I'm still biting my fingernails about North Carolina even while I'm excited about Senator-to-be Hagan and Governor-to-be Perdue, and ecstatic about Obama's win.
According to the results the NC Board of Elections links to, Obama and McCain are less than a percentage point apart with 95 counties out of 100 reporting. McCain is listed as being 5433 votes ahead.
ohpleaseohpleaseohplease let the last five counties go for Obama...
I found an interesting link at Language Log: an excerpt from a new book called The Myth of Mars and Venus", which debunks the myths we have as a culture about the ways that men and women speak.
Caroline @42
Yeah, it's pretty weird. I don't remember the Good Omens reference, alas.
My thought was, which corporate executives? Their own? Random corporations doing "team building"?
Just a bit of possibly good news from the Raleigh News & Observer:
There's a new dimension to the fallout from the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad that left 11 Iraqis dead: Blackwater USA apparently has stopped all its expansion projects.
On Wednesday, the North Carolina private military contractor canceled a $5.5 million real estate deal to buy 1,800 acres of farmland near Fort Bragg, where the company was going to set up a training ground for soldiers and corporate executives.
Elise @ 26:
Maybe Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation, which states that "any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror."
With reference to the "corpse bride", I'm thinking perhaps a goth wedding (I freely admit that I don't know enough about goths to know if this is a reasonable guess)? Or a costume based on the Tim Burton movie? (or something combining the two aspects...)
Fascinating stuff. And the idea of maternity bridal gowns makes perfect sense now that I know they exist, but I would have never guessed that you could buy them otherwise.
I need to refresh myself on first aid (it's been a long time since I had that course).
On the other hand, I had occasion to call 911 a couple of times on behalf of other people, which made it much easier to overcome that reluctance for more personal emergencies.
Practice (useful, nonetheless): I called when I saw a city bus go by whose electric sign said "please call police". (Never did find out what that was about; 17 years later, I'm still curious.) That was my first call ever, and I was intensely nervous: fifty people would have called before me and my call would be extraneous and I would be wasting their time. But no, they wanted all the details, and nobody else had called first. I called when I saw tree branches smoldering where they were touching electric wires.
I've never been told that I shouldn't have called; when I asked, I was told I made the right decision. When family medical emergencies came up, the 911 operator talked me through what to do while waiting for the ambulance to turn up. It's all been highly reassuring.
Just wanted to share another American dialect's version of the second-person plural: you-uns or yuns or yins. Some of my growing up was in southern Indiana, and I fairly frequently heard older locals say the first of those.
I have fond memories from the mid-'80s of the generic bus in the Champaign-Urbana bus system. It was assigned to different routes, was painted with the classic olive green stripe, and cost less to ride than the other buses in the MTD.
Paula #550
Thanks! That looks like just what I wanted.
re: 542
...Or maybe I was just experiencing a temporary loss of my google skills. Now I'm turning up a bunch of stuff. Still, if anyone has any particularly egregious examples in mind, I'd love to see them.
A question: I was recently having a conversation with my mother (a staunch Democrat) who had picked up the notion of John McCain being an honest man. She had and has no plan to vote for him, but figured that he was probably the best of a bad lot on the Republican side. I promptly up and said that he was a liar, but now I'm having trouble tracking down specific evidence, aside from his recent Baghdad jaunt.
I did find the post (and comments thereto) here on ML, "John McCain, tyrant in waiting," which will probably be of interest to her, but doesn't go into the question of his honesty (other than to discuss his false presentation of himself as a maverick).
Can anybody help? I'm quite sure that I've seen him described as dishonest somewhere, but maybe I'm mistaken.
Bubble bees is an old favorite I hadn't gone back to in a while before seeing this thread. Uh-oh... I remember liking a few other games from that site, too.
Larry Brennan @ 286: Huh. That's what my father used to make coffee all through my childhood (1970-mid-80s) in the Midwest. I still have one hanging around my house for his visits from the days when he still drank coffee. I've never been a coffee drinker, so having something that was small, inexpensive, and worked well with boiling water from a kettle was ideal.
I love tea. I will confess to apparently being a Philistine on the matter, however, as I routinely microwave a cupful of water and then put black tea leaves in. I like it just fine, though I gather not everyone agrees with me. I do prefer making it in a pot, though. But then, I already knew I had odd taste in tea. I either like the more expensive stuff or the really cheap stuff: US store brand tea bags that cost about 1-2 cents a bag. I think of it as seaweed tea because the flavor reminds me vaguely of nori.
Yes. It was the last line that made me realize.
This may be too little, too late, but it appears that an archaeologist has been helping train (at least some) pilots who are going to Iraq to recognize religious and archaeological sites (including Muslim cemeteries):
Caroline in #42:
It's not quite the same sort of food, but there's a taqueria called Taqueria Mi Pueblo in Durham that I really like a *lot*. I'm also fond of Los Comales, on Roxboro St just north of I-85 (not least because when they figured out I was buying tacos for a homeless woman, they cut the price).
They're both places where I do best (not speaking much Spanish beyond "por favor" and "para llevar"(I think?)) with phrasebooks of the Mexican-Spanish variety to help me translate the menu. Not that this always helps; my phrasebook doesn't translate huaraches as anything but sandals. These are also places where I wouldn't suggest you go if you're vegetarian or keep kosher: I suspect the beans are cooked with lard.
Now if only someone could tell me where to go around here for good Salvadoran or Honduran food. The Honduran restaurant just north of Los Comales used to be good, but the food was dreadfully salty the last time I went. Maybe I should give it another try, in case it was a fluke. The Salvadoran place on Garrett Rd was greasy the one time we tried it.
Todd in #16, the milk-based soft drink could also be spelled "horchata", and is tasty. You can sometimes find horchata mix around here; a neighbor of ours who can't drink milk likes putting it in rice milk.
Sorry! Forgot to check if someone else had posted the same thing while I was typing mine up.
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