Is this too mellow?
 

"Iain Churches" wrote in message


He tells a good story about how, after uni, he
traveled across America and visited Japan. He got a
job in a music store in Chicago, and the secretary to
the owner uses to get him (my pal) to write all the
letters as he was the only one who could a) put a sentence
together, and b) spell. English was his fourth language:-)

More to the point, he was a person with considerable linguistic talents. If
he had to resort to working in a music store, his university education must
not have had much practical value.

He cannot understand (neither can I for that matter) why
things that "can be done" are "doable", and why the
friendly "You are welcome" has given way to "No problem"
and how "guys" can refer to a group of people of either
gender, or what people mean by "doing stuff"

He's got linguistic talents, but his skills in sociology and anthropology
seem to be not so much.

There are countless examples. People who live in the
UK have probably not noticed the slow changes as
much as those of us living outside the UK.

Probably true. It's the boiled frog effect.

I still speak what was regarded as standard
English in the 1960's and 70s.

Speaks to a very rigid personality. There is a considerable amount of other
evidence to support this hypothesis.

The last time I was in
London, the son of a friend told me I "sounded like
one of them posh geezers"

Needless to say Iain, you didn't properly decode the message.

I think I need to go to elocution lessons, innit.

No Iain, you need counseling or at least a good self-help regimen, so that
you become more flexible. Given your age, you've got your work cut out for
you. :-(

Is this too mellow?
 

"Laurence Payne" wrote in message

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:13:58 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

Not really. It does say something about what their
preferences are. Since the vast majority of US citizens
already have either private or government medical
coverage, universal medical coverage not that much of
an issue to them.

I sense a wriggle in that answer.

It's the short version. Not all details are present. Typical of you Laurence
to try to twist reasonable economy of words into a character flaw.

Is there a fuller story to be told?

Of course. The above is one paragraph, 3 sentences. What do you expect?

The answer to the question above Laurence is that you are probably looking
for ways to salve your anxiety by means of hypercritical remarks.

Obviously if coverage already WAS close
to universal, there would be little to dispute about
making it completely universal.

In some sense there is effectively universal medical coverage in the US. For
example, many hospitals accept everybody who shows up in their emergency
rooms and treat them, no matter how much it costs. There is welfare and
charity medical coverage for people with chronic problems and limited means.
Social Security includes considerable medical coverage. Etc. Etc.

The problem is that this is a messy semi-system. There is no single point
that anybody can go to. The support is thin in places. Hospitals and some
doctors eat immense numbers of unpaid bills. I would say that the last
problem is actually the one that drives reform the hardest. The private
insurance industry and their reasonably happy clients provide the most
resistance to change.

One factoid - the private medical insurance industry as we k now it today in
the US was started by doctors, to ensure that they got paid for the work
that they were obliged to do anyway by their professional oath.

Is this too mellow?
 

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

In article , Bob
Latham wrote:
In article
, Arny
Krueger


Stuff falls off of planes all the time. Building a
plane that totally trashes itself when it runs over a
little junk is not the best idea.

Sounds like an American jealousy viewpoint to me. Having
the right tyres would have helped and do you suppose we
cannot find equally inadvisable elements with other
aircraft of the time?

I'm more intrigued by the "little junk" claim. Curious to
know of evidence that all other planes would have
survived the same bit of "junk" hitting them in the same
way in the same circumstances

Excluded middle argument due to the presence of the word "all".


I'd assumed that the point of having people check and
clear runways was precisely to prevent such "junk" and
the accidents they might cause.

There were about 4 minutes between when the junk dropped, and when it took
out the Concorde. The junk was small enough that expecting someone to see it
in real time and shut the runway down would be unreasonable.

The blame was assessed and represents the official view that for most planes
most of the time, running over the junk would be survivable, and that a
blown tire generally does not take out fuel tanks and crash a plane.

Is this too mellow?
 

Keith G wrote:

"bcoombes" bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote in message
o.uk...
Keith G wrote:

I got nothing to hide,

Fess up Keith, you're another one who's been getting Arny's goat and
now you're afraid they will find all that goat pron on the Mac's
drive. ;)


Goat pron doesn't bother me - it's the idea that a pic of one of my dear
old mutts could end up floating about in the ether. This pic of a
*bodger* (to confuse the trawlbots) was taken in total blackness through
a window on a 'floppy disk' Sony Mavica

I remember when they came out. I thought 'My God I really want one of those'.
All that storage. :)


a long time ago (I photographed
the 'crunching' sounds):

http://www.moirac.adsl24.co.uk/showntell/Bodger.jpg

See loads of em in Devon.


I put it on my (then) webpage and about six months later it came through
the door on a sodding wild animal and bird feed brochure!! (There's
more....)

I just spoke to Buy It Direct and asked if many people were loath to
send computers back and the nice lady said 'Oh yes, all the time -
especially the clergy!' OK, I'm joking

Many a true word etc.


but it ain't going back - not with my 17,000 pix, 18,000
'unregulated' MP3s, Swim's finances (backed up from her machine) going
back to the year dot as well as some of her work stuff which is very
sensitive, apparently.

So, I'm hoping it's the PSU and that they will check/replace/repair that
on its own, or I'll get one and try it - I'm waiting to hear back now.


I'm not familiar with their PSU's. Bound to be propriety technology I suppose.

--
Bill Coombes

Is this too mellow?
 

"bcoombes" bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote in message
...
Keith G wrote:

"bcoombes" bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote in message
o.uk...
Keith G wrote:

I got nothing to hide,

Fess up Keith, you're another one who's been getting Arny's goat and now
you're afraid they will find all that goat pron on the Mac's drive. ;)


Goat pron doesn't bother me - it's the idea that a pic of one of my dear
old mutts could end up floating about in the ether. This pic of a
*bodger* (to confuse the trawlbots) was taken in total blackness through
a window on a 'floppy disk' Sony Mavica

I remember when they came out. I thought 'My God I really want one of
those'. All that storage. :)


I think they held about 70 pictures at a certain size/resolution...?




a long time ago (I photographed the 'crunching' sounds):

http://www.moirac.adsl24.co.uk/showntell/Bodger.jpg

See loads of em in Devon.



Try getting a pic of one that close!! ;-)



I put it on my (then) webpage and about six months later it came through
the door on a sodding wild animal and bird feed brochure!! (There's
more....)

I just spoke to Buy It Direct and asked if many people were loath to send
computers back and the nice lady said 'Oh yes, all the time - especially
the clergy!' OK, I'm joking

Many a true word etc.


:-)





but it ain't going back - not with my 17,000 pix, 18,000 'unregulated'
MP3s, Swim's finances (backed up from her machine) going back to the year
dot as well as some of her work stuff which is very sensitive,
apparently.

So, I'm hoping it's the PSU and that they will check/replace/repair that
on its own, or I'll get one and try it - I'm waiting to hear back now.


I'm not familiar with their PSU's. Bound to be propriety technology I
suppose.


The palaver with Apple (basically, talking to Penelope Cruz in Greece on her
first day in the job reading scripts at a leisurely pace @ 5p per minute
only to discover that she didn't really know a computer from a crocodile and
then to end up being asked for a credit card number - yeah? WTF for?) had me
back on to Laptops Direct/Buy It Direct/Whuddever TF Direct to get them to
agree to send the PSU only back for testing.

I asked the blokey what would happene if the whole thing was sent back and
found to be faulty - It's inside 28 days, so they just send out another one,
sez he. Good oh, sez I, what happens to it then? It would go ff somewhere to
be refurbished, sez he. Where, Sez I? Mexico? India? Quite possibly, sez he
and then the penny dropped....

....while the 'service engineers' (that word again) at Laptops may well be
too busy to explore people's hard drives, the 'refurb houses' are almost
certainly not! Although that said, if you want a PC with somebody else's pix
on the hard drive, I'm told PC world is the place to go!

We had a brand new fax machine from Argos with somebody else's phone number
in it a while back and Swims new phone (work phone - so having a nice chat
with a Greek chick at 5p a minute on it was no hardship) is the second one
in so many days - the first *brand new* one already had stored numbers in it
and games loaded on it!

Bottom line: Swim is so adamant that she doesn't want the unending anxiety
of her financial details going off into the wide blue yonder she will
re-imburse me for the Mac (if I let her) if I can't get it sorted out!

.....Is when I have the top off it or, more likely, take it to a nearby *real
live* Mac repair geezer to get it looked at!!

:-)

Is this too mellow?
 

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Iain Churches
wrote:


I still speak what was regarded as standard English in the 1960's and
70s. The last time I was in London, the son of a friend told me I
"sounded like one of them posh geezers"

I think I need to go to elocution lessons, innit.

Nah. Jus get down wiv da yoof. Should help you get into recording the
latest 'stuff'. :-)

It's -17C here today. Cool. Just right for "chilling out" with
the "latest stuff"

But I ask ya: Even if I saand like a posh geezer,
am I bovvered, am I bovvered like?

I once got talking to Charlie Watts, in the SAS lounge
at Heathrow.He was flying to Stockholm, to attend the
opening of an art gallery and possibly buy some pantings.
He looked very distinguished in an immaculate pinstripe
suit, and spoke "terrible posh"


Iain

Is this too mellow?
 

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:01:53 +0200, "Iain Churches"
wrote:

I once got talking to Charlie Watts, in the SAS lounge
at Heathrow.He was flying to Stockholm, to attend the
opening of an art gallery and possibly buy some pantings.
He looked very distinguished in an immaculate pinstripe
suit, and spoke "terrible posh"


Speaking of Mr. Watts, there was a documentary on the Beeb many years
ago about butlers. One of them was asked if he had ever buttled for
anyone particularly pleasant, and he named Charlie as his favourite
boss.

d

Is this too mellow?
 

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Iain Churches" wrote in message


He tells a good story about how, after uni, he
traveled across America and visited Japan. He got a
job in a music store in Chicago, and the secretary to
the owner uses to get him (my pal) to write all the
letters as he was the only one who could a) put a sentence
together, and b) spell. English was his fourth language:-)

More to the point, he was a person with considerable linguistic talents. If
he had to resort to working in a music store, his university education must
not have had much practical value.


Don't be silly Arny, he was a European travelling across America and therefore
didn't have a green card. Under such circumstances working in a music store
would be a good job, particularly if he was into music.


I still speak what was regarded as standard
English in the 1960's and 70s.

Speaks to a very rigid personality. There is a considerable amount of other
evidence to support this hypothesis.

Sigmund Freud your middle name huh?

The last time I was in London, the son of a friend told me I "sounded like
one of them posh geezers"
Needless to say Iain, you didn't properly decode the message.

Well you obviously have Arny so let us in on the big sekret.

I think I need to go to elocution lessons, innit.

No Iain, you need counseling or at least a good self-help regimen,

Coming from someone who thinks that the Lord Mayor of Hiroshima either existed
or spoke English that's really funny. BTW, far from saying "What the **** was
that" he wouldn't have had time to say "Wh...". [even if he had existed].




--
Bill Coombes

Is this too mellow?
 

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

What I find interesting is that there were only 2 shuttle failures of about
100 flights, but the failures were widely chronologically separated so that
if you broke the flight schedule into two chronological groups of 50
flights, each group of 50 had a failure. The failures were totally unrelated
in terms of when or how they happened.



The failures were both caused by exactly the same root cause..NASA engineers not
foreseeing something totally obvious. In one case the effect of cold weather on
rubber and in the other the kinetic energy possessed by falling chunks of foam.


--
Bill Coombes

Is this too mellow?
 

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Iain Churches" wrote in message


He tells a good story about how, after uni, he
traveled across America and visited Japan. He got a
job in a music store in Chicago, and the secretary to
the owner uses to get him (my pal) to write all the
letters as he was the only one who could a) put a sentence
together, and b) spell. English was his fourth language:-)

More to the point, he was a person with considerable linguistic talents.
If he had to resort to working in a music store, his university education
must not have had much practical value.


My friend was travelling, and wanted to stay a while in Chicago.
He knew the music store owner from whom he had bought
a Guild acoustic guitar on a previous trip. He regarded
the job as a bit of fun, and a welcome break from academia.
He played gigs in the evenings.

I don't think he is particularly talented as a linguist, many people
in this part of the world are multilingual. But he was surprised
I think to find what a poor command so many Americans have
of English.

Illiteracy in Scandinavia is unknown. Itr is hard for people
here to comprehend that your own city of Detroit, Arny
has an illiteracy rate according to a United Nations report
of 46%.



He cannot understand (neither can I for that matter) why
things that "can be done" are "doable", and why the
friendly "You are welcome" has given way to "No problem"
and how "guys" can refer to a group of people of either
gender, or what people mean by "doing stuff"

He's got linguistic talents, but his skills in sociology and anthropology
seem to be not so much.

One needs to be neither sociologist nor anthropologist to
see the adverse effect that sloppy American usage is having
on the English language.


The last time I was in
London, the son of a friend told me I "sounded like
one of them posh geezers"

Needless to say Iain, you didn't properly decode the message.

I understood his meaning perfectly . This is a bright lad
who has currently chosen to reject normal standards of
behaviour, etiquette and social graces, and as a result is
finding difficulty in finding a job or a place in further
edfucation because of his lack of ability to present himself
well, and express himself eloquently and coherently.

Hopefully this is a phase that will pass before any real
setbacks occur.