Michael M

I know Passover does. How about the others?

Years ago, I read an essay by CS Lewis in which he commented about those Psalms written in a despairing tone, in which the Psalmist complains about his or Israel's suffering. Lewis observed that a Greek poet of the same time period would never have written such a poem, since (according to Lewis) the Greeks did not even expect justice from their gods.

I thought this was so interesting that I soon read Lewis's "Reflections on the Psalms."

But I cannot remember where I read that original passage. (It was NOT in "Reflections on the Psalms.") Does anyone know the essay in which it appears? I know I read it in one of the anthologies of Lewis's writings.

Thanks

This isn't a "serious" legal question. It's a brain-teaser I heard years ago. But unlike most brain-teasers, it is more about stimulating a discussion than about figuring out the "right" answer.

Adam, Ben, and Chuck are stranded at a desert oasis. Adam announces that in the morning, he will try to travel on foot to the nearest town. He fills his canteen with water before going to sleep.

Ben, who hates Adam, secretly pours some poison into Adam's canteen during the night. The poison will kill Adam instantly if he drinks it.

Chuck also hates Adam and is unaware of Ben's actions. In the morning, just before Adam starts out, Chuck drills a small hole in the canteen, hoping that Adam will die from lack of water.

Adam begins walking across the desert, and when he first tries to take a drink, he discovers that his canteen is empty. He dies of thirst.

Eventually, this all comes to light and Ben and Chuck stand trial for murder.

Ben argues that he is not guilty, since Adam did not drink a single drop of the poison which Ben put in the canteen. Ben argues that he is therefore not responsible for Adam's death.

Chuck argues that draining the canteen of poisoned water only served to prolong Adam's life and to give Adam a better chance of making it back to civilization alive. Chuck argues that depriving a man of poison is hardly murder.

It seems that each are guilty of attempted murder, but are either of these two actually guilty of murder? Is the legal answer different from the ethical answer? Ten points for the most convincing argument.

It was published in 1947. The setting is clearly in "modern times" as there are references to phonographs, elevators, machine guns, motor vehicles and armored tanks. But there is a "regent" who lives in a palace, and whose armies are constantly marching through the city and creating much consternation. There is also a large insurrection being planned against him.

This doesn't sound like France two years after the end of the second world war. It also does not sound like a thinly disguised account of Nazi occupation, since the upper class is presented as viewing the insurrectionists with disdain (in contrast to how I would imagine anyone in France viewing the resistance.)

The political issues are presented in terms of class distinctions among the French, rather than in terms of occupation by a foreign army.

Does the story correspond to an actual period of French history? Or is it purely fanciful? I thought a regent was someone who temporarily held the throne till the king or queen came of age, but the French monarchy ended with Louis XVI, didn't it?

I'm reading about an ancient temple at which an oracle of the goddess Fortuna was housed. If a visitor came seeking divine guidance, the priest or priestess of the temple would reach into an urn containing small bronze tablets. Each tablet was pre-inscribed with a response, and the one that was randomly selected (under the guidance of Fortuna, presumably) would be regarded as containing the goddess' answer to the question. So needless to say, each of these inscriptions was written in a vague, mysterious sounding way. A bit too mysterious for me to have much success in deciphering them!

Many of them are written in a similar pattern, so if someone could translate one for me I probably can manage to crack at least some of the others. Here is one, with punctuation supplied by the author of the book I am reading:

"De incerto certa ne fiant; si sapis, caveas."

I get the part after the semicolon. But I am thown by the two adjectives, one singular and one plural, referring to uncertainty and certainty. And I am not sure what the plural subject of fiant would be.

I get the impression it is a derogatory term. (literally "a female fox", which in English has no negative connotations at all.)

I realize that slang is different in different Spanish-speaking countries (just as American and British slang are quite different). this question is about Spain.

If the meaning is really offensive, I apologize.

In Schubert's Unfininished Symphony, what instrument plays the famous theme the first time it occurs? The theme is repeated layer in a higher pitch, on what sounds like a violin to me. The first time around is it a violin, a viola, or something else?

We have a small portable DVD player (the kind where the screen flips up and you can set the whole thing on your lap.) My wife was pushing buttons and suddenly the image appeared inverted!. turning it off and on again does not fix the problem. I searched every menu I could find, but there was no adjustment for this sort of thing.

Everthing is upside down, not just the movie image. All the menus, even the little insets that say "play" or '2x" are inverted as well.

My wife thinks she was pressing "mode" then "enter", but "mode" seems to just adjust brightness and color contrast, so that doesn't seem to be the heart of the problem.

Any suggestions?

The word 'argument' has a technical meaning in a branch of mathematics known as Complex Analysis, and many of the pioneers in this field were French (and wrote in French, of course!) If you draw a vector (representing a complex number) in the coordinate plane, then the angle made with the positive x-axis is called the "argument" of the complex number. (So for example, any point in the first quadrant lying on the line y = x would have an 'argument' of 45 degrees, or pi/4 radians)

When I look up "argument" in French dictionaries, I get the usual meanings in English: a dispute, a persuasive discourse, etc. Does anyone know of an archaic or obscure non-mathematical usage in either French or Latin that would explain this choice of terminology?

One other clue (or red herring -- I don't know which! lol): When one makes the connection between complex analysis and trigonometry, the argument corresponds to the frequency of a wave.

Did it follow the regular form for 2nd declension masculine nouns? If so, "dee" sounds a bit awkward.

Or did it follow the form of the irregular "meus", and thus become "di"? Or was it something else?

(In medieval Ecclesiastical Latin, the vocative became simply "Deus", as in Psalm 22 which begins "Deus meus, Deus meus...", with no trace of the classical vocative in either the noun or the possesive adjective. But my question is about what the ancient Romans did.)

This phrase is on the back side of a US one-dollar bill, above the pyramid. "Coeptis" could be the ablative or dative plural of "coeptum", meaning "beginning" (or a declined participle of the verb "to begin") but "annuit" looks to me like a perfect verb form and I can't figure out what verb.

I wouldn't be surprised if the general sense was "new beginnings" or "begun anew", but I am having trouble with a precise parsing of this.

(I have been teaching myself Latin, without the benefit of a course.)

For those of you involved with the Cursillo movement: why are the supportive prayer notes that people write called palancas? I know Cursillo began in Spain, and "palanca" is Spanish for "lever." So why are those notes called levers? I suppose they "uplift" the person receiving them, but the word still does not strike me as a natural one to use. If anyone knows about the actual history, I would be interested in hearing about it.

Almost every word in the Bible was written in either Hebrew or Greek. There are a few Aramaic words scattered here and there in the New Testament. And I suppose a few words referring to Roman officials or to the Roman Empire can be taken to be Latin words.

There is one word in the New Testament that is not from any of these languages. It occurs in a verse that is quoted fairly often. What word is it? And from what language? (In case there are examples other than the one I am thinking of, I am referring to a word whose meaning is expounded in the Biblical commentaries of St. Augustine.)

Hint: In many English-language Bibles today, the word remains untranslated. I suppose the reasoning goes: "If the word would have struck a Greek speaker in New Testament times as a foreign word, then a faithful rendering into English should leave the word as a foreign sounding word."

Because they choke whenever they get near a bowl.

I know this sounds like a strange question. But in fact, the English names for large numbers are not the same in all countries. I live in the United States, and for us, "one billion" is the name for

1,000,000,000

But in some countries, this is called "a thousand million", and the name "one billion" refers to

1,000,000,000,000

which we call "one trilliion" in the US.

I'm curious about how this varies around the world: Please respond with your country and the number of zeros ( 9 or 12). Or if you simply know of the usage in a country other than your own, that would be good too.

I realize that not everyone ever thinks about numbers this big, so if you do not know, please do not guess :)

thanks

Rahm Emanuel is the son of Benjamin Emanuel, who was born in Jersusalem during the British occupation and who was a member of a Zionist group pressing for Israeli independence (achieved in 1948). Rahm attended a Jewish day school as he grew up in Chicago. Obama just named him as white house chief of staff.

Would a militant Muslim do this? It seems to me the entire case for the supposed "Muslim terrorist" connection is Obama's name, which coincidentally sounds like Osama. Well, if one is going to make a case based only on names, what about "Emanuel"?

Can we please finally drop this "terrorist" nonsense surrounding our new President? Thank you.

I have a used Latin textbook in which the previous owner wrote class notes in the margins. Where the book says there are very few neuters of this type, he or she wrote "only four!" The ones I mentioned, genu and cornu, are the only two that appear in that book.

Another Latin text says that these are the only two that "you are likely to encounter."

So of course this is now bugging me! What are the other two? (If in fact there are only two others.) I assume they were pretty obscure words (or obscene ones!)

Does anyone know any?

In the 1950's, television commercials for M&M's would go on and on about how they melt in your mouth and not in your hand, unlike all those other candy bars. But at the very end of the commercial, the announcer would say "M&M's, plain or peanut" and then mention almost as an afterthought, "or try M&M's chocolate wafer bars."

I don't believe I ever even SAW that product except on TV. Did anyuone here ever have one? what was it like? I'm guessing it was something like today's Kit Kats, but that's just a guess.

I bet they melted in your hand.

Years and years ago, my wife and I ate at a restaurant on the Gran Via in Madrid, near the Callao metro stop. The name of the restaurant was "Rodilla". Not "La Rodilla", just "Rodilla". An odd name and an odd syntax, with the article omitted.

I checked my dictionary to see if the word could mean anything other than "knee", but to no avail. I did notice that "rodillo" meant "rolling pin", which might be more appropriate for the name of a restaurant. But I stared at that sign, which was in cursive lettering, and could not convince myself that that's how it read. It definitely said "Rodilla".

Does anyone have any insight as to what the name refers to?

Let A denote the event "a person on yahoo answers awards 10 points for what they consider to be the best answer to their math question."

Let B denote the event " a person on yahoo answers says they will award 10 points to the best answer to their math question."

Select an asker at random from yahoo answers-math.

conjecture: P( A | B) < P(A)