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Henry WH Hack v3.0b

2:43 AM

@Tsundoku We all learn something new everyday on Stack Exchange!

2 hours later…

b_jonas

4:39 AM

@HenryWHHackv3.0b I'd protest that I don't even log in every day, but I have a fanatic badge on Sci Fi so I kind of do.

2 hours later…

CowperKettle

6:12 AM

> Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.

Rand al'Thor

6:45 AM

@verbose Yes, but if they grew up in Britain I'd say they're "from Britain", even if their heritage and some of their culture might be from elsewhere. I chose my original wording carefully ;-)

@Spagirl Ah, misremembered your comment then, sorry.

"Blighty" is the strangest one. It comes from a word meaning "foreign", and was originally used by some of the poor souls that Britain was colonising, but now it's come to be a word used affectionately by Brits themselves.

verbose

7:15 AM

@Randal'Thor It's from Hindi विलायती vilaayatii meaning "foreign"

Rand al'Thor

Which makes it funny when Brits talk about Blighty. "I'm going back to 'the Foreign Land'" but for them it's going home!

verbose

7:42 AM

@Tsundoku are you still planning to propose Girish Karnad as a topic challenge? I was about to propose Arun Kolatkar and Anita Desai

In series, I mean, not in parallel

Bookworm

Q: Did Koestler coin "mimophant"?

Wikipedia says: Koestler is said to have coined the word mimophant to describe Bobby Fischer. There are two sources given for this statement. One of them is not a source but simply a quote defining the word, while the other refers to a book that is also cited on the corresponding Wiktionary pag...

1 hour later…

Bookworm

9:05 AM

Q: What kind of weapon destroyed Laila's home in A Thousand Splendid Suns?

In the novel, the author describes Laila's family home as having been struck by a rocket and was implied to have been mostly, if not completely, destroyed. What kind of weapon might this have been? What kinds of military rockets that are capable of leveling entire houses were used in Afghan confl...

historical-context setting khaled-hosseini a-thousand-splendid-suns

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

10:00 AM

A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

Sarojini Naidu I just learned about this person today, but she seems to have been an important figure in Indian history as well as an outstanding poet. Quoting from Wikipedia: Naidu's literary work as a poet earned her the nickname the "Nightingale of India" by Gandhi because of the colour, imag...

Rand al'Thor

10:48 AM

@Bookworm Two good answers self-deleted in a surfeit of politeness! Would at least one of you please undelete? :-) @ClaraDiazSanchez @GarethRees

Rand al'Thor

11:17 AM

They were both good answers, and posted close together so clearly you were working independently. There's no reason to delete either of them in my opinion; I'd be happy if you both undeleted.

Clara Diaz Sanchez

11:28 AM

@Randal'Thor It should really be Gareth who posts the answer - he was first to reply. Let's see who cracks first ;)

Rand al'Thor

This is like a reverse game of Chicken.

Clara Diaz Sanchez

"Nobody calls me chicken"

BTW @Randal'Thor thanks for the bounty today. I had no idea I was in line for one, so it came as a nice surprise

Rand al'Thor

12:00 PM

You're welcome! I'm always impressed by answers that go a bit "above and beyond", doing something more than searching on the internet or in a book.

Btw, @ClaraDiazSanchez, although I've upvoted your answer to my question on the history of Spanish literature, I'm not sure if I can accept it without more information on how and why these terms specifically came to be used for broad genres of literature. I've left a comment indicating the sort of thing I'd like to know.

(This is not a criticism of your answer, which I appreciate and have learned from - just an explanation for the lack of checkmark.)

Clara Diaz Sanchez

12:38 PM

@Randal'Thor No worries. It'll be a day or so before I can edit it tho.

2 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

2:12 PM

German customs officials go through special training for how to handle people smuggling suitcases full of sausages. They're prepared for the wurst-case scenario.

Loong

2:33 PM

😶

Gareth Rees

3:16 PM

I have undeleted my answer to the mimophant question as requested

Tsundoku

3:44 PM

@verbose I have so many suggestions already that I was holding off from adding new ones :-) So feel free to add it to the list.

@Randal'Thor I don't know why those are German jokes, since the Dutch word for sausage is "worst", which fits better than "wurst". Anyway, I sometimes tell other people German is just a Dutch dialect.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethRees Thank you! And now we've gone HNQ.

I still think the two answers, while largely the same, each contain info that the other doesn't, and are therefore both worth preserving. @ClaraDiazSanchez's answer mentions that "Describing the term as his "brain child" is surely a claim that he invented the term", which is a good point to prove (as best we can) the correctness of the claim.

Clara Diaz Sanchez

4:07 PM

@Randal'Thor OK, I've undeleted my answer too.

b_jonas

4:55 PM

@Randal'Thor tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverlyPolitePals “Often this routine involves a door or gate the pair will need to walk through, each of them insisting the other goes first (and eventually they both do simultaneously, and collide). The resulting deadlock is sometimes called a Canadian Standoff.”

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

6:20 PM

@b_jonas Canadian standoff, ha!

2 hours later…

Tsundoku

8:39 PM

butterfly-lovers is a Chinese legend, not a book-length work. Shouldn't this tag be deleted?

Do we want to keep art-history?

Tsundoku

8:55 PM

star-wars, as used on the only question tagged with it, is not a work of literature. Do we want to keep this tag?

1 hour later…

Bookworm

10:15 PM

Q: What is the name of this op-ed/essay/newspaper article written by Walt Whitman

It's very hard to find this essay/op-ed Whitman wrote because it's not included in Leaves of Grass and Google keyword searches always prioritize sites which discuss Leaves of Grass. Whitman wrote an article for the newspaper in which he railed against politicians in general but singled out Lincol...

identification-request walt-whitman

Bookworm

11:06 PM

Q: Did the writers involved in “Warrior Nun Areala” ever write a conclusion to “The Angel and the Coming Storm?”

I am going to give an explanation to those of you who have no idea what I am talking about. “Warrior Nun Areala” is a comic book series that Ben Dunn started in 1994. It stars Shannon Masters, a nun who fights demons. It has four main volumes/series, as well as over a dozen spin-offs, crossovers,...

comics

Bookworm

11:32 PM

Q: Why did Bill Watterson ("Calvin and Hobbes") come out of retirement now?

Follow-up to: Why has Bill Watterson ('Calvin and Hobbes') been retired for so long? Bill Patterson notoriously retired from writing Calvin and Hobbes at 38 and became extremely reclusive for decades, virtually vanishing from public life. Now 64, he recently announced The Mysteries (a collaborati...