On my trip to the UK this June, getting off the train from Gatwick at London Bridge, the first things I saw were Starbucks and Kristy Kreme outlets. O tempora, o mores.
OTOH, comparing a UK Starbucks to a North American is interesting. On the coffee side, the only obvious difference is no high-fat dairy for the beverages - skim and whole milk only, no half and half 10% bf, no coffee cream 18% bf.
On the food side, though ... Marmite Breakfast Panini, anyone? I have pictures!
The ceaseless reflection of the present is why much 1950-1990 SF is rather bizarre to re-read today. You can see the shadow of the Berlin Wall cast long across the field. But often, when it was recent/new, I couldn't. And I don't just mean the Yangs and Comms or Asimov's divided world (just Us and Them, quite brilliant), but in the background of very many stories. Unfortunately, the Analog collection is currently packed, so I can't drag out too many. Fred Pohl's "The Coming of Quantum Cats" is one more or less obscure example from a major name.
Has any university created a program in Cold War studies yet?
#345 and all - I work for the parent company of MyFax. At www.myfax.com, there's a free small volume sending tool. And you can sign up for a 30 day free trial. It does many file formats.
B. Durban at #248 "we've reached a permanently high plateau" -- as far as I can tell, this phrase means "run" - cash out and hide the cash under your mattress (or at least in guaranteed forms.) Does anyone else remember a Wired cover story "The Long Boom"? Just after that, the .dot com bubble burst.
How did bubbles come to be so frequent that they overlap? It used to be a once-a-generation or even once-a-lifetime thing. But we've had two of three at least in twenty years - can I count Bre-X as a bubble?
In WWII, my Uncle Henry was a piper and saw combat in at least France and in India. He missed the boats at Dunkirk and turned up back in Scotland afterwards. He refused to talk about that period. He blamed his hair loss on a hot steel helmet in India - I have the same hair loss, so I doubt that.
Local-to-me Kanata Freecycle had a blow-up (same ol' same ol') with official Freecycle a while back and became "Kanata Freestore". The official people started a new Kanata group, I don't know how it's doing.
In Ottawa, we also have a Habitat for Humanity Re-Store for building supplies. It's conveniently close to my office, takes lots of stuff, and sells for very low prices.
Joel and I live in the same city, and HD here is often better than some of the descriptions from other places. For one thing, much of the staff is female. The Canadian self-scan checkout seems unexceptional - so probably better than the US one.
My wife (who's 5' 10" and a person of size) had about a seven-year period of chronic invisibility, then it got better circa age 50. OTOH, she often gets mistaken for male.
I have occasional invisibility myself. Recently in a pharmacy (of the nutritional/homeopathic variety), I experienced the beckoning of someone behind me. I left. I phoned the store and asked if they would post a sign saying "unaccompanied males will not be served" if that is their policy. One of the staff who ignored me had almost tripped over my feet. I had been the only obvious XY among five or so staff and seven or more customers.
pericat at 295 may well be right - most of the cases I can think of certainly happen in harsh light.
#660 - you might be able to disable the current C: partition, and then the second partition would become C:. This looks like the like of oddity some vendor install systems leave behind; a very small bootstrap partition, then the real install. I speculate that your MBR got munged and the backup is from the initial build. I may be full of small green marbles, however. The article at http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5080480.html offers some good-seeming advice. Download the trial Acronis DiskEditor to see the partition table for free; you may need to pay to actually change it.
I probably don't need to remind you that caution is very important, you don't want to make it worse.
#48 in another thread, someone referenced Florence Foster Jenkins. Imagine the Jenkins rendition of McGonagall! On second thoughts, don't. If you succeed, if will hurt.
My local *$ has some pictures of old espresso machines. I swear one of them looks like it has a hand-cranked rotary pump. A similar machine appears on p 35 of Maltoni's book.
#7 - McGonagall is one of my home town's more dubious claims to fame. Especially as they no longer make marmelade there. A tin ear, a poor vocabulary, and very little sense that poetry couple be other than couplets. I have found a couple of pieces that aren't couplets.
When McG wanted to put on his own "improved" version of the Scottish Play, his weaving mill mates raised the money. Apparently, because they expected it to be the hilarious mess it turned out to be.
I recall seeing the stubs of the piers of the old bridge when crossing the Tay by train on the new bridge. When I was a child, it wasn't as eerie as it seems now.
BTW, if you can deal with both McG and German, you may appreciate Robert Henryson a good Scots* poet of the 15th century. Try reading it out loud.
Esope myne authour makis mentioun,
Of twa myis and thay wer sisteris deir,
or more phonetically modern
Esope mine author makis mention,
Of twa meece and they were sisters dear,
* Scots is a language in the Germanic family, not really a dialect of English.
Followup to my previous - looks like the "Holman Christian Standard Bible" is a Southern Baptist version with the same objectives as Conservapedia - http://www.bible-researcher.com/csb.html
The biggest evidence of "liberal bias" in the NIV was the preparation of the inclusive language revision of the NIV.
The Conservapedia bible project appears to be a straight (worse-possible method) transliteration of 1611 AV into modern English. Plus the opinions of the transliterator. It's a bit of a train-wreck. The AV text isn't particularly well thought of today.
The NIV is pretty much based on the opinions of textual critics. For a probably theologically conservative read, J.I. Packer was involved in one recent project - see http://www.bible-researcher.com/versbib13.html for nine 21st century editions! And that was just to 2005.
Biblegateway.com has bunches of translations; there's also about a hundred at http://www.tyndalearchive.com/Scriptures/index.htm I have recently had flirtations with both Coverdale 1540 and J.B. Phillips The New Testament in Modern English and The Word on the Street - the latter formerly known as The Street Bible.
When you consider high-speed (or even low-speed) chases, it's very clear that most criminals are impulsive, etc. Besides, rational people know that there's more money in honest work. (I read once that the average bank robbery nets $250 - not worth the effort.)
The juxtaposition is truly great.
#351 xeger ...
(I have a number of vintage 2500 sets. The built-in mic of my cell phone is so horrible that the obvious technique of recording directly there has never produced anything I like. I think it cuts off too much of the low end.)
Plugging any reasonable mic into the mic input of most sound cards will get you a wav file. (Windows Audio Recorder is quite adequate.) An MP3 can be created using freeware such as "Exact Audio Copy"
Terry @228 - congrats. Those are good interview questions. I'm about to start trying to hire (programmers, .Net and/or SQL) again. I must cogitate.
#100 The story is Overproof by Johnathan (sic) Blake MacKenzie, Analog October 1965. I have the magazine right here.
I think it's collected in one of the Analog anthologies.
Bill at #82 & #83 - there were probably just as many ties in Montreal as being worn in those Worldcon photos. The difference is that in Montreal, they all belonged to David Hartwell!
#861 et al
One thing that's hopeless frustrating about Windows is the vast number of interrelated variables. However, standard C doesn't help that much, and MS SQL adds more pain. It's much harder than it should be to do time and date right and way too easy to do it wrong.
Right, in this context, nearly always means converted to and from UTC. It's not limited to Windows, btw. Some 25+ years ago I dealt with an early email server that could not be made consistent over the "fall back" end of DST. The operational fix - keep the system down for that magic hour. (Those timestamps in local time occur twice. Bad ju-ju! Local time bad. UTC less bad.)
REcently, we had an amusing time/architecture bug from testing - MS SQL dates go from 0001-01-01 to whenever. C# dates go from 1753-01-01. If you get a date in the datebase before that, you get an exception on reading it out. And you spend some time head-scratching until you find it.
There's also the well-known (in some circles) Wednesday phenomenon. Date code is more likely to fail on Wednesday - because it's the longest day name. And in September, too, of course.
It's also possible to write flawed date arithmetic that works only in January and February, or vice versa.
Then there's leap year handling. I recall a book published in 1999 with incorrect leap-year code that would fail in 2000. Silly, as from 1901 to 2099, mod 4 is quite adequate.
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