quora honour the commitments it has made publicly and eponymously?

(Improvements to Anonymity on Quora by Riley Patterson on The Quora Blog. Remember that name.)

Yes.

In Riley’s sentence:

All anonymous content will be reviewed for spam and harassment before receiving distribution,

(remember, he put his name to that statement),

should “fairly dimwitted bot, of the caliber we can expect of Quora bots in the year 2017” be understood to be the subject of the weaselly passive, and a satisfactory level of review?

No.

I’m sure Quora thinks Yes. Because they want this done on the cheap. The answer is still No.

Should Quora commit to vetting questions to decide if anonymity is appropriate or just trolling?

How well is the “new anonymity” policy on Quora working at filtering out bad content, as of March 20, 2017?

If this is the level of their vetting, better not to have made that undertaking at all.

Bridegrooms, Bonfires, and Woodchucks: Folk Etymologies in English. From that link:

• The textbook examples for English are sparrowgrass for asparagus, and bridegroom, which should have been bridegoom. (The word gome for “man” became extinct, so people grabbed the nearest similar word. Now that the noun groom for “horse attendant” has also become extinct, people use groom to mean bridegroom.)
• Apparently cockroach is a folk etymology mangling of cucaracha, and Algonquin otchek became woodchuck.
• A bonfire was originally bonefire; people assumed the bon- is French.
• The change of femelle to female in English was a folk etymology linking it to male.

An example I discovered just this year, because of Quora, is the Greek for toyboy or twink, teknó. It looks like a mis-stressed version of the Ancient Greek téknon “child”, the word with which priests address their parishioners. (Insert your own joke here.)

In fact, it’s from the Romany tiknó, “small (child)”. Kaliarda, the cant of Greek street queens in the 60s, used Romany for its base vocabulary, just as its counterpart Polari for English used Italian. Someone along the line noticed the similarity of tiknó to téknon, and switched the vowel accordingly. (Amusingly, someone also noticed it in 1800: Etymologicon magnum, or Universal etymological dictionary, on a new plan [By W. Whiter].)

… Unless Romany tiknó is derived from téknon itself, of course. But I’m reasonably sure it isn’t: Scandoromani derives it from Sanskrit tīkṣṇa “sharp”.