Re: Quartz/Halogen incandescent bulbs

["Bernard G. Cleyet & Nancy Ann Seese" <georgeann@REDSHIFT.COM>]

Hear hear!

 From another prescriptive grammarian -- solidarity against the
descriptives.

My mother taught HS English in the Cretaceous -- I wince whenever
someone fails to use the genitive with gerunds.  I've corrected two
posters -- Note my degeneracy:  I don't shun neologisms.  One replied
with "Buzz off."

I think your lesson is quite appropriate, and, therefore, not
gratuitous.

Degenerate was a very strong epithet among the greeks and romans.

Degeneracy:  having sunk to a state below that normal.......)  However,
does not removal of the degeneracy create a less "normal" state?

A few of my students (HS) joked about another's drinking yesterday.  I
said, showing off, "Oh, he was a bit tweaked."  Another answered, "No!
Hammered!"



Leigh Palmer wrote:

> > I don't think that the body oil on the surface acts to 'breech the
> > degeneracy' of the vitreous quartz.
>
> It doesn't. It catalyzes a relaxation from the vitreous state to
> the lower free energy crystalline state. I was responsible for the
> devitrification of a mercury arc envelope when I was a graduate
> student. They cost $75 each in 1960, so the lesson was memorable.
> (No, I didn't have to pay for it.) The devitrified quartz, I was
> told, opens a very small air leak into the envelope. The arc
> gradually goes bad. Unlike a quartz halogen bulb the pressure in a
> mercury arc lamp is below one atmosphere, so there is no tendency
> to blow a bubble. I haven't seen the phenomenon mentioned, but I
> wasn't referring to a quartz halogen envelope anyway. I have seen
> some dandy bubbles blown by glass (not fused quartz) 35mm and
> overhead projector bulbs, however.
>
> Leigh
>
> Gratuitous English grammar lesson follows:
>
> "Break the degeneracy!" "Breech" is a noun; "break" is the verb. I
> am sensitive to the difference because I was raised by folks who
> thought the difference mattered. I realize that my attitude is not
> politically correct. I still think "lend" is a verb and "loan" is
> a noun, and that's the way it was when I went to kindergarten
> sometime during the late Pleistocene. There seems to be a move
> afoot to make the English language more degenerate by reducing the
> number of distinct parts of speech! Isn't it interesting that the
> term "degenerate" can be interpreted in two ways here? I always
> wondered about how that word got attached to two or more equal
> energy states. One who uses "loan" as both a verb and a noun is
> practicing degenerate grammar.