cafard

195 ms·

1. 2701.▲
   by cafard 6y ago

   Grose's A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) mentions the army custom of a marriage over the sword, the officiant, an NCO, pronouncing "Leap rogue, and jump whore/And now you are married forevermore." And somebody
2. 2702.▲
   by cafard 6y ago

   Hah. Omni Magazine. I remember seeing a copy in 1979 and thinking how odd it was.
3. 2703.▲
   by cafard 6y ago

   How? Uber loses money on every ride, doesn't it? Are you going to get VC money for a co-op?
4. 2704.▲
   by cafard 6y ago

   I think of stressing the third syllable of "ambulance" as a strong Maryland marker. Pronouncing "island" as "ollin" is said to be Baltimorean, but you can hear that in western Pennsylvania, too.
5. 2705.▲
   by cafard 6y ago

   Private military contractors? Well, they complained about the Hessians in the Declaration of Independence, didn't they? Older people who are thought to be spry enough to hold cabinet-level posts?
6. 2706.▲
   by cafard 6y ago

   Or, in the 19th and earlier 20th Century, public school, just as in Germany the Abitur qualified one to do one's compulsory military service as an officer of the reserve. Now, the instruction in the public school and gymnasium leaned h
7. 2707.▲
   by cafard 6y ago

   The lure of creating the philosopher king doesn't go away, does it? A few impressive philosophers have instructed a few impressive monarchs; but the latter didn't necessarily rule that philosophically. Aristotle taught Alexander,
8. 2708.▲
   by cafard 6y ago

   P.D.Q. would definitely be cheating. The one I didn't immediately remember was J.C.
9. 2709.▲
   by cafard 6y ago

   Historical reasons, but I don't know enough about this to say what they were. I infer that some of it may have had to do with the more uneven level of secondary schools in the US, as compared to the UK--where Sandhurst has a much short
10. 2710.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Skipping the ones on your list: Ohkegem, Josquin Des Prez, Byrd, Tallis, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Schutz, Rameau, Haydn, Telemann, Bachs who weren't J.S. or P.D.Q. (C.P.E. for example), Liszt, Chopin, a Johann and Richard Strauss, Mahle
11. 2711.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    a) They are selected for a variety of qualities, and mathematical competence weighs only so much, I suppose. b) They have many duties that eat up time and energy, and no doubt make it harder to study than it would be at a standard universit
12. 2712.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Thanks. I saw a reference to it in Kingsley Amis's novel The Old Devils , but was too idle to look it up.
13. 2713.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    An old-timey sysadmin I met referred to superuser as "stupiduser".
14. 2714.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    I do keep the crontab under revision control.
15. 2715.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    As a childhood fan of the Cleveland Browns, I'll mention the quarterback Frank Ryan, who had a Ph.D. in math from Rice. He was the QB during the Browns's last NFL championship.
16. 2716.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Meh. I have a six-letter surname, very common in northern Europe, and a couple of high school teachers basically never got the first vowel correct.
17. 2717.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Stanford is in a climate maybe less favorable to ivy, but a) it has a degree of prestige, and b) its graduates have done OK in tech.
18. 2718.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    I think Pascal said not all, but four-fifths. But how much of the modern economy stems from the same inability?
19. 2719.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    "Caroline huffily replied that regardless was a footless, weak word and got you nowhere, that on the other hand you threw in the word irregardless and won any argument hands down." Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King
20. 2720.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    That sounds right--I see he got an article in the Times end-of-year "The Lives They Lived" issue in 2004.
21. 2721.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Some year ago, the obit for a CCNY philosophy professor attributed the counter-example to him. This may be one of those quips that is simply untraceable.
22. 2722.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    If you are applying this to computer games, I see your point. If you are applying it to 5-star reviews for $20, then I disagree. (Luigi Barzini mentions an Italian book on card-playing--written, I think, by a clergyman--that begins "Al
23. 2723.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    You should have a look at The Best of Myles by Flann O'Brien, and the stretch of items about his "readers", who will make one's newly purchased books look properly read. Anyway, have a look at https://www.st
24. 2724.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Correction: in Swift it is "The peaceful possession of being well deceived". Pope made it "art".
25. 2725.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    "Art" used ironically, or perhaps whimsically, is fairly common in English. "The art of being well deceived" appears in both Swift and Pope. Whistler wrote The Gentle Art of Making Enemies .
26. 2726.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Bedtime and commuting. When the demands on my time fell off, it was hard to get out of the habit of leaving books under the bed.
27. 2727.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Without reading the article, it sounds as the author or editor is referring to Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined .
28. 2728.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Did they put this through a thorough examination, or just make rough guesses?
29. 2729.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Once, many years ago, I took a turn a little too fast, and a heavily loaded pallet with no bottom deck boards failed--the two stringers just folded. When I got to the plant, my boss said "Way to go, Stirling Moss." In my defense,
30. 2730.▲
    by cafard 6y ago

    Stoked and promoted? That was a reporter kneeling on George Floyd's neck?