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12:23 AM
Aww I would have voted for you too if I'd had 4 votes! Frankly I just voted for the top 3 rep, because I thought most candidates would make excellent moderators and had no real preference. Seriously, this website is suffering under the burden of too many great users.
The above was @Martha (and all other candidates). Why aren't there more mod spots anyway?
12:38 AM
Ok, I think the comment on my answer here english.stackexchange.com/q/14621/2007 is implying that I 'stole' his answer, but they don't seem even a little similar to me. Am I being trolled or am I just missing something?
12:57 AM
@Dusty, as I remember it, you posted your answer first, so he can hardly be claiming plagiarism. I'd say just ignore the comment.
@Cerberus, my philosophy was, 10k+ users have many mod-like powers, so the diamond mods ought to be folks whose rep is not above 10k, thereby spreading the work. :/ Oh, well.
@Martha I'm actually not sure about whose was first, but the post themselves don't seem at all similar, so i was just trying to figure out what he was talking about =D
1:30 AM
@Martha mplungjan initially answered at 15:31Z, and edited it at 15:37Z. Dusty answered at 15:48Z. But they don't appear that similar to me, either.
1:48 AM
@Dori thanks, I feel slightly less crazy now =D
6 hours later…
8:14 AM
@Cerberus It might have been then more logical to vote for good users with less rep, so as to increase the users with mod power. (Don't forget 10k users have access to most mod tools)
But anyway congratulations to @nohat, @RegDwight and @Kosmonaut. I voted for two of them, but the third one comes as no surprise.
And I hope that some of the excellent candidate will nominate themselves for the next election, though I don't know when it could happen.
1 hour later…
9:37 AM
@Dusty and @Martha, too. Hover over the "X hours ago" bit to see the exact date and time. This works not only for answers, but also for questions, comments, user profile fields, and in fact pretty much anywhere you see anything resembling a date. Oh, and then there's always the timeline: /posts/14621/timeline­.
10:14 AM
@RegDwight: Good morning, Mr. Moderator.
Hello, Mr. Dream!
How come you don't have your diamond yet? Is there going to be a medal ceremony or something?
Me do haz.
Only in chat me's blue insteadz.
Das ist normal.
Ah, I seez it now.
I must have been looking at a cached Users page.
Ja, hier herrscht Ordnung!
Ordnung muß sein!
10:18 AM
Now, are the trains going to start running on time now that you're a mod? I sure hope so.
Well, as chance would have it, there's not much to do this morning.
Murphy's Law.
I could become obstreperous and you could ban me. Would that make you happy?
You come to the site as a normal user, everything's a dupe of everything. You visit as a mod, boring nothingness.
@Robusto I think it would make me sad, actually.
Hey, it's a slow day. There haven't even been many new questions over the past 14 hours.
But anyhow, back to the real important issues. Have you seen The Three Burials of Melquiadez Estrada?
10:21 AM
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a 2005 American drama film directed by Tommy Lee Jones and written by Guillermo Arriaga. It stars Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, and Dwight Yoakam. The film was inspired by the real-life killing in Texas of an American teenager, Esequiel Hernandez Jr, by United States Marines during a military operation near the United States–Mexico border. Plot Melquiades Estrada, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, is shot and buried in a shallow grave in the high desert of West Texas by border patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper). Estrada's ...
This is how you make good modern western movies.
Sounds interesting.
It's hard to make a good Western these days.
No Country for Old Men would qualify, I think.
True Grit wouldn't.
The Three Burials is excellent in that it's like a ten-hour movie packed into 120 minutes. While True Grit is like 30 minutes packed into 110. Now, the funny thing is, normally this would imply that True Grit is somehow entertaining while The Three Burials is somehow boring, but the opposite is actually true.
I believe it. Is it out on DVD yet?
I mean, usually it's the boring stuff that takes forever, and the fun stuff that makes time fly, but here the opposite is the case.
@Robusto I would guess so.
I've seen a dubbed version, IIRC. The movie is like five years old.
Ah! There it is right in the Wikipedia snippet: it's from 2005.
10:27 AM
Yeah, I was going to say I can add.
Or subtract. I'm really versatile.
Are you like a human Watson?
Kind of.
Not quite as good with the ladies as he is, though.
And I break down in the math when it comes to non-linear differential equations.
Which is probably why he edges me out with the ladies. Chicks dig diff-eq, what can I say?
Hm. I'm not informed about Watson's lady-loving skills, but I think that's a good thing.
Oy! (:
Oh, he doesn't love them. They love him. He plays way hard to get.
10:31 AM
Good morning, you three-headed dog, you.
Hmm I expected everybody to be asleep at this time...
Should'em not be like nine or something?
11.30 here.
But In America, what, 12 am-5am?
10:32 AM
It's 5:30 a.m. here.
Me's talking about the number of heads.
Ah, see? I was right. Everyone should have been in bed but I (red herring!).
Hehe well I see you have divined my essence.
Like I always say, n heads are better than one.
But 50 would be bragging.
Most men only have two.
10:34 AM
Wait can't n be 1?
@Robusto Yeah, yeah, here's your thwack.
See now I feel the difference in time zones.
Not morning talk that.
Hm. Word ladder from talk to wood?
Ok, let me rephrase: Like I always say, n heads are better than one, where n > 1.
Thank you.
10:36 AM
I usually skip the foreplay and go right to wood, myself.
6 mins ago, by Robusto
That sounds a lot more... appropriate.
Incidentally, does anyone know why there should be only three moderators?
double oy!
There are many more users I'd have loved to give my votes to.
@Robusto Actually, there have been as many as 20 new questions over the past 14 hours.
10:38 AM
Is that more than average?
I really wouldn't know.
@Cerberus — Well, it's not clear there are only three. "A smaller number of sources shows a variable number, sometimes as many as 50."
18 hours ago, by RegDwight
@Martha Never say never, Martha. Besides, they could go for four mods, actually. I'm looking for that question right now...
18 hours ago, by RegDwight
A: Continuity of Moderation


If they were going for four mods they would have done it before the election.
Read the comments there.
@Robusto: Huh so would that be hidden mods or something?
10:41 AM
I'm just saying that artists usually depict three mods, but there have been other representations in history. Just like how many heads you have.
Thanks for the link, reading...
@RegDwight has been trying on his tiara and sash already.
Hehe nice, there must be a link. The many-headed monster that is EU&L.
Oh, by the way, this was the scene right before the voting:
SASH! is a German DJ / producer team, fronted by Sascha Lappessen (born 10 June 1970, Nettetal, Germany), who works in the recording studio with Ralf Kappmeier and Thomas "Alisson" Lüdke. They have sold over 18 million albums worldwide and earned more than 65 Gold and Platinum awards. History Sascha Lappessen, Thomas "Alisson" Lüdke, and Ralf Kappmeier, created Sash! in 1995. The previous year, the three had worked together, under the name of Careca, to produce a piece called "Indian Rave", which was a mildy successful song. In 1996, Sash! released "It's My Life", which became a Europea...
10:42 AM
That's @RegDwight 8th from the left.
See, you've got what you've been asking for since the beginning.
Refresh my memory.
Feb 15 at 1:29, by Robusto
@Kosmonaut, @drachenstern, @waiwai933: I hope there's going to be a swimsuit competition.
Well, it took you long enough. You're all such teases.
So I see the number of moderators is somewhat flexible. But why three in the first place?
10:45 AM
It's a magic number.
Arg a Latin mistake.
yesterday, by RegDwight
Hey @Robusto, I dunno if you know any Russian, so I'll let you in on a secret. In Russian, the number 7 stays for luck. 3, 12 and 40 have special meaning, too. I know I'm blowing your mind too hard, so I'll pause for a second.
(In that meta question, not your line obviously.)
(All that anti-prescriptivist therapy for nothing!)
(Bangs head against wall.)
@RegDwight — You're always harping on the past.
@Cerberus Latin prescriptivism is somewhat tolerated. We're only skeptical about English prescriptivism here.
10:47 AM
It is a slippery slope!
I feel the urges... taking possession of me...
Yes! That's why we tolerate the Latin prescriptivism only somewhat, any only on Math.
No wait that was my left head.
Only on math? Huh.
Actually, I thought the English are sceptical.
Only on meta.Math, actually.
The English are no more sceptical than the Germans.
10:48 AM
@Robusto That's how I spelled it at first.
You have to consider your audience.
Right. I suppose mathematicians are nit-pickers?
@Robusto Yeah, I didn't want this to become another ashame affair.
Refresh my memory?
10:50 AM
I once used ashame, a word Robusto didn't know.
Neither do I...
I suppose it means something like asleep?
And I did it totally on purpose, to see his reaction.
4 mins ago, by Robusto
@RegDwight — You're always harping on the past.
I expect he remained a gentleman?
10:51 AM
Where do you think the word "ashame**d**" comes from?
See, this is how we can tell you're a non-native speaker. No native speaker would use ashame that way.
It might be a back-formation of some kind, like -nosed?
@Cerberus Well, sort of.
Feb 23 at 14:05, by Robusto
Does that pass for "remaining a gentleman"?
1 min ago, by Robusto
4 mins ago, by Robusto
@RegDwight — You're always harping on the past.
10:52 AM
@Reg Hehe not quite.
13 secs ago, by Robusto
1 min ago, by Robusto
4 mins ago, by Robusto
@RegDwight — You're always harping on the past.
Well, you are.
Are you asking for a confirmation or what?
I thought it was pretty obvious right from the beginning.
If it wasn't for links to past chat references and Wikipedia, @RegDwight's output here would be about 18 words per week.
Feb 24 at 2:21, by RegDwight
I'm so tired, I can only quote.
10:54 AM
He is sooooo lazy.
Feb 23 at 11:38, by Eldros
If @Robusto is the dictionary here, @RegDwight is like some kind of archivist. Count on him to find the right link/song/reference relevant to the discussion at hand.
1 min ago, by RegDwight
13 secs ago, by Robusto
1 min ago, by Robusto
4 mins ago, by Robusto
@RegDwight — You're always harping on the past.
Obviously quoting is the quickest way to communicate in life in general.
Feb 23 at 11:40, by RegDwight
BTW, you misspelled irrelevant.
I feel like we're in the Middle Ages all of a sudden.
10:55 AM
Haha, a Cerberus finds himself in the Middle Ages. How's that for a movie idea?
Why are you "archiving Robusto"? That sounds ominous.
Yeah I'm sure it would work.
With Whoopi Goldberg!
Haha what, is she to play me?
In fact she could be my left head.
That is my friendly head - you won't ordinarily see it.
Well, she was in that crappy A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court re-hash.
10:57 AM
(<= Totally film-ignorant)
A Knight in Camelot is a 1998 TV movie starring Whoopi Goldberg and Michael York. It was directed by Roger Young, distributed by Disney and is loosely based on Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Plot Scientist Vivien Morgan is zapped back to the medieval age and time of King Arthur and Camelot, when her scientific machine malfunctions. She is sent back along with many objects from her desk, including her laptop and boom box. As she is sentenced to be burned at the stake, she discoveres among the laptop-data, that there will be a solar eclipse in short time. With her ...
Sorry, not a fan of Whoopi Goldberg or travesties of Twain.
Oh that sounds quite... interesting!
An interesting mixture of genres.
No it doesn't.
No, no, no.
in Sandbox on Stack Overflow Chat, 1 min ago, by Nyuszika7H
12 secs ago, by Nyuszika7H
11 secs ago, by Nyuszika7H
8 secs ago, by Nyuszika7H
5 secs ago, by Nyuszika7H
18 secs ago, by Nyuszika7H
Quoting test!
10:59 AM
And we have a winner!
An interesting movie would be if Whoopie Goldberg got burned at the stake. The End.
We've had longer sequences already.
You can hear him searching ...
Well winner of the daily prize perhaps then?
10:59 AM
Here it comes ...
Get ready ...
Hmm, he's usually much faster than this.
My God, has he lost his speedo?
Nah, you can't search for embedded quotes. I would have to remember some keywords from the surrounding conversation.
Umm, Nyuszka, that's getting a bit disruptive.
11:00 AM
Well, well. Thanks Nyuszika; especially for that removal!
Feb 18 at 10:59, by Robusto
13 hours ago, by Robusto
27 secs ago, by RegDwight
2 hours ago, by RegDwight
yesterday, by RegDwight
Feb 7 at 15:38, by RegDwight
@Robusto @Ceberus You can't spell my name…
There he goes.
@RegDwight mine was longer :P
Apologies! Corrected.
11:02 AM
@Nyuszika7H That one got much longer, too. But again, I can't be bothered searching. I was only able to find the above one because I remembered the word "foot".
By the way, do other SE sites have a similarly high answerers-to-askers ratio?
And people don't seem to understand good writing on English.SE. Go figure.
@Cerberus Um, do we have a high answerer-to-asker ratio?
Well it usually feels as though everyone is waiting for new questions and jumps onto them before I can finish my answers!
Jan 31 at 16:40, by RegDwight
11:04 AM
Your question indicates that perhaps this ratio is normal for SE...
Feb 9 at 16:35, by RegDwight
That's "fastest gun in the West", in case anybody's not informed.
@Cerberus I was under the impression that we are awfully slow when compared to SO.
11:05 AM
Well, I haven't visited SO in a long time. But that's what I hear on MSO.
Then what do people do after the split second it took for the first excellent answer to appear?
What do you mean, what do people do?
The complaints I've heard are that there are many more nearly identical answers on SO, because everyone tries to be the FGITW.
Well, when I visit this site I usually wait for a new question to appear that is somewhat decent, then I answer it; but if there is always some excellent answer quicker than mine, I'd feel useless!
@RegDwight: I still want to know why you would be archiving me. That sounds very NKVD to me.
Arg, I meant "answer" (corrected).
11:07 AM
Feb 18 at 10:21, by RegDwight
You can edit stuff here.))
Yeah I'd done that already.
Hey is that how you get all those quotes!
@Robusto Well, whom else should I be archiving? Not that many people here.
You're just trying to build some kind of case against me. Get me evicted from my back yard or something.
Yay kittens!
11:09 AM
@Cerberus Placekittens! :)
I mean, hey, that is not very appropriate...
@Cerberus Actually, there have been lots and lots of occasions when an answer would come in late and still take the lead.
Kittens of the breed non sequitur.
That's the best breed evar.
11:10 AM
@Reg: Yeah okay true. But often the first answer is quite decent, not very far below the level of the best answer.
OK, time for coffee. TTYL.
Oh I dear I talked non-English. Bad.
How come non-sequitur-kittens.com is not registered? Even upsidedowndogs.com is taken!
11:12 AM
(<= Sorry weak at memes.)
I should be putting in my contacts and going for a run; I can hardly read chat anyway... have fun quoting, later!
Okay. CU!
11:30 AM
Did I shoo them all away?
Yes. It's always your fault. Always.
Even when it's not.
I knew it. I already had a suspicion from the many remarks my girlfriend makes.
Well I wanted to get some fresh air anyway. TTYL.
Yeah, excellent weather here. Ciao.
12:17 PM
Well it would have been even nicer if it hadn't been freezing and windy. But the sun was good.
Every time I am amazed at how good it feels to live in a medieval city, even after years and years.
Running through old alleys, along 17th-century canals... how do people live without those?
Tradition and age are such utterly pleasing things.
Überall ist es besser, wo wir nicht sind.
Aberu warum sagst du das?
I just felt reminded of that movie title.
Oh I haven't seen it... lemme see.
I haven't seen it, either. I only know the title.
12:23 PM
Oh dear... I don't think I could ever be happy in the New World!
Perhaps New England...but still...
The New World is so 1492.
I know right!
I mean, sure we don't have many medieval buildings left; but it is the churches that are the backbones of the city, even though though only tourists ever visit them.
Traditions should only be destroyed when they are evil through and through; otherwise they should be adapted as subtle as possible.
Hi again, er… I meant: oy!
Oye como va mi ritmo.
12:27 PM
...as my rhythm goes... what is "oye"?
Thank you Nyu.
@Cerberus NO it's not an answer to your question. :D
It's a simple LOGO script that draws two vertical lines:
@Cerberus Listen. Imperative.
Even if it wasn't!
12:28 PM
Don't tell me you don't know that song.
Sorry no...
I don't own a television set.
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Oh Santana! I used to like him.
12:30 PM
I knew that song before there were television sets. I just held an onion to my ear.
Haha nice mixed(?) metaphor... yeah it sounds good so far.
It's not a metaphor at all. It was the style at the time.
Right... it could be that I am still panting from my run, but I don't get the link at all!
12:33 PM
Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I held an onion to my ear, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
But why, why hold vegetables to your ear? I thought you meant that listening to Santana was like holding an onion to your ear because it made you weep...
It would have made for a nice figure of speech, oh well.
22 hours ago, by Robusto
See, this is how I can tell you're a non-native speaker. You don't get all the cultural references.
Oh I see, the Simpsons!
Well I do like the Simpsons. It is just that we only had public television when I grew up, and the Simpsons were only on commercial television. And I haven't had a television at home ever since I went to college so... I have never watched much shows at all in my life, you see...
In fact my peers, whose English might be worse, look at me weird too when I don't get film and television references.
12:43 PM
Hear, hear! @Robusto.
Did you grow up in the USSR?
Well, kind of, for as long as it lasted.
Cool, in a way.
Oh, I should be going. It will soon be time to go imprint the importance of Latin and Greek upon the soul of innocent children and I am trying not to be late again.
1:27 PM
Congratulations @RegDwight
Why thank you, Benjol.
I don't bother congratulating the others, they were already mods :)
And doubled congrats because you're non-native (if I've been reading correctly
@RegDwight — "Hear, hear" what?
@Benjol Hahaha. Well, actually, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Nohat, Kosmonaut, and Michael for their efforts in setting the tone for this site.
Yup, non-prescriptivists FTW :)
1:31 PM
@RegDwight — Wait, I thought this was an atonal site. Or even aleatoric.
@Robusto Hear, hear that someone not getting all the cultural references could simply mean that he doesn't own a boob tube.
Well, these days it's impossible to be a native speaker without TV and the Internetz.
Tru dat.
Q: Colon usage in English

Peter Of The CornI have always thought that colons were used to clarify, expand, provide evidence for the preceding sentence, or show an example. I have heard that this is not true. (Truly, it is a shame if it is so: colons are my favorite punctuation.) Which of the following sentences uses the colon correctly: ...

Feels like a medical question somehow ...
@Robusto I got the internetz, but not the TV...
1:33 PM
@Benjol — Check the FAQ. I think it's required for this site, idk.
Though I must say, I used to not own a TV set for like three years in a row, back in 1998 or something. And I didn't miss it at all after a while. And it's only after I got married that I got a PC + some Internets at home.
As Jack White so aptly put it, "Oh well oh well oh well".
We got dvd player, but no channels. Can't say I miss it much. TV is like Twitter, a flood of rubbish with some hidden gems
DVR is my rubbish filter.
You can pick the hidden gems and watch them at your leisure.
I can just feel @RegDwight googling for the Jack White reference.
@Benjol Yeah, I would like to reply that you just have to watch the right channels, but alas, I'm watching a lot of crap, too.
@Robusto Um, actually, no. I thought the quote was perfect. It says everything it needs to say, no follow-up googling required.
1:36 PM
At least on StackExchange we get to flag or close the crap :D
Besides, why Jack White, what about Lady Gaga?
Crap there is, and crap there will be, even on SE sites. The "we are smarter than me" meme is so 2008, and answers that gets the most don't have to be right answers.
They don't have to be right. But at least they may. That's light years ahead of Yahoo Answers.
@RegDwight — Wow, how did I miss Lady Gaga? The clues were there right in front of me: Elton John, George Michael ...
@RegDwight — Not saying the site is not valuable. Just not perfect.
Like any democracy.
Yeah. It's the worst thing if we ignore all those other things that are even worse.
1:40 PM
@RegDwight like democracy :)
@Benjol — That's what he meant.
Jinx or what?
Or maybe he was talking about Lady Gaga. You can never be sure.
Feb 23 at 11:06, by RegDwight
Lots of echo in here.
@Robusto No, that's what you meant. I never mean to mean anything.
You don't really mean what you're saying now.
1:41 PM
Precisely. But the opposite is also false.
@Robusto Lady Gaga's talking about me. Not the other way round. Not sure why she keeps calling me Fernando, though. That's so ABBA.
2 hours ago, by RegDwight
Feb 18 at 10:59, by Robusto
13 hours ago, by Robusto
27 secs ago, by RegDwight
2 hours ago, by RegDwight
yesterday, by RegDwight
Feb 7 at 15:38, by RegDwight
♫ Don't call my name, don't call my name, Robusto! ♫
Be careful with Lady Gaga. She may wind up wearing you one day.
@Robusto Thank you. ABBA is much easier to remember and to search for than foot.
And your conducting credentials are suddenly in doubt. Unless you're talking about this kind of conductor:
I will say this about ABBA, though. They are the best band out of Sweden whose name is a palindrome.
Me, I'm more into hard-core death emo.
1:48 PM
What, no love for smörebrödörderöms?
Not as good as their American cousins:
A s'more (sometimes spelled "smore") is a traditional nighttime campfire treat popular in the United States and Canada, consisting of a roasted marshmallow and a layer of chocolate sandwiched between two pieces of graham cracker. Etymology and origins S'more appears to be a contraction of the phrase, "some more". While the origin of the dessert is unclear, the first recorded version of the recipe can be found in the publication "Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts" of 1927. The recipe is credited to Loretta Scott Crew, who reportedly made them by the campfire for the Scouts. It is ...
I think you mean sauerverdientes S'morebrot.
Now I'm hungry.
I thought people only had hunger in Germany.
They were never hungry per se.
1:53 PM
Ich bin hungrig.
Nee, du hast Hunger.
Ich habe Hunger.
Es hungert mich nach...
Es dürstet mich.
It's only when Germans say Wir haben Hungary that I get worried.
Them were Austrians.
Nice of you not to differentiate.
1:55 PM
Ze Schömans were never interessiert in Ungarn. It was die Österreicher.
{| class="infobox" style="width: 290px; text-align: left; font-size: 88%;" |-style="background: #bbccee" !colspan=2 style="text-align:center; font-size: 110%"|Austro-Hungarian Empire |- !colspan=2 style="text-align:center; font-size: 110%"|Official Long names (and English translation thereof) |- |colspan=2|en: The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen ----de: Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder und die Länder der heiligen ungarischen Stephanskrone ----hu: A birodalmi tanácsban képviselt királyságo...
Precisely my point.
Which reminds me: What ever happened to Westerreich. Did it get consumed?
oops, the oneboxing doesn't look so good there
Someone's going API-shit right now.
1:57 PM
Feb 25 at 11:53, by RegDwight
Feb 7 at 15:17, by RegDwight
The Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the world's oceans, and the lowest elevation of the surface of the Earth's crust. It is currently estimated to be up to deep. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands. The trench is about long but has a mean width of only . It reaches a maximum-known depth of about at the Vityaz-1 Deep and about at the Challenger Deep, a small slot-shaped valley in its floor, at its southern end. If Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth at , were set in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, there would be of ...
I like that one much, much more.
Way more trenchant than your usual remarks.
Q: Numbers mysteriously stripped from inlined Wikipedia articles in chat

RegDwightCase in point. For those too lazy to click, the original Wikipedia article reads: The Mariana Trench [...] is currently estimated to be up to 10,971 m (35,994 ft) deep. [...] The trench is about 2,550 kilometres (1,580 mi) long but has a mean width of only 69 kilometres (43 mi). It reaches a...

Not wanting to spam you guys, but if you're heavily into commenting before you flag (ok, Reg you don't flag anymore), this script might interest you: stackapps.com/questions/2116
@Robusto Duly thwacked.
@Benjol I have actually just dismissed one of my own flags.
@RegDwight Wow, conflicted! casts around for blunt object for eventual legitimate self defence :)
