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#186646 08/29/2009 4:35 AM
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it's not pinin'! it's passed on! this forum is no more! it has ceased to be! it's expired and gone to meet its maker! it's a stiff! bereft of life, it rests in peace! it's pushing up the daisies! its metabolic processes are now 'istory! it's off the twig! it's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-FORUM!!

(apologies to Monty Python, and especially to Anu)

but why stop there? <pages through thesaurus> amort, anabiotic, antemortem, asleep, at death's door, at peace, at the last gasp, at the point of death, booked, burial, buried, cinerary, commorient, condemned, dead, dead and gone, dead as a doornail, deadly, deceased, defunct, defunctive, demised, departed, departed this life, dying, eclipsed, eighty, elegiac, encharnelled, exanimate, extinct, fey, funebrial, funerary, funereal, gathered to one's fathers, given over, going, going off, gone, hippocratic, iced, in extremis, in the agony of death, in the jaws of death, inanimate, infernal, intestate, late, launched into eternity, lethal, lifeless, lost, moribund, morient, mortal, mortuary, mortuous, near one's end, no more, numbered with the dead, on one's deathbed, on one's last legs, out of the world, placeparted, post, posthumous, released, sepelible, smabbled, stillborn, taken off, terminal, testate, thanatoid, tottering on the brink of the grave, with one foot in the grave

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THIS IS AN EX-FORUM!!

Hmm, what happened? Why wasn't I informed?


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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>what happened?

nothing. but that's rather the point, isn't it?!
-ron o.

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I had noticed an especial lack of posts over the last couple of days.

/beats post on counter


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an especial lack of posts

Oh, that. It's pretty much a Viconian cycle of sorts. But I wouldn't hold the funeral until the patient expires. Rather than meta-posts about the dearth of posts, post a post about words.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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tsu I have noted much the same in Q&A. Maybe the site just isn't as celebrated (notorious?) as once was


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Estivalnating, travelling, on the go, respecting the guest status, being social, renewing the American cultural shock, anti laptop movement. Folks are outdoors. Hope to see you all mid September. Put some salsa in it. Top it off with fajita's. Have a nice Californian glas of red and most of all. KEEP IT ALIVE!

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But I wouldn't hold the funeral until the patient expires

I think Defibrillation was more Tsuwms intent.

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Bran good for you, you're indeed an optimist


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I'm going for "moribund".


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Experiencing seasonal fluctuations.

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Like the weather: global warming???


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Well, like many other endeavours, this great forum, over the years has mutated from a sprightly movement to a ripe institution. It's by no means moribund in my eyes. It loses its attraction for eternal searchers of novelty. And newcomers may be awed by the figures of Top Posters (who by the abstention of the newcomers grow ever more prominent). Why not reset that counter?

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Dang, I take a one week vacation and you're ready to bury the place. Sheesh!
We shall see about this.
Okay, here's one: how many of y'all know what an ulu is--without looking it up?

And another: what town's name means "where the north wind blows"?

And lastly: who was the Canadian Minister of the Interior in 1898? No cheating!

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Originally Posted By: Jackie
Dang, I take a one week vacation and you're ready to bury the place. Sheesh!
We shall see about this.
Okay, here's one: how many of y'all know what an ulu is--without looking it up?



Umm, seventeen? Counting tsuwm, of course.

Originally Posted By: Jackie

And another: what town's name means "where the north wind blows"?



Beats me.

Originally Posted By: Jackie

And lastly: who was the Canadian Minister of the Interior in 1898? No cheating!


Oh, c'mon. Might as well ask who was the second assistant janitor at Robert E. Lee High School in Snark, VA in 1904.

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how many of y'all know what an ulu is?
One, Jackie.
In samoan, Ulu is a breadfruit (kuru in Rarotongan)

what town's name means "where the north wind blows"?

That place down here would be 'Hauraki'.

who was the Canadian Minister of the Interior in 1898?

Neil Young

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Jackie, do YOU know (without looking up, of course!):

1. What is a stifle (n)?

2. What town's name means "the chosen spot"?

3. Who became director of the Board of Trustees of the U of R (University of Rochester, NY) in 1952?

Good luck! :0)

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Okay, where did you go on vacation?

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i know one out of each three, I almost bought an ulu once and isn't a stifle part of a horse?

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I think so, yes. I posed those questions because they are things I learned on vacation. Here's a link to what an ulu is; I used wikipedia so as to avoid advertising a particular store/brand.

Skagway (orig. Skaguay) means 'where the north wind blows'. I could have spent several more days there.

The Canadian minister of the interior was Mr. Somebody White: they created a route to the Yukon gold fields, and named the White Pass part after him.

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The Canadian minister of the interior was Mr. Somebody White: they created a route to the Yukon gold fields, and named the White Pass part after him.

The Canadian Minister in 1898 was Clifford Sifton (link), but Thomas White was Minister of the Interior from 1887 to 1888 (link). I take it you were up in Nunavut (or environs) for your vacance, n'est-ce pas?


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Egad--obviously I misremembered what the flyer said. Yep--Alaska; and into Canada on the train ride.

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My turn to maybe be pining cause everybody else now seems to be on vacation.
Alaska must be wonderful too Jackie, but travelling gets a bit tedious when you have to take your shoes off all the time.
(Ironic, terrorism made us take our shoes off, not in churches and temples but on airports)
The cutest gadget of rural and suburban America I thought is this: link
The little free standing house for letters, outbox when you put the red signal up. Cute. But I also admired Pluto and our moon's surface through a telescope, the Science Academy and SFMOMA in San Francisco, a black widow spider in the garage, dolphins and seals seen from the beach, white pelicans over the house and the large hawks. A frantic howling coyote outside the fence on my family's back land in the dead of night.The mountains round Lake Tahoe, the largest variety of pine and fir trees I ever saw and many more amazing things of beauty. etc. etc. Now back to work and I hope you're all having a nice vacation too. :~)

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I am sorry I was not at home when you stopped by and took a
picture of my mail box. Nope, oops, sorry, mine is black. My bad.
By the way, Pluto only has three moons: Charon, Nix and Hydra.
But that is ok, we call it fatigue from too much intake.
Glad you had a wonderful time.


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I wasn't giving any numbers of Pluto's moon here. But I guess I saw four. Maybe I squinted in that telescope. Or because of astigmatism.

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Aiii! Now I know why the four moons... I did not see Pluto at all. It was Jupiter with four moons in a straight line. So my bad to begin with. I call it fatigue from too many hours of delay on the home flight. It was big bold Jupiter!

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I wondered.. Pluto ain't even a planet anymore. in fact, in some circles, it's spelled pluto.

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Pluto, and beyond there is Sedna, Quoaor (spelling?): dwarf
planets, and Ceres between Mars and Jupiter. I was just teasing.
It had to be fatigue. Pluto, however has three moons, with two
new small ones recently being discovered.


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Or are they moonlets?

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Moonlets? Moonlets? That sounds like a 1950-s lady-singers trio.

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Or either that or dwarf moons. Take your pick.

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Nah, moonlet is fine. A moonlet serenade.

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Not to quibble over such a small thing, moon or moonlet,
but NASA called them moons when giving their names and telling
the public about them:


http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060624.html


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some discussion on why Pluto is now, officially, a dwarf planet. (it should be noted that Pluto's moons were discovered, and named, before this declassification; Faldo's 'dwarf moons' follows logically.)

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1611, "a pun, a play on words," probably a dim. of quib "evasion of point at issue" (c.1550), from L. quibus "by what (things)?," dative and ablative plural of quid "what," neut. of quis (see who). The word's overuse in legal jargon supposedly gave it the association with trivial argument. Meaning "equivocation, evasion of the point" is attested from 1670. The verb in this sense is from 1656.

That's funny, that's exactly what our childhood arguments were called : kibbelen. We did not fight, we kibbelden. Never saw this English 'quibble' before.
Quibus/kwiebus btw is a noun still in use too, meaning silly person.

Last edited by BranShea; 09/21/2009 4:18 PM.
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I just love this site - it has so many authorities on so many
subjects.


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