(#119) I suppose it's too unlikely that either the New York cop was married to the [Unknown State] Senator, or the cop became a Senator? [One notes the Capitalization of Capitol workers.]
Latin Aid Plea: In my work in an inner city community I used a motto/tag for our paperwork based on the Psalm and Wilde's poem, De profundis, always translated as 'From the depths'. It was trying to say 'From the depths of the City', but my grammatical underpinnings are quite insecure, so I wavered around De Urb[i/u]s Profundis. It'd be nice to keep using it, but I'd like to check what'd be the most correct phrase.
My school library had some odd old books. I remember a biography of Richard III from 1930s(?) which quite reveled in the cruelty of those times, idolising the people's 'toughness'. It probably had something to do with the mood of the '30s with fascism's 'Will', Ms Rand, Busby Berkely and the like — a slightly unusual romanticism when compared to, say, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
abi (#49) I wot not Cordelia Naismith, but I wonder if people look for seeds in potatoes, turnips or carrots? They're all ground storage organs like tulip bulbs, and I can see a similarity between fruit like pumpkins and tubers like potatoes.
Jules (#93) "Err", indeed.
Fascinating how it approaches close to what we suspect may be reality-based, then — whoosh — veers off, rather in an epicyclic manner.
Mental scars from the recent Robin Hood series caused extreme wariness upon spotting Merlin trailers. Someone said "life is too short to stuff a mushroom"; this mushroom of a series is fairly stuffed, and I won't fill what life's left with it. This here Fluorosphere may be mushy OTOH, but comes stuffed to the gills with a sweet 'n' savoury goodness not altogether false. Though such shows can be of interest looking back later, to see what assumptions, blinkers, fashions of our time we put onto others. Like that 'Christmas in the Year 2000' print from 1900 linked round Yule last year.
Cuddled up with hot drinks and warming food to mark the Longest Night here too. I haven't found quite this on the BoM site, but one of my other favourite useful places tells me, inter alia Sunrise, Sunset & Twilight TimesSYDNEY Lat=-33°52'00" Long=+151°13'00"
Time zone: +10.00 hours
TIMES OF SUNRISE AND SUNSET (for ideal horizon & meteorological conditions)
22/06/2009 Rise 0700 Set 1654
Bruce … (#201) My total knowledge of Cheez Whiz stems from: a) this discussion; b) a short reference¹ in The Blues Brothers involving an aerosol can.
(Why do USians say airplane instead of aeroplane, yet aerosol and not airsol or airspray or such?)
To me, gravy is based on pan juices from the meat it's used on (e.g. #212, supra, without milk), so tends to some shade of brown, even with poultry. Artificial ones — Gravox, etc. — imitate this. Would 'cream gravy' just describe the colour, or involve dairy products like #212? There are many other sauces, of many colours and different textures, with other names.
[1. Took ages to work out what "thoughs" was at that link.]
"I have no doubt that God understands Dick Cheney's heart.", from Xopher & Tom (#153, #154)
I'd appreciate a nice formulation for an agnostic/atheist who'd like not to be called out on using 'God' when convenient to use:
"Some omniscient being may understand Dick Cheney's heart"?
P J Evans (#133) Do you have hot'n'sweaty feet in summer or frigid feet in winter?
I s'pose your winter shoes could be a size larger so you could wear 2 or 3 sets of socks. Or your climate is relatively mild and invariant. Or your lifestyle keeps you insulated from your climate. Or you have natural/zen/whatever bodily control. <SFnal thoughts on insulation, temperature control, etc.>
Where's that darn cat? <sound of vacuum cleaner>
They also serve, who only stand and wait.
Tho' clickable 'buttons' or written-out selectable allowed HTML near the comment text box so I didn't have to type all of my coding out 'longhand' would be useful. Dave Harmon's #117 reply link sounds good too.
Nicole & Charlie (72, 73) Well, I'm certainly an agnostic-shading-towards-atheism (being pushed there by the religious dogmatists), and have been on the internet since 1990/91.
When one sees assorted vile-to-unpleasant practices being justified by beliefs based on, or appeals to the "current corpus of holy scripture" of a faith or variety thereof, and addressing the actual factual practical problems the practices (including omissions) cause is responded to by appeals to those beliefs and scriptures, what kind of arguments can one use? (There's a whole different set where one tries to address the basis for beliefs, types of morality, etc.)
I generally avoid a lot of either arguments — besides supporting what I agree with with my money, vote, petition signatures, etc. — because it makes me too angry, sad, distracted and despairing. Hence my having to only touch Pharygula lightly these days, since so much of it's taken up with profane, angry, snide argument back and forth.
Dragoness (#37) but:
a) isn't much of the difficulty with people who feel that the whole context of the "archaeological, historical and cultural context of the Ancient Near East, plus the history of textual criticism, plus scriptural exegesis" should be ignored in favour of what they believe the bare (translated) words mean? See also Slacktivist's (Fred Clark) taking apart of the Left Behind books, from the viewpoint of another Christian, assorted mullahs, rabbis, etc;
b) also addressed in 'The Courtier's Reply' (Rich (#3 in the comments) explains: "It doesn't matter that the theory of epicycles is wonderfully intricate and was built over generations by the most skillful astronomers if it's just wrong." Ian (#69 there) and Bryson (#51 there) explain part of my patience with some people of some sorts of faith.)
Darn. See, I've just used an hour or so of time I have all sorts of useful and important things to pack into to explain this. Sigh.
*waves down to Terry, who appears to have eaten Prompt. "Nice Terry, good boy."*
"Sodomy, Levitatio" sounds like a spell from one of those Happy Rotter fanfics.
Ah, Patrick (#41) , all of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at … the stars!
<exits stage left with dramatique flourish, head and hand elevated>
Is "dressmaker" used in the US?
Mary Kay, sorry to hear about your influenza. I hope it's not too bad and over ASAP. Maybe concentrating on a warm inner glow from your not carrying infection/contagion to others, and improving karma will help your mood.
A HR person in our USA HQ sent an email out about Memorial Day weekend to All Staff last week. Which caused (a/be)musement to many of the AU/CA/HK/NZ/SA/UK work units.
Caroline (#61), yup, that's the one alright. Thank you. That little incident and the whole mood of the drinker were what had stuck. The name of the surveillance system hadn't struck me before.
Though the other story described here by Clifton and Nancy sounds a little familiar too.
Elsewhere: Art imitates Life imitates Art?A New Zealand couple [from Roturua] are reportedly on the run after $NZ10 million - instead of $NZ10,000 - was mistakenly deposited in their [Westpac] bank account.(Assorted news stories abound; comments (some context).)
Cruelty to animals is criminal here, even if you own them, partly thanks to Anna Sewell. Killing 'without cruelty' I'm unsure; you can still buy mouse traps.
Does anyone remember a short story rather like a precursor to Minority Report? It cut between a drunk starting up in the morning and a writer having the (mechanical?) murder detection system explained to him. It included a joke about the writer feeling like killing an editor who rejected a story about Sean O'Claus.
Bill (#32), Bruce (#59) on Anglo-Saxon neologisms <koff>. In the late 19th/early 20th centuries, as part of a kind of Northern Nationalism (worst, most extreme, expression seen in Germanic Nazi ideas) there was a movement to replace Latinate, French, Italian and such Southern borrowings and influences in Northern languages.
I found this out through the pianist and composer Percy Grainger, who liked to use Anglo-Saxon or 'blue-eyed English' versions of standard musical terms. (He had some other somewhat eccentric aspects of his character, which tend now to be better remembered than his work (perhaps I should try burning down some great public building to be remembered), some of which was remarkably prescient. One day the lost Kangaroo Pouch music machine may turn up, or be reconstructed.)
y (#173) It's an overcast day here in sometimes-sunny Sydney, so your explanation is cut off from my view by the cloud layer. But I hope by some application to gain a portion of enlightenment anent it.
NelC (#166), that high-speed/low-information way of editing action scenes is common these days. A lot of people are irritated — some like you affected even worse — by it, but generally the response (if any) is along the lines of "this isn't your father's fight scene".
And I agree that it seems strange that people would remark on roommates seeing each other in varied states of undress. But perhaps this is also an Australia v USA culture thing. The 'flirty' mannerisms doing it didn't strike me, but I'm not all that good at body language, being a fairly standard weird loner outsider type found in fannish groups (just ignore that internal contradiction).
[Later: Strewth. I was interrupted & went off thinking I'd sent this; have come back hours later to find it still in preview. Think it still holds.]
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 26 |
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