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#9620 11/01/00 11:20 PM
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So, what's your solution to the problem of super-saturation?

I'll pass on that one if you don't mind.

(now, I'm sure the toilets were this way...)




#9621 11/01/00 11:58 PM
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, surely you could swing on over to Cinci and pick me up,

Hmm--this was to be a gathering of gutter-wallowers only.
But, perhaps if you beg...
I feel it only fair to warn you that I have already threatened to run up I-71 and strangle you. Perhaps I could lure you into my clutches with the promise of a nice trip.


#9622 11/02/00 01:43 AM
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Give the kid a chance. Maybe he wants to get lei'd?


#9623 11/02/00 10:59 AM
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OK, Anna, off to Hawaii!


#9624 11/02/00 04:03 PM
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In a book that I'm currently reading, (the Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann) the author discusses the fact that both random and chaos have become everyday words. Both have specific scientific/mathematical meanings, and they are no longer used correctly by the masses. (I could go into the definitions, but I'd have to quote from the book, and it takes him most of a chapter to define random fully)


#9625 11/02/00 04:08 PM
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...that being the case, I doubt if they were ever used correctly by the masses.


#9626 11/02/00 05:44 PM
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random and chaos have become everyday words. Both have specific scientific/mathematical meanings, and they are no longer used correctly by the masses.

That statement intrigues me. Is the author claiming that the scientific/mathematical definitions are the correct ones? Surely the author would have been better to say that the words are used differently in different contexts? Certainly in the case of chaos, the word existed long before the modern mathematical discipline that uses it. I agree that when using terms which are specifically scientific in origin, one should try to use their origiinal definitions, but surely words like "random" and "chaos" have always had general, non-scientific definitions. For an author to claim that these are "wrong" smacks of the "white-coated priesthood" mentality - "I am a scientist, so you will use these words in the manner I prescribe". If we use the author's apparent "I saw it first, so it's mine" approach, it could be argued, with a word like "chaos", which predates a scientific definition, that it is the scientists who are using it incorrectly.


#9627 11/02/00 05:56 PM
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max, thank you for clarifying my smartass comment -- ______ jargon, its overuse, and co-option of "normal" terminology is one of my pet peeves. [fill in the blank]


#9628 11/02/00 06:41 PM
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______ jargon, its overuse, and co-option of "normal" terminology is one of my pet peeves.

Ich auch. I used the phrase "intrigues me" rather than "irks me" or "annoys the hell out of me" because I wanted to avoid giving any impression that my annoyance was directed at xara.


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