Immured behind walls of paper for the nonce


It’s that time. Finals are over. The students get to relax, and many of them get to travel home to enjoy time with family. And we professors get to sit before stacks of exams, a battery of red pens at hand, and begin the awful process of grading.

I am about to cloister myself with two sets of exams and a pile of term papers, and I will not emerge until they are done. My goal is to get through them all before our trip to Minneapolis tomorrow. So no distractions allowed.

Comments

  1. blf says

    “immured” (literally “behind walls”) behind walls is redundant.

    Poopyhead has emtombed himself behind walls for protection against the advancing paperocalypse. So it’s not quite redundant, but one can only hope (assuming one is rooting for poopyhead) that he’s used British industrial cheddar — possible the most impenetrable substance known, capable of slowing down a pea — to build his barricade.

  2. chigau (違う) says

    “Immured behind paper…” isn’t as dramatic as “Immured behind walls of paper…”.
    but what about that “nonce” business?

  3. blf says

    Interesting. I wasn’t aware of the UK slang sense of nonce, mostly using it myself in the technical cryptographic sense or (sometimes) in the related lexicographic sense, and occasionally in the (rather rare?) sense poopyhead probably meant.

  4. moarscienceplz says

    PBS recently aired a stage show called The Nance starring Nathan Lane, about a gay man trying to stay employed on Broadway in the 1930s. I had never heard the term ‘nance’ before, but it seems pretty obvious it derives from ‘nancy boy’. I imagine ‘nonce’ as used in this sense is similar.

  5. moarscienceplz says

    … but of course, “for the nonce” simply means, ‘at the present time’. Nothing unsavory about it.

  6. Usernames! (ᵔᴥᵔ) says

    Guh? Why do you grade tests yourself?

    That’s what indentured servants graduate students are for!

  7. Al Dente says

    So no distractions allowed.

    Is that absolutely no distractions or is there some slack for things like erupting volcanoes, tsunamis, herds of stampeding wildebeest, Martian invasions, the house catching fire, etc.?

  8. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    May not get to class #3 tonight, dang it.

    Blame it on the cat….

    That’s what indentured servants graduate students are for!

    If you work at an undergraduate institution like PZ, graduate students are hard to come by.

  9. mywall says

    Urrm, what does “nonce” mean in American? Because it means something different in British.

  10. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Urrm, what does “nonce” mean in American?

    I interpret as “for the moment”. Subject to change when the grading is done….

  11. Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD says

    As someone who grew up in the UK I had no trouble recognising it meaning ‘the moment’. There may be other colloquial uses, but they don’t make any sense in context.

    My exam marking is done, but I still have to do moderation and another study period has already started. *whimper*

  12. says

    Finals for class #2 all graded, final grades for that class submitted.

    I’M BLIND. BRAIN BROKEN. CAN DO NO MORE.

    Still have a small stack of 10-15 page term papers to mark up. I skimmed through them the other day and they’re generally OK, but I’m in no shape to do the fine detail grading. Maybe tomorrow.

    One nice thing — before I buckled down to the papers, I figured out this Pandora thing, so I’ve had 80s music playing all day. Very pleasant. Almost makes up for MY EYEBALLS EXPLODING.

  13. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    If you have one, try a sauna. The last place I lived in Dah YooPee had one. Very good for muscle aches from snow shoveling, and making colds a minor nuisance. And getting a good nights sleep.

  14. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Okay, I really didn’t think I had anything to contribute. Trite expressions of sympathy are trite.

    Yet here I am, because suddenly, after reading about PZ’s exploding eyeballs (get that keratoconus looked at, PZ!), unable to stop myself from shouting:

    Grading power to the grading people!

    We shall overcome!

  15. blf says

    Grading power to the grading people!

    We shall overcome!

    The kraken, Elder Ones, and mice in the cupboard all fail
    to stir. Must try harder.

  16. says

    In an amusing & typical distortion from one of the trolls, Martin Wiesner AKA Pogsurf, one of more supercilious & stupid members of that crowd, has just announced to David Gorski on Twitter that I am now calling myself “the Nonce”, as evidence that I’m a sex offender.

    Let me know if Nugent adds it to one of his interminable lists of my crimes.

  17. David Marjanović says

    “immured” (literally “behind walls”) behind walls is redundant. ;)

    Walled in behind yet more walls may be overkill, but it’s not redundant. And I can see in and murus (“wall”) in that word.

  18. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @PZ:

    I am now calling myself “the Nonce”

    Bw… ????????????

    Really?

    Is Wiesner / Pogsurf a native English speaker?

    Cuz, wow. That one is so stupid it hurts.

    What could Wiesner/ Pog possibly be thinking “nonce” means?

    I am literally in awe at the stupid.

    Wonder, yes, but also fear and even trembling at such brobdingnagian inanity.

  19. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I’m English, and I’ve never heard ‘nonce’ used to mean anything other than ‘paedophile’ before this.

    Oh, evidently you never read any Dame Agatha Christie’s works. The word appears there, in the context PZ meant. For the moment.

  20. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Gee, the meaning PZ uses dates back to Shakespeare.

    Ham IV.vii.159 [Claudius to Laertes, of Hamlet] I’ll have preferred him / A chalice for the nonce
    1H4 I.ii.177 [Poins to Prince Hal] I have cases of buckram for the nonce
    1H6 II.iii.56 [Countess to Talbot, of his reply] This is a riddling merchant for the nonce

    So, only a dirty or presuppositional (PZ must be wrong) mind would make it anything else…

  21. says

    I’m American, and I’ve never seen the word used in any way other than as a term for the present time.

    And yeah, Wiesner is really bottom-of-the-barrel stupid.

  22. anteprepro says

    Daz, that was actually quite a victory right there.

    I’m American, and I have never heard the word “nonce” before this thread. Then I looked it up in multiple places, including the slang definitions, read about nonce words and nonce numbers on wikipedia, and then knew way too much about the word.

    And then I also learned some shit about linguistics. Damn, I was bored.

  23. says

    PZ:

    In an amusing & typical distortion from one of the trolls, Martin Wiesner AKA Pogsurf, one of more supercilious & stupid members of that crowd, has just announced to David Gorski on Twitter that I am now calling myself “the Nonce”, as evidence that I’m a sex offender.

    Does that fuckwit (hey Nugent, if you’re reading, add me to the list of people who calls others a ‘fuckwit’) think the sex offender definition of nonce makes sense in the context of the title of this post? Geez. Someone needs to upgrade the thinky thing between their ears.
    Oh, gee, was that too mean?

  24. Lofty says

    Is “Pogsurf” and old prison hand, to recognise the term that way? I’ve only read Shakespeare, not been incarcerated.

  25. zenlike says

    Wow, that Martin Wiesner/Pogsurf guy clearly is obsessed.

    Also, I now learned that publishing your own blogposts in bookform constitutes ‘plagiarism’.

    Bottom of the barrel indeed.