The Potomac Tavern

The Watering Hole :: RE: The Devil's Dictionary - May 2009

MsDebby wrote: decuman

PRONUNCIATION:
(DEK-yoo-muhn)

MEANING:
adjective: Very large.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin decumanus, variant of decimanus (of the tenth), from decimus (tenth), from decem (ten). The word was often applied to waves from the belief that every tenth wave is greater than the others. The word also referred to the main gate of a military camp in ancient Rome. This gate faced away from the enemy and the tenth cohort of the legion was stationed there. A related word is decimate and a dean is, literally speaking, a chief of ten.

USAGE:
"The lover whose soul shaken is
In some decuman billow of bliss."
Francis Thompson; The Way of a Maid; c. 1890.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is. -Jean Anouilh, dramatist (1910-1987)

The Watering Hole :: RE: Hi from sunny Austin TX!

Mark D Hamill wrote: Congratulations in finding a new job, Debby. That's great, considering the dour economy. Have fun in Texas.

That's Entertainment! :: RE: Sweeney Todd

Mark D Hamill wrote: Played by Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Borat.

The Watering Hole :: RE: Testing my black thumb

Mark D Hamill wrote: I took home the peace lily in my office. I think it needs to be repotted. We got it when my mother died. I'm glad it at least is thriving. I've maintained it with my black thumb somehow these last 3 1/2 years.

Tavern News :: RE: It appears that the Potomac Tavern is a tavern no more

Mark D Hamill wrote: Kat, look for a topic on Frank under Joys and Concerns. I posted a picture of his grave marker, taken in March.

Humor :: Come to Somalia and escape socialism

Mark D Hamill wrote: One of the funniest and truest YouTube videos I have seen in a while.

Link

Humor :: RE: Microsoft Stores

Mark D Hamill wrote: Just like their Zune player, or so I have been told.

The Watering Hole :: RE: Daily Facts and Trivia - May 2009

Mark D Hamill wrote: Mike: Oh the humanity!

Dimes were legal for payment of obligations prior to 1933, but only for transactions under $10.

What do you call a group of kangaroos?

The Watering Hole :: Warp speed ahead?

Mark D Hamill wrote: I found this article in the news about the possibility of Warp drive interesting.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090506/sc_space/startrekswarpdrivenotimpossible

Quote:

Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.

The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's General Relativity.

Luckily for us, this speed limit only applies within space-time (the continuum of three dimensions of space plus one of time that we live in). While any given object can't travel faster than light speed within space-time, theory holds, perhaps space-time itself could travel.

"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving."

The article goes on to suggest that when the Big Bang occurred it is likely that for a while anyhow the universe moved faster than the speed of light.

Sign me up for a starship ride. Meanwhile, I will have to contend myself with the Star Trek movie this weekend.

Morals, Ethics and Philosophy :: RE: Plot the Seven Deadly Sins Nationwide

Mark D Hamill wrote: I confess I haven't looked into the methodology used to create these maps, but presumably there is some modicum of science behind them. Yeah, I noticed that Mississippi in particular was high on the lust meter. Maybe it is due to all that Biblically-based oppression of natural sex urges. It must be environmental because across the population I have to think we all basically average out.

The Watering Hole :: RE: Daily Facts and Trivia - April 2009

Mark D Hamill wrote: To close out the month, a dolphin is napping if they only have one eye open.

Dang, we really need Pat back around here.

The Watering Hole :: RE: The Devil's Dictionary - April 2009

Mark D Hamill wrote: Perhaps in retirement I will write romance novels. It doesn't look to hard and it pays real well, and I never heard of a slump in the market. I might require a pseudogyny.

That's Entertainment! :: RE: Ragtime gets an excellent review

Mark D Hamill wrote: Having seen it before, I know it is one of the great American musicals. Unfortunately, it's only been around 10 years but in time it should rank similar to other great musicals like Oklahoma. Glad it is being done right.

Morals, Ethics and Philosophy :: RE: Can someone help me with this question on philosophy?

Jim Goldbloom wrote: Reading a few books also helps you delve into the minds of other great thinkers, which will help you formulate better questions. Books also serve as important historical repositories so you can see how, through time, philosophy has matured as well as how questions change as society changes within generations. Reading, to me, is all about gaining knowledge and insight by absorbing the thoughts and opinions of others, and should not be looked at as a useless exercise in learning historical facts or "putting the blinders on" compared to free form discussion. Philosophy and books are closely bound and always will be.

I think Deb hit it right on the head in terms of defining the most important questions of philosophy, which when all boiled down is really an exercise in finding truth in the world and ultimate knowledge. This includes examining worlds beyond ours and a means to find our place and purpose in this existence.

In philosophical discussions the scientific method is not required to justify any findings, and each philosophical question may have many answers formulated during the inward search for truth. This is why we have many doctrines, or belief systems, that are adopted by some and challenged by others. Without discord, there's no meaning to philosophical discussion and arguably a lot less fun, too. At least I think so.

-jim

The Watering Hole :: RE: Two projects I am working on

Mark D Hamill wrote: Jim, thanks for the pointer to jquery. I will pass it on here at work. There are lots of libraries out there and it is hard to know which is the most useful. Except for the JSON parser library, I rolled my own on this one.

I am discovering the value of using a fulltext search index with MySQL. This is new in 5.0 and makes pattern matching for strings much easier.

I found a zip code table with associated city, state, latitude, longitude and timezone information on the web, and loaded it into MySQL and use it to find city names. Once I have it I know the zip code, so can search for news based on zip code, as well as pull up a large potential of localized services. For example, I construct the URL needed to retrieve an image of the current temperature from wunderground.com.