Posts by James Butler
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Hard News: We ... WHAT!?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
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That was, however, his own doing. No suggestion that pressure was applied on him by those who are acutely sensitive to the raised eyebrows of Foggy Bottom’s residents.
That's just more evidence of their stupendous power!
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Hard News: We ... WHAT!?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
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I suspect by now the Mandarins of Foggy Bottom would have extracted grovelling corrections and apologies from both McCully and Grosser with a blunt butter knife and a pair of eyebrow tweezers.
You kidding? It took nary more than a raised eyebrow to get rid of Judge Harvey.
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Hard News: We ... WHAT!?, in reply to DeepRed,
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It raises another issue: is the English language in danger of splintering like Latin did centuries ago?
My (limited) understanding is that Latin splintered with the disintegration of the Roman empire and the closing of the lines of communications that had kept far-flung provinces in touch with each other. I have no doubt that after the west falls, satellites re-enter and undersea cables rot, English will splinter like Latin.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review - The Proposals, in reply to Andrew Geddis,
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It's the Goldilocks number! Not too high, not too low, and supported by just the right number of people!!
Goldilocks was still ejected from the house by a bear majority.
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Hard News: The Music for Occasions, in reply to Steve Barnes,
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In the UK at both my Brothers and my Mothers funerals, a week apart FFS, we had to request and source the music through the Funeral Directors, copyright law don’t cha know, so the selection was limited. This just added to the sadness and anger.
That's one advantage to a live-music funeral that I hadn't thought of. At least then even if you do end up paying, you're paying musicians.
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Hard News: The Music for Occasions,
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For comparison, my Dad went out to most of the Orpheus Choir singing this in Wellington Cathedral. And sometimes I wonder why I find it hard to let go of the whole church funeral thing.
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Hard News: The Music for Occasions,
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I've been thinking about this one a bit recently (although I don't plan on dying anytime in the next 50 years). I was brought up in the Anglican church music tradition, and I always assumed that I would have an Anglican funeral, perhaps with Thomas Tomkins' Funeral Sentences:
Even having left the church, choral music is important enough to me that I think I still want a choir; but the very plain statements of faith offered by Tomkins wouldn't sit well I think. Of course the range of secular choral music is a bit limited, but maybe I could cope with church music if it were in a different language?
But whatever happens, I want my pall borne out to something very different:
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Just have to point out that Stephen Hawking is on my side #proofbyendorsement
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Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to richard,
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But for experimental physics junkies, it lacks a bit of that wow factor
But for actual experimental physicists, there is a fair bit of wow
Sick - but not undeserved - burn.
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Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to richard,
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Personally, my feeling is that any mathematical typesetting done in Microsoft looks like arse – I would have used LaTeX.
Hopefully not with Knuth's Computer Modern, which is the Comic Sans of scientific typesetting and ruins 99% of TeX/LaTeX docs :P