A bunch of idioms in France

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Notabot
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A bunch of idioms in France

Post by Notabot »

My kids are reading "Madeline and the Bad Hat" and they noticed there was nobody wearing a bad hat at all. As the books are French-ish, we are wondering if perhaps "bad hat" is a French idiom for scalawag, hoodlum, or other sort of ne'er-do-well.

If anyone (SLARTI) has any info on this, my children would appreciate it.
Mercy bo coo
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Re: A bunch of idioms in France

Post by Ice Shard »

Originally posted by Notabot

Mercy bo coo


i thought i was merci beaucoup for thankyou in french
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Re: A bunch of idioms in France

Post by Cliffjumper »

I think it's an obsolete idiom here.
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Post by slartibartfast »

It's news to me.

I did a little snooping though, and as it turns out bad hat seems to be an old english saying.
Originally from babylon.com
bad hat
Noun1. someone who deliberately stirs up trouble (synonym) troublemaker, trouble maker, troubler, mischief-maker (hypernym) unwelcome person, persona non grata (hyponym) agitator, fomenter
and not french. ludwig Bemelmans wrote his books the madeleine series directly in english, so I don't think it was a funny translation error of a french saying
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Post by CounterPunch »

Beat me to it, bad hat basically means "f*****g trouble"

Things like "He's a bad hat, he is"
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Post by Notabot »

On behalf of my children, I'd like to thank the international community of TFArchive for your linguistic education. You've brought a level of enlightenment to South Dakota unbeknownst heretofore. We assumed that's what it meant, but the kids were stoked that someone from across the big blue space on their map answered their question.
Your next category will be... Scientific nomenclature of organic polymers.
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Post by slartibartfast »

macromolecules ! yay !
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Post by Rurudyne »

My fave is the bucky ball.

Gotta love anything that looks like the house you would dread your neighbor to build.
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Post by Notabot »

Carbonic dodecahedral goodness. My inner nerd is tittering with delight.
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Post by Clogs »

They have a Bucky Ball in France - in Paris, at Le Parc de La Villette, I believe.

Brings the whole thread full circle, non?
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Post by Rurudyne »

Originally posted by Notabot
Carbonic dodecahedral goodness. My inner nerd is tittering with delight.
Oddly, the ancient Greeks has some wierd notions about regular geometric shapes.

They considered the dodecahedron to be so revolutionary and profoundly meaningful they wouldn't reveal it to the public lest the whole social order collapse.

Or so I've been told.
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Post by slartibartfast »

If I recall correctly, the downfall of greek society was due to Hippasus' heresy of proving that applying pythogorus' theorum to a 1x1 right-angle triangle results in an impossible number... sorry, "irrational number" According to Plato, the dodecahedron is the structure of the universe.
random quote from some maths site
Plato equated the tetrahedron with the "element" fire, the cube with earth, the icosahedron with water, the octahedron with air, and the dodecahedron with the stuff of which the constellations and heavens were made.

cripes, I sobered up quick :(
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Post by Notabot »

Originally posted by slartibartfast
cripes, I sobered up quick :(


Yet another use for the dodecahedron! Is there anything it can't do? It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries, it makes Parisians sober. Order now for the low, low price of 12 dollars.
But wait, there's more...
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Post by slartibartfast »

You wouldn't have anything that has the opposite effect in stock by any chance ?
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Post by redman prime »

I do!

er, did..

I like the new tagline slarti, btw.
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Post by Rurudyne »

Originally posted by slartibartfast
If I recall correctly, the downfall of greek society was due to Hippasus' heresy of proving that applying pythogorus' theorum to a 1x1 right-angle triangle results in an impossible number... sorry, "irrational number" According to Plato, the dodecahedron is the structure of the universe.



cripes, I sobered up quick :(

Well ... there you go! No wonder I've always held the grammerian philosophers in low regard: they were flat out wrong.

The tetrahedron sould be associated with the Earth since it appears to be some sort of an internal structure to same.

That said, some years ago (and just for funsies) I did a little mental exersize with physics by making a contrarian assumption and the following it through logically.

While my notion wouldn't produce a dodecahedron in the literal sense it did seem to indicate that the universe would look like a network of strands or thin surfaces surrounding large relatively empty areas (think of a multitude of soap bubbles).

The reason "has to do" with the "fact" that the whole thing may perceptually appear large from the inside; but, as it actually exist only as a boundary condition between a quantum vacuume and its ultradense shell (the macro structure would be a result of concentrated threads of gravitational energy), the universe really has no volume (at least with respect to the larger dimensionality within which our sub-exist).

Oddly enough, the universe does seem to have a soap-bubble structure like the one I'd imagined.

Who knew?
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Post by Axe »

Originally posted by slartibartfast
[...]a 1x1 right-angle triangle results in an impossible number[...]

You wouldn't have anything that has the opposite effect in stock by any chance ?


In the mood to "see" why for some large numbers x^2 = x? :smokin:
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Post by slartibartfast »

is the bear catholic ? Does a pope sh*t in the woods ? hit me.
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Post by Axe »

This isn't a proof, just a "show that", but one I think is slick. The main obstacle is showing x+1 = x. We can count the number of atoms in the universe:

1 mole -> 10^27
1 star -> 10^33 kg of H atoms -> 10^(33+3+27) = 10^63 atoms
1 obserable universe (5 year old data) -> 10^12 galaxys -> 10^(12+12) stars -> 10^87 atoms
(let) 1 islandthing = 10^13 obserable universes -> 10^100 = 1 googol atoms

Does it make any difference if we add 1 more atom to an island-thing? If we assert that 1+googol = googol then the rest follows as a proof.

I have little choice now but to administer a cheap shot. 1 followed by as many zeros as the number of atoms in an islandthing = 10^ (10^100) = googolplex. I will, however, stay a bit more physical by considering the number of subsets of an islandthing (taking every atom to be unique).

Observe the correspondence between the subsets of {a,b,c} and three bit binary numbers, where each bit represents the inclusion/exclusion of a particular member:

000 {}
001 {c}
010 {b}
011 {b,c}
100 {a}
101 {a,c}
110 {a,b}
111 {a,b,c}

When we include 0, an n bit number enumerates 2^n numbers (a 3 bit number enumerated 8 numbers above), so the number of subsets of an n element set is 2^n. The number of subsets of an islandthang is 2^googol.

See what happens when we double 2^googol:
2^googol * 2 = 2^(googol+1)
We get more abstract when we consider 2^ (2^googol). Let's multiply this number by itself:

2^ (2^googol) * 2^ (2^googol) = 2^ (2^googol + 2^googol) = 2^ (2^(googol+1))
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Post by slartibartfast »

that's a pretty swanky argument for advocating chaos theory and fractilian systems right there.

crash course for anyone wanting to join in : Fractal images are computed by feeding pixel coordinates of a blank image through a mathematical formula. the variations you see on the screen are the result of computational errors. ie. take Pi. we round it off to 3,1456 but it goes on and on and on after that, so any sum involving Pi is going to be approximate. multiply it by bigger and bigger numbers and your result is go further and further away from what it should be. And there you have chaos theory (y'know, a butterfly flaps its' wings etc.) Fractilian models don't just make pretty pictures, they're used all over the place. weather prediction for exemple.

excuse the nerdwank... where was I ? ah yes, probabilities and approximations... heu ...






... ok, you got me. I just wanted to show off :glance:


Originally posted by Rurudyne
While my notion wouldn't produce a dodecahedron in the literal sense it did seem to indicate that the universe would look like a network of strands or thin surfaces surrounding large relatively empty areas
isn't that where the general theory of relativity comes in ? What was your contrarian assumption you started with ? :)
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