Tell me about the stars, in 25 words or less.

The moon's 
saloons
the bars 
of Mars
we are all in the gutter,
eh?
but some of us mutter
hey
look at the stars

~Pink

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Request for Answer Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 31 Dec 2005 14:24 PST

Hi Pink,

This was, quite possibly, my favorite question of the year (well...my
favorite answer of the year, I suppose) so I choose it to see what
happens to this ferschlugginer system of ours when one asks for an
RFC...


Happy Healthy New Year.


paf

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Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 02 Jan 2006 12:20 PST

Howdy, Paf.

I had entirely forgotten about this question and answer. Thanks for reminding me! 

~Pink

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Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 02 Jan 2006 12:24 PST

Oh, and thanks for reminding me of the grand old word
"ferschlugginer." Back in the days when I was an avid fan of "Mad"
magazine, that was one of my favorite words. I think I may give it a
whirl again. I'm always in need of funny words.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 02 Jan 2006 16:01 PST

Great...but I'd check on the spelling of that ferschlugginer word if were you.

---

Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 02 Jan 2006 16:15 PST

Hey, this is kinda neat:

"FERSCHLUGGINER  

A Mad-word; 'a sort of clean dirty word'.  From Yiddish 
'far-schlogner', which we may translate 'all beat up'."

http://www.sff.net/people/diccon/FOXTROT.HTM

When I was young, I learned a bit of Yiddish from some elderly
relatives, but I never realized that "ferschlugginer" came from
Yiddish. I guess it's not surprising that "Mad" magazine used the word
, since Alfred E. Newman is probably a nice Jewish boy.

Ah, would that there were a ten star rating.

~Paf

Was the 12/31 RFC posted in response to a system problem (seen at
least on 1/1/06 and part of 1/2/06)? I thought that the problem was
related to the first leap second in seven years, but that change was
supposed to take effect several hours after the RFC was posted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

"for example, a leap second on 31 December will be observed as 6:59:60
pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time."

Re-indexing / reloading (?) seems to have taken longer. The number of
answered questions went from about 41,000 yesterday to about 46,000
today.