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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Latest TIME, Caption of photo showing Pres. Bush and UN Sec. Gen. Annan:
"Bush seems blindsided by the entropy of Annan's U.N."
What in hell does that mean?
entropy
n.
5Ger entropie, arbitrary use (by R. J. E. Clausius, 1822-88, Ger physicist) of Gr entropc, a turning toward, as if < Ger en(ergie), ENERGY + Gr tropc, a turning: see TROPE6
1 a thermodynamic measure of the amount of energy unavailable for useful work in a system undergoing change
2 a measure of the degree of disorder in a substance or a system: entropy always increases and available energy diminishes in a closed system, as the universe
3 in information theory, a measure of the information content of a message evaluated as to its uncertainty
en[trop$ic 73tr9p4ik8
adj.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Maybe they mean the degree of discord among the different nations.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Entropy is not disorder, it is the measure of disorder. Entropy can be either
large or small.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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the measure of disorder
Such are the vagaries of language change.
Or perhaps it is the fact that there is disorder to measure that rankles his geezer.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Language gets changed too often by assholes trying to be pretentious using words
the don't really understand, but hope thereby to impress the great unwashed.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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In reply to:
Language gets changed too often by assholes trying to be pretentious using words
the don't really understand, but hope thereby to impress the great unwashed.
Heh heh. True. You're right that entropy is the measure of disorder, but I think they were using the word (incorrectly) to simply mean discord or disagreement. Either that or all the UN delegates had merged into a big homogenous mass that was at room temp.
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old hand
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old hand
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Either that or all the UN delegates had merged into a big homogenous mass that was at room temp. That explains a lot.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Quite pssibly many delegates to UN have room temperature IQs. But one more problem:
How do you 'blindside" somebody with an abstraction?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>How do you 'blindside" somebody with an abstraction?
not to put too fine a point on this, but we are talking about Bush..
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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I was talking about a lousy mixed metaphor. The President didn't get blindsided by
UN membership's disorganization, he was inadequately briefed by his advisors as to
how mucht UN support he could expect.
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