Collecting experience

On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:36:00 -0600, "Mr. Jaggers"
lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:

For the record, that should be "reining in." Oops, wrong group. Let's see,
that would be alt.english.usage. My bad. But try doing that over there and
see how long you survive. Those guys will tear you one over a misplaced
quotation mark or improper use of the pluperfect subjunctive. Welcome to
Usenet.

That really isn't so. The newsgroups alt.english.usage and
alt.usage.english are my primary newsgroups. I read, and post in,
other newsgroups, but those are the two that interest me the most.

One of the most remarkable things about those two newsgroups is the
high level of politeness. Flame wars are rare. If you wander into
a.u.e., and find some rude remarks being exchanged, check the headers
and you will find that the post is cross-posted to the sci.lang group
(primarily linguists), and the rude exchange involves a sci.langer.

Should you write "reign" for "rein" in a.u.e., someone might reply
with "Oy!". That's a.u.e.-speak for "You've made an error". More
likely, the reply will contain a pun or some good-humored wordplay at
your expense.

Reid would not fare well in a.u.e., though. Not because he mistreats
pluperfect subjunctives, but because a) he'd bore the living daylights
out of the regulars in the group, and, b) he thinks shifting goalposts
is the required response to having an error pointed out.




--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

tony cooper wrote:
On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:36:00 -0600, "Mr. Jaggers"
lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:

For the record, that should be "reining in." Oops, wrong group.
Let's see, that would be alt.english.usage. My bad. But try doing
that over there and see how long you survive. Those guys will tear
you one over a misplaced quotation mark or improper use of the
pluperfect subjunctive. Welcome to Usenet.

That really isn't so. The newsgroups alt.english.usage and
alt.usage.english are my primary newsgroups. I read, and post in,
other newsgroups, but those are the two that interest me the most.

One of the most remarkable things about those two newsgroups is the
high level of politeness. Flame wars are rare. If you wander into
a.u.e., and find some rude remarks being exchanged, check the headers
and you will find that the post is cross-posted to the sci.lang group
(primarily linguists), and the rude exchange involves a sci.langer.

Should you write "reign" for "rein" in a.u.e., someone might reply
with "Oy!". That's a.u.e.-speak for "You've made an error". More
likely, the reply will contain a pun or some good-humored wordplay at
your expense.

Reid would not fare well in a.u.e., though. Not because he mistreats
pluperfect subjunctives, but because a) he'd bore the living daylights
out of the regulars in the group, and, b) he thinks shifting goalposts
is the required response to having an error pointed out.

In all due honesty, I was only on those two usage groups for a short time,
at the end of which I got my hiney chewed royally for my analysis of the
proper sequencing of tenses/moods that was the subject of a query post. I
did it as a relative newbie, from the point of a classically trained Latin
scholar, and that was all it took. "But behold, there be they who, having a
specialty, and admiring it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth
essay it, nor can abide it in them long." - Mark Twain

James

On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:45:22 -0600, "Mr. Jaggers"
lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:

In all due honesty, I was only on those two usage groups for a short time,
at the end of which I got my hiney chewed royally for my analysis of the
proper sequencing of tenses/moods that was the subject of a query post. I
did it as a relative newbie, from the point of a classically trained Latin
scholar, and that was all it took.

To give you an idea of how tolerant the group is, I would put the
period at the end of that quote after the closing quotation mark in
violation of the accepted American style. However, because I am
consistent in this, no one has ever Oy'd me on it. It's regarded as a
style choice.

"But behold, there be they who, having a
specialty, and admiring it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth
essay it, nor can abide it in them long." - Mark Twain


--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

On Feb 20, 2:13*am, Reid Goldsborough
wrote:
[snip]

Look out, I have some actual numismatic content in my response. Just
going to respond to a small part of your post, Reid.


So I wound up focusing mostly on ancient Greek coins, more engaging to
me in general than Roman coins. Just as Rome copied Greece with
mythology, philosophy, science, architecture, and so on, it also copied
Greek coins, only made them in general smaller, more often debased, and
less attractive artistically.

Well, that's your viewpoint, of course, but I personally tend to favor
the Romans for my own collection. True, the Greeks had some of the
most truly spectacular coins ever- I'm thinking especially of
Syracusan dekadrachms and some other Sicilian coins- but those coins
are priced pretty stratospherically. The more affordable Greek coins
(let's say that "affordable" for purposes of this discussion is under
$2-3 K per coin) are not so much more knock-your-socks-off than
similarly priced Roman coins, especially the early Empire. Smaller is
also not entirely true- the Romans issued mid- and large-sized bronzes
a lot more regularly than most Greek city-states. (Okay, the
Ptolemaic bronzes are pretty damn huge, but I'm talking about the
general case. How many sestertius-sized bronzes of Athens, or
Alexander, or the Seleukids, etc. do you see compared to Roman, well,
sestertii?) The Romans, as a group, are a more coherent social-
historic grouping than the "Greeks", at least as they are defined
numismatically, and I find that backbone helpful in organizing a
collection. The "Greek" series is so huge and varied that anyone
undertaking it ends up with a group of several much smaller, better-
defined collections (as you yourself have ended up in your
collecting). Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just want
to present an alternate viewpoint.

As you know, I have made the Parthian series the biggest focus of my
coin collecting, in terms of number, depth of collection, and
percentage of collecting budget spent. I don't think that really
contradicts what I said about "Greek" coins, since I don't consider
the Parthians Greek. "Greek" in catalogues of ancient coins sometimes
means little more than "not obviously Roman". The early Parthian
coins do have good Hellenistic inscriptions, and sometimes Hellenistic
portraits, but that changes over time. I challenge anyone to identify
a uniquely Hellenistic attribute, or read a single word of Greek, on
this late Parthian coin:

http://www.parthia.com/coins/pdc_7235.jpg

And if you still think I contradict myself, well, very well, I
contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.

Rome also made the same mistake the U.S.
has made over the past hundred years or so, in my view, by using human
portraits as primary, obverse devices rather than more imaginative and
inspirational symbolic or mythological figures.

True, the Romans emphasized portraiture more than the classical Greeks
(besides the late Hellenistic monarchs) but I think this is an
important reflection of the nature of their respective societies. The
Roman emperors were the truly central figures of their culture (or at
least they tried their best to be), and the coinage reflects this.
Early Imperial portraiture is quite attractive. (Though I have to
agree in seeing little merit to, say, Constantinian and later coin
portraits where you have to read the inscriptions to have the faintest
clue who is being portrayed. Even most of the Parthians can be
distinguished by portrait!) As for US coin portraits, I agree that,
as a republic, we should not be putting actual portraits on our
coins. Although at least we don't portray the current ruler, only
previous deceased leaders, who are not directly associated with the
current administration. Maybe they share somewhat the same function
as the portraits of deities and heroes on classical Greek coins-
paragons of particular virtues, rather than a reminder of governmental
power like Roman Imperial portraits? Anyway, thanks for posting this
rather long article, I enjoyed it even though I don't have time to
reply to every part of it.

-Robert A. DeRose, Jr.

On 2/20/2010 7:45 PM, in wrote:

thanks. i wish i could read the whole thing.
even as late as my childhood, halves circulated. i remembered having a walker
when i was 8, that's why i collected them later.
bust halves seem as varied as varieties of hi-tops.

Someone talking coins in response to a post of mine about coins.
Refreshing! Really. In stark contracts to the Bruce Remicks here. He
says he "parodying" me. Funny. He's just being disruptive, and dully,
with every post of his here, and many past posts, no different from
countless others on Usenet, here as elsewhere, past and present, doing
it because they can. One other dodo said the same thing, a few years
ago, after creating a handle that consisted of my name and just
disrupting thread after thead. That was high art in his mind too, that's
how he defended himself after I figured out who he was.

But let me try to get no more distracted than I already have by focusing
on what you said above about coins. I also remember seeing Walkers too
as a kid. But what got me interested in coin collecting was getting from
my grandfather his collection of Morgan and Peace dollars, about 30, as
I recall. For some reason that I don't remember I went the type
collecting route after this, buying no silver dollars, while as I
mentioned my best friend at the time filled Whitman folders with more
recent coins. We would take the bus to a local coin shop in the burbs,
then started taking the train into the city, buying at shops and even a
few auctions. We were 13 and 14 years old, those years anyway. I
remember eating at King of Pizza in the city each time, sausage pizza,
sprinkling lots of oregano on it. One time we both slept past our stop
on the way home.

I remember early into my type collecting showing off to a dealer a coin
I had bought -- don't remember from whom. The dealer asked if he could
try something. I said sure. He bent it over the edge of his counter,
with it easily bending. It was a lead-alloy counterfeit of a Barber
coin, a half if I recall correctly, maybe a quarter. I wish I kept it. g

--

Consumer: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Connoisseur: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Counterfeit: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos

tony cooper wrote:
On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:45:22 -0600, "Mr. Jaggers"
lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:

In all due honesty, I was only on those two usage groups for a short
time, at the end of which I got my hiney chewed royally for my
analysis of the proper sequencing of tenses/moods that was the
subject of a query post. I did it as a relative newbie, from the
point of a classically trained Latin scholar, and that was all it
took.

To give you an idea of how tolerant the group is, I would put the
period at the end of that quote after the closing quotation mark in
violation of the accepted American style. However, because I am
consistent in this, no one has ever Oy'd me on it. It's regarded as a
style choice.

I've had a lot of surprises after reading the latest edition of the Chicago
Manual of Style, which I received as a Christmas gift. A lot of the rules I
learned in school have changed, it seems. For example, we were taught that
one should always capitalize President when referring to the POTUS.
Apparently that is as passé as "23 skiddoo". Or is it "skiddoo."?
"Skiddoo?." Oh, I give up.

James the Indecisive

Reid Goldsborough wrote:
On 2/20/2010 7:45 PM, in wrote:

thanks. i wish i could read the whole thing.
even as late as my childhood, halves circulated. i remembered having
a walker when i was 8, that's why i collected them later.
bust halves seem as varied as varieties of hi-tops.

Someone talking coins in response to a post of mine about coins.
Refreshing! Really. In stark contracts to the Bruce Remicks here. He
says he "parodying" me. Funny. He's just being disruptive, and dully,
with every post of his here, and many past posts, no different from
countless others on Usenet, here as elsewhere, past and present, doing
it because they can. One other dodo said the same thing, a few years
ago, after creating a handle that consisted of my name and just
disrupting thread after thead. That was high art in his mind too,
that's how he defended himself after I figured out who he was.

Will the real Bruce Remick please stand.

James "To Tell the Truth" the Dull and Disruptive Dodo

"tony cooper" wrote in message
...

To give you an idea of how tolerant the group is, I would put the
period at the end of that quote after the closing quotation mark in
violation of the accepted American style. However, because I am
consistent in this, no one has ever Oy'd me on it. It's regarded as a
style choice.

It's that type of beeding-heart, feel-good liberalism that is destroying the
written language. g

"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
tony cooper wrote:
On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:45:22 -0600, "Mr. Jaggers"
lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:

In all due honesty, I was only on those two usage groups for a short
time, at the end of which I got my hiney chewed royally for my
analysis of the proper sequencing of tenses/moods that was the
subject of a query post. I did it as a relative newbie, from the
point of a classically trained Latin scholar, and that was all it
took.

To give you an idea of how tolerant the group is, I would put the
period at the end of that quote after the closing quotation mark in
violation of the accepted American style. However, because I am
consistent in this, no one has ever Oy'd me on it. It's regarded as a
style choice.

I've had a lot of surprises after reading the latest edition of the
Chicago Manual of Style, which I received as a Christmas gift. A lot of
the rules I learned in school have changed, it seems. For example, we
were taught that one should always capitalize President when referring to
the POTUS. Apparently that is as passé as "23 skiddoo". Or is it
"skiddoo."? "Skiddoo?." Oh, I give up.

Be glad you didn't have to write according to the US Govt style manual.
Talk about contrast in grammar, spelling, and punctuation we were taught in
school. Plus some of the "style" usually would change according to the
administration in power.

"Reid Goldsborough" wrote in message
...
On 2/20/2010 7:45 PM, in wrote:

thanks. i wish i could read the whole thing.
even as late as my childhood, halves circulated. i remembered having a walker
when i was 8, that's why i collected them later.
bust halves seem as varied as varieties of hi-tops.

Someone talking coins in response to a post of mine about coins. Refreshing!
Really. In stark contracts to the Bruce Remicks here. He says he "parodying"
me. Funny. He's just being disruptive, and dully, with every post of his here,
and many past posts, no different from countless others on Usenet, here as
elsewhere, past and present, doing it because they can. One other dodo said
the same thing, a few years ago, after creating a handle that consisted of my
name and just disrupting thread after thead. That was high art in his mind
too, that's how he defended himself after I figured out who he was.

But let me try to get no more distracted than I already have by focusing on
what you said above about coins. I also remember seeing Walkers too as a kid.
But what got me interested in coin collecting was getting from my grandfather
his collection of Morgan and Peace dollars, about 30, as I recall. For some
reason that I don't remember I went the type collecting route after this,
buying no silver dollars, while as I mentioned my best friend at the time
filled Whitman folders with more recent coins. We would take the bus to a
local coin shop in the burbs, then started taking the train into the city,
buying at shops and even a few auctions. We were 13 and 14 years old, those
years anyway. I remember eating at King of Pizza in the city each time,
sausage pizza, sprinkling lots of oregano on it. One time we both slept past
our stop on the way home.

I remember early into my type collecting showing off to a dealer a coin I had
bought -- don't remember from whom. The dealer asked if he could try
something. I said sure. He bent it over the edge of his counter, with it
easily bending. It was a lead-alloy counterfeit of a Barber coin, a half if I
recall correctly, maybe a quarter. I wish I kept it. g

Ahhhhhhhh shaddup, you festering gob of conceit.