What about the registered voters who didn't vote? (Unless my estimates are way off, there are considerably more of them than voted independent.) Any special messages for them?
Greg London: every time you explain, it sounds like a better argument for a long lie-in on polling day. Is that what you're trying to encourage people to do?
John M. Ford: the version of that ditty that I was raised on went:
[Insert appropriate name] is dead and gone
His face we'll see no more
For what he thought was H20
Was H2SO4
Must...resist...urge...to...read...all...comments...
I just came across this gem, from one "frac": Wow. Your mother should have had one.
She probably did. After she found out what this one turned into, she didn't want to take any more chances.
I learned to use a blanket at home, and nursed my kids everywhere, in church, in the mall, everywhere, without flashing a boob. It's not that hard.
It wasn't that hard for you, you mean. I can't be sure my daughter's eating properly if I can't see what the attachment's like, and I have one or two problems with sticking my head under a blanket while feeding her.
As far as bottlefeeding as a creation of Satan goes, my policy is to assume that any well-educated and caring mother who isn't breastfeeding must have a damn good reason for it, and not embarrass her by demanding specifics. That still leaves the sad question of women who don't breastfeed because they aren't well-educated about the benefits, but like Rivka says, it should be possible to get the word out without shaming bottlefeeders.
An assistant in my local Waterstones recommended the Covenant books as similar to my plot summary of my first novel, so I undertook to read one for research purposes. At some point between the recommendation and my sitting down to read the book, someone on a forum said they couldn't abide Covenent because of the rape.
When I made time to read it, about three pages after the rape I realised that *this* was the rape that the forumite was so upset about. The prose was so utterly impenetrable that I didn't realise while I was reading it.
What interested me was how many behaviours from the list and the comments have been in my family for at least two generations of non-poverty. Bending down to pick up change, filling pockets with free sugar, making do and mending, a relaxed attitude to mould and best-before dates - my parents both grew up in what passes for affluence among the working class and raised me in middle-class luxury, but the behaviours still got passed on.
I used to date a guy whose first language was German. Since he spoke far better English than I did German, English became the language of mundane conversations and German became the language of love. A rough-edged, raunchy kind of love, perhaps, but that suited both of us well enough.
We also used to goof around saying mundane German phrases as if they were dire threats, or mundane Portuguese words as if they were passionate declarations. I can still get a laugh out of him by saying, breathlessly, "Fiambre! Queijo! Pastelaria!", which roughly translates as "Ham! Cheese! Cake shop!"
Sarah M: I think I know what you mean. The deaths, once I'd been reassured that the last of my London friends was safe on holiday, didn't make much of an emotional impression on me. But when I heard where the bombs went off, I suddenly started to shake.
I've been through that deep tunnel on most of the occasions I've been to London. Next month, I planned a journey that would in all likelihood have taken me through that tunnel again. It could have been me, and that's the most terrifying aspect.
You mean I'm not the only person to have audio playback of conversations in my head? From the way the psychiatrist looked at me I thought I had to be.
One odd thing I do is play conversations back in English whatever language they were originally in. Sometimes I could hear my ex's mother speaking in my head so clearly that I had to remind myself I couldn't be hearing her words because she wouldn't have spoken them in English.
I didn't see what the "schwa" sound had to do with reading and I apparently TOLD the teacher so, in about that many words.
My mum tells two stories about me, both of which I have to take on trust since I don't remember either incident. The first is about how I taught myself to read through being read to regularly, and the first she knew about it was when I started asking awkward questions about things I'd read in the newspaper.
The second is about how my school taught using the Initial Teaching Alphabet when I started, and how I marched up to the head of Infants and announced that "I don't read that rubbish - I read *real* writing."
I do remember the head of Infants taking rather a dislike to me...
I can see where they're coming from. You say that he's in the wrong but you focus on his teachers' responsibility, which sounds like a way to shift the bulk of the blame from him. No, which is a way to shift the bulk of the blame from him.
I thought the focus on what the university could have done was just down to the fact that it's the interesting part.
Plagiarism is bad; I don't think anyone's likely to miss that, especially here. But the university was also wrong in letting him get away with it for so long: that's an issue that bears further discussion.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 6 |
| 2005 | 4 |
| 2004 | 3 |
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