balding_n_tired

I disagree. It's a lot easier not to go to Nevada than it is to pick up and move someplace where you prefer the voting system.

There is an interesting chapter in _Excellence Without a Soul_ by Harry Lewis, suggesting that garde inflation is less a problem that widely believed. You could look it up.

1. Isn't this a repost?

2. Maybe the plumber didn't feel like chatting while he worked.

I worked with a programmer who was legally blind. He used speech-recognition software plus some sort of display software that blew each character up to about 10" x 6".

Many years ago a neighbor of ours, riding his son's motorcycle at something around walking pace, collided with his daughter's bicycle, and fell off on his head. He died, she got away with a broken arm.

Certainly you can, but I find that bookstores generally don't, and I don't at home--force of habit.

You might want to Google for C.J. Date's essay on the problems with "intelligent keys".

I have written a certain amount of Javascript this year to run on Windows machines. This was because a) I needed the scripts to run on Windows, b) I did not wish to have to install another language (say Python) on the machines, c) I really really did not want to do them in VBScript.

You could change the NFL a great deal by changing the substitution rules, and making players play both ways as they commonly did before about 1960. You'd probably see the linemen come down to about linebacker size, and the skill positions to about defensive back size.

Meanwhile I'm waiting for the obsessive parents of America to read up on the cumulative effects of heading soccer balls.

Elite runners can take enough out of themselves that the recovery is much longer. Recreational runners--well, I used to be able to do two or three every fall. Hell, I knew a guy who would run one a week. He drove race directors crazy, because he expected the gates open and the tee shirt ready when he got to the line in 5:30 or 6:00.

I was a decent recreational runner in my late 20s. But pain tolerance is not "the difference", just "a difference". I do not have the classic marathoner's frame, and at above 60 miles per week, I would start to feel twinges here and there, which likely would've developed into injuries had a continued to train at that level for more than a couple of weeks. Now, 60 miles per week is nothing for a marathoner, about half what the true stars run.

As with any form of highly competitive athletics, the best advice is to choose your parents carefully.

Gee, I'm a 40+ Perl programmer. But Amsterdam is a few time zones away...

"There is one Phillips screwdriver in my house."

How many screws do you strip by not having the right size of Phillips screw driver? How many more can you not engage? Or have you gone really minimal and guaranteed that you have only one size of head on all your screws?

Washn't this posted from the original blog already?

A fellow I know who works for Goodwill remarked on the folks with scanners some time back. My impression was that he thought it an odd way to spend one's time, but was glad to see the books go out the door.

As for the fellow at the library, I can understand how a retiree, able to exchange time for lower prices, might be annoyed.

Because, however popular he may be in Europe, he still has to run in the US.

Just say "strong as a Bull Moose" and run with it, eh?

American here. There are professors of English in the US who pride themselves on incomprehensibility. And let's not get started on the social scientists...

res ipsa loquitur, or does it?

Or maybe the laws aren't enforced. Using hand-held phones behind the wheel is outlawed in DC, but widely practiced. I doubt you can stand on a moderately busy street in Washington for five minutes and not see a driver holding a phone to his ear.

"two clicks away"?

I wonder whether the writer might take a hint from Johnson on "Cymbeline", that it is impossible to criticize unresisting imbecility.

This is not to say that Ms. Sobon is an imbecile, for obviously she is not. But apparently she finds it easiest to fill up her blog with stuff that is not worth reading closely--worth a smirk from the indulgent and evidently a scowl from some of the rest.

Not enough colors!

As I recall the P-80 never saw combat, at least in WW II. I remember it chiefly for killing Richard Bong, the USAAF leading ace.

I have seen drinking lunch and pretty blatant sexual harassment in the work place. (Drunk boss chases female subordinate around the room; bosses sleep with secretaries; computer operator consumes 5 mixed drinks at a company party, then bollixes an upgrade.) So the old-timey fun as The Economist seems to define it is something I don't much miss.

Given that it's usually my wife or my stepmother, usually I say Yes. I did help with the internet connection on a neighbor's computer about a year ago, but we've known them for years and are on good terms.

Sorry--"dark-tipper"?

Twain commented on the shortening distance between Cairo and New Orleans and suggested that eventually the river would run out of room and have to stick out into the Gulf like a fishing pole.

Years ago I worked with a government techie, a fellow who had written a masters thesis on W.B. Yeats. One day, as we were discussing the dim prospects for the line of proprietary minicomputers we worked with, he said, "Jim, I think we're fastened to a dying animal." (http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/3847.html)

The Washington Post should publish a matrix comparing responsibility at the paper with highest degree or certification reached and source of undergraduate degree if any. I may by now have the story wrong, but it seems to me that in the early 1980s a friend who applied to work in a Post advertising department--not selling, and administrative assistant job--got the message that her pitiful midwestern state school B.A. made her undesirable.