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[WeepingElf]

Oh, and Happy Birthday, WeepingElf!

Thank you!

[Moose-tache]

Looking for Karen Booker's Comparative Muskogean: Aspects of Proto-Muskogean Verb Morphology. I found it on ProQuest for $40, and I'm wondering if anyone has access to a scan I can borrow? I definitely have things to trade if there's anything you need.

[Man in Space]

Looking for Karen Booker's Comparative Muskogean: Aspects of Proto-Muskogean Verb Morphology. I found it on ProQuest for $40, and I'm wondering if anyone has access to a scan I can borrow? I definitely have things to trade if there's anything you need.

I actually may have a lead on a hard copy if you can do inter-library loans. I’ll have to check though.

[keenir]

Looking for Karen Booker's Comparative Muskogean: Aspects of Proto-Muskogean Verb Morphology. I found it on ProQuest for $40, and I'm wondering if anyone has access to a scan I can borrow? I definitely have things to trade if there's anything you need.

I can get ahold of Native Languages of the Southeastern United States (Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians) by Janine Scancarelli and Heather K. Hardy, if it helps...its a borrowable book at my local library.

[bradrn]

Looking for Karen Booker's Comparative Muskogean: Aspects of Proto-Muskogean Verb Morphology. I found it on ProQuest for $40, and I'm wondering if anyone has access to a scan I can borrow? I definitely have things to trade if there's anything you need.

I have ProQuest access (via my university) and have just downloaded the full-text (assuming you’re talking about Karen 1980). I don’t know how you’d prefer me to share the file, so send me a DM.

EDIT: Whoops, it is of course Booker 1980, Karen being her first name.

[Moose-tache]

Holy crap, thank you! I'll DM you when I get back to my desktop.

[Raphael]

Had hazelnuts not covered in chocolate for the first time in a while. Surprising how much of what I thought would be the taste of the chocolate cover is actually the taste of the hazelnuts themselves.

[Moose-tache]

Nutella is the Schrödinger's Cat of the schmear world.

[Raphael]

Just typed the letter "P" into my phone while the phone keyboard was set to German, and the words autocorrect suggested were "Paul", "PS" ("HP", as in "horse power"), and "Problem" ("problem"). Now I feel like I should be able to come up with a story about Paul's Horse Power Problem.

[Man in Space]

Just typed the letter "P" into my phone while the phone keyboard was set to German, and the words autocorrect suggested were "Paul", "PS" ("HP", as in "horse power"), and "Problem" ("problem"). Now I feel like I should be able to come up with a story about Paul's Horse Power Problem.

That sounds like an Asimov story title.

[Raphael]

I'm trying to find an obscure quote by Douglas Adams.

I recently re-read some stuff about averages, and how few people, if any, are "truly" average, and that made me think of a half-remembered Douglas Adams quote about how the average inhabitant of the Galaxy has [some number I don't remember] legs and owns a hyena.

Does anyone know the exact wording of that quote, and where, exactly, it's from? Internet searches have failed me so far.

[Raphael]

I'm trying to find an obscure quote by Douglas Adams.

I recently re-read some stuff about averages, and how few people, if any, are "truly" average, and that made me think of a half-remembered Douglas Adams quote about how the average inhabitant of the Galaxy has [some number I don't remember] legs and owns a hyena.

Does anyone know the exact wording of that quote, and where, exactly, it's from? Internet searches have failed me so far.

Found it! Chapter 1 of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, pretty close to the start:

The Census report, like most such surveys, had cost an awful lot of money and told nobody anything they didn't already know---except that every single person in the Galaxy had 2.4 legs and owned a hyena.

[Raphael]

For how long have (some) human cultures known the concept of "mammals"? I mean, I don't know this for sure, but I suspect that the idea that (for instance) all birds have things in common with each other has been around for longer, and in more cultures, than the equivalent idea about mammals? Is that true? And did any languages have a word for "mammal" in the modern sense before the emergence of modern taxonomy?

[bradrn]

For how long have (some) human cultures known the concept of "mammals"? I mean, I don't know this for sure, but I suspect that the idea that (for instance) all birds have things in common with each other has been around for longer, and in more cultures, than the equivalent idea about mammals? Is that true? And did any languages have a word for "mammal" in the modern sense before the emergence of modern taxonomy?

I doubt it. At the very least, would they have included cetaceans?

[zompist]

For how long have (some) human cultures known the concept of "mammals"? I mean, I don't know this for sure, but I suspect that the idea that (for instance) all birds have things in common with each other has been around for longer, and in more cultures, than the equivalent idea about mammals? Is that true? And did any languages have a word for "mammal" in the modern sense before the emergence of modern taxonomy?

Interesting question, though to answer it I think you'd need fairly deep knowledge of a language... dictionaries won't do. It wouldn't surprise me if "furry creatures" is a very old concept, but I don't know.

Old English seems to have divided up the semantic space into deor 'wild animal', nytenu 'domestic animal', and fugel 'bird'. But even birds shouldn't be taken as identical to modern taxonomic classes; e.g. there's a passage in Chaucer where he calls bees 'small fowls'.

"Beast" in (slightly older) English is often a rough equivalent. E.g. there's a fable of Aesop where there's a war between "beasts and birds" and the bats don't know which side to join. Unfortunately search results are clogged with version of the fable, so it's hard to see how "beasts" appears in various languages, including the original.

[Travis B.]

For how long have (some) human cultures known the concept of "mammals"? I mean, I don't know this for sure, but I suspect that the idea that (for instance) all birds have things in common with each other has been around for longer, and in more cultures, than the equivalent idea about mammals? Is that true? And did any languages have a word for "mammal" in the modern sense before the emergence of modern taxonomy?

I doubt it. At the very least, would they have included cetaceans?

This reminds of me Dutch/Afrikaans walvis, literally whale plus fish...

[Richard W]

Interesting question, though to answer it I think you'd need fairly deep knowledge of a language... dictionaries won't do. It wouldn't surprise me if "furry creatures" is a very old concept, but I don't know.

"Beast" in (slightly older) English is often a rough equivalent. E.g. there's a fable of Aesop where there's a war between "beasts and birds" and the bats don't know which side to join. Unfortunately search results are clogged with version of the fable, so it's hard to see how "beasts" appears in various languages, including the original.

But are elephants furry creatures?

When I was a child, one of my favourite reference books was the 'Beast Book', a reference manual for creatures of Britain. It covered amphibians, reptiles and mammals (including cetaceans) and excluding birds and fish.

[keenir]

Interesting question, though to answer it I think you'd need fairly deep knowledge of a language... dictionaries won't do. It wouldn't surprise me if "furry creatures" is a very old concept, but I don't know.

"Beast" in (slightly older) English is often a rough equivalent. E.g. there's a fable of Aesop where there's a war between "beasts and birds" and the bats don't know which side to join. Unfortunately search results are clogged with version of the fable, so it's hard to see how "beasts" appears in various languages, including the original.

But are elephants furry creatures?

when they are babies, yes.

When I was a child, one of my favourite reference books was the 'Beast Book', a reference manual for creatures of Britain. It covered amphibians, reptiles and mammals (including cetaceans) and excluding birds and fish.

I think one definition, judging by the contents of some books when I was growing up, was "has hair or fur, and has four legs" and if something was furry with more than four legs (such as bees), it was not a beast; while if something was furless while having four legs (such as a lizard), it is a beast.

[Raphael]

Thank you for your thoughts, everyone!

[bradrn]

When I was a child, one of my favourite reference books was the 'Beast Book', a reference manual for creatures of Britain. It covered amphibians, reptiles and mammals (including cetaceans) and excluding birds and fish.

I think one definition, judging by the contents of some books when I was growing up, was "has hair or fur, and has four legs" and if something was furry with more than four legs (such as bees), it was not a beast; while if something was furless while having four legs (such as a lizard), it is a beast.

Er, did you just contradict yourself there? Lizards are furless and hairless, so they don’t satisfy ‘has hair or fur, and has four legs’.