Seems like a perfect example of someone holding a stereotype that the object of the stereotype finds wholly unfamiliar.
My stereotype of the Dalai Lama as a guy who eats a lot of pizza has been utterly destroyed.
"I felt better after having talked with him, I think everyone does"
Brilliant! If I ever get the chance to meet the Dalai Lama, I think I'll try to tickle him, consequences be damned. After all, you only live once.
Seems like a perfect example of someone holding a stereotype that the object of the stereotype finds wholly unfamiliar.
Oh, the Dalai Lama is just your basic nerdy Asian guy.
5: I don't see a pencil case, though.
Or maybe I don't even see pencil cases.
He's going to have to be more of an asshole if he wants to get some women.
He could at least put together a rice rocket to compete with the Popemobile.
It's sad when the Dalai Lama is laughing at you, not with you.
I would do that, if I had the chance. That is an awesome thing to do.
The accents* and awkwardness remind me of Flight of the Conchords.
*Shut up, I know it's the wrong island.
||
Hello, Unfogged. I would like to tell you about my day. I (for some reason) agreed to teach a roomful of undergrads -- of wildly varying computer ability and programming experience -- how to do some somewhat sophisticated web programming, over the course of about four days. Today was day two. Having already gone far off the rails of my lesson plan on day one, my plan was to write the solution to the assignment I had hastily given them and then, basically, wing it. I was distracted from this plan by [ buncha bullshit ], and with fifteen minutes before class began, I started to write the homework solution. First, I realized that it was impossible without using techniques I hadn't taught them. Second, it failed to work at all.
Time for class!
Okay, I thought, no plan, no homework assignment: we will make a teachable moment out of the debugging process! All things considered this went okay, until I got into what I'll call "programming mode", taking opportunity presented by fixing the bugs in the homework solution to improve it, and in the process introduce concept after concept after concept after... say, you're all staring at me sort of glassy-eyed. You didn't retain any of that, did you? And yes, you can smell the flop sweat, can't you? The next couple of hours were devoted to free work on what we had learned, during the course of which I asked several students how they were doing. "Well, you could talk more about concepts when you introduce them", one said doubtfully. "You've been doing this for so long -- of course you don't know how to teach it!" another said, helpfully.
Finally, it was time for me to leave. I stood and, with a flourish, accidentally unplugged all the computers in the lab.
Ha ha!
|>
That is a awesome flourish. Good job Tweety!
And then you introduced the concept of the kill switch.
And that's how you saved the dance-off?
That is a truly magnificent terrible day.
In keeping with the topic, 13 should end with "At that moment the students were enlightened.".
18 actually made me check my fly. I wouldn't have been a bit surprised.
13: You have my sympathy. A couple of times I've agreed to run tutorial sessions on simulation software at conferences, and it went pretty terribly. In the most spectacular failure, the only step I successfully completed was downloading the package: "now that you got the .tar.gz file, extract it and run 'make'... huh. And if you see that message, something went wrong. Maybe I changed my Fortran compiler since the last time I compiled this? Um, no time to figure out what this weird library incompatibility is on the fly, but luckily I have another installed copy of this software I've been using for months, so let me just run it and.... huh. Never segfaulted before."
And the best bit of the story is that the class has two more days to run!
I'm sure you'll do better the next couple of sessions.
Was that encouraging/reassuring? I really suck at encouraging or reassuring and what with the boy and the new coworkers, I should practice.
24.2: Wasn't there a how-to thread on that back in the day?
And the best bit of the story is that the class has two more days to run!
This is exactly what I was going to say. HAVE FUN!
Wasn't there a how-to thread on that back in the day?
You aren't supposed to praise people for their intelligence, right?
Bring several cases of beer to the next class. That way, you can be the teacher with the free beer.
You can't praise intelligence or cleavage, I think.
27: Something like "Get to Work, Stupid" is sticking in my head as the post title, but I can't find it.
30: If you were harder working, you could have found it.
my plan was to write the solution to the assignment I had hastily given them and then, basically, wing it
This seems to be where things went wrong. These classes are multiple hours long? And your plan was basically to "wing it"?
I'm not sure the fact that you were distracted from this plan prior to class hurt you much, in the end.
13 sounds wildly anxiety-provoking to me, also. On par with bad dreams about realizing during final exams that you forgot about a class all semester.
21 is my experience with lots of OSes. i consider windows xp to be the pinacle of the whole computer tech thing.
It's cool. It's not like anyone was paying tens of thousands of dollars or taking on nondischargeable debt to take this class.
I hope you got paid more than five dollars.
This seems to be where things went wrong.
Well, yeah.
These classes are multiple hours long?
Even better, these classes are of a basically indeterminate length -- it's up to me to figure out when we're done, and how much we should cover on each day. I will be judged purely by how well these students (with no prior programming experience) are able to program come next week.
I'm not sure the fact that you were distracted from this plan prior to class hurt you much, in the end.
You're not wrong, but the genesis of the "wing it" plan can be found somewhere in the interaction between the first day of class (where I covered a bare fraction of what I hoped to cover, and had to radically reshape the structure of the class on the fly) and the fact that I still have my regular ol' full-time job that is progressing simultaneously with this class, such that I really didn't have a hell of a lot of time to figure out what day two's plan ought to be. That said, if the homework had actually, you know, worked, things would have been smoother.
N.B. commenters with teaching experience: yes, go ahead and cackle.
Before the next class, make certain you are wearing clothes.
35: thankfully, it isn't. They're being paid a stipend to live free-of-charge in the dorms and get summer research experience. The only thing at stake is whether or not they'll be at all useful to our lab while they're here.
the genesis of the "wing it" plan can be found somewhere in the interaction between the first day of class (where I covered a bare fraction of what I hoped to cover, and had to radically reshape the structure of the class on the fly) and the fact that I still have my regular ol' full-time job that is progressing simultaneously with this class, such that I really didn't have a hell of a lot of time to figure out what day two's plan ought to be.
In that case a better plan might have been calling in sick.
I've winged a lot of under-1-hour classes when I was too busy to prep, but much more than that is going to be tough, unless you've taught the material many times previously. And also those were 50 minute classes in the course of a full semester, not multiple hour classes that were each supposed to be one-quarter of an entire course.
They're being paid a stipend to live free-of-charge in the dorms and get summer research experience.
Oh, well this is disappointing new information. Do you at least still get teaching evaluations from students at the end of the course, I hope?
39-- Oh, I was kidding. That totally sounds like the kind of thing I would have done (well, minus the teaching about advanced web programming thing).
Perhaps as a result of similar experiences, I now tend to overprepare. An old boss taught me to literally write down in full sentences the script of any public presentation, even when you know you'll go off script. That's time consuming and I don't always do it, but I really notice the difference in e.g. depositions or oral arguments vs just having an "outline" or notes about what you want to say.
42.2: part of the problem is that I have an irrational confidence in my ability to wing it. I generally do pretty well with things like conference presentations if I prepare some slides and a light outline and know the material well. And I am an absolute champion of wedding toasts given with minimal preparation. Why I thought this would generalize to teaching undergrads to program is, with the fullness of hindsight, unclear.
Everybody is drunk at a wedding and only fifty percent of an undergrad class is. That's completely different.
An old boss taught me to literally write down in full sentences the script of any public presentation, even when you know you'll go off script.
This is what I did when I started teaching.
These kinds of basics sound closer to training than teaching, if that at all makes sense. For something where there are steps you have to go through in particular order, winging it can be a real problem because if you've got the steps down and it's what you routinely do, you don't really think about how it goes together. It's kind of like when people try to give directions and then realize that they no longer pay attention to the intermediate streets/landmarks along the way.
I've found that I can wing short presentations that aren't really teaching but just convey information/explanations or I can do longer presentations with just some outlines/notes/slides, but that I no matter how much or how little preparation I do for teaching it's all unsatisfying mediocrity. For some reason I'm more comfortable with (workplace) training - maybe it's the steps.
45: Me too. I write out my whole lecture, and then radically deviate while teaching. It's magnificent.
I was surprised how often in high school and college people didn't know the room numbers of the courses they were in. Sure, they looked it up at the start, but then it became a matter of going to the same places at the same times.
Oh, wow. Nobody's cackling. I'm sure we've all had that class in one form or another, in which you come out of it realizing (with a self-smack-in-the-face), "Self, this teaching stuff takes planning, and pacing, and all that, after all."
43: part of the problem is that I have an irrational confidence in my ability to wing it.
Yeah. Rarely works except at an advanced level, I think, or later in the course, where the students are advanced, you've already established ground principles, and you have at least some kind of outline prepared, however sketchy.
We probably all messed up in teaching at the beginning. There might be some outliers, and we really don't need to hear from them!
Sympathies, Tweety.
As for the OP, I'm unhappy to report that I've inherited the Stormcrow (and others?) video-caching problem. One piece of anecdata: I hadn't actually gotten around to watching that cello video LB posted until I clicked on it in this post.
45 & 47: Me too at first. It was especially useful when I first taught beginning language courses to figure out how to explain things in German in a way that would get across to the students what I meant, even if they didn't have the words yet.
28
I had a TA in college show up for the final with a six-pack of beer. He said "When I'm out of beer, you're out of time. Begin." Apparently, this rubbed a few people the wrong way because the department chair later asked me about it. I said I had seen nothing.
51: My Spanish instructor managed to explain a failed spree killing attempt to us in Spanish. It was a 300 level class, but it was still impressive on her part.
It was not part of the lesson. The failed shooter crashed his car into un arbol next to the door we used to get to class.
And, yes, my experience is that winging it is a terrible disaster until you've done it at least a hundred times. That "flop sweat" feeling is among the worst experiences you can have as a teacher.
Oh my god guys cool it with the sympathy, really. I'm fine! It just seemed like the kind of clusterfuck (especially given the climactic depowering) that you share with the internet. This being, as I have already established, not actually my job, the stakes for me (humiliation aside) are pretty low. Anyhow, I think I can rescue things tomorrow.
50: For some reason both the cello and this one are still the phallic symbols dude on Firefox on this computer. I just fire up IE to watch the videos.
Tweety says he can rescue it tomorrow! We will have to see whether he's at all red in the face while doing so. Hopefully he won't grimace.
Tweety, I'm really sorry about the awkwardness you're feeling as a result of all the sympathy in this thread. My condolences. (W/r/t the teaching fubar, ha ha.)
I glanced distractedly at the screen while watching TV and for a moment thought Sifu had added a "climactic deflowering" to the story.
55: Right, it's just a class not a morality play like the NBA finals.
If I inadvertently expressed any sympathy to anyone in my comments in this thread, I can only say that I am sorry that they felt sympathized with.
I'm unhappy to report that I've inherited the Stormcrow (and others?) video-caching problem.
Me too. Ctrl+F5 fixed it. FWIW, I had watched the cello video when it was first posted. I haven't watched this one yet (and I doubt I will).
63: Ctrl+F5 fixed it.
So it did for me as well. Thanks, didn't even occur to me to try that. But watch the video. People having a spot of fun. Harmless.
Okay, I watched it. It's admittedly funnier than I was expecting.
If the Dalai Lama had been on his A-game, he would've known the follow-up joke. "And then the Dalai Lama pays for his pizza, and asks, 'What about my change?' And the pizza maker says, 'Change comes from within.'"
How do you get the Dalai Lama off your front porch?
Actually, I think it's "nuke Beijing".
I visited a hotel in India when the D.L. was there. Couldn't talk my way into an impromptu audience, but I think His H. was recuperating from surgery at the time. Lots of security: mirrors being passed under cars to look for bombs and all that.
His H.
Dalai Lama dissed by the Royal Opera House (see drop down next to title--via Crooked Timber).
63: Maybe you can explain computers to Tweety.
mirrors being passed under cars to look for bombs
This is apparently SOP in Bali now after the terrorist bombings.
I guess I'm the only one who thought the joking was borderline offensive.
But it's the kind of joke that, if you object to it, gets people to tell you to "lighten up" or not ruin people's fun.
77: having just watched the video, I found it offensive. But the news reader's reaction -- he seems to know immediately that not only has the failed spectacularly but also that he's been an ass -- somewhat mitigates the harm. Put another way, you should lighten up, man.
77: I thought it was somewhere between offensive and bizarre, and didn't really think it was funny. But then, I'm in a really foul mood today.
The Dalai Lama laughing helped mitigate the harm. The presenters talking afterwards in the studio didn't help.
This, on the other hand, cracked me up.
82: the Dalai Lama was, not surprisingly, kind enough to bail the poor doofus out.
84: Yeah. It was totally a Dalai pardon.
I would like to see La Llama que llama give the Dalai Lama a call.
What on earth is offensive about watching a newspaper reporter make a jackass of himself? I assume you guys thought the DL was the butt of the joke? Please.
I don't know how you could interpret the "joking" that's offensive to refer to anything but the reporter's joking, but I guess you have.
I know the reporter is the one cracking the jokes. The point of the video is clearly not to appreciate how clever he is.
I don't think the reporter really has any idea that the joke was borderline offensive. He seems like the "lighten up" type. Of course he knows it didn't work. That's not the same thing.
I agree that the reporter doesn't seem to get what a douche he's being. The point is still to mock him.
Sure, I'm all for mocking him. I thought that was why you posted it, anyway.
Well, that's good. I guess I don't see what's offensive.
I'm also all riled up for some reason over this. Lately I've been getting too riled up here.
I guess I don't see what's offensive.
The reporter's douchery?
I used borderline because it doesn't seem like a big deal. But I'm referring to the assumption that the Dalai Lama is going to get the catchphrase reduction of Buddhism to simply seeking "to be one" with things, and then think it's funny applied to pizza. Maybe it didn't occur to him that someone with Buddhist beliefs might not have the same impression of the pizza joke?
It made me think of the Shaq ching chong thing (which, I admit, makes me chuckle in retrospect for being so off the wall, and not part of a sit down interview with Yao).
(But not on the level of ching chong stuff in general, given the longer history of that usage.)
But we air stories of douche bags all the time, with the expectation that we're going to mock them, not take their content seriously. If the douche's target comes out of the interaction looking way cooler and more composed than the douche, then where is the sting?
I guess I'm not getting where you're seeing sting. I just didn't think any of it was funny.
And I should add that there's nothing really wrong with that, with respect to posting this. I'm not criticizing the post.
By sting, I meant the sting of the offense. I know you said you only found it borderline offensive. 97 was written without seeing 95, fwiw.
Not finding it funny doesn't bother me the way finding it offensive does. Also fwiw, I think the assumption you mention in 95 is exactly what makes the reporter such a tool. (not just that.)
I'm clearly being super defensive, anyway. Sorry about that.
No one says "Make me one with everything" about pizza, though, right? You say it about a hot dog, canonically.
OT: Target's anti-union video. Thirteen minutes of union-busting, lies, and video.
Fuckers. Now where am I supposed to buy my cheap but chic crap made in China?
And I was looking forward to Target coming to Canada (though I'll likely be gone before they open here).
Now where am I supposed to buy my cheap but chic crap made in China?
Kmart.
Of course the reporter's joke is offensive, as it's a pun. Other than that, eh, not so much.
re: 13
You have my sympathy. I used to teach that sort of thing -- HTML, relational databases, VBA, whatever -- to fund myself through graduate school, and when it goes well, it's lovely but when it goes wrong, it's a bastard. Winging was at the level of connecting the dots and making sure I covered all of the exercises. I had a list of stuff to cover which someone else had provided, and worksheets for the students, so there was some imposed structure. The idea of doing it without that would be pretty terrifying.
I did wing a 2 day philosophy summer school (for visiting US teenagers) once. I was filling in for a friend who had to drop out at the last minute.
'Just teach them something interesting.'
It went really well, but they were bright kids, so we did a lot, and the stuff got progressively more advanced over the two days and as I had no outline I just kept adding more stuff. So my friend kept finding, for the rest of his 6 week course, some bugger in the class saying to him, 'we covered this with Matt.' Including quite advanced stuff.
Him: 'Did you teach them Quine on radical translation?'
Me: 'Yeah'
Him: 'And Kripke?'
Me: 'Yeah'
Him: 'AND Tarski, ffs?'
Me: 'Yeah'
At the time I thought it went great, but given they were 15, I expect about quite a few of the kids in the room were utterly mystified.
I occurs to me typing that that what I did was more or less recapitulate, in order, a very good undergraduate course someone else taught to me years before.
You might also try to recapitulate phylogeny.
Sir Kraab, one of the biggest Human Services Providers in Massachusetts (not mine), sometimes called the evil empire, because it's so big, makes its employees watch an anti-union video.
I have some co-workers who used to work there. They like our place a lot better--even though we're not well treated and have shitty benefits.
They like our place a lot better--even though we're not well treated and have shitty benefits.
You should maybe find somebody else to make the pro-union video.
I think it's about as funny as asking the pope if a bear is a catholic. Actually, that would be funnier. But the pope probably wouldn't get it either, because his English, like the DL's, is not colloquial.
asking the pope if a bear is a catholic
I wonder what hand motions you'd use with that one.
But does the Pope shit in the woods?
In his Hitler Youth days, with the emphasis on healthy hikes and the like, quite possibly.
114: Same as those for ordering a mohito in a biker bar, except keep the elbows closer to your side.
I think it's about as funny as asking the pope if a bear is a catholic.
Less defensively, this reflects that you're observing a completely different aspect of the interaction, and thinking that's what's supposed to be the funny part, than I am.
I wonder what hand motions you'd use with that one.
1) Raise arms high above head.
2) Issue guttural "GRRRRRRRRR".
3) Cross self.
4) Secure lawyers to try to free self from Vatican dungeon.
4) Secure lawyers to try to free self from Vatican dungeon.
This is Italy we're talking about. Guns and money would be more useful.
Less defensively, this reflects that you're observing a completely different aspect of the interaction, and thinking that's what's supposed to be the funny part, than I am.
I can actually tell that the funny part is the reporter making an ass of himself. I'm just free associating.
I finally watched the video, and that was funny, heebie. Your mistake, heebie, is that you can't trust the people who comment here. Their motives are sinister.
The problem with 124, heebie, is that it doesn't use the name "heebie" enough, heebie. Heebie.
Fuckers. Now where am I supposed to buy my cheap but chic crap made in China?
H&M? Oh wait no. I went in there the other day to see if they had any cheap linen skirts, and I have never before in 15 minutes had so many moments of 'What a cute shirt-OH. No actually it's a romper.'
Oh, wow. Nobody's cackling.
I'm not sure this is a fair reading of 40 and 41.
If you put pants or a skirt over a romper, then I think it becomes a shirt.
That is, it becomes a shirt in a teleological sense, not that the crotch falls out of it.
Kind of like how shoes become bracers if you cut out the toe and shove your arm through.
For some reason compelled to point out the irony of a vegetarian reminding us about hotdog-ordering protocols, albeit a vegetarian I have watched fry a big pan of bacon. (Speaking of which--irony, not vegetarians--I know it is tireder than tired to talk about that song and how various things in it are or are not ironic but I woke up this morning with the song in my head, god knows why, and immediately thought "a free ride when you've already paid isn't ironic OR not ironic; it's just impossible. IT ISN'T FREE IF YOU'VE ALREADY PAID. Help!! Why am I thinking about this? Help!!" That is more or less what I thought this morning, yep.)
Maybe the joke would be funnier with another religion. So the pope walks into a hotdog stand and says "make me one that molests altar boys."
And the hot dog vendor says, "That was the bar bitch you ate!"
So the one wooden bear says to the other, "I don't have to run faster than the Pope, I just have to run faster than you!" Then all concerned became enlightened.
One of Howard Stern's henchmen, Stuttering John, once asked the Dalai Lama if people greeted him by saying "Hello Dalai."
Upon hearing the translation, the DL reportedly chuckled.
Banana you glad I didn't say, "Orange." (My son can never get that one right.)
Upon hearing the translation, the DL reportedly chuckled.
Why not? Tenzin Gyatso is a bright lad, and god knows he's had the corners knocked off him over his life. But I don't understand how translating that gag would make it any more intelligible.
Maybe the translator explained it? I have no idea what translator etiquette is for untranslatable puns.
Bear in mind the translator's actual translation: "This little c0ck is making a crap joke based on the sound of your name in English/based on the fact that a nostrum of commercialised Western Buddhism somewhat resembles a phrase in a menu for fast-food outlets selling hot dough covered in a glue of rancid milk"
Haha: next time don't spend so much time deliberating whether to qualify the word "c0ck" with the word "little".
I have no idea what translator etiquette is for untranslatable puns.
When I do translation work, I always convey that the joke, while not remotely funny in the target language, is the pinnacle of hilarity and wit in the original. Just doin' my part!
If all translators roll that way, it would explain why Jerry Lewis was so big in France.
My 'niece'* is an EU translator. I was surprised [although only because I'm an idiot] to find out that they only translate into their native language.
* step-niece-in-law? English kinship terms are hard.
To keep things fair between the speakers of common languages that are often used and the speakers of languages that are pretty much ignored by everybody who wasn't born somewhere absurd, the EU should translate everything into Quechua and then into the target language.
Didn't someone use aggressive retranslation in the subtitles to turn Hogan's Heroes into a hit show in Germany?
I know someone who knows Quechua and would probably be delighted if that suddenly became a marketable skill.
146: Right. I'm all about the stimulus.
I was surprised [although only because I'm an idiot] to find out that they only translate into their native language.
Reputable publishers have the same rule for books and articles. My dad used to translate out of four or five languages, but only into one.
Quechua speakers have it easy. They may not get a lot of work but at least they don't have some Marine standing around waiting to shoot them if the going gets rough.
Why is being a native speaker more important for the target language than the language you are translating from?
Is it more important to understand the nuances of what you actually wind up saying than to understand the nuances of what you are trying to say? I suppose messing up the former can get you in more trouble than the latter?
Yeah, my 'niece' and her husband both speak English, Italian, French, German, Czech and Slovak. I think one or other of them also speaks Russian. But he translates into Italian from Czech and Slovak [he's Italian], and she translates from French, and I think maybe German or English into Czech [but not Slovak]. From just one or two core languages into their native language, anyway, even though they speak several more.
re: 151
I'd guess it's important to keep up a smooth idiomatic flow of language, and yeah, I suppose that's right on the nuances. I don't know for sure, though.
I'm actually kinda dissapointed in the Dalai Lama here. If anyone should be familiar with a vast repetoir of Dalai Lama jokes, its him.
151: I don't know in general, but I'm guessing that a non-native speaker translating into English would make an accidental cock joke about once a chapter.
151, 153: I don't know what I'm talking about for real, but I think it's much more likely to become perfectly idiomatic in reception of a second language than in production. Adults I know who learned English as adults but are pretty fluent don't generally seem to stumble over anything I say to them in English (more than native English speakers do, anyway, but that sort of thing is on me) but do produce English that's occasionally either funny-incorrect or really-not-what-they-meant incorrect. So I'd bet accuracy is much higher for translations from second-language to native-language rather than the reverse.
I'd guess there's always that asymmetry of competence. Most people can understand more of another language than they can say, so best to maximize what they can say by sticking to their native language? [on preview] What LB just said.
For a translation of fiction or poetry, I think it's right that fluent target language has to be preserved even at the cost of missing occasional nuances in the source (good translators have a sixth sense for idioms they haven't spotted in their text and research them). But you could argue that for non-fic, including speeches in the European parliament, the reverse is true, as long as the translator isn't producing meaningless literalism. If you miss a signifier of irony or deference in the source language, you could accidentally start an incident.
English that's occasionally either funny-incorrect or really-not-what-they-meant incorrect
Which gets even worse in Spanish, because then the non-native speaker says she's so embarazada, causing only more confusion.
I don't know what I'm talking about for real, but I think it's much more likely to become perfectly idiomatic in reception of a second language than in production.
Yes, in that there is no real way to be perfectly idiomatic in reception, you can just be able to grasp whatever is said to you, and that's a lower bar.
Does that make sense? I'm not sure it does. Let me try again: you can get things from context, and if you understand a language on a very high level, this in addition to your generally good comprehension will enable you to understand things about as well as a native speaker. And then you just render it instinctively, idiomatically, in your own language.
Whereas the level of fluency required to produce idiomatic utterances all the time (if we're talking about translation and not interpretation, and the goal is perfectly idiomatic utterance and not just graspable basic sense, this is) is rare because it's an enormous undertaking, including vocabulary, idiom, and worst of all, cultural reference.
I am not sure I am adding value.
because then the non-native speaker says she's so embarazada, causing only more confusion.
Only if she's English or American. As a native Spanish speaker once explained to me, if an Englishman seriously fucks up in public, he gets embarrassed; an Italian goes and buys a red Ferrari.
159 - reminds me of my grandfather's joke about the Polish pilot who explains that he doesn't have any children; he's married, but unfortunately his wife is impregnable.
"No, no, unbearable. No... inconceivable."
Didn't someone use aggressive retranslation in the subtitles to turn Hogan's Heroes into a hit show in Germany?
I know that's true of Donald Duck.
There's no similar rule for ASL interpreters (it'd be nice if there were, but there aren't enough hearing native signers), but I've seen a lot of people claim to be fluent, able to interpret, etc who absolutely produce garbage when they sign. Skip important parts, mangle grammar, etc. In their heads, they think they are interpreting the content successfully because they understand the content, but what they produce is sometimes bad enough to be incomprehensible.
Going the other way (ASL to English, or generally second language to first) it's obvious to the interpreter right away if they don't understand something, and they seem to be better at identifying when they did or did not do a good job of conveying the sense of the input.
I bet it's different for written-to-written translation than live interpreting.
ST promised to liveblog today's class, right?
No... inconceivable.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
if an Englishman seriously fucks up in public, he gets embarrassed; an Italian goes and buys a red Ferrari.
What if they really are pregnant?
168: Quote from The Princess Bride. Wallace Shawn keeps on saying something is 'inconceivable', and then it happens, and the Spanish swordfighter says "You keep saying that word -- I do not think it means what you think it means."
168: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D58LpHBnvsI
Ah, of course. I've seen it, now that it's pointed out I even remember the quote.
In fairness, it should have been signed "Opinionated Inigo Montoya".
I would have thought a similar Pope joke would involve a pastry.
173: The pontiff takes his bagels with a papal shmear.
Billy Connolly used to have a routine about a couple of Glaswegians who visited Rome and being thirsty in the heat of the day went into a bar, but failed to recognise the drinks on offer. The barman asked them what they wanted, and being unsure of themselves they asked, "What does the Pope drink?"
"Um, well I've heard he will occasionally take a glass of creme de menthe."
"Oh? Right, we'll have two pints of that then!"
And it went from there.
John Calvin walks into the bar. Barman says, "I knew you'd show up here."
Q: Why did John Calvin walk into the cheese shoppe?
A: Brie destination.
I have two friends/colleagues who think I could translate in the wrong direction. I've been close to being offered swedish to english jobs projecsts times but it's never worked out, so.
163: That article's shortchanging Carl Barks, though. His comics have been successful everywhere he's been widely available.
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Well, they sure aren't going to learn very much about programming, but that was much better than yesterday.
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In fairness, it should have been signed "Opinionated Inigo Montoya".
Sigh.
182: What's the purported material, if I may ask?
184: how to make web-based scientific experiments.
183 gets it right. What does it possibly add to a comment, to put the word "Opinionated" in front of it? Why not switch to something equally random but unpredictable, like ending every fake name with the word "Labs"?
That was one specific character, for whom being opinionated was a relevant trait. It was not an all-purpose telegraph for people too stupid to get the joke.
The whole point - and we've had this discussion before - is that while sometimes "Opinionated" is appropriate, sometimes just a name is appropriate. Go back through the archives and you'll find very few opinionated dead and/or fictional commenters.
"Opinionated" is sometimes funny, sometimes not. More often than not it's funnier than just commenting under a fake name, IMO, which is why the usage spread.
Halford likes to be told when a joke is happening.
I thought the usage spread out of laziness, bad taste, and honest misunderstanding.
To the discerning eye, the cleverness/appropriateness - it's not always funny, nor always meant to be funny - of fake name commenting is a function of both the name used, the content of the comment, and its placement within the thread (and, if there's a link, the appropriateness of that link). Slapping opinionated onto it merely for the purpose of trying to make it funny can reach a certain basic level of humor, but won't be what raises the comment above the mass of pointless verbiage.
I'll shut up my snobbery now, as I'm hoping to take advantage of all the attention the hockey game is going to get by doing some shopping.
It's only done to irritate Ned and Megan.
To the discerning eye, the cleverness/appropriateness - it's not always funny, nor always meant to be funny - of fake name commenting is a function of both the name used, the content of the comment, and its placement within the thread (and, if there's a link, the appropriateness of that link). Slapping opinionated onto it merely for the purpose of trying to make it funny can reach a certain basic level of humor, but won't be what raises the comment above the mass of pointless verbiage.
I'd go farther than that. When used to modify an actual name, it removes humor from the comment in the vast majority of instances. Because part of the humor of a comment by, say, Gregor Samsa, or Tiger Woods, or Sergeant Snorkel, to pick three from the first page of Google results, is the fleeting notion of what it would be like if that person was actually posting on Unfogged. Adding "Opinionated" shatters the possibility of that notion before it even enters the mind.
I mean, most of the jokes here are horrifically lame and unfunny, including my own. But "opinionated" has its uses.
I thought the main thing--necessary and close to sufficient--was that the comment had to be in angry all-caps, as was the style of the original Grandma, and it had to make sense for it to be so. Which is part of why 195 works.
No?
The OG OG also had good fake email addresses.
201: Right. The essence of being OPINIONATED is that the blog has somehow attracted a driveby from an upset whoever-it-is who fails to understand the nature of the conversation but needs to break in with a heated statement of whatever the OPINIONATED speaker's issue is. And I often think OPINIONATED comments of that pattern are funny, and occasionally make them myself.
If that sort of analysis doesn't kill the joke for good, I don't know what could.
193: Mass of pointless verbiage? Here?
Q: Why did John Calvin walk into the cheese shoppe?
A: Brie destination.
Q: Why did God foreordain that he would buy the cheese made with added cream, then damn him to hell for self-indulgence?
A: Double Brie destination.
If that sort of analysis doesn't kill the joke for good, I don't know what could.
Arguably, the evolution of the humor of the various "OPINIONATED" constructs derives from an inward-looking take on the meta-aspects of the joke as it was originally construed, so that explicit discussions of the origin of the humor will only serve to increase the continuously evolving meta-humor of the concept.
205: Q: Why did he then walk into the bakery next door?
A: Torte-al Depravity.
194 is why I do it, but I suspect it started first for other reasons.
IT'S NO MORE THAN SHE DESERVES FOR KEEPING HONEST PEOPLE AWAKE AT NIGHT.