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Today's Ridiculous Scientific Buzzword is:


Ishtvan

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I just stumbled upon this phrase "order-order transition (OOT)." Order-disorder transition actually makes sense, but come on, order-order transition? It's called a phase change for FFS.

 

Disclamer: I just saw this term and don't know much about polymer physics, it could have some meaning, but on first glance, this is a silly buzzword propped up by the popularity of ordered-disordered transition.

 

My other fav. buzzword is "room temperature annealing," then later explaining that this means leaving stuff in a drawer for years.

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Legal buzzwords aren't any better, or "magic words" ... If you can show that this word applies to what you're doing, suddenly it's kosher (or forbidden, as the case may be).

 

One infamous one that I've studied and sort of like is "dangerous anthropomorphic interference" as it applies to the # ppm of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Well, pick any # ppm and it's "dangerous" for somebody. Some countries are already losing/lost glaciers and coral reefs now, and some islands will lose real estate very soon, a big deal when you're a tiny country. Some countries will actually benefit with warming. So how do you pick one number, and what makes it specifically "dangerous". And then there's the "anthropomorphic" and "interference" parts to deal with...

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Yeah, for defining dangerous toxicology, I like the "minimum lethal dose," or LDMin because it's nice and simple. This is what kills a rat. Period. Then you've got "LD50," this is what kills half our rats. From my experience with rats in TDM, a fire arrow has LDMin of 1. But I imagine it's very hard to quantify negative externalities like pollutants.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 8 months later...

Not a scientific buzzword, but this whole paragraph (or mission statement, or strategic enterprise paradigm moving forward, whatever) made me laugh:

 

-------- redefines effective Continuous Improvement with a suite of products that each contain the lifecycle imprint needed to choreograph and control change. These modules deliver functions that snap into --------’s Solution Framework to support both departmental needs and enterprise requirements. Connectivity embedded in the architecture eliminates obstacles to interfacing with your enterprise systems. As a result, you can improve awareness and effect change while leveraging your system of record investment.
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I think it translates to "drink coke" :D

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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It's exactly that kind of crap that causes problems in business and research, I think. A whole lot of nothing said, as complicated as possible, with the intention of impressing and intimidating and nothing more. Asinine. I swear the only thing more boring to me than grad school research lectures are two-hour department meetings. It's all I can do not to go on a murderous rampage during these things.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Eigenface, a set of eigenvectors used for face recognition. Especially funny for us germans, because eigenvalue and eigenvector sound so stupid... ;-) How come there is no proper english word for "eigen"?

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Eigenface is a great word. :D It just sounds so hilarious. Eigenface eigenface eigenface. Eigenface. Bwahaha.

 

How come there is no proper english word for "eigen"?

Because we borrowed yours? ;)

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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Eigenface is a great word. :D It just sounds so hilarious. Eigenface eigenface eigenface. Eigenface. Bwahaha.

 

 

Because we borrowed yours? ;)

 

I can understand you borrowed Bratwurst. Sauerkraut. But not Kindergarden. (It is "Kindergarten", damit). But don't get me started on "Uber-something" (It is Über, damit!), abseiling, ugh.

 

OTOH, we Germans invent words like "handy" (meaning mobile phone, and lately, any device that has the same form factor...), "public viewing" (viewing a usually sporting event in a public place on a big screen), "body bags" (used in place of the perfectly normal word "Rucksack", which is actually German *groan*) and a whole lot other stupid words and phrases that are either completely wrong or just wrong :D

 

It got so bad that we have entire adverts in (broken, sometimes) English, and the people selling you things sometimes just start adding English words. Last time I was shopping for new sunglasses the guy told me I cannot change the glasses on my old ones because they are so "curved". What he meant was "gebogen", but it took him a while to realize I didn't understand what he meant by "Die sind so curved, das würde nicht gehen." :D

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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We do spell it "kindergarten". :blink:

 

I reserve the right to drop umlauts and other decorations from words appropriated into the English language, on the basis that they're a pain to type on our keyboard layouts. :P e.g. I usually spell "resumé" as "resume" unless I'm being formal, just because I have to jump through hoops to get the é.

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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It's not pressing the keys, it's remembering all the character codes. I usually just copy and paste from Character Map.

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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A lot of words for just about every European language has been either anglicized or "Americanized" if you prefer the latter. Personally, I respect the mother language (being a student of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and a little German) so I'll usually Bing the anglicized word so I can copy-paste with the correct accents.

 

Off the top of my head, I can remember alt-1 ☺ and alt-156 £.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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We do spell it "kindergarten". :blink:

 

Really? Interesting, I saw a giant sign in UK that spelled it "garden".

 

I reserve the right to drop umlauts and other decorations from words appropriated into the English language, on the basis that they're a pain to type on our keyboard layouts. :P

 

Dropping the dots is still wrong, tho. The proper translation for "ü" is simply "ue" e.g. adding an "e" after the Umlaut. "u" is a different letter than "ü" and "ue". And "ue" is not impossible to type on even the most idiotic keyboard layout :)

 

So the correct way to write is "Ueber-keyboardmap".

 

e.g. I usually spell "resumé" as "resume" unless I'm being formal, just because I have to jump through hoops to get the é.

 

Your keyboard map is broken then :) Don't know if it is possible to switch for the american keyboard map, but for the Germans we have multiple, the ones with "dead acute" etc. simple render a ' as a ' when pressed, then "normal" one supresses the ' until you press the second key, which if it is an e, renders é, if it is space, you end up with ',and if it was ' again you end up with ´. Pretty simple to use and gets you all funky thinks like é ń ñ õ ó Ò and € @ ¶ ¢ µ and so on with only two keys ("acute" plus letter, or ALTGR plus letter) per character.

 

There is really no excuse except lazyness and I don't excuse lazyness :P

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Well, it's easy to say that, but I would never throw up the ASCII-code Table, just for creating a proper "ë" either. It's not on my layout and I also know hardly any words using that kind of lettering, so why bother... :-)

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Well, it's easy to say that, but I would never throw up the ASCII-code Table, just for creating a proper "ë" either. It's not on my layout and I also know hardly any words using that kind of lettering, so why bother... :-)

 

My initial complaint was about the german "ü", which is easily transcribed as "ue" and everybody knows at least one word using "ü". :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Ubergarden

 

Lazy büm.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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My CV is so good, I call it my uber-resume!

 

(Simultaneously mangling words imported from two different languages gets you bonus points. ;) )

 

Dropping the dots is still wrong, tho. The proper translation for "ü" is simply "ue" e.g. adding an "e" after the Umlaut. "u" is a different letter than "ü" and "ue". And "ue" is not impossible to type on even the most idiotic keyboard layout :)

 

So the correct way to write is "Ueber-keyboardmap".

In German, maybe. English doesn't have any such rules for transliteration. :)

 

Your keyboard map is broken then :) Don't know if it is possible to switch for the american keyboard map

No, there's no standard US keyboard layout with dead keys.

 

The standard US keyboard layout works perfectly, thanks very much. I could equally say that your language is broken for requiring such characters. :P

 

There is really no excuse except lazyness

I beg to differ...

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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  • 2 weeks later...

I forgot to mention another hated word I came across a few months ago: "prehab"

 

We could just use an existing word that works perfetly well, like "prepare" or "condition," but no, let's make an annoyingly trite word from another, shortened word like "rehab." Yes, let us all go out and pre-habilitate ourselves.

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