Posts by Josh Addison
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Yeah, we made out well from ours. We'd been living together for years, and had everything we needed in the way of "house stuff", i.e. traditional wedding gifts. On the invitiations we basically said "presents are nice, but money towards a house deposit would be nicer, thanks". Of course, then we went and bought a house a month before the ceremony (because we didn't have enough to stress about), so all the cash became "money towards a honeymoon". Which was awesome.
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Only vaguely related - when we got the phone connected at an old flat, Telecom assigned us a phone number that had previously been used by a Baha'i faith phone line. I discovered this when I answered one day to be asked "are you aware of the Baha'i faith?" I replied "um, yeah, I've heard of them..."
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Matthew, I'm assuming you're doing a Bachelor's degree, in which case you're right - independent thought is generally not allowed, since at that level, you're supposed to be showing that you can research a subject and understand what you've learned. At Master's level and further on you get to start making your own points(although everything you say has to be carefully backed up, of course).
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Bollocks. Let's just pretend that link was properly formatted.
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The missus and I <a href="http://brainstab.blogspot.com/2007/05/civilised-unionised-cupped.html">went for a Civil Union</a>, figuring it meant we wouldn't be bound by tradition and could come up with an event that suited us. Her brief was "a big party with a little ceremony at some point", although we ended up being a little more structured and traditional than that, mostly for the sake of our families. Because that's the real secret of weddings/Civil Unions/whatever -- they're really all about everyone else; the happy couple are just convenient focal points for the audience.
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I think the "leaves on trees" thing is pretty much universal -- it was one of the first things I commented on when I got glasses at 18 (having first noticed my eyesight getting dodgy at around 16). And as soon as I made the observation, I was told that my uncle had said the exact same thing when he got glasses...
Both my mother and one of my brothers got glasses at a young age (in my brother, it motivated him to go into optometry). Mum went to contacts, and watching her poke herself in the eye every morning for years convinced me to stick with the glasses. My brother, on the other hand, had issues with Roacutaine and an air-conditioned office, which combined to make his eyeballs to dry for lenses. Weird.
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Now, one I've never been clear on: do you give someone a reality check, or do you write them a reality cheque?
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I've noticed a journalistic trend of late to misuse "begging the question".
It's not just journalistic, and it's not just of late. As a former Philosophy student, seeing a technical term misused into meaninglessness, it makes my head explode.
As a former Linguistics student, familiar with the ever-shifting sands of our constantly evolving language, meh.
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Did you eventually define a dangling participle Josh? Lessee, Jesus had 12 participles, and one of them ended up hanging himself - it's a reference to Judas?
Do you know, that's the least blatantly pornographic explanation of the term I've ever heard. I was going to go with "look at those dangling participles - big as grapefruits, they are" or something. I like yours better.
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I've always assumed it meant blown up by your own bomb. Please tell me I haven't been wrong for all these years...
Nope, you're dead right. Lots of people though, see the word "hoist" and just assume a petard must be some sort of flagpole that you hoist things up on. Or, in the case of the editorial Herr Slack mentioned, something which gets hoist up. Argh.