Posts by Irony Deficient

Spanish flu

It was called “Spanish flu” because it was first reported upon in the (neutral) Spanish press.

Re: So they call them Presidents

US presidents are not at all dictators in the classical sense (i.e. dictators on the model of the Roman Republic before Sulla). Dictators were appointed by consuls to pursue a specific goal (and outranked the consuls in pursuit of that goal), and resigned when that goal was achieved; presidents are elected by the Electoral College, and have a fixed term to execute any or all of the powers of the office.

Presidents are closer to consuls than to dictators, and even that comparison exaggerates the similarity of the two offices. Two consuls were in office simultaneously for one-year terms, and could not serve as consul again until ten years had passed after their most recent term; presidents have four-year terms, and are eligible to serve a second term immediately after the first one. Consuls were only head of government when they were within the city of Rome; when they were outside of it, though, they could (and often did) serve in the field as military leaders. Presidents remain head of government no matter where they’re located, and only Washington served in the field as a military leader while in office. Consuls had legislative, judicial, and religious duties along with their executive duties; presidents don’t.

Go figure.

Such emergency actions have precedent during previous wars. The censorship of news reports and detentions of designated foreign enemies occurred during both World Wars, and the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus * happened during the Civil War; once by Lincoln’s executive order, and again through legislation after pushback on the former †. The search and seizure of persons and property are permitted when not “unreasonable” (and accompanied by appropriate warrants), even during peacetime, and unreasonability can vary according to events of the time.

* — Not suspension of the writ itself; I suspect that suspension of the privilege of the writ rather than of the writ itself is what was found among these recently unclassified emergency actions.

† — Back when Congress reacted to encroachment from executive branch actions.

That should probably be 120 million.

Indeed it should:

PART I — PLANNING ASSUMPTIONS

C. DAMAGE ASSUMPTIONS

1. GENERAL. The attacks have almost completely paralyzed the functioning of the economic system, causing disruption of organized governmental activities, fragmentation of society into local groups, deterioration of our social standards, breakdown of our financial system, and complete disruption of normal production processes. The proportion of human casualties exceeds the proportion of material losses. In spite of the magnitude of the catastrophe and the possibility of additional but lighter attacks, about 120,000,000 uninjured people and substantial material resources remain. Consequently, there is ultimate recuperative potential to meet the requirements of the surviving population. Restoration of our society and its economy is possible in spite of the existence of confusion, despair, bereavement and psychological deterioration.

Now desktops need 4GB of RAM.

How much RAM they need might depend upon their OS and which programs need to be run on them.

Don’t think solar panels in a rather cloudy and snowy climate …

… at 45 degrees N latitude can possibly be a good idea.

Several solar plants exist in Vermont, most notably the 19.6 MW Coolidge Solar Farm in Ludlow. (Granted, that’s closer to 43° 30′ N than to 45° N, which is close to the border with Québec.) However, I’ve seen a couple of smaller installations in the Northeast Kingdom, e.g. the 2.6 MW Barton Solar Farm, around 44° 45′ N.

(For folks who aren’t familiar with New England, the climate of northern Vermont is approximately the temperature range of Moscow with the annual precipitation of Galway.)

On a smaller scale, A Vermonter’s Guide to Residential Solar (PDF, from September 2018) provides information for people in Vermont who might be considering photovoltaic systems for their homes.

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Regarding the UDHR’s application to US national law,

In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain that the Declaration “does not of its own force impose obligations as a matter of international law”, and that the political branches of the U.S. federal government can “scrutinize” the nation’s obligations to international instruments and their enforceability. However, U.S. courts and legislatures may still use the Declaration to inform or interpret laws concerned with human rights, a position shared by the courts of Belgium, the Netherlands, India, and Sri Lanka.

Souter’s opinion was the basis of the Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain decision. The relevant snippet is:

To begin with, Alvarez cites two well-known international agreements that, despite their moral authority, have little utility under the standard set out in this opinion. He says that his abduction by Sosa was an “arbitrary arrest” within the meaning of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Declaration), G. A. Res. 217A (III), U. N. Doc. A/810 (1948). And he traces the rule against arbitrary arrest not only to the Declaration, but also to article nine of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Covenant), Dec. 19, 1996, 999 U. N. T. S. 171, to which the United States is a party, and to various other conventions to which it is not. But the Declaration does not of its own force impose obligations as a matter of international law. See Humphrey, The UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in The International Protection of Human Rights 39, 50 (E. Luard ed. 1967) (quoting Eleanor Roosevelt calling the Declaration “ ‘a statement of principles … setting up a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations’ ” and “ ‘not a treaty or international agreement … impos[ing] legal obligations’ ”). And, although the Covenant does bind the United States as a matter of international law, the United States ratified the Covenant on the express understanding that it was not self-executing and so did not itself create obligations enforceable in the federal courts. See supra, at 33. Accordingly, Alvarez cannot say that the Declaration and Covenant themselves establish the relevant and applicable rule of international law. He instead attempts to show that prohibition of arbitrary arrest has attained the status of binding customary international law.

(I added the bolding.)

Re: 218 million customers

… or some people only have records of a single type, e.g. someone who rents a room on a “utilities included” basis in an otherwise occupied house might only have a mobile phone bill as an identifying “utility” record.

Re: 218 million customers

Section V of the report confirms that my interpretation was mistaken: they’re not 218 million utility customer records, but utility records of 218 million unique customers (among 139.7 million housing units). ICE’s use of these utility records to e.g. track down people for deportation seems to be a side effect — an extra source of income to the NCTUE consumer credit reporting agency, which assembled these utility records as a way to estimate the creditworthiness of people with limited or no traditional credit histories.

Re: 218 million customers

218 million customers that has got to be nearly every utility customer and therefore the homes of nearly all the population of the USA.

According to the 2020 US census, as of 2019-07-01, there were 139,684,244 “housing units” (i.e. houses, condominiums, apartments/flats, &c., whether occupied or not) within the US, so there is certainly some overlap in those 218 million customer records (which are perhaps represented by tuples of person, service address, utility type, date range, so a single person at a particular service address during a specific date range could have multiple customer records — one for each relevant utility type).

you don’t see mass of people trying to enter Russia…

That depends upon how you define “mass”. This archived article from 2014 discusses the emigration of people, both “legal” and “illegal”, from a number of the ex-USSR -stans to Russia, mainly in search of employment. (More recent articles on the same topic exist, but this article provides informative background context.)

Re: The E in ICE?

According to ICE’s annual report for fiscal 2021 [PDF], 59,011 non-US citizens were deported (“removed” in immigration legalese) from the US in fiscal 2021. Historical comparisons to removals in other fiscal years can be found here; large numbers of deportations seem to have started during the second Clinton administration.

How do you pour soup through a letter box?(*)

(*) Answer: messily.

Alternative answer: using a funnel.

Axe not ax

The OED offers a different analysis:

axe, ax (æks), sb.¹ Forms: 1 acas, äx, eax, 2 æx, 3 eax, (echze), 5 ex(e), (6 Sc. aix), 2– ax, 5– axe; Pl. axes. [Common Teutonic: OE. æx (acs), str. fem. for earlier *aces, *acus, Northumb. acas, cogn. with OS. akus (MDu. akes, Du. aaks), OHG. acchus (MHG. ackes, mod. G. ax, axt), ON. öx (gen. axar), Goth. aqizi; akin to Gr. ἀξίνη, and prob. to L. ascia. The spelling ax is better on every ground, of etymology, phonology, and analogy, than axe, which became prevalent during the 19th century; but it is now disused in Britain.]

This seems to be another example of an older form of a word surviving outside of the UK.

Re: Does anyone care?

I’d omitted Middle English “cedule”, “sedule” in the etymological chain above. The OED provides additional background:

In the 16th c., both in Fr. and Eng., the spellings scedule and schedule, imitating the contemporary forms of the Latin word, were used by a few writers. In Fr. this fashion was transient, but in Eng. schedule has been the regular spelling from the middle of the 17th c. The original pronunciation (ˈsɛdjuːl) continued in use long after the change in spelling; it is given in 1791 by Walker without alternative; in his second ed. (1797) he says that it is ‘too firmly fixed by custom to be altered’, though on theoretical grounds he would prefer either (ˈskɛdjuːl), favoured by Kenrick, Perry, and Buchanan, or — ‘if we follow the French’ — (ˈʃɛdjuːl). The latter he does not seem to have known either in actual use or as recommended by any orthoepist. Smart, however, in 1836 gives (ˈʃɛdjuːl) in the body of his Dictionary without alternative, although in in his introduction he says that as the word is of Gr. origin the normal pronunciation would be with (sk).

Thus, it would seem that the UK pronunciation of “schedule” is not based on a Modern Greek reading of σχέδη, but rather on an evolution of the original English (and French) pronunciation “sedule”.

I think that the closest analogous word in English that came via the Middle English ← Old French ← Late Latin ← Greek route might be “schism”. The OED gives two pronunciations for it — /sɪz(ə)m/ and /skɪz(ə)m/. It notes that

The pronunc. (skɪz(ə)m), though widely regarded as incorrect, is now freq. used for this word and its derivatives both in the U.K. and in North America.

I’ve never heard the pronunciation “sism” used in North America; is that pronunciation still preferred in the UK? Is the pronunciation “shism” used there, on the model of “schedule”?

Re: Does anyone care?

The etymological chain is “schedule” ← Old French cedule ← Late Latin schedula ← Latin scheda ← Ancient Greek σχέδη ; schedula is a diminutive of scheda. The Ancient Greek χ was pronounced as IPA /kʰ/, an aspirated “k”, which the Latin spelling represents. In Modern Greek, before ε, χ is pronounced as IPA /ç/, the “ch” sound of German ich. My guess is that the UK pronunciation of “schedule” was based on a Modern Greek reading of σχέδη, replacing the /ç/ sound with the more familiar /ʃ/ sound of “sh”, even though Latin ch never represented the /ç/ sound.

Re: Does anyone care?

Some parts of US English preserve older forms of the common language, e.g. “fall” vs. “autumn”; “gotten” vs. “got” as a past participle; rhoticism vs. non-rhoticism (although both rhotic UK English dialects and non-rhotic US English dialects exist). But some parts of UK English preserve older forms too, e.g. prepositional adverbs of time (“He likes a pint of an evening”); “thou” and its declensions in certain dialects. Also, IE English should not be overlooked as a source of preserved older vocabulary.

Because I know next to nothing about the US…

how does $289k compare with “average” wages in the US?

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated these nationwide wage estimates in May 2020. For all occupations, the median hourly wage was $20.17, the mean hourly wage was $27.07, and the mean annual wage was $56,310. (For “computer and mathematical occupations” only, the corresponding amounts were $43.92, $46.53, and $96,770 respectively.)

What would [“Baltic Curry”] even be?

Latvian bukstiņputra is one possibility.

And, horror, does it really suggest adding *cheese*?

Adding, no; it suggests fromage blanc (which is a type of fresh cheese, somewhere between cream cheese and cottage cheese) as a possible replacement for the milk.

Re: Wonder where they went

I’d read an article somewhere (perhaps Der Spiegel ?) that mentioned that Armenia was one place where small Russian software companies were relocating and reïncorporating. Along with Armenia, I think that there are still flights to Turkey and Georgia (and presumably China and the central Asian -stans, and perhaps other non-aligned countries worldwide) from Russia, so I’d guess that there are still many options for Russian emigrants.

Though measuring stuff in American-style “cups” does my head in.

WTF does “2 cups of…” mean? Which cups?

In American recipes, a cup is a unit of volume equal to eight fluid ounces. Over here, this cup is ½ pint; in Imperial land, it would be ⅖ pint, so it’s easier to think of it there as equal to eight fluid ounces (the difference between your fluid ounce and our fluid ounce is only about 4%, which should be a negligible difference for most recipes).

yet you still call your antiquated system …

… of inches, yards, pounds and whatnot as “Imperial measurements”

No, we call our system of measurements “US customary”. The Imperial system of measurements was a replacement for the traditional English and Scottish units in the UK and its possessions; the Imperial system was not adopted in the US.

Why the hell is the gallon different?

The US customary gallon (3.785411784 l = 231 cubic inches) was originally the pre-Imperial English wine gallon. (There were also ale gallons, corn gallons, and coal gallons in the pre-Imperial English system.)

The Imperial gallon (4.54609 l) is closer in size to the pre-Imperial English ale gallon (4.621152048 l = 282 cubic inches). The Imperial gallon’s size was not based on a set number of cubic inches, but (originally) on the volume of 10 pounds of distilled water weighed in air with brass weights at a barometric pressure of 30 inches of mercury and at a temperature of 62 °F.

any others?

Of course! Both gallons contain eight pints, but for liquids, the US customary pint contains 16 US customary fluid ounces, and the Imperial pint contains 20 Imperial fluid ounces; thus, the Imperial fluid ounce is slightly smaller than the US customary fluid ounce.

There’s another unit called the bushel, which is a larger unit of volume. The Imperial bushel contains eight Imperial gallons. There are two US customary bushels: one for liquids (eight US customary gallons), and one for dry goods such as grains (approximately eight English corn gallons).

The US still uses both avoirdupois pounds and Troy pounds for measuring mass; Troy weight is used mostly for precious metals. The Imperial system has only retained Troy ounces (but they are identical in both systems).

The US used to define certain SI units in terms of US customary units. This changed in 1959, when the US customary units were redefined in terms of SI units. However, the “survey foot” is still based on the pre-1959 US definition of the meter in terms of the yard. This wasn’t redefined because of the amount of survey data that was based on the survey foot.