Elemental's Excitingly Excellent Random Banter: No.CLXXVII (177)

[Mutant Sheep]

Allow me to scream in fury briefly because the absolute GIT across the hall from me - the two foot wide hall - is blaring out atrociously bad electro-dance music at club level decibels!!!!!
At twenty past eleven in the evening!
At least everyone else in my staircase is joining in with me on our 'shout the moron into respecting his fellow humans - exam taking humans' crusade!
Lksdnfoiuabrdf S\lacknfs\dl!!!!!1!!eleven!

This far away from calling the Porters!

I know its morning out there in Curlylandia, but really. Calling electro MUSIC? SHAMEFUL!

Latin happens to be a tool of the trade, so to speak, so I must learn it.

[LaZodiac]

Oh hey, since I can, I'll just want to note this.

Dragonpriiiime. Now that you're, for the most part, off from things, you should totally sign on more so we can talk stuff!

[Amiel]

Went to see the Avengers with 16 friends;

[Castaras]

Currently doing this physics essay on Space Science due to be handed in in 5 and a half hours.

My current mind.

[Feytalist]

New Hark, a Vagrant.

It's... odd.

[Tectonic Robot]

It... most certainly is quite odd.

[CurlyKitGirl]

\Yes, most Hindu-Arabic languages write from right to left, instead of left to right.

Actually, does anyone know where that comes from?
I've never seen anything on the subject.

Took a while of flipping through Wikipedia, and while I couldn't find anything concrete on it, I have a rough theory based upon about two dozen languages and my knowledge of PIE (Proto-Indo-European) I can say this:
with the exception of Ancient Egyptians hieroglyphs (which read left-to-right) the earliest alphabets as opposed to logoglyphs and so on, were written right-to-left.
The earliest of these being the Proto-Sinaitic language which is thought by scholars to be the ancestor to the Phoenician alphabet. And as you can see from the article, nearly all modern languages are descended from it.
In fact, as far as I could tell, we have Ancient Greek (at least in the West with languages using the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets) to thank for both having vowels in the alphabet and for writing left-to-right; even though the latter only became common in the C5^th - C4[sup]th[sup] BC.

Yes, it's pretty fun. I'm thankfull that my eye is better than my hand, which is better than my ear, which is better than my mouth.

Same for me. I can read most things as long as you give me time to learn at least the basics of the language and a dictionary, but speak it? Eh.

This whole course has been a lesson in frustration. First my book doesn't let me into the online course, then the online course doesn't let me into the online book (and is absolutely useless), then the teacher pops tests on us with no rhyme or reason, then she doesn't even get the questions right.
Hopefully I pass, since I only took it to boost my GPA while I'm out of school.

Well that's . . . messed up. You tried contacting the publisher's or telling the teacher? Well, at least it won't negatively affect you GPA right?

Online latin courses, I think I saw one on TV that promised a native speaker as a teacher by videoconference lessons.

Wait what.
What.
IT'S A DEAD LANGUAGE!
Nobody is a native speaker of Latin any more! Not unless their parents are either really weird or really awesome or both.

Nothing prevents you from doing a mixed approach. I'm a science person, still going to take all the psychology, theology and semiotics courses I can because... Rennaisance man FTW!

*boogies on down with the Renaissance man!*

I don't even know what that means. :D
I know next to nothing about theology. However, board-rules and all...

It's fun even if you don't believe in that sort of thing or can even talk about it here. Or with many friends.

I would just give up.

Shame. Some of the most interesting conversations exist in quotestorms. Not that I read all of them myself.

I'm familiar with the story, but I've never read more than a kid's abbreviated version. It's on my list of "Things I Must Read At Some Point Eventually".
... it's a ridiculously long list.
It sounds like a scream to read!

It must be read! (And my list is very long too)
It's a scream although, as you may expect with a poem in the oral tradition, there are several set forumulae and the battle sequences can get a bit repetitive.
Also Roland is a doorknob.
I actually found myself enjoying the political side more. All the intrigue.

I'm somewhat familiar with IPA, but I pick up things like that fast, so I'm not worrying too much about it. The Head of Linguistics has an awesome German accent that makes even basic syntax somewhat fun to listen to. Yeah, the early stuff doesn't seem that hard, or even all that boring to slog through. I'll survive it, for sure!

Cool.
Our faculty had really boring lectures on Intro the Literary Theory that pretty much killed off my (and most of my 'class'mates) interest in that field, except in a very few specific areas.
Areas which we were already interested in and studying beforehand because they were our go-to areas for critics and ways of analysing texts.

I've already done 2 Math exams and 2 English exams, each one 2 hours long (I just got back from the second English exam). I also have 2 French exams, but they're short and together are 2 and a half hours, and also there's a week in between my last History exam and my French exams, so that's TONS of time to study.

That sounds like the most horrendous thing in the world.
I haven't had exams in two years. And then I only had four. I don't I sat that many exams in one go since . . . GCSEs.
Speaking of, my sister has about twenty-six of those. Although some of those are coursework - or as they call them now 'class assessed and monitored portfolios'. Which is basically coursework under controlled conditions.

Oh, I am NOWHERE NEAR the level of proficiency in French necessary to be taught in it. Though if I want to, just for kicks, I can request to take ANY given exam or hand in ANY given assignment in French.

That . . . could be fun. If hard. I had a hard time writing a 1000 word piece of coursework in appropriate academic French three years ago. I couldn't imagine what it would be like now.

Aye, the benefits of not-having-to-read-every-single-thing-in-front-of-me :D

Stop being mean and teasing my about this compulsion.

Also, Arabic script is just so. gosh. darn. pretty.
Arabic script is the most gorgeous form of writing EVER. Also, the things you can do with Arabic script...
*snip*
That's complete and beautiful art, made out of actual words.
I'm in love with that.
Like, legitimately in love with that.

Okay, that's just beautiful. Puts a whole new spin on 'word art' doesn't it?

Yeah, IB was haaard, and it kinda suuuucked, but on the other hand, I'm totally gonna MURDER university. I've already written a 4000-word paper while at the same time writing another 3000-word project, I've taken 12 (mock-)exams in 10 days (not including weekends), I am SET. Even if I did have to take math and a science that I would not have otherwise taken.

You're going to rock socks off your university studies.

Awwww man, that's a shame. It would have been quite cool if you were in Cambridge.

I am not ashamed that my immediate thought was "But I'm at Oxford. Isn't that cool enough for you?"
Then I remembered that a lot of ex-colonies stole all the names of our towns and cities and counties. I'm looking at you Cornwall, Canada!

[QUOTE=Dragonprime;13202379]I napped for most of today, because I slept so little last night. I've actually managed to sleep right past evening prayer and into the middle of dinner here at the seminary, but no one's checking on me so I assume I've gotten away with it.

>_>[quote]

Lucky.
I'd have thought those things were kind of compulsory. Here I can do that. If I don't mind missing lectures (which are optional) and classes and tutorials (which aren't).

Post-Enlightenment thought sadly just kind of ignores medieval philosophy. St. Thomas Aquinas occasionally shows up, but mostly because people want to argue against him. St. Anselm's ontological argument for God, which took me a solid hour of thinking to really comprehend, also gets used by Descartes, and then everyone else proceeds to yell at Descartes for using it. It's not surprising that medieval thought really doesn't help with understanding any later philosophy, because rather than being a continuation of past schools of thought like the medieval was, the modern era has branched out in a million ways.

That's actually what I like about a lot of medieval thought. It's a nice continuum that builds on top of and further develops past philosophy. There are disputes (John Scotus Eriugena got stabbed to death by his students because they disagreed with him) and different schools, but overall there's a sense that they take what was good before them, and then try to improve upon it. The Enlightenment and later schools of thought do borrow from the past, but they often try too hard to do their own thing and reject past thought. Also, the late medieval period was probably the last great explosion of Aristotelian philosophy, and as far as I'm concerned Aristotle is pretty much the best of the ancient philosophers.

Well that's a bit thick.
Bernard of Chartres said that we are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. How can you just discard several hundred years of thought just because it was founded on or based around principles that were later proven wrong or incorrect?
Yes, some suppositions were wrong, but the conclusions they reached are still worth merit and understanding even if based off of faulty ideas. Hell, some of the most interesting medieval dialogues were based off a direct interaction with previous ideas and the dynamism created was used to prove and disprove equally!

Also, I know need to read The Cloud of Unknowing. It looks so very interesting. It's a shame that currently I'm reading The Ladder of Divine Ascent, although that's a solid book in it's own right. It's a guide for monks written by the abbot of a monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Yes, the Mt. Sinai. It's interesting stuff.

Yet another book added to your Things I'd Like To Read List?
I'd actually recommend the entire website. The TEAMS editions of medieval works is very thorough and they all come with comprehensive notes and introductions for the budding scholar or fan of context.
The Cloud is more of a mystic book than outright theology or spiritualism, but mysticism is a tricky genre anyway.
*adds The Ladder of Divine Ascent to her list*

When I need happy cheese I listen to MANOWAR! They're quite ridiculous, but they're so enthusiastic about what they do that I can't not enjoy their music.

So ridiculous!

I tried self teaching myself, but I found that I just didn't have the time to learn Latin on my own. I will eventually have to do a little bit of self teaching, just because the course I'm taking teaches classical Latin, while I want to know ecclesiastical Latin instead. Still, the switch shouldn't be too hard.

Shouldn't be. Some new vocabulary, probably pinched from Ancient Greek or newly coined, slightly different syntax and pronunciation.

A pity that Lady Philosophy doesn't show up more. She was an interesting character. Interestingly enough, Boethius is actually a canonized saint, though it took forever for that happened. He was for a long time confused with another saint named Severinus, but eventually the distinction was made, and Boethius got canonized in the 19th century.

I actually think Lady Philosophy is very sweet really. A bit like your first teacher (is supposed to be so as not to terrify you for life), which is appropriate given the context.

Yeah, some of the more brilliant philosophers occasionally get branded as dumb, hence the dunce cap. St. Thomas Aquinas was called "dumb ox" by some of his fellow classmates because they thought he was stupid. It only became clear that he was brilliant a little bit later. I think there's a certain level of intelligence that makes you look incomprehensibly stupid to others.

Allow me to paraphrase Bede again: the poet Caedmon would think on the Biblical works read to him like a cow chewing the cud and he would compose the most beautiful verse imaginable, like the very angels had whispered it in his ears.
And Caedmon was an illiterate cowherd. Dumb and intelligent aren't mutually exclusive.

Well, I will actually have to learn more about the contemporary and modern philosophers. I just haven't yet touched on them yet. I have had the occasional exposure to them, but only indirectly. For example, last semester I had a course called Philosophy of the Human Person which went from the pre-socratic philosophers up to post-modernism, so while I haven't ever taken course directly on those such as Descartes or David Hume, I've still had courses that do talk about them. So there are some of the modern era such as Hume, Descartes, and Kant that I'm actually somewhat familiar with.

I just get confused because post-modernism and modernism is very much not my thing.
I have a question I want to ask my tutor later today, and it's kind of an involved question, so I was planning it out in my head so it would sound . . . sane. And I realised I used the phrase "latent medievalism" in a positive context.

YES. So very much. I hate it almost as much as not being able to take a course because I lack the right prerequisites. We have a theology course next semester called "Friars in Renaissance Florence" that I wanted to take, especially since we're taught by Dominican friars who would know something about this. However, I lacked a second tier theology course as a prerequisite, so I'm taking Reformation theology instead.

If it helps, Reformation theology is still very interesting.

*pumps fist in the air*

Expeditio sacra!

I know! So fun to read about too.
I'm even chuffed I knew what that was, and then remembered there was a Latin wikipedia too.

This, is why I'm glad I don't live in a normal college dorm.

He gave in about five minutes after I posted because we'd all called the Porters on him. As had the people the next staircase over.

Currently doing this physics essay on Space Science due to be handed in in 5 and a half hours.

My current mind.

Awwww.
That's adorable.
I demand Cassie makes herself an avvie of her in space acting like that.

[LaZodiac]

Yay, I got my Starman Messanger Bag in the mail! It's too small for my laptop though, because it is to awesome. Thankfully, my Mom knows tailors. I'll just get the bag extended.

[Heliomance]

Well that's a bit thick.
Bernard of Chartres said that we are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. How can you just discard several hundred years of thought just because it was founded on or based around principles that were later proven wrong or incorrect?

I thought that was Isaac Newton.

[CurlyKitGirl]

I thought that was Isaac Newton.

First attributed to Bernard of Chartres, but most famously by Isaac newton.

[Elemental]

Makes sense. If something sounds suitably smart, more than one person is going to say it.
Even more so if it's practical.

[DraPrime]

Took a while of flipping through Wikipedia, and while I couldn't find anything concrete on it, I have a rough theory based upon about two dozen languages and my knowledge of PIE (Proto-Indo-European) I can say this:
with the exception of Ancient Egyptians hieroglyphs (which read left-to-right) the earliest alphabets as opposed to logoglyphs and so on, were written right-to-left.
The earliest of these being the Proto-Sinaitic language which is thought by scholars to be the ancestor to the Phoenician alphabet. And as you can see from the article, nearly all modern languages are descended from it.
In fact, as far as I could tell, we have Ancient Greek (at least in the West with languages using the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets) to thank for both having vowels in the alphabet and for writing left-to-right; even though the latter only became common in the C5^th - C4[sup]th[sup] BC.

I wonder if the left-to-right thing in Ancient Egypt was caused by their use of ink, and the dominance of right-handedness? If you write left-to-right with your left hand, you can very easily smudge the ink that you write on. As far as I know, the Egyptians were some of the first to write left-to-right, perhaps to avoid smudging their papyrus. That could have possibly spilled over into the rest of civilization, giving us our current system. Then again, other societies wrote right-to-left with ink, so I could very well be dead wrong.

I am not ashamed that my immediate thought was "But I'm at Oxford. Isn't that cool enough for you?"
Then I remembered that a lot of ex-colonies stole all the names of our towns and cities and counties. I'm looking at you Cornwall, Canada!

Heh, we do steal a lot. Especially up here in New England (I mean just look at this region's name) all the town names are outrageously British, though occasionally they get pretty weird. I'm looking at you Braintree. Though we do have some non-British names for our things, which mostly come from the names of the local tribes. For example, this state is named after the Massachusett tribe.

Lucky.
I'd have thought those things were kind of compulsory. Here I can do that. If I don't mind missing lectures (which are optional) and classes and tutorials (which aren't).

They are mandatory, but somehow no one caught me. Also, what exactly is the difference between a class and a lecture at Oxford? For us, we just go to our classes to hear lectures, so I'm getting the feeling that there's some difference in terminology here.

Well that's a bit thick.
Bernard of Chartres said that we are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. How can you just discard several hundred years of thought just because it was founded on or based around principles that were later proven wrong or incorrect?
Yes, some suppositions were wrong, but the conclusions they reached are still worth merit and understanding even if based off of faulty ideas. Hell, some of the most interesting medieval dialogues were based off a direct interaction with previous ideas and the dynamism created was used to prove and disprove equally!

Yeah...I'm pretty much in agreement with you. Medieval philosophy is critically underrated. I'd argue that the philosophical endeavors of the 13th century scholastics is as great, if not greater, than the explosion of philosophical thought during the Enlightenment. Ah well.

Yet another book added to your Things I'd Like To Read List?
I'd actually recommend the entire website. The TEAMS editions of medieval works is very thorough and they all come with comprehensive notes and introductions for the budding scholar or fan of context.
The Cloud is more of a mystic book than outright theology or spiritualism, but mysticism is a tricky genre anyway.
*adds The Ladder of Divine Ascent to her list*

Mysticism is indeed tricky, but it's sometimes more enjoyable than straight up theology. Things like the Summa Theologica can be rather dry at times.

Shouldn't be. Some new vocabulary, probably pinched from Ancient Greek or newly coined, slightly different syntax and pronunciation.

Exactly. Switching to classical Latin will actually in some ways be worse for me. I've already gotten used to using prayers written in ecclesiastical Latin, so I've actually gotten fairly used to the ecclesiastical way of pronouncing it.

I actually think Lady Philosophy is very sweet really. A bit like your first teacher (is supposed to be so as not to terrify you for life), which is appropriate given the context.

Amen to that.

Allow me to paraphrase Bede again: the poet Caedmon would think on the Biblical works read to him like a cow chewing the cud and he would compose the most beautiful verse imaginable, like the very angels had whispered it in his ears.
And Caedmon was an illiterate cowherd. Dumb and intelligent aren't mutually exclusive.

Man...I need to read more Bede. I occasionally get a snippet of his works in the Divine Office, but not often enough.

I just get confused because post-modernism and modernism is very much not my thing.
I have a question I want to ask my tutor later today, and it's kind of an involved question, so I was planning it out in my head so it would sound . . . sane. And I realised I used the phrase "latent medievalism" in a positive context.

Modern philosophy I don't actually have a problem with as a whole. A lot of it is wrong, but thinkers like Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, etc. are so opposed to each other that it's hard to criticize them as a whole. Post-modernism on the other hand is just...stupid. I'd actually argue that some of the philosophy expounded by it really fails to be philosophy anymore. My big problem is that a lot of post-modernists just completely reject the idea of any objective truth. This of course runs into the problem with such views:

1. There is no truth.
2. For that to be so, 1 has to be true.
3. Therefore, there must be truth, because otherwise you just get a contradiction by using truth to disprove truth.

Post-modernists answer this by just saying "Well we just reject the law of non-contradiction" so that they don't have to actually follow logic. It's the philosophical equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and yelling "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

If it helps, Reformation theology is still very interesting.

It is, and it's important to know the arguments of those you disagree with, but the Italian Reinaissance is just so cool. Though the Northern and Felmish Renaissances had better painters.

I know! So fun to read about too.
I'm even chuffed I knew what that was, and then remembered there was a Latin wikipedia too.

Latin wikipedia is pretty amazing. I'm very amused by attempts to Latinize modern words. For example, I apparently live in the state of "Massachusetta". Who knew?

He gave in about five minutes after I posted because we'd all called the Porters on him. As had the people the next staircase over.

Victory!

edit:

Also, one thing for everyone:

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! MY LAST EXAM IS DONE! HOOOOORAAAAAAY!!!!! Medieval philosophy is done for now!

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Still, Kant is quite cool. I like his categorical imperatives. I even wrote my big ethics paper on them last year.

Mmmh, I find his categorical imperatives quite flawed. Saw an article a while ago that used the categorical imperative to prove that adoption was immoral.

It is worth learning. Avicenna is particularly interesting with his study of causality and metaphysics.

I must say, I dislike the latizinization of their names. Ibn Sina isn't that hard to remember, and neither is Ibn Rushd. Of course, their long names are a bit more ridiculous... ʾAbū l-Walīd Muḥammad bin ʾAḥmad bin Rušd for ibn Rushd, and Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā for ibn Sina, and it's a bit weird to know them just be "son of Rushd" and "son of Sina", but yeah.

It just feels a little... disrespectful to call them by Latin bastardizations of their name.

Thomistic theology is the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. It simply borrows his name, which is fitting. It's fun stuff.

Ah, St. Thomas Aquinas. I've heard a LOT about him, he's basically the most famous figure in theology, or the historiography of theology or whatever the equivalent is. When was he alive?
He also has a badass name.

Oh man...mountains. Rhode Island has pretty much none of those. One of their highest points of elevation is a garbage dump. I'm so envious.

Well, it's a small mountain, 233m, 764 feet.

Spoiler

Show

That's the city from most of the way up the mountain. The circles buildings is the university. That's how awesome the location is.

I'll support you there on Russian, but the other languages...eh. Arabic does have very cool writing.

Well, English and French I don't get much choice, they're the national languages. I just happen to be good at them, and also yeah I do like French. And the other option, if I didn't take French, would be to switch to Spanish, and I HATE spanish.

This, is why I'm glad I don't live in a normal college dorm.

I'm not really all that excited for dorm life. I'm hoping I get into one of the MORE dorms instead: they're just large town-houses split amongst several students. Which would be awesome.

Took a while of flipping through Wikipedia, and while I couldn't find anything concrete on it, I have a rough theory based upon about two dozen languages and my knowledge of PIE (Proto-Indo-European) I can say this:
with the exception of Ancient Egyptians hieroglyphs (which read left-to-right) the earliest alphabets as opposed to logoglyphs and so on, were written right-to-left.
The earliest of these being the Proto-Sinaitic language which is thought by scholars to be the ancestor to the Phoenician alphabet. And as you can see from the article, nearly all modern languages are descended from it.
In fact, as far as I could tell, we have Ancient Greek (at least in the West with languages using the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets) to thank for both having vowels in the alphabet and for writing left-to-right; even though the latter only became common in the C5^th - C4[sup]th[sup] BC.

Yeah, this is basically how it works. Not sure WHY the Greeks wrote left-to-right. Maybe they figured out they'd smudge their hands less?

It must be read! (And my list is very long too)
It's a scream although, as you may expect with a poem in the oral tradition, there are several set forumulae and the battle sequences can get a bit repetitive.
Also Roland is a doorknob.
I actually found myself enjoying the political side more. All the intrigue.

Oh I'm a sucker for political intrigue. There is NOTHING so captivating as well-written intrigue, in this young soul's opinion.

Cool.
Our faculty had really boring lectures on Intro the Literary Theory that pretty much killed off my (and most of my 'class'mates) interest in that field, except in a very few specific areas.
Areas which we were already interested in and studying beforehand because they were our go-to areas for critics and ways of analysing texts.

I hope I don't have to do any literary theory... I'm good at it, but honestly being able to analyze books doesn't enhance my enjoyment of them. It takes away some of the magic, personally. Some books don't suffer from analysis: Chronicle of a Death Foretold is still brilliant even after having written at least 5 essays on that novella, but most suffer from having to write about them.

That sounds like the most horrendous thing in the world.
I haven't had exams in two years. And then I only had four. I don't I sat that many exams in one go since . . . GCSEs.
Speaking of, my sister has about twenty-six of those. Although some of those are coursework - or as they call them now 'class assessed and monitored portfolios'. Which is basically coursework under controlled conditions.

Aye, it's pretty horrific. Have to do 2 of the physics papers the afternoon. I kinda understudied for them. Ooops.
Let's just hope that there are lots of questions about nuclear physics on them? I'm good at that part...

That . . . could be fun. If hard. I had a hard time writing a 1000 word piece of coursework in appropriate academic French three years ago. I couldn't imagine what it would be like now.

Yeah, something tells me that I'm not gonna really do that.

Stop being mean and teasing my about this compulsion.

I have no idea what you're talking about, surely.

Okay, that's just beautiful. Puts a whole new spin on 'word art' doesn't it?

Isn't it just? I have this thing, and shuddup I know it's a horrible idea, but I have this thing, and I'm going to translate it into arabic and have it drawn up all pretty-like and get a tattoo of it. Mmk? Mmk.

You're going to rock socks off your university studies.

One can only hope!

I am not ashamed that my immediate thought was "But I'm at Oxford. Isn't that cool enough for you?"
Then I remembered that a lot of ex-colonies stole all the names of our towns and cities and counties. I'm looking at you Cornwall, Canada!

I'm currently living in what used to be York, Canada, my grandpa was born along the banks of the Thames, near Chatham-Kent. My grandma was from nearby Blenheim. A couple of my friends are going to go to university in London. My grandparents' city, Waterloo, is adjacent to a city that used to be called Berlin until WWI.

[Thufir]

...that was a mildly disturbing dream. I dreamt that I ordered AT to set himself on fire and burn himself alive, then watched as he did so.

Some sort of boar was involved as well, also under my control. I think I might be turning evil, guys.

That's fine, so long as you become classy evil. Refined tastes and whatnot. Do evil with style.

It'd be amusing if my rants/gushing about things I love/general discourse actually educated people wouldn't it?

I learned more about analysing and writing essays about english from talking to you than I did in school, certainly.

Oh god, I cannot compete with the multi-quote gods!

Dragonprime is a multi-quote god now? What, are we just giving the title away? Most of those posts only quoted one previous post, just split it up into bits.
This is a multi-quote post.

Well, if you claim to be a ditz, you do a damn good job at hiding it with epic rants and intelligent discussion.

Well, over the internet she has time to think things through, plus the epic rants and intelligent discussions are on subjects she's very familiar with.
IRL... sometimes not so much.

What do people do when they feel their life is a waste and always will be?

Get over it. What else can one do?
Also, this.

I would just give up.

MWAHAHAHAHAHA! Fear my multi-quote powers!

Allow me to scream in fury briefly because the absolute GIT across the hall from me - the two foot wide hall - is blaring out atrociously bad electro-dance music at club level decibels!!!!!
At twenty past eleven in the evening!
At least everyone else in my staircase is joining in with me on our 'shout the moron into respecting his fellow humans - exam taking humans' crusade!
Lksdnfoiuabrdf S\lacknfs\dl!!!!!1!!eleven!

This far away from calling the Porters!

I trust "this far" was actually a negative distance.

I know its morning out there in Curlylandia,

lulwut.
What part of "twenty past eleven in the evening" was unclear?

Currently doing this physics essay on Space Science due to be handed in in 5 and a half hours.

My current mind.

Space. So much space. Gotta see it all. Gotta see it all. Gotta go to space.

Then I remembered that a lot of ex-colonies stole all the names of our towns and cities and counties. I'm looking at you Cornwall, Canada!

Why would they even want to steal the name of Cornwall, of all places?

[Elemental]

Firstly, two hundred and thirty-three metres isn't a mountain!
I think the lower limit is six hundred metres.

Secondly, Cornwall has an awesome history.
If I do remember correctly, that's the origin of my family's last name.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Firstly, two hundred and thirty-three metres isn't a mountain!
I think the lower limit is six hundred metres.

Secondly, Cornwall has an awesome history.
If I do remember correctly, that's the origin of my family's last name.

It's a mountain. A really old mountain, but still a mountain. It's called "Mount Royal", therefore mountain.

[Elemental]

It's a mountain. A really old mountain, but still a mountain. It's called "Mount Royal", therefore mountain.

I suppose, if it's the tallest naturally occurring thing in Rhode Island, it counts as a mountain in relation to everything nearby.
Good thing there are no redwoods around.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I suppose, if it's the tallest naturally occurring thing in Rhode Island, it counts as a mountain in relation to everything nearby.
Good thing there are no redwoods around.

Rhode Island? Eng: Mount Royal --> Fre: Mont Royal --> Md Fre: Mont Real --> Montreal

And that, my friends, is why Montreal is called Montreal.

"Real" being the Middle French word for "royal".

Yeah, it's a bit shallow for a mountain. But hey, it's what it's been called for 400 years, hard to argue with that.

[Elemental]

Rhode Island? Eng: Mount Royal --> Fre: Mont Royal --> Md Fre: Mont Real --> Montreal

And that, my friends, is why Montreal is called Montreal.

"Real" being the Middle French word for "royal".

Yeah, it's a bit shallow for a mountain. But hey, it's what it's been called for 400 years, hard to argue with that.

Damnation.
I seem to have lost track of where everyone is from. Again.
Edit: It was Dragonprime who lives in Providence. I think...
Damn quotes everywhere...

[DraPrime]

Mmmh, I find his categorical imperatives quite flawed. Saw an article a while ago that used the categorical imperative to prove that adoption was immoral.

I'll admit, I do find them lacking at times. They're not perfect, and they can be abused, but they can be used as a good general tool. Basically, it just asks you to treat others well and keep your system of ethics consistent and logical. Not all that bad. I'd have to see this article to see whether or not they were using the categorical imperatives correctly. They might have abused them.

I must say, I dislike the latizinization of their names. Ibn Sina isn't that hard to remember, and neither is Ibn Rushd. Of course, their long names are a bit more ridiculous... ʾAbū l-Walīd Muḥammad bin ʾAḥmad bin Rušd for ibn Rushd, and Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā for ibn Sina, and it's a bit weird to know them just be "son of Rushd" and "son of Sina", but yeah.

It just feels a little... disrespectful to call them by Latin bastardizations of their name.

I can sympathize, since my last name (Biedrzycki) gets heavily bastardized, but over a thousand years of history have made the Latinizations like Avicenna and Averroes common, and so to a certain extent we just have to deal with it.

Ah, St. Thomas Aquinas. I've heard a LOT about him, he's basically the most famous figure in theology, or the historiography of theology or whatever the equivalent is. When was he alive?
He also has a badass name.

St. Thomas Aquinas was alive in the 13th century. He was originally born in Italy, but spent much of his life in France. Interestingly, Aquinas isn't really part of his name. It's just that he was from the city of Aquino, so he got that name. He is pretty outstanding though. One of my favorite thinkers of all time.

Well, English and French I don't get much choice, they're the national languages. I just happen to be good at them, and also yeah I do like French. And the other option, if I didn't take French, would be to switch to Spanish, and I HATE spanish.

Awww man, I actually quite like Spanish. I'm going to have to learn how to use it anyways, since we have a lot of immigrants from Puerto Rico in Boston with whom I might be working. Put this together with my future Latin and Greek studies, and I should know English, Polish, Latin, Greek, and Spanish by the time I'm done with seminary.

I'm not really all that excited for dorm life. I'm hoping I get into one of the MORE dorms instead: they're just large town-houses split amongst several students. Which would be awesome.

It all comes down to who you end up living with.

Yeah, this is basically how it works. Not sure WHY the Greeks wrote left-to-right. Maybe they figured out they'd smudge their hands less?

I don't know about that. I think the Greeks mostly wrote on wax tablets, so they're not likely to have smudged their hands. Maybe it was Egyptian influence? Egypt had a lot of influence on early Greek culture.

Damnation.
I seem to have lost track of where everyone is from. Again.
Edit: It was Dragonprime who lives in Providence. I think...
Damn quotes everywhere...

Yeah, I'm the one living in Rhode Island.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Damnation.
I seem to have lost track of where everyone is from. Again.
Edit: It was Dragonprime who lives in Providence. I think...
Damn quotes everywhere...

DP is generic East-Coast USA (the Northeast all blurs together for me)
I'm Toronto heading on Montreal.
Koorli's Oxcamfordbridge, emphases on the cattle and the natural-crossing-places
Thufir's... I don't even know. Hey Thuf, where are you in Englandshire?

[DraPrime]

is a multi-quote god now? What, are we just giving the title away? Most of those posts only quoted one previous post, just split it up into bits.
This is a multi-quote post.

I challenge you to your good title. Tonight. In the ring.

*dons boxing gloves*

DP is generic East-Coast USA (the Northeast all blurs together for me)
I'm Toronto heading on Montreal.
Koorli's Oxcamfordbridge, emphases on the cattle and the natural-crossing-places
Thufir's... I don't even know. Hey Thuf, where are you in Englandshire?

I can see why we'd blur together. The rest of the New England just rips off the greatness of Massachusetts and tries to be as cool as us.

[Thufir]

Koorli's Oxcamfordbridge, emphases on the cattle and the natural-crossing-places.

Only during term time. In the holidays she's in Penzance, of Pirates fame. The southwestest bit of England.

Thufir's... I don't even know. Hey Thuf, where are you in Englandshire?

Newcastle upon Tyne area. Pretty much the northeastest bit of England.

[Elemental]

I can see why we'd blur together. The rest of the New England just rips off the greatness of Massachusetts and tries to be as cool as us.

It's also because all those states are so small and jammed together.
Everything's so much more spread out in Australia.

[Teddy]

We started realising an electronics project today. Basically, it's a circuit that will connect an 8-bit ADC with an 8-bit DAC through a serial cable. First we spent a great amount of time building a 3-bit decoder filling 1/4th of our availible space. Then we realised that we could completely remove it with only minor changes to our blueprint. Jay...

[CurlyKitGirl]

I wonder if the left-to-right thing in Ancient Egypt was caused by their use of ink, and the dominance of right-handedness? If you write left-to-right with your left hand, you can very easily smudge the ink that you write on. As far as I know, the Egyptians were some of the first to write left-to-right, perhaps to avoid smudging their papyrus. That could have possibly spilled over into the rest of civilization, giving us our current system. Then again, other societies wrote right-to-left with ink, so I could very well be dead wrong.

Possibly. I don't really know much about the history of writing that far back, but it seems logical that you'd not want to spoil your writing. Well, at least there are probably people in my uni who are specialists on writing this far back. There's a Professor in Akkadian hanging around somewhere; and there are compulsory manuscript classes in most Masters courses which would involve handwriting.
*sighs*
Now I really want to know.
Maybe if I ask a tutor he'd know who to contact?

Heh, we do steal a lot. Especially up here in New England (I mean just look at this region's name) all the town names are outrageously British, though occasionally they get pretty weird. I'm looking at you Braintree. Though we do have some non-British names for our things, which mostly come from the names of the local tribes. For example, this state is named after the Massachusett tribe.

Braintree. Why.
Then again, you look at the UK in general and we're . . . a mess.
Eboracum (Latinised version of the Celtic name) becomes Ebrauc (bastardised Romano-Celtic after the Romans left) becomes Eoforwīc (Old English for 'wild-boar town') becomes Jorvik (technically the Kingdom of Jorvik) becomes York.
At least your town's names didn't change. Much.

They are mandatory, but somehow no one caught me. Also, what exactly is the difference between a class and a lecture at Oxford? For us, we just go to our classes to hear lectures, so I'm getting the feeling that there's some difference in terminology here.

A lecture you go to a faculty room (usually) or another one where loads (or not very many, I've been to lectures with four people in) of people sit down and are lectured for fifty minutes.
A class is small, almost never more than six people have close interaction with the professor, do work, group discussion and so on.
At lectures you only get lectured.
At seminars and classes you can interact with the professor and other people.

Yeah...I'm pretty much in agreement with you. Medieval philosophy is critically underrated. I'd argue that the philosophical endeavors of the 13th century scholastics is as great, if not greater, than the explosion of philosophical thought during the Enlightenment. Ah well.

If you consider that aside from the Greek and Roman philosophers there just wasn't that much major academic work at all outside of monasteries, and then suddenly everyone wants to be educated and are becoming more aware of themselves and want to know about how they interact with the world on every level.
They were quite literally breaking new ground that could get them killed.
While I'm not really a fan of philosophy in general, some of their ideas were just straight up beautiful.

Mysticism is indeed tricky, but it's sometimes more enjoyable than straight up theology. Things like the Summa Theologica can be rather dry at times.

True that. Depending on the subject of the work you can compare it to many, many works because people read a lot more widely than most usually do now.

Exactly. Switching to classical Latin will actually in some ways be worse for me. I've already gotten used to using prayers written in ecclesiastical Latin, so I've actually gotten fairly used to the ecclesiastical way of pronouncing it.

It's mostly in the vowels isn't it? I think in ecclesiastical Latin the vowels are more clipped?

Man...I need to read more Bede. I occasionally get a snippet of his works in the Divine Office, but not often enough.

Just for you then, Bede's account of Caedmon. In parallel text! OhmyHeavenssuchnerdery.
I quite like Bede. He's very approachable as an eccleasiastical historian. And surprisingly dry (in a good way).

Modern philosophy I don't actually have a problem with as a whole. A lot of it is wrong, but thinkers like Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, etc. are so opposed to each other that it's hard to criticize them as a whole. Post-modernism on the other hand is just...stupid. I'd actually argue that some of the philosophy expounded by it really fails to be philosophy anymore. My big problem is that a lot of post-modernists just completely reject the idea of any objective truth. This of course runs into the problem with such views:

1. There is no truth.
2. For that to be so, 1 has to be true.
3. Therefore, there must be truth, because otherwise you just get a contradiction by using truth to disprove truth.

Post-modernists answer this by just saying "Well we just reject the law of non-contradiction" so that they don't have to actually follow logic. It's the philosophical equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and yelling "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

It probably says something when I don't understand contradictory messages that add together to make one whole concept.
That's what my degree is! Mostly. Kind of. If you squint.
I also think post-modernists are a little frustrated because they can't really think up anything 'new' to say; or rather, they can, but they want to say it in an entirely 'new' way so as not to be classed as something 'outdated'.

It is, and it's important to know the arguments of those you disagree with, but the Italian Reinaissance is just so cool. Though the Northern and Felmish Renaissances had better painters.

I know, I know. But it's still fun, albeit mostly concerned with central and Northern Europe. Too much time spent indoors in winter being bored I say.
Eh, at least you can do witch-burnings. That's cool. You can read Shakespeare in a witch-burning context too.

Latin wikipedia is pretty amazing. I'm very amused by attempts to Latinize modern words. For example, I apparently live in the state of "Massachusetta". Who knew?

Pluralising Massachusett (member of the tribe) then? I still don't know my inflections very well.

Victory!

*high fives*
I know!

Also, one thing for everyone:

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! MY LAST EXAM IS DONE! HOOOOORAAAAAAY!!!!! Medieval philosophy is done for now!

*high fives*
Even though I envy you.

Mmmh, I find his categorical imperatives quite flawed. Saw an article a while ago that used the categorical imperative to prove that adoption was immoral.

See, now you're having high-brow intellectual conversations in massive quotestorms!
It's catching isn't it?

Yeah, this is basically how it works. Not sure WHY the Greeks wrote left-to-right. Maybe they figured out they'd smudge their hands less?

It's bugging me too. I'll see if I can find a Professor of the History of Handwriting or something.

Oh I'm a sucker for political intrigue. There is NOTHING so captivating as well-written intrigue, in this young soul's opinion.

It bookends the poem.
Starts with politics (familial, courtly, national, international and religious) and a betrayal, then there's a battle, a badass priest who kills loads of pagans (seriously, Roland's warcry is 'Pagans are wrong and Christians are right', but as always, context is eveyrthing), then he dies, then there's a trial where the betrayer is tried for treason.
It's not exactly advanced by any means.

I hope I don't have to do any literary theory... I'm good at it, but honestly being able to analyze books doesn't enhance my enjoyment of them. It takes away some of the magic, personally. Some books don't suffer from analysis: Chronicle of a Death Foretold is still brilliant even after having written at least 5 essays on that novella, but most suffer from having to write about them.

I analyse for fun, but never within a theory, if you know what I mean. I just analyse what is fun, or important, or to see if I can string together something from this one point I noticed.

Aye, it's pretty horrific. Have to do 2 of the physics papers the afternoon. I kinda understudied for them. Ooops.
Let's just hope that there are lots of questions about nuclear physics on them? I'm good at that part...

Good luck on those then.

I have no idea what you're talking about, surely.

*pouts*
Meany-face/

Isn't it just? I have this thing, and shuddup I know it's a horrible idea, but I have this thing, and I'm going to translate it into arabic and have it drawn up all pretty-like and get a tattoo of it. Mmk? Mmk.

Actually it sounds pretty cool.

I'm currently living in what used to be York, Canada, my grandpa was born along the banks of the Thames, near Chatham-Kent. My grandma was from nearby Blenheim. A couple of my friends are going to go to university in London. My grandparents' city, Waterloo, is adjacent to a city that used to be called Berlin until WWI.

*brain asplodes*
Wat.

Secondly, Cornwall has an awesome history.
If I do remember correctly, that's the origin of my family's last name.

*high fives for Cornishness!*

Oh my. I think I have quotestorm fatigue.

[wadledo]

Possibly. I don't really know much about the history of writing that far back, but it seems logical that you'd not want to spoil your writing. Well, at least there are probably people in my uni who are specialists on writing this far back. There's a Professor in Akkadian hanging around somewhere; and there are compulsory manuscript classes in most Masters courses which would involve handwriting.
*sighs*
Now I really want to know.
Maybe if I ask a tutor he'd know who to contact?

If you figure it out, make sure to tell me.

Braintree. Why.
Then again, you look at the UK in general and we're . . . a mess.
Eboracum (Latinised version of the Celtic name) becomes Ebrauc (bastardised Romano-Celtic after the Romans left) becomes Eoforwīc (Old English for 'wild-boar town') becomes Jorvik (technically the Kingdom of Jorvik) becomes York.
At least your town's names didn't change. Much.

Lets see....
Bourne, Sandwich, Falmouth, Mashpee, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, Harwich, Brewster, Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown.
Huh, the lower cape has all the interesting names, while the upper cape has all the native names.

[Elemental]

*high fives for Cornishness!*

Oh my. I think I have quotestorm fatigue.

Well, we're not actually Cornish, but I finally managed to trace my last name to a tiny village called Tregole.
And seeing as it literally meant "from Tregole" in its original form, I suppose we're descended from people who moved away from there.

[Cobra_Ikari]

...I feel like I went to class and missed the memo that all RB posts must now meet a certain minimum page length.

So many multiquotes! D=

[Teddy]

...I feel like I went to class and missed the memo that all RB posts must now meet a certain minimum page length.

So many multiquotes! D=

That's the point when you decide that you actually aren't especially well-versed in these topics and desperately try to figure out if anything interesting at all happened earlier in your day that you can retell just to keep yourself floating.

ION:
Thursday means gaming night, and more of Hell's Highway. I think I rolled more 6's than the average (5 of about 15-20 rolls), which would be good, hadn't 4 of them been bridge demolishment rolls, where you want to roll low. 3 of them even were in a row.

I have no idea about how I'm supposed to push the bloody red-caps out of Arnhem. Or prevent the XXX corps from getting there. Or achieve anything at all, actually. It's true as one of the guys at the club said last week: The only thing that isn't dangerous in this game is being out of supply.