Random Questions Thread

Lawn shavings and other terrible things.

Whatever Soviet era cigarettes were made of

Pain and suffering of mortals, fire and brimstone, your lies and despair.

I think it depends on the kind of hell.

This is the firey kind.

Also, it would be the kind made for demons.

edited 31st Jan '14 8:25:55 PM by BiggerBen

Then beautiful premium tobacco fresh from Cuba

Or perhaps beautiful premium tobacco made from Cubans.

Gives a whole new meaning to when you say you're "smoking a Cuban".

One more thing, it's supposed to be far too strong for mortals.

Havana tobacco leaf rolled with powdered 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (burn it and you get tear gas.)

Is it possible for a corporation to exist where two people own 51% of the stock (aka being dual partnership type thing) where the rest of the stock is up for the highest bidder and ONLY that amount is available to buy? Meaning a hostile takeover is pretty much impossible unless one of said two people gives up their 25.5%?

I believe so. In fact, in real life people use all sorts of tricks to maintain control with much less than 50% of the stock. For example, stock is often divided into voting and nonvoting shares, with only the later being sold. Another trick is to use a series of holding companies and crossholdings to maintain control, often seen in India.

Suppose a soldier performed a very important service for their country, but one that could cause some kind of big disturbance if the details were leaked. Would it be possible for them to be awarded the Medal of Honor (or their country's equivalent) in secret for the government to still show their gratitude? If so, would they have to keep the award secret, would they be able to show the award but keep the details secret, or would that depend on what, specifically, happened?

Not really. Usually they never get awards in situations like that.

I think it was in one of the Splinter Cells there was a bit where Sam and Lambert were having a conversation about how even though Sam is out there saving the world's ass he'll never get recognized for it.

If I remember correctly the Russian protagonists in Battlefield 3 were having a similar conversation.

edited 1st Feb '14 1:02:10 PM by LeGarcon

Secret awards were and continue to be a thing with intelligence services; militaries, somewhat less so. The fact that you got the award is not listed on public record, of course, lest someone should start asking questions. But those are usually mid-ranking awards—no Medals of Honor or Victoria Crosses, which typically require conspicuous gallantry to earn.

The CIA does that sort of thing all the time.

Friend of mine told me she couldn't get into Dragon Ball for a numerous reasons, one of them being that Goku, Vegeta, Tien, etc all have ridiculous physiques and muscles in places they shouldn't. Um...I'm no expert in anatomy, but what may she be referring to, specifically?

Everyone in Dragon Ball is hilariously buff beyond all reason.

Does anyone know if Sikh Regiment soldiers carry special knives/swords (specifically a kirpan) a la Gurkhas and their kukris? Or at the very least, award them as gifts to partnered/allied soldiers from other countries?

edited 1st Feb '14 9:24:02 PM by peasant

How would you attempt to communicate with someone from a completely unknown culture and language?

Given a corpus of printed text, they could probably deduce that the numbers are base 10 and written left to right. With some study, they could figure out that the main text is written left to right, top to bottom, and possibly even some aspects of the grammar. But without context, that doesn't really help. How would you communicate the actual meaning behind the words?

edited 2nd Feb '14 4:28:34 PM by storyyeller

With only printed work, I'm not sure you do. Remember how long the key to heiroglyphs was (were?) lost before the Rosetta stone showed up?

edited 2nd Feb '14 4:58:14 PM by edgewalker22

Note that this is going to be difficult to nigh-on impossible if one party does not wish to attempt communication with the other and there is no access to people of that culture/language who are also willing to attempt such. The methods and reasonings through which this person was found are going to change how they try to understand each other. Do the interacting parties have anything in common? Why does this one party want the other to understand this document, and what is it about? Do both parties consist of a single person (most likely with little to no experience with interactions like this), or does one of them have access to linguists or other similar people to help? Even with the help of people who study languages, getting this person to understand the contents of this document is not going to be a quick process.

Interpretive dance

The universal language of mathematics

Auditory and visual association, one word at a time, probably with visual aids and pantomime.

Most languages use -en and -ed as ways to end a word in various ways (such as -ed, which is a past tense inflectional affix). But let's say you are to create a language and have that language's own ways of saying -en and -ed. For example, in my language, gan means rise, and -arah means -en, so ganarah means risen. Would a different way of saying an ending be grammatically correct?

Well in my case, one party is a stranded alien. The other has no formal linguistics training but lots of books on the subject. They both want to communicate. Unfortunately, their spoken languages are anatomically incompatible, so they had to resort to writing.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking; what do you mean by "most languages"? The use of -ed to form the past tense, for example, is pretty much only in English as far as I know. By "a different way of saying an ending", do you mean different verbal forms?

You'll need to decide how verbs are modified, for starters. Do they change meaning via inflection, modifying the verb itself, or periphrasis, where extra words change what they mean? If the former, do they use a system of affixes to determine tense, aspect, mood, and so on, or does a certain part of the verb change in each? If the latter, does the verb inflect at all, or is the changing meaning expressed solely through the extra words?

For example, in my conlang, the verbal structure is based partially on Spanish; all verbs are in their infinitive form by default. To use your example, bavres is "to rise" or, more poetically, "to ascend". The "-vres" ending indicates that it's an infinitive, with most different forms of the verb made by changing this stem, although aspect and mood are formed by infixes. The past participle, "risen", is formed by changing the ending to -vrega: bavrega. The past tense form, "rose", depends on the person and plurality of the subject who did the rising.

• 1st person singular: I rose, "bavro"
• 2nd person singular: you alone rose, "bavra"
• 3rd person singular personal: he/she rose, "bavrae"
• 3rd person singular impersonal: it rose, "bavras"
• 1st person plural inclusive: we (including you) rose, "bavron"
• 1st person plural exclusive: we (but not you) rose, "bavrin"
• 2nd person plural: you all rose, "bavran"
• 3rd person plural personal: they (the people) rose, "bavraen"
• 3rd person plural impersonal: they (the things) rose, "bavrasn"

For example, in my language, gan means rise, and -arah means -en, so ganarah means risen.

I hope you realize that you're just creating a cipher of English. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Creating a real language is a ton of work.

What exactly is the difference between a "cipher for English" and a real language?

edited 3rd Feb '14 6:03:43 AM by SciFiSlasher