Terra-forming

[NotHardUp1]

When you hear the phrase or read it, if you do, what comes to mind?

 

[Kahaih]

Cooling lava and deltas. Land in the making/in progress.

Is this some new catchphrase?

 

[Kahaih]

Ok, wiki doesn't use the hyphen, but explains.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I'm trying to use more hyphens online, so they don't end up in our oceans.

 

[unloadonme]

When you hear the phrase or read it, if you do, what comes to mind?

The film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

 

[Vannie]

Isis

 

[cabinfever]

Alien life forms

 

[Peloso]

Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)

 

[gsdx]

The film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

You beat me to it.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, starring the beautiful Merritt Butrick as Captain Kirk's son, with whom William Shatner hated having to share the big screen because Merritt was gay but he had to hug Merritt anyway because Leonard Nimoy told William he had to.

 

[unloadonme]

You beat me to it.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, starring the beautiful Merritt Butrick as Captain Kirk's son, with whom William Shatner hated having to share the big screen because Merritt was gay but he had to hug Merritt anyway because Leonard Nimoy told William he had to.

Your post prompted me to Google Merritt Buttrick. All I knew about him was that he appeared in the Star Trek film. Sadly, he died in 1989 aged only 29 from toxoplasmosis and AIDS.

Merritt Butrick - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Latimer]

I'm trying to use more hyphens online, so they don't end up in our oceans.

I find myself increasingly using hyphens, much to the disapproval of spell-check--or is it properly "spellcheck"? I also find myself increasingly using quotation marks, commas and semicolons. My cellphone allows me to easily use accent marks, and I love doing so:

• ç – la cédille (the cedilla)
• é – l'accent aigu (the acute accent)
• â/ê/î/ô/û – l'accent circonflexe (the circumflex)
• à/è/ì/ò/ù – l'accent grave (the grave accent)
• ë/ï/ü – le tréma (the trema)

 

[NotHardUp1]

My reason for asking is that I've heard it exclusively in context of science/science fiction, and about other planets.

As I lay watching the Earthshot Prize awards ceremonies early this morning, I heard a couple of nominees who were fighting deforestation, desertification, and ocean acidification.

It occurred to me that all these enterprising environmentalists were, in their own way, terra-forming, but on this terra. We might think of using it here and now in the real world, rather than only in the virtual future that may not exist.

 

[Kulindahr]

When you hear the phrase or read it, if you do, what comes to mind?

Just now, a computer game from the late 1980s where the goal was to terraform Mars or some generic dead planet. I played it for hours; I think it was "Sim Earth".

 

[Kulindahr]

View attachment 1879798Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)

I thought I'd seen that movie, but I don't remember that!

 

[Peloso]

I thought I'd seen that movie, but I don't remember that!

I don't either. It's probably a pre-production artist's rendering. I couldn't find an image of how it actually appeared in the film.

 

[me203]

I'm trying to use more hyphens online, so they don't end up in our oceans.

How noble!

But it's easier to put them in the punctuation recycle bin for responsible disposal!



I probably use hyphens more than normal people. The legacy of being the son of two grammar Nazi parents lives on... And some stuff is just so automatic, like using "e-mail" instead of "email".

 

[me203]

I find myself increasingly using hyphens, much to the disapproval of spell-check--or is it properly "spellcheck"?

Or maybe spelling check? Unless you are a witch, you probably don't have spells to check!

 

[me203]

I find myself increasingly using hyphens, much to the disapproval of spell-check--or is it properly "spellcheck"? I also find myself increasingly using quotation marks, commas and semicolons. My cellphone allows me to easily use accent marks, and I love doing so:

• ç – la cédille (the cedilla)
• é – l'accent aigu (the acute accent)
• â/ê/î/ô/û – l'accent circonflexe (the circumflex)
• à/è/ì/ò/ù – l'accent grave (the grave accent)
• ë/ï/ü – le tréma (the trema)

I got a Macintosh computer jsut before I started college. One selling point: the easy access to accents, built in. No special keyboard or software needed. A professor who did need those accents had to buy special equipment to get it to work on his DOS PC, or so he said. Although my usage of those accents was so light it might as well not have been there. Indeed, it's arguable that computer was a big overbuy--I used it, and I liked features it had. But I could have gotten by with Commodore C64 with cassette tape drive for 90% of what I actually needed to do.

Other memory: in high school, I used manual typewriters. I remember seeing one in a thrift shop I really, really wanted that had (or had a mark that would work as) a dieresis (¨, like in naïve). I got really excited--but they decided the typewriter wasn't for sale. The store owner needed a typewriter more than she needed a few bucks.

The typewriter comment reminds me of something else--high school language teachers owned European typerwriters so they could have those accents available when typing tests, etc.

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't either. It's probably a pre-production artist's rendering. I couldn't find an image of how it actually appeared in the film.

Could be.

BTW, normally I hate action GIFs as avatars, but that one is awesome!