Posts by linger
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I'd be one of the other 3.4% -- trapped in MacOS9 and therefore Netscape 6.2. If PA ever becomes incompatible with that, I'm toast. (It's already incompatible with Explorer 5 on my system.)
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some previously rock-ribbed Clintonites
= ribbed for her pleasure?
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In respective reply:
(1) I read the second poster as "Taggers [say] we want you [murderers] caught"...
(2) So: Government ministers tag team wrestling?
Holds a certain morbid fascination, I grant you. -
76% only makes any sense if read as the proportion of final-year school leavers who go on to spend some time (however short) in some form of post-secondary education. (Like Kyle, I am uncertain whether this should be limited to immediate takeup, though I don't see how any final figure would be possible otherwise.)
Of course, that ratio would be fairly meaningless, since a sizeable proportion of secondary students don't complete the final year and so aren't included; and conversely, this figure certainly doesn't tally with successful completion of a tertiary course of study (even allowing the dubious equation of "post-secondary" & "tertiary").
Census data on "highest educational qualification" from Statistics NZ: in 2001 (sorry, that's the most recent I have immediately to hand), ca. 40% of NZers aged 20-49 had some "post-secondary" qualification, with little variation within that age range; the rate peaked at 43% for 35-39yo, then fell gradually to around 20% for 60-64yo, 15% for 65+. About 2/3 of this category consists of vocational certificates.)
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Laurie Bauer & Winifred Bauer (2003). Playground Talk. Wellington : Victoria University, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies.
Further information on the study is available here -
(i) The NEAR-SQUARE merger has long been a standard ingredient of trans-Tasman jokes. For example, there's the one where a Kiwi finds an Aussie farmer busy with a sheep:
"Er, in NZ we shear our sheep."
"Well, we don't here; bugger off and find your own."Complete merger of the two vowels has been widespread for at least 30 years, though there has been considerable variation in exactly how both vowels end up being pronounced.
(ii) Less frequently commented on, though, is the fact that this merger of the two front centring diphthongs is part of a larger pattern. Younger NZers also merge two vowels that may be regarded as back centring diphthongs: thus "sure" and "shore" are also homophones.
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What's a "Koan"? ... it'd be nice if someone could explain its meaning.
But then it would no longer be a koan, grasshopper.
Unless, possibly, no-one were to read the explanation. -
Let's see if I can translate all (well, the most relevant bits) of that for arts majors, then.
Andrew's query
Surely ... extraction of 100% of the *added* energy occurs when the temperature of the fluid is reduced back to the original ambient temperature?
seems to indicate some confusion in two areas.
Firstly, "energy extraction" is not the same thing as "useful work".
When the engine goes back to its initial state, it is true, by definition,
that it "contains" the same amount of energy as it started with --
but it isn't true that we've got all of the added energy back in the form of work. A lot of that will have been lost, mostly as radiated heat.
Secondly, we need to clarify exactly what a "heat engine" does, in order to show that such losses are unavoidable.A heat engine performs work (in Carnot's original model, by raising and lowering a piston in a cylinder) as a byproduct of transferring energy from some "hotter" space (at temperature TH) to some "colder" space (at temperature TC, which we usually assume is the outside ambient temperature).
For our purposes the temperatures TH, TC are assumed to be constant.The energy is transferred using some "working fluid".
For the engine to keep producing work, we need to define some "cycle" of states where the final state = the initial state.
The working fluid starts at TC.
The fluid is then allowed to exchange energy with the "hotter" space, so that its temperature rises to TH. This causes an increase in the fluid's volume, which moves the piston and does some work.
So far, so good.
But now we have the problem of getting the piston back to its original position without simply undoing all the work we've just performed. Which means cooling the working fluid again (by allowing it to exchange energy with the "colder" space).But note that this means we have lost some energy from the engine system in the form of heat!
Hence not all of the heat energy added to a heat engine comes back out as work; no heat engine can be 100% efficient.
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One swearing substitute that has worked well for me is:
Struthiolaria papulosa!
which is the scientific name for the common NZ ostrich foot shell.
(The papulosa bit means "covered in tiny bumps")This is not to say that my lectures are not liberally seasoned with Anglo-Saxon, unfortunately.
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As an unmarried Aries with an aversion to tea, I would seem to be uniquely safe from worry this month.
Except that I don't believe in astrology.
Bugger.