St. Valentine's Day Ice-a-cree

Bite your tongue or 'we've got trouble'.

Ken:

Tie my keyboard behind my back...

There's just so many ways that statement can be twisted, and not a single one of them back to the original post's intent.

I better stick with yellowwoods.

Yes, you had better. I was trying to tell StPaulPeg something about Michigan Tech. You know it hasn't been easy for me being a girl with brains! And please don't say, "Oh you poor thing!" Heard it already.

Gloria,

It's been 30 years, but here goes: "Zrastvyichi, tovarischa. Kak dela?"

That might be all I remember from four years of high school Russian, except for this phrase, which I often, regrettably, had to used in class. "Ya nee znayu."

Scott

Decumbent: It hard to read Russian that's not written in Russian, i.e. Cyrillic, but I shall try.

Hello. Madame Comrade. How ya doin?

How would I know? [Id rather be shootin hoops]

This message was edited Mar 11, 2007 8:26 PM

Gloria,

My mnd is like a steel trap! Remembered after all these years. Imagine. The second phrase, "How would I know," would, of course, be answered in class with a hunch of the shoulders and a stupid look on my face.

Scott

Are you sure you weren't one of my students at the University of Kentucky?

That would probably have been me...Scott only wishes he went to a school where they knew how to shoot hoops.

Gloria - I think the boy girl ratio is down to about 3 to 1 now. When I visited with him I did see real live girls walking around campus. I'll have to tell him of the joys of technical russian. Peg

P.S. If you go to www.mtu.edu there's link to webcams. You can even check out the broomball (no games tonight!)

StPaulPeg: When I was there all the girls stayed at Smith Hall, which is /was/katty-corner across from the cafeteria. One night the snowflakes were so big I got lost (crossing the street) and wound up at a frat house. (Not on purpose).

hey Viburnum,

....Like who? UK? Oh, they've been dominating this year. They start every game poorly and finish worse. My team is Xavier, my alma mater. This year's George Mason for sure.

Scott

Oh. Oh.

I know this is a silly question (not my first or last), but until VV starts a new thread I was hoping to keep the Yellowwood discussion going. Here it is: Why is there no "c" in C. kentukea? Is this a simple taxonomic faux pas along the lines of Acer pensylvanicum, or is there another explanation? You'd think taxonomists with their penchant for orderliness would not allow this to happen. ;)

I think it's as simple as words in other languages that become Latin species names get spelled as if they were Latin.... I don't think Latin ever uses a 'ck' combination, so the 'c' was dropped. I suppose that's true for the (sometimes) missing 'n' in pensylvanicum...

In looking for the official answer to this question (which I couldn't find), I did manage to learn why the 'A' is capitalized in Picea Abies... it's because Abies is a genus name already... lots of rules!

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ldplants/sci-names.htm


Now if I could just figure out how New York became noveboracensis.....

Speaking of basketball, we have Felis kentukea versus Felis pensylvanicum this week, and I see Xavier squeaked in but not Drexel? What's up with that?

This message was edited Mar 12, 2007 11:25 AM

Maackia: What an observant person you are. The link that I posted above indeed does spell the designation for Yellowwood, Cladrastris Kentukea, but my background as a technical editor "corrected" the spelling. Ugggh. Can't believe I misspelled a word!

Hi Claypa,

I think Disney had something to do with Xavier getting in. Oh, wait, I'm thinking of Mouseketeers.

Claypa,

"I see Xavier squeaked in but not Drexel? What's up with that?"

Maackia,

"I think Disney had something to do with Xavier getting in. Oh, wait, I'm thinking of Mouseketeers."

One word: Jesuits.

Scott

Ahh, that would explain why Marquette is in while Syracuse is out, even though they had a better conference record.

Exactly.

Scott

According to wikipedia, the latin Eboracum was derived from a Briton name meaning the place of yew trees. Appropriate for trees and shrubs.

SPP:

So that's Yew York?

Gloria:

Gloria - that is a great story. I passed it on to my kid as a strategy for how to meet girls - hang out next door to where they want to go.

I'm sure the frat boys were all polite, with so many future engineers. Do you know how to tell an extroverted engineer? He stares at your shoes when he talks, not his own

I'll sign off before I offend more.

St.PaulPeg: I remember taking a philosophy class at Michigan Tech. the prof. was trying to explain Plato's Cave.

the idea was to imagine you were in a cave. The concept was totally incomprehensible to the engineers in the class. I don't think any of them ever looked at my shoes. Love it. Im sure if there are more girls he won't have any trouble meeting them. As I remember, there were girls at Marquette. Is that Northern University? And also at Saulte Ste Marie which is the 2 year section of Michigan Tech. Thats where I started out. On the other hand, I think most of the guys were so nerdy their most non-engineering activity was hockey. Also, there were several bands and orchestras.

I was on the ROTC rifle team, but there weren't many guys. I guess it was the girls rifle team, that would explain it.

This message was edited Mar 12, 2007 8:58 PM

Peg:

Tell your son to go to vet school. Vast majority is women these days. A freshman classes at one of the veterinary schools had 106 students, 104 were women. That's good odds!

VV: You apparently have never been out alone in a Michigan snow storm.

Very easy to get disoriented with huge flakes coming down.

This message was edited Mar 15, 2007 4:05 PM

That's a big 10-4, roger, copy that.

My favorite winter experience. I always since boy scouts did a couple of winter camp outs and we did not take anything but food and sleeping bags. We would find some fir or other low branching tree and dig out the snow underneath and place (forgive me) lower branches of a neighbor to insulate our underneath and camp near a stream and net or weir trout into our food source and cook them on a stick and eat the tender meat with breakfast lunch and dinner. As we shared 'manly' discussions of our previously great achievments. LOL

Well, Sofer, I guess that's why you go to Alaska in the dead of winter. All the men I know go South. I guess they never learned about manly adventures in the boy scouts. I love your stories. And your icy photos. I learned my love of the north woods as a kid, from the lumber jacks in our woods. They had me believing Paul Bunyan was a real person. (For people who hate lumber jacks, these were hired every 5 or 10 years to clean out the dead wood. No one would clear cut a sugar maple forest in those days).

I like lumber jacks!

I know what you mean about the camping Steve. When I went camping in high school (trail club), we brought in food and sleeping bags, but we had tents too. The idea was to leave no trace of where you'd been, remember that soap, Dr. something?? we would wash up in the stream, but still come home stinking to high heaven from sweat and not bathing LOL. Oh I guess for us girls it was perspiration. I was shocked when someone took me "camping" here, they had places to plug in hair dryers and toilets and everyone was two feet away from each other around this little lake, I won't mention names lest I offend someone. I was like, this is NOT camping!! I was pretty bummed, it was a long drive and I was looking forward to it.

This message was edited Mar 15, 2007 9:32 AM

Gloria and Kevin - I'll tell me son to join the girls rifle team and take pre-vet classes. Whatever I say, though, I think he's not going to take my advice. At least I've raised him to politely listen to me before he does what he was going to do in the first place. Peg