Papyrus is over the line- it’s too stylized. It’s fine for say… a sign in a store saying to “Use other Door” or “Bathrooms this way”, or even for a neighborhood flyer or something. I wouldn’t use it for anything more formal than that; I guess it could be appropriate for the cover of some kind of Egyptian-themed novel, but I wouldn’t use it within the book itself.
Which reminds me of another thing people get worked up about. Metric vs. English measurements
Star Wars.
It was a good movie. I watched it with my family when I was a kid, and life as a tween in 1977 was incomplete without having seen it.
But…
It’s just another film.
It’s really a tween/teen film, with a fairly standard plot–the plot to 2001 was far deeper and thought provoking.
The special effects were groundbreaking, but not so much so.
Many other great films were made in the forty years since that just don’t get the fawning attention given to this one and its progeny.
If you go to Cracked, where 70% of the articles seem to be about movies these days, you will find that almost all of the movie-related articles mention something Star Wars-related. Why should one film dominate everything so much?
Are you discussing abortion or infanticide? The latter has also been referred to as “post-natal abortion”.
Oh, the word processor wars of the past century. And endless Mac vs Windows battles, and Linux/Unix fanatics. But your professor was way behind the times, to all intents and purposes you could do 95% of what the DTP programs and Tex could do, using something like M$ Word. Even in 1995.
Back in the seventies the same sort of people debated endlessly and vociferously about the best audio system. But, in everything from cameras to audio systems to computers - most hardware in fact - the differences are far less nowadays as the items concerned have become commodities. Today’s flame war over the best gizmo is pointless in ten years from now, when the gizmos are better, cheaper and almost identical to one another.
I’m a little curious, as an American do you know what cellotape is? Wouldn’t it annoy you to have to look it up right in the middle of reading a book?
Speaking as a different American, the instances where you can’t infer the meaning of an unknown British word from context alone are few and far between. And that’s not even counting the fact that “cellotape” has the word “tape” in it!
Now if you’re talking really arcane slang, with a lot of it in close succession, that could potentially be an issue. But even then context will usually get your understanding into the general ballpark.
IMHO, part of the enjoyment of reading a book written by a Brit such as J.K. Rowling or James Herriott, etc. is *having *to look up those unfamiliar terms and learn something, and also truly feel that you are reading something written by the author’s true intent. I don’t want to read something that’s been adjusted for my American mind, I *want *to get the British/foreign stuff unedited and in its raw/original form.
DC all handguns were banned. So what do you think happened to the previously legal owners of those guns? They were confiscated.
Chicago, guns had to be registered with a fee of $100 a year, if you missed, they confiscated the gun.
Whether Taiwan is part of China.
Paraphrase of actual conversation I had with two of my otherwise reasonable Chinese roommates.
Me: Isn’t Taiwan a separate country form China?
Them: Oh no not at all.
Me: But it has its own government, and its own set of laws and its own distinct economy?
Them: yes of course
Me: and this isn’t going to change?
Them: No, no one is advocating changing the current system.
Me: But if they came out and acknowledged what has been obvious for all practical purposes for 30 years, namely, that they are a separate country…
Them (shocked): That would be totally unacceptable! We would have to invade them no matter what the cost!
Since you’ve imagined this confiscation of arms, please tell me how it took place. I enjoy a good tall tale.
Firearms registered before the Firearms Control Act of 1975 were grandfathered in. There were no confiscations of firearms from legal owners.
Only if they were *registered. * I will point out that they have made a point, like in CA, of making the registration process as difficult as possible. In CA, you actually COULDN’T register your 'assault weapon" as they ran out of the forms. Then they said Ok, you get a grace period, we got more forms. Then they said “surprise!” no grace period after all, fooled ya!
What happened to the guns in Chicago when the $100 fee was late or unpaid?
So this is a gun control thread now.
Look folks, I’ve been exercising extreme restraint by not posting a fifteen paragraph screed about americanization/censorship of british literature. Don’t put my efforts to waste!
To be fair, comics are aimed way more at adults than kids these days. So it’s just like getting passionate over novel to movie adaptations. I like discussing them, just like novel ones. Some adaptations so different they just don’t even count as the same fandom, even if they’re good. Others (to me) lose the most important essences of characters. Some are great at capturing essence, if not specifics (history in comics is way too long for a movie to get/keep all the details - not as strongly the case with novels). It’s fun.
Gotta admit, I don’t get the DC v. Marvel thing anymore. There was absolutely a time in comics when they were significantly different flavors, but that time is long gone. And years ago Marvel jumped on the reboot wagon, so that difference went away, too.
I didn’t mean to derail the thread and I’m sorry. I’ll step out of this thread. If DrDeth starts another thread, perhaps I’ll join but probably not. He is combining in his imagination things that happened in California with things that happened in D.C. and I don’t have the interest in continually correcting him.
This has been an eye-opening and educational thread for me so far, particularly the cheerful revelation that one can find their life’s love by organizing instruction manuals properly. That will stick with me for a while.
Believe me, the only passion I had for TeX/LaTeX was the passionate sort of hate. For what we were writing, Word or WordPerfect was way more than adequate, but old Bart was some kind of mover and shaker in the early days of TeX, so he sort of forced it onto us whether or not it made a lot of sense.
Are the comics really aimed at adults, or are there just a lot of adults who never evolved their tastes for more sophisticated art?
Around the time that the Harry Potter craze was getting underway (mid-90s) I spotted a mass-market paperback at Borders titled Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone. Whoa, cool title! It kind of fit, since Indy was a college professor.
The verbiage on the flyleaf mentioned the Voynich Manuscript, and I’m interested in the VM, so I bought the book and read it. I don’t remember anything about it, though.
There’s a Facebook group I subscribe to, about problems that francophone Europeans are having with their Can-Am Spyder trikes. (Apparently the dealer and service network is dreadful over there.) On more than one occasion, the group’s moderator has reminded everyone that the group is to be used ONLY for complaints. Any positive messages or non-problem pictures are not welcome and will be removed.