Interesting Links for 15-02-2020

[andrewducker]

A couple of clicks in a bank's spreadsheet caused the biggest fluctuation in Britain's trade figures in modern history.

(tags:gold UK trade weird )

What's going on with geothermal wells?

(tags:electricity energy earth heat )

An Inflammation of Place (the historical diagnosis of NewYorkitis)

(tags:newyork disease cities stress )

Don't aim for passion, be *curious*

(tags:advice passion )

Moving home can affect your children's health and education

(tags:homes children mentalhealth Education )

Some tips on writing British characters

(tags:UK society behaviour )

Flow-Charts of Programming Language Constructs

(tags:programming visualisation )

Dentists threatened by face-mask shortage because of coronavirus

(tags:teeth virus disease Doom )

There and Snack Again: How to eat everything in Lord of the Rings

(tags:lotr food )

How real is "grade inflation"?

(tags:education uk )

Comments

[cmcmck]

Mint sauce with EVERY meat meal?

I may be veggie, but even I know that isn't right!

[calimac]

Two things about the "writing British characters" entry:

1) If "fanny" is a rude word, then why is it also a name? Does everyone "fall about laughing childishly" whenever anyone mentions Fanny Burney?

2) The writer uses casually a word which is perhaps not realized an American would need explained: kebab. I had no idea what sort of food this was until I had one. In America we'd call it a "pita-bread sandwich." In America the word only appears in the combination "shish-kebab" which means chunks of meat and sometimes veggies on a skewer. I doubted these were sold in vans to be eaten while walking down the street.

[andrewducker]

1) Pretty much. And it's not used as a modern name so people aren't going to get used to it. They also fall about laughing if you use "cock" to refer to a male chicken. Genitals are clearly hilarious.
2) In the States you seem to call this "shwarma". Which I hadn't heard of until it was mentioned in The Avengers.

[dewline]

In my Canadian experience, kebab dishes are a different thing from shawarma, though you can buy both at the same restaurants.

[calimac]

We have shwarma, but that's a different thing from what I had in England called a kebab. Shwarma is shaved meat on a plate with side dishes. The kebab I had was chunks of meat (not shavings, chunks) and the sides (lettuce, tomato, onion, dressing, etc) all stuffed into a pita-bread pocket. In the US, anything stuffed into a pita-bread pocket is a pita-bread sandwich.

[alithea]

A kebab from a kebab shop in the UK is meat shaved off a big chunk cooked on a skewer and usually served in a pitta bread. Homemade kebabs are the meat or veg cooked on domestic sized skewers rather than a giant one turning in an industrial oven.

[calimac]

What I had was from a kebab van, rather than a shop - I'd been led to understand that such vans were ubiquitous, though I rarely saw one - and the meat was chunks, not the shavings from a big skewer that characterize shawarma in the US, and in any case US shawarma is served on a plate with the pita bread and other ingredients on the side.

[andrewducker]

Yes, sorry. When most people in the UK they are referring to a "Doner Kebab", which is the shaved meat thing (served in a Pita pocket), but it is _absolutely_ appropriate to also be referring to a shish kebab, which (as you say) is the chunk of "meat on skewers".

Meanwhile I've been confused by the description I've seen online of Shawarma. Clearly it's the meat bit, and putting it in pita makes it a "Pita Bread Sandwich" in the USA.

I think I've learned something!

[calimac]

Now that's interesting, because I once went into a small counter-service hot-food shop that had two likely things on the posted menu, a "lamb kebab" and a "lamb doner". I made the mistake of saying, "I know what a kebab is, what's a doner?" and despite my repeated attempts at rephrasing, the staff embarked more and more desperately to explain to me what lamb was, even to the extent of running around waggling their fingers over their heads and going, "baa! baa!"

I eventually gave up and left without buying anything. This was about five years ago in Bournemouth or some such miserable place.

Just to be clear, I should emphasize that a pita-bread sandwich is anything in a pita-bread pocket, not specifically what the UK calls a kebab. I suppose if it were served that way, the menu would list the contents as it would for a shawarma plate, and add something like "served to-go [American for takeaway] in pita-bread." Normally, though, it'd be up to the diner whether they'd want to stuff the meal inside the pita-bread that comes with. Shawarma plates often come with rice, and that probably wouldn't fit, and would fall out if you tried.

[ninetydegrees]

To add to the confusion, we call a fast-food-like döner kebab with meat shavings, French fries, sauce and accompaniments stuffed in a pita "a greek" in France... Don't know if it's because of the pita. To most people this is a synonym for "a kebab". Meat on skewers usually isn't called a kebab because we use "brochette" instead, but it may be used in proper restaurants serving all types of kebabs.

[andrewducker]

That makes sense. Sadly in the UK such things have mostly become a low-end takeaway food, rather than something you'd sit in to eat, and changing that reputation would be tricky.

(A lot of foreign food types are now changing in the UK, as more authentic versions are being sold, rather than the original bastardised version produced for 70s British taste buds.)

[nancylebov]

I know a someone named Fanny-- I think she's Australian and about 30.

British English mostly doesn't include "gotten".

City blocks don't exist in (a lot of?) England. Jo Walton was amazed to find out they were real when they came to the US. She also thought college students choosing courses was something Zelazny made up for Doorways in the Sand.

[calimac]

I've known Brits to be amazed by our high-value house numbers. They're not used to streets which stretch for miles without a change of name, and they're also unfamiliar with the way we use these digits as grid locators (12195, that's near the end of the 121st block from the center line) rather than actual house numbers (1, 2, 3, 4 ...)

I knew that Oxbridge, at least, runs teaching very differently than US univs do, but I hadn't thought of not knowing about US college courses. What initially irritated me about Doorways in the Sand, the more so as I was an undergraduate at the time, was that my univ already had automatically in place a rule that would have foiled Fred's eternal-undergraduate scheme. It simply listed a maximum number of credits within which you had to complete a major. Penalty for failure: can't register for any more terms. Exemptions granted only under exceptional circumstances.

[naath]

Most UK degree courses you apply for a 'degree in $foo" and then have very limited choice of courses (institutions vary, in both within-$foo choice and outside-$foo permitted courses). US students having to take English courses to get a maths degree astonishes me (sharing dorm rooms horrifies me).

Roads often change name for no clear reason. Find N $bar road is often really hard. Respect to posties. And a grid hahaha no, it's a mess. A mess that has been growing for 1000 years in many places, "new" towns planned from scratch are souless and strange though.

[jducoeur]

Most UK degree courses you apply for a 'degree in $foo" and then have very limited choice of courses (institutions vary, in both within-$foo choice and outside-$foo permitted courses). US students having to take English courses to get a maths degree astonishes me (sharing dorm rooms horrifies me).

*boggle* -- wow, it's so standard at US universities to require a breadth of courses (and encourage yet more) that it hadn't occurred to me to question it.

I'm curious: how common is major-switching in the UK? It's quite common in the US -- indeed, many folks don't settle on their major until somewhere around third year -- and I wonder if this difference in expectations plays into that.

(And sharing dorm rooms horrified me, too, but it's one of the rites of passage in the US. And I can come up with arguments in its favor, although it's challenging for us introverts...)

[naath]

I have not taken anything not STEM since I was 16.

Some people do change course, but unless it's really closely related or you only just started they probably have to start over (you've missed so much) I know a few people who did.

I picked 3 subjects at 16 which entirely ruled out many degree subjects, I did go on to natural sciences at Cambridge which (unusually for the UK) meant I didn't have to pick a science until 3rd year, but that's basically chemistry or physics in my case not a wide choice really.

I see the point of liberal arts, but I hate essays so not my thing really.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, different world. My major was Computer Science (I was *fairly* sure of that going in, and it solidified within six months), but the classes were more shoring up my existing knowledge than anything else, since I'd already been working in the field since I was 14.

So college was mostly liberal arts, with enough stuff in my major to graduate well. Essays were sometimes a pain, but with occasional joys like managing to write my final in Arthurian Lit on the then-hip-and-new comic book Mage...

[nancylebov]

Maybe they added the rule as a result of someone trying to game the system.

[calimac]

Maybe, but more likely it was the result of people waffling about their majors without game-playing intent. Remember that Fred's motive in the story is the unusual provisions of his uncle's will. Without that, he'd never have done this.

What irritated me about the book is that the university is desperately trying to find a way to stop Fred from gaming their system, yet it never occurred to them to add a provision which actually exists in the normal course of the real world.

[redbird]

What startled me when I lived in Washington is that the grid system and numbering didn't end at the city boundary: my house number was 10495 (which in my home borough in New York would have been written 104-95), with a named street (Bellevue Way) counting as 104--but the numbers started somewhere in the 90s, I think, with everything below that on the other side of Lake Washington.

Somehow this seems weirder to me than New York using one set of street/house numbers for Manhattan and the Bronx.

[calimac]

What you encountered is something that exists only in the West, much of which was surveyed before the white settlers moved in. It's called the county grid, and extends over the entire county, which is why the mountains east of Seattle have little winding country lanes with names like "212th St. NE" and why the numbers suddenly shift when you cross the county line. Most early-settled cities have city grids which override the county grid and consequently have lower numbers, and this applies to house numbers whether or not the streets are also numbered (as is common in the northwest) or not (as in most places in California). But the county grid is often an extension of the city grid of the main city of the county; this is certainly the case in Seattle.

[snippy]

I was today years old when I learned about the county grid even though I live in one and have driven over county boundaries. I just never put together why the number changes are associated with counties, when the city was still the same (I am in a city that has parts in 3 counties).

[hirez]

Cor. It's just like being back on alt.gothic in 1996.

In Chicago at least, a doner kebab is closest to a Gyros.

The internets are surprisingly interesting on this. I had thought it was down to which cultural groupings emigrated where. Or who yr colonisers/invaders were, to be far more brutal.

Also. How d'you get this to post to FB and turn up in people's feeds?

[andrewducker]

Me?

I use dlvrit to post to my links page and then crosspost manually (Facebook shut down the API for personal accounts last year).

[hirez]

Aha. I was hoping for unknown-to-me magic. Hey ho.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I'm lucky they left open the API for Pages.

[snippy]

On the Left Coast we don't have doner kebab, and schwarma is what you get in a gyros. If it's anything else, it's specified: lamb gyros have chunks of lamb etc.

[calimac]

Gyros! That's the term I had forgotten. (I don't eat this cuisine really often.) That's the most common term in the US, rather than shawarma. Gyros is the Greek term, and is used when the makers are Greek, which they most commonly are in the US. Again, it's usually a plate, with shaved or chunk meat, some veggies, rice, and pita bread on the side.

[jducoeur]

Again, it's usually a plate, with shaved or chunk meat, some veggies, rice, and pita bread on the side.

Hmm -- that doesn't match my experience. When I see simply "gryos" on the menu, that typically connotes the shaved meat in a pita sandwich, with toppings inside. What you're describing, I'm used to seeing as a "gryos platter". (And in practice, I most often get a "gryos salad", which is basically a greek salad with the shaved meat on top.)

I suspect it varies regionally. (As nearly everything does in the US.)

[lalajia]

1) Fanny in Scotland also means a silly/stupid person. Hence why this advert was doubly hilarious :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuLgsVcQUY

[naath]

there and snack again; oh, ambitions...