Most desired Sci-Fi Invention

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

Is 'ain't' a contraction or a corruption, though?

It's a contraction.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

It means that you can read what is written with greater clarity, hear what is said with less confusion, and it generally makes for an easier time of things,

People wonder why I'm obsessed with proper spelling and punctuation. That reason is why. Less-literate online friends of mine maintain that "you can still understand what I'm trying to say," but sometimes I can't. It's just too incoherent.

Grammar, on the other hand, is hit-or-miss.

[Nate the Great]

Zebra on the roof?

It's interesting how obsessed I get about "may" and "can" sometimes. Not so much for grammatical reasons, but just using the definitions. "Can I have a bowl of ice cream?" Well, of course you CAN. You know where the bowls, spoons, and ice cream are. You aren't wearing manacles, and there isn't a padlock on the refrigerator. "May I have a bowl of ice cream?" Do you have permission? Is it okay to have some ice cream? Is the ice cream earmarked for another purpose? And so on.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I'm like that with clear and colourless, but that's an occupational hazard.

Ditto spectrums and spectra (one's right, the other isn't).

[Nate the Great]

Of course clear and colorless aren't the same. Clear means you can see stuff on the other side. Colorless means that it's colored white. Sort of akin to white=red+green+blue for light and white=no pigment for paint.

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

Clear means you can see stuff on the other side. Colorless means that it's colored white.

No, that's not it.

Clear = transparent, which is more or less what you said. For a chemist (what Sa'ar is, in case you missed it), it would mean "without observable flocculents, filaments, sediment or other particles," -- as pure water would be, for example.

Colorless = without color. Not blue, not green, not yellow or pink. Not white, either. Without coloring of any kind -- again, as pure water would be, but in a different way than "clear" describes.

[Chancellor Valium]

@mudshark: b-whu? It's the same length!

@II: I have no idea what the 'z0r' is for, but it seems to be randomly added to words in 1337...

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

@mudshark: b-whu? It's the same length!

It is? No, no, no -- "contraction" is one letter longer than "corruption", heh heh heh.

(Actually, I see what you mean... I think.

"Ain't" is a contraction, but it's also an altered form of more than one earlier contraction (some of which are longer and some of which aren't, and most of which were even more awkward to begin with than "ain't" is) which, depending upon who's doing the defining, may also make it a corruption -- it's hard to tell, sometimes. The English language was a lot more fluid around the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than it is now, and I think that, more than anything else, when the lists of What Would Be Standard English and What Wouldn't were being drawn up by the people who do that sort of thing, "ain't" was simply standing in the wrong queue, and it has never managed to recover from the gaffe. The Usage Notes in two entries on the page to which I linked above go into more detail on this, if you're interested, but, in my opinion, far more time has been spent in human history arguing about the validity (or lack, thereof) of the word "ain't" and how to correctly classify it than the subject is properly worth.

(Oh, and aren't parentheses fun? ))

@II: I have no idea what the 'z0r' is for, but it seems to be randomly added to words in 1337...

That's about it, really -- noise. h4XX0r, r0xx0rz, 5uXX0rz, LOLz0rz: it's all a hangover from the time when preadolescents used to send each other messages on their telephone pagers, and thought it was pretty clever to bamboozle their parents and teachers with odd spellings and character substitutions. It's funny and not a little pathetic when you see a forty-something, otherwise "respectable" citizen using words like "pr0n" without thinking, but there you go...

[Nate the Great]

You guys are just confusing me now. Anything that's not out and out transparent/clear/whatever has SOME color.

You still haven't defined clear vs colorless adequately. What's needed is an example of a clear object that has color, or a colorless object that's not clear.

Oh, and although people might be led to believe that II would be the proper acronym for me, I really do prefer NTG for such purposes. Just a preference.

[Gatac]

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

You guys are just confusing me now.

Now you know my pain.

Gatac

[Sa'ar Chasm]

You guys are just confusing me now. Anything that's not out and out transparent/clear/whatever has SOME color.

You still haven't defined clear vs colorless adequately. What's needed is an example of a clear object that has color, or a colorless object that's not clear.

*cracks knuckles*
All right, hold on to your hats, and please keep your hand inside the car until it has come to a complete stop.

A glass of water is clear and colourless. Clear means that it's not opaque: you can see right through it. Colourless means that it has no colour - that is, it doesn't absorb any visible wavelength, so it's not green or yellow or magenta or whatever.

A glass of Kool-Aid is clear, assuming you've mixed it all completely and don't have chunks of undissolved sugar swirling in it. You can see right through it and it isn't opaque. It is, however, coloured, depending on what flavour it is.

A block of ice is colourless, but you can get ice that isn't clear, depending on how it froze. If the ice cube is full of bubbles, you can't see through it.

A glass of milk is not clear, it's opaque. It's also coloured - white, in this case. Yes, white is a colour.

Clear? (Or colourless?)

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Infinite Improbability

You guys are just confusing me now.

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is, therefore, your own problem. Please relax. You will be sent for soon.

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by mudshark

It is? No, no, no -- "contraction" is one letter longer than "corruption", heh heh heh.

*shakes fist in ineffective annoyance*

Originally Posted by mudshark

(Actually, I see what you mean... I think.

How can you *see* a meaning?

..."An eye for an eye"

Originally Posted by mudshark

"Ain't" is a contraction, but it's also an altered form of more than one earlier contraction (some of which are longer and some of which aren't, and most of which were even more awkward to begin with than "ain't" is) which, depending upon who's doing the defining, may also make it a corruption -- it's hard to tell, sometimes. The English language was a lot more fluid around the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than it is now, and I think that, more than anything else, when the lists of What Would Be Standard English and What Wouldn't were being drawn up by the people who do that sort of thing, "ain't" was simply standing in the wrong queue, and it has never managed to recover from the gaffe. The Usage Notes in two entries on the page to which I linked above go into more detail on this, if you're interested, but, in my opinion, far more time has been spent in human history arguing about the validity (or lack, thereof) of the word "ain't" and how to correctly classify it than the subject is properly worth.

Much like the split infinitive - the third way to lose friends forever in three minutes...

Originally Posted by mudshark

(Oh, and aren't parentheses fun? ))

Possibly (But then (you see (I think) ) you could (possibly (just about (perhaps) ) ) get away with using commas (don't you think? (I'm not sure (you see) ) )

Originally Posted by mudshark

That's about it, really -- noise. h4XX0r, r0xx0rz, 5uXX0rz, LOLz0rz: it's all a hangover from the time when preadolescents used to send each other messages on their telephone pagers, and thought it was pretty clever to bamboozle their parents and teachers with odd spellings and character substitutions. It's funny and not a little pathetic when you see a forty-something, otherwise "respectable" citizen using words like "pr0n" without thinking, but there you go...

!nd33d...

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

Much like the split infinitive - the third way to lose friends forever in three minutes...

I do believe I've been zinged.

[Nate the Great]

Bubbly ice cubes are colored white.

"They all dared to brave unknown perils, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before. And thus was the Empire forged."

Are you guys proposing that clear=any portion of a beam of light that hits one side can be seen on the other?

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Bubbly ice cubes are colored white.

No they're not, and neither are polar bears.

Are you guys proposing that clear=any portion of a beam of light that hits one side can be seen on the other?

We're not proposing anything. We're stating accepted scientific definitions. Clear and colourless describe different properties. Colour is colour, but clear refers to turbidity (more specifically, the absence thereof).

[Nate the Great]

Try again, without defining anything as itself. X=X isn't very illuminating.

[Chancellor Valium]

'Anything that happens, happens'.

Written by an atheist looking for rational explanations to the universe.

Consider in terms of rationality.

[Nate the Great]

"No matter where you go, there you are."

Written for Buckaroo Bonzai, looking for a phrase that the builders of the Excelsior can rip off.

Consider in terms of blatant cliche emulation.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

All right...this is much easier with props.

Consider a glass of water. Nothing in it, no ice cubes or rye or sand or anything. It has no hue. It's colourless. You can see right through it - everything on the otherside of the glass is visible, albeit distorted. It's clear.

Now consider a glass of chocolate milk. It's got a colour: brown. You can't see what's behind the glass. It's not clear, it's opaque.

There'll be a quiz on this later. Just be glad we no longer use the term "water-white".