| Destiny's Forge |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|02:28 pm] |
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| |  chipper | ] |
I read Destiny's Forge over my vacation (last week).
Now I've been reading Larry Niven and his Tales of Known Space for decades now. A few years back he let other people into his sandbox and a series of short stories and some novels referred to as, "The Man-Kzin Wars" were born.( Read more... ) |
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| Eggcorn |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|02:16 pm] |
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| | amused | ] |
The Eggcorn Database - v. 0.5
eavesdrop » eardrop
Classification: English
Spotted in the wild:
* Some of the terms that are closely inspected in this chapter include attacks on integrity and confidentiality, wardriving, LAN jacking, wireless eardropping, WEP cracking and usage of rougue adapters. (net-security.org book review, June 4, 2003)
* I mean just eardropping this morning I heard a lot. (Australian Government welcome address transcript, (1994))
* Yes privacy and civil rights are important, but do you really think the government was more interested about eardropping on your silly conversations than about trying to prevent another attack? (SatelliteGuys.us forum, August 28, 2006)
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/
On the original verb eavesdrop, see eavesdrop » ease drop. Eardrop makes immediate sense. |
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| interludes |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|12:13 pm] |
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| | geeky | ] |
I never saw Al Franken on Saturday Night Live.
I know his voice from a series of books he's recorded including, "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot," and "Lies and the lying liars who tell them: a fair and balanced look at the Right." I liked his delivery and I've listened to at least the second one a couple of times.
I've been following the longest federal election in U.S. history for a while and realized when it was finally decided about 2 weeks back what had been absent: Al Franken's voice.
He'd essentially gone into seclusion and let his lawyer do all the talking. I heard his acceptance speech and not much after that. Admittedly, Michael Jackson and Gov. Sanford had taken the lime lite.
So yesterday, it was very pleasant to go into my Doctor's office and find that not only was the TV tuned to Sonia Sotomajor's hearings, but the questioner was Al Franken.
There was something oddly comforting about hearing the phrase, "Senator Franken." |
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| Memes |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|01:34 pm] |
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| | chipper | ] |
I've never grasped the importance of those memes that say something like, "If there's any one on your friends list you want to have sex with copy this into your journal..."
I've hot hundreds of friends, it'd be odd if I didn't have a few with whom I'd like to have sex.
The add on to the meme where, with replies hidden, readers are invited to say that you've been interested in the poster for sexual purposes; that one has problems as well.
So you get brave and you post the second one.
For the point of argument, you get 4 replies.
- One is a former sexual partner with whom you're on good terms. The reply is complementary and doesn't require that you offer to restart the sexual portion of your relationship.
- One is a current flame and just re-affirms the current state of affairs.
- One is a relative stranger who's expressing interest, and
- One is someone you find totally inappropriate and with whom you have no desire to become sexually involved -- for our purposes they remind you too much of a sibling.
So now that these 4 people have indicated interest after you asked, what's the polite level of response for each of them?
Not asking for a prescription here, just delineating the basic range of answers you can reasonably be expected to get.
And of course there may be several people lusting after you who are too anxious to state it so directly without more encouragement... |
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| Writer's Block: Le Quatorze Juillet |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|10:38 am] |
I was in France watching various channels on the TV. I discovered on didn't really need dialog for a James Bond film. On the other hand, Highlander is a very dialog driven TV show.
Four Weddings and a Funeral came on. I realized every profane English expression, (fuck, shit, etc.) had been transcribed to "merde" in the voice over.
I'd had the same realization when I saw The Full Monty and the French subtitles had done the same thing. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 13th, 2009|02:27 pm] |
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| | amused | ] |
Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.
Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a "soliciting purr" to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.
Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a "cry", with a similar frequency to a human baby's.
The team said cats have "tapped into" a human bias - producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8147566.stm |
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| What comes next? |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|10:09 am] |
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| | calm | ] |
The essential failing of the war in Iraq was Rumsfeld's failure to ask the question, "So what do we do after we win?"
The image to keep in mind is that of a dog chasing a car: What will he do if he catches one?
Mark Sanford is going through this now. It's awkward being on the other end of people's "He should resign," speeches, especially after you've made a very public one on President Clinton. Sanford desperately wants people not to regard him as a bad person. He fell romantically for someone and he thinks that's somehow better than Elliot Spitzer, the last sitting Governor who had a sex scandal. A romantic affair is better than high priced hookers, right?
The trouble is that at a time when people know all they need to know and he says he wants to re-build his marriage, he should really just keep his mouth shut.
He's not asking the question,"So after I come clean to the public, what do I do next?"
It's always a good question to ask. |
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| LR Edited-69 |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|09:42 pm] |
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| | chipper | ] |
Now my yoga class was nothing like this.
Not only was it a crummy carpet, but the lights in the room were florescent.
( nws ) |
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