Oops. Andrew M. beat me to it with much more information.
Will @68, Brooks @71: it's significant that Wikipedia specifies England and Wales. Marriage ceased to be a sacrament in Scotland in 1560. That's getting on for 450 years of civil marriage. (Hence all those Gretna Green elopements, etc.)
Marna Nightingale @39:
Once a Rt. Hon., always a Rt. Hon. (I have no idea why this particular bit of trivia is stuck in my head, presumably from Grade 9 History class.)
/nitpickery
Other than that, I am entirely of your opinion.
In my copy of Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens there is a bit early on where a vulture in a formerly happy African country dies "of Greasy degeneration of the heart" [their capital] a week after the arrival of a stunningly beautiful arms dealer in a red truck. This is a bit baffling until you read further and get to the character named Greasy Johnson, who I assume used to have another name. I don't know if they've fixed this in later editions.
I have just discovered TV Tropes (warning: it will Ruin Your Life), which lists the Naugahyde database as a Magical Database. Just one of the many features available on a Magical Computer.
Bruce Cohen @813: And those same hospitals, despite being incredibly shiny, seem to have no janitors at all. (Or social workers or patient advocates or...) House makes me cranky.
Really just dropped by today to mention how much this very alarming story made me think of the Clutter threads.
Regarding file cabinets: my grandfather, who was notoriously well organized, used a single two-drawer file cabinet his entire life. He had everything he needed and nothing he didn't. If you wanted to know how much the refrigerator cost in 1978, he could go to the file cabinet and produce the receipt. (It probably helped that he was a lawyer, with a fine sense of what did and didn't need to be kept.)
I don't think I'll ever be that organized, but it's something to aspire to. I do have a two-drawer cabinet, and it isn't stuffed full yet (nor is it fully organized), but older stuff lives in boxes in the closet, so I can't really claim to have pared back to that level.
Stefan Jones at 57: I sympathize about the recyclables! When I was in a smaller apartment, I used a small version of Ikea's Trofast system (this one, actually) for recyclables. It doesn't give you a huge amount of storage but it's better than having a tower of cans and another of newspapers.
Making four moves in a year really cut down on my tolerance for Stuff. Unfortunately, it also gave me a higher than average number of boxes marked Misc. I'm chipping away at them slowly, and reminding myself that even getting things into smaller boxes marked Misc is a victory.
My father has a tendency to hoard papers, which I find maddening, but it could be a lot worse.
I may have bought that book once. If it is the book I'm thinking of, I returned it when (a) I realized that buying three books on clearing your clutter was probably counter-productive and (b) I hit the chapter on feng shui-ing your colon.
If someone does buy it, please let me know if it contains that chapter, because it's stayed with me for about four years now.
Xopher, I bow before your ovo-lacto pomo faux-dodo cocoa so-so Gun-go-do gogo low low homo Hobo homeowner mojo.
And then I cackle with glee.
Xopher 131: ovo-lacto pomo homo Hobo homeowner! Hurray!
ajay #13: perhaps the Augusta National Golf Course is there to demonstrate that all that camels-through-the-eyes-of-needles bit is just liberal hippie propaganda?
On the whole, though, I think I'll go with your second interpretation.
Oh. Oh, that's just beautiful. *sits back and contemplates the beauty*
Although I have to say the second book TBogg quotes has the potential to be a rip-roaring good read:
For Such a Time As This is a five week Bible study that challenges single Christians to discover and surrender to God’s purpose and plan for them, and truly experience the great, unsearchable riches of Christ while serving and placing Him first in one’s life. Walk through the scorching fires of Nebuchadnezzar’s unmerciful furnace, grace the twinkling, rolling hills of the Augusta National Golf Course, and witness God’s miraculous Hand in a crowded back booth in McDonald’s and a stressful intensive care unit on Christmas Eve.
I might actually pay cash money to read that. Not a lot of cash money, obviously, but still.
A little more to throw into the mix. I did a quickie Medline search on "risk compensation driving". From the resulting abstracts it seems that the jury is still out, at least in some areas.
One points out very sensibly that "there are two basic design changes that make cars safer: the first reduces the likelihood of a crash; the second reduces the chance of injury during a crash. Because design changes that reduce the likelihood of a crash also often provide direct and immediate feedback, drivers may change their behavior, although there is no evidence that the change offsets the benefits of the increased crash avoidance capability. Design changes that increase occupant protection usually provide no direct and immediate feedback and, therefore, should have no effect on driving behavior."
Cute study involving go-karts with between-subject and within-subject seatbelt/no-seatbelt comparison of driving behaviour.
No evidence for increased injury or death following seatbelt legislation: Illinois, Britain.
On a marginally related note, as my taxes pay for the care of people who are injured in car accidents, I'm perfectly fine with seatbelt legislation.
Teresa @ 452:
They're not free to drive when impaired, drive in an unsafe manner, drive an unsafe vehicle, or purchase a new vehicle that doesn't meet a stringent and constantly evolving set of safety standards. If they screw up on those, they can be fined, forbidden to take their car out on the road, and in severe cases have their driving privileges suspended or revoked.
A friend of mine answers letters for the Ministry of Transportation in my province, and from the stories she tells, a really astonishing number of people who write in believe they should be free to do all those things without penalty and the government is infringing on their freedom by not letting them. Makes her crazy.
(Usual cheers for the post, of course.)
It doesn't seem terribly challenging to significantly impede traffic flow in just about any major city. A friend of mine used to be a traffic reporter in Montreal, and she claims she could shut down the whole city in morning rush hour with about three well-placed breakdowns. If she wanted to, that is.
Jenny J: I saw the story only yesterday in Metro's News of the Weird section: Raccoons on the lam
Beware!
Oooh, you know something else infuriating the latest version of Word does? (That talk of XML reminded me.) Smart Tags! What are they for? Who asked for them? Why are they enabled as the factory default, thus requiring me to strip them out of every document I get from a person who hasn't figured out how to turn them off yet? Why must they carry over so brilliantly into eWebEdit Pro, along with a lot of other crappy code that I don't want? WHY? WHY DO YOU TORMENT ME, WORD?
Also, they're not actually very smart.
Gah.
All of this advice is excellent.
Displaying hidden characters is also a good way to get sneaky section breaks (etc.) out in the open. (The command doesn't seem to be in any of my menus, but it's the button with the paragraph mark on it.) You'll see all the spaces, paragraph marks, tabs, and so on.
Also, I don't know what version of Word you have, but on mine (2002) you can show a Styles and Formatting panel (go to the Format menu, then click Styles & Formatting) that really helps you sort out what the *&%$ is going on in the document.
You have my deepest sympathies. Word does so many crazy-making things. Unfortunately, people who don't really know how to use Word also do crazy-making things with it (like using spaces instead of tabs or tabs instead of tables, or, say, not accepting all changes in the document before sending it on to the next person).
linnen at #39: I miss that too -- mainly because of what BethN posted at #42. In Word, or so I've read, the formatting isn't inline; it's ALL in that paragraph at the end.
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