This has been an issue of contention between me and my wife. My wife would rather be in a traffic jam for 2 hours, than catch the train. I’ve been an annoyed passenger on such occasions. None of the other reasons brought up by respondents applies. So long as you are heading to the CBD, […]
An adolescent question like this deserves an adolescent poem as its answer. Here’s one I prepared earlier. As an adolescent, in fact. Taktas jarojn tiuj, kiuj dankasDion – trance, kun vagstulta fido. Trafas kraŝon tiuj, kiuj tranĉaspor si hastan vojon – kun venkrido. Tanĝas homojn tiuj, kiuj talpas mensizole, ĉar en si kontentas. Transas homojn […]
I believe that everything that ever needed to be said about this has already been said by my friend Quora Quorason. Vote #1: Quora Quorason’s answer to How would you parody your own writing style on Quora? This answer is meant to be supplemental to that. Only it isn’t, because I am enamoured of my […]
Benjamin R. Drakenbourg is right: Australians have a lot invested in thinking they are egalitarian and not-British, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t class in Australia. The sneering at bogans that has happened over the last two decades is nothing if not class. So is the abundance of hipsters in the inner suburbs. But Australians […]
The intention of the Unicode Regional Indicator Symbols was to represent current countries in existence (as encoded in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2), as locales for software; the flags are a lagniappe. (A rather unfortunate lagniappe.) Hence, no SPQR flag: the point of the codes is to indicate the country you live in, as a two letter […]
Tough question, Habib le toubib: I don’t do heroes, I like my critical faculties about me, and I’ve been jaded for a while. And of course, anyone I’d choose would be morbidly obscure anyway. … OK, challenge accepted. Hubert Pernot. The underappreciated giant of Modern Greek historical linguistics. Not a polemicist, not a tub-thumper; he […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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, […]