Some thoughts for December

[Verbivore]

Dec 6, 2021 18:16:46 GMT Little Jack Horner said:

I wonder what does define someone other than just being a person? To describe me as “a man“ is fine for me but there are other people, as Vv well knows, who cannot, and probably should not, be defined by their sex or gender. I think we really need something else. […] I am at a loss to know where this is going.

Perhaps, LJH, it didn't have to go anywhere. I thought your ramblings fine, perhaps because the issues of identity and labelling have long interested me.

One of the best answers I've ever heard on the matter was from Lee, in our very first conversation. He was 26 (a 'young' 26 at that) and I was trying to figure him out.

I asked Lee: "What do you want to do and be in life?" and he blew me away with his unhesitating response, which I'd consider 'advanced' from a person with no 'different' ability. He said: "I just want to be me". That impressed me more than any university lecture on identity.

[Dave Miller]

I think (after, admittedly, only a brief consideration) that any description is meaningful only in context.

If John Smith is to be introduced, why not “John Smith”? There may be a need to describe him further, but that need arises only in context. We might say “the author John Smith”, or “one of the UK’s first challengers to the marriage laws in the 1970s, John Smith”. Perhaps “John Smith, the local vet”, or “father of the second victim and dedicated campaigner, John Smith”.

Murderer, racist, pacifist, fraudster - things which people have done.

Second Lord Portalington, Prince Rupert, desert nomad - things which people are born into.

As you, I’m not sure where this is going … but I feel that perhaps when seeking a descriptor we should first consider what is relevant, and go by that.

[Verbivore]

Silly thoughts that arise from reading the news:

I found reference in this morning’s news to Italian-Thai Development Corporation Limited – perhaps an unfortunate name were it to be abbreviated to I-Thai (Eye-tie, Aussie slang for Italian).

[Verbivore]

Oh, for a hyphen!

In yesterday’s news was a report of a subvariety of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, reported as Omicron Like.

That reference throughout the article was consistent, and I thought what an odd name to call it.

I queried ABC news and, while I received no direct reply, I have noticed this morning that in the original article the term has been emended to Omicron-like.

Ha! That makes more sense.

One wonders if Aussies are becoming as averse to hyphens as the Americans.

[Little Jack Horner]

Arising from the previous post, I would like to know Covid, Omicron, Ebola and Zika are spelled with capital letters. We don’t give influenza, malaria, typhoid and other illnesses the same courtesy.

[Dave Miller]

I suppose they just get capital letters when they are proper nouns: Zika is a forest and Ebola a river (from which the diseases came?).

Omicron, Delta, etc are the given names of the variants, so could reasonably have capitals (though capitals are not always used on them, I notice).

The word/name “Covid” is the odd one, though: should it not actually be COVID, or at least CoViD? But time changes things and, like AIDS becoming Aids, the typography finds its own value and settles. It used to be RADAR and LASER, but we’re nowadays quite happy with radar and laser.

(Also like AIDS, there’s grown a confusion between the virus, SARS Coronavirus 2, and the disease, CoViD.)

[Verbivore]

Dec 12, 2021 22:19:10 GMT Dave Miller said:

[…] The word/name “Covid” is the odd one, though: should it not actually be COVID, or at least CoViD? […]

I notice (BBC, Guardian, for example) that acronyms such as AIDS, COVID, and UNESCO (AU style) are Aids, Covid, and Unesco in the UK. It seems that in the UK, initialisms are still all caps while acronyms aren't, using just an initial capital. In AU we still use all caps.

I've also observed that people are reported as having caught COVID, whereas in fact they've contracted the SARS-Cov-2 virus, which has led to the disease COVID. 'Twas the same in earlier times with HIV/AIDS: people were reported as catching AIDS when in fact they'd contracted HIV, which could lead to the condition of AIDS.

And yet another obs: Omicron. I hear some folk pronounce it oh-micron (it means 'little o') when traditionally in classical Greek it was said with a short o. The Greek 'long o' is omega (oh-mega – 'big o'). I'm given to understand that in modern Greek they are  both pronounced (as individual letters, as in reciting the alphabet, not necessarily when pronounced in words) oh-micron.

There are already many more variants of SARS-Cov-2 / COVID than there are letters in the Greek alphabet, so I wonder what naming convention will follow once we've reached Omega.

[Little Jack Horner]

A long time ago, in a sociological journal, I came across a single word which, so far as I can recall, meant “value free”. I can’t recall what the word was so I decided to search “value free” in an online thesaurus. It didn’t recognise “value free” and suggested that I might have meant “balefire”. How could I possibly have meant that when I had typed “value free”? I know I can misspell things but that would have been a seriously spectacular misspelling. 

It also thought that I might have meant, amongst other things,  “vilifier”, “wayfarer”, or “pilferer”. 

[Twoddle]

I don't want to put the details on an open forum, but Paul D's not too well. I'll give more details to friends and former regular acquaintances of Paul if you'd like to PM or e-mail me.

[Little Jack Horner]

I have just been watching some extracts from the Extreme-E racing series. I noted that the ship which is used as the mobile base for the series is the St Helena (formerly RMS St Helena) which provided mail services to the island of Saint Helena. Does anybody have any idea why the island and the ship are pronounced St HelEEna whereas the saint whose name has been adopted was pronounced HELLerner? Just wondering.

[Dave Miller]

I suppose it depends on where the name Helena is pronounced. In England, certainly, it’s usually HELLena, but the island was reputedly discovered by the Portuguese and named after St Helena of Constantinople. Neither of those influences would necessarily follow English patterns.

[Twoddle]

I've always pronounced it, "Hellayna". Napoleon died on the island from wallpaper poisoning.

I do know that the first attempt to exile Napoleon almost ended in disaster when the captain of the ship taking him there got drunk and ended up navigating the craft to a city in India, because he didn't know his Madras from his Elba. (Sorry.)

[Verbivore]

Good Folk: I’ve been unable to access the board this morning from my Macs, but following a message from Twoddle I’ve tried via my phone and had success.

This is weird! The security settings on my Macs are quite strict, so any nasties are blocked. However, I have identical settings on my iPhone and can access the site, as evidenced by this posting.

On the Macs (3 different browsers — Safari, Firefox, Opera — I get the message “The site is blocked due [sic] to a phishing threat. … [The board] has been blocked by your network administrator.”

Twod is having no problem with access; ditto, it appears are Dave and LJH.

Je suis beaucoup baffled.

[Verbivore]

Dec 20, 2021 23:16:58 GMT Verbivore said:

Good Folk: I’ve been unable to access the board this morning […] Je suis beaucoup baffled.

Half the problem is solved. I can access the board in all browsers on my older Mac and on my iPhone (the phone was never a problem), but still cannot access it via my newer Mac.

I've cleared browser cache, cookies, history, restarted my modem … and there's been no improvement. All other sites are accessible as normal.

I'm beginning to think my newer Mac has been compromised and am now running all my diagnostic tools to see what I can discover.

[Verbivore]

I need to find a brick all against which to bang my head!

I have run all the scans and anti-malware options that I have installed, as well as a few only available on line, and they all insist that the NtAPS site is compromised by a phishing expedition.

Not sure why the same bother isn't noticed on my older Mac or my very new iPhone; all have the same security options, and the newer Mac and the iPhone each have the latest iteration of their respective operating system. The older Mac I deliberately keep not updated so that I can run legacy software.

I'm loth to contact Apple support because, in my recent extended experience with them, they were as useful as mammaries on an ox.

If any others here have anti-malware options available, I suggest you run them just to be sure you're not being phished.