#8589
10/23/2000 12:41 AM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Per AnnaStrophic's request. Here is the list that Jazz. put together (thank you):
It's Stranger(0), Newbie(25), Journeyman(50), Member(100), Enthusiast(200), Addict(400) As of this writing, we know that at 700 posts we get the title Old Hand.
Here are the last few posts from the original thread (may it
retire in faded glory):
xara
(newbie)
Sat Oct 21 10:43:35 2000
Re: graduation
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two
Hey look, it worked! Thanks for the tip Steve!
Father Steve
(newbie)
Sat Oct 21 20:23:48 2000
Re: graduation
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There are many such secrets to be revealed in the Kingdom of Anu.
xara
(newbie)
Sun Oct 22 09:50:58 2000
Re: graduation
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Congratulations on your own recently acquired newbie status!
belMarduk
(journeyman)
Sun Oct 22 14:41:11 2000
Re: graduation
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Congrats xara & Father Steve. Isn't it nice to be out of the <stranger> limbo. Believe it or not, you will be amazed at how the points (posts) rack up in the beginning. There are so many interesting threads to participate in.
Write on.
AnnaStrophic
(enthusiast)
Sun Oct 22 19:56:13 2000
Diesel-powered Mac
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Could someone with a 20th-century computer please start a Graduation2 thread starting with maybe the last half-dozen posts here (or whatever number the volunteer deems appropriate)? Took me five minutes to get here... and it'd take another five to do what I've just requested.
Thanks... *tossing pellets to the mice in the modem wheel
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old hand
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old hand
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Vote of thanks to Anna and Jackie for this. Now if only I could get to 100 sharp-ish. Perhaps posts like this might help?
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#8591
10/23/2000 12:00 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Now if only I could get to 100 sharp-ishJust keep posting those beautiful thoughts of yours, Dear! I've noticed a couple of times, you've made one post that included different responses. You could separate them out, if you want. I'm 'cheer'ing for you! 
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#8592
10/23/2000 12:13 PM
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old hand
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old hand
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Now there's a thought: each post a different thought. Style rules for wordies (awadeers?) scorn Fowler and others. We do it our way!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Oy, but doesn't making one post for each thought make the thread quite weighty and long. In my system, the post size remains the same two-inch deep space even if you only have one word. For people with smaller screens this involves a lot of scrolling for very little commentary and some people simply lose interest.
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old hand
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old hand
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Fear not bel...
It was not meant to be taken too seriously!
For what it's worth, I think if you change your viewer profile or whatever it's called, you can reconfigure the way the posts appear, scroll through all the titles, and identify the ones you haven't seen yet...
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Pooh-Bah
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It was not meant to be taken too seriously!
Hear! hear! Thank goodness there are very few signs of seriousness on this board - just about enough weight to stop us all floating off into the stratosphere.
Long may it remain so.
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old hand
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old hand
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By the way, does anybody else feel the way I do - that 'member' sounds too exalted/settled a word to be used for such a small achievement? I'd have felt more comfortable if the order had gone: stranger, newbie, journeyman, enthusiast, addict, member, old hand... yes? no? maybe?
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veteran
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'member' sounds too exalted/settledNot to me, shanks. You sort of graduate from being a professional (newbie, journeyman, member) to being an amateur (enthusiast,addict), which feels right in this instance. Oh, and you graduate from there to being part of the furniture (old hand)!
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#8598
10/26/2000 10:34 AM
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Posts: 1,094
old hand
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old hand
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Here are the last few posts from the original thread (may it retire in faded glory):
Jackie, if we're just going to kill the Graduation thread like that you're going to have to compile a list of the all the most memorable posts of the thread. Posterity can't go on without knowing the legacy of 'Graduation'.
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#8599
10/26/2000 11:50 AM
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Carpal Tunnel
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compile a list
These things get incestuous. In a previous job, I ended up with a database to find my way around the other databases - a sort of metabase, I guess. Metathread?
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#8600
10/26/2000 12:38 PM
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Posterity can't go on without knowing the legacy of 'Graduation'.
They'll be there, dear. If there are any that you particularly like, you may feel free to compile your own list for the edification of us all.
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there was some consternation back when it was revealed that 700 was the 6th level of AWADtalkitiveness (counting stranger as 0th and newbie as 1st), thereby breaking up the *obvious arithmetic progression.
well, as A-6th level-WADdy, I'd like to make a prediction. if my newly discovered progression holds true the next level will be, not at 1000, but 1100 posts. but, of course, I'm probably wrong.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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> 1100 posts Good prediction - we'll get Shona to check it out - I'm sure he'll be there by Christmas  !
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enthusiast
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tsuwm,
Since I know you're a stickler for using the right word, I consider it my duty to jump in here and point out that a series that goes 25,50,100,200,400 is in fact a geometric series (each number a constant ratio of the last). 700 certainly wrecked that one. An arithmetic progression is one that is formed by adding/subtracting a constant number to/from the last, eg 3,6,9,12. Your new theory, if I've understood it correctly, and an interesting one on the data so far, suggests that the algorithm is based on the number of posts required at each level: (so far 25, 50, 100, 200, 300), which you're assuming has now settled into an arithmetic series, although it started as geometric. I don't know if there's a word for hybrid series like that.
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#8604
10/26/2000 11:27 PM
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Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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good point, marty, on the geometric vs. arithmetic.
>I don't know if there's a word for hybrid series like that.
me too, but the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, ...) is an example of a sequence described recursively by a pair of formulas:
FIBO(n) = FIBO(n-1) + FIBO(n-2) for n>2
FIBO(1) = FIBO(2) = 1
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#8605
10/27/2000 12:10 AM
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Posts: 347
enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Thanks for bringing up Fibonacci, tsuwm. You sent me into a whole new world of fascinating revelations, eg http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fib.html about Fibonacci numbers, golden ratios, how rabbits breed, stems divide and spiral seashells are constructed. I marvel at the connection between the seemlingly purely academic analysis of a number series and the beauty of nature.
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#8606
10/27/2000 12:36 AM
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Joined: Oct 2000
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veteran
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veteran
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he'll be there by Christmas
Only if I make lots of short pointless
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#8607
10/27/2000 12:44 AM
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marty, good link - but doesn't he fudge the F. series by introducing a zero? this eliminates the need for the second formula, but doesn't even agree with his examples from nature!
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enthusiast
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I agree, tsuwm. I thought it might offend you too. Hard to see how 0 pairs of rabbits could produce any offspring, let alone a total population of 354224848179261915075 after 100 months. But you never can tell with those pesky rabbits!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hard to see how 0 pairs of rabbits could produce any offspring, let alone a total population of 354224848179261915075 after 100 months.
How's this for a possible workaround: One rabbit, a pregnant female. That still means you have zero pairs of rabbits, but could produce as many future coneys as anybody could wish could for.
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enthusiast
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Full marks for original thinking, Max, but there's another complication we need to get around, even if we allow the original bunny's 0.5 pair to be rounded down in perpetuity. In order to produce the Fibonacci series, the original female cannot reproduce again after she gives birth to her first pair of kittens. Does she die during birth of her offspring, do we need to introduce a well-timed trauma to her reproductive organs, or are we talking some kind of one-off lapine Divine conception here? Not so far-fetched for a rabbit society where everyone has eternal life? But perhaps this line of thinking has gone far enough.....
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She contracts Rabbit calicivirus the day after giving birth and is dead within weeks. BTW, can you have half a pair? Since a pair is two of anything, isn't it possible, at least semantically, to argue that it's an all-or-nothing deal? Either you have a pair or you don't, that 0.5 pair, is, by definition, not a pear?
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If you're gonna get all eschatological about bunnies and the afterlife, do call me to the thread.
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enthusiast
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Good one, pastor. Where were you when I was struggling with that impossible Latin grace a couple of weeks ago??
Per cuniculum exanimum caliciosum nostrum. Amen.
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Pooh-Bah
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>algorithm is based on the number of posts required at each level: (so far 25, 50, 100, 200, 300)
Actually isn't it 25,25,50,100,200,300 so far, like the 1,1, at the start of the Fibonacci sequence?
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#8615
10/27/2000 11:40 AM
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Phew - made it before Shona!
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#8616
10/27/2000 11:49 AM
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old hand
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Congratulations. I am considering congratuitousness in posts just to catch up. And yes, I made up that word. (Maybe I can re-post this in Wordplay and Fun?)
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#8617
10/27/2000 11:51 AM
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old hand
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Bother. Even with all this frippery, I'm 17 posts shy of Shona...
Pretty pathetic innit (!!), when all these alleged intellectuals finally succumb to plain and simple rat-racing?
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veteran
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all this fripperyshanks, me old son, I'd be well behind you if posts were marked on intellectual worth! And you're not far behind now. I probably won't be doing much AWAD-wise this weekend due to other commitments ( hah! famous last words), so go for it. See you there. Well done Jo! Now we have a 3-piece suite, don't we? http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Board=miscellany&Number=6904
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Carpal Tunnel
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>Actually isn't it 25,25,50,100,200,300 so far, like the 1,1, at the start of the Fibonacci sequence?
exactly, which highlights that the sequence just shifted and is why I put the disclaimer on my prediction - we don't have enough evidence to reliably predict where it's going next -- or haven't been clever enough to see the real pattern (or there in no pattern and it is just a programmer's whim).
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old hand
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algorithm is based on the number of posts required at each level: (so far 25, 50, 100, 200, 300)
Actually isn't it 25,25,50,100,200,300 so far, like the 1,1, at the start of the Fibonacci sequence?
Contrary to popular belief (at the base of many intelligence tests etc), there is no uniquely defined, "correct" way of continuing any finite number sequence.
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old hand
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Good point! The philosophical problem of underdetermination. (Another friend of mine describes it as the 'theory-ladenness' of science and the empirical method.) Can be depressing if you think about it too much...
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#8622
10/30/2000 12:21 PM
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old hand
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>'theory-ladenness' <
I suppose you allude to the now-fashionable pursuit of "science studies", which I also find a rather depressing kind of meta-science.
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"science studies", which I also find a rather depressing kind of meta-science
Depressing, indeed. Meta-science - never. To be meta anything, I suggest, you must have some of the attributes of the original subject, and there is nothing scientific, logical, or rigorous about POMO relativism.
END_RANT
cheer
the sunshine(s because of hydrogen nuclei fusing under pressure into helium nuclei with the loss of mass - converted into energy - and NOT because dead white european males deemed it convenient to say so in order to maintain the suppression of women and ethnic minorities) warrior
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Carpal Tunnel
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the sunshine(s because of hydrogen nuclei fusing under pressure into helium nuclei with the loss of mass - converted into energy - and NOT because dead white european males deemed it convenient to say so in order to maintain the suppression of women and ethnic minorities) warrior
Goodness me, Dearest, are you having a bad day? I hope not.
But--please, what is "meta-science", and POMO?
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are you having a bad day?
Not at all. Just wanted to play the intemperate (note - NOT incontinent) old man for a bit. Besides the topic is one of my bugbears.
But--please, what is "meta-science", and POMO?
Well, as you probably know, all modern philosophy is based upon a mistranslation. (Whaat? See Aristotle's books...)
Meta-science is, in a sense, the study of how people go about doing science - that is, science as a social activity. It is all tied in with what I call POMO - post-modernism/post-modernist relativism, where theorists (primarily from France - I dunno why - are those truffles hallucinogenic?) claim that science is effectively behaving fraudulently - because it is laying claim to 'absolute' knowledge whereas it is merely another social activity that (by claiming rationalism as its main tool) contributes to the oppression of women and ethnic minorities (amongst which groups the rationalist/empirical ideas invented by DWEMs [dead white european males] are not prevalent, since they are more in touch with the Earth Mother and their own feeling) - and all sorts of similar post-Freudian, mid-fraudian claptrap, mumbo-jumbo, gibberish and intellectual self-abuse.
Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal have published a book, called Intellectual Impostures in the UK, and, I think Fashionable Nonsense (or some such) in the US, that exposes the complete lack of anything approaching logic, or science, in the meta-scientific world that the social scientists with physics-envy (analogous to - yes, you know what I'm talking about - envy) have constructed for themselves in order to cope with their green-eyed demons.
cheer
the sunshine (live and let live) warrior
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...which all seems to smack of the same sort of blather to be found in literary deconstructionism.
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And structuralism, and any other modern '-ism'. For instance, much though I feel for the position of African-Amercians and their desire for a heritage of their own, I do not feel they are going to get anything worthwhile with a fraudulent vision of Egyptology, as it is, I believe, now being taught in many universities Stateside...
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laying claim to 'absolute' knowledgeshanks, Without wishing to put the cat among the pigeons, I think there is some merit in establishing that scientific thought isn't the be-all and end-all. I agree very strongly that such thinking shouldn't be used as a means of promoting any political agenda, let alone one that could be seen as favouring ignorance and laziness. But sometimes it's important to realise that theories are just theories, however well they have worked up to now, and that science doesn't have all the answers. It seems to me this is about restoring an appropriate awe and the ability to marvel at what is around us. Included in what's around us, of course, are many human creations - including those that would never have been possible without scientific thinking (and engineering, in particular). The Web is a particularly pertinent example. I don't see this as depressing. And surely scientists are more worthy of respect as fellow (occasionally fallible and emotional) human beings rather than as pure rationalists. I suppose no scientist would actually claim to be a pure rationalist, but Science itself comes across as claiming pure rationality. Or is that just 'Shona-talk'??
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