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[Puzzlemaker]

Eh, if you really feel like it it's mostly okay to leave something like that out. Probably wouldn't be many situations it'd qualify as formal writing, but it's fairly legit.

Yeah but semicolons are my favorite punctuation so it bugs me.

[Max™]

The ACS considers both to be acceptable spellings/pronunciations, as does IUPAC. So in a way, you're both right?

That's only a political declaration, much like the legal value of Pi; intended to keep America and Britain from nuking each other.

Well, after googling "Legal value of pi" I am very much confuddled.  In addition, bad use of a semi-colon; you needed an "its" before "intended", because each side of the semicolon should be a complete sentence.  If I got my grammarly right.

You did, a semicolon is properly used to link sentences; this is an example of such a usage here. It is a strange bit of punctuation though; as it can also be used to represent a more thoughtful pause than a comma. Using it that way always feels weird to me though, even there it feels wrong.

Spoiler: The Derail (click to show/hide)

Come on Max, you're better than this. Global average temperature is a tool to measure indirectly the change in the Earth's energy budget. More to the point, your argument doesn't really seem to be addressing the crux of the issue: the nature of desertification and its relation to climate change. The extraordinary claim that modern climate science is fundamentally wrong on important measures requires extraordinary evidence, after all.

This isn't an extraordinary claim, the coldest periods in the last 30,000 years had vastly more arid landscapes, with deserts spreading enormously. The warmest period in the last 30,000 years was about 5~6 thousand years ago, and the Sahara had grasslands spreading across it.

Take pollen and other plant fossil data and map it:
http://www.bridge.bris.ac.uk/resources/Databases/BIOMES_data

Input the data into a model so you can get a usable example spectrum for how the planet would appear from an exoplanetary system:
https://arxiv.org/abs/0901.1214
Scroll down a couple pages to the biome maps they used.

Note that they checked if the model results properly reproduced the known distribution and such of biomes and foliage based on various lines of evidence, and noted where they did not like the grasslands in australia.

This has nothing to do with any claim about climate science itself, it's the sort of thing you only actually find in the "Summary for Policymakers" sections. It's a scare tactic that preys upon people reflexively linking "desert=hot, warmer here=more desert-like, desert life=hard, fuck, that's bad" when it should be "desert=dry" and any further inferences would be changed accordingly.

In more interesting discussion, I found the video with the Popeslam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI9ypuMYWSE

[martinuzz]

In more interesting discussion, I found the video with the Popeslam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI9ypuMYWSE

The Pope is probably just testing if he can make the demon show his true face by taunting it.

[Max™]

Whenever I said that out loud I said it like a wrestling announcer. "Oh, IT'S THE POPESLAM! HOW ARE THE REFS ALLOWING THIS?"

Also who taught Trump how to shake hands? Saw him trying to do the arm yank shit with Macron who noped it so they just kinda clenched for a bit, expected Mills Lane to pop out of nowhere and break it up.

[Lord Shonus]

In other news, the 4th Circuit Court Of Appeals has upheld the injunction against the revised travel ban, 10-3. The three dissenters disagreed with the degree to which the court used Trump's statements to look beyond the letter of the bill.


The White House intends to appeal.

[martinuzz]

What are the chances of the High Court repealing the ban?

[Lord Shonus]

Very difficult to say for sure, but I think they are pretty high.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The ACS considers both to be acceptable spellings/pronunciations, as does IUPAC. So in a way, you're both right?

That's only a political declaration, much like the legal value of Pi; intended to keep America and Britain from nuking each other.

Well, after googling "Legal value of pi" I am very much confuddled.  In addition, bad use of a semi-colon; you needed an "its" before "intended", because each side of the semicolon should be a complete sentence.  If I got my grammarly right.

In addition to the grammar rules of English existing to be learned and then immolated in the fires of the mind; what I posted is a complete sentence anyway because it's a response to another statement. If one asked "Why spelling Al divided is", and I responded "Intended to keep America and Britain from nuking each other", nobody would object. Communication on a forum is, as the name suggests, more speech based than literature based regardless of the medium.

[Max™]

ARE YOU PEOPLE SAYING YOU DON'T INDICATE PUNCTUATION VIA GESTURAL CUES WHEN YOU SPEAK?!?!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My air quote fingers are the strongest in the world, I can and have killed entire armies of Grammar Nazis with a single flex of my sarcastic gesture. You're fucking dead kiddo, etc, etc.

[Max™]

Oh good, I was starting to worry that I've been making a fool of myself for years.

[Strife26]

The fact that fragments are allowable in general conversation is not justification for their use in any form other than general conversation.

[Gizogin]

Punctuation is like salt; used well, it can bring out the best of, er, a ... dish? Too little can lead to confusion and irritability, while too much can lead to heart trouble. This metaphor may have escaped me slightly.

I take grammar and punctuation seriously. I mean, I used to be a lot more, ah, passionate about it, to the point I once actually suffered epistaxis after reading a sentence with subject-verb disagreement. I got over it after concluding that, ultimately, these things are communication aids, not rules to be harshly enforced. There's no excuse for poor spelling, of course.

In actual on-topic news, Jared Kushner is under FBI scrutiny relating to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He's not being investigated for any known or suspected criminal activity; they just think he might have some relevant information.

I'm reminded of John Oliver's video on Jared and Ivanka, where it was pointed out that no-one seems to know anything about Jared. Have you ever heard him speak? He's just sort of there, silently present in the background all the time.

[Cruxador]

Spoiler: Deserts (click to show/hide)

If deserts are expanding then the planet is getting cooler.
If deserts are shrinking then the planet is getting warmer.

Not sure if you're confused on what a desert is, confused on what the climate is, or are thinking of some obscure atmospheric thing that is probably being overapplied here but definitely needs more thorough justification and explanation.

A desert is a region with precipitation below a certain level, less than 25 cm a year as I recall. If the planet is getting colder, more water is accumulating in ice caps, and there is less energy moving through the cryo/hydro/atmosphere to facilitate evaporation, transport, and precipitation of water. The largest desert on the planet is also the largest store of fresh water on the planet. Condescension does not suit the incorrect, but now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

Ah, so it the last of the three but less obscure and with more misunderstanding of basic hydrology. More liquid water doesn't actually mean there's more precipitation. Liquid water actually mostly winds up in the ocean, and while an increase in ocean surface area might theoretically increase total evaporation (though I see no reason why this would mean that precipitation falls on deserts instead of just back into the ocean) more evaporation doesn't necessarily mean more precipitation either. Precipitation isn't caused by an increase in temperature, on the other hand, it's caused by a decrease in temperature. There's a certain amount of water that can remain suspended in either gaseous (vapor) or liquid (clouds/fog) state, and that amount depends on both temperature and density of the air. This is why air forced up mountains tends to precipitate, and then on the other side it doesn't any more. So if temperature goes up, you're seeing a much more direct effect decreasing continental rainfall than any increasing it.

Which is a moot point anyway since you've already acknowledged that both temperature and precipitation are local measures, which counters your suggestion that an increase in average global temperature means that desertification can't be increasing. If these things are local (which they are)
 then deserts, which are localities with extreme(ly low) precipitation can exist and be large regardless of average values. Furthermore, the reasons for desertification are generally not directly related to the global system anyway, but are related to land management policies that reduce local rates of transpiration, not evaporation.

The ACS considers both to be acceptable spellings/pronunciations, as does IUPAC. So in a way, you're both right?

That's only a political declaration, much like the legal value of Pi; intended to keep America and Britain from nuking each other.

Well, after googling "Legal value of pi" I am very much confuddled.  In addition, bad use of a semi-colon; you needed an "its" before "intended", because each side of the semicolon should be a complete sentence.  If I got my grammarly right.

In addition to the grammar rules of English existing to be learned and then immolated in the fires of the mind; what I posted is a complete sentence anyway because it's a response to another statement. If one asked "Why spelling Al divided is", and I responded "Intended to keep America and Britain from nuking each other", nobody would object. Communication on a forum is, as the name suggests, more speech based than literature based regardless of the medium.

While your original sentence is correct, your example as to why is actually completely bogus. First of all, questions in English use a different structure than statements, so it'd be "Why is spelling Al divided?". And the actual reason has nothing to do with questions anyway. There are some things that are omittable in casual speech and those include a simple subject which is preceded by a more complex descriptor. The most formally correct way to do this (what you should put on a test) would be "That's only a political declaration. Much like the legal value of Pi, it's intended to keep America and Britain from nuking each other." But that doesn't mean that your wording is wrong, this is the level on which language is an art rather than a science.

ARE YOU PEOPLE SAYING YOU DON'T INDICATE PUNCTUATION VIA GESTURAL CUES WHEN YOU SPEAK?!?!

I normally indicate such things via timing and intonation. I think this is typical across most/all dialects.

The fact that fragments are allowable in general conversation is not justification for their use in any form other than general conversation.

You may notice, though, that what we're engaging in now falls under the rather wide umbrella of general conversation.

[smjjames]

Punctuation/grammar/syntax/semantics derails happen every so often don't they.

Meanwhile..... the Montana special election for the seat vacated by Ryan Zinke is happening and the polls are coming in.