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Month: April 2017
What are some tips for living in Melbourne?
The sooner you pronounce the city name the way the locals do, the better. Not MELbin, but MALbin: Salary–celery Merger, a proudly Victorian peculiarity. (Whaddaya mean, New Zuhluhnduhrs do it too?) And never, ever pronounce that <r> in Melbourne. What do you think this is, Melbourne, Florida? Never say anything good about Sydney. It’s against […]
What are some examples of folk etymology?
Bridegrooms, Bonfires, and Woodchucks: Folk Etymologies in English. From that link: The textbook examples for English are sparrowgrass for asparagus, and bridegroom, which should have been bridegoom. (The word gome for “man” became extinct, so people grabbed the nearest similar word. Now that the noun groom for “horse attendant” has also become extinct, people use […]
What is your favourite celebrity nickname?
Some celebrity nicknames are funny, and ingenious, and a sign that you have made it big, if you have an instantly recognizable nickname. On the other hand, some celebrity nicknames show familiar contempt for celebrities, and I like those too. Australian bent in these. Madge for Madonna This. So delightfully pulling her down a peg. […]
What should be included in the Constitution of Sockistan?
Habib, so many good answers here with allusion to the US Constitution, and I couldn’t hope to exceed them or even reach them. And then, I remembered a different country’s constitution. Not even its current version. In the 60s, Greek leftist youth protested the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis and the subsequent upheaval in the country, […]
What is it like to be raised by immigrant parents?
I love my folks, however problematic things have been between us, and I don’t begrudge them their struggles in a strange land, to do the best they could for their kids. (Maybe their objectivity, but not their struggle.) But what was it like to be raised by immigrant parents? Defensive. Don’t assimilate to those drunkards. […]
Are there any examples of a successful ethnic cleansing such that the race is extinct?
As others have said, this is a matter of definition. There are many older claims of such mass exterminations, but without the modern day efficiency of a Heydrich, it was hard to be as thorough as people would have liked, especially if you allow for intermarriage. This is a particularly sensitive issue in Australia, as […]
What ancient names, if any, would you name a child nowadays?
From harrumphing, get-your-hippy-names-away-from-me answers such as Why do English-speaking people often have strange first names? and Is Khalisi a weird name for a baby?, you will have surmised correctly that I would only go with ancient names that have survived in modern times. Or been revived in modern times. Ιn Greece, the difference matters: Helen […]
What about Vegemite is so appealing to the Australian palate?
As others have said—many of them not even from God’s Own Country (but certainly honorary Aussies, one and all): Vegemite is ace. I’ll add a couple of observations: There are certainly cultural predilections in what food you end up eating by default: what a culture happens to have come up with in cuisine determines what […]
If your pet could fully comprehend what you’re saying to them for 60 seconds, what would you tell them?
Jenny! Jenny, I know you’re in chronic pain and rather silly about your own pain management. When you get those Zydax® – Injections to Reduce Arthritis in Dogs? That’s not a cue for you to start running berserk in the doggie park again. Or to jump all over the doggie chiro. Just relax, Jen. Take […]
What reasons are there to not use Go (programming language)?
Tikhon Jelvis has just followed me, and I don’t want to annoy him by liking Go. 🙂 And I do like Go. But treating Golang as a general all-purpose language is silly and hype-y. Golang is a low level, strictly typed language. It is almost as pleasant as a low level language can get: a […]