Maggie Wittlin

"I meant only that I had gone back in time to the mid-1780s and had a verbal spat with another person then."

Getting the Peer Assessment Score is gonna be a logistical challenge, but I think we’re up for it.

Scientists Decry ‘Political Attack’ on Reference Manual for Judges

The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence is an invaluable resource, and political interference with its contents is a serious problem.

What is Journey to the Tenor of the Earth?

He was extremely popular in the mid-to-late ‘90s, and now he has another starring role in a hospital show (The Pitt).

Noah Wyle? From ER?

Ah, ok. Missed that episode! Anyway, the Seiko is $475 and the Parmigiani is about $75K, per their websites.

Thereabouts. Or a factor of >150x.

That is just a very, very pretty watch.

There is a very big price difference between these two watches.

A great blue heron (I think?) stands tucked and on one leg on ice covering part of a lake. There are some ducks behind. Late day light comes from the left. The two towers of the San Remo building are reflected in the unfrozen part of the lake.

A zoomed in shot of the heron, now on two feet and in cloudy light.

This fellow was in Central Park today.

What are ambiphians?

The email is opaque enough that I don’t know if we can infer details. (It could be for immediate use giving feedback, rather than actual grades, for example.) But yeah, it would be good for every school to have a policy prohibiting use of AI in grading.

Yikes! Glad the car looks like that instead of you!

Yup:

I don’t see how it would work either. But I hadn’t previously heard of the Irish Pale, so when he capitalized it in the expression, the Pale of Settlement was the only thing I could think of, and I thought that was the allusion he was making.

P.9.1977–a bridge too far (a) A step beyond what is safe, sensible, or desirable; an act regarded as too drastic to take; (b) something that is likely to prove too difficult; a task that is beyond what one is expected or able to achieve. Popularized by the title of the 1977 film A Bridge too Far (based on the 1974 book of the same name), an account of the 1944 Allied defeat at Arnhem in a battle for a series of strategically important bridges, with allusion to a comment made by Lieutenant-General F. A. M. Browning (see quot. 1944). [1944I think we might be going a bridge too far. F. A. M. Browning in R. E. Urquhart & W. Greatorex, Arnhem (1958) 4Citation details for F. A. M. Browning in R. E. Urquhart & W. Greatorex, Arnhem] 1977Brave though he is to attempt it, monetary union in the absolute form Mr Jenkins is suggesting is all too likely to prove a bridge too far. Economist 24 September 16/2

My second OED lookup of a phrase origin this afternoon!

Next time we don’t win trivia…

Yeah, again, it's unclear to me whether it's the origin of this use of the word, since the OED says it's unsupported. Even if they did talk about things "beyond the Pale" in Ireland, it might not be the etymology? But I don't know! (I'm more familiar with the Pale of Settlement, so I went there.)

Ha, I hadn't even seen the context of what you were quoting! I was gathering that you were suggesting that "beyond the Pale" had, like, antisemitic origins.

I.5.c. 1720–beyond the pale (of): outside or beyond the bounds (of). beyond the pale: outside the limits of acceptable behaviour; unacceptable or improper. Cf. senses I.4a and I.5a. The theory that the origin of the phrase relates to any of several specific regions, such as the area of Ireland formerly called the Pale (see sense I.4b) or the Pale of Settlement in Russia (see sense I.4c), is not supported by the early historical evidence and is likely to be a later rationalization.

OED:

Wait, really?

What is Watermelon Sugar Snap?

This is so bad, but it is also so, so funny. Real life version of:

Who is Scott Hamilton?

In-flew-encer

What is a mater-ialist?

I don’t think this is the first time I’ve seen the public catch wind of a specific instance of some common thing in criminal procedure and go ballistic over it…

Every hour: 1 taco, 1 beer, half a mile to jog it off.

I’m assuming the 10 miles don’t have to be consecutive.