DrSeudo's New Writeups

Clauses of fearing in Latin (thing)

2003-04-09T00:51:59Z

"Ah, cripes," I hear you say. "I fear that this will be another boring Latin grammar node." Well, not only are you right, but you've provided an example of this kind of clause. Lucky you!.

Let's look at the following two sentences:

Timeo ut veniat.
I fear that he is not coming.
Timeo ne veniat.
I fear that he is coming.

These are fairly straightforward: a verb indicating fear (timeo, "I fear"), a conjunction (either ut or ne), and a verb in the subjunctive mood indicating what is being feared (veniat, "he might come"). The only thing that might throw you off is which conjunction goes with which meaning. The negative conjunction, ne, goes with the positive meaning (the second sentence), while the positive conjunction (ut) goes with the sentence that has the word "not" in it (the first one). What gives? To explain it, let's split our sentences into two:

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oderint dum metuant (idea)

2003-03-01T19:11:22Z

"Let them hate, so long as they fear."

Attributed to Lucius Accius, a Roman tragic poet (c. 170 BC). A favorite saying of the emperor Caligula, whose tyrannical, ruthless leadership style and slash-and-burn way of dealing with his enemies it perfectly embodied.

phoney (thing)

2003-02-17T21:19:22Z

In Scrabble, a phoney is any word that is not listed in the dictionary being used (the OSPD, the OSW, SOWPODS, &c. &c.). In Scrabble notation, a phoney is designated by a * (e.g., NODER*). The strategies surrounding when to play phoneys, and when to challenge your opponent's, has been the subject of much discussion by Scrabble experts.

Phoney FAQ

Q. What do you mean, "when to play phoneys"? Isn't playing phoneys against the rules?

A. Nope. According to the National Scrabble Association's official tournament rules, phoney words will only be removed from the board if they are challenged and ruled unacceptable. If no challenge is made that turn, the phoney word or words remain on the board for the remainder of the game.

Q. So you could play a word, knowing that it was a phoney, and it would count if your opponent doesn't challenge it? That's dishonest!

A.…

Limerick (thing)

2003-02-16T02:14:35Z

Meter of Limericks

In considering the meter of a limerick, let us examine a canonical example:

A prostitute living in Kew
Once filled her vagina with glue.
     "Well," she said with a grin,
     "since they pay to get in
They can pay to get out of it, too."

We can then scan each line with - representing a long (stressed) syllable, u representing a short (unstressed) one, and |demarcating the beginning and end of the foot:

|u   - |u u    -|u   u   - |
 A prostitute living in Kew

|u     -   |  u   u -|u  u     -|
 Once filled her vagina with glue.

     | u       u  -  | u   u   - |
     "Well," she said with a grin,

     | u      u   - | u  u  - |
     "since they pay to get in

|  u   u   - | u  u   - |u  u    - |
 They can pay to get out of it, too."

(" 'Well,' she said" is technically an amphimacer, but this can be overlooked for our purposes.) The meter thus looks like…

Vamp (thing)

2003-02-16T00:30:49Z

Musical theatre is a curious creature. It combines composed music, which is mathematically precise—the value of a quarter note is the same no matter how many times you play it—and Theatre, whose practicioners can be counted on to read each line slightly differently from night to night. Obviously, some sort of kludge would be necessary to combine the two, and so the vamp was born. Let's first look at how a vamp might look in a musician's score, and then talk about how it works.


         /                                                  \
        /    Vamp (voice last x)                             \
       /                                                      \
------|-|----------------------------------------------------|-|------------------------
      | |                                        ___         | |     /QQQ\
------|-|-------------{-------------------------/QQ

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Selchow & Righter (thing)

2002-09-29T03:52:23Z

From Parcheesi to the Poorhouse: The Selchow & Righter Story

In the 1870s, Selchow & Righter was one of the top wholesalers of board games in the United States (along with Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley). With their 1874 purchase of the trademark to Parcheesi, an invention of toy-and-game store owner Alfred Swift, they established themselves as a leader in the brand-new world of board games.

Things remained relatively quiet for the company to which Elisha G. Selchow (pronounced "SELL-shau," rhymes with "cow") and John Righter had given their names until 1927, when S&R dropped out of wholesale and began producing Parcheesi full-time. Selchow did eventually branch out into more in-house games in the 1920s, removing a few of their eggs from the Parcheesi basket, but by and large drew their revenues from the Parcheesi brand. Selchow conducted no marketing and did not pressure Parcheesi into the hands of retailers.

Thi…