Zack

689 reputation

bio	website	owlfolio.org
	location	Pittsburgh, PA
	age	35
visits	member for	2 years, 8 months
	seen	20 hours ago
stats	profile views	30

Hello, my name is Zachary Weinberg. I go by “Zack,” except on paper. Pleased to meet you.

I’m about thirty years old, and I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California. I’ve had most formal study in chemistry and cognitive science, but somehow I always end up working in the computer industry. My interests range all over the sciences and a little way into philosophy, plus some of the arts (notably, candle-making, pottery, and game design).

	689 reputation	bio	website	owlfolio.org	visits	member for	2 years, 8 months
28 badges		location	Pittsburgh, PA		seen	20 hours ago

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May 17	revised	What's the meaning of “what am I to do” clarify rule re "the next"
May 17	comment	How to reply to a status update for a job application? Before replying, check whether this is an automated message. They may not expect any response at all.
May 17	answered	What's the meaning of “what am I to do”
Apr 22	comment	Why is “does” sometimes pronounced “is”? @camelbrush You could write it as "what's" in informal register, but not as "what is".
Mar 27	comment	What is the proper way to mark a letter stressed in a name? I am a strict descriptivist, and I'm quite confident that most speakers don't know that anymore, so by me it no longer counts as an agreed-upon rule.
Mar 27	revised	What is the proper way to mark a letter stressed in a name? deleted 8 characters in body
Mar 27	comment	What is the proper way to mark a letter stressed in a name? Yes, I did mean diacritics, I just couldn't remember the word right then. Anyhow, your examples are inapposite, being all people with names whose spelling is dictated by a language other than English -- of course one carries over a name verbatim from another language, diacritics and all, if the technology permits. Within English, there is no universal standard for what diacritics mean, and even if someone is following a common convention (diaresis to indicate a syllable split, eg.), I think it unlikely that the majority of readers would know that was the intent.
Mar 27	revised	What is the proper way to mark a letter stressed in a name? deleted 2 characters in body
Mar 26	answered	Meaning of “I never give a sucker an even break”
Mar 26	answered	What is the proper way to mark a letter stressed in a name?
Dec 30	revised	What does the writer mean by “green fatigues”? added 171 characters in body
Dec 30	comment	Can less be used without any comparison? It sets my StdAmEng native speaker's teeth on edge, but 'very less' is anecdotally the preferred way to say things like these examples in at least some variants of Indian English. (India the country, just to be 100% clear.) I'm told it's probably influence from Hindi.
Dec 30	comment	What does the writer mean by “green fatigues”? I would say this since I answered the question, but I think that this is not GR in context. Knowing that "green fatigues" can refer to a type of clothing does not rule out the possibility that there is also a figurative meaning, and the writer quoted is known for packing in the figurativity and the symbolism.
Dec 30	answered	What does the writer mean by “green fatigues”?
Dec 30	revised	“Place the television on/in the left corner and sofa set at/in the right corner” added 30 characters in body
Dec 29	comment	“Place the television on/in the left corner and sofa set at/in the right corner” @Jim I have been surprised so many times by dialectal differences ("Frequency of bus is very less" is apparently the correct way to say "Buses are very infrequent" in some registers of Indian English!) that I have given up on saying someone is in error. I'll only go as far as "If you say that people will not understand what you mean," and "The TV is on the corner of the room" isn't even that bad.
Dec 29	answered	“Place the television on/in the left corner and sofa set at/in the right corner”
Dec 27	comment	What is the process called to change “fire” → “fiery”? @Jay The "one regular rule" principle winds up being more analytically useful in descriptive linguistics. I was oversimplifying a little for effect, but only a little. If you're curious, read up on "morphological productivity" (the references in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_%28linguistics%29 look plausible to me)
Dec 26	comment	Salt tastes salty then water tastes …? Bitterness has little or nothing to do with burning. There are thousands of chemical compounds that taste bitter; only a subclass of them are produced by burning food. Quinine, for instance, is quite bitter and has nothing to do with combustion. (The common thread, as far as science is aware, is chemical structures that are likely to be poisonous.)
Dec 26	comment	Time and tide wait for no man Perhaps Britain's long and variably honorable tradition of sea-faring provides motivation for the change.