I have been meaning for some time to draw the attention of those of a fannish persuasion to what is possibly the only bronze statue of someone wearing a propeller beanie.
(The statue is of Richard Crosbie, pioneering balloonist.)
St. Barbara was fairly popular in the West of Ireland; my youngest aunt is called Barbara (or Bairbre). The Naomh Bairbre is a US-built Galway hooker which has sailed to Ireland - Steve Mulkerrins who built it is actually my col ochtar, let me see, third cousin in this case.
Slight correction to Emmet and Niall above:
No Irish President has ever refused to dissolve the Dáil, although they have that power under the Constituion . In 1982 the outgoing Taoiseach was Fine Gael's Garret Fitzgerald, leader of a Coalition government. Fianna Fáil wanted President Hillery (former FF politician) to refuse a dissolution after the Government lost a budget vote (the "VAT on children's shoes" budget, IIRC). It would have suited FF leader Charlie Haughey to be able to form a government and if necessary call an election a few months later. The ostensible justification was that there had just been a general election in 1981. President Hillery, a very principled man, refused to take the phone calls of Lenihan and others. In the end there was not just one but two general elections in 1982.
The Irish implementation is also slightly different, in that the President, while they can refuse a dissolution, cannot call in the leader of the opposition and invite them to form a government.
Just to add my thoughts and wishes. I've seen someone in much worse condition (comatose for 3 weeks, paralysed for much longer) achieve a decent level of recovery and would have thought the prospects sounded pretty good for Scraps, considering his level of function now and his comparatively young age. The human brain is amazingly plastic.
As Katherine says, there is a reason they give you the worst case scenario. But your own assessment doesn't have to agree with that.
Crankiness, besides being perfectly understandable in the circumstances, is a common effect of any insult to the brain.
It shocks me yet again that you and other Americans in similar positions have to worry about monstrous bills in this situation. Even the inadequate Irish public health system would do much better.
Just saw this now, and would like to add to the chorus of get well wishes.
Some stuff over at Unfogged, from a regular commenter there who lives in the Twin Cities and is an activist.
Apparently, I signed up too late to get the Scalzi ebook download. I guess I'm just tough out of luck.
Earl, I have reason to believe that if you send a nice email to the
address that comes with the current book download email, they might
well send you the Scalzi link.
442 is Ze. Oraa. And I don't think anyone guessed another of Bryan's at 174 - it's Gur Guveq Cbyvprzna.
Four invaders from another world overthrow the established authorities and take over the place, with weapons provided by a powerful overlord who also helps them break dangerous traitors out of imprisonment. The overlord later joins in a peace treaty with the previous government but manages to escape the penalty clause on a technicality. The invaders establish an authoritarian government and squash all dissent, but eventually they leave.
Congratulations! I imagine showing a few photos of the award's being presented, etc. would allay security apprehensions.
Abi at 332; Elise already spotted that 111 is Pangur Bán.
im in mi monastery
doin mi job
all nite
writin wurdz
pangurcatz in mi monastery
doin his job
all nite
catchin micez
i can has wizdum
he can has micez
weez gud (practiz!)
uz LOL
The fannish accent rasff thread linked by Avram way up there at 18 was interesting. Though I've never met Teresa, I am unsurprised to hear that she pronounces commas (isn't that what they're for?).
Also there's some eerie foreshadowing of later events, with a discussion of how Jeb Bush succeeded in Florida politics after he made his manner more folksy and less New England-y.
I recognised that it was Elvish, but went off on the wrong track expecting it to be a translation from a well known English text, not from one Elvish language into another. If that thought had occurred to me there would have been no problem. Also, if I'd had to identify whether it was Sindarin or Quenya I'm sure I would have chosen correctly. (I notice that Sindarin has a similar method of forming the vocative case to some Celtic languages.)
Ok, it's one of those personal preference things so, the beer guy in my off-licence and I both like it better than the Hefeweissen (I don't go for the Dunkelweissen). The Oktoberfest stuff OTOH I've always found bland.
These days I drink more Czech and Belgian beers, too.
Oops, name all messed up there.
Niall, can you get the Erdinger Schneeweisse ("Das Winterbier!") where you are? It's particularly tasty. My local Dublin off-licence gets it every year but last night I saw it in a pub/venue in Camden St. so it must be fairly widely distributed now.
In case anybody who knew him hadn't heard: sad news about Irish fan David Stewart.
Drat, the name looked ok in the comment preview. I'll have to go back to my Usenet ways until I figure out the HTML for i/, e/ and o/.
Beth N. at #42: In the same vein, the best MSWord advice I've ever got was that the formatting for each paragraph is attached to its ending paragraph mark. If you hit the button for "Show/Hide (paragraph mark)"* and delete the paragraph mark, your paragraph now has the formatting of the succeeding paragraph (not the preceding one as your intuition would lead to you to expect). This often happens by accident when blank space is being deleted and the unseen paragraph mark is deleted too.
You can also copy and paste paragraph marks to change the formatting of a recalcitrant paragraph to that of an obedient one.
Iain Coleman at 57#: I usually set up a macro with a button to Paste Special - Unformatted Text. It's a while since I've done it but as far as I recall recording the macro is easy, setting up a button for it is a bit fiddly.
*if this button is not visible, you can also do this from Options/View/Formatting Marks/All
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