Born and raised in Scotland, currently living in New Hampshire. Author of several books, mostly on meditation and Buddhist practice. Fan of Scots language. Learning #dansk and #svenska. Dabbler in #Pali.
I just had a conversation with a guy who said, “Yeah, well I’m a capitalist.”
So I asked, “Okay, how much capital do you have?”
Boy, oh boy, does that question put things in perspective. He became a caricature of an old Warner Brothers cartoon character, trying to compose himself as he fumbled for words, all while he avoided actually answering the question.
So I simply repeated the question. I highly recommend.
@MattMerk Is it Stockholm syndrome or something? The US is full of people who act like serfs, talk like rugged individualists, and identify with the very rich.
Tomorrow I'm interviewing big-time audiobook narrator Scott Brick, who narrates the "Dune" books, and Kevin J. Anderson who has written many "Dune" books.
Do you have any questions you'd like me to ask them (I'm especially interested in questions about the language of "Dune").
@grammargirl@EJGilbert Same here. When I read Dune I took Atreides to sound like a-TRY-deez (in the film it's a-TRY-deez — don't know about the audiobook). I also read Leto as Leeto, but I think in the film it's Layto (again, no idea about the audiobook). Did Herbert give any indication of how these names were to be pronounced?
Does anyone know the story behind these tiles about Alice? I run into different ones from time to time on walls around the Southside of Glasgow, mostly in the vicinity of Queen's Park.
"European intelligence agencies have warned their governments that Russia is plotting violent acts of sabotage across the continent as it commits to a course of permanent conflict with the west."
We are already under attack by Russia.
"... explosion at a munitions factory in Wales that supplies shells used by Ukraine ... a Czech arms depot storing weapons for Kyiv was destroyed ... A huge fire at a factory in Berlin...
Just today I've started using the term "billionairism" to signify that the morbid accumulation of wealth is a form of mental disturbance, even illness, and also to signify the detrimental effects billionaires' addictions have on society and the planet as a whole.
The fantastic Norton Disney dodecahedron intrigues everyone. There are other complete examples, e.g., this one from Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt.
We still don't know what those mysterious devices were used for. Any suggestions?
@ninawillburger I can imagine these functioning as stands for something like glass vials. Modern test-tube stands have holes that are the same size, but something like this could hold many different sizes of non-standard vessel/vials for perfumes,, medicines, and so on. You'd just have to turn the stand so that the size of hole you needed was at the top. Relatively fragile glass containers wouldn't survive, while these would. I don't know if Romans had anything like test-tubes, though!
Microsoft Word's grammar suggestion is to change "Take as long as you need" to "Take if you need."
How can a grammar checker be so bad? How can a company so inept become so rich? How can such a rich company fail to invest in the software it foists on its users? (These are rhetorical questions.)
Apart from a few comma suggestions, almost all the recommendations are as bad as this.
A really fascinating article on the evolving way Europeans understood Buddhism. Europeans encountered Buddhism in several different countries, but thought they were dealing with different religions in each. Voltaire was an admirer of the Buddha, although he called him Sammonocodom (Samana Gautama).
Listen, at 4:33 into this programme, to how many of the vox-pop voices, supposedly recorded in Dumfries today, have distinctly southern English accents. I know Dumfries well: there are English voices there, certainly, but they're a distinct minority. What are the BBC playing at here?
@simon_brooke Off-topic, but I saw 4:33 and immediately assumed this was about John Cage. Still, I'm interested in BBC bias and accents, and yes, all of the male voices are distinctly English.
I’m about to see a doctor because I injured my back badly last night. My blood pressure is 120/80. Exactly! The nurse said she hasn’t seen that in years 🙂
So, will the radical conservative justices on the Supreme Court decide that the president can legally have them executed? I tend to think not all of them will, but nothing would surprise me.
@maegul Yeah, there will be more and more things like that happening. China and India are now space powers as well, for example. Their increased presence is an inevitable shift, with them being the two most populous countries in the world and making advances with their economies.
