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Category: Personal
What is the meaning of your name? Does it have a story behind it? Why did your parents name you that? What do you like about it? Do you share it with a celebrity?
Nick. From Greek Nikolaos, Victory of the People. The name shows up in antiquity, in its Attic variant Nikoleōs, and got enshrined among Greeks via Saint Nicholas. Too vernacular for the late Byzantine historian Chalkokondyles, who flipped his first name around to Laonikos. Nicolaus in Latin, Nicolas in French and Middle English, as featured in […]
What is the photo on your lock screen?
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, tuning up. From the best seats I’ve ever had in a concert: choir stalls. This was the performance of Mahler’s 6th during which my wife, somehow, fell asleep. Much to Victoria Weaver’s merriment. Answered 2016-11-02 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-the-photo-on-your-lock-screen/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Do you prefer silence or noise? Why?
In my twenties, I was like Jordan. Silence unnerved me. I sought noise. I made noise. I was loud. Sunday nights, when it was deadly quiet as I was working on my PhD, I would put on the community radio Metal show, because I couldn’t deal without noise. (And not because I had any idea […]
What would you choose in the following coin flip scenarios? Explain your thought process.
I did Engineering as an undergrad. So I should have a good appreciation of statistics, and work through the odds, right? Screw that. I played a slot machine once when I was 16, lost all the money I put in after being ahead, and I’m not doing that shit again. I refuse to set foot […]
What did you do with your partner on your first anniversary?
Why, what else does one do on a first marriage anniversary? Put your wife on a gondola. (Luxury Gondola Cruises: Venice on the Yarra) Everyone on the riverside assumed this was for a proposal. I kept hollering out to onlookers: SHE SAID YES!!! (sotto voce) Two years ago… Answered 2016-10-05 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-did-you-do-with-your-partner-on-your-first-anniversary/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Men of Quora: what do you look like with and without facial hair?
Mid-2012. I need to put some text content here. So I’ll say what people said when Derryn Hinch, way too prominent Australian reporter, shaved off his beard. The image everyone conjured was that of Daffy Duck, sans bill: Oh, and I don’t deserve to be on the same thread as Michaelis Maus. But there you […]
Which intellectual topic can you just not get into?
Lots. It seems that the dismal science, economics, is a popular answer here, and I’ll put my hand up for that as well. (I just looked up the origin of the phrase The dismal science and… holy shit! Carlyle made up the phrase to decry economics as being amoral, and hence depressing—because economics was concluding […]
Which vice(s) do you most struggle with, e.g. one of the seven deadly sins?
Wrath: I enjoy it a little too much, though it really is more as a performance piece than a reality. The Magister Optimus Michael Masiello circulated the rage performance pieces of Eddie Pepitone recently (Michael Masiello’s answer to Who’s the best stand-up comedian whose act is awkward and funny?); they had me in stitches. Gratias […]
Can the wonderful people of Quora upload a picture or two of themselves?
I am a wonderful person of Quora. I see three or four people I know on this thread. The network graph must expand! Me 10 years ago, with my sister: Me as Dr Nick, 7 years ago (at my future best man’s graduation): With my then girlfriend, 4 years ago: Close to two years ago: […]
Would you take a DNA test to see your origins?
https://youtu.be/tyaEQEmt5ls Some fascinating answers here. For me, no, and that’s about different attitudes to ethnicity and history. My no is for the same reason as User’s (answer stupidly collapsed by mods) or Feifei Wang’s. My skepticism about the methodologies in pop DNA tests is the same as Madelene Zarifa’s, my skepticism about the utility the […]