Non-standard adjectives

http://blog.plover.com/math/partial-function.html

Mark Dominus said, Ranjit Bhatnagar proposed the notion of "non-standard adjectives". I'm sure I talked about this before, but I can't find the link.

The idea is, that a "big diamond" is a sort of diamond. But a "fake diamond" is not a diamond -- it's something like a diamond, but isn't. Likewise, something which is "definitely complete" is complete, but something which is "partially complete" is not complete. The adjective describes a way the noun applies other than usual.

An example that came up recently was "nearly unique". I still stand by "very unique" for the normal English meaning of "unique in more ways, or out of a bigger set" (I agree it's meaningless if the set in which it's unique is specified, but that's really rare in normal language rather than maths). But I said that "nearly unique" should be acceptable to everyone, in that it means something that isn't unique, but is close to it.

However, I've a feeling I said something recently that came across as wrong, or misleading, or hurtful, and I wanted to quite this explanation to say that that's not what I meant, but I can't remember what it was. Sorry :(

Legend of Korra

After Season 1 of Korra, I was unsure, but was recommended to give the second half of season 2 ago because it picked up a lot. I'm exactly half-way and I think I can see how that's going.

The first half was mixed. It was hilarious in places, and all the call-backs to parent-generation politics, in the water tribe and in Aang's children, were great.

But there was forced-relationship-played-for-laughs which was ugh :(

And the politics was all huh? Like, if you described it to someone it would all make perfect sense. A and B are strong-willed and inexperienced so they like each other but are upset with each other and don't talk. A, B and C are impatient with D and ignore them. A is somewhat inexperienced and believes all this "uniting the tribe for everyone's good" and "don't take sides" stuff and totally misses the guy invading your homeland is the bad guy. That's all really realistic! But on screen it just stands out as "huh"? You never SEE someone's motivation for acting high-handedly, it always feels tacked-on even when it ought to feel natural.

And to a lesser extent the same with the world-building -- I'm constantly being surprised by the number of high-court judges or soldiers or police a given society can support, and I don't care if the numbers make sense, as long they look like they fit and don't feel like they're constantly changing the plot under you.

And the old-school tv/radio recaps at the start of each episode are amazing, they really add to the episode even when you already know what happened.

But ooh, when it starts on the spirit-world stuff, that's really really good.

ETA: I also enjoyed Jim Hines' watch-through where he blogged the episodes as he saw them for the first time. I'm glad someone agrees the episode where everyone is stupid, and the characters are all assholes, for no reason is not the high point! http://jimhines.livejournal.com/tag/korra