Posts by Jake Pollock
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Field Theory: Me and Paul, brewing up a storm, in reply to Mark Thomas,
check out the high tech equipment they were using at home
Glorious.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Greg Dawson,
WTF? Can we have a thing where we just got to a place in a practical manner without turning it into some middle class proof of worth exercise?
Wear what you want my friend. Frankly the lycra brigade is just happy to see other people on bikes.
(That said, what Jack said about dedicated cycling clothing being more comfortable for longer rides is 100% correct. People who cycle longer distances for exercise and recreation aren't wearing it to annoy you, just as people who wear running shoes to go jogging aren't trying to frighten off people who are running to catch a bus.)
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yeah, don’t hold your breath.
Hey, that's the Canon Newspaper of the Year you're talking about. They don't just distribute those between the mediocre organs of two conglomerates year-in, year-out, you know.
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It’s an arbitrary and relatively modern distinction anyway, made for aesthetic rather than grammatical reasons in the late eighteenth century.
Appearing in a quote in Language Log:
The OED shows that less has been used of countables since the time of King Alfred the Great – he used it that way in one of his own translations from Latin – more than a thousand years ago (in about 888). So essentially less has been used of countables in English for just about as long as there has been a written English language. After about 900 years Robert Baker opined that fewer might be more elegant and proper. Almost every usage writer since Baker has followed Baker’s lead, and generations of English teachers have swelled the chorus. The result seems to be a fairly large number of people who now believe less used of countables to be wrong, though its standardness is easily demonstrated.
It’s paywalled on the OED, but it does indeed say
c. A smaller number of; fewer. This originates from the Old English construction of lǽs adv. (quasi-n.) with a partitive genitive. Freq. found but generally regarded as incorrect.
Of course, generally regarded as incorrect is not the same thing as incorrect, and linguistic prescriptivism is no way to win an argument. I agree with everything else Damian has to say about TVNZ7, for what it’s worth.
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I’m just going to leave this here.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
According to the Herald live feed, it was reported by Sky News. Scroll down to 1.23PM.
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Hard News: We are all twatcocks now…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
To be fair, if the weather in Amherst is anything like it has been in Pittsburgh, that is kind of nuts.
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Bernie Sanders tells it like it is.
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I look forward to seeing the press release being published in Sideswipe after “twatcock” wins in a canter.
#eqnz should probably be in there.
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I live in Allegheny County, and I did not know about that. Wow.