Depends on the type of balance. The very-common “electronic balances” (e.g. the analytical balances manufactured by Mettler) measure weight, but report mass.
Transvestites hang from the ceiling.
Transvestmites grow up from the floor.
I’m not confused. I’m just arguing against prescriptionist claptrap promulgated by an eighteenth century grammarian who had nothing better to do than invent new rules for the English language.
“Begging the question” is a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed either implicitly or explicitly in one of the initial premises. The term you want to use is “raises the question” or “prompts the question”.
This is very funny.
I gotta think up something to add to this list. Right now I got nuthin’…
There is some argument that a die specifically has pips on each side, if it has numbers it is a number cube. That said I support the use of the word die for any solid object that can be thrown and read to generate random information. Totally with you on the confusion that dice is the plural of die, you can’t throw one dice.
A podium is a platform or stage. You stand on a podium.
A lectern is a speaker’s desk. You stand behind a lectern.
Movies have soundtracks.
Live on stage musicals have cast recordings (or cast CDS).
Referring to a musical’s “soundtrack” in front of some groups is apt to get you conked with the nearest blunt object.
Sheet music, contrary to popular belief, is not just any sheet of paper with music on it. Strictly speaking, it is a one-or sometimes two-sheet copy of a song, commercially printed and separately sold, which contains melody, lyrics, piano accompaniment, guitar chords, and frequently guitar tablature.
“If you can pee in it, it’s craft. If you can pee on it, it’s art.” -unknown artisan
Since I brought up copyright v trademark earlier, I’d like to address a related point of confusion. Many people, when I tell them my job title, think that I work with copyrights. I don’t.
A copyright is, as described above, the right to copy (and distribute) content that someone has created.
The text in an advertisement is called copy, and the person who writes the text that goes into advertisements (like I do) is called a copywriter. Copywriters generally have nothing to do with copyrights, other than taking care not to violate someone else’s in the course of writing copy. The text in other kinds of printed documents can also be called copy, but generally only writers of ad copy are called copywriters.
I suppose a copywriter who thinks he’s hot shit could call himself a copywright, but that’s just asking for a punch in the nose.
Hear, hear. Preach it, brother.
To the average family with whom I speak after an autopsy, a “heart attack” is any sudden cause of death, particularly if it started in the heart. An arrhythmia like ventricular fibrillation is a “heart attack” even if it was triggered by Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. A ruptured coronary artery aneurysm from Kawasaki disease (yes, there is one, you geeks, and it’s not a motorcycle of the heart) is a “heart attack”. A stab wound through the heart is a “heart attack” (no, well, they do draw the line there).
To a medical type, a “heart attack” is a coronary artery which has been partially blocked for some time by a big blob of atherosclerosis, which has suddenly become totally blocked by a blood clot, often because the blob broke open (the plaque fissured) and exposed its very clotty contents to the passing bloodstream. Id est, a thrombosis on a stenosis. The heart muscle downstream of the clot is no longer being supplied by blood, and begins to die. This can cause a) nothing, b) pains just like heartburn (can’t tell you how many people I’ve autopsied with Tums or even doctor-supplied Tagamet in their pocket, with no ulcers at all and three subendocardial MI’s of varying ages), c) the classic “a volkswagen is sitting on my chest with steel bands radiating around me and pain down my left arm, please help me,” d) death. And all points in between.
So you can grab your chest and die on the sidewalk as the consequences of your 45 years of abusing your body with cigarettes and overweight and cocaine and lack of attention to your high blood pressure, and I may find a cor bovinum and an insane degree of small vessel disease on histology, and yes, you died from your heart, but if your coronary arteries were clear, you didn’t have a heart attack.
Maybe your heart attacked you.
If it’s transferring to your computer, it’s a download.
If it’s transferring from your computer, it’s an upload.
You download email, you read it, and then you upload a reply. After that, the person at the other end will need to download your reply in order to read it.
Everything that comes to your computer from the Internet is a download, not just large files. This webpage was a download. When you chat and your friend IMs you, the message is downloaded. If it wasn’t on your computer when you started, then it has been downloaded. The term “download” does not exclusively refer to MP3 files, programs or videos, it refers to everthing that is transferred to your machine.
A pet peeve:
**Personal - relating to a particular person. Examples: “That information is personal”, “I asked the receptionist to change some of my personal details”
Personnel - relating to a group of individuals, employees. Example: “Our company employs 300 personnel”
Machine Gun: An automatic firearm specifically designed to fire a continuous stream of bullets for a sustained period of time to distances in excess of 300 meters.
Assault Rifle: A shoulder-help firearm designed for accurate, controlled single shots to distances in excess of 200 meters but also capable of automatic fire for short bursts.
Sub-Machine gun: A shoulder held automatic firearm specifically designed to fire pistol calibre ammunition, useful at short ranges.
As opposed to what? Do orchestra members and concert musicians look at “sheet music” or are they called something else?
Tactics are the small decisions made to best achieve a specific, immediate goal.
Strategy is the more long-term planning about how best to go about achieving a generally larger, more abstract goal.
Logistics is the process of ensuring that important things get where they are needed, when they are needed.
Apologies to the military folks if I’ve left out important distinctions in that field; my familiarity with the terms comes from the gaming side, where this distinction is sometimes made:
Tactical games, which often have Tactics somewhere in their name in the US, focus on skillful manipulation of your limited units in a series of small-scale conflicts.
Strategy games are those that also have you collect and deploy resources to increase your forces. This often also involves some very rudimentary logistics and supply chains. The tactics involved in strategy games are commonly referred to as ‘micro-management’.
Hope it’s not too late; this is a good thread.
It’s often said that the possessive 's in English is a genitive, but this doesn’t appear to be so any longer, although it apparently originated from one.
A genitive is a declension of an individual noun: rex king, regis of a king.
However, the 's ending can be added to an entire noun phrase: “the king of Spain’s daughter.” If 's were a genitive, this sentence would mean that Spain is the possessor of the daughter, or else the sentence would have to be written “the king’s of Spain daughter” (filia regis Hispaniae).
It is therefore more appropriate to call 's a clitic, a morpheme that is movable but has to be attached to another word.
There appears to be still some controversy about this, but it seems reasonably clear at least to me.
I wanted to clarify these a bit:
A Machine Gun is a firearm, usually firing a centrefire rifle cartridge, which will continue to fire as long as the trigger is depressed. They are generally fixed or mounted onto a vehicle or in a gun emplacement, but a Light Machine Gun- such as the FN-Minimi or the Bren Gun- is completely man-portable and fireable, and can be used by one or two people- and, in a pinch, can be used as a beefed-up assault rifle.
An Assault Rifle is a selective fire Military rifle, firing either an intermediate or full-size centrefire cartridge, designed to be carried and used by one person. An Assault Rifle must have a bayonet lug, a detachable magazine, AND be select-fire (semi-auto/3-shot burst/full-auto)- and generally they have a pistol grip instead of a “conventional” rifle stock. A semi-auto military rifle with a bayonet lug is exactly that- an L1A1 SLR is NOT an Assault Rifle, nor is an SKS rifle, nor is a semi-auto only AK-47 or AR-15 clone. If you can’t fire it in bursts or full-auto, it isn’t an assault rifle.
Also, the terms “upload” and “download” only apply to computer networks. When you put your digital camera’s memory card in your card reader and copy the pictures to your computer, you are not downloading them, and when you burn a CD of them you sure as hell aren’t downloading them to the CD.