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.
So you’re just marking time then PZ ?!
Cue the devil cat….
“immured” (literally “behind walls”) behind walls is redundant. ;)
@Marcus Ranum- it could be multiple walls.
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.
“Immured behind paper…” isn’t as dramatic as “Immured behind walls of paper…”.
but what about that “nonce” business?
Yeah, “nonce” has a somewhat unsavoury connotation in UK English, PZ. Not ambiguous, but a bit funny. :)
Remember PZ, the answers go D, B, A, C, D, B, A, C.
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.
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.
… but of course, “for the nonce” simply means, ‘at the present time’. Nothing unsavory about it.
The only use of ‘nonce’ I was aware of before now was with ‘for the’.
Learn something new…
http://worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-non1.htm
Guh? Why do you grade tests yourself?
That’s what
indentured servantsgraduate students are for!You knew the job was dangerous when you took it. No sympathy (well, maybe a little…)
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.?
One class done & grades submitted.
Starting work on second class.
May not get to class #3 tonight, dang it.
Blame it on the cat….
If you work at an undergraduate institution like PZ, graduate students are hard to come by.
Urrm, what does “nonce” mean in American? Because it means something different in British.
I interpret as “for the moment”. Subject to change when the grading is done….
mywall #18:
Are you referring to ‘sex offender,’ or to ‘grass, nark.’ Whichever, it also has the standard meanings in British English.
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*
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.
Yeah, I did note that it wasn’t ambiguous, mind. I’ve just been rereading my Rebus mysteries lately, so the slang’s been in my head. :)
PZ
Take a long, hot bath.
With bubbles.
and a drink
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.
Sauna!
Don’t drink alcohol in the sauna, though.
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:
We shall overcome!
The kraken, Elder Ones, and mice in the cupboard all fail
to stir. Must try harder.
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.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
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.
@PZ:
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.
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.
I’m also English, and had no problem with the word ‘nonce.’
Since we’re discussing prison-slang usages, though, I’d point out that it also means a police-informer.
Words have multiple meanings, news at eleven.
Gee, the meaning PZ uses dates back to Shakespeare.
So, only a dirty or presuppositional (PZ must be wrong) mind would make it anything else…
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.
anteprepro #37:
Although nonce-words, by definition, never do.
Thank you, thank you. I’m here all week. (I’d take a bow, but the ship would sink…)
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.
PZ:
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?
I’ve only ever heard nonce used in the manner PZ used it.
Is “Pogsurf” and old prison hand, to recognise the term that way? I’ve only read Shakespeare, not been incarcerated.
I learned something today, was what I was trying to say. Never even considered it might have other meanings before.
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.