xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
Explained at:--
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876
On Tuesday, January 9, 2024 at 10:51:38=E2=80=AFAM UTC-5, Dorothy J Heydt w= >rote:
In article <un7f7r$3qsri$[email protected]>,
Lynn McGuire <[email protected]> wrote:=20
xkcd: Range Safety=20[Hal Heydt]=20
https://xkcd.com/2876/=20
=20
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.=20
=20
Explained at:=20
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2876
G. Harry Stine in his book _Rocket Power and Space Flight_ cited=20
the time a range saftey officer borrowed a rifle from a guard and=20
shot holes in the tanks of Viking rocket. After that incident,=20
tanks had targets painted on them to show where to shoot should=20
the problem recur.
I always liked Frank Thorne's "Danger Rangerette."
https://www.lastdodo.com/en/items/784737-the-erotic-worlds-of-frank-thorne-= >5
On Thursday, January 4, 2024 at 4:33:20?PM UTC-7, Lynn McGuire wrote:
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
I'm sure you're correct. I suppose the joke is that the English
language makes it possible to combine words so that it's
as easy to express nonsensical concepts, like a "Range
Danger Officer", as it is to express sensible ones, like a
"Range Safety Officer".
Perhaps they think the situation would be improved if we
started speaking Navajo instead of English?
On Mon, 8 Jan 2024 18:17:26 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Thursday, January 4, 2024 at 4:33:20?PM UTC-7, Lynn McGuire wrote:
xkcd: Range Safety
https://xkcd.com/2876/
I am fairly sure that I have never met a Range Danger Officer.
I'm sure you're correct. I suppose the joke is that the English
language makes it possible to combine words so that it's
as easy to express nonsensical concepts, like a "Range
Danger Officer", as it is to express sensible ones, like a
"Range Safety Officer".
Perhaps they think the situation would be improved if we
started speaking Navajo instead of English?
That almost sounds like an implicit claim that German could never form
such a word for some reason.
But, as I am not a native speaker of German, I do not feel like
commenting further.
The reference is to the fact that Navajo is one of quite a number of languages which has an "evidentiary system". That is, if you assert
a fact, the grammatical forms you must use will indicate if this
is something you saw, something you heard about from someone
else, something that is general knowledge, and so on.
This has led to assertions that Navajo is a language that it is
impossible to tell lies with.
On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 9:30:09 AM UTC-7, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
On 2024-01-10, Quadibloc <[email protected]> wrote:
The reference is to the fact that Navajo is one of quite a number of
languages which has an "evidentiary system". That is, if you assert
a fact, the grammatical forms you must use will indicate if this
is something you saw, something you heard about from someone
else, something that is general knowledge, and so on.
This has led to assertions that Navajo is a language that it is
impossible to tell lies with.
That's frightfully naive. Obviously a Navajo speaker can _lie_
about the evidentiality of an assertion.
Yes, that's true. But perhaps it might be realistic to say that
languages with evidentiary systems make it a bit easier for
liars to get tripped up. Although, come to think of it, surely
in nearly every lie told in English, there is an intended
evidentiality even if it's not expressed verbally in it, so why
should an evidentiality system even manage to achieve
that?
Absent an evidentiality system in English, it wasn't clear
that I wasn't really making this claim about Navajo, I
was just repeating a claim that some people made
about it.
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