Re: the strength of a rope

On Sep 22, 9:17 pm, Purl Gurl <purlg...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dhuh, out of simply curiousity, why has anyone gone to the futile
effort of duplicating posts made to sci.physics to sci.usage.english?
It was one of your regular members that performed this cross posting
of two newsgroups with such contrasting interests and foci.

I am simply curious as to what caused anyne to crosspost to these two
very different newsgroups, having two very different posting styles?
Perhaps boredom; immature newsgroup members, or what?

I am not immune to to discussion of english language issues, but when
posting on sci.physics, unless that which we publish in scientific
journals, what we post on the Newsgroups is posted somewhat ad hoc and
in real time, for which most educated posters will accept if our
meanings are clear.

That is precisely the cost of posting in real-time. Fact prevails over
the grammer employed.

This does not mean that technical people are languge impaired. In
fact, I personally enjoy a skillfully constucted poem or sonnet.
Still, from an objective standpoint, I and others posted the varous
technical explanations as to why the CERN supercollider would not run
as scheduled, and the reasons why. Now from a scientific vantage
point, some of us believe that the tuning of the accelerator will
require at least another year from construction completion, and many
of us have stated from experiece our reasons why be believe this.
Some acctually believe that an accelerator of these dimension can
never operate, and have given their reasons why.

Now I. more than many other readers appreciate both physics and the
beauty of carefully constructed english language, but as with physics,
carefully constructed senentences are difficult to find today. Those
in recent history that cross my mind are those written by others for
pupular politicians. My favorite is:

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for
your country."

Wow, and I didn't even for this guy,

Kennedy also proclaimed that:

"Within 10 years, we will land a man on the moon, and return him
safely to earth."

Wow again, strong words, and those of us working in science and
technology at the time did not believe a word of it, and that moon
shot did pose great risks, more than was revealed to the public. Too
many ascent vehicle crashes, so the scientific community knew that
while we could safely plant a man on the moon, the chance of him
returning safely to earth was considered problematic...risky...very
unlikely, your call. Still, for a few flight it worked, but then
consier that today, unwilling to take the same risks, when was the
last year that man actually walked upon the moon?

I'm curious on this point...How many people today believe that we
currently have the capability of landing a man on the moon today, and
returning him safely to earth? Let me count the hands.

I guess that I'm a nut, because I've lost most of my interest in the
US Presidential election. since the outcome is obviously going to be
determine by the quantity of clueless voters that manage to stagger
their ways to the polls and who now drastically outnumber the number
of voters who vote for the people of principal who constructed this
country on the principles of Grecian Democracy, and honor, and
Spartian principals of strength and courage. Face it, how many
American voters today ever heard of the battle of Thermopylae, or what
it eventually meant to the concept of democracy.

One thing for sure, other than students, not many people alread
familiar with Thermopylae will bother to look it up, or realize that
or realize that without it democracy would have died in the womb,
never to be reborn anywhere else on our planet.

I take note of the fact that a vast majoritity of our highschools no
longer teach Ancient HIstory, nor Latin, French, Russian, German, or
Arabic. Pity. I took a year of Latin in my highschool, and hated it.
But I still remember some parts. I also hated French, one year of
which I also hated. Still, that little fragment of language education
helped me navigate in both Brussels and Paris. In college, our choices
were limited to German, Arabic, or Russian. I chose German, bercause
it had a decipherable alphabet, and since 90% of all scientific
journals are printed in English, German, or French, it became very
useful.

Today, most of my noh-recreational reading starts at the beginnings of
our civilization with the Greek Wars. Wow, this is really meaty suff,
and it would be very easy to change the frame of reference to
Washington, DC, circa 2008, without losing anything. It's simply
amazing, because all of the players are identical to those of today,
except they did not have the NYSE or the mortgage bankers to deal with
at the time. Persia (Iran) was at the time a pain to most of the then
relatively stable regions like Greece and Rome, but that was in time
very well disposed of. Not entirely well in my mind, otherwise the
Iranians today would be speaking Greek. (Just dreaming of what could
have been...you have to read the book!)

Okay, if you want to learn English language construction, you really
need to own 3 books, and study them. Book # 1 is commonaly called
"Struck and White", the names of its authors. It has a title, but
nobody except librarians and bookseller know what it is. To everyone
else, it is simply "Struck and White". It's surprisingly a paperback.

The second book has the title of "The Chicago Manual of Style", and I
have no idea who the author are since I gave my only copy to my wife.
This is also a classic, and while principally formulated to educate
you on how to write for the University of Chicago Press, it has become
the ultimate reference book on how to punctiate your writing to how to
compose your pagragraphs. The Chicago Manual of Style is in my mind
rather formal, but deos define the standard for formal writing.

For the third book I have no title or author, becasue I was taught
this writing style by John Paul Baldeagle thrugh semi-personal
instruction. An English major posting her may be able to assist,
becaue after nearly 40 years, someone likely published a book on this
subject. Primarily, it defines sentence structure. I remember 7, but
I believe there are 12. Here are a few of the exmaples that I
remember from 40 years back:

Natural order beginning:
"The thief stuck in the night, without warning."

Adverbial phase sentence order:
"Slumber was interrupted instantly, when the theif silently stuck in
the night without warning.

I believe that most readers grasp the idea, There are at least
between 5 and 9 more opening sentence structes that grab the reader.

Enjoy, and please find that Third Book, but stay far clear of linking
with sci.physics.

It's late, so please forgive my typos and spelling errors.

Harry C..






























.

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