Author: opoudjis

How old were you when you first flew on an airplane and what was it like?

By: | Post date: August 24, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Personal

I was 8: it was the flight on which we returned to Greece from Australia for four years: 1979. Singapore Airlines, I believe. I don’t remember much about the last time I flew to Sydney, let alone anything from the ’70s. But I do remember: Cool exotic beverages, the like of which I had never […]

How many countries have you been to?

By: | Post date: August 24, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Countries

I assume there’s a prize at the end of this? No? Well, I wouldn’t win it anyway. Australia Greece Cyprus USA Austria Canada Netherlands Belgium France New Zealand Turkey Armenia Italy UK Germany Grade: B-. Could do better. Answered 2016-08-24 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/How-many-countries-have-you-been-to/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

Why did Australia choose to limit parenting roles in their survey to mother and father instead of gender neutral options?

By: | Post date: August 20, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Australia

http://mashable.com/2016/08/05/same-sex-parents-slam-census/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link#FPWYDDaXDiq5 Inertia. Census questions are a slow moving beast, and getting them updated is extremely difficult. The question on volunteerism in this year’s census was a request from Peter Costello, three censuses ago. The Australian Bureau of Statistics could not afford to spend the money to get rid of it. There is plenty of cowboy […]

Who do you think, of all famous people (dead or alive), deserves a biopic film?

By: | Post date: August 19, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

Frederick Douglass. I mean, I’m white Australian, and I’m flabbergasted that Hollywood has still not gotten there. Maybe it’s because I’m white Australian. Epic Rap Battles of History is… a start, but he deserves a lot more: Answered 2016-08-19 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Who-do-you-think-of-all-famous-people-dead-or-alive-deserves-a-biopic-film/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

Do people in other countries “hate” their capital city?

By: | Post date: August 19, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Australia, Greece

The reason why we in Australia built Canberra in a middle of nowhere sheep paddock was precisely that the two main cities, Melbourne and Sydney, hated each other. NSW and Victoria were quite independent colonies before Federation; and Australia is a federation, as in decentralised state, precisely because of that independence. (As with other federations, […]

Why do people dislike reading the King James Bible, preferring other translations?

By: | Post date: August 18, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

How do I dare disagree with the Magister Optimus Michael Masiello, on this his home turf? By telling a personal anecdote around Classics, in the hope of sucking up to him. When I was doing my PhD, I had occasion to cite a few Ancient Greek texts. It was a linguistics thesis done after 1900, […]

What is your best music composition?

By: | Post date: August 18, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Music, Personal

Eh… I looked through Compositions for the pieces I composed and put into music software in 2000. (I composed as a teenager, but didn’t quite know what I was doing; 2000 was when I had enough free time to try and polish things.) (Not that I quite knew what I was doing in 2000 either.) […]

Why do some Chinese call Britain “the nation of Yaoi”(腐国)? Is it because Britain has a relatively high rate of homosexuality?

By: | Post date: August 17, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi The answer for Greece in the 1960s, when Britain was portrayed as a gay and trans wonderland, is almost certainly not the answer for China in the 2010s. But I’m reminded of it nonetheless. And the answer for Greece was, early and high publicity moves towards decriminalisation, that left people in conservative Greece puzzled. […]

How can one summarize the Watergate scandal to a kid?

By: | Post date: August 17, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Countries

Once upon a time, there was a president called Dick. No, that really was his name. Why are you laughing? Dick was very clever, and worked very hard. But he was also very angry. He was very angry, because he was sad that people didn’t think he was cool. Like the other president, Jack. People […]

Sierra in Trumpland

By: | Post date: August 16, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Quora

Sierra Spaulding’s answer to Are the media guilty of inaccurately portraying Trump supporters as uneducated and poor? captures the close encounter between the Sandersnista Sierra Spaulding and her aunt’s Trump-supporting friends, in deepest darkest San Diego. https://www.quora.com/Are-the-me… Hm… yes, I think I have access to some footage of this happenstance: Posted 2016-08-16 [Originally posted on […]

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